Dear Floss and Bill:

Yes, do please scold us. We have it coming to us. But the guy was a "prominent" New York surgeon with forty years of experience, and he had treated KB for tension and *knwh* and understood the problems involved --- so we thought. Some day I must have a long talk with Bill and find out just what the "relatives of the patient" can do when everyone in the hospital who comes in to see the patient says he needs attention badly "but we can't do anything for him until the doctor sees him", and this goes on for twelve hours (third day after the operation with only one visit from the dr. early the 2nd day before the swelling set in) and when I call the dr. I get his wife who says don't worry, you know he is a difficult patient and a very tense person and I say - that's just why I AM worried - and finally the dr. has KB's phone cut off at the hospital so he can't bother him (Are drs. supposed not to be bothered?) -- and at just what point can a relative of the patient get in another doctor -- as far as I can make out, *never*. Well, anyhow he finally *saw* KB and realized that the guy would just die if he didn't do something, and he talked the whole thing over with him (KB was scared, and so was I), gave him relief from both ends of the alimentary canal (another question for Bill, Just how long can a person lie bloated with no action either way, without developing gangrene or something? Three days? Four days?) and proceeded to pull him out of it. The telephone was connected, the drs. wife told me to just call them any time I had anything on my mind (I said: "I don't like to bother you.") But for several weeks KB had × painful trouble with elimination and we were worried. He seems perfectly all right now. But I shall be very scared to ever let him in a hospital again unless I have someone like Bill to advise me. He can go into shock and never pull out of it, if he feels he has an unsympathetic doctor. The reason this surgeon was "unsympathetic" was that he had forgotten to come to the operation (he admits he is forgetful) and he knew that KB knew that he had forgotten to come. Bad situation from the start.

Enough of wailing.

It is so good to have Floss's note saying that all is well with you. We too feel pretty good, waiting for the boys to come home for the holidays - the phone will ring any time now - and after then we go to Florida. The only thing that can keep the Florida trip from being a success is if they charge just much too much for everything - we are prepared for the worst - but they may go beyond what we think is the worst!

Wish we had had another visit with you this fall. I'm afraid we WERE a little sad at that time, not able to make it the truly happy day it should have been, for we do so much enjoy those days when you come. We shall work out a new way of life, given a little time. You are lucky to have your boys not too far away, even with their problems it is better not to have that feeling that they are in another part of the world. I am wondering how these problems have worked out. Next winter we go to California, palo alto - some Ford foundation behavioral group - good deal financially as KB can do his own writing, but such a long long way from Harvard University! It is surely the kids that kick the parents out of the nest.

Take care of yourselves. And do write. Mail will be forwarded whenever we have an address (KB says to everyone our address in the South will be General Delivery, Segregationville) (I wouldn't be surprised if there were such a place). And if we find a heavenly place, we shall surely let you know about it if there were the least chance of your joining us.

Your generosity ("I had planned to ask you to stay with us") makes that goddam hospital experience just a little worse in my memory - we have put deBell on a pedestal around here since this fiasco.

I am sending you a 35¢ book worth a million. Do please read it.

Best of love, from KB and me,

Libbie