In this day and age of multiple personality disorder — that is, our combination of official government identifications (driver’s licence, voter ID card, medical ID card, etc.) and online personalities (email address, social media identities (real and/or imagined)), etc.) — do we know who we are when we no longer know who we are?

While we work with medical professionals in private practice and public hospitals (a thanks to the folks at Holston Valley Medican Center and HealthSouth Rehab Hospital) to get my father on a track where he can have an acceptable, if not good/great, quality of life considering his conditions, my family works in the background to sort out my father’s multiple personalities.

For instance, my father kept Post-It notes of some of the usernames and passwords associated with his online personalities but not all of them, especially the most important ones.

His official government identification cards are up-to-date and don’t need fixin’, as we say around here.

However, working through the bureaucracy of getting help when help is needed most — a medical emergency — is just short of a nightmare for those of us able to sort through the payment options and insurance coverages that are written to accommodate as many diagnoses as are currently available in legible written form by the medical profession.

Woe be to those whose family members have symptoms that can’t readily be grouped into an official syndrome or disease.

I could wax and wane through many a lighted Moon cycle on the current state of the modern medical scientific community but suffice it to say that any view 1000 years hence marks this time, like all looks back into history, as rather barbaric, archaic and borderline misinformed.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a fast-forward button to take my father into a future where his conditions are rather curable by enlightened practitioners.

I have to deal with the training and knowledge at hand, such that it is.

Thank goodness, compassion, care and comfort are rather universal — human touch, in other words, is good for most of us, in one form or another.

My father responds well to communication with fellow members of his gender.  Guy-to-guy gatherings are his thing and he perks up when men ask him to perform manly tasks.

He does not want to be babied or treated weakly by women.

Otherwise, all is well that progresses well.

Me, I don’t mind attention by females in medical professional roles but I’ve noticed my father responds best when treated by men — doctors, nurses, therapists and specialists.

Probably a generational thing as well as social training — I am a child of the 1960s/1970s whereas my father is a child of the pre/during-WWII era, with other subcultural nuances thrown in for good measure.

Something the medical community should take into consideration when vocalising concerns about getting more people involved in seeking certification for jobs/roles in the medical field.

Healing is not just application of chemical treatments — treating people like desired monoculture grass lawns — it’s also understanding where the patient is coming from and wants to be treated.

The online world is no different.  How do we create a system so that when a person’s ability to recall important online identity tags diminishes, family members can step in and help without having to figure out the unique character set combinations the person’s brain created to protect online personalities, especially where bill payment and medical information access is critical to keeping the person healthy and out of financial trouble?

People to thank with more to follow: Benjamin, Amanda, Tina, Martha, Mary, Sue, Jennifer, Joyce, Glenda, Brenda…