health care – Page 3 – shoutforjoy.us

PICC Line Installed & Biopsy Taken

It was Sunday morning. On any other week, I would be in Matins at St. Philip Antiochian Orthodox Church, Souderton. Instead, I was being wheeled down to a room with a CAT scan machine. Steve even headed my gurney into the room in the correct direction. It was a tight fit. The room obviously had not been built with this huge machine in mind. They gingerly slid me from the gurney onto the bed of the machine. They fed me into the machine feet first.

While the machine was imaging the area, Dr. Osuego carefully snaked a line in to take a biopsy of, or a sample of the fluid from the sac that had attached itself to my spine at T10-T11. He then installed the PICC line from my left forearm for the intravenous antibiotic. It was going to be a long haul.

A PICC line is, by definition and per its acronym, a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is long, slender, small, flexible tube that is inserted into a peripheral vein, typically in the upper arm, and advanced until the catheter tip terminates in a large vein in the chest near the heart to obtain intravenous access. It is similar to other central lines as it terminates into a large vessel near the heart. However, unlike other central lines, its point of entry is from the periphery of the body the extremities. *

He was a sweet, gentle, middle-aged man, with what sounded like a hint of a South American accent with kind eyes. I thanked him for working on a Sunday morning. He was cheerful and that made all the difference. I don’t remember any unpleasantness in the procedure. I just remember this beautiful man.

Accidental Health Advocate

On Saturday, October 16, one of the last things the host of Marketplace Money on NPR said was something like: “Before you go to the hospital, you should make sure you have a health advocate who can help you through the process and look out for your best interests.” She did not say how to find such an advocate or what his or her qualifications would be.

Dr. Jerry Burke became my health advocate. It happened in an ad hoc way. He heard that I had been to the ER and took a look at my x-rays and such. When he heard that they had read this as cancer, he intervened. He asked the radiologists if they had read my health history. Cancerous tumors on the spine virtually never are primary cancers. They are spin-offs from a cancer someplace else that is not responding well to treatment. He pointed out to them that I had no history of cancer, but did have a history of staph infection. He told them to get me into the hospital and start treating me for infection. They could still take their oncology biopsy if they really wanted to. It just would be a good thing if they didn’t let me die of an infection while they were waiting to do it. He kept pushing, going so far as to call my primary care physician to persuade her. She called me on Saturday, Oct. 23, to tell me to go to the hospital.

I was not aware this was happening behind the scenes. This was just the first time Jerry saved my life.

(The header photo is Jerry at the birth of his son, Nick.)

It’s Probably Cancer

A doctor read my MRIs and concluded that I had a tumor about the size of a large plum or small apple attached to the interior side of my spine at T-11, T-12 and L-1. I was told to schedule a biopsy for oncology after I had been off of Valium for at least four days; so, next Tuesday. Then I was to wait another six days for them to read the results of the biopsy, then meet with the oncologist to discuss possible treatment options. Well, didn’t that just make Bethann’s and my day!

I was literally screaming in pain, had to stop the Valium, and face the high likelihood that I had cancer on my spine. I was facing the immediate reality of trying to cope at home for ten more days with exquisite pain in my back that seemed to be growing every day. I found someone else to go down to the city for The King’s Jubilee that night. I don’t remember who. You know who you are: Thank you and may God bless you!

Heavy Metal Music

On Wednesday, October 20, Hilary drove me back to Grand View Hospital for MRIs on my spine. I spent over an hour in the MRI machine for standard and with contrast MRIs. The huge machine makes a constant noise that sounds like it is straight out of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” starring Danny Kaye: “tapokitta-tapokitta-tapokitta.” Then there are the loud noises when it is actually taking images. I was so cramped and in pain, yet this heavy metal music nearly lulled me to sleep. Of course, I had taken Percocet and Valium before I went. That could have had some impact on my perception.

Inexplicable Pain

I started to feel a pain in my back on Sunday, October 3. There was no good reason for it, as far as I could tell. I hadn’t lifted anything incorrectly or slept on it funny. It just started to hurt. The pain gradually grew more intense over the next two weeks. On Saturday, Oct 16, I co-led a “Living on the Street” tour in center city Philadelphia for The King’s Jubilee. I barely made it up onto the platform to Mark’s place. I sat at his table and drank coffee while the rest of the tour hiked through the underbrush to visit Fred’s old camp. The pain had spread, so that now when I coughed, it felt like my kidneys hurt.

By Sunday, I was continuously miserable. That afternoon was our granddaughter Isabella’s birthday party in the park and I was useless to load or unload anything. Bethann made me promise to go to the chiropractor the next day. Monday morning, I called the chiropractor and my medical doctor. I got back to back appointments. First I went to the chiropractor. He examined me, doing that thing where he pokes his fingers on either side of my spine working his way up the back. He didn’t find anything seriously amiss, but one point where he touched on the left side in the middle of my spine caused excruciating pain. He did a minor adjustment and put heat on my back. He was mystified. There was no chiropractic cause for the kind of pain I was having.

I went on to see my doctor. She examined me. I told her of my experience at the chiropractor and that I was afraid it must be something in my organs, perhaps my kidneys, that was causing the pain. I gave a urine sample. there was no blood, so that made it less likely that it was my kidneys. She agreed that it did not seem musculo-skeletal in cause, but not sure, and ordered x-rays to be done the following day.

I was given a prescriptions for Valium for a muscle relaxant (since I am allergic to Flexiril) and Percocet for the pain.

Bush, McCain and Palin’s Holy War

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin taught in her “Bible study” class at the Assemblies of God Church in Wasilla, Alaska, that the US troops in Iraq had been sent “out on a task that is from God.” She also taught the School for Ministry graduates that it was God’s will that the natural gas pipeline be built across Alaska. “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,” she said. The fact that this pipeline would make BP, Shell and Alyeska Pipeline, sponsors of her inaugural celebration, that much more profitable was only a side effect, I guess. Of course she also said that the war in Iraq is about oil. She told BusinessWeek: “We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources.” So I guess she is saying that it is God’s will that we start preemptive wars to kill people to get oil.

To be clear, there is no such thing as a holy war. Neither the Bible, nor the Orthodox Church teach that any war is just. James tells us clearly where wars come from, and he makes no exceptions for so-called Christian countries who are running out of gas. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:1-3)

President George W. Bush claimed to hear from God that he was to strike down Saddam. This is while he was lying to the world about WMD’s, pressuring the CIA to come up with the right intelligence that would match his aims, and his own father, former President George H. W. Bush was telling him not to go there. If you are hearing from God, why should you listen to the CIA, the UN or your dad? Praise God and pass the ammunition!

John McCain has expressed on numerous occasions, including most recently his acceptance speech that we have a sacred obligation to win any war we engage in. This includes a preemptive war started on falsified intelligence based on a document planted by the Bush White House, because Fearless W. Leader heard the voice of God telling him to take out Saddam. By the way, intentionally targeting an individual, even in time of war, is a crime. Targeting a head of state is a war crime, a violation of the Geneva Convention (which W. claimed we are not subject to, because this is not a war), and is stupid and counter-productive, as are torture, and indeterminate, incommunicado imprisonment. John McCain used to oppose torture, but this year he voted to authorize its use in order to get the full support of the Republican Party. That one vote disqualifies him for office and would leave him open to charges of crimes against humanity in the civilized countries of the world. I guess when you are on a mission from God, you are allowed to bend the rules.

Let’s be clear about the Bush administration’s request to give the CIA an exemption from the U.S. Army’s Field Manual on Interrogation. It was opposed by the Pentagon. It was opposed by career State Department officials. It was opposed by career CIA people. Why? Because torture is inhumane and counter-productive. It does not generate reliable information. It dehumanizes us in the eyes of our enemies, thus it is an added recruiting tool for extremist groups. It endangers our people as it increases the possibility that they will be tortured upon capture. These are the reasons that torture was outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. Bush, McCain and Palin don’t need to heed common sense or history or international law, however, because they have God on their side.

The Iraq invasion was a preemptive war. America has never before rationalized such an act. The only leaders in modern history who have tried to justify such preemptive strikes are Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Stalin and Golda Meir (though Stalin and Meir thought better of it and decided against it). McCain has embraced the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war. He hasn’t chosen very honorable role models.

It’s very hard to argue with someone who says God told him or her to do something. Hitler was establishing the Third Reich to usher in the coming of the Lord. George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are intent on starting Armageddon to bring on the coming of the Lord. Hirohito didn’t need to hear from God. According to Shinto practice, he was god. Palin’s Assemblies of God background should be troubling to any sane voter. Pentecostals believe in personal, special revelation from God on anything, and then fit the facts of the world around it. The two most prominent AG members in politics thus far have been Secretary of the Interior James Watt and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Watt didn’t have any problem with clear-cutting national forests of strip-mining in national parks, without any concern of sustainability. He felt we only needed to make sure there were enough resources for the few generations left until the Lord returned. The largest ever petition to remove someone from office was delivered to President Reagan regarding Mr. Watt. He was finally forced to resign after he made an insensitive remark about his staff in a public address. One of his more quotable quotes is: “If the trouble from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”John Ashcroft anointed himself with Crisco before taking the oath of office. He was known for his opposition to desegregation and proposing the TIPS program where Americans were to snitch Soviet-style on their neighbors for unpatriotic behavior.

I am not saying that because James Watt and John Ashcroft were Pentecostal wackos that Sarah Palin is also. But it’s scary to think that she thinks that the war in Iraq is a task from God and that God assigned her the task of building a gas pipeline. Also, I have to question the judgment of anyone who names their children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. Especially since they are all obviously boys’ names and three of them are girls.

People are all excited that McCain and Palin are “pro-life.” Preemptive war is not pro-life. They just don’t like paying for abortions. This isn’t pro-life. It is just cheap. Gov. Palin doesn’t like paying to help prevent teen pregnancies or care for teen mothers so they can have their babies either, as evidenced by the use of her line item veto. Bush, McCain and Palin have opposed any plans that would guarantee prenatal care for every expectant mother and healthcare for every newborn. This isn’t even cheap. It is just mean-spirited, as providing this care would prevent so many birth defects, diseases, and handicaps that it would be cost beneficial. Not to mention how many infant deaths would be prevented. Every civilized country has universal healthcare. The infant mortality rate in our inner cities is the same as that of the poorest third world countries. Shame on us! Shame on the Republican Party! Universal healthcare is pro-life.

During the Reagan and GHW Bush years abortion rates increased. During Clinton’s two terms, abortion rates and numbers went down every year. After Bush II took office, the numbers and rate started to increase again. The culture of endless war, out of control govt. debt, lack of care for the poor and working class, no hope of meaningful increase in minimum wage, cuts in WIC funding (a program which the GAO concluded was the most cost-effective program the federal govt. ran), all contributed to a hopelessness and culture of death in which more mothers chose to kill their embryos or fetuses than to let them come into such a world. Not discounting any of his other faults, Bill Clinton promoted a climate and vision of hope. More mothers were willing to let their babies live, as they were entering a world where there was hope for a better tomorrow.

War is never holy or pro-life.

Hope is pro-life.

Universal healthcare is pro-life.

Rosalie, Pete, Jerome & Pops

Rosalie was born about two weeks before me in 1955. We’re both partially of Irish descent. We grew up at the same time in different parts of the same country in two very different worlds.

I first met Rosalie in 1985 when she was an inmate in the Women’s Detention Facility at the Philadelphia House of Corrections. We were both just exiting out twenties. She was a wild thing with a head of thick, curly, frizzy, red hair. I had a lot more brown than white in my beard and hair, wore no moustache and had aviator wireframe glasses. (They were the closest thing I could find to round at the time.)

Rosie told me her sad story of abuse and love. This was the first time I had heard this sort of tale, which by now has became all too familiar, of a woman who is physically abused by her mate, yet loves him still, to the point of endangering their children. Rosie was vivacious, persuasive, irrepressibly happy and a tease.

I saw her on and off through my four years as a chaplain in the Philadelphia prisons. She was one of our first students in the tutoring program I started in the WDF. She always was telling the tutors and the guards what a great guy I was, followed by some kind of left-handed compliment.

It was sometime in 1990, about the time we were turning 35, while I was serving sandwiches, iced tea and goodies at the wall of the “Love Park”, I heard this woman holler: “Hey Rev! How ya been?” Rosie ran up to me and gave me a big hug.

Since then, we have seen Rosie from time to time. Sometimes she was a regular customer. Other times, she would just stop by to say hello and catch up on the news.

We met her brother, Pete. Rosie had a couple of different boyfriends that she introduced to us. Then she got serious about Jerome several years ago. Pete befriended an older man whom he would look out for and help out. We only ever knew him as Pops. Pops got housing assistance. So Pete and Rosie and Jerome moved in with him. It was a way of surviving off the street by pooling their resources. Some nights we would take them all home after we were done serving.

Rosalie and Jerome got married several years ago by Judge Valentine on Valentine’s Day at City Hall. They all got evicted from the house. Rosie and Jerome ended up getting violent with each other. Jerome was arrested. There was a restraining order. Jerome says it was a horse apiece, that Rosie gave as good as she got, and I can believe it. She was feisty. They divorced.

For a time Rosie lived in New Jersey with relatives, but she still came over about once a month to see us and let us know she was all right. Her relatives moved and she was back on the street.

In 2005, about the time we were turning 50, Rosalie was diagnosed with leukemia. She went through one round of chemo. It seemed she was doing better, then not so much. She went through another round in the Spring of 2006. This is while living on the street. Her brother and Pops and a few other guys were looking out for her and trying to provide protection and moral support. Finally some health worker was able to figure out a way for her to get a room in a group home, as she was about to start her third round of chemo.

Pops passed away last year. Pete got a good job and a place of his own. Jerome spent most of the last year in jail. He just got out. Rosalie passed away sometime around our 53rd birthdays.

Rosie was a joy to know. She always gave thanks to God for even the smallest acts of kindness. I consider it a privilege and blessing to have been counted among her friends. May her memory be eternal.

The painting “Rosalie” is one of the first I did. I had no photographs. It portrays the emotional memory of the first time I met her in the WDF activity room. Read more about the painting at my art website.