One of the reasons Im writing thisthe main reasonis that setting and achieving small objectives keeps me going. Im looking at waits for over a month to have further testing the results of which will determine what surgery I will have weeks or months after that. Meanwhile I self-catheter three or four times a day and try not to make too many wild guesses about precisely what this or that member of the medical establishment meant by this or that casual remark or rapid-fire jargonal answer. And if I dare to seek further enlightenment by calling a number I push one of several buttons leave a message wait two or three days for a response and... and find myself left with more questions than ever.
Dont talk to me about the evils of socialized medicine. For nobodies like me the nightmare is already here. Thanks to ambulance-chasing lawsuits Obama-era paperwork and open admission for the Third World diaspora many of us already no longer have timely access to treatment: the docs who havent retired are absurdly over-extended. Im trying not to hate loathe and despise doctors personally though its hard when specialists" work four-day weeks and so clearly love to dash off prescriptions that turn into a horror show if you research their side-effects. (Or if you actually use them. So far Ive tried two of these made-in-Chinas for a total of four days: sever headache dizziness and nausea in both cases… no thanks.)
I know Im aging. I do get that. Death isnt too far away and it comes to everyone. Maybe I still have a couple of decades maybe not. His will be done. Just spare me will you the talk about the miraculous progress of our technology. Jesus is coming to your neighborhood… in six months. Reserve a space along the road to touch his hem at nine-fifty on the last Thursday of August by pressing One now. Admission subject to revised CoronaVirus protocol."
Ah yes. COVID-19. Id take the virus hands-down over my current situation. Ive had flu before. I almost died of a particularly virulent strain when in my mid-twenties I was stuck in Ireland and unable to receive my monthly check from home due to a nation-wide postal strike (speaking of socialist utopias). Living on one meal a day I made an easy target for opportunistic infections; and Western European populations of older people and other compromised groups did indeed die in the winter of 1981 by the hundreds (or probably the thousands). So I know the flu from its worst angle. Id take it over this: no-brainer. But of course Im not being given that choice.
Now Im reading that hospitals may throttle back on non-essential surgeries" until the Awful Horror swaggers through our streets and wanders elsewhere. With my stock of trusty self-catheterizing rods (and they do elicit a certain affection seriously: theyre the only friends I have besides my sainted wife) I suppose I could go on for... I dunno; whatever time a sixty-six-year-old is supposed to have left. And its somewhat comforting in an odd way to know that as I tend my garden or make my baseball videos my radiator is actually better drained than it has been in over a decade. Thank you thank you o Twenty-First Century for self-catheterization kits!
But for doctors medicine the health care system"... no you can keep all that. Keep it for the people who matterand throw in a barbed-wire enema for them all from me.
Again as for the CoronaVirusthe latest best alternative to another impeachment trial a new strategy that the Donald played right into for months by blasting and blaring away about unprecedented economic prosperityyeah stick that up your pipe and smoke it too. For about two decades we as a society have smugly stupidly utterly ignored warnings about our power grids vulnerability. Part of the reason was that many of our subversive representatives (including a two-term president) actually liked the idea of priming the nation to be instantly brought to its knees by an enemy. Immediate checkmate. But even these traitor-ideologues were too foolish to comprehend that major solar flares occur quite naturally on a timetable that we dont fully understand but that seems to leave us long overdue for another visit. And the consequences of that visit would purge nine out of ten inhabitants of North America within a year.
But lets not mention the unsecured power gridor lets just rule its risks debunked". Lets rave hysterically instead about COVID-19. Round-the-clock coverage of the non-story the apocalyptic pandemic that will kill one in five of us (figures courtesy of talking heads who calculated that Bloombergs campaign expenses divvied up would have meant a cool million for each of us)... babble and blather every bloody time you walk through a room with a plugged-in TV. Stay home! Wash your hands! Drink more sanitizer! Build a protective suit of toilet paper!"
Id so like to have the flu instead of be walking my present path. Any flu would do. But I havent been given the option of wimping out.
So Ill send the ramrod up the rifles bore one more time order some more catheters just in case Amazon decides to hunker down under the shadow of Thanatos next month and go fence the deer out of my new almond trees.
When I pass through the gate at last Ill find my grandmother and well share a good laugh about all of this... or maybe not. My suspicionmy hope my convictionis that well have far more beautiful noble glorious things to occupy our attention than American society of the twenty-first century.
One of the reasons Im writing thisthe main reasonis that setting and achieving small objectives keeps me going. Im looking at waits for over a month to have further testing the results of which will determine what surgery I will have weeks or months after that. Meanwhile I self-catheter three or four times a day and try not to make too many wild guesses about precisely what this or that member of the medical establishment meant by this or that casual remark or rapid-fire jargonal answer. And if I dare to seek further enlightenment by calling a number I push one of several buttons leave a message wait two or three days for a response and... and find myself left with more questions than ever.
Dont talk to me about the evils of socialized medicine. For nobodies like me the nightmare is already here. Thanks to ambulance-chasing lawsuits Obama-era paperwork and open admission for the Third World diaspora many of us already no longer have timely access to treatment: the docs who havent retired are absurdly over-extended. Im trying not to hate loathe and despise doctors personally though its hard when specialists" work four-day weeks and so clearly love to dash off prescriptions that turn into a horror show if you research their side-effects. (Or if you actually use them. So far Ive tried two of these made-in-Chinas for a total of four days: sever headache dizziness and nausea in both cases… no thanks.)
I know Im aging. I do get that. Death isnt too far away and it comes to everyone. Maybe I still have a couple of decades maybe not. His will be done. Just spare me will you the talk about the miraculous progress of our technology. Jesus is coming to your neighborhood… in six months. Reserve a space along the road to touch his hem at nine-fifty on the last Thursday of August by pressing One now. Admission subject to revised CoronaVirus protocol."
Ah yes. COVID-19. Id take the virus hands-down over my current situation. Ive had flu before. I almost died of a particularly virulent strain when in my mid-twenties I was stuck in Ireland and unable to receive my monthly check from home due to a nation-wide postal strike (speaking of socialist utopias). Living on one meal a day I made an easy target for opportunistic infections; and Western European populations of older people and other compromised groups did indeed die in the winter of 1981 by the hundreds (or probably the thousands). So I know the flu from its worst angle. Id take it over this: no-brainer. But of course Im not being given that choice.
Now Im reading that hospitals may throttle back on non-essential surgeries" until the Awful Horror swaggers through our streets and wanders elsewhere. With my stock of trusty self-catheterizing rods (and they do elicit a certain affection seriously: theyre the only friends I have besides my sainted wife) I suppose I could go on for... I dunno; whatever time a sixty-six-year-old is supposed to have left. And its somewhat comforting in an odd way to know that as I tend my garden or make my baseball videos my radiator is actually better drained than it has been in over a decade. Thank you thank you o Twenty-First Century for self-catheterization kits!
But for doctors medicine the health care system"... no you can keep all that. Keep it for the people who matterand throw in a barbed-wire enema for them all from me.
Again as for the CoronaVirusthe latest best alternative to another impeachment trial a new strategy that the Donald played right into for months by blasting and blaring away about unprecedented economic prosperityyeah stick that up your pipe and smoke it too. For about two decades we as a society have smugly stupidly utterly ignored warnings about our power grids vulnerability. Part of the reason was that many of our subversive representatives (including a two-term president) actually liked the idea of priming the nation to be instantly brought to its knees by an enemy. Immediate checkmate. But even these traitor-ideologues were too foolish to comprehend that major solar flares occur quite naturally on a timetable that we dont fully understand but that seems to leave us long overdue for another visit. And the consequences of that visit would purge nine out of ten inhabitants of North America within a year.
But lets not mention the unsecured power gridor lets just rule its risks debunked". Lets rave hysterically instead about COVID-19. Round-the-clock coverage of the non-story the apocalyptic pandemic that will kill one in five of us (figures courtesy of talking heads who calculated that Bloombergs campaign expenses divvied up would have meant a cool million for each of us)... babble and blather every bloody time you walk through a room with a plugged-in TV. Stay home! Wash your hands! Drink more sanitizer! Build a protective suit of toilet paper!"
Id so like to have the flu instead of be walking my present path. Any flu would do. But I havent been given the option of wimping out.
So Ill send the ramrod up the rifles bore one more time order some more catheters just in case Amazon decides to hunker down under the shadow of Thanatos next month and go fence the deer out of my new almond trees.
When I pass through the gate at last Ill find my grandmother and well share a good laugh about all of this... or maybe not. My suspicionmy hope my convictionis that well have far more beautiful noble glorious things to occupy our attention than American society of the twenty-first century.