EDITOR'S NOTE Journals teach and stimulate in many ways. They present new information. They raise questions. They emphasize. They also may affect patient care by affecting physicians' feelings. This paper has affected reviewers not necessarily by presenting new information but by edging into their consciousness, by stirring their sense of humanity, by giving a new approach to hopelessness and handicaps. It is about teaching and about caring."Avocado" is an adaptation of an address given at the Stanford University Class Day, June 1990. It is an excerpt from an unpublished novel, La Mollie and the King of Tears. Dr Islas is Professor of English at Stanford. He has dealt with his own chronic illness for 30 years.