It has been far too long since I have opened the door to this room...
My last posting, in October 2014, is a curious lead-in to this writing...
Lisa and I are in dire peril right now....she almost died shortly after I posted the October piece...stress and a faulty liver almost took her from me, as she lay bleeding out on a ER gurney from an esophageal varices...
Short version: she made it, because she is remarkable and our guardian angels were on the job.
Now we are faced with the slings and arrows which are flung upon the poor...the unemployed...the folks at the base of the Murikan Pyramid...
We had no health insurance...a mixture of "eligibility windows" and an entrepreneurial attitude about the relative unimportance of protecting your most valuable asset--your employee--had thrust us into the cadre of peasants who sludge through the mud on a daily basis, fearful of slipping into the mire, with no safety nets to save us if we fall...
We are facing massive medical bills...and the whopper, the one from the hospital with its 18 hrs of ER, 3 days of ICU and two in "general population"--with all their attendant charges for the 8 units (yes, the body only holds, roughly, 9-10 units) of blood, 4 of plasma, countless more of saline...the $50 gauze pads, etc.--has not yet come...
Prior to this incident, we barely had enough, robbing this Peter to pay that Paul, to keep the electricity and gas flowing and provide for the fuel needed to get around LA to work...and pay for prescriptions...and "walk-in lab" procedures (a great boon to patient care, BTW...you can get virtually any lab procedure done without having to traverse the Yellow Brick Road of "primary care physicians", and their oh-so-expensive colleagues "specialists", to find out precisely what your thyroid or liver or kidneys are doing..or what your testosterone level really is). We have kids who need to be fed.
We are Murika.
So we are at a crossroads.
We will probably have to sell our home (hopefully while market conditions are favorable), pay off the first and second mortgages and the bulk of remaining medical bills, and hope to have enough to find a community where our balance of assets can provide us with a new field in which to plant our gifts. We will have to "re-invent" ourselves...
I'm probably sharing too much. I apologize for that. I guess I'm just really feeling a long-overdue fraternity for my fellow Americans. I fought for you, and you spit on me when I returned. I nursed and saved you--when I could-- from death as a paramedic, and you showed me the horrors that man does to fellow man--or oneself in the depths of despair...and made me leave a career which I earnestly felt an affinity for, but which was too overburdened with bureaucracy and a "caste system" mentality to be bearable on a daily basis...a career which I chose for me, as opposed to theatre which was--lovingly--imposed upon me from birth...a career I left because the consequences of failed decisions were life and death matters, not just playtime drama...
Hence my personal crossroads....
When Lisa lay bleeding out, after me missing the precursor symptoms for 72 hours, I ripped myself a new one...I lost 10 pounds in a week just pacing the floor....I cursed myself in 4 languages... Despite my keeping my MEDSCAPE subscription--and CME credits--current (although it is than 40 years after my turning in my "whites") my poor ego thought that I could see the deteriorating condition of my beautiful mate fish, despite being inside the tank with her. Foolish boy...
Now we must march like Patton's troops to make her strong and well and back to health...mental, spiritual and physical health. We have enrolled her in a Covered CA Platinum PPO...an extra $150 month but covering essentials much better than any competing product. She's got a new, sharp, young primary care physician, she's seeing the gastroenterologist this afternoon for a consult on a follow-up procedure...
Once this immediate hurdle is cleared, it will be time for some serious soul-searching. I really must commit to either art or medicine, because I must relieve my poor, overstressed and overworked mate fish from the endless duty of keeping the tank clean...
And, maybe, make a mortgage payment...or a healthcare insurance payment....or car insurance...or Time Warner...or...
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