It’s been a little over a year since Shannon died, and it’s been rough. Random things make me think “I’ve got to tell Shannon about this”, and then it hits me that I can’t. I cannot describe the wave of sadness that momentarily overwhelms me. It hits like a tsunami and tugs me under churning debris before it recedes and leaves standing, miraculously, on solid land.
The irony is that I’m able to land on solid ground largely because of the man I lost. The years of taking care of him taught me how to be a man. Our endless conversation gave me the strength of my convictions. I learned to love without condition and to accept his on the same terms. I learned to be patient. He made me more human and, thereby, better equipped to survive without him.
And I am surviving.
My life is very different than it was before. I have to keep up with when bills are due (something he did really well) and feed the cats. I keep up with my doctor appointments instead of his. I am the patient instead of “being patient”.
Everything about him challenged me to grow into a better person. I returned the favor, and we grew into people I could be proud of. It was a great life, even with its challenges. They were opportunities for growth, not obstacles.
The tsunami hits every day or two. Some days, it comes in periodic waves. Either way, I end up on solid ground standing on my own two feet, waiting for the next one to hit. Still, I’m surviving.
If he were here, I’d say goodnight about now. And, in a way, he is.
So, “Goodnight, sweetie. Get some good sleep."
"I’ll see you on the other side.”
09 October 2011
04 July 2011
The Celexa Chronicles
The saga continues. I’ve been taking Celexa for almost 2 months now, and I continue to be amazed by what feeling like normal feels like. By what it feels like to think clearly and see the humor in life. The simple joy of an incisive and witty phrase well-turned.
I had forgotten what it feels like to laugh. Somewhere amidst all the darkness, I lost my bemusement and amusement at the daily absurdities we all confront. Instead of simply accepting that many parts of life are absurd and not within my control, I began to equate absurdity with injustice, two very different concepts. The latter requires conscious action by someone; the former simply is.
Every day, I feel better, farther away from that abyss I fear so much. Every time I laugh, I savor the kernel of joy that comes with that primeval response to humor. It tastes like sunlight with a honey, orange and ginger dressing.
The life outside my mind hasn’t changed. I’m still recently bereaved and trying to learn how to live as a single man. A man who’s rapidly aging. My life still revolves to a greater or lesser degree around medical appointments. I still have a blood clot and am still recovering from hip surgery. My work is still demanding, and my bank account still always too low.
My response to that reality is profoundly different, though, than what it was a couple of months ago. All those things seem manageable, somehow, in a way they didn’t. They were probably manageable all along, but I couldn’t see it. Not through all the darkness.
I still miss Shannon. That’ll never change. I miss my first partner, Rich, who died over 15 years ago. It took a while for that grief to modulate into a fond longing. It will take a while this time to.
But I can see that more clearly than I have been able to up until now. It doesn’t mitigate the pain, but I now believe the pain is survivable.
I had forgotten what it feels like to laugh. Somewhere amidst all the darkness, I lost my bemusement and amusement at the daily absurdities we all confront. Instead of simply accepting that many parts of life are absurd and not within my control, I began to equate absurdity with injustice, two very different concepts. The latter requires conscious action by someone; the former simply is.
Every day, I feel better, farther away from that abyss I fear so much. Every time I laugh, I savor the kernel of joy that comes with that primeval response to humor. It tastes like sunlight with a honey, orange and ginger dressing.
The life outside my mind hasn’t changed. I’m still recently bereaved and trying to learn how to live as a single man. A man who’s rapidly aging. My life still revolves to a greater or lesser degree around medical appointments. I still have a blood clot and am still recovering from hip surgery. My work is still demanding, and my bank account still always too low.
My response to that reality is profoundly different, though, than what it was a couple of months ago. All those things seem manageable, somehow, in a way they didn’t. They were probably manageable all along, but I couldn’t see it. Not through all the darkness.
I still miss Shannon. That’ll never change. I miss my first partner, Rich, who died over 15 years ago. It took a while for that grief to modulate into a fond longing. It will take a while this time to.
But I can see that more clearly than I have been able to up until now. It doesn’t mitigate the pain, but I now believe the pain is survivable.
22 June 2011
Ressurection
One of the great ironies of depression is that it’s hard to see from the inside. From the inner perspective it can look like moodiness, frustration with everyday events, an inexplicable loss of good judgment or an intense desire to be alone in a small world that you can control. From inside, nothing ties all those things together and names them symptoms of depression.
The irony continues when one gets treatment for depression. As the medication begins to take effect, all of this becomes clearer, the parts fitting together into a whole. And the depressed person realizes acutely just how dark his life had become. From within depression, the darkness seems normal. Outside of it, it leads to questions like “Why couldn’t I see this?” and “Shouldn’t I have known?”
That’s the punch line: depressed people often cannot put a name on what’s changed in their lives other than that they are unhappier. They say “stressed” or “under pressure”. They say “I can’t sleep”. They say they’re lonely and/or don’t care about anything and want to be alone.
No part of the experience makes sense until the depression begins to lift. Then the picture gradually becomes so clear one wonders how they missed it. Why they didn’t see it before.
And contrary to popular myth, antidepressants aren’t “happy pills”. They don’t create an artificial happiness that wasn’t there before but had been superceded by the dark side. Pills don’t create happiness: they only allow happiness to be more of an option. They don’t mask or dilute pain, but they do allow the individual to deal with those emotions more sanely.
It’s been about a month for me on Celexa, and I kick myself for not talking to my doctor sooner. I suppose that I didn’t want to admit that I was weak and needed help. I really don’t know. Nothing was very clear when I was teetering along the edge of the abyss.
A month in, things are much clearer. I’m back to being me. Hopelessly romantic and optimistic. Instead of seeing what is and retreating inside myself, I see what is and what could be. I can laugh at the absurdity of daily life instead of taking it as a personal affront.
The only side effects have been some dry-mouth and loss of libido ("dead dick" in the parlance). I can always drink more water, and since I gave up promiscuity a decade ago, not caring about sex is something of a blessing. I ain't getting none any time soon, but I don't care. It's one less thing to distract me.
In short, I have a perspective that I lacked a few short weeks ago. A perspective that is more in line with normal functioning for me than what I had become.
People have noticed. They ask me if I’ve changed my hair or lost weight. (“No” to both: my hair is still gray and I’ve put on 10 lbs.) They say I look “healthier”, whatever that means. They know something’s different, but they can’t quite put a finger on what it is.
The difference is that I’m back. The real me is present again. I'm in the house.
I feel almost like I’ve been raised from the dead.
The irony continues when one gets treatment for depression. As the medication begins to take effect, all of this becomes clearer, the parts fitting together into a whole. And the depressed person realizes acutely just how dark his life had become. From within depression, the darkness seems normal. Outside of it, it leads to questions like “Why couldn’t I see this?” and “Shouldn’t I have known?”
That’s the punch line: depressed people often cannot put a name on what’s changed in their lives other than that they are unhappier. They say “stressed” or “under pressure”. They say “I can’t sleep”. They say they’re lonely and/or don’t care about anything and want to be alone.
No part of the experience makes sense until the depression begins to lift. Then the picture gradually becomes so clear one wonders how they missed it. Why they didn’t see it before.
And contrary to popular myth, antidepressants aren’t “happy pills”. They don’t create an artificial happiness that wasn’t there before but had been superceded by the dark side. Pills don’t create happiness: they only allow happiness to be more of an option. They don’t mask or dilute pain, but they do allow the individual to deal with those emotions more sanely.
It’s been about a month for me on Celexa, and I kick myself for not talking to my doctor sooner. I suppose that I didn’t want to admit that I was weak and needed help. I really don’t know. Nothing was very clear when I was teetering along the edge of the abyss.
A month in, things are much clearer. I’m back to being me. Hopelessly romantic and optimistic. Instead of seeing what is and retreating inside myself, I see what is and what could be. I can laugh at the absurdity of daily life instead of taking it as a personal affront.
The only side effects have been some dry-mouth and loss of libido ("dead dick" in the parlance). I can always drink more water, and since I gave up promiscuity a decade ago, not caring about sex is something of a blessing. I ain't getting none any time soon, but I don't care. It's one less thing to distract me.
In short, I have a perspective that I lacked a few short weeks ago. A perspective that is more in line with normal functioning for me than what I had become.
People have noticed. They ask me if I’ve changed my hair or lost weight. (“No” to both: my hair is still gray and I’ve put on 10 lbs.) They say I look “healthier”, whatever that means. They know something’s different, but they can’t quite put a finger on what it is.
The difference is that I’m back. The real me is present again. I'm in the house.
I feel almost like I’ve been raised from the dead.
05 June 2011
Life Support
For the last nine months I have struggled to write meaningfully and intelligently about Shannon's death, but intelligence and meaning elude me. I want to give a name to what grief and loss feel like, but all words disappoint me: none are good enough. I want to work out in my own mind how to learn to be alone and move forward, but I see only here and now. The future is a concept I don't really believe in any more. I fight for meaning or reason or anything that makes sense, and I end up where I started: confused and psychically mute, unable to speak because I have nothing to say.
I have diversions enough that keep me from wallowing in the psychic void where pain lives. Work keeps me busy, although I find it increasingly irrelevant except as a way to generate honest cash. I care about doing a good job, but that's more a manifestation of neurotic perfectionism than anything else. Managing my health takes more time that it ever has, but I've never had surgery or a blood clot before. It takes time and slows me down, but I don't want to die or live with complications of a mismanaged surgical recovery. I see and talk to friends and family who are always there if I need them, but they generally give me the space I asked for while I try to rebuild my life.
And that is where I hit the wall: rebuilding. How do I do it? Where do I begin? What do I want it to look like? Are my best days behind me? What happens now?
I'll be 46 on Friday, but I am as unsure of myself as I was when I was a teenager starting college. Less sure of myself, to be honest. Back then, I was too naive to understand that I didn't know everything. I didn't have the weight of life and experience tugging me down. I can't think clearly about anything that isn't immediate these days.
I have maintained enough sanity, however, to realize that I was on the edge of an abyss, staring down into its eternal darkness. If I teetered and fell, I might or might not be able to claw my way out. Through my clouded perceptions, I could see that fact clearly. It's happened before, and even the prospect of it happening again scared me to my bones.
It scared me so bad that I called my doctor to talk about “mental health issues”. I told him about the abyss and my fear of falling. To my surprise, he listened and believed me. I spoke honestly and even cried a little. And he listened.
The long and short of it is that Celexa (an antidepressant) is now a part of my nightly pill regimen that also includes a blood thinner and blood pressure medicine. The last two are supposed to prolong and safeguard my life, and the first is supposed to help make me care about it again.
He's a good doctor, and I'm fortunate to be his patient.
It's been a couple of weeks, and I'm thinking a little more clearly, but not always. The crazy pills take 21 days or so to reach full impact, so we'll see where I am on clarity in a week or so. Somewhere, deep inside me, there's a will to live. A lust for happiness, in whatever form that might take. That part of me isn't dead, but it's on life support.
I have diversions enough that keep me from wallowing in the psychic void where pain lives. Work keeps me busy, although I find it increasingly irrelevant except as a way to generate honest cash. I care about doing a good job, but that's more a manifestation of neurotic perfectionism than anything else. Managing my health takes more time that it ever has, but I've never had surgery or a blood clot before. It takes time and slows me down, but I don't want to die or live with complications of a mismanaged surgical recovery. I see and talk to friends and family who are always there if I need them, but they generally give me the space I asked for while I try to rebuild my life.
And that is where I hit the wall: rebuilding. How do I do it? Where do I begin? What do I want it to look like? Are my best days behind me? What happens now?
I'll be 46 on Friday, but I am as unsure of myself as I was when I was a teenager starting college. Less sure of myself, to be honest. Back then, I was too naive to understand that I didn't know everything. I didn't have the weight of life and experience tugging me down. I can't think clearly about anything that isn't immediate these days.
I have maintained enough sanity, however, to realize that I was on the edge of an abyss, staring down into its eternal darkness. If I teetered and fell, I might or might not be able to claw my way out. Through my clouded perceptions, I could see that fact clearly. It's happened before, and even the prospect of it happening again scared me to my bones.It scared me so bad that I called my doctor to talk about “mental health issues”. I told him about the abyss and my fear of falling. To my surprise, he listened and believed me. I spoke honestly and even cried a little. And he listened.
The long and short of it is that Celexa (an antidepressant) is now a part of my nightly pill regimen that also includes a blood thinner and blood pressure medicine. The last two are supposed to prolong and safeguard my life, and the first is supposed to help make me care about it again.
He's a good doctor, and I'm fortunate to be his patient.
It's been a couple of weeks, and I'm thinking a little more clearly, but not always. The crazy pills take 21 days or so to reach full impact, so we'll see where I am on clarity in a week or so. Somewhere, deep inside me, there's a will to live. A lust for happiness, in whatever form that might take. That part of me isn't dead, but it's on life support.
15 April 2011
Tea Times
My hip surgery went remarkably well: a textbook case, I was reassured. My biggest problem post-surgery was nausea from the anesthesia (a common reaction, they said). So once I was able to hold food on my stomach the next morning, they released me with the best of prognoses. I went home and began my period of exile and recovery.
I learned to walk with crutches and how to use the motorized shopping cart at the grocery. I took pain pills and stared numbly at the tv. I worked on projects in the two-hour windows between when the meds began to wear off and the next dose hit.
Days dissolved into nights and then reconstituted into days again. I was bored silly and craved a change of pace. I should have been content with bored and recovering normally, I learned soon enough.
Four days in, my foot and leg began to swell inexplicably, and when they grew large enough for fear to override my instinct to ignore such inconveniences, I went to the emergency room (although not before calling a 24-hour nurse and almost daring her to tell me it was nothing). Three vials of blood and a sonogram later, the ER doctor came in with a terse diagnosis that belied the gravitas of his words: “You have a blood clot.” That was it. No explanation of how it might have formed or how serious it was.
I began to get a sense of the urgency those five short words implied when he immediately asked me if I had a family doctor I could see within 24 hours and was visibly relieved when I told him I did. “Good. We’ll get you fixed up tonight, but go see your doctor tomorrow.”
The nurse gave me a shot of blood thinner in the stomach (“it absorbs faster that way, honey”) and some pills (blood thinners, also), then sent me on my way. But not before I signed papers that conditioned my release on my promise to see my regular practitioner within 24 hours. Since it was 3:30 a.m., I hoped that it would be significantly less than that.
At the doctor’s office the next day, I was met by a large man who was not my doctor but who whisked me off to an exam room, nonetheless. Thus began my education about blood clots (aka "deep vein thrombosis" or "DVP").
It turns out that the clinic where my GP practices has an entire department devoted to patients taking blood thinners, which I quickly learned was the treatment of choice for clots. The large man was a Coagulation Management Certified Nurse, and he would be my guide through the next six months of treatment. He would teach me the ins and outs and dos and don’ts of survival.
He taught me how to give myself a shot in the stomach (the fatty tissue) so that I could do so myself every twelve hours for the next 7-14 days. He told me to take the pill that I will be taking for 6 months at the same time every night. That he would tweak my dosage until it was right. It needs to make my blood thin enough that new clots don’t form, but not so thin that I hemorrhage.
Then we got to dietary issues that affect how the anticoagulant warfarin (aka coumadin) behaves. Green vegetables contain vitamin K, which mutes the effect of the medication, so in order to calibrate a good dosage, I have to eat the same amount of them consistently. I can have all I want as long as I have the same amount every day. The more green I eat, the more warfarin I have to take.
Herb teas are out—there exist scant clinical tests exploring interactions with the many herbs that are increasingly accepted as having medicinal properties. Green tea is out, likewise, but for different reasons: it delivers a massive dose of vitamin K in a fairly concentrated form. Cranberries* are out for a reason that lost me, other than they can inhibit the warfarin's effectiveness. I just know “no cranberries.” And, last but very certainly not least, extremely limited alcohol.
The others will be easy enough, but for a confirmed beer-hound like me, the last one gave me pause. Both my doctor and the Coag Nurse reinforced it to me, though: alcohol interferes with the liver’s processing of the warfarin and causes a buildup of the thinner in the blood, leading to blood so thin that lethal hemorrhages can occur. To that end, they put me on a strict ration of one beer a day.
That one hurt. I can live without cranberries, but I like my beers. I like them a lot. I miss it, even. I miss it like I would an old friend that I talked to regularly and honestly. However, if I ask myself “is this worth dieing for?” every time I get the urge to crack one open, the answer is pretty obvious: of course it’s not worth dieing for. Not right now, at least. I’m not ready.
I make light of this to a degree, but I understand the seriousness of blood clots. They can kill or cripple with the same capriciousness that they form. All that can be done is to make conditions as unfavorable for that to happen as possible. Thin the blood to prevent secondary clots and hope the original one stays in place as it dissolves away over time. It’s the standard, well-accepted course of treatment.
But it’s imprecise, part science and part art, as my coag nurse told me in our first meeting. After several visits, he and my doctor are still tweaking my medication dosage. And there are no guarantees: I could do everything I’m supposed to and still end up dead or severly disabled.
Although I know that the contemporary treatment is grounded in medical science, it feels a bit medieval, somehow akin to leeches and blood letting. I think over and over again that there must be some other more advanced treatment that simply gets rid of the clot instead plying it with potions. What’s next, I wonder sometimes: burying chicken bones and dancing naked under a full moon?
I know that’s not a fair or intelligent assessment, and one that I don’t really believe. It’s just the fear talking. It lives right beneath the glib face I put on every morning and take off when I’m home again, ready to boil to the surface like a blister at any time. The awareness of what could easily happen and the impotence to prevent it leaves me in a no man’s land between knowledge and fear.
Given that I can no longer feed my inner beer hound, I’ve taken comfort in tea. Since herbal and green teas are out, I’ve rediscovered the joy of old-fashioned iced tea. The kind my grandmother always had on hand to wash down the cake she always mysteriously produced, no matter what time or when I dropped by. The tea that she made extra strong and then poured hot over ice and added enough water to finish the dilution.
We drank tea, ate cake and talked under the giant trees that shaded her front yard. When I was in college and feeling stressed or anxious, her house was just a short drive from campus. A short distance, but one far enough to transport me from a hectic urban, academic world to the relative calm and serenity of an old farm house in the country surrounded by pastures and fields.
My tension and worries began to evaporate the second I turned off the highway down her long driveway. By the time I made it to the bottom of the hill, I could breathe. Crossing the creek and climbing the hill in front of me took on a symbolic meaning. When I pulled in next to Grandpa’s truck, I sometimes sat there a few minutes, absorbing the peace. Then she’d appear from nowhere, and I knew I’d be okay.
Granny was a strong, practical woman whose eyes twinkled behind her weathered face with its rosy cheeks. She always looked taller than she actually was. She seemed afraid of nothing and knew what was important and what wasn’t. She made me feel like I could be in charge of my life as I grew into a man.
So for now, I’ll do what I’m supposed to: take my pills, watch what I eat, refrain from strenuous physical activity and ration my beer. I’ll be alert for complications like internal bleeding and call 911 if symptoms (chest pains, dizziness or shortness of breath) warrant. All the while, I know it’s a gamble, and no matter how much the odds are stacked in my favor, I’m not much of a gambling man.
All I can do is take charge and try to make peace with the unknowns. And drink tea. Not that over-priced noxious stuff that comes in a bottle and barely resembles tea. Real, fresh-brewed homemade tea. I make it like Granny: strong, to be diluted. (She was right: it’s better that way.) And I even made a banana bread (the closest I’ll ever get to a cake). It doesn’t bring me peace, per se, but it reminds me of peace. I find a small modicum of comfort in that.
It’s what I have. Here’s to you, old girl. Bottoms up.
----------------------------------------
*For conflicting opinions about cranberries and warfarin, see this article from the Lance Armstrong Foundation's LiveStrong.org site and this one from the Cranberry Institute.
I learned to walk with crutches and how to use the motorized shopping cart at the grocery. I took pain pills and stared numbly at the tv. I worked on projects in the two-hour windows between when the meds began to wear off and the next dose hit.
Days dissolved into nights and then reconstituted into days again. I was bored silly and craved a change of pace. I should have been content with bored and recovering normally, I learned soon enough.
Four days in, my foot and leg began to swell inexplicably, and when they grew large enough for fear to override my instinct to ignore such inconveniences, I went to the emergency room (although not before calling a 24-hour nurse and almost daring her to tell me it was nothing). Three vials of blood and a sonogram later, the ER doctor came in with a terse diagnosis that belied the gravitas of his words: “You have a blood clot.” That was it. No explanation of how it might have formed or how serious it was.
I began to get a sense of the urgency those five short words implied when he immediately asked me if I had a family doctor I could see within 24 hours and was visibly relieved when I told him I did. “Good. We’ll get you fixed up tonight, but go see your doctor tomorrow.”
The nurse gave me a shot of blood thinner in the stomach (“it absorbs faster that way, honey”) and some pills (blood thinners, also), then sent me on my way. But not before I signed papers that conditioned my release on my promise to see my regular practitioner within 24 hours. Since it was 3:30 a.m., I hoped that it would be significantly less than that.
At the doctor’s office the next day, I was met by a large man who was not my doctor but who whisked me off to an exam room, nonetheless. Thus began my education about blood clots (aka "deep vein thrombosis" or "DVP").
It turns out that the clinic where my GP practices has an entire department devoted to patients taking blood thinners, which I quickly learned was the treatment of choice for clots. The large man was a Coagulation Management Certified Nurse, and he would be my guide through the next six months of treatment. He would teach me the ins and outs and dos and don’ts of survival.He taught me how to give myself a shot in the stomach (the fatty tissue) so that I could do so myself every twelve hours for the next 7-14 days. He told me to take the pill that I will be taking for 6 months at the same time every night. That he would tweak my dosage until it was right. It needs to make my blood thin enough that new clots don’t form, but not so thin that I hemorrhage.
Then we got to dietary issues that affect how the anticoagulant warfarin (aka coumadin) behaves. Green vegetables contain vitamin K, which mutes the effect of the medication, so in order to calibrate a good dosage, I have to eat the same amount of them consistently. I can have all I want as long as I have the same amount every day. The more green I eat, the more warfarin I have to take.
Herb teas are out—there exist scant clinical tests exploring interactions with the many herbs that are increasingly accepted as having medicinal properties. Green tea is out, likewise, but for different reasons: it delivers a massive dose of vitamin K in a fairly concentrated form. Cranberries* are out for a reason that lost me, other than they can inhibit the warfarin's effectiveness. I just know “no cranberries.” And, last but very certainly not least, extremely limited alcohol.
The others will be easy enough, but for a confirmed beer-hound like me, the last one gave me pause. Both my doctor and the Coag Nurse reinforced it to me, though: alcohol interferes with the liver’s processing of the warfarin and causes a buildup of the thinner in the blood, leading to blood so thin that lethal hemorrhages can occur. To that end, they put me on a strict ration of one beer a day.
That one hurt. I can live without cranberries, but I like my beers. I like them a lot. I miss it, even. I miss it like I would an old friend that I talked to regularly and honestly. However, if I ask myself “is this worth dieing for?” every time I get the urge to crack one open, the answer is pretty obvious: of course it’s not worth dieing for. Not right now, at least. I’m not ready.
I make light of this to a degree, but I understand the seriousness of blood clots. They can kill or cripple with the same capriciousness that they form. All that can be done is to make conditions as unfavorable for that to happen as possible. Thin the blood to prevent secondary clots and hope the original one stays in place as it dissolves away over time. It’s the standard, well-accepted course of treatment.
But it’s imprecise, part science and part art, as my coag nurse told me in our first meeting. After several visits, he and my doctor are still tweaking my medication dosage. And there are no guarantees: I could do everything I’m supposed to and still end up dead or severly disabled.
Although I know that the contemporary treatment is grounded in medical science, it feels a bit medieval, somehow akin to leeches and blood letting. I think over and over again that there must be some other more advanced treatment that simply gets rid of the clot instead plying it with potions. What’s next, I wonder sometimes: burying chicken bones and dancing naked under a full moon?
I know that’s not a fair or intelligent assessment, and one that I don’t really believe. It’s just the fear talking. It lives right beneath the glib face I put on every morning and take off when I’m home again, ready to boil to the surface like a blister at any time. The awareness of what could easily happen and the impotence to prevent it leaves me in a no man’s land between knowledge and fear.
Given that I can no longer feed my inner beer hound, I’ve taken comfort in tea. Since herbal and green teas are out, I’ve rediscovered the joy of old-fashioned iced tea. The kind my grandmother always had on hand to wash down the cake she always mysteriously produced, no matter what time or when I dropped by. The tea that she made extra strong and then poured hot over ice and added enough water to finish the dilution.We drank tea, ate cake and talked under the giant trees that shaded her front yard. When I was in college and feeling stressed or anxious, her house was just a short drive from campus. A short distance, but one far enough to transport me from a hectic urban, academic world to the relative calm and serenity of an old farm house in the country surrounded by pastures and fields.
My tension and worries began to evaporate the second I turned off the highway down her long driveway. By the time I made it to the bottom of the hill, I could breathe. Crossing the creek and climbing the hill in front of me took on a symbolic meaning. When I pulled in next to Grandpa’s truck, I sometimes sat there a few minutes, absorbing the peace. Then she’d appear from nowhere, and I knew I’d be okay.
Granny was a strong, practical woman whose eyes twinkled behind her weathered face with its rosy cheeks. She always looked taller than she actually was. She seemed afraid of nothing and knew what was important and what wasn’t. She made me feel like I could be in charge of my life as I grew into a man.
So for now, I’ll do what I’m supposed to: take my pills, watch what I eat, refrain from strenuous physical activity and ration my beer. I’ll be alert for complications like internal bleeding and call 911 if symptoms (chest pains, dizziness or shortness of breath) warrant. All the while, I know it’s a gamble, and no matter how much the odds are stacked in my favor, I’m not much of a gambling man.
All I can do is take charge and try to make peace with the unknowns. And drink tea. Not that over-priced noxious stuff that comes in a bottle and barely resembles tea. Real, fresh-brewed homemade tea. I make it like Granny: strong, to be diluted. (She was right: it’s better that way.) And I even made a banana bread (the closest I’ll ever get to a cake). It doesn’t bring me peace, per se, but it reminds me of peace. I find a small modicum of comfort in that.
It’s what I have. Here’s to you, old girl. Bottoms up.
----------------------------------------
*For conflicting opinions about cranberries and warfarin, see this article from the Lance Armstrong Foundation's LiveStrong.org site and this one from the Cranberry Institute.
08 April 2011
Help
As I have grown older, my perception of my role in the universe (or in my universe, at least) has solidified and become part of my self-identity, evolving from malleable clay into fired ceramic. In my mind, I am the “fixer”. I always have been to one degree or another, but over time, words and phrases like “right hand”, “go-to guy” and “care giver” have come to define me more and more. And I haven’t minded.
The role feeds a certain naccissistic appetite for control. It reinforces to me that I am needed. It gives me a role to play in the grander scheme of things. It makes me strong. It’s what I do.
I am not used to being looked after, taken care of or helped by other people. I fiercely resist any attempts by any one to do so. I am independent. I can take care of myself.
That’s what I dreaded about surgery more than anything else: I was going to have to let people take care of me. And that was before I realized what the scope of my need would be. That the “procedures” weren’t going to be a single “procedure” and were going to be more complex and invasive than I was prepared for.
From the morning of the surgery, I had to let others help me. I could have taken a cab to the hospital, but a friend offered to drive me, and I let her. As we navigated the pre-dawn streets, I admitted to her that I was nervous—scared, even. She told me it was okay to be scared. That it was not a sign of weakness but of good sense.
At the hospital, I checked in, paid them and was shown to an austere pre-op room. As I changed from my real-people clothes into a paper surgical gown, I became acutely aware that, from that point on, other people were going to be taking care of me. I was temporarily ceding control to a group of people whom, save my surgeon, I had never met before. That I was depending on them to take care of me.
The operating room was cold, sterile and scary. “It looks like something from a science fiction movie where humans are adbucted by aliens,” I remarked. That was all I remember until I woke up in the recovery room several hours later.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I tried to move my legs. The right one wasn’t budging. “What if there’s a fire?” I thought. “How will I get out?”
“How do you feel?” a somewhat disembodied male voice asked.
“Awful. Like a car wreck. And I’m the car.”
As I got my bearings, the voice slowly materialized into a nurse standing by my bed. “At least I got a cute nurse,” I thought. Or at least hope I only thought. If I said it out loud, he didn’t seem to mind. He’s probably seen and heard it all.
That was when the real neediness began. I was parched, so Gerome (the cute nurse) put crushed ice in my mouth. What in another setting could have been a sexually-charged action meant nothing to me except helping to slake my thirst. And when he thought it was okay for me to have water, I couldn’t hold the cup. He held it for me, and I drank through a straw. I had temporarily lost the will the be a dirty old man.
Then I needed to pee, so he brought me one of those plastic hospital pee bottles and pulled the curtains. But I couldn’t get things positioned right, so he had to put my penis into the mouth of the receptacle until I could hold it in myself. Although he did so matter-of-factly, I was embarassed to accept such intimate help from a total stranger, no matter how cute.
And I said so. “Don’t worry about it. That’s what I’m here for. To help you in whatever way you need,” he replied. “You’re a lot less trouble that some of the people who come through here.”
I had never felt so helpless in my life. The tables were turned: I was no longer the fixer or caregiver. I was the one being cared for and attended to. And I couldn’t quite reconcile that role reversal in my mind.
The next 24 hours or so became a study in how to ask for and accept help, as well as accept and be grateful for help I hadn’t asked for. Like the friend who had been there to talk to the doctor after surgery and had called people to let them know I was out of the OR and that things had gone well.
Or the orderly who cleaned me up after my late lunch came roaring back up in a Linda Blair moment. Or the medical assistants who arranged my pillows, brought me water and ice and emptied my pee bottle.
Or the nurses who calmed my fears because I couldn’t keep food down. “It’s not that unusual,” they told me again and again. “Some people react that way to anesthesia. It’ll pass.”
Or my sister, who spent the evening with me in my room getting things for me that I couldn’t reach, fixing the tv and letting me use her netbook to get some basic emailing done.
By the time I was released, I gladly accepted being pushed outside in a wheelchair. I had given in to the reality that I had to accept help some times, whether I asked for it or wanted it or not. I was not comfortable playing the role, but I realized that my psychological hangups would, on occasion, have to subordinate themselves to my practical needs.
Leaving the hospital, I accepted one final offer of help: a ride home. Home, the place where I was in charge, independent and self-sufficient. Even though I now realized that those notions of control were mere illusions, I was ready to return to the role I knew.
The role feeds a certain naccissistic appetite for control. It reinforces to me that I am needed. It gives me a role to play in the grander scheme of things. It makes me strong. It’s what I do.
I am not used to being looked after, taken care of or helped by other people. I fiercely resist any attempts by any one to do so. I am independent. I can take care of myself.
That’s what I dreaded about surgery more than anything else: I was going to have to let people take care of me. And that was before I realized what the scope of my need would be. That the “procedures” weren’t going to be a single “procedure” and were going to be more complex and invasive than I was prepared for.
From the morning of the surgery, I had to let others help me. I could have taken a cab to the hospital, but a friend offered to drive me, and I let her. As we navigated the pre-dawn streets, I admitted to her that I was nervous—scared, even. She told me it was okay to be scared. That it was not a sign of weakness but of good sense.
At the hospital, I checked in, paid them and was shown to an austere pre-op room. As I changed from my real-people clothes into a paper surgical gown, I became acutely aware that, from that point on, other people were going to be taking care of me. I was temporarily ceding control to a group of people whom, save my surgeon, I had never met before. That I was depending on them to take care of me.
The operating room was cold, sterile and scary. “It looks like something from a science fiction movie where humans are adbucted by aliens,” I remarked. That was all I remember until I woke up in the recovery room several hours later.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I tried to move my legs. The right one wasn’t budging. “What if there’s a fire?” I thought. “How will I get out?”
“How do you feel?” a somewhat disembodied male voice asked.
“Awful. Like a car wreck. And I’m the car.”
As I got my bearings, the voice slowly materialized into a nurse standing by my bed. “At least I got a cute nurse,” I thought. Or at least hope I only thought. If I said it out loud, he didn’t seem to mind. He’s probably seen and heard it all.
That was when the real neediness began. I was parched, so Gerome (the cute nurse) put crushed ice in my mouth. What in another setting could have been a sexually-charged action meant nothing to me except helping to slake my thirst. And when he thought it was okay for me to have water, I couldn’t hold the cup. He held it for me, and I drank through a straw. I had temporarily lost the will the be a dirty old man.
Then I needed to pee, so he brought me one of those plastic hospital pee bottles and pulled the curtains. But I couldn’t get things positioned right, so he had to put my penis into the mouth of the receptacle until I could hold it in myself. Although he did so matter-of-factly, I was embarassed to accept such intimate help from a total stranger, no matter how cute.
And I said so. “Don’t worry about it. That’s what I’m here for. To help you in whatever way you need,” he replied. “You’re a lot less trouble that some of the people who come through here.”
I had never felt so helpless in my life. The tables were turned: I was no longer the fixer or caregiver. I was the one being cared for and attended to. And I couldn’t quite reconcile that role reversal in my mind.
The next 24 hours or so became a study in how to ask for and accept help, as well as accept and be grateful for help I hadn’t asked for. Like the friend who had been there to talk to the doctor after surgery and had called people to let them know I was out of the OR and that things had gone well.
Or the orderly who cleaned me up after my late lunch came roaring back up in a Linda Blair moment. Or the medical assistants who arranged my pillows, brought me water and ice and emptied my pee bottle.
Or the nurses who calmed my fears because I couldn’t keep food down. “It’s not that unusual,” they told me again and again. “Some people react that way to anesthesia. It’ll pass.”
Or my sister, who spent the evening with me in my room getting things for me that I couldn’t reach, fixing the tv and letting me use her netbook to get some basic emailing done.
By the time I was released, I gladly accepted being pushed outside in a wheelchair. I had given in to the reality that I had to accept help some times, whether I asked for it or wanted it or not. I was not comfortable playing the role, but I realized that my psychological hangups would, on occasion, have to subordinate themselves to my practical needs.
Leaving the hospital, I accepted one final offer of help: a ride home. Home, the place where I was in charge, independent and self-sufficient. Even though I now realized that those notions of control were mere illusions, I was ready to return to the role I knew.
29 March 2011
I Will Survive
Tomorrow's the big day: I have to be at the hospital at 5 a.m. for 7 a.m. surgery. Part of me is relieved that it's finally here, and part of me is scared to death. I'm happy that I might soon be able to live without the pain, but I'm afraid of how I'll be able to take care of myself.
I'll probably be on crutches for a while, and I don't know how one carries anything on crutches. How will I get food out of the oven or microwave? How will I water the plants? How will I feed the cats?
When I woke up this morning, it all hit me, and I freaked out. All of the unknowns came crashing down on me. I've been trying to plan and take care of things in advance, but I suddenly realized how many things I hadn't anticipated and had no plans to deal with. I didn't think I could even possibly get them done.
I took care of work once I calmed down some. I think it's taken care of well enough. I have my rides to and from the hospital confirmed, and a baby sitter, as well. I have food stockpiled and medications refilled. Laundry's done. Rent is paid.
Now all I have to do is show up. I don't really know what I'm worrying about, but I've had an impending sense of doom for a while. I guess I know all the things that could go wrong.
My greatest fear is that the surgery will not provide any tangible relief from on-going pain. I can't say for a fact that it will help me in any way. It could hurt me.
I have faith in my physician, though. It may be misplaced, but I don't think so. He's been practicing since I was a kid. And he left surgery as a last resort. It was me that told him that it was time. That I was so tired of living in pain that I'd gladly face that option.
I'm scared. I'll admit that readily. I haven't had surgery since my tonsils came out when I was 5. 40 years ago. This is new, uncharted territory for me.
I'll push through it, though. I see a physical therapist in my future. And I already know his name.
In the end, I'll be okay. I won't let nerves get the better part of me. I will survive.
I'll probably be on crutches for a while, and I don't know how one carries anything on crutches. How will I get food out of the oven or microwave? How will I water the plants? How will I feed the cats?
When I woke up this morning, it all hit me, and I freaked out. All of the unknowns came crashing down on me. I've been trying to plan and take care of things in advance, but I suddenly realized how many things I hadn't anticipated and had no plans to deal with. I didn't think I could even possibly get them done.
I took care of work once I calmed down some. I think it's taken care of well enough. I have my rides to and from the hospital confirmed, and a baby sitter, as well. I have food stockpiled and medications refilled. Laundry's done. Rent is paid.
Now all I have to do is show up. I don't really know what I'm worrying about, but I've had an impending sense of doom for a while. I guess I know all the things that could go wrong.
My greatest fear is that the surgery will not provide any tangible relief from on-going pain. I can't say for a fact that it will help me in any way. It could hurt me.
I have faith in my physician, though. It may be misplaced, but I don't think so. He's been practicing since I was a kid. And he left surgery as a last resort. It was me that told him that it was time. That I was so tired of living in pain that I'd gladly face that option.
I'm scared. I'll admit that readily. I haven't had surgery since my tonsils came out when I was 5. 40 years ago. This is new, uncharted territory for me.
I'll push through it, though. I see a physical therapist in my future. And I already know his name.
In the end, I'll be okay. I won't let nerves get the better part of me. I will survive.
25 March 2011
There Is Nothing Like a Dame: the Other ET
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor-Hilton-Wilding-Todd-Fisher-Burton-Burton-Warner-Fortensky: the name says it all. She earned to title of Dame even though she was a notorious serial bride who once said in an interview that, while some people might take her many marriages to mean she was a slut, she was, in fact, quite virtuous: she only had sex with men she was married to. I don’t know if that covered before and/or after the fact, but that’s not really any of my business.While her many marriages are a large part of the fabric of her legend, her true legacy will lie in her films, her courage in being one of the earliest voices for AIDS suffers and her devotion to causes she cared deeply about.
As for films, she made a number of dogs, but the ones that were good were very good. They showcased her extraordinary range of acting talents. From a comedy like “Father of the Bride” to Maggie, the sexpot fighting to save her marriage to a sexually confused husband in “Cat on Hot Tin Roof”, to the demented and tormented Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, she made me believe her every time.And that’s not to mention “Giant”, "A Place in the Sun", “Suddenly Last Summer”, “Night of the Iguana”, “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, “Raintree County”, “Butterfield 8” or “Taming of the Shrew”. Some were met with better critical reception than others, but they’re all great. They will exist as standards to meet as long as movies exist.
But her greater legacy will be her work on behalf of AIDS organizations. I remember that, in the dark, early days of the disease when no one really knew much about it and the right wing was talking about quarantining people diagnosed with the disease, she was among the first celebrities to lend her voice, stand up and say “This talk is just stupid.” She stood up, took center stage and spoke out for a disenfranchised group of people in the midst of an almost hysterical reaction to the disease.
She lent her ability to draw cameras, reporters, crowds and A-list celebrities to the causes of both education and research. She took the strength of her convictions public and demanded attention. And she got it. She used her powers for good.
Her very public stance was a turning point in the larger public’s awareness about the disease. It’s probably the greatest thing she ever did.
Homosexuality was becoming more accepted in the 80’s, but AIDS drove that progress to a screeching halt. The growing acceptance turned to fear. And it’s taken the better part of 30 years to regain that footing. Ms. Taylor was a tireless voice to help us regain it.
She was blunt and frank and honest and open-minded. She never wasted a chance to speak her mind. She never hesitated to call what was stupid, irrational or ridiculous what it was: stupid, irrational and ridiculous.
She had bigger balls than I have. And mine ain’t too shabby. (Or so I’ve been told.)
Thanks to her work, people know more about AIDS, and they’re not so frightened. Thanks partly to her, I can live openly and not have to lie about my life any more. She was one of the first to put a human face on the disease and, by doing so, she helped put a human face on gay people in general. She helped put a human face on me.
I will always love her films. I can’t make through any of them without laughing or crying or cringing in horror at how cruel and manipulative people can be, or doing all three by spells.
But I will love more what she did with her fame. She leveraged it for what was not a popular cause when she started. She stood up. She spoke her mind. And she defied anyone to contradict her.
I guess when you’re Elizabeth Taylor, you can do and say what you want.
I will also always love her for both her passion for men and her "Passion for Men". It was Shannon’s favorite scent, and smelling it reminds me of him. I sometimes spray a little of his last bottle into the air and walk through the mist. I can see him more clearly and hear his voice more distinctly.
She never knew me or even of me, but she gave me gifts that I can’t place a value on. I’m sure I’m not alone in being able to say that. Collectively, her gifts to people like me are immeasurable.
Rest in peace, Ms. Taylor. The good work you so tirelessly devoted your life to will continue, and now it’s your turn to rest.
Thank you for everything.
I’m miss you much.
21 March 2011
Survival Skills
I had a letter from my orthopedic surgeon’s office waiting for me Friday when I got home from work: my final instructions for surgery. It reiterated the ban on any food or drink after the midnight before the procedure, told me to call the evening before to get an exact arrival time and told me to quit taking any blooding-thinning medication. Those include just about every over-the-counter pain reliever available.
A couple of months ago, the surgeon asked me if I needed narcotics. I told him that whether or not I needed was immaterial. I didn’t want them. That I needed to function, and I’d like to explore other options first. That option was huge doses of naproxin and aceteminophen. It didn’t totally get rid of the pain, but it was better than nothing.
I don’t have even that any more. The irony is that I didn’t know the pills I was taking were doing anything. Now that I don’t have them, I hurt all over. I would kill for a Tylenol or a Motrin or a naproxin right now, but I can’t take any. Doing so would jeopardize the surgery.
The only good side of this whole experience has been that I’ve found out who is really my friend. The real ones are reaching out and trying to help me in any way they can. Some times, simply being able to tell someone that I’m scared is enough.
And I am scared. I haven’t had surgery since my tonsils and adenoids came out when I was 5. I have no idea what to expect or how I’m going to take care of myself afterward. I know I’m going to be incapacitated, but I don’t know to what degree.
By the same token, I don’t want too many people interfering with my life. Anyone fussing over me too much will drive me up the wall. My mother will almost certainly approach that boundary. That’s how she is.
She wants to be here, and I’m starting to think that she might have the right idea. But that’s not possible. So I’ll work around it.
I’m not used to asking for help, and I’m even worse about accepting it. I’m a typical man who thinks he can conquer the world and get by on his own. But I can’t this time.
Storms scare me, always. I’ve known since I was a teenager to go the bed before one hits. Otherwise, I’ll be up until it passes. The wind and rain and thunder and lightning turn me into a child needing reassurance that the world isn’t ending.
This is a different storm, but it scares me in the same ways. Once they put me under, I have no control of anything. I don’t like that. That alone scares me.
I’m putting on a brave face for most people, but that’s all it is: a face. It’s a mask that tries to hide my fear. It works better at some times than others.
But I will man-up and face my fear. Head on. Take no prisoners. Do what I need to and go on with my life.
Somewhere, Donna Summer is either singing for me or should be. Because I’ll survive. I will survive. I’ve got all my life to live and all my love to give, and I’ll survive. I will survive.
I’ll either survive or wallow in self-pity, and I have no inention of doing the latter. I’m surviving.
A couple of months ago, the surgeon asked me if I needed narcotics. I told him that whether or not I needed was immaterial. I didn’t want them. That I needed to function, and I’d like to explore other options first. That option was huge doses of naproxin and aceteminophen. It didn’t totally get rid of the pain, but it was better than nothing.
I don’t have even that any more. The irony is that I didn’t know the pills I was taking were doing anything. Now that I don’t have them, I hurt all over. I would kill for a Tylenol or a Motrin or a naproxin right now, but I can’t take any. Doing so would jeopardize the surgery.
The only good side of this whole experience has been that I’ve found out who is really my friend. The real ones are reaching out and trying to help me in any way they can. Some times, simply being able to tell someone that I’m scared is enough.
And I am scared. I haven’t had surgery since my tonsils and adenoids came out when I was 5. I have no idea what to expect or how I’m going to take care of myself afterward. I know I’m going to be incapacitated, but I don’t know to what degree.
By the same token, I don’t want too many people interfering with my life. Anyone fussing over me too much will drive me up the wall. My mother will almost certainly approach that boundary. That’s how she is.
She wants to be here, and I’m starting to think that she might have the right idea. But that’s not possible. So I’ll work around it.
I’m not used to asking for help, and I’m even worse about accepting it. I’m a typical man who thinks he can conquer the world and get by on his own. But I can’t this time.
Storms scare me, always. I’ve known since I was a teenager to go the bed before one hits. Otherwise, I’ll be up until it passes. The wind and rain and thunder and lightning turn me into a child needing reassurance that the world isn’t ending.
This is a different storm, but it scares me in the same ways. Once they put me under, I have no control of anything. I don’t like that. That alone scares me.
I’m putting on a brave face for most people, but that’s all it is: a face. It’s a mask that tries to hide my fear. It works better at some times than others.
But I will man-up and face my fear. Head on. Take no prisoners. Do what I need to and go on with my life.
Somewhere, Donna Summer is either singing for me or should be. Because I’ll survive. I will survive. I’ve got all my life to live and all my love to give, and I’ll survive. I will survive.
I’ll either survive or wallow in self-pity, and I have no inention of doing the latter. I’m surviving.
21 February 2011
Ch-ch-ch-changes
I’ve been in more extended pain for the last three months than I can remember in any of my 45 years. I feel about 100 most days. Walking hurts. Sitting hurts. Standing hurts. And that’s with more medication than I’ve ever taken in my life. And I’m walking with a cane.
Nothing helps.
There’s always a background pain. It’s usually dull, but sometimes throbs. And some times it feels like someone is putting an ice pick under my kneecap. Or maybe has stuck an electrode deep inside my leg and turned up the voltage to maximum power.
It’s white-hot, like being struck by lightning in one tiny random spot, and it tears through my entire body in an instant. I feel it for hours. Every step hurts, and I don’t know which will trigger the lightning again.
When it hits, I double over and grab on to my cane for dear life. I don’t want to end up on the floor. If anyone’s around, they’ll ask me if I’m okay in that sort of “did you just have a heart attack” voice. I have to reassure them that I’m fine so they don’t call 911 and really complicate my day.
It happened today when I was with my sister, who was shopping for shoes. I went to stand up, but ended up doubling over, instead. I must have made a noise, because the woman facing me asked if I was okay in a vaguely European accent. I told that I was. I just had a problem with my hip.
“Apparently so” was her cool reply. I had scared her children, I’m afraid.
I’ve seen five doctors, had 3 MRI’s, an EMG, a nerve conductivity test and x-rays. I found out I had a pinched nerve in my back and had a cortisone injection into a bulging disk in my spine. (I don’t know if it hurt or not: they put me all the way under for that. I had a nice buzz for a day or so from the anesthesia, though.)
The real culprit is my hip. I have early arthritis and torn cartilage. I don’t know what causes arthritis or how I tore the cartilage. I only know that it hurts all the time and sometimes more than others.
I’m tired of it. Tired of walking with a cane. Tired of reassuring people that I’m not having a heart attack when what I really want to do it let out a primal scream. Tired of the lightning turning me into a feeble old man.
I’m tired of doctors’ offices, out-patient surgical hospitals, radiology clinics and blood work. I’m tired of being poked, prodded, x-rayed and scanned. I’m tired of the pharmaceutical regime. Of staring at the clock, waiting for it to be time to take more meds so I might get a modicum of relief.
I start physical therapy later this week, and I’ll see how that goes. I’m giving it a month to help. I see the orthopedic surgeon in about a month, and if I’m not significantly better, we’re going to talk about the “nuclear option”: surgery. I more or less dismissed that as a possibility when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, but it's on the table now and a real possibility, and I want more details.
While I may seem to be have unrealistic expectations about physical therapy, I have some very real time constraints. My health insurance is up for renewal, and I have no idea what my coverage will be July 1 and won’t know until late May. The whispers in the breeze say get ready to pay more for less.
I’ve been lucky to hold onto a plan that the insurer no longer offers to new customers but has renewed for several years. The wind tells me it’s going to change, and, if I’m going to have surgery, I need to do it now while I can still afford it.
Also, July is when work heats up as we prepare for our annual financial audit. I don't want to take any great amount of time off between July and September.
Besides, I’m tired of the pain and want it to go away. It’s over-riding my irrational fear of needles and doctors and hospitals. When I learned that I would have to have dye injected directly into my hip joint for the last MRI, my blood pressure jumped 20 points. In reality, it was uncomfortable for a few seconds a couple of times. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd built it up in my mind to be.
The MRI wasn’t too bad, either. I watched Reba McEntyre and Alec Baldwin at Carnegie Hall doing a concert presentation of South Pacific on the nifty goggles they provided. (I provided the DVD. I doubt any radiology clinic in the world would have it.)
I get so worked up about this kind of stuff that I don’t even want to consider something like surgery, but I’ve never lived with this kind of constant, continual pain. I’m tired. I’m worn out. And the wind is changing.
So am I.
Nothing helps.
There’s always a background pain. It’s usually dull, but sometimes throbs. And some times it feels like someone is putting an ice pick under my kneecap. Or maybe has stuck an electrode deep inside my leg and turned up the voltage to maximum power.
It’s white-hot, like being struck by lightning in one tiny random spot, and it tears through my entire body in an instant. I feel it for hours. Every step hurts, and I don’t know which will trigger the lightning again.
When it hits, I double over and grab on to my cane for dear life. I don’t want to end up on the floor. If anyone’s around, they’ll ask me if I’m okay in that sort of “did you just have a heart attack” voice. I have to reassure them that I’m fine so they don’t call 911 and really complicate my day.
It happened today when I was with my sister, who was shopping for shoes. I went to stand up, but ended up doubling over, instead. I must have made a noise, because the woman facing me asked if I was okay in a vaguely European accent. I told that I was. I just had a problem with my hip.
“Apparently so” was her cool reply. I had scared her children, I’m afraid.
I’ve seen five doctors, had 3 MRI’s, an EMG, a nerve conductivity test and x-rays. I found out I had a pinched nerve in my back and had a cortisone injection into a bulging disk in my spine. (I don’t know if it hurt or not: they put me all the way under for that. I had a nice buzz for a day or so from the anesthesia, though.)
The real culprit is my hip. I have early arthritis and torn cartilage. I don’t know what causes arthritis or how I tore the cartilage. I only know that it hurts all the time and sometimes more than others.
I’m tired of it. Tired of walking with a cane. Tired of reassuring people that I’m not having a heart attack when what I really want to do it let out a primal scream. Tired of the lightning turning me into a feeble old man.
I’m tired of doctors’ offices, out-patient surgical hospitals, radiology clinics and blood work. I’m tired of being poked, prodded, x-rayed and scanned. I’m tired of the pharmaceutical regime. Of staring at the clock, waiting for it to be time to take more meds so I might get a modicum of relief.
I start physical therapy later this week, and I’ll see how that goes. I’m giving it a month to help. I see the orthopedic surgeon in about a month, and if I’m not significantly better, we’re going to talk about the “nuclear option”: surgery. I more or less dismissed that as a possibility when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, but it's on the table now and a real possibility, and I want more details.
While I may seem to be have unrealistic expectations about physical therapy, I have some very real time constraints. My health insurance is up for renewal, and I have no idea what my coverage will be July 1 and won’t know until late May. The whispers in the breeze say get ready to pay more for less.
I’ve been lucky to hold onto a plan that the insurer no longer offers to new customers but has renewed for several years. The wind tells me it’s going to change, and, if I’m going to have surgery, I need to do it now while I can still afford it.
Also, July is when work heats up as we prepare for our annual financial audit. I don't want to take any great amount of time off between July and September.
Besides, I’m tired of the pain and want it to go away. It’s over-riding my irrational fear of needles and doctors and hospitals. When I learned that I would have to have dye injected directly into my hip joint for the last MRI, my blood pressure jumped 20 points. In reality, it was uncomfortable for a few seconds a couple of times. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd built it up in my mind to be.
The MRI wasn’t too bad, either. I watched Reba McEntyre and Alec Baldwin at Carnegie Hall doing a concert presentation of South Pacific on the nifty goggles they provided. (I provided the DVD. I doubt any radiology clinic in the world would have it.)
I get so worked up about this kind of stuff that I don’t even want to consider something like surgery, but I’ve never lived with this kind of constant, continual pain. I’m tired. I’m worn out. And the wind is changing.
So am I.
14 February 2011
Dammit, Janet
Ann Coulter moaned the other day at the CPAC convention that the GOP didn’t have the support of more “gays” without ever realizing how using “gay” as a noun objectifies and demeans the people she’s talking about.
I am not a “gay”. I am man who happens to be gay. One of the least important things about me.
I am a man, dammit.
I’m pig-headed, obstinate and mouthy. I’m compassionate, loving and caring. I work hard. I give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, and then some. (Even though I don’t get paid what I’m worth.)
I stayed up all night talking to my father who was unconscious, writing when I knew he was going to die the next day. We were going to have to cut off life support, and I knew that. I wanted to be there with him for a while, alone.
I cut off life support for my first husband because I knew that was what he wanted. I didn’t for my last one, because he was very clear about his wishes.
I have a mother who needs me, and I need her, too. I have a brand new baby nephew who’s named after me.
I am more than the sum of my sexual orientation. That determines who I do or do not take to bed. And that’s no one’s business unless I want to make it known. And I don’t talk about that any more than any straight person I know.
Or should I say “a straight”.
You’ll never hear someone say “a straight”. Unless in the context of “a straight man” or “a straight woman”. But you’ll hear “a gay” or “gays” pretty regularly. Not “a gay man” or “gay woman” or “a gay person”.
There are no “gays”. There are gay people. Using the word as a noun is demeaning and objecitifying. It’s perjoratie, and it hurts. If I live to be 100 (and I hope I don’t—I believe that God is merciful and will take me home before then), I never want to hear that word used as a noun again.
What Ann Coulter didn’t get is that she was offending the very people she was trying to appeal to. Wonder why there aren’t more “gays” in the GOP? Because they’re people first and a sexual orientiation on down the list. It’s not the most important thing about them.
And they don’t vote with their dicks.
Except when they do. But that involves hanging chads and other messy things that I won’t go into. Suffice the say, one would need a tissue, hanky or hand-towel to clean up after them, depending on the level of patriotism.
At the end of the day, I am you. You are me. We’re human beings. I’m a human being with a penis. I happen to want to go to bed at night with another human being that also has a penis. What happens when I close the bedroom door and pull the covers up is none of anyone’s business but mine and the other penis’s.
Gay does not define me, and it never will.
Until the politicos realize that people like me are people like them, they’ll never get it.
When Daddy was in the hospital and running out of steam rapidly, Mama said that she didn’t know what to do. I told her that when the time came, she would know what to do. That it would be the hardest thing she ever did in her life, but also the easiest. That I knew because I’d already done it.
The situation had required it, and I manned up to it. That defines me more than anything else: I’m a man taking responsibility because someone has to, and I’d just as soon it be me as someone else who might or might not care as much about the consequences of the actions. That is who I am.
I am gay. I’m a gay man. But I’m not “a gay.” I’ve never even met one, much less been one.
Until right-wing whack jobs like Ann Coulter understand that, they’ll never have broad support from gay and lesbian people. And until the radical right quits telling me with everything it does that I’m less equal than other people, I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything else they have to say.
When the GOP is ready to talk about that, they can call me.
I’m a man, dammit, Janet.
I am not a “gay”. I am man who happens to be gay. One of the least important things about me.
I am a man, dammit.
I’m pig-headed, obstinate and mouthy. I’m compassionate, loving and caring. I work hard. I give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, and then some. (Even though I don’t get paid what I’m worth.)
I stayed up all night talking to my father who was unconscious, writing when I knew he was going to die the next day. We were going to have to cut off life support, and I knew that. I wanted to be there with him for a while, alone.
I cut off life support for my first husband because I knew that was what he wanted. I didn’t for my last one, because he was very clear about his wishes.
I have a mother who needs me, and I need her, too. I have a brand new baby nephew who’s named after me.
I am more than the sum of my sexual orientation. That determines who I do or do not take to bed. And that’s no one’s business unless I want to make it known. And I don’t talk about that any more than any straight person I know.
Or should I say “a straight”.
You’ll never hear someone say “a straight”. Unless in the context of “a straight man” or “a straight woman”. But you’ll hear “a gay” or “gays” pretty regularly. Not “a gay man” or “gay woman” or “a gay person”.
There are no “gays”. There are gay people. Using the word as a noun is demeaning and objecitifying. It’s perjoratie, and it hurts. If I live to be 100 (and I hope I don’t—I believe that God is merciful and will take me home before then), I never want to hear that word used as a noun again.
What Ann Coulter didn’t get is that she was offending the very people she was trying to appeal to. Wonder why there aren’t more “gays” in the GOP? Because they’re people first and a sexual orientiation on down the list. It’s not the most important thing about them.
And they don’t vote with their dicks.
Except when they do. But that involves hanging chads and other messy things that I won’t go into. Suffice the say, one would need a tissue, hanky or hand-towel to clean up after them, depending on the level of patriotism.
At the end of the day, I am you. You are me. We’re human beings. I’m a human being with a penis. I happen to want to go to bed at night with another human being that also has a penis. What happens when I close the bedroom door and pull the covers up is none of anyone’s business but mine and the other penis’s.
Gay does not define me, and it never will.
Until the politicos realize that people like me are people like them, they’ll never get it.
When Daddy was in the hospital and running out of steam rapidly, Mama said that she didn’t know what to do. I told her that when the time came, she would know what to do. That it would be the hardest thing she ever did in her life, but also the easiest. That I knew because I’d already done it.
The situation had required it, and I manned up to it. That defines me more than anything else: I’m a man taking responsibility because someone has to, and I’d just as soon it be me as someone else who might or might not care as much about the consequences of the actions. That is who I am.
I am gay. I’m a gay man. But I’m not “a gay.” I’ve never even met one, much less been one.
Until right-wing whack jobs like Ann Coulter understand that, they’ll never have broad support from gay and lesbian people. And until the radical right quits telling me with everything it does that I’m less equal than other people, I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything else they have to say.
When the GOP is ready to talk about that, they can call me.
I’m a man, dammit, Janet.
12 February 2011
One of my Favorites (Today)
I spend my days working and seeing doctors. I spend my nights missing Shannon. I never thought that I would miss going to the hospital to see someone, but at least I could see him. Now, I can only remember what he looked like or how he smelled. Or that cackle of a laugh, like a chicken laying an egg. A rooster laying an egg.
It ended too soon, but we almost had it all.
We did. Just not long enough.
It ended too soon, but we almost had it all.
We did. Just not long enough.
04 February 2011
Snow Day
Snow rarely falls in Austin, and accumulates even less frequently. The weathermen had all been talking about the possibility of it with increasing giddiness. They were like schoolboys anticipating getting to second base on prom night. What they got was a home run.
I got up to pee a little before five this morning, and pulled up the local news online before I went back to bed only to find that I could stay up: it had snowed and everything to speak of was shut down or not opening.
Including my office.I peeked out behind the patio curtains and blinds, and everything was covered. When I turned on the TV, I saw freeways and flyovers coated with snow except for the small amount that traffic had compacted into ice.
Lucy wanted to go out, but it turns out my youngest cat is afraid of snow. She’s never seen it before. She ran outside the second I opened the door, ran to the edge of the snow, smelled it and came bolting back inside.
I would call her a fraidy cat, but I didn’t venture out until everything started melting.I was diagnosed with early arthritis and cartilage tears the day before, so I wasn't taking any chances on getting out with the obligatory cane. (Ironically, the symptoms are mostly in my knee. I can't explain that, but the orthopedist wasn't that surprised.) And I didn't want to slip on an ice patch and complicate things.
And I certainly didn't want to dodge all the stupid drivers who don't know how to drive on that stuff. I grew up doing that and learned early on that testosterone should not be a part of driving, whether on snow and ice or on dry pavement.
These days, I have to worry about people on cell phones on the snow and ice.
I ain't getting younger, but I would like to get older.
01 February 2011
Ghost Story
For years I worried about what would happen to Shannon if anything happened to me. He barely made it through a few of my visits to Tennessee without drifting into psychosis, so my being gone forever would have pushed him over the edge, almost certainly. And not only would he have been crazy, he would have lost his major income stream: me.
We never had "my money" or "his money"; it was always "our money". But without mine in the mix, he would have been hard-pressed to make ends meet. He was the beneficiary of multiple life insurance policies, but that money would have run out.
I didn't know if he would have been able to cope well enough to keep functioning on any level.
I don't have to worry about any of that now, but the question still haunts me because of something that happened years ago: I saw an old man who looked like an older version of Shannon standing on a traffic island asking for money. I keep wondering if that was something he might have been spared from.
I don't want to say that I saved him: we saved each other. But I was the one thing he could count on. That I would be there day after day, whether he was sane or not, in good health or not. I don't know that he had that assurance from anyone else or that anyone else understood him enough to care on that level.
I wonder what happened to that old man. I look for him, but I've never seen him since. What I remember most about that chance encounter is his shoes: from a distance, they looked just like the ones Shannon wore. Up close, they were tattered. Shannon's were never tattered.
Those shoes haunt me more than anything.
That, and the image seared in my brain of someone who looked like a possible picture of the future for the man I loved.
I always knew that Shannon would probably die before me because of the age difference (14 year), but I never expected him to do so this soon. His death devastated me, but I can take a small (very small) comfort in knowing that he was never reduced to begging for money on a traffic island.
It wasn't as large a leap as some might think.
In the end, I took care of him, as I always had. I advocated for his best interests when he couldn't do so for himself, both in life and death.
Still, that old man haunts me.
We never had "my money" or "his money"; it was always "our money". But without mine in the mix, he would have been hard-pressed to make ends meet. He was the beneficiary of multiple life insurance policies, but that money would have run out.
I didn't know if he would have been able to cope well enough to keep functioning on any level.
I don't have to worry about any of that now, but the question still haunts me because of something that happened years ago: I saw an old man who looked like an older version of Shannon standing on a traffic island asking for money. I keep wondering if that was something he might have been spared from.
I don't want to say that I saved him: we saved each other. But I was the one thing he could count on. That I would be there day after day, whether he was sane or not, in good health or not. I don't know that he had that assurance from anyone else or that anyone else understood him enough to care on that level.
I wonder what happened to that old man. I look for him, but I've never seen him since. What I remember most about that chance encounter is his shoes: from a distance, they looked just like the ones Shannon wore. Up close, they were tattered. Shannon's were never tattered.
Those shoes haunt me more than anything.
That, and the image seared in my brain of someone who looked like a possible picture of the future for the man I loved.
I always knew that Shannon would probably die before me because of the age difference (14 year), but I never expected him to do so this soon. His death devastated me, but I can take a small (very small) comfort in knowing that he was never reduced to begging for money on a traffic island.
It wasn't as large a leap as some might think.
In the end, I took care of him, as I always had. I advocated for his best interests when he couldn't do so for himself, both in life and death.
Still, that old man haunts me.
29 January 2011
A Couple of Three
Sweetie,
The house is still empty without you. I moved, but I brought your absence with me. It follows me everywhere I go. I can see where we lived from my patio, and even walking past it reminds me again that you’re not here.
You’d like the new place, except for the two steps up from the sidewalk. They’re even hard for me to get up these days. Otherwise, it’s nice. I got rid of some things to fit everything in, but Bob’s chair and ottoman are in the living room. They look really nice.
You’d be happy.
I have your art on the walls, even though I haven’t finished unpacking yet. I got sidelined by my own health problems. The study is still a mess of boxes strewn everywhere. I’m going to try to unpack 2 more this weekend.
When I told Crystal that I was moving, she said “No! You good customer.” She was visibly relieved when I told her I was only moving a few feet away and would still be bringing her my dry cleaning. She gave me a calendar that I don’t use.
I never seem to know what day of the week or date it is. That hasn’t changed. I always relied on you for that information. As well as when bills were due.
Lucy still looks like a sausage stuffed into a tabby’s body. Only bigger. She’s as demanding as ever, and still hasn’t learned that I can’t turn off the cold or rainy weather. Or be home all day with her.
Amanda still spends most of her days curled up on the bed, the perfect kitty comma. She stays on you side more often than not. I don’t know if she can still smell you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were so.
I miss you most on the weekends. I’m home by myself with the cats. They haven’t changed: as demanding and spoiled as they way you left them.
They’re your fault.
I officially have high blood pressure, and when I told the doc that I’ve had a lot anxiety and stress over the last year or so, he asked me the question that I’m sure you got asked over and over: “Do you ever think about harming yourself or others”. I told him “No.”
If I had been thinking, I would have said “Yes. The person in front of me at the grocery who’s holding up the line over $3. Good thing I don’t like guns.
The doc was just doing his job, and I told him that I knew what depression was, and I wasn’t there. That I was profoundly sad, but not clinically depressed. I’ve been depressed, and I know what it tastes like.
Still, I miss you. Fiercely.
You’d be proud of me. I’m actually seeing doctors to take care of physical problems. I didn’t really take care of myself because I spent my time taking care of you and didn’t worry about me so much.
I never knew how frustrating it is to have to use a cane. It monopolizes one of my two hands. I can’t seem to get it propped up right when I need to use both hands. It’s life with one hand.
And I have a new-found appreciation of how awful nerve pain is. Sometimes the loose change in my pocket irritates the hell out of my leg. The burning has pretty much gone away since I got the cortisone injection, but my thigh is still mostly numb.
I’m doing what I need to, though. I have another MRI next week (this time on my hip), a follow-up with the pain doctor and another with the bone doctor after he’s seen the MRI. I’m sure that’s not the last of these appointments.
As I said, you’d be proud. And amazed. I’ve cost Aetna thousands and thousands of dollars, but much less than they’ve received for me over the years.
And M. is very supportive. I’ve taken more sick time for doctors’ appointments over the last month than I’ve taken since I had strep. I actually took a full day off because I hurt so much that I could barely get out of bed.
I miss you every day. I miss your cackle. Someone called your laugh “robust”, but it was a cackle, like a hen laying an egg. You were always a sucker for a throw-away line. I threw them out as often as possible just to hear it.
I miss you. All of you. Even the crazy parts. I didn’t love you in spite of the crazy: I loved you knowing that the crazy was there. I loved and continue to love you because of the man you were.
Say “Hi” to Rich for me, and tell him that I love him, too. Tell him that Sweet Pea loves him and misses him. He’ll know what that means.
I’ll see you both on the other side.
In the mean time, the two of you can talk about wood and argue about how to properly finish it. Get it out of your system, because I don’t want to spend eternity with the two of you bickering over that kind of stuff.
Visit when you want. But I won’t be long getting there in the grand scheme of things. And when I do, we’ll make a nice couple, the three of us.
The house is still empty without you. I moved, but I brought your absence with me. It follows me everywhere I go. I can see where we lived from my patio, and even walking past it reminds me again that you’re not here.
You’d like the new place, except for the two steps up from the sidewalk. They’re even hard for me to get up these days. Otherwise, it’s nice. I got rid of some things to fit everything in, but Bob’s chair and ottoman are in the living room. They look really nice.
You’d be happy.
I have your art on the walls, even though I haven’t finished unpacking yet. I got sidelined by my own health problems. The study is still a mess of boxes strewn everywhere. I’m going to try to unpack 2 more this weekend.
When I told Crystal that I was moving, she said “No! You good customer.” She was visibly relieved when I told her I was only moving a few feet away and would still be bringing her my dry cleaning. She gave me a calendar that I don’t use.
I never seem to know what day of the week or date it is. That hasn’t changed. I always relied on you for that information. As well as when bills were due.
Lucy still looks like a sausage stuffed into a tabby’s body. Only bigger. She’s as demanding as ever, and still hasn’t learned that I can’t turn off the cold or rainy weather. Or be home all day with her.
Amanda still spends most of her days curled up on the bed, the perfect kitty comma. She stays on you side more often than not. I don’t know if she can still smell you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were so.
I miss you most on the weekends. I’m home by myself with the cats. They haven’t changed: as demanding and spoiled as they way you left them.
They’re your fault.
I officially have high blood pressure, and when I told the doc that I’ve had a lot anxiety and stress over the last year or so, he asked me the question that I’m sure you got asked over and over: “Do you ever think about harming yourself or others”. I told him “No.”
If I had been thinking, I would have said “Yes. The person in front of me at the grocery who’s holding up the line over $3. Good thing I don’t like guns.
The doc was just doing his job, and I told him that I knew what depression was, and I wasn’t there. That I was profoundly sad, but not clinically depressed. I’ve been depressed, and I know what it tastes like.
Still, I miss you. Fiercely.
You’d be proud of me. I’m actually seeing doctors to take care of physical problems. I didn’t really take care of myself because I spent my time taking care of you and didn’t worry about me so much.
I never knew how frustrating it is to have to use a cane. It monopolizes one of my two hands. I can’t seem to get it propped up right when I need to use both hands. It’s life with one hand.
And I have a new-found appreciation of how awful nerve pain is. Sometimes the loose change in my pocket irritates the hell out of my leg. The burning has pretty much gone away since I got the cortisone injection, but my thigh is still mostly numb.
I’m doing what I need to, though. I have another MRI next week (this time on my hip), a follow-up with the pain doctor and another with the bone doctor after he’s seen the MRI. I’m sure that’s not the last of these appointments.
As I said, you’d be proud. And amazed. I’ve cost Aetna thousands and thousands of dollars, but much less than they’ve received for me over the years.
And M. is very supportive. I’ve taken more sick time for doctors’ appointments over the last month than I’ve taken since I had strep. I actually took a full day off because I hurt so much that I could barely get out of bed.
I miss you every day. I miss your cackle. Someone called your laugh “robust”, but it was a cackle, like a hen laying an egg. You were always a sucker for a throw-away line. I threw them out as often as possible just to hear it.
I miss you. All of you. Even the crazy parts. I didn’t love you in spite of the crazy: I loved you knowing that the crazy was there. I loved and continue to love you because of the man you were.
Say “Hi” to Rich for me, and tell him that I love him, too. Tell him that Sweet Pea loves him and misses him. He’ll know what that means.
I’ll see you both on the other side.
In the mean time, the two of you can talk about wood and argue about how to properly finish it. Get it out of your system, because I don’t want to spend eternity with the two of you bickering over that kind of stuff.
Visit when you want. But I won’t be long getting there in the grand scheme of things. And when I do, we’ll make a nice couple, the three of us.
27 January 2011
Obama Cares
While the U.S. House of Representatives sits around wasting time debating a repeal of the health care overhaul, their constituents are getting sick and are unable to seek treatment because they have no health insurance. At least not until they have to be treated in an emergency room, where they can’t be turned away. Since the repeal has no chance being enacted, the representatives are piddling away time that could be better spent addressing the real problems and issues.
Instead, they choose to engage in political grandstanding and misinformation that rises to the level of propaganda on a grand scale. They use carefully scripted words and phrases (“Obamacare”, “job-killing”, “government power grab”, “takeover of health care”) that have no basis in reality. Unless they live on a planet where the sky is green and the truth is less important than a sound bite.
I’m lucky in that I have good health coverage, and it’s Aetna that determines the level of care I get, not the government. No one has taken over my health care, other than in that the insurance company can’t charge me for certain basic health services. That’s the “government takeover”.
And I think to only impact on jobs might be that hospitals might need fewer people in the ER, treating others less fortunate than me for something that a GP might have been able to treat before a problem became acute. And that’s not a bad thing: many hospitals would love to re-assign that particular staff to other duties. There is shortage of workers in most health care fields.
With costs to both insurers and the federal and state governments skyrocketing, the House should be talking about how to cut those costs. Study after study has shown that it’s cheaper to treat someone early than to treat them in the ER or ICU when he or she is acutely ill. ER and ICU treatment costs significantly more than early intervention.
At the core, the House is hypocritical: they have government-provided health insurance. They don’t mind pushing hot buttons, but they accept health care from the same entity that wants to provide the same quality of care to people that they profess to represent. All in the name of rabble-rousing.
I lived without health coverage for over a decade, and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t get too sick. If affordable care had been available, I probably would have signed on. But it wasn’t there.
I have good coverage now, but I have to wonder what I would do if I didn’t. I would have probably lived in pain as my blood pressure slowly inched up until I came to the breaking point and ended up in the ER, either seriously ill or dead.
The reality of the health care bill is that it good on all fronts. I keep my private coverage, and people not so lucky to have it get an opportunity to get something similar. The bill will save billions and trillions of dollars as the population ages and doesn’t need as much treatment because they were treated sooner rather than later.
The benefits are self-evident: affordable preventative treatment, earlier detection of problems through health screenings, fewer acute care patients that drive costs up and a higher quality of life for those that don’t currently have access to health care.
Ignoring those benefits and the long-term savings that have been confirmed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office strikes me as a political ploy to spin the issue into oblivion on the part of the House. I would like to ask them each, individually, if they’ve ever been without coverage. That is highly unlikely, I realize.
In the mean time, they toss out words and phrases designed to scare. I doubt that many of them have seen a $204,000 medical bill. That’s reality for a major health failure. Getting sick is easy; paying for it isn’t.
Legislating a way for people without coverage to get it is in no way a takeover. And mandating coverage is no different from states mandating liability insurance for car owners. Doing so serves a greater good, a position that the Supreme Court has affirmed over and over. It has consistently ruled that the government can impose requirements that benefit and advance a greater good.
The VA, which as little as 10 years ago was a model of inefficiency and waste, has transformed itself into one of the best health care providers in the country. And they’re run by the government.
On top of everything else, ignoring that singular fact paints most opponents of reform as either stupid, uninformed or opportunistic. They either don’t know because they don’t keep up or care to, or they don’t want to see what’s staring them in the face: a model that works.
Given the rhetoric from the far and even moderate right wing, I can only surmise that their motivations are opportunistic, painting the health care reform bill as massively unpopular among the American people. In fact, most polls show that that, while opinion is divided, it carries the support of a little less than 50% of those polled by non-partisan organizations. Opponents carry similar numbers.
Those numbers in no way justify a repeal, nor do they represent an overwhelming support for repeal. Rather, it represents the number of people who either lack coverage or know someone who does.
House Republicans are fighting a war they know they have no chance of winning to get press time. It’s free advertising for the individual members when the press covers the issue as closely as it does.
The pandering to the far right and the press ignores the basic question: why is health coverage available only for a certain demographic? What if I’m self-employed or run a small business that can’t afford the extremely high cost of covering myself or a small group of employees? What do you have to offer, instead? How are you going to control health care costs that are expanding almost geometrically?
So far, the answer to the last question is “we don’t know”. The answer to the prior is “we don’t know and we don’t care”.
The current debate, if you can call it one, boils down to a cynical attempt to scare people to forward the agenda of a political party at the expense of the uninsured people they are supposed to represent.
To them, I say “shame on you”. Take you rhetoric and put it where your heart ought to be.
Instead, they choose to engage in political grandstanding and misinformation that rises to the level of propaganda on a grand scale. They use carefully scripted words and phrases (“Obamacare”, “job-killing”, “government power grab”, “takeover of health care”) that have no basis in reality. Unless they live on a planet where the sky is green and the truth is less important than a sound bite.
I’m lucky in that I have good health coverage, and it’s Aetna that determines the level of care I get, not the government. No one has taken over my health care, other than in that the insurance company can’t charge me for certain basic health services. That’s the “government takeover”.
And I think to only impact on jobs might be that hospitals might need fewer people in the ER, treating others less fortunate than me for something that a GP might have been able to treat before a problem became acute. And that’s not a bad thing: many hospitals would love to re-assign that particular staff to other duties. There is shortage of workers in most health care fields.
With costs to both insurers and the federal and state governments skyrocketing, the House should be talking about how to cut those costs. Study after study has shown that it’s cheaper to treat someone early than to treat them in the ER or ICU when he or she is acutely ill. ER and ICU treatment costs significantly more than early intervention.
At the core, the House is hypocritical: they have government-provided health insurance. They don’t mind pushing hot buttons, but they accept health care from the same entity that wants to provide the same quality of care to people that they profess to represent. All in the name of rabble-rousing.
I lived without health coverage for over a decade, and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t get too sick. If affordable care had been available, I probably would have signed on. But it wasn’t there.
I have good coverage now, but I have to wonder what I would do if I didn’t. I would have probably lived in pain as my blood pressure slowly inched up until I came to the breaking point and ended up in the ER, either seriously ill or dead.
The reality of the health care bill is that it good on all fronts. I keep my private coverage, and people not so lucky to have it get an opportunity to get something similar. The bill will save billions and trillions of dollars as the population ages and doesn’t need as much treatment because they were treated sooner rather than later.
The benefits are self-evident: affordable preventative treatment, earlier detection of problems through health screenings, fewer acute care patients that drive costs up and a higher quality of life for those that don’t currently have access to health care.
Ignoring those benefits and the long-term savings that have been confirmed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office strikes me as a political ploy to spin the issue into oblivion on the part of the House. I would like to ask them each, individually, if they’ve ever been without coverage. That is highly unlikely, I realize.
In the mean time, they toss out words and phrases designed to scare. I doubt that many of them have seen a $204,000 medical bill. That’s reality for a major health failure. Getting sick is easy; paying for it isn’t.
Legislating a way for people without coverage to get it is in no way a takeover. And mandating coverage is no different from states mandating liability insurance for car owners. Doing so serves a greater good, a position that the Supreme Court has affirmed over and over. It has consistently ruled that the government can impose requirements that benefit and advance a greater good.
The VA, which as little as 10 years ago was a model of inefficiency and waste, has transformed itself into one of the best health care providers in the country. And they’re run by the government.
On top of everything else, ignoring that singular fact paints most opponents of reform as either stupid, uninformed or opportunistic. They either don’t know because they don’t keep up or care to, or they don’t want to see what’s staring them in the face: a model that works.
Given the rhetoric from the far and even moderate right wing, I can only surmise that their motivations are opportunistic, painting the health care reform bill as massively unpopular among the American people. In fact, most polls show that that, while opinion is divided, it carries the support of a little less than 50% of those polled by non-partisan organizations. Opponents carry similar numbers.
Those numbers in no way justify a repeal, nor do they represent an overwhelming support for repeal. Rather, it represents the number of people who either lack coverage or know someone who does.
House Republicans are fighting a war they know they have no chance of winning to get press time. It’s free advertising for the individual members when the press covers the issue as closely as it does.
The pandering to the far right and the press ignores the basic question: why is health coverage available only for a certain demographic? What if I’m self-employed or run a small business that can’t afford the extremely high cost of covering myself or a small group of employees? What do you have to offer, instead? How are you going to control health care costs that are expanding almost geometrically?
So far, the answer to the last question is “we don’t know”. The answer to the prior is “we don’t know and we don’t care”.
The current debate, if you can call it one, boils down to a cynical attempt to scare people to forward the agenda of a political party at the expense of the uninsured people they are supposed to represent.
To them, I say “shame on you”. Take you rhetoric and put it where your heart ought to be.
17 January 2011
Over and Over
The sad truth is that mental illness is the bastard stepchild of medical policy as seen by federal, state and even local governments. They seem to treat all mental illness as either laziness, addiction or a weakness of character while not realizing that many people who are lazy, addicted or weak of character are not mentally ill. They are simply lazy, addicted or weak.
Some are mentally ill, though. Their behavior is a symptom of the greater illness they suffer from. It’s not the cause. And for those people, getting treatment is almost impossible. Even if they want it.
Not long after I met Shannon, I found out about his history of mental illness, something that a psychiatrist who had known him since childhood and has become a dear friend to me told me about very bluntly. Shannon was in never-never land, ranting and raving and yelling and screaming, but he wasn’t a danger to himself or anyone else, so our friend told me, “Let’s go run an errand. You have an errand, don’t you?”
Before we got to the end of the block he told me the brutal, honest truth: Shannon was bipolar and had been all his life, but wouldn’t accept the diagnosis. I let out a sigh of relief, as I remember, because I finally had a name for what was going on. I knew there had to be a reason, but giving it a name made it much easier to deal with.
We got back from my “errand”, and I managed to get Shannon calm enough to sleep, and when he woke up a few hours later, he didn’t really remember much of what had happened. Our friend had already gone, and Shannon only vaguely remembered that he’d been there.
That’s when I told him that he was mentally ill and needed help of some sort. He resisted at first. He said people had been saying that for years, but he didn’t believe them. When I started pointing out the psycho things he’d done since I had known him, he started to come round.
I told him it wasn’t weakness, laziness or anything other than a health issue. One that he needed treatment for. That I’d had my own bouts with it, and that it’s real. I knew it was real. I told him about the time I found myself curled up in almost a fetal position at the end of a hall in college crying for no reason I could name. About planning my suicide.
I have an aversion to guns in general, and knives hurt, so I had chosen pills as my preferred method of self-euthanasia. And I certainly wasn’t going to set myself on fire. I was going to take an overdose of something and go to sleep.
For whatever reason, he listened to me after ignoring so many other people. He admitted that he might have an illness. Maybe it was the way I framed the discussion as purely health-related. Or that I told him my own history.
I don’t know. But he agreed to try to find help.
That’s when the fun began.
We quickly found out that there are few to none inexpensive options for treating mentally ill adults in our area. Even though we lived in a very liberal, open city, there are almost no mental health services available for less than $100/hr. Even when he got SSI, there were still almost none.
Then he applied for and got Veterans’ coverage based on his short stint in the Navy decades ago. It turns out that the VA has the biggest mental health business in town. It’s about the only place to find help if $100/hr. is too rich for your blood. They have an income-based fee schedule, and the expensive medication he needed suddenly became affordable. Shannon paid very little at first, and then nothing later on.
But he got the counseling and medication he needed to keep him sane. Finally. After years of denial, then acceptance and then being hit with roadblock after roadblock, he could be happy.
People wonder why the Tucson shooter didn’t get help or why someone didn’t intervene. It probably wouldn’t have mattered unless Tucson is very different than Austin. I’m in a larger metropolitan area, but at any given time, there are precious few beds available for mentally ill patients.
When Shannon had a couple of breakdowns, they put him in the CCU of a local hospital that had 1 mental health professional (a psychologist) on hand. There weren’t any beds at the psychiatric hospital, and it was not equipped to deal with his other health problems, anyway. He wasn’t healthy enough to go to the psychiatric facility, and the CCU had no real resources to deal with a mentally ill patient.
The one time he got into the psychiatric hospital, he ended up back at the other hospital because the psych folks neglected to get him his meds. I told him that I’d take care of him from there on out. And I did.
It meant wrestling him down and getting him to take a blood pressure pill and a sleeping pill, literally forcing them down his throat and holding his mouth closed so he wouldn’t spit them out because he was hallucinating. He always came back to the scenario where someone was trying to poison him. Once I got the pills down him, he was okay.
That’s the state of mental health care in the most open and liberal city in Texas. It’s okay to be gay and it’s okay to have any handicap other than mental illness. There are no readily available resources for people that don’t either know or want to admit that they’re mentally ill, much less the ones who realize it and want help. As if they would even be able to function on a high enough level to know how to find where to go for what little help there is or navigate the system once they found it.
Most mentally ill people lose the capacity to make the rational judgments that would lead them to seek care. And even in progressive communities, mental illness is still stigmatized, so there is an over-riding social pressure to pretend it’s not there. To pretend it’s not real.
I got up one morning and realized that Shannon hadn’t moved from the spot on the couch where he’d been when I went to bed the night before. He was staring blankly into space. I asked him if he knew where he was. He shook his head “no”. I asked if he knew who I was, and he shook his head “no” again. Then I asked him if he knew who he was. When he shook his “no” again, I knew we were in for a long day.
I assumed custodianship of his illness early on in our relationship and did my best to see that he had appropriate care and was treated with respect, even when he didn’t know who he was. Most mentally ill people don’t have that kind of an advocate. They simply wander through life alone.
And people don’t like to talk about it. It’s too dark and too scary a topic for most. They’d rather talk about cancer or drug addiction, two conditions that have lost the stigma that mental illness still carries. No one makes a conscious choice to get a tumor or become an addict, but neither does one make a choice to be mentally ill. They all suck, and no one would take any of them on voluntarily.
Until the stigma goes away and people talk about mental illness the same way they talk about lymphoma or rehab, Tucson will happen again, over and over. Until people realize that they have to intervene and take care of those they love, even when the one they love protests, it will happen again. Until there is widely available and adequate treatment, it will happen again.
Over and over.
Some are mentally ill, though. Their behavior is a symptom of the greater illness they suffer from. It’s not the cause. And for those people, getting treatment is almost impossible. Even if they want it.
Not long after I met Shannon, I found out about his history of mental illness, something that a psychiatrist who had known him since childhood and has become a dear friend to me told me about very bluntly. Shannon was in never-never land, ranting and raving and yelling and screaming, but he wasn’t a danger to himself or anyone else, so our friend told me, “Let’s go run an errand. You have an errand, don’t you?”
Before we got to the end of the block he told me the brutal, honest truth: Shannon was bipolar and had been all his life, but wouldn’t accept the diagnosis. I let out a sigh of relief, as I remember, because I finally had a name for what was going on. I knew there had to be a reason, but giving it a name made it much easier to deal with.
We got back from my “errand”, and I managed to get Shannon calm enough to sleep, and when he woke up a few hours later, he didn’t really remember much of what had happened. Our friend had already gone, and Shannon only vaguely remembered that he’d been there.
That’s when I told him that he was mentally ill and needed help of some sort. He resisted at first. He said people had been saying that for years, but he didn’t believe them. When I started pointing out the psycho things he’d done since I had known him, he started to come round.
I told him it wasn’t weakness, laziness or anything other than a health issue. One that he needed treatment for. That I’d had my own bouts with it, and that it’s real. I knew it was real. I told him about the time I found myself curled up in almost a fetal position at the end of a hall in college crying for no reason I could name. About planning my suicide.
I have an aversion to guns in general, and knives hurt, so I had chosen pills as my preferred method of self-euthanasia. And I certainly wasn’t going to set myself on fire. I was going to take an overdose of something and go to sleep.
For whatever reason, he listened to me after ignoring so many other people. He admitted that he might have an illness. Maybe it was the way I framed the discussion as purely health-related. Or that I told him my own history.
I don’t know. But he agreed to try to find help.
That’s when the fun began.
We quickly found out that there are few to none inexpensive options for treating mentally ill adults in our area. Even though we lived in a very liberal, open city, there are almost no mental health services available for less than $100/hr. Even when he got SSI, there were still almost none.
Then he applied for and got Veterans’ coverage based on his short stint in the Navy decades ago. It turns out that the VA has the biggest mental health business in town. It’s about the only place to find help if $100/hr. is too rich for your blood. They have an income-based fee schedule, and the expensive medication he needed suddenly became affordable. Shannon paid very little at first, and then nothing later on.
But he got the counseling and medication he needed to keep him sane. Finally. After years of denial, then acceptance and then being hit with roadblock after roadblock, he could be happy.
People wonder why the Tucson shooter didn’t get help or why someone didn’t intervene. It probably wouldn’t have mattered unless Tucson is very different than Austin. I’m in a larger metropolitan area, but at any given time, there are precious few beds available for mentally ill patients.
When Shannon had a couple of breakdowns, they put him in the CCU of a local hospital that had 1 mental health professional (a psychologist) on hand. There weren’t any beds at the psychiatric hospital, and it was not equipped to deal with his other health problems, anyway. He wasn’t healthy enough to go to the psychiatric facility, and the CCU had no real resources to deal with a mentally ill patient.
The one time he got into the psychiatric hospital, he ended up back at the other hospital because the psych folks neglected to get him his meds. I told him that I’d take care of him from there on out. And I did.
It meant wrestling him down and getting him to take a blood pressure pill and a sleeping pill, literally forcing them down his throat and holding his mouth closed so he wouldn’t spit them out because he was hallucinating. He always came back to the scenario where someone was trying to poison him. Once I got the pills down him, he was okay.
That’s the state of mental health care in the most open and liberal city in Texas. It’s okay to be gay and it’s okay to have any handicap other than mental illness. There are no readily available resources for people that don’t either know or want to admit that they’re mentally ill, much less the ones who realize it and want help. As if they would even be able to function on a high enough level to know how to find where to go for what little help there is or navigate the system once they found it.
Most mentally ill people lose the capacity to make the rational judgments that would lead them to seek care. And even in progressive communities, mental illness is still stigmatized, so there is an over-riding social pressure to pretend it’s not there. To pretend it’s not real.
I got up one morning and realized that Shannon hadn’t moved from the spot on the couch where he’d been when I went to bed the night before. He was staring blankly into space. I asked him if he knew where he was. He shook his head “no”. I asked if he knew who I was, and he shook his head “no” again. Then I asked him if he knew who he was. When he shook his “no” again, I knew we were in for a long day.
I assumed custodianship of his illness early on in our relationship and did my best to see that he had appropriate care and was treated with respect, even when he didn’t know who he was. Most mentally ill people don’t have that kind of an advocate. They simply wander through life alone.
And people don’t like to talk about it. It’s too dark and too scary a topic for most. They’d rather talk about cancer or drug addiction, two conditions that have lost the stigma that mental illness still carries. No one makes a conscious choice to get a tumor or become an addict, but neither does one make a choice to be mentally ill. They all suck, and no one would take any of them on voluntarily.
Until the stigma goes away and people talk about mental illness the same way they talk about lymphoma or rehab, Tucson will happen again, over and over. Until people realize that they have to intervene and take care of those they love, even when the one they love protests, it will happen again. Until there is widely available and adequate treatment, it will happen again.
Over and over.
05 January 2011
Let's Talk
For the past month or so, I’ve been dealing with pain, numbness and weakness in and around my right knee. It’s absolutely maddening: I have to walk with a cane, my thigh intermittently burns like it’s on fire, anything touching it causes pain and my foot alternates between mostly numb and uncomfortably tingly. I love walking by myself during the day because there’s a certain Zen involved: I put my mind in neutral and let it go where it wants. I can’t do that right now.
I saw my primary care physician, and he referred me to a neurologist who gave me a very thorough exam while I alternately sat and reclined on an exam table in my underwear. (Two things about neurologists that have been my experience: I’ll eventually end up in my drawers, and they don’t work between Christmas and New Year’s.) The neurologist ordered 2 MRI’s, an EMG and a nerve conductivity test, which I had this week.
Nothing like spending an hour in a narrow tube inside a giant noisy machine or another hour on an exam table being shocked with electrodes and needles. The only thing that could be worse would be suffering through it all and paying full price for the experience.
Luckily, I have an increasingly rare benefit: good health insurance. My co-pays range from $10 to $15 per visit and test and from $10 to $30 for prescriptions. So far, I’ve shelled out $70 for what would have cost $4,000 to $5,000 without insurance. Since my insurer has collected about $70,000 from me and my employer over the last decade and the insurer has paid out about $10,000, I don’t feel so bad about using the benefit.
The level of treatment I have received isn’t available to a too-large number of people. If they have coverage, their out-of-pocket expenses for something like this would either be prohibitive or eat up too much of their income. If I had to pay 20% of everything up to a deductible cap, I wouldn’t be able to afford it. If I had to pay the much higher co-pays, I’d have to be choosing among which bills to pay.
My insurer doesn’t offer our policy any more. They discontinued it several years ago, but they will renew it with an annual price adjustment. Policies like mine almost don’t exist today. My insurer will renew it, but they haven’t issued new ones in years.
The basic healthcare that I take for granted isn’t available to millions. The good healthcare I value so highly is available to even fewer. And that’s a basic inequity. I have a good job with good insurance, so I can afford the care. Too many people don’t have that. They can’t afford to go to the doctor for minor things, much less larger ones.
Now that universal healthcare is back in the news, I’ve been thinking about why it’s important, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the benefits outweigh the price. Emergency rooms don’t get over-run with people who really need to see a GP but can’t. The ERs’ costs go down. Healthy workers are more productive. And critical and end-of-life care costs go down because people don’t come to the hospital on their deathbeds.
Empirical evidence suggests that it’s much cheaper to treat potentially fatal or debilitating illnesses and diseases when they are diagnosed early on. Common sense dictates that a healthy worker is a more productive worker (unless the illness is pure old laziness).
The cost of no insurance is infinitely higher than the cost of having it. 2 weeks in the ICU can easily cost $200,000. If insurance pays for most of it, the hospital has that much more towards not going broke. And regardless of who the insurer is, as long as it’s not the government, the private insurer will make a profit in the long run.
The biggest lie, distortion and cynical spin on any legislation in my lifetime has been the “government takeover of healthcare”. The government won’t be running much of it. It’s mandated certain coverage, but my state mandates that I have liability insurance on my car. They don’t care if I have comp and collision because that doesn’t impact anyone but me.
The lack of available healthcare harms everyone, whether they have insurance or not. If I wreck my car and don’t have the comp and collision, it doesn’t affect anyone but me. If I don’t have health insurance and rely on emergency rooms for primary care or don’t seek treatment until my condition is critical, everyone pays. They pay in the form of higher costs across the board.
I lived for years without any coverage, and my company’s health insurance makes up for a lot other shortcomings on their part. There hasn’t been money for a raise in a few years, but I still have my health insurance. It costs only slightly more than what I paid the last time I got a raise.
The Sarah Palins of the world talk about “death panels” and socialized medicine. The reform act under attack meets neither criterion. It does provide funding for end-of-life counseling, but that’s a good thing. When my father died, the hospital provided counseling so we could make the right decisions. The ones we needed to make but didn’t want to.
My family needed to hear a half-dozen doctors from many specialties tell us how bad he was and why he was going to die, whether we did anything or not. He might have made it a few more days, but the unanimous decision was to cut life support. That’s a “death panel”. I’m glad we had one.
I still don’t understand the resistance to healthcare reform. Maybe people think it’s going to cost them more, but they’ll pay for it one way or another. Whether it’s in the form of higher medical bills, health insurance costs or taxes, we’ll all pay. And the tactics of fear mongering and rabble-rousing that politicians have employed to oppose extending care to more people strike me as both insincere and elitist. They spin an important issue for political advantage (the insincere part) and don’t care about the enormity of the healthcare problem (the elitist part).
They have insurance, so why should they care? And fear is one of the strongest political motivators, so they use is any time they can. It boils down to the politics of indifference and fear.
It’s time to end the politically motivated politics of fear and talk about reality.
I saw my primary care physician, and he referred me to a neurologist who gave me a very thorough exam while I alternately sat and reclined on an exam table in my underwear. (Two things about neurologists that have been my experience: I’ll eventually end up in my drawers, and they don’t work between Christmas and New Year’s.) The neurologist ordered 2 MRI’s, an EMG and a nerve conductivity test, which I had this week.
Nothing like spending an hour in a narrow tube inside a giant noisy machine or another hour on an exam table being shocked with electrodes and needles. The only thing that could be worse would be suffering through it all and paying full price for the experience.
Luckily, I have an increasingly rare benefit: good health insurance. My co-pays range from $10 to $15 per visit and test and from $10 to $30 for prescriptions. So far, I’ve shelled out $70 for what would have cost $4,000 to $5,000 without insurance. Since my insurer has collected about $70,000 from me and my employer over the last decade and the insurer has paid out about $10,000, I don’t feel so bad about using the benefit.
The level of treatment I have received isn’t available to a too-large number of people. If they have coverage, their out-of-pocket expenses for something like this would either be prohibitive or eat up too much of their income. If I had to pay 20% of everything up to a deductible cap, I wouldn’t be able to afford it. If I had to pay the much higher co-pays, I’d have to be choosing among which bills to pay.
My insurer doesn’t offer our policy any more. They discontinued it several years ago, but they will renew it with an annual price adjustment. Policies like mine almost don’t exist today. My insurer will renew it, but they haven’t issued new ones in years.
The basic healthcare that I take for granted isn’t available to millions. The good healthcare I value so highly is available to even fewer. And that’s a basic inequity. I have a good job with good insurance, so I can afford the care. Too many people don’t have that. They can’t afford to go to the doctor for minor things, much less larger ones.
Now that universal healthcare is back in the news, I’ve been thinking about why it’s important, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the benefits outweigh the price. Emergency rooms don’t get over-run with people who really need to see a GP but can’t. The ERs’ costs go down. Healthy workers are more productive. And critical and end-of-life care costs go down because people don’t come to the hospital on their deathbeds.
Empirical evidence suggests that it’s much cheaper to treat potentially fatal or debilitating illnesses and diseases when they are diagnosed early on. Common sense dictates that a healthy worker is a more productive worker (unless the illness is pure old laziness).
The cost of no insurance is infinitely higher than the cost of having it. 2 weeks in the ICU can easily cost $200,000. If insurance pays for most of it, the hospital has that much more towards not going broke. And regardless of who the insurer is, as long as it’s not the government, the private insurer will make a profit in the long run.
The biggest lie, distortion and cynical spin on any legislation in my lifetime has been the “government takeover of healthcare”. The government won’t be running much of it. It’s mandated certain coverage, but my state mandates that I have liability insurance on my car. They don’t care if I have comp and collision because that doesn’t impact anyone but me.
The lack of available healthcare harms everyone, whether they have insurance or not. If I wreck my car and don’t have the comp and collision, it doesn’t affect anyone but me. If I don’t have health insurance and rely on emergency rooms for primary care or don’t seek treatment until my condition is critical, everyone pays. They pay in the form of higher costs across the board.
I lived for years without any coverage, and my company’s health insurance makes up for a lot other shortcomings on their part. There hasn’t been money for a raise in a few years, but I still have my health insurance. It costs only slightly more than what I paid the last time I got a raise.
The Sarah Palins of the world talk about “death panels” and socialized medicine. The reform act under attack meets neither criterion. It does provide funding for end-of-life counseling, but that’s a good thing. When my father died, the hospital provided counseling so we could make the right decisions. The ones we needed to make but didn’t want to.
My family needed to hear a half-dozen doctors from many specialties tell us how bad he was and why he was going to die, whether we did anything or not. He might have made it a few more days, but the unanimous decision was to cut life support. That’s a “death panel”. I’m glad we had one.
I still don’t understand the resistance to healthcare reform. Maybe people think it’s going to cost them more, but they’ll pay for it one way or another. Whether it’s in the form of higher medical bills, health insurance costs or taxes, we’ll all pay. And the tactics of fear mongering and rabble-rousing that politicians have employed to oppose extending care to more people strike me as both insincere and elitist. They spin an important issue for political advantage (the insincere part) and don’t care about the enormity of the healthcare problem (the elitist part).
They have insurance, so why should they care? And fear is one of the strongest political motivators, so they use is any time they can. It boils down to the politics of indifference and fear.
It’s time to end the politically motivated politics of fear and talk about reality.
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