Where Do You Find Hope?

As you, my readers know, I’m going through some very tough times these days.

They got a little tougher on Friday when I got a letter stating that my disability benefits were being cut off. Why did that happen? It happened because the doctor hired by the insurance company arbitrarily decided that I was cured. I have carpal tunnel in both wrists, and pain in my shoulders and neck from repetitive motion from the hours and hours of typing I did at my last job. I saw this doctor three times altogether.

The first time, he poked me and asked me a few questions, and sent me on my way.

The second time I saw him, he gave me a cortisone shot into my right wrist, which actually caused more problems than it solved, because the pain moved from my wrist to the palm of my right hand and into my ring finger and little finger.

The third time I saw him, he poked me again. I told him about the pain in my hand and fingers after the cortisone shot. I told him about the continuing pain in my shoulders and my neck. We spoke of my having surgery. Other than that, I got no treatment at all.

However, on the basis of a 5 minute talk, he declared that I was cured and that I could return to normal duties. His report contained no mention at all about my continuing shoulder pain, nor did it mention the pain in my neck. It did not mention that he had recommended that I undergo surgery in both hands. Instead, he simply declared that I had –  somehow – been cured.

So, on Friday, I got the letter from the insurance company, as expected, ending my disability benefits.

Ironically enough, nothing has actually changed with my medical condition. Both my hands and wrists still hurt. I’m wearing my wrist braces 24/7; without them, after about an hour or so, my wrists and fingers ache badly. My shoulders hurt constantly, and sound like rice crispies in milk every time I shrug my shoulders to try and ease them. The pain in my shoulders sometimes wakes me up at night when I turn the wrong way. My activities of daily living are affected, since I now have trouble lifting and grasping. My neck burns as well, and the tension and stress don’t help at all.

My attorney sent me immediately to another doctor – who did all the things the insurance company doctor didn’t do. I was honestly astounded at the amount of hands-on examination I had from my new doctor.  He took X-rays of my wrists, shoulders and neck. I was tested for grip strength and range of motion, where it became obvious that my shoulders aren’t functioning properly, and my hands aren’t either.  Why hadn’t the insurance company doctor done any of these things, or examined me properly? My new doctor put me back on TTD; in other words, he considers me to be disabled. How had my other doctor come to the conclusion that I was cured – after barely even touching me and the most cursory of examinations…? Why hadn’t he mentioned my shoulders, or that he had recommended surgery? Neither of those items made it into his report.

That’s the question, isn’t it?

So now, I have no income, nor do I have a job. I seriously doubt that anyone is going to hire me – as long as I have to wear these braces, well, it’s kind of like a giant red flag to any employer.

So, readers, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me. I have spoken with my attorney, but, of course, because it’s a holiday weekend, I won’t get an answer until Tuesday morning, when I may find out that the insurance company can refuse to reinstate my disability for any number of silly reasons, or delay and delay and delay – until I could – literally – find myself homeless.

Honestly? I’m freaking terrified. I’ve stewed all weekend over this, and I keep finding myself feeling more and more frightened. I’ve gone through what little savings I had, and after my last check runs out, I’ve got nothing.

So where do you find hope when things get this bad? I don’t know where to look anymore.

This Is Your Brain On No Insurance

Perhaps some of you remember those old PSA’s from years ago – the one with the skillet on the stove? The VO says, “This is your brain.” An egg then gets cracked into the sizzling skillet. The VO says, “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

Well, I’m not on drugs, but I’d like to write about my brain on no insurance.

On November 17, 2004, I had just gotten back to my desk after lunch and was getting ready to dig into my afternoon’s work, when I noticed my left eye twitching. I rubbed it a little, thinking it was just a little tic and it would stop. It didn’t. It kept twitching, and then, the left corner of my mouth started twitching as well, and before I knew it, my whole head and left arm were twitching and jerking uncontrollably. I knew exactly what was happening to me – I was having a seizure, I was completely terrified and I had absolutely no control over my movements.

I heard myself making these rasping “uh…uh…uh…uh” noises, and I watched strings of drool swinging madly back and forth and then falling from my mouth and onto my blouse. Tears ran out of my eyes because I was so terribly frightened by what was happening to me.

“I have cancer! I have a brain tumor! I’m going to die!” – all those thoughts made a mad dash through my brain as the seizure continued to escalate.

I don’t know how long the seizure went on. It felt like forever, but finally, it stopped. I took several kleenexes out of the box on my desk, wiped my mouth, dried my tears and attempted to blot the saliva off my blouse. I was exhausted, so I put my head down on my arms and closed my eyes.

I still remember the thought processes that went through my mind as I rested my head on my folded arms that day. My first thought was that if I reported that I had had a seizure, they’d take my driver’s license away and I wouldn’t be able to get around. My second thought was that maybe I shouldn’t report it or call a doctor – that maybe it was a freak one-time occurrence and it wouldn’t happen again. My third thought was that no, not reporting the seizure was not an option, because I knew that there was a reason I had had a seizure; it could be a tumor, or it could be something else wrong with my brain – and that by not reporting it, I could be sentencing myself to death.

All these thoughts rushed pell-mell through my head; it must have only taken moments before I raised my head and called out to the attorney who was sitting in the office about 20 feet from my own. He habitually was so deeply involved in his work that he rarely noticed anything outside his office – and that day, he didn’t notice me, shaking like crazy, slinging drool and grunting like a chimpanzee at the zoo.

He did, however, hear me when I called out and told him that I had had a seizure.

That’s when the madness began. He called the front desk, who called 9-1-1 and called one of the nurses who worked in our claims department. One of them immediately came over to my desk; she was one of my friends, and she comforted me while she took my blood pressure – which was, unsurprisingly, sky-high. She stayed with me until the paramedics came to take me to the hospital.

It was probably a silly thing to worry about, considering what was going on at the time, but the thought of being strapped to a gurney with paramedics rolling me through the corridors of my office with everyone staring at me was something so acutely embarrassing that I refused to ride on their gurney. I walked out to the ambulance on my own two feet. People stared, but somehow, walking out with the paramedics wasn’t so bad.

It was a short ride to the emergency room at Kaiser. I remember sitting in the exam room waiting for the doctor, when I had another, more violent seizure. At the time, I wore hard contact lenses, and I was afraid that they were going to give me a drug that knocked me out, so I attempted to communicate with the male attendant (I don’t know if he was a nurse, an orderly or an intern or what) who was with me by tapping on his arm with my right hand, and then indicating my eyes. I did this multiple times, but I wasn’t getting through to him. (Just so you know why I attempted to communicate this information so strenuously, closing your eyes and/or sleeping with hard lenses in your eyes can cause serious and painful problems.) This guy thought that my motions of tapping on his arm and then indicating my eyes were part of my seizure. Maybe that should have been a clue as to what was going to happen next - I still have nightmares about it.

The seizure continued; it was both longer and more violent than the one I had already had, and the attendant who was with me actually attempted to push me down flat onto my back on the gurney. As before, during this seizure, I couldn’t speak, nor could I cough or control any of my facial or throat muscles. When the attendant put both his hands on my shoulders and tried to force me to lie down on my back, my mouth and throat filled with saliva and I couldn’t breathe. I fought him like a madwoman because I was seconds away from choking and/or drowning in my own spit. Finally, I fought my way back to an upright position, and what looked like two cups of drool poured out of my mouth and cascaded down my front and I was able to take a breath.

I remember being furiously angry with that guy – even I, with my most basic knowledge of first aid, know that the very first rule of dealing with a person who is having a seizure is that you lay the person down on their side with their head turned to the side. You absolutely do NOT put that person flat on their back, because – as it happened to me – a person can choke, or even drown on their saliva. I’m sure daggers were shooting out of my eyes at that guy, so it didn’t surprise me that when the seizure stopped, he beat a hasty retreat as the doctor came in to examine me.

I answered a few questions about what had happened to me, and then I told the doc about my contact lenses. He told me not to worry, that they weren’t going to knock me out. He told me that he was going to put in an IV with an anti-seizure medication, Dilantin, and I was to have a CT scan. All this happened in short order. The IV was put into the back of my left hand and taped down, and I sat for a while in a room while they waited for the medication to take effect. Then I was wheeled down to the CT scanner, where I sat on my gurney in the hallway for about 15-20 minutes waiting for the tech.

All this time, I was alone, and I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what was happening to me, and the things I thought about that it could be weren’t at all comforting. A nice lady said hello to me.

Finally I had my CT scan. A doctor came to see me afterwards, who introduced himself as Dr. J, my neurologist. He told me that I had a brain tumor on the right side of my brain, and that I needed an MRI in order to make a more complete diagnosis. I had never had an MRI before and didn’t know what to expect. He told me that I would be inside a big tube which would take pictures of my brain. I asked him how long it would take, and he told me that it would take about 20 minutes.

So once again, I found myself on a gurney being rolled through the halls of the hospital to the MRI lab. I was asked to lie down on this narrow “bed,” then given earplugs to put in. My head was put into a U-shaped cradle, and a grid-like mask was fitted over my face so I couldn’t move. The bed then was rolled slowly into the large tube – about the size of your standard sewer pipe – and the MRI began. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an MRI, but it’s not a pleasant experience. The machine makes a horrendous amount of noises that I likened to Satan’s heavy metal rock band, with loud twanging, clicking, rumbling, buzzing and thumping that went on and on. After what seemed like forever, one of the techs injected something into the IV in my hand. I felt an immediate rush of cold up my arm, and the infernal thumping, banging and twanging started all over again.

About 45 minutes later, it was over. The doctors told me that I was being taken to another hospital for further testing, so I was once again put in an ambulance and taken to Encino Hospital. By this time, it was around 4:00pm. Once I was in my new room, another technician came to see me. She told me that she was going to do an EEG, so she proceeded to take a small metal instrument and scratched about a dozen places on my scalp – enough to break the skin. She then smeared a dab of goo on the sore spot and attached an electrode to each of the painful scrapes in my scalp and turned on the machine. After about 15 minutes of this, she removed the electrodes, leaving my hair both greasy and bloody, and left. At that point, I called my friend, and he told me he was on his way to be with me. I asked him if he could bring me something to eat, as it was getting late and I was hungry.

At this point, Dr. J came to see me again. He told me that he had checked out my MRI and my CT scan and had given them to a neurosurgeon, Dr. F, who was going to be coming to see me later. He asked me if I had any questions for him, and I told him that I was unhappy with the fact that the very first thing he had told me (with regard to the MRI) had not been the truth. He had assured me that the MRI was going to last about 20 minutes, when in fact, it was more than twice that. I tried to explain to him that it was very important to me that my doctor be truthful with me, but Dr. J wouldn’t listen.

Dr. J got very angry with me, and rather than answer my question or reassure me, he spat out that what I had was most likely a cancerous tumor in my brain that had metastasized from another cancerous tumor (or tumors) somewhere else in my body. He then abruptly turned and left the room, leaving me sitting there with my death sentence in my lap.

I sat there, too stunned to cry. I was going to die. My life was over. I was going to die a slow and painful death of cancer. At this point, my friend arrived and I finally burst into hysterical tears. Finally, exhausted and cried out, I drank the chocolate milkshake he had brought me. We sat together and I stared numbly at the television.

Around 10:00p.m. Dr. F (my neurosurgeon) came to see me. I was a basket case, waiting to hear his confirmation of my death sentence. Instead, he told me that my tumor was a small benign tumor called a meningioma. The closest analogy to this type of tumor, he said, was that it was like a wart on the skin of my brain. It was about the size of a hazelnut, and it wasn’t actually inside my brain. It was on the outside “skin” of my brain (the meninges), and the pressure of the tumor had caused the two seizures I had had. He told me that he could take it out, and that I would almost certainly recover completely.

He told me that he wanted to do some additional tests to confirm his diagnoses, but I was so overcome with emotion I didn’t hear what he said. I wasn’t going to die! That’s all I heard. I wasn’t going to die.

Once I stopped crying again, he repeated that he was ordering other tests to confirm his diagnosis, so over the week that followed, I had several other tests: a chest X-ray and a bone scan, just to rule out any tumor or cancers anywhere else in my body. I think the worst thing about that week, aside from Dr. J telling me I was going to die, and the cliche of the crappy hospital food, was being hooked up to several machines constantly (I was being monitored by the nurses at the nurses’ station to make sure I wasn’t having another seizure) – which meant that I was not allowed to shower.

I still had the gooey ointment and blood in my hair from the EEG, and I had not been allowed to shower for 3 days. Finally, I rebelled. I demanded to be allowed to take a shower, so they grudgingly removed the electrodes and wiring from my body and gave me a small bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a washcloth and let me take a shower. I think that was the best shower I have ever had.

After five days, I was allowed to go home. I had been given several different medications to take to prevent seizures, and I was forbidden to drive. I had an appointment with Dr. F, in which he scheduled my craniotomy for December 1, 2004, approximately two weeks away. I asked dozens of questions. Dr. F got annoyed with me and told me that I should be quiet and let him talk. I looked him in the eye and I apologized for asking so many questions, and I told him that I was the only person I had to take care of me, and I needed to ask them, because I had nobody to ask these questions for me. He was taken aback for a moment, and we went on from there.

It wasn’t a very cheerful Thanksgiving that year, although my thoughtful friends brought me lots of food and spent time with me. I had several meltdowns during that time, as I had been on my computer googling “meningioma” and reading horror stories of patients becoming blind, paralyzed and other things because of their tumors and their surgery. The biggest meltdown I had was the night before I was supposed to go to the hospital for my surgery, because I had gotten a helpful brochure from the National Brain Tumor Foundation in the mail that morning, telling me that after my surgery I could wake up blind, paralyzed, with no memory and/or be unable to speak, read or write, but a friend talked me through it.

December 1st rolled around, and my friend took me to the hospital for my surgery. I had packed a small bag with some pj’s, my ipod, a robe and other small items. When I got to the hospital, I got into my lovely backless gown and into bed. I hung on to the book I was reading, Diana Gabaldon’s “A Dragonfly in Amber” to keep me company as I waited. Finally, they came to take me to surgery. I said goodbye to my friend and ended up once again parked on a gurney in a waiting room. They put in my IV and left me to my thoughts.

A little while later, Dr. F bounded in, full of energy and started speaking to me very rapidly about what was going to happen. I was too frightened to listen, so I asked him to give me his hand. He looked puzzled, but gave me his hand. I took it in both of mine, looked into his eyes, and told him, “My name is Kate. I have 4 cats. I like football, reading, chocolate and shopping. My favorite food is ice cream.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind, and I told him that the reason I had said those things to him was that I wanted him to see me as a person – not a tumor or a head to be opened. Poor Dr. F. I didn’t make it easy for him. He nodded and told me that he’d see me after surgery.

I was wheeled into the operating room. I remember it being cold and remember the bright light – but that’s it. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and I was in the recovery room. My head was swathed in bandages, but nothing hurt. Quickly, I wiggled the toes on both feet, wiggled all my fingers, and then I recited the alphabet and the multiplication tables to myself – and was considerably relieved that I had all my faculties. I was taken to intensive care, where it seemed that I was hooked up to a dozen machines. I had pressure sleeves on my legs that inflated approximately every thirty seconds – enough to painfully squeeze both legs. I had an IV hooked up to my right hand, and my arm was taped to a splint. I had more electrodes attached to my chest, side and shoulders, all of which had wires feeding to a machine that monitored my blood pressure, heartbeat and other things I didn’t recognize.

That was a long night. Because of the pressure cuffs on my legs, I really couldn’t sleep. There was a lovely male nurse in the ICU who took very good care of me that night. I was incredibly thirsty, so he brought me pitcher after pitcher of ice cold water. I realized that I had also been catheterized – and that meant I could drink as much as I wanted and that I would not have to either get out of bed to go to the bathroom or use a bedpan. And that cold water tasted so good that I polished off almost three full pitchers of it. He also brought me some fresh cold egg custard, which was delicious.

In the morning, Dr. J came to see me. He put on his best bedside manner and asked “And how are we this morning?” I let him have it – I told him that I was fine – no thanks to him. He sputtered and growled at me, and told me that I should be “grateful” to him, to which I replied, “You told me that I was going to die – you’re FIRED!” He glared at me, muttered something I didn’t catch – and stomped off. I saw Dr. F and a couple of nurses over at the nurses’ station look at each other, and I swear I saw a couple of smothered grins.

After a day in the ICU, I was taken to a normal post-surgical ward. I still couldn’t get any sleep, because that place was ridiculously noisy! They were putting up Christmas decorations in the halls at 9pm, and worse, there was a woman in the room next to mine who broke my heart. She was evidently in a great deal of pain, because I could hear her groaning and moaning continuously throughout the night. I asked one of the nurses if there was anything that could be done for her, and she told me no.

I had to get out of there! So the next morning, when Dr. F came to see me, I asked him if I could go home. He told me that if I could walk down the hall, down and back up one flight of stairs without incident, then I could go home. My response to that was “get out of my way!” He and a nurse trailed me down the hall and the steps and back to my room, where he told me that I could go home. I called my friend to come pick me up, and about 2 hours later, I was home. Of course, the first thing I did was remove the bandages on my head to see my incision. The second thing I did was say a few dirty words while I tried to shave off the accidental mullet my surgeon had left me with. I discovered that I actually liked how I looked with no hair.

My recovery was swift and complete. I had several followups with my new neurologist, Dr. A, who was wonderful. She pronounced my recovery to be 100%. I went back to work in February, 2005, and in March, my driver’s license was returned.

Since my surgery, I have had a routine MRI and an appointment with Dr. F every year to make sure my tumor hasn’t returned. I always have some trepidation when facing the procedure; the tumor could grow back. The odds are against it, but still…

This year, it is once again time for my annual MRI. But, unlike years previous, this year I have no health insurance and I’m currently on disability, which barely pays the bills. My doctor was kind enough to recommend an imaging center. I called them and asked them what the cash price would be for my MRI, a brain scan with/without contrast. The price? $750. I don’t have $750, and I simply cannot afford to pay that much all at once out of my disability check, because how would I pay my rent?

I could have a tumor, but because I have no insurance, I simply cannot afford the procedure to make sure I don’t.

This is my brain on no insurance.

Dog in the Manger Nation

You’ve heard that phrase before? It is variously attributed to some random Greek, the fablemeister Aesop and the Gnostic gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said, “Woe to the Pharisees, for they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of oxen, for neither does he eat nor does he let the oxen eat.”

So there was that bristling dog, guarding that manger full of hay – which he couldn’t eat, but yet, when the hungry oxen tried to take a few mouthfuls, the dog growled, snapped and chased them away.

I’m reminded of the dog in the manger when I hear Gadsden-flag-waving Tea Party stalwarts complaining about how some of their tax dollars go to help poor, unemployed, disabled and elderly Americans.  I hear that dog in the manger growling when rich people sipping expensive champagne on the deck of their yachts complain about the tax rate being raised to that which they paid under President Clinton. I hear the snarling when pundits and presidential candidates demean and belittle the suffering of middle class Americans. I’m reminded of the dog in the manger when I hear Mitt Romney exalt his hard-working wife Ann, who chose the noble career of motherhood when she stayed home to raise her five sons – and then again when I hear that same Mitt Romney opining about the “dignity of work” and demanding that any poor woman with a child over two years old leave her child in daycare and go to work for the meager welfare dollars she gets from the government to support her children.

And when Republicans (and one Democrat) blocked cloture for the Buffett Rule in the Senate, I’m hearing that dog’s rumbling growl escalate into full-on red zone snarling and barking (according to Cesar Milan, the “Dog Whisperer,” a red zone dog is a “serious threat.”).  The Republicans have flooded our nation’s dialogue with phrases like “redistribution of wealth,” and “socialism,” which, in dog-in-the-mangerspeak, covers anything, any program, any new law or proposal that has to do with establishing any kind of fairness or relief of the burden on America’s middle class. The Republican dogs—er, Senators — stand strong in their mangers overflowing with money and stalwartly guard it for their masters, refusing to let the hungry, the poor, the sick and the elderly have even a single penny to ease their suffering and then they even demand that the bread be taken from the very mouths of hungry children and given to the rich. After all, we wouldn’t want those poor children to grow up to be lazy slackers, now, would we?

The GOP has made it very clear whose interests they represent. They represent the wealthiest Americans, who have gotten even more bloatedly rich over the last ten years, while the rest of the American people have suffered through the worst recession since the Great Depression. They have the nerve to tell us that social justice is a bad thing, that extending a helping hand to our fellow Americans makes them weak and lazy, all while they acquire more and more riches. And worst of all, some Americans have believed them, and have turned their anger on their fellow Americans. They too now stand guard in their own mangers and growl at anyone less well off than they, even if the manger they guard is a rundown doublewide in the backwoods of Louisiana or a crumbling house in a dying town in the Rust Belt. They have turned us against each other.

It is up to us to take our nation back from these dogs in the manger. The hay belongs to us. We need to claim it in November when we step into the voting booth to vote.

Happy Whatever-It-Is You Celebrate

So it’s Easter tomorrow. As an atheist, I don’t celebrate the day, but I’m always appreciative of chocolate, whether in bunny form or not. So enjoy – and bite the ears off your chocolate bunny for me, mmkay?

They’re Talking About Me

I’m a liberal. I’ll admit it – I’m a godless, unabashed, tree-hugging, bleeding heart, birkie-wearing progressive feminazi. And I’m not in the least ashamed of any of that.

I’m also an American. I was born in Missouri 57 years ago, grew up in the Midwest and in California, went to school and church (in my younger days), got married, mothered two stepchildren, got divorced and worked at a number of jobs. I paid my taxes every year. Like a lot of my fellow Americans, for a whole bunch of my 57 years, I never really paid much attention to politics. I was too busy living my life, doing theatre, hanging out with my friends and making my living to pay much attention to what was going on in Washington, D.C.

I voted in the presidential elections; as a matter of fact, at the age of 18, in 1972, I proudly voted in my first election – for Richard Nixon. (What can I say? I was young.)

I think I started paying attention when the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton. I was outraged that my tax dollars were being spent on such ridiculousness. I didn’t give a damn who gave the president a blowjob, nor did I care that Newt Gingrich was porking Callista in his office while his wife was in the hospital having cancer treatments. To me, that represented merely unsavory extracurricular activities, and as far as I was concerned, they all did it. Power is a well-known aphrodisiac, and in Washington, there’s a lot of power floating around, a lot of powerful men and, let’s face it, a lot of belt-notching women.

But when the Republicans actually impeached Bill Clinton for that blowjob, it pissed me off. And after that, there was no going back. That bell had been rung, and I couldn’t go back to my blissful state of political non-awareness.

Then came the 2000 presidential race. The Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush. The madness continued. And then in 2004, I was a volunteer for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, and I adored John Edwards. I got to see him at a campaign event, and still have an autographed campaign sign. I was horrified and disgusted by the vicious slandering of decorated Vietnam combat veteran John Kerry by the Republicans, led by Karl Rove. When John Kerry conceded, I cried. (And yes, I felt betrayed that John Edwards would be so stupid as to fall into that same old trap that yawns at the feet of all powerful men. But I also think that an extreme double standard exists with regard to the way John Edwards was punished. Newt Gingrich, guilty of the same sin – is running for president. John Edwards has been hounded out of public life forever. But that’s material for another post.)

When our country was attacked on September 11, 2001, I put aside my loathing for George Bush and got behind our president. I was in favor of the Afghanistan war, because I believed that Afghanistan was where we would find Al Qaida, and we would punish those who attacked us.

And then George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republicans started beating the drums and demanding that we go to war against Saddam Hussein. I found myself confused and questioning why on earth we should attack Iraq, a country that had not attacked us and was absolutely no threat to the United States. I heard the stories about yellowcake and Niger, read the Downing Street Memo and, for the first time in my life, I found myself horrified and ashamed of my president and his administration. Innocent men, women and children in Iraq were dying – and I, as an American, was an unwilling participant in that slaughter.

So I spoke out. I stated publicly that I was against the war in Iraq, that the war had been started on the basis of lies, and that I felt that the Bush administration had committed a criminal act of aggression against another nation. For this I was harassed by conservatives, who also stalked me into my real life. They made death threats, reported me to Homeland Security (for what, I have no idea), and even posted my employer’s phone number and urged people to call and get me fired.

They called me un-American. They called me a traitor. They said I hated America. They called me all kinds of ugly names.

This was only a small group of people, so it didn’t bother me much. However, when I started hearing myself called those same names and being declared un-American and a traitor by senators and congressmen in Washington, I was shocked. They were talking about me! They were calling for me to be arrested and prosecuted for treason, they wanted me to be sent to Gitmo or deported to …somewhere. All for the crime of exercising my First Amendment rights.

Now, almost ten years later, they’re still talking about me.

The Republicans have made it their party platform that the only real Americans are the “job creators,” the wealthiest 1% are those to whom all the blessings of the American dream should flow. They want to kill Medicare and privatize it with a voucher program: “Here’s a $6,000 voucher, grandma, now get out there and buy your own health insurance! What? Nobody will cover you? Oh, well, too bad. Not our problem. You should have bought insurance while you were healthy!” They want to privatize Social Security:  “Here, grandma, grandpa, guys and gals, let’s put all your retirement money into the stock market! Think of all the money you could make!! What? The market crashed? Oh, well. That’s the breaks. Not our problem.” They want to put an end to unemployment insurance. “Don’t have a job? You’re just a lazy slacker, and living in a cardboard box under a bridge will incentivize you to get a job!”

They’re saying that I’m enjoying a relaxing vacation at the expense of my fellow Americans because I’m too lazy to look for work. Because I don’t have a job, I don’t have health insurance. When they make speeches, they tell my fellow Americans that I’m just too cheap to pay for insurance and that it’s my choice. At the Republican presidential debates, they said that if I get sick, I shouldn’t receive care, that I should just be left to die in the street – because it’s my fault that I don’t have health insurance.

And now? They’re talking about me because I’m a woman; obviously, because I have a vagina, a pair of ovaries and a uterus, I am not capable of making my own reproductive healthcare decisions. The Republicans in Congress and in the State houses, my boss and religious leaders should be the ones who get to make the decisions about my healthcare, because, hey, I’m just like a cow or a pig, livestock valued and functional only as an incubator for the precious, all-important fetus – which must be preserved and protected, even at the expense of my life.

I’m tired of it. I’m sick to death of being vilified by the party of old white men, the party of the 1%, the “haves and the have mores.” I’m tired of being talked about as if I didn’t deserve to draw breath in the country of my birth simply because I wasn’t born a white male or with a silver spoon in my mouth. I’m fed up with those who don’t have a clue what it’s like to get by making $20 bucks an hour – or less – telling me how lazy I am and how I just need to work harder or get a second – or even a third job.

Well, I have a newsflash for the Republican Party. I’m an American. I’ve paid my taxes for nearly 40 years, which includes money deducted from every single paycheck I’ve ever brought home for Social Security and for unemployment insurance. I’ve paid my way. I’m not a communist. I’m not a lazy slacker. I’m not an America-hater. I’m also a woman, but that does not mean that I’m stupid. It does not mean that I should be treated as if I were a cow or a pig. Nor does it mean that I am incapable of making my own choices, reproductive or otherwise.

And millions of my fellow Americans will be making our choices in November. And, no matter how many times Mitt Romney or his surrogates say otherwise, we women will not forget. We will be making our own choices, and we won’t be choosing Republicans.

Keith Olbermann: A Special Comment

OK, I’ll say it right up front:  I adore Keith Olbermann. I have, ever since I watched his first show on MSNBC, and I have been a faithful viewer ever since. So if you don’t like Keith, well, you may as well stop reading right now, because this piece is gonna piss you off.

It’s difficult being a lightning rod.

I’ve been a lightning rod myself for almost 10 years – going all the way back to March, 2003, when I first posted on a public message board that I was dead-set against George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. I believed then – and I still believe now – that that war was planned in advance, and was sold to us with a pack of lies. I have never wavered from my conviction that the Iraq war was a criminal enterprise for the sole purpose of gaining control of Iraq’s oil, but that’s not the subject of this post.

As I said, it is difficult being a lightning rod. When, in March 2003, I posted on a public message board that I was against Dubya’s war of choice, I became the target of intensely concentrated hatred directed at me by a group of conservatives. They harassed me every single day. They posted that they wished that I would die, that I and my family should be murdered by terrorists, that I was a traitor to my country, on and on and on. The harassment didn’t stop there; these people invaded my real life – they did research on me and discovered my full name and where I lived. They called my employer and tried to get me fired and urged their friends to do the same. I received death threats. I was called ugly names. I was told I “should be afraid to open my door” because they were “sending me a surprise.” Someone vandalised my car by scratching the word “TRAITOR” on my trunk lid. On two different occasions, locals in pickup trucks took umbrage at my “Impeach Bush” bumper sticker and literally tried to run me into the retaining wall on the 101 freeway.

Now, keep in mind that I’m small potatoes. I’m just a tiny little fish in a very big pond having my say about what I believe – and the fact that I was the target of so much concentrated hatred, which carried over into my real life, still freaks me out a bit. I bought a new car in September, 2011, a truly gorgeous red 2012 Fiat Pop, a car I absolutely adore — and I admit it:  I’m afraid to put an “Obama 2012″ sticker on it for fear someone will vandalize it. And I live in blue Los Angeles.

Think about for a second: if a small target like me was subjected to such a ridiculous amount of harassment, what must it be like to be a national lightning rod like Keith Olbermann? He and I are a lot alike; both intense, passionate, unreservedly outspoken about the truth and the things we believe in, and neither of us is afraid to to use blunt descriptive terms to call out the racists, the homophobes, the bullies, the liars and the thieves who currently infest our national politics.

I know that I fought back, and I fought back hard. I got in some trouble for fighting back; I was banned from the message board any number of times for being too blunt in my responses to the daily harassment from the wingnuts. I fought the management of the message board for over a year; they wanted me to stop posting altogether, on the basis that the site was not for discussion of politics. I pointed out over and over again that there were numerous other subjects being discussed on this same website (including a group posting about conservative politics), and they weren’t being asked to stop posting. I pointed out that I was being singled out because I made the bullies angry, and instead of dealing with the bullies, they wanted me to stop making the bullies angry. Well, I refused. And I won. I’m still posting on the same website, and yes, I know darn good and well that I am still pissing off the bullies, but for the most part, they leave us alone.

Keith Olbermann has been a much, much larger target, and with him, other forces are in play: the network, ad revenue, ratings – big money is involved. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that Countdown had remained on the air for as long as it did, because Keith never did mince words when he called out Billo the Clown, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert, Joe Arpaio, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck — and all the other hundreds of ugly, racist, lying conservatives who have come out of the woodwork and ratcheted up the Hate-O-Meter since Barack Hussein Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency on February 10, 2007.

Someone had to do it. And Keith Olbermann was the first. He had the courage to go on national television and express a point of view at odds with the Bush administration, and had the courage to continue to express that point of view in the face of what must have been a veritable tsunami of hatred directed at him by the right.

I admire that kind of courage, and I always will.

All that said, I know from experience that being subjected to that kind of hatred day in and day out takes a toll. With me, it made me angry and I lashed out at people. I suspect that maybe Keith might have done so as well, because aside from the torrent of raw and vicious hatred directed at him from the wingnuts, he most certainly had pressure put on him by management to tone it down, to back off, to use words that were less blunt, to not offend so many people. I suspect that Keith, like me, refused to do that, and this latest firing is the result.

Keith Olbermann, love him or hate him, is a driven, exacting, passionate, wicked smart, sarcastic and funny man with extremely high standards who calls ‘em as he sees ‘em, and doesn’t mince words. In the high-stakes game of national television, those wonderful qualities are undoubtedly a double-edged sword. Keith has been forced into a pressure cooker on several occasions, with the inevitable result: an explosion.

I will always be a fan, Keith; I unreservedly admire your courage, your outspokenness – even your anger, because you express what I – and a whole lot of my friends – have been feeling for a very long time. My hope is that you have a sit-down and a heart-to-heart with Al Gore, who is another of my progressive heroes, work out your differences and get Countdown back on the air. Unfortunately, I don’t hold out much hope of that happening; once lawyers are involved, things have pretty much gone past the point of no return.

Keith:  we need your voice. It is my hope that you find a way to come back to us as soon as possible.

Good night – and good luck.

Plan C

Suicide. What a terrible word. It is a very terrible word, but it has occupied some significant real estate in my brain over the last 3 years. At the risk of sounding whiny and self-pitying, it has been a very rough ride since 2009. The most recent blow was, of course, being fired from my job for no reason I can figure out (except for my open Workers’ Comp claim for carpal tunnel) on March 1st. Reliving that humiliating half hour over and over again just isn’t any fun.

Also, I am now in the unenviable position of being unemployable. If I tell the truth about what happened to me – well, I tried that. Twice. The first time, I was escorted to the door, and the second time, well, the nice HR lady never called me for that scheduled phone interview. My only other choice is to lie; lie about why I’m not working and/or to lie about my carpal tunnel and risk being fired – again – for lying. Talk about your rock and hard place, right?

I’ll be honest with you: this stuff scares me to death. The thought of never being able to get a job again, whether it’s because of my being fired or because of my work restriction terrifies me. What good is a secretary without her hands? What other jobs could I do without my hands? I honestly can’t think of anything else I could do – and make enough money to actually live on. At some point, my doctor is going to declare me “permanent and stationary,” which in the world of Work Comp, means that I’m cured, or at least I’m as cured as I’m ever going to get. With carpal tunnel, the prognosis isn’t really good, unless I end up having surgery – and that doesn’t prevent a recurrence. But what happens after I am cured?

Well, for one thing, my temporary disability checks stop coming. Which of course, puts me right back in the position of having to find a job after having been fired. Now, I wasn’t fired because I was a crappy employee; in fact, I was one of the best assistants at my firm. I was fired because my employer did not want to deal with an employee with an open Workers’ Comp claim – but the fact remains:  I was fired. And nothing I can say to a prospective employer about why I was fired is going to persuade them to hire me. All prison inmates are innocent, right? Of course.

Now, it’s all about Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. Plan A is to find another job. Hopefully a job as an executive or administrative assistant, where the typing is incidental – but so far, that hasn’t been going very well. Plan B is to find anther way to make a living. Now, I’m working on this; I’m writing, not only on this blog, but for another website, which could – maybe – help me make a living. But so far, well, I’ve been writing mostly for free. I could try going back into acting – I haven’t ruled this out, but it’s a very iffy proposition, and there are related expenses (headshots, etc.) that might make it difficult – that and the fact that I haven’t acted in this town for more than 10 years, so I don’t know anyone anymore and I’d have to start again from scratch. The odds aren’t great.

So what’s left? If both Plan A and Plan B fail, where does that leave me? With no job and no income…? That’s when I start thinking about Plan C. That’s where I’ve been for the last several days — and it’s not a good place. I’ve been thinking rather obsessively about the terrible things that could happen to me down the road, and I think the thing that terrifies me the most is the thought of ending up being homeless. I just can’t be homeless. I just cannot see myself trying to live on the street or in a shelter. I’ve worked my whole life, and what do I do if I can’t do that anymore?

Plan C is suicide.

When I look down the road and I can’t see any kind of happy ending, well, what else is there?

First, of course, is how would I do it? I’m terrified of pain and I hate guns – so that’s out. I don’t think I could jump off a building, either. I imagine myself out there on the ledge, staring down, feeling the vertigo wash over me in waves and then I think about stepping off into space. I just don’t think I could do it. And then I think – pills. Yep. Pills – that’s the way to go. A few moments of swallowing, and then (hopefully) I would just drift off to sleep and never wake up.

That sounds kinda peaceful to me.

And then, because I don’t really truly think I could actually bring myself to do it, well, there’d be some built-in time where I could change my mind – run in to the bathroom and stick my finger down my throat and call 9-1-1, you know?

That brings me to my suicide note. What would I say? I know that I’d have to start with “I’m sorry,” because suicide is a terrible, terrible thing to do to the people who love you. I’m not actually sure where I’d go from there, except maybe to ask whoever found me to take care of my cats. Maybe I would leave a note with the password to my computer, and put a document on the desktop with all of my final instructions – give my jewelry to X, give my clothing to the Goodwill or to a battered womens’ shelter, here’s where my keys are, etc.

I’d need to say goodbye to a few people, and tell them that no, it’s so very not their fault, that there was really nothing they could have done to stop me, and that they are absolutely not to blame themselves. See, that’s the thing: I’m highly intelligent and well-read, and I know the “tells” that give away a suicidal person’s intentions. And if I was really and truly going to do this, nobody would ever know until the deed was done and all that was left was the body bag.

Yes, it has been a very rough ride. I keep hoping that things will get better, but now, after three years? I’m not so sure they will.

I’m sorry to be so morbid, readers; I hope you’ll forgive me for my self-pity – but somehow writing about it seems to help. It helps me to name my enemy. There is great power in names – any sword and sorcery geek can tell you that. Once you know your enemy’s name, you have power over that enemy.

I now know my enemy’s name.

Guns Don’t Kill People – Hoodies Kill People

Hack “journalist” Geraldo Rivera has a history of making an ass of himself on the teevee. I’m sure we all remember the gigantic fizzle that was Al Capone’s vault. Well, Geraldo’s at it again. He has, once more, firmly nailed his “I AM A HACK, NOT A JOURNALIST” flag to the mast, this time on the March 23, 2012 episode of Fox and Friends, by absurdly blaming Trayvon Martin’s death on his clothing, a hoodie sweatshirt:

“I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was,” Rivera said on Fox and Friends. “You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a gangsta—you’re going to be a gangsta wannabe, well people are going to perceive you as a menace. That’s what happens. It is an instant, reflexive action.”

This assertion is 100% absurd, and only a hack masquerading as a journalist would say such a thing. The hoodie is ubiquitous all over the world. I’m a 57 year old white woman – and I regularly wear hoodies because they’re a comfortable and practical item of clothing. Everyone I know, old, young, black, white, male, female – we all wear hoodies. Somehow, I can’t see myself as a “gangsta wannabe”- I just want to be comfortable.

Geraldo Rivera’s blame-the-victim-style assertion actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual item of clothing Trayvon was wearing when he was shot dead by cop-wannabe George Zimmerman. Geraldo’s assertion that the hoodie was responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death is racist codespeak for the purpose of perpetuating the sinister meme that young black men are dangerous thugs and gangstas out to prey on decent (white) people.

By all accounts, Trayvon Martin was a fine young man, a good student who loved his nieces and nephews. If he was white, he would be considered a sterling example of American youth, but, according to people like Geraldo Rivera and the rest of the rightwing mouthpieces at FOX and on conservative talk radio, Trayvon was a dangerous thug wearing his gangsta uniform – a hoodie – and was on the prowl to rob, steal or rape decent (white) people on that rainy night in February.

What happened to Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, 2012 was a terrible tragedy.

What makes this pointless murder even more of a tragedy is the pervasive and sinister undercurrent of racism present in Geraldo Rivera’s ridiculous assessment of Trayvon as a gangsta. Mr. Rivera’s statement about Trayvon being a “gangsta wannabe” had nothing whatsoever to do with Trayvon, the human being, a bright and well-adjusted 17 year old high school student with a bright future who loved his family, but had everything to do with the fact that Trayvon had dark skin, and therefore, according to the racist meme, he must be a dangerous gangsta, and his hoodie simply confirmed that “fact.”

We need to take a long hard look at racism in this country. It is an unspeakable horror that in America, thanks to the flames of race-based fear fanned by the conservative right, the cult of gun ownership and to dangerous NRA-backed laws like “Stand Your Ground,” it is open season on African-American men, young and old. How terrible and frightening it must be for the parents of every young black man in this country to see their sons walk out their front doors and into a world where racists are armed to the teeth and just waiting for some punk to “make their day.”

The death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman is a teachable moment. Let us not waste it.

2012: The Etch-A-Sketch Election

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, one of Mitt Romney’s staffers made the gaffe of the century – or the mother of all ITE’s (Involuntary Truth Emissions) – when he compared Mitt Romney’s campaign in the primaries to that famous toy introduced in the late 1950′s, the Etch-A-Sketch. I probably don’t have to explain what an Etch-A-Sketch is, but it’s a simple toy with a square screen and two dials. You would twist the dials to make lines on the screen, and when you were done, all you had to do is turn the Etch-A-Sketch over and shake it, and voila! Whatever was on your screen disappeared like magic.

I think that is one of the most devastatingly apt analogies that I have ever heard, especially with regard to Mitt Romney, the Man Who Would be King, and, to a lesser extent, to the rest of this year’s Republican field.

Mittens has been running for office for most of the last 20 or so years, and during that time, he has attempted to be all things to all people – people who could give him the power, that is. I’m not going to bore you with a list of all of his flip-flops (this link has 14 of them), but suffice it to say that if you go back far enough, Mittens has been on both sides of every single issue, sometimes within the same 6 hour period: Roe v. Wade, immigration, climate change, health insurance mandates, Bush’s tax cuts, Ronald Reagan, gun control …well, you name it, Mittens has been both for it and against it, depending upon who he was speaking to at the time.

He ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, proclaiming himself to the left of Ted Kennedy, and now he’s trying to run to the right of the Jesus candidate, Rick Santorum. He was pro-choice in 1994, and now, in 2012, believes that every zygote is a person. He has also told us that corporations are people. (Doesn’t it seem these days that these extremist Republicans believe that everything is a person – except a woman?) He bragged about taking government money in connection with the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics (he “saved” them) and the Big Dig tunnel project in Boston (he “saved” that too). Oh, and FYI, there’s an extra nugget of crunchy Mitt goodness at the end of the linked article – Mittens takes a moment to pat himself on the back about the success of his “Romneycare” healthcare plan – you know, the one he’s running away from now?

And then there’s all those lies Mittens tells on the campaign trail. He has accused President Obama of making the economy worse (not true), of being bad for business (not true), raising taxes (not true) – well, you get the picture. Rachel Maddow took a devastating look at the lies of Mitt Romney, where she literally took him apart – by the simple expedient of proving that he has routinely lied about even the smallest things, depending on the day of the week and who he’s speaking to at the time.

It’s obvious that the Republicans are not happy with Mitt Romney, and frankly, I can’t blame them (I can’t stand him, either.). He is just another in a long line of extremely weak Republican presidential candidates: Bob Dole, John McCain, and now, Mitt Romney. And when you think of the candidates who have dropped out along the way in both 2008 and this year, the picture becomes even bleaker:  nutjobs Tom Tancredo,  Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani (Mr. “Noun-Verb-9/11“), Mike Huckabee in 2008, and the circus clowns like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and The Donald himself in 2012.

Ironically, the candidates have gotten weaker and weaker as the Republican Party has bulled its way further and further to the right – for which we can thank the crazies in the Tea Party. The Tea Party has forced the Republicans into running ever-more-extreme candidates, and now, they have painted themselves into a corner. At one time, the establishment Republican Party could still have stood up and said no to the extreme rhetoric of the teabaggers, but they refused to do so, and now, establishment guys like Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are most likely kicking themselves, wringing their hands and sobbing into their bourbon-and-branches. In 2012, there were actually a few candidates who might have actually given Barack Obama a real challenge, Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, but neither of them was crazy or extreme enough to suit the rabid rightwing base, and both of were forced to drop out early on.

Mitt Romney, perhaps once a reasonable Republican moderate, has been forced into adopting extremist rightwing positions on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and in a pretzel-worthy twist, even the healthcare reform he himself enacted in Massachusetts while he was governor. Still, despite his gaffes, his lies and his cluelessness, Mittens soldiers on, and has tried very hard to convince himself and the rest of us that he is draped in the mantle of inevitability as the Republican nominee for 2012. Well, maybe he’s correct — or maybe this campaign will continue on to a bare-knuckled brawl at the Republican Convention in August.

Once the dust settles, we’ll see who comes out on top. I plan to have plenty of popcorn on hand, because if things continue as they are now, neither Rick Santorum nor Newt Gingrich is going to drop out of the race, and if that’s the case, I think the convention is going to be more entertaining than some WWF rasslin’.

But if that Romney staffer is to be believed, the 2012 Republican primary is just like an Etch-A-Sketch, right? Once this bloody dogfight is over, there will be a reboot, the Etch-A-Sketch will be shaken and, magically, all of Mittens’ past words will disappear, along with those of the rest of the candidates and they can all start fresh. It astonishes me, that in this information-overloaded era, where most Americans have access to cable television, the internet and social media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, the Republicans actually believe that we are all going to have our memories wiped when that Etch-A-Sketch gets shaken.

Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking. I’m not going to forget, and, for the sake of this country, I hope nobody forgets.

A Note to my Readers

Hello, readers – I think it’s time that I need to put forth some guidelines with regard to comments on this blog.

I’m a firm believer in free speech. However, this blog is not the public square, nor is it a government outlet; it is privately operated by me. Yes, you are all most welcome to read – in fact, I’m delighted that you do! I also invite your comments, and for the most part, I do not censor comments on this blog.

However, that said, I have no intention of tolerating hate speech or continual harassment from wingnuts who persist in offering the same stupid strawman arguments over and over again, presumably to draw a false equivalence between liberals calling George W. Bush a war criminal and conservatives calling President Obama a nigger. Those two are not the same. Not even close.

And if you can’t tell the difference, then I suggest you do some homework in the form of reading and also in the form of an honest examination of your reasoning. Frankly, I believe that if you cannot tell the difference between calling George W. Bush a war criminal and President Obama a nigger, no amount of homework or self-examination is going to fix your problem.

It has been my policy to not censor comments here, but I warned you: I’ve had enough of the racist crap, so if you post comments that I deem to be stupid, repetitive, or offer ad hominem or strawman arguments, I reserve the right to remove your comments and to ban your ass permanently. Scream “censorship!!” all you want, but I don’t give a damn; your comments on this blog will never again see the light of day.

If that offends you, too bad. Deal with it. I’m not here to make wingnuts happy.