May Newsletter
I recently underwent something called Blue Light Treatment. A powerful light beams onto your head and face for 16 minutes in an effort to root out any lingering skin cancers. Not an unpleasant experience after which you cannot go anywhere for 48 hours where there is even a hint of sunshine as you have just lost several layers of skin. “Stay away from windows,” I was advised, reminiscent of the old Cold War instructions to “Get under your desk.”
You only look like you have leprosy for a few days after which you are safe to crawl out into the light. It’s only been a week, but I am confident I shall look thirty years younger any second now.
Back in the 70’s, I got involved in the making of a film of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. This was in the heyday of the Ozploitation films, when the Australian government decided anyone investing in films could get a huge tax break. The movie, starring a very young Jeremy Irons, was shot on location in Tasmania for less than a million dollars. It occasionally pops up on some obscure Scandinavian TV channel around Christmas time. The only reason I know this is that I get about eight pounds credited to my Barclays Bank account in Henley on Thames every January. I have had this account since childhood. Sadly, there has seldom been more than eight pounds in it at any one time.
The film was written by a guy called Tutte Lemkow. You are now wondering how this relates to skin cancer. It doesn't, really. Only before writing the script of The Wild Duck, Tutte had been a bit-part actor. He appeared very briefly in over two hundred films. Most notably, he was the guy who translates the inscription on Harrison Ford’s staff in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now I know who he’s talking about, you’re thinking.
Tutte told endless stories on set to console and distract himself. His script was deemed so awful that Jeremy Irons was rewriting his own part and everyone else’s. Tutte had once been cast in a tiny part as Head Leper in Ben Hur. Thinking it might empower his performance if he visited one of the last remaining leper colonies in the world before filming started, he made the mistake of mentioning this to the film’s star Charlton Heston. Tutte told me he had never witnessed anyone recoiling faster. Consequently, Tutte was demoted from Head Leper to fourth leper on the right in the back row and told not to interact anymore with Chuckles Heston, as everyone referred to him.
But I digress. Getting back to skin peeling off: You can’t beat getting to be over sixty-five in America. You are waited on hand and foot by doctors and nurses, mostly for free. In England one is forced to sit in a waiting room full of coughing characters with runny noses for hours on end whilst you wait to be seen for any malady. Reaching old age in the US is a pleasure. Doctor’s offices are like the Executive Lounges in airports used to be. It’s been a few decades since I have been admitted to an Executive Lounge anywhere, but going to visit my doctor on MacDill reminds me of being spoiled. Water and coffee are free, Architectural Digests are plentiful, the television is showing some delicious soap opera, and you never have to wait long to be seen.
As you are leaving, you murmur something about “Do I owe you anything?” and invariably are told your insurance covers it, but we’ll bill you if there’s a co-pay. As I seldom open bills for weeks, the whole thing appears psychologically free.
For a very small amount of money, I belong to a medical group that boasts Concierge Medicine. This just means the good doctor gives you his home number and you can call him any hour of the day or night to whine that you might be getting a cold or your big toe aches and could this be gout? My own doctor is very good to me. He tells me not to fuss, and that there is basically nothing wrong with me that a glass of prosecco won’t sort. I bet he would say that even if I convinced myself I had leprosy.
From Wilton Morley
