Back Up Vocalist
NOTE: I moved this off the feature page because I thought it was too long. Then I heard from a doctor in the comments section and realized this needs to be as available as possible-- BC)
A week ago today, life was closing in on me.
A doctor's appointment loomed.
I was running out of the herbs, vitamins and hippie concoctions that have been keeping me alive for the past 15 years.
I felt too poorly to make more than a half-hearted swipe at any new projects.
I hadn't written much for this blog for months and months.
I'd abandoned hope of ever getting proper health care.
I was depressed over the future of Lettie and Lu the Dogs, who would face drastic and startling change were I to suddenly and permanently depart.
Come to think of it, maybe life wasn't closing in so much as it was closing out. I was fixin' to die. And that's no way to live.
I put one foot in front of the other and made it to the appointment. Ever vigilant, it didn't take long for the men and women of the health rackets to brand me with a scarlet "C" to indicate that I had a perilous preexisting illness. That illness, Hepatitis-C, truly alarmed these otherwise unflappable professionals. They sprung into action and began watching and treating me as if I were the guy who had stolen their car stereo and cassettes back in '87. Their disdain for me could not be concealed. Some of those Kenny Loggins tapes were irreplaceable.
Despite the fact that these corporate functionaries in lab coats treated me as if I were a junkie (and like I always say, not even junkies should be treated like junkies), their treatment of me resulted in a major medical breakthrough. It restored my voice.
It couldn't have come at a better time because I used it to speak up and walk away when I realized I was the one about to be robbed. The colonoscopy I was to have had was to be paid for by a government agency. But once the doctor ordered a batch of blood tests that weren't covered by the state, I was left to the mercy of the merciless - the for-profit health racket. Before I could get those tests, I was directed to apply for assistance - under duress and in full view and earshot of several other people who had no business learning of my private health and financial circumstances. Those folks had their own troubles and didn't need to know about mine. Had I not spoken up in protest, and instead complied with this humiliation and gotten the tests, it's likely I'd have returned home to learn that I had either been granted a minuscule discount or that I had been flatly rejected for any aid at all. Then the bills would come, followed by the phone calls from the virtual leg-breakers hospitals happily send after anyone thirty seconds late with a remittance. These leg-breakers demand payment of bills ciphered by people who believe a fair price for a Tylenol is $11.50. (The extra-strentghs are $15.80 but if you break it down, they're a better deal.)
Legalized medical larceny doesn't just victimize the uninsured. It also savages the insured with whopping premiums, large co-pays, ridiculous claim denials and "billing errors" that never, ever break the consumer's way. To fight the health insurance racketeers requires an ability to spend a few generations on the phone, listening to horrid music, only interrupted by a robot telling you how important your call is to its software licensee. Such attempts to realize healthcare consumer justice require the faith and patience of an old Catholic lady who doesn't realize that kneeling and praying the rosary doesn't cure arthritis, it causes it.
We need to speak to each other and not spend our lives on hold per the instruction of a nonhuman representative of an inhuman corporation. Humans are such better company.
This post would run 12,000 words if I thanked all who've shown kindness. In my doldrums, I'd forgotten the power of protest and the possibilities of compassion. Thanks for reminding me. I'm amazed at all you've done on my part already.
Several of you are attempting to find ways to get me health care. This includes an offer of pro bono care for any basic GP stuff I need from a doctor not too awfully far from here. His wife, a nurse, wrote to denounce the system and then offer to help me work around it. Amazing.
An eminent attorney is going to fight for my right to Medicaid as well as attempt to get me into a drug trial for Hep-C patients. So skip lawyer jokes around me unless the punchlines concern corporate barristers.
Paul Krassner and James Wolcott slathered the internet with my two healthcare posts and their audiences came running with an array of kind and wise responses.
Anne Feeney, the great musical advocate for workers everywhere who spent much of last year touring in support of single-payer, chimed in from Sweden with a generous offering and a true tale of how well she was treated in an emergency room over there. Praise Odin!
Many wrote to ask how they could help. I requested they join the fight for single-payer care. Most already had. I then suggested that if they really could afford it, small gift certificates from Amazon would help me keep current in herbs, supplements and various other essentials (such as the expensive pills that really help Lettie the Dog's tender hips). I've now learned that some of you have a much different idea of what's "small" than I do. Some responded with anonymous donations. Thanks unnamed benefactors! Some sent donations but no email address where I could send thanks. (Thanks Joy!) Several others allowed me the pleasure of personally thanking them for their generosity. Thanks again!
My life has been depressurized. I'd been scrimping on my "meds" but now full doses of everything are the rule of the day thanks to the largess of many people. The flow of assistance has begun dramatically. I was about to use up some dicey milk thistle I'd bought at a Dollar Store but then a package containing premium thistle came moments before the subpar supplement would have been swallowed. It wasn;t due for another five days. Yesterday I finished off the Yellow Dock. First thing today the UPS man arrived with Yellow Dock in hand. It wasn't due until at least Thursday or Friday. Karma, baby, karma!
Slews of messages of support and solidarity are still flowing in. Some from folks in circumstances similar to my own. Some from people who had lost loved ones due to criminal denial of the human right of health care. One person told me of how he was considering leaving his family because he is very sick. You see, in this country we take away the homes of the sick to pay higher dividends to stockholders. USA! USA!
The more I hear the more I wanna holler. The more I holler, the better I feel. I'm sure not about to roll over and die. My renewal started when I spoke up but continued because of you. I can't believe how many people are on my side. And in my boat.
Something I wrote a few years ago keeps coming back to me: The corporate health care racketeers know that sick people often are too weak to do anything but take "NO" for an answer. So "NO" is where they start. "NO" would have worked on me a week ago. I now consider it unacceptable. I have a treatable disease and I will get treatment, goddamnit!
Please holler with me. If we remain silent then we're going down and going down hard. If we speak up, the worst case scenario is that we bite the dust cursing the forces that drove us into it. It beats going quietly.
One of the people my outburst drew out was Ed Robinson, a fellow rabble-rouser from the Boston days. He wrote and sent me a lovely gift Saturday morning. I wrote back to thank him. He replied that he had been around for a lot of my work in opposition to Reagan's Death Squad Diplomacy and George Sr.'s Gulf War I. He said he had a tape of a speech I'd given in 1990 and that if found it, he'd post it on YouTube and send me the link. A few hours later the link arrived. Thanks, Ed!
The video is of a much younger me. For the health record, I lost over a hundred pounds in the months following this rally -- perhaps from giving speeches like this one - but I suspect vegetarianism had something to do with it. So here's my old self speaking up. My new self promises to do the same so long as I have air in my lungs and milk thistle on the shelf.
Sickened Ire
By Barry Crimmins
Yesterday I went to a doctor for a preliminary consultation for a colonoscopy. The entire procedure was to be covered by a state agency because I am 57 years old; have no health insurance; and a family history of colon cancer. This was surprising to me because as a preexister, I never expect to get any medical care at all in the United States. In fact I've gotten to the point where I think even hoping for any medical care is dangerous for someone in my condition.
I have had Hepatitis C for almost 35 years. I'm not a junkie and never was. I just knew a junkie who I tried to help by destroying her needles. Needless to state, this was an unwise move. Because I have a disease common among IV drug users, the medical establishment generally treats me like an extra from Panic in Needle Park.
Wait, it gets worse. A few years ago when I ate in the wrong diner in New Jersey (or stayed at the wrong hotel or whatever) I got Hepatitis B. I nearly died. The one doctor who saw me, treated me like I was The Man With the Golden Arm (and leaden wallet.) She informed me that the tests she'd run indicated I had a bonus batch of the illness that was already killing me. Then she showed me to the front desk, where her billing people explained that there was no need for any follow-up visits. This was fine by me since I was too close to death to want to do anything but go home and lie on the couch with my dearest pal ever, the late Lloyd the Dog.
With the help of friends, the faithful companionship of Lloyd, some herbs and vitamins, and dozens of hilarious DVD's (big doff of the skimmer to W.C. Fields), I somehow inched my way back to health. But I've never been the same. My condition is up and down from day to day. So much as a common cold can drop me just down the street from Death's Door. It's tough but I'm alive and I can still write. I sometimes wonder what I would be able to do had I received timely care, monitoring and treatment for my illness. But mostly I just try to move ahead, enjoy life and continue my work.
And who knows, maybe Sesame Street will hire me to do the Hepatitis alphabet on the show. "G" is for "Ghana," don't drink the swamp water there!"
Anyway, back to yesterday. Upon entering the doctor's office, I was handed a zillion forms to fill out. I complied. One of the questions was: 'Have you ever been hospitalized?' Having never spent a single night in a hospital in my life, I checked "No."
I turned in the forms and waited about 40 minutes before I was called to go into an examining room, where a nurse went over my answers with me. When we came to the hospitalization part, I reiterated that I'd never been hospitalized. A minute later I mentioned how I had been to emergency rooms several times to be stitched up, x-rayed and so on. The nurse then turned prosecuting attorney on me, asking in a most accusatory tone, "I thought you said you've never been hospitalized?"
I responded, "That's right, I have never spent a night in the hospital. But I have been to several hospitals for various things, always as an outpatient. They never, as they say, kept me."
Looking as rueful as Miss Havisham on a bad day, she admonished, "Every one of those visits was a hospitalization."
I said, "Are you trying to establish that I'm a liar thereby adding mendacity to the list of reasons why I am not a good candidate for medical care?"
She ignored this and repeated " So, you have been hospitalized."
"I guess I have, according to this new definition of the term. Thank goodness we caught that!" That was all I said but I was thinking, "If I'd really been trying to scam you on your boundless definition of 'hospitalization', why the hell would I have answered several other questions about my health history that would have made it clear that I had, on many occasions, set foot in a hospital for care, you corporate bureaucrat in drag as a caregiver!"
But I didn't and she lightened up a bit. Within no more than twenty minutes, even I could again speak with an unclenched jaw.
The only other dispute we had was when she told me that I should "Go to Walmart" to buy the intestinal propellants required to empty out my lower tract so that the TV crew could do its work.
I said, "I can't go to Walmart."
She queried, "Why? Aren't there any near you?"
I replied, "Of course there are Walmarts near me, this is the United States, we're lousy with Walmarts. I just happen to respect workers and so of course I can't walk in those places. But never fear, I will find a good local pharmacy and purchase the items and shall arrive at the hospital, on the given day, ready for my closeup."
This seemed to perplex but then appease her. She gave me an examination gown to put on and told me the doctor would see me in a few moments. Then she left.
About ten minutes later, there was a knock and the nurse reappeared. She told me that the doctor was on the phone with another physician but he would be in to see me soon. I passed the time in the airless room that had the faint odor of ten thousand ass exams. I thought of how much I despised the medical racketeers but allowed that I had made it this far and I was going to see this through. Alone with my thoughts, I reflected on life in this country. I considered how we are about to celebrate restoring unemployment benefits to some people, while leaving uncounted others, unemployed for more than an immoral 99 weeks, to sink into a future as murky as whatever the substance is that used to be the body of water known as the Gulf of Mexico.
After a half an hour or so of similarly wretched considerations, the doctor came in. He was pleasant enough until the Hep-C came up, when he recoiled a half-step and asked how I'd discovered I had it. I told him I had had a biopsy and he stopped me cold.
"A biopsy, in a hospital?"
I repeated the same exchange I had with the nurse and watched him transmogrify from caregiver to insurance corporation Hessian, even though my entire visit was covered by the state.
As it happened, because of the Hep-C, everything might not be paid for. When the exam (nothing intrusive!) ended, I was told to report to a local for-profit hospital, named after a Catholic saint, for body and blood tests, necessitated by my preexisting condition. I strolled in and proceeded to the lab area, where I handed the form the doctor sent along with me to a young tech. He told me I first had to go to admitting.
I said, "So I'm going to be hospitalized?"
He said, "No. You are only going to be here for blood tests. We won't be keeping you overnight or anything."
"A-HA!" I retorted. And then I turned and went back and found admitting.
There I had to sign in and wait to be seen but my time wouldn't be wasted -- not with FOX-News blaring on a small screen suspended above several other would-be medical customers. I posited to myself that they must have some open beds in the mental ward they were trying to fill. Then I surrendered to my base instincts and fantasized about killing Neil Cavuto (and if that's not how he spells his name, I don't care.) I never watch FOX-News. I know the right wing as well as I know my hometown, as well as I know my boyhood home. There is nothing new from these reactionaries. They are the same innuendo-spewing McCarthyites they ever were. I know better than to allow their invective to splatter upon someone in my condition. My gallant liver is overtaxed enough without having to get kicked into bile overdrive by toxic talking maggots in a shiny studio.
Mercifully my name was soon called-- but wait-- just to fill out more forms. Forms that asked the same questions I had answered as many as three times already in the last few hours. Why do they make 17 copies of everything if they never pass one along to the next bureaucrat? I took a deep breath and began yet another trip through the corporate labyrinth. This time I aced the hospitalization question. Twice battered, once learned!
Soon a nice enough administrator brought me in and we went over my answers. It went almost too well. She gave me back the form with the request for the blood work. With it, she gave me a copy of my newly filled-out forms and told me to go back up to the lab for my blood work. The heavens opened, rays of hopeful light warmed me and then.... and then the administrator poked her head in another office, where a young woman she introduced to me as, I'm pretty sure, either a 'financial screener' or 'scanner' sat.
The administrator spoke loudly and slowly, like a kindergarten teacher, saying "Oh good, you're here! I think you will be able to help Mr. Crimmins. HE HAS NO HEALTH CARE. Mr Crimmins , Ms -name-omitted-to-protect-the-complicit-in-the-banality-of-evil, healthcare-division, will help you with some financial planning."
And then she ran, and I mean ran back to her office and slammed the door. Ms -name-omitted-to-protect-the-complicit-in-the-banality-of-evil, healthcare-division, got up and came out of her perfectly good office. She brought me to a desk at the other side of the FOX-News Memorial Waiting Room. There she announced to all the other patients and me -- "So you have no health care, Mr Crimmins?"
Getting into the spirit of farce, I stage-whispered, "None at all. I made the horrible mistake of getting sick in the United States, where we need our money for more important things like senseless, endless wars and haranguing the indigenous people of the Southwest for moving back and forth across borders created by thieving scum! But you know all about that, what with your daylong exposure to fair and balanced FOX-News!"
She kept smiling like a used car salesperson hell-bent on unloading a YUGO that had only been through the one flood. She then informed me that there may be a way to subsidize part of the costs I was bound to incur at the for-profit joint named after Jesus's friend. It seemed all I had to do was answer several embarrassing questions about my life and finances, well within earshot of all the other poor souls in the FOX-News Memorial Waiting Room.
I said, "Oh good. This way we can not only humiliate me, we can also drive away some of the other deadbeat ill and injured people, who had the nerve to come to a hospital when they were feeling poorly. The last thing a sick person feels like doing is be made an example of so let me serve as a warning to all the poor devils who are politely pretending they can't hear everything we're saying.
"Nice system you have here-- first you pound would-be patients with some FOX News where they fairly blame poor people for all of our economic woes. Then you bring them in for a private grilling. Then you haul the remains out here for the final indignities.
With that I turned around and walked out of St. Moneychanger's. Only one question remains: am I still technically hospitalized?
UPDATE
Since posting this I've received several private messages that cover some of the same ground. I have answered all of them but I am posting this update to answer more similar inquiries in advance.
Many have encouraged me to continue to seek health assistance through the public sector. I shall. However, I am leery of the so-called reforms that seem to reward the culprits behind the healthcare crisis, much the same as the criminals behind our nation's economic collapse were placed first in line when it came to federal recovery assistance. Nevertheless, I will continue to try to find a way to get health care. I am beginning to think it will require using my passport.
Second and most important-- several people very kindly asked how they might help me. Well everyone can fight for a reordering of national priorities that waste our collective wealth on the obscenity of war and every paranoid whim such madness encourages at the cost of our true needs, such as national health care.
If you would like to help me directly and can afford a small donation: I have been between paychecks for a long time as I wait for a huge writing project to bear fruit. This project has just recently cleared a significant hurdle and things could soon improve for me. In the interim, I am spending a lot of money on herbs and supplements (milk thistle, quercitin, esther-C, turmeric, alpha-lipoic acid, CO10Q, various vitamins and flaxseed oil (among other stuff). Only the flaxseed oil makes sense to buy locally (it must be cold and fresh) because I have to drive everywhere from Rochester to Ithaca to try to find much of what I need, at a much more expensive rate than is available on the web. So although Amazon is a heartless, enormous company, it is a one-stop resource where several of the supplement and vitamin retailers make the goods I need available. Therefore, if you are so disposed and can truly afford to send along a small Amazon gift certificate, I promise I will use it for my health (or my dogs' needs or perhaps the occasional therapeutic W.C. Fields movie!)
I have never had a paypal button or paid advertising in the 14 years of barrycrimmins.com so I'm sorry to turn mendicant on you. The fact is, at this point a little help would go a long way. I hope this update answers some of your questions. Major thanks for all the kindness and support you have shown. I repeat: please, please, please only donate if doing so causes you no hardship.
With gratitude,
Barry
PS- Messages may be sent to barry at barrycrimminsdotcom. Here's the Amazon link.Choose "email a gift card" give them your info and my email address and that should be that. Thanks so much.
PPS: I am blown away by the generosity that's been shown. I have written to thank all who identified themselves with their offerings but a number of you sent anonymous gifts. So I will thank you here and let you know that you have helped to alleviate stress as well as provide me with what will be a tonic that is at least doubled in strength because of your kindness.
With Pith
The short version of yesterday's much too long post goes as follows:
Once I found my voice and spoke up for myself, many of you heard me and helped in a variety of very significant ways. This resulted in a great improvement in attitude and health for me. Thanks so much, all of you!
I might be the canary in the American healthcare mineshaft but the fumes are lethal to everyone. Single-payer care now!
My inner-37 year-old is back and screaming for justice. He's in for the duration, just on a better diet! Here again is the YouTube of me as an ancient antiwarrior, courtesy of Ed Robinson.
PS- Here is a TV show that included a small slice of the 1990 speech from another angle. Check to see who applauds at the end. Thanks for posting, dear pal Mike Donovan!
Follow-up call
I felt a bit leery as I entered the doctor's office the other day. It wasn't so much the forty-foot flagpole adorned with the Stars and Stripes that remind us that we have the greatest healthcare in the world that put me off, it was the fact that the doctor had a logo, a fucking logo! It mostly consisted of his initials wrapped around each other so you had to look at it for a bit before you realized the purpose of the inane emblem.
The logo was in gold, perhaps because that's what he drills for when he works on his customers' (forget the word patient, just forget it) defecatory canals. Anyway, his office just called me. At least his office was what the woman on the other end of the phone claimed to be.
Here's a transcript of the phone call, including my inner dialogue in parenthesis.
Ring! Ring!
Me: Hello
Dr Logo's Office: Hello, Barry?
Me: Yes? (How come my father was always "Mr. Crimmins" but I am only "Barry?" I'm 57 goddamned years old!)
Dr Logo's Office: This is Dr Logo's Office.
Barry: (Boy did your parents ever have a sense of humor!)
Dr Logo's Office: Did you get your blood test yet?
Barry: (Uh-oh, sounds like someone has been talking to the quislings down at St. Moneychangers'.)
No I didn't. I couldn't make it past financial customs at that for-profit Christian institution.
Dr Logo's Office: Well you know that without the blood tests you cannot have the colonoscopy?
Barry: I figured as much. I was trying to find a way to get the blood tests. (But I can tell by your tone that you are in a hurry to give me the preexisting bum's rush so that you can make sure there isn't a pause in the assembly line of profit on the day of my once-scheduled-but-never-to-be colonoscopy. Oh well.)
Dr Logo's Office: So you have CHOSEN not to have a colonoscopy!
Barry: (Is that what I said, you soulless sack of medical waste?) No, you have CHOSEN not to assist, or even listen to, a patient in need of a colonoscopy. Now that we've both put words in one another's mouths, let me add one more: Goodbye!
She beat me to hanging up the phone. And with that, I went back to my day and she went and added yet another skull and crossbones symbol to my permanent file.
I best own up to something: I don't suffer humiliation well. If they'd look in that permanent file, they'd know what I went through as a kid and maybe they'd understand that my dignity is a preexisting condition that survived against great odds. And maybe they wouldn't subject me to public embarrassment simply because they dance for corporate masters who have no business sticking their filthy, money-grubbing paws into what should be a sterile environment. So I can be very difficult. But maybe, just maybe, my obstinate nature has helped me survive 35 years of assault by a lethal virus.
I also must add that I have a great deal of respect for all sorts of doctors, nurses, technicians and other caregivers who are caught in the middle of this for-profit mess. They perform valiantly despite having to save lives while trying not to trip over a bottom line that runs all over the hospital next to all the color-coded ones. I think their schooling should be free. I think their services should be free to the public. (who will pay for them via taxes) I think we should scrap the war machine and its new mammoth twin, the domestic spying apparatus to help keep taxes down. I think these talented and skilled individuals should be very well paid. I also think if they want to become obscenely wealthy, they should go down to Wall St. and take their chances among the hegemonic hedge-funders. So that should prevent some arguments and start some others, which is good. Because to rage against the madness is an exercise reserved for the living. And I ain't dead yet.
This entire hassle has done me good. Right now, I feel a lot better than I have in a long time. Thanks to several of you folks, I have herbs and vitamins headed my way. Thanks to all of you who have written and commented, I've received the best kind of shot in the arm.
I spoke to my old pal A. Whitney Brown and told him what had happened and how many people had written to help and express support.
He said, "That's great. People really love you. You know that, right?"
Absolutely right! I feel very fortunate. People really love me. It's Dr. Logo's Office that doesn't much care for me.
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