It's not that difficult to get free health care here in…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:34 PM Permalink …America. Actually it's quite easy.First ya gotta sign-up in the military and get sent to a highly toxic zone, like Vietnam, where they had no idea of the effects of dioxin, a chemical the government would like to disinvent.
Get not one, but two cancers in the lymph nodes of the left side of your face and neck. Undergo a radical neck dissection AFTER four months of chemotherapy and ONLY after you've had 6,000 rads of radiation shot through the tumors from four different angles while you lay there, head clamped to the table by a heat and pressure formed mask aligned with the little dots they tattoo behind your ear and on your neck for aligning the mask and aiming the radiation equipment.
Then, and only then, when the tumors are still scoffing at every one of your doctors, then you go under the knife for a radical neck dissection, a medical term of art:
The purpose of radical neck dissection is to remove lymph nodes and other structures in the head and neck that are likely or known to be malignant. Variations on neck dissections exist, depending on the extent of the cancer. A radical neck dissection removes the most tissue. It is performed when the cancer has spread widely in the neck.…Where they also happen to irrevocably sever the fifth cranial nerve:
The trigeminal nerve is quite complex. It functions both as the chief nerve of sensation for the face and the motor nerve controlling the muscles of mastication (chewing).and the 11th cranial nerve:
Problems with the sensory part of the trigeminal nerve result in pain or loss of sensation in the face. Problems with the motor root of the trigeminal nerve result in deviation of the jaw toward the affected side and trouble chewing.
The cranial nerves, the trigeminal nerve included, emerge from or enter the skull (the cranium), as opposed to the spinal nerves which emerge from the vertebral column. …
The 11th cranial nerve. The accessory nerve originates from neurons in the medulla and in the cervical spinal cord. It has a cranial root, which joins the vagus (10th cranial) nerve and sends motor fibers to the muscles of the larynx, and a spinal root, which sends motor fibers to the trapezius and the sternocleidomastoid muscles. Damage to the nerve produces weakness in head rotation and shoulder elevation.along with the long thoracic nerve:
Injury to the long thoracic nerve causing paralysis or weakness of the serratus anterior muscle can be disabling. Patients with serratus palsy may present with pain, weakness, limitation of shoulder elevation, and scapular winging with medial translation of the scapula, rotation of the inferior angle toward the midline, and prominence of the vertebral border. Long thoracic nerve dysfunction may result from trauma or may occur without injury.and combine them all with permanent damage to every cartilaginous structure of your throat and neck from radiation scarring they don't tell you about, making not only breathing difficult and swallowing ever harder (it's a bitch to cough up a piece of food you ate hours ago because it went into your lungs rather than the esophagus)but escalating pain levels to the point of sheer torture. And that's without even mentioning the necrotic (dead) jawbone and loss of teeth.
Well, that's how I did it and if it worked for me, it can work for you, too!
Labels: Agent Orange, health care, health care reform, hypocrisy, indiscriminate bombing
4 Comments:
I'm sorry.
Thanx, Nunya, but what's done is done and if given the chance to change the paths I've chosen knowing what I know now, I would do my life over EXACTLY the same way for fear of the smallest change resulting in not meeting my Warrior Woman, real name Milagros, Spanish for "Miracles." She has been my Warrior Woman and miracle for 35+ years and the lady whom I still and always will love madly. Even out of bad things good things can occasionally arise, and with Mila, I just would not want to go on living without her. She's indescribable, inimitable, and the mad, mad, crazy mad love of my life.
Thank you for your kindness.
Dear god, Bill. The shit you have gone through and endured... and survived. You truly are made of sterner stuff than most.
As nunya said, I'm so sorry to hear this and wish it had been different for you.
More cyber hugs to you and your woman.
Thank you for having the empathy to realize that not all the suffering of man is of his own doing, but really, I am one of the lucky ones. I still have all four limbs, though my left arm is not of much practical use; it was mentally that I paid the price, one doc saying this, a hit doc saying something else. I worked as best I could before the breakdown, I had an almost photographic memory, or just shy of one, and now I have hugh blocks of memory that vanish, sometimes to return, others not. Many of my oldest mot cherished memories are behind an impenetrable wall I keep trying to scale and fail. Were it not for the kindness of the people with whom I write here at VidiotSpeak I would not have this avenue of catharsis and be in much worse shape, mentally, and they are beyond kind enough to overlook my gaffes. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Yep, real lucky. Thank you again though, and spread the word that these poor bastards coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, even intact, limb-wise, are going to suffer horribly as well, and we, the American people need to stop so much idolization of sports figures, actors, singers, calling them 'heroes' when they have risked mere financial failure without being prepared to make or risk the ultimate sacrifice for America, and help these vets who are gonna come home suffering so badly, but 'suck it up' and don't tell anyone until it's too late and they or someone they love is hurt or killed.
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