Gene's Blog

An update and a few words

For those of you following my son’s story on CaringBridge, you’ll know that is where I’ve done most of my writing the past, nearly three months now. His accident and his slow recovery, now beginning a long and painful rehabilitation process, has consumed my time and attention pretty much completely since April 23.

But he is recovering, his last surgery, we hope – there is some question yet as to whether he suffered an injury to his left shoulder that will need more than rehabilitation, was three weeks ago to perform plastic surgery, a skin graft, on his left foot and heel. That was successful and in another week he should be able to bear weight on that leg, for now they are just working his right leg, having him stand, last week that required assistance, this week, yesterday, he got up himself and stood on his right leg for a full minute. That doesn’t sound like much but considering he came within an eyelash of dying April 23rd, that it took 12 hours to stabilize him enough for surgery his doctors weren’t sure he’d survive, that coming out of that surgery they thought they would have to amputate his left foot about halfway up to the knee and that he then spent the next 5 weeks unconscious, tethered and sedated. Tethered because when he’d come up a bit out of the sedation, he’d buck like a bronco trying to get out of that bed, he did NOT like being tied at the wrists, though that was only to prevent him pulling tubes out of himself, tubes that were keeping him alive, and sedated because when he wasn’t he’d buck like a bronco. Yes, circular, but the truth nonetheless.

There were periods during those five weeks I thought he was gone, his eyes would open look blankly at the ceiling, no light in them at all, no recognition of anything, then close again, but we were assured there had been no deprivation of oxygen so no anoxia and no brain damage, which in itself is a bit of a miracle. I’ve told him, we all have, that he definitely had an angel sitting on his shoulder that night, because in the interim, I’ve seen many stories (in the way that once you get a different car, you suddenly notice them everywhere, when before you hadn’t noticed them at all?) of people having the sort of accident he did and virtually none of those people lived. He has no memory of the accident at all, a blessing that.

But at 5 weeks he came back to us, got moved to a long term acute care facility, got pneumonia and went back to the original hospital, North Memorial, got that cured and went back to Bethesda where he is still. His real rehabilitation only began last week. He still has a lot of pain in his right thigh, understandable considering they cut a tunnel from mid calf up over his knee a few more inches to insert the rod into his femur, then cut another six inch slice in the side of that thigh so they could repair the femur and attach the rod. There’s a lot of scar tissue there, cut muscles take a long time to heal, I recall from a long time ago when I had my appendix out the old way when I was 15. But it has begun, it will be a full year before he is really back to normal again, or as close to it as he’ll ever get. No idea how long he’ll be in a facility, but his medical bills are over $120,000 as of 7/20, a small portion paid by his auto insurance, we are a no fault state and they can’t look to the driver because he lied about having insurance when in fact he had none.

And so many people think we do not need single payor national health care. I’d like to prescribe some medicine for every legislator, every lobbyist, every lawyer, every health insurance official myself and that would be to sit down and watch Michael Moore’s wonderful documentary, Sicko. We brag so much about our health care but our statistics are dismal compared to other countries in virtually every category. Oh, sure, the RICH have wonderful health care, but no one else, and many have none at all. Single payor works in every country Michael visited, CUBA has better health care than we do, Americans go THERE to have procedures done they can’t get done here and at virtually no cost. Yet we have this cowboy mentality that says if it is American it is the best. The real truth is: That ain’t true no more. Not by a long way. We need to get there sooner rather than later and if that means a few HMO exec’s stop making 7 figure salaries, well so be it. We could do this for a fraction of what we are spending in Iraq. Yet lobbyists are screaming as if the world would end should this wonderful thing come to be, the AMA, which represents about 20% of American doctors is dead set against it, we hear a LOT about them, but not the other 80%, many of whom DO support the idea as in the best interest of their patients. We could DO preventative health care rather than emergency medicine which is SO much more expensive. It WILL happen, even if in increments. Because it makes so much sense spiritually, humanly and fiscally, though all the arguments use those three things as a basis to deny this need to the American people. Lest anyone think, I became an aficionado of this idea after Evan’s accident, well dig through the archives a bit, lol. And believe me when I tell you I gave copies of Sicko away as Christmas gifts last year. It is an idea whose time has come, my son’s desperate situation notwithstanding. So anyone reading this, I’ll debate it with you, I’ll send you a copy of Sicko, and I’ll ask you to ask your Representative and Senators to support it. It is time, this is right, and we need act. I hope to be here more often, but time still is constrained, though it is in me that will not be so for much longer. We’ll see what happens then. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene