My favorite thing about healthcare is having witnessed it up close and personal both as a cancer patient in the 80’s and as the survivor of a heart attack seven years ago.

I was fortunate enough to have testicular cancer before Lance Armstrong made it seem kind of stylish.  Caught early, it’s one of the most curable cancers.  As those who’ve undergone the chemo will attest, the cure is almost potent enough to kill you.

I self-diagnosed while watching a local news cast in Amarillo where I was stationed on one of my consulting engagements.  As we were having dinner, my fellow consultants voted to change the channel—I however had lost my appetite.  I went to my room, looked in Yellow Pages—see how times have changed—and called the first doctor I found.  This is one of those times when Never Wrong Roemer hated being right.

So, yada, yada, yada; my hair falls out in less time than it took to shower.  A few more rounds of chemo, the cancer’s gone and I start my see America recovery Tour, my wig and I visiting friends throughout the southeast.  If I had it to do over, I would go without the wig, but at twenty-seven the wig was my security blanket.  I don’t think it ever fooled anyone or anything—even my house plants snickered when I wore it around them.

I owned a TR-7 convertible—apparently it never lived up to its billing as the shape of things to come, more like the shape of things that never were.  My wig blew out of the convertible as I made my way through Smokey Mountain National Park.  I spent twenty minutes walking along the highway until I spotted what looked like a squirrel laying lifelessly on the shoulder—my wig.

The last stop on my tour was at a friend’s apartment in Raleigh.  Overheated from the long drive and the August sun, I decided to take a few laps in her pool.  I dove in the shallow end, swam the length of the pool, performed a near-flawless kick-turn and eased in to the Australian Crawl.  As I turned to gasp for air, I noticed I was about to lap my hair.  I also noticed a small boy, his legs dangling in the water, with a look of astonishment on his face.

My ego had reached rock bottom and had started to dig.  Realizing my wig wasn’t fooling anyone but me, I had one of those “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em moments” and never again wore the wig after learning it was such a poor swimmer.

Do you get those moments, or get the little voice telling you that your EHR that the users would rather enter patient data on an Etch-A-Sketch?  It’s okay to acknowledge the voices as long as you don’t audibly reply to them during meetings—I Twitter mine.

Sometimes the voices ask why we didn’t include the users in the design of the EHR.  Other times they want to know how that correspondence course in project management is coming along.  It’s okay.  As long as you’re hearing the voices you still have a shot at recovery.  It’s only when they quit talking that you should start to worry.  Either that, or try wearing a wig.