I started to drive last week, which has been liberating. I’m still not quite sure of the clutch foot in my VW van. I’m likely to get an automatic transmission vehicle and have been renting one for a week and getting around pretty well. I’m looking to lease a car.

Meanwhile, the Eurovan started right up after sitting fallow since December 16th. I’m able to push in the clutch and drive it. I have a love – hate relationship with it, though. It’s been nothing but trouble since the day I bought it, but luckily much of the failures were covered by warranty.

There still are some quirky things happening when it starts up. I take it to the garage on Sunday to get it looked at. Who knows when it will be out of the shop. I’ll check on Wednesday.

As for now, the car lease quest is now a waiting game hoping for a better deal. The one in December that I missed was zero down, 24 months $197 for a Ford Focus. The best I’ve been able to find now is zero down, 36 months $239 for a Subaru Legacy sedan.

I digress.

Meanwhile, I figured out that the main reason doctors get sued so much is because healthcare is imprecise at best. Hit and miss guesses based on the best information available at any given moment is the only way to figure out what’s wrong with someone.

Once a doctor and patient weigh the information and with a high probability have figured out what’s happening, the same process is followed for treatment. Patients who aren’t proactive and involved in their health care and rely on docs to make decisions make a huge mistake.

I’ve learned that a person really needs to be a strong advocate for themselves because doctors, nurses and everyone else in the health care environment could give a rat’s ass what’s happening with each individual patient. The squeaky wheel gets the bed pan was my mantra.

I’m still going through ‘dialing in’ process for my treatment. I don’t think I’ll ever be back to where I was before June, 1, 2013 – but who knows?

I’d say the “armchair patients”  who haven’t been in the healthcare system lately and think that modern medicine choices are black and white need to get sick to experience it themselves.

So far, so good on that front.

The things I notice these days, are public places that aren’t universally accessible. I stayed at a bed and breakfast as a break from hotels the other day.

It’s in an historic building and there were two concrete steps to get up to the yard, then four concrete steps to get to the porch. Once inside I had to navigate six stairs to one landing then four more stairs to the second landing.

Whaddya gonna do?

Truckin, Im a goin/ home. whoa whoa baby, back where I belong …