A lifetime of healthcare misadventures, told backwards: Read A Twinkle at the End: Rewinding My Life Through America’s Healthcare Maze now, before the author rewinds completely.
Most memoirs start with childhood and end with death. Author Alan O’Hashi does the opposite: He begins as an old guy on the verge of collapsing in the kitchen. He then works his way backward through Medicare mix-ups, acupuncture torture, and raisin-based arthritis remedies. Finally, Alan fades out as a zygote. Think about cradle-to-grave coverage in reverse.
The story begins with his healthcare in a Boulder, Colorado, senior cohousing community. Read about his acupuncture torture sessions. Discover the drunken raisin arthritis cure that nearly got him evicted from my condo for being too healthy and young.
Along the way, he recounts medical misadventures from my working life. These include a small-town hospital merger. There was also an emergency CPR rescue. From there, it’s a rewind through college scrapes, high school drama, and adolescent sex-ed horrors. There are also grade-school struggles with bad eyesight and worse teeth. Eventually, he vanishes as nothing more than a twinkle in his parents’ eyes.
Of course, there’s a paradox at the heart of all this. Healthcare providers want to keep us alive and well. To survive themselves, they depend on us being just sick enough to keep coming back. Cures don’t pay the bills, chronic conditions do.
According to Social Security, I’ve got about 10.4 years left on my warranty. Given my track record, He hopes to outlive the actuary. If you want to find out how his story unwinds before he does, grab the book now. Don’t wait until he’s a twinkle. There will be no book signings after that.
Order from Ingram iPage, ISBN: 9798218163495, Retail Price $17.99 USD.
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Published by Alan O’Hashi, Whole Brain Thinker
I’ve been involved with community journalism since 1968 when I wrote for my junior school paper, the "Tumbleweed," through high school and college and then wrote for the "Wyoming State Journal." I put aside my newspaper pen and began Boulder Community Media in 2005. There wasn’t much community journalism opportunity, so I resurrected my writing career as a screenwriter. My first short screenplay, “Stardust”, won an award in the 2005 Denver Screenwriting Center contest. I've made a number of movies over the years. Filmmaking is time-consuming, labor and equipment intensive. I recently changed my workflow to first write a book and make a movie based on that content.
- Electric Vehicle Anxiety and Advice - This is a memoir travelogue of three trips covering 2,600 EV miles around Wyoming (2022)
- Beyond Heart Mountain - Winter Goose Publishers released my memoir in February (2022)
- The Zen of Writing with Confidence and Imperfection - This is a book recounting how luck planed into my signing a book deal after a 15-minute pitch meeting. (2020)
- True Stories of an Aging Baby Boomer - War stories about living in a cohousing and lessons others can learn when starting their communities (2021)
- Beyond Sand Creek - About Arapaho tribal efforts to repatriate land in Colorado (PBS - TBA)
- Beyond Heart Mountain - Based on my memoir about my childhood in Cheyenne facing overt and subtle racism toward the Japanese following World War II (PBS - 2021)
- New Deal Artist Public Art Legacy - About artists who created work in Wyoming during the Great Depression (PBS - 2018)
- Mahjong and the West - SAG indie feature which premiered at the semi-important Woodstock Film Festival (2014)
Over the years, I’ve produced directed, filmed and/or edited several short movies, “Running Horses” (Runner Up – Wyoming Short Film Contest), “On the Trail: Jack Kerouac in Cheyenne” (Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival, Top 10 Wyoming Short Film Contest), “Gold Digger” (Boulder Asian Film Festival), “Adobo” (Boulder International Film Festival), “A Little Bit of Discipline” (Rosebud Film Series), and two feature length documentaries “Your Neighbor’s Child” (Wyoming PBS and Rocky Mountain PBS), and “Serotonin Rising” (American Film Market, Vail Film Festival). He also directed and produced the award winning stage play “Webster Street Blues” by my childhood friend Warren Kubota.
Boulder Community Media is a non-profit production company dedicated to democratzing media in all their forms - large and small screens, printed page and stage by providing sustainable and community-based content.
I mostly work with community-based media producers, organizations, and socially-responsible businesses to develop their content via – the written word, electronic and new media, the visual and performing arts in a culturally competent manner – I’m what’s commonly called a niche TV and movie producer.
Along with all this is plying my forte’ – fund development through grant writing, sponsorship nurturing and event planning.
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