My Carl Spackler Moment

So I pulled a Carl Spackler yesterday staking out on the bathroom floor in camouflage in hopes of diagnosing and then eliminating these pesky little bugs marching out from under the toilet like imperial stormtroopers. I was both terrified and exhilarated. Felt like I was in an episode of Stranger Things meets Alfred Hitchcock. My sad treatment plan firing off soap detergent was a mere Band Aid and so they kept coming back, like a pain or cramp that returns despite injections, like a resilient tumor, or anxiety that keeps telling someone they can’t. Some problems - in the home and in health - are notoriously hard to diagnose and harder to stop if you ask me. I sometimes think the healthcare industry and health insurers can be unintentionally cruel when they make it harder than it has to be to figure stuff out, and harder to make the thing we want to stop, to just go away. They force folks to fail first on so many things. To waste time firing soap detergent and wait out the problem until it becomes a crisis, to wade through a series of steps - so many tests, so many hurdles and rules. It takes a toll: months of pain, unknowns, confusion, trepidation. A lot like how I felt when I was laying on that cold bath floor holding a spray bottle like Bill Murray’s character did in Caddyshack. But there’s now hope … my daughter thought to put nail polish down as a kind of sealant to block those bugs, and wouldn’t you know it, they stopped coming. Genius? Luck? Maybe a bit of both but undeniably resourceful, creative and cost effective given my next step was a call to a couple specialists — the bug guy and the plumber. It reminded me of old Doc Baker giving Laura Ingalls a soda to solve her belly ache. If only healthcare had as much ingenuity and the freedom to experiment like my kid did without so many checks and balances, and time spent on the floor.