Totalized Hospitality On Ionized Weirdness

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL ~ Jonathan Swift

Dear God--

When I walked into the Highland Park Bakery--which is on Oak Lawn, in "gaytown", as some call the Oak Lawn/Cedar Springs neighborhood, the one where Texas Senator Ted Cruz offices (almost wrote orifices) near Hall Street, just west of the infamous and formerly-named Lee Park, horse-pulled bronze statue of a general who may have been farther south in Texas when he sailed to Veracruz to pummel the town from sea: first naval assault in modern history--a gay barista asked me how I was doing.  

I whispered: "I just had my first UTI!" 

"REALLY!!!"

One particularly annoyed-appearing lady of scrappy and longish red hair looked up and scowled.  Gossip.  Always fun to spread terror and amazement in that neighborhood.  I go there to see a business partner.  She's a former Dallas Police Officer.  She rode horseback when employed.   

But that's beside the point.  Due to the issue of a simple UTI, I have been put through a veritable meat-grinder by the Oncology Clinic at Parkland Hospital, one of the finest public hospitals in the country. 

At least until RFK Jr, heroin addict, missing motor mounts, front door open no one inside, got his hands on hospital funding.  What is he? 

One of these: *

I went to the ER after speaking to a nurse hotline.  She advised it simply could be a burst blood vessel (I'm delicate down there, blood in urine only twice a problem before), but that, to be safe, advised I visit the ER and get to the bottom of the three-day bleeding.  No biggie.  I immediately dressed, grabbed my keys and headed to the new Parkland ER.  

With a magic word I was given long ago, I was in a room in less than five minutes.  Where I lounged in a propped hospital bed for the next seven and a half hours.  

A doctor, visiting me, asked if she could run numerous tests for infection, hep C, or infection.  Sure, I said.  Let's see.  

After receiving a sonogram to see if the blood originated in the bladder (it didn't), the test results arrived: UTI.  The doctor prescribed some really big horse pills--antibiotics--to end the infection, which, I must add, may have been more widespread and low grade than originally believed.  Interestingly, when I got up to use the hallway bathroom--no blood.  

By the time I fetched the pills, purchased some dinnertime eats and headed back to my NODA (North Dallas) apartment, the light rail station was lit up in darkness.  I checked around.  I've been there before.  

No action that night.  Hence, I took the bus back to the complex.  Stepping off the bus, I looked again: no action.  Fine.  Precautionary via experience, I stepped out onto the median and walked a short distance to my apartment.  Hungry, I ate a quick meal and lounged on the couch until an early bedtime.  

Cosmic, eh?  Not really.  As far as I was concerned, problem solved.  But wait.  Not so fast.  Parkland's Oncology Clinic wanted to "consult" after the UTI.  

Once there, only a few days after the ER visit, the Oncologist, ironically named Wang, worried outloud that my neutrophil count was really low.  Sure thing.  Infections lower neutrophil counts.  He said it was "extremely low".  I didn't feel too much surprised.  But he was adamant: After only three or so days to recover from a low-grade and likely widespread infection, he advised an immediate bone marrow biopsy.  

Seriously?  We went back and forth on that one.  He showed me the neutrophil count: only a few days after the ER visit, it had more that doubled--250 to 600--still, he said, total danger.  Jesus F. Christ, I thought, can't this wet-behind-the-ears doc allow me to recover first before conducting a serious exploratory regime? 

Like any good Borg from Star Trek: Voyager, Wang basically told me "It's protocol" to do so in the event of low neutrophil counts.  I fired back: "But I've only been four or so days out of the ER.  In that time, the count has more than doubled.  What'll it be like in a week.  

Wang went for his boss.  Bossman came in, and again told me all about what it must be like to be an automated zombie-worker in a big public hospital that is struggling to maintain its no-profit status in the wake of some heroin addict with a hole in the middle of his brain's "decision" to cut funding with the "Totally Nasty-Assed Trumpery Anti-American Cut-Off-The-Poor-By-The-Knees Excuse For Beauty" bill.  

Just look at Missed Her Trumpery: Surrounded with an all tits and ass DOJ.  He likes surrounding himself with hotties.  Always had.  He's moving on the United States "like a bitch".  He's all Hollywood and apparently needs access for his "big beautiful" mushroom-sized lower dens of an addled brain.  

Can't make it with the ladies?  Project rejection onto an entire country and then grab it in some dressing room.  Dressing for what?  

Only the Shadow knows. . . .

I asked for a delay on the bone marrow biopsy.  That wouldn't be a biggie in terms of drill-drill-drill into my pelvis, but as far as "waste fraud and abuse", that procedure would cost the American people boo-koo bucks.  He resisted.  I went back to the apartment, checked with Mayo, then with Cleveland Clinic, found that much of the information Wang and Co offered was basically mistaken.  

Drill-baby-drill.  The accountants need some money to go visit Shinsei, the all five-star Asian Fusion Spot across from Dallas' Inwood Shopping Center.  

In one way of thinking about the Oncological weirdness, I understand.  Financial assholery courtesy of people who have no business at all holding down the Health and Human Services agency with a foolish hack who fronts "autism studies" involving maybe six people telling a story about how a vaccination damaged their babies.  

Wowie.  Surreal on steroids.  Guy kills bear, leaves it by bike lane, escaped to do some dope--is almost automatically levitated to a high-muckety-muck position so he can really damage human life.  So laughable: Kills wild animal, leaves it by jogging path, laughs and giggles while ripped, returns in triumph to obsess over vaccinations.  Totally peachy.  We say in sarcasm.  

Sure thing, bucko: Compromise the financial security of one of the most important public regional hospitals this side of Houston.  For fun and terrorization.  Way to go, Trump chump.  

I emailed Wang after doing my own research via reputable medical information sites, showed him my work on the hospital's private communication line.

Assholery this time involves attempts to re-traumatize a former cancer patient who nearly died before the chemo rounds had ended.  Let's vaccinate Junior with six rounds of chemo to see if it will kill off his bad juju.  

Next day, a Wednesday, Wang agreed to reset for another simple blood draw.  He reluctantly suggested that my homework was worthy.  But as usual (I'm joking) tightwad skinflints have apparently taken over the entire Official USA game in another round of this: 

US OUT OF EVERYWHERE

Perhaps if I was deaf and dumb with an IQ nearing 67, I'd have bought the cheap meal for the organization Doctors Without Tickets Who Have Squeaky Wickets.  

Let's play...croquet!  With pretty wooden balls with painted stripes on them.  No, like, never with mine, buckos.  

Maybe I should have spelled "buckos" with a little more Kultur: Bucquoisies!  I'm laughing at Official Dallas and its lust to be the very first European City in the US.  

Anyway, we did reset the blood test for Wednesday, 9-8.  I dutifully bused to the clinic where I get my blood draws, went into the short consultation with a representative, then was told, "You should have gone to Moody".  That's where the Oncology Clinic is--third floor.  

"When we get blood draws, can't we choose either of the two spots for phlebotomies?"

"Actually, your blood-draw has not been ordered. . . "

"You mean I bused 15 miles to do as requested and Wang or Oncology failed to even order the test?  Can you please call and find out?" 

The Oncology Clinic contact said she needed to ask.  This struck me as fishy.  I didn't need to go straight to the big, long-wait blood draw area at the Moody Clinic Building.  I already knew I could get the blood-draw either place.  

I waited.  And waited.  Finally, after waiting plenty of time for the Oncology Clinic to get its act together, I decided to take my own on the road.  

"When they ultimately call back, tell them I will contact them again to reset."  

The rep copied the order and handed it to me.  "You want to see the order?" 

Midway down the page, I found this: "malignant *"  Scare tactic?  Or confession?  

Before coming to the second Oncology visit the prior Friday--different more amenable doctor--I'd found a Texas Standard article that summarized a Washington Post expose about Parkland going all chintzy with kidney patients on the sole reason they are poor people--in favor of wealthier clients.  All around that article on the search engine page were all kinds of Parkland financial reports.  

CYA?  If so, CYA is big time over there.  Something simply isn't right to 1) not order a blood draw, and then suddenly order it, and 2) a subsequent demand for another battery of tests.  CT Scans--just had one of those.  The doctors even requested they scope my penis to see, well, something-something.  

I've never seen a bunch of doctors so goddamned obsessed with my penis in my entire life.  While I'm happy doctors are careful to cover all bases, what I'm getting there right now spells this: 

O-V-E-R-K-I-L-L

Get re-traumatized--for Jesus!  Perhaps he's my big brother by another mother?  Whatever the case, if I was, well, no forgiveness this time.  

For Give?  What do the forgiveness-dependent want this time around? 

Right.  Sometimes everybody feels like that.  

I first was a little stunned to see another barrage of tests.  But seriously.  I do know my own body.  In fact, so far, I have the right to understand my own body.  Maybe we need to perform an abortion on RFK Jr's obsessive-compulsive complex involving killing hundreds of Samoan children.  

One a hailer from Gangsterland, always a hailer from Gangsterland.  RFK's entire claim to fame is that his Irish granddad was a bootlegger who worked closely with the Mafia.  

Way to go, dude.  That's not how to be an elite.  That's how to con your way into absolute respect.  My father was killed.  I didn't get any levitation from that.  What gives, con artist?  

I simply will not go into how my father was humiliated for drinking his problems away.  He was "geared" into suicide.  Hateful Dallas, 1970.  

"With a push and a shove this land is ours!"  

What, pray tell, will "the help" think?  

I wrote Wang a four part riot act.  Let him and Oncology Clinic know I do not abide by incompetence.  Maybe some tiddly-wink biddies who wear mink stoles all summer long are much closer in sync with many of my Black neighbors who, right now, are so afraid many are indeed wearing long-sleeved hoodies in 90 degree weather.  Symbolic? 

Clearly the biddies don't read signs or symbols.  STEM dependent, they've long been O-ganizing.  Ha.  Good line from an old acquaintance who, oddly, while a real fly in the ointment, possesses that crazy wisdom many of his detractors simply cannot comprehend.  

OK.  I laughed about it once the shock wore off.  No sweats or chills.  No dizziness.  No odd pains in the lower abdominal area, none of the symptoms of something off.  

Yesterday, after previously learning my debit card had been hacked, I had forgotten about the incident, went down the hill to buy groceries.  Debit card--cancelled.  Went back up the hill at sports walker speed.  Picked up other card, walked downhill, got groceries, could not get cash, returned home, rested, ate a homemade hamburger, and kicked back to enjoy my evening.  Was I experiencing weakness?  

Nope.  Quite the opposite.  I'm happy, writing well, and working really hard--not sitting around grousing about lost or busted opportunities.  

When one hits the bottom line, one song I love states, the only thing to do is rise.  

See it?  I'm channeling Kurt Vonnegut's novel, "Breakfast of Champions": 

*