The Making Of An Obamacan, Part 2

Yea, Al's conversion started with a bad headache. Right after he started his job in Jackson, he went to see a doctor. An MRI revealed that Al had a tumor near the base of his brain. And it was growing.

There really weren't any options. He could either undergo risky brain surgery that might leave him memoryless, a different person, or worse; he could do that, or die. There were no options.

When Al started slowly interacting with people after the surgery there was an intense quiet. Would he need to be pushed around in a wheelchair the rest of his life? Wear a leash?

There was a relieved sigh when Al's sort of rough grace and sense of humor showed up. Beside a metal plate in his head it seemed like he was going to be fine.

His brain seemed to be fine, anyway. But he got sick and stayed sick, and complained about terrible back pain. And when I say "complained"-- that's not Al's style. He might have said, "my back is killing me." a couple of times, but you could see it. He had a lung infection, pneumonia, that could not be driven out, and this pain in his back.

Because of the disjointed system that we have no one caught the bone infection raging in the vertebrae of Al's lower spine, probably gotten through a contaminated catheter used after his brain surgery. No one noticed it until eight months later, despite repeated trips to the emergency room and the offices of esteemed specialists.

It was a pulmonary guy who finally ordered a bone scan when Al was physically unable to get himself up off the doctor's exam table, eight months after the infection had taken root.

Bone infections are bad. They're very hard to stop and after they have passed through, the infection will have left the bone porous and brittle, like a dried out sponge.

They would have to stop the infection first and then see what there was left to work with.

The treatment for this sort of thing is a daily, three hour, intravenous blast of high test antibiotics, and you do that for about three months.

At this time Al had one kid in college and two in private school so he figured he would have to work through it. he hid the tubing from the I.V pick line in his arm under his suit and went to work. Every day he stopped by the hospital on his way home to get a required blood test and his bag, then he would go home, sit in his chair and hookup for his three hour I.V.

After the treatment course was run the news was not good. Several of his vertebrae were devastated, dead and structurally unsound. They were about as strong as balsa wood vertebrae. This would require surgery. Four, as it turned out. They would remove bone, put bone in, bolt rods to what was left good, and then bolt some more rods in and hope that the whole mess somehow fused together. Al wouldn't be able to bend over, but at least he wouldn't snap in half if he tried.

Of course the damage to the nerves in that area, the ones coming off the spinal cord, were train wreck severe, so the pain became excruciating and constant. And there were more insults, more then there's room for here. Like the emergency surgery done on Al to repair a ruptured ulcer in his stomach that was cause by the VA's stupid and cruel aversion to prescribing narcotics. Instead they prescribed high doses of caustic, although non-narcotic, painkillers. Anything to keep another junkie off the street.

Ironically, it probably hasten Al's turn into junkiedom by causing him more chronic pain.

He was sent to a pain management doctor who could see that the man was in terrible pain and gladly let him have any medicine that would relieve his suffering. Al was quickly taking increasing doses of oxycontin, roxicodone and other high end narcotics.

There's a misconception that these drugs just erase pain, that's not really true. The pain is still there it's just that it becomes kind of abstract, like it could be someone else's pain. It also introduces some new problems into the equation, and there's a list of them, but the biggest problem is the old junkie dilemma. The junk may help with pain but once your hooked you'll be introduced to a new pain that's worse then anything you knew before. The pain from junk sickness is nothing to play with.

After Katrina Al was through. He couldn't do it anymore. The Doctors had been telling him for some time to pack it in and retire. He was just not realistically able to work anymore.

With affidavits from his doctors Al applied for Social Security Disability Benefits. The way this compassionate conservatism thing works is that you apply and even with an obvious case like Al's you will probably be denied. From there you can re-apply or appeal your case into the indefinite. It's a proven method for weeding out the weak, sick and desperate. Al's application is now about a year and a half old and lost in the black hole of the appeals process.

Al's wife had a good job, but it was about 80 miles away. she decided to quit and find work closer to home. That turned out to be harder then they had thought. As their medical insurance began to lapse Al applied for medicaid. Mississippi's republican governor, Haley Barbour, had made some money saving changes to medicaid. When you apply first you will be treated like the bottom feeding scum that you are and then there will be some appointments and paper work and some more appointments, and then you will be denied. Again there's appeals or re-apply process.

It also should be said that by this time, even with top shelf insurance, Al was financially ruined. They had borrowed from family, re-mortgaged their home, were still tens of thousands of dollars in debt and had already filed bankruptcy. They were quickly going from desperate to disastrous. Broke and with the bank starting foreclosure proceedings on their home and no health insurance, Al's wife decided to make a ballsy move and re-enlist in the army.

In the meantime, with no insurance and his medicine running out Al turned to the VA. But even with medical records showing obscene medical insults and injuries and the incredibly high doses of narcotics Al was on the VA treated him like a lowrent addict. Eventually, and only with persistence, the VA agreed to give Al a low dose of morphine. A "here's a little something to help you kick" dose. They pretty much laughed at him.

With his son in Iraq, training cops in the Sunni Triangle, his wife on her way to Iraq, bankrupt, his home heading into foreclosure, intense pain and no health insurance, and with one last dose of pain medicine, Al went home and locked the doors and pulled the blinds.

He stayed in there, probably close to three weeks. The horror show that went on inside that house is not something I'm interested in thinking about. I've seen the educational videos. Free style detoxing is not for the faint of heart.

When Al finally emerged, like all those who have survived junk sickness, he was like Jacob after wrestling with God. They're never the same after that.

That's when the folk CD's started showing up and the excitment over Obama. Al, the stalwart right wing republican who's voted Reagan, Bush, Dole, Bush and Bush again.

Al comes over for coffee a lot these days. I like talking with Al. He's seen a lot. He's seen big mountains of shells and explosives detonated in the desert of Jordan, because it was cheaper to blow the stuff up then ship it home after the first Gulf War. He's seen presidents up close. He's seen monster, megaton hurricanes level cities, and, of course, he has been gang raped and beaten by the street level realities of the Right's dreaming. But he never talks in pride or bitterness. He always talks like a man who knows in his heart that only the dead have seen an end of war.