Healing energy for Lightning Rod

[Doreen Peri]

Lrod's Dispatch.... from Facebook.. he posted this 11 hours ago. Just now saw it:

This day has been a major turning point. Ever since the surgery I have been in a breath by breath struggle. It has been hugely exhausting. They kept telling me that I was healing satisfactorily and quickly etc. But I couldn't tell. It seemed as hard today as it was yesterday. I could never quite get a breath. Yesterday evening I took a turn for the worse. I was breathing with only great difficulty. I knew this wasn't going to work. Even the smallest exercise completely winded and wore me out. About MIdnight I simply hit the wall. If this was their idea of a successful outcome to the operation, then we were NOT on the same page. That's when I called my sister and made plans to go back to Emergency.

I really didn't have much hope. I knew I couldn't live this way though, struggling from breath to breath with panic in between. So this morning at 7 AM I appeared at Parkland Emergency again. My main objective, truly, was to brow-beat them into giving me heavier narcotics. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't even enjoy a good nod for fear of going to sleep and forgetting to do the very difficult and self-conscious breaths that had become necessary just to maintain consciousness. I was discouraged, to say the least.

Mercifully the nurse felt my plight and quickly rigged up an IV with a paltry one Mg. of Dilaudid. I was glad for it. After they did the obligatory X-ray and CAT scans, She asked me if I wanted some suction on my lungs. I said OK with a certain resignation because this procedure had not been helping for the past week. This nurse seemed to know even less about the procedure than most of the other ones, which may have been my salvation. First she put some moist oxygen on the STOMA. This is what they call the naked hole that is in my neck which leads directly into my air passage. It is still healing. Then she began suctioning and pulling with tweezers on the mucous globs and scabs that surrounded the opening. I was literally still gasping for every breath. Then suddenly she pulled a piece out. It was about as big as a nickel. Suddenly it was markedly easier to breathe, a breath of fresh air so to speak. Over the course of the next hour, she moistened and massaged and sucked and prodded and picked around on the opening. Toward the end of the process she showed me a huge grotesque Booger about the size of a wallnut. This had been totally invisible within the STOMA hole, obstructing it. Nobody had seen it before. She had grabbed it with a lucky stab with the tweezers. It was like taking the stopper out of a tub of water. Suddenly I could actually breathe. I mean a real breath, not some wheezing excuse for a breath. It's the first honest breath I had drawn since the operation. I couldn't believe the size of the damned snot-ball.

Anyway, this is to report to you that I feel confident that my recovery has taken a major turn for the good. I knew that something wasn't right, but nobody seemed to know just what it was. It was Hamlet's infamous 'Rub.'

May all your boogers be big ones.

Onward,

[Doreen Peri]

A pretty darn detailed description.

Clay, your ability to describe things so people can envision them has not declined one bit. You're a fine writer. I'm very glad you got it cleared out!

[tinkerjack]

Dear Doreen
Thank you for posting that, yes it is graphic, but it is also grist for the mill.

I am feeling much better after reading it.

[judih]

note: LR himself posted it on the previous page of this thread.

[Doreen Peri]

Oh.. I didn't see it here. Sorry!

Clay... glad you're feeling well enough to post in more than one place. Keep us posted. Feel better soon!

[singlemalt]

Best wishes, CJ!

[diesel dyke]

When you breathe easier clay, I do too.

You put the words down cuz, your voice is stronger than ever.

thanks for writing
thanks for keeping the faith
thanks for fighting the good fight
thank you for being a cyber pal to this crazy old fucking fool.

[Arcadia]

[Artguy]

hang in there Clay...there's a whole lot of words between here and eternity...

[judih]

hang in there Clay...there's a whole lot of words between here and eternity...

a whole lot of silence as well. a whole lot of experience.
in every second

[izeveryboyin]

LRod, I was on FB last night and my daughter Myla was sitting next to me. You were in my newsfeed so I decided to go to your page and look through some of the photos you're tagged in. She pointed and said "Mommy, why that man have long, long Rapunzel hair?" (She recently became obsessed with the movie Tangled, Disney's version of Rapunzel) So I said, "Because that's how he likes it." "Oh." She replied. And then after staring at it a little longer, she says, "It's beautiful." I smiled at her. The innocence of children can send warmth all the way through you. I told her that that was very nice of her to say. Then she left the room to go play with her barbies (the Rapunzel one, I'm sure). I thought I'd share that with you because I know we all love a compliment. Especially in relation to our long, flowing locks. And to say that even the young know there's something to Clay. So I'm not going to bombard you with encouragement because I am dark and existential. I'm just going to give you a compliment. Your hair is beautiful, as is your writing, your music, and your soul. I'm so glad I know you, and because I feel guilty now, I'll have to say it: Feel better!

[hester_prynne]

Sending you love, music, and and boisterous, robust healing energies. I want to thank you too, for your amazing narrative regarding your health issues. Healing not only to you, but I'd say even moreso to the reader, and I thank you for sharing it so vividly and profoundly. Be well soon my dear LROD.

[Doreen Peri]

More from Lrod, copied from his post last night on Facebook. No doubt about the fact that his writing voice is as strong as ever!

In early May when I presented myself at the Emergency Room of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, they didn't know that they were about to be treating a world famous poet, writer and social critic. To them I was just a slightly down at the heels old hippie-looking guy who could prove that he lived in the County. This is the secret sauce that makes the whole enchelada of American Healthcare taste so damned good. No matter who you are, you can walk into an Emergency Room and you will be treated. It doesn't sound like much; it's not Universal Healthcare, just a reflection of the American values of compassion and mercy. We don't let our sick suffer without trying to help them. It's a good, solid National ethic; The Poet's Eye approves of it.

We would think that a nation with such generosity and ethical bearing would have a system of healthcare distribution simply reflecting this ethic. But American greatness is not based on what is reasonable or logical. If there is an impossible solution to a simple problem, we prefer it. It's no wonder that our system of healthcare distribution can be as twisted, byzantine and diabolical as possible and still work. The strongest leg of American Milking Stool, the leg that must always reach the floor is Functionality. If it doesn't work, then we have no need for it. It's the Stoic's Way.

This poet can't walk through the doors at Parkland Emergency room without thinking about that day in 1963 when we all were there. That was the day we learned what a fatal fashion combination the colors of pink and blood red turn out to be. Even though Dallas was a hot-bed of conservatism, the doors of Parkland Memorial were open to conservatives and liberals alike. They didn't even care if he was a Catholic. A liberal public health policy is as essential to a functioning democracy as a sound public education system and the right to vote. The only plausible system of healthcare in a democracy is one in which healthcare of the first order is Available to all. Our American healthcare system as expressed in institutions such as Parkland Hospital demonstrates how close we can get to having a system of universal healthcare without actually calling it that.

Like many wildly effective public institutions, our public hospitals are perpetual amazement machines running on the rare fuel of pure paradox. They combine the cold efficiency of a bureaucracy with the hands-on compassionate art of healing. Who could imagine such a thing? such a fortuitous suspension of opposites?

It showed up in my singing first. I've never been a very good singer. I can deliver a song, to be sure, but I'm not a singer's singer; I'm not what I call a Voice. My voice has also changed throughout my career in a perpetual adolescent sort of way, it cracks and breaks without my conscious control. So at first I didn't pay much attention when suddenly I could hit that note I never could reach before or if one of my trusted memory notes did not come forth on command. I had begun looking for singers to sing my songs. By the time I walked into Parkland I was pretty much down to a wheeze and a rasp. I figured it was only a matter of time at that point. I had never seen this story take a happy ending. I hoped they would not be stingy with their painkillers.

Like many of our great big-city hospitals, Parkland is a teaching hospital. That means that in association with various universities, the hospitals are learning laboratories which train our young doctors and nurses and technicians. It's a tremendous win-win situation for all involved. During my stay at Parkland, I was visited by a good friend who has always been an advocate of scientific secular humanism. He said to me, "I have one of those pieces of paper somewhere, A Living Will. One thing it tells them to do is bring me to this hospital. Oh, I could afford to go to Baylor or out to Presbiterian or Methodist or St. Paul's but I want to be in a hospital where they are still learning things not ones based and funded on superstition." The Poet's Eye likewise sees remarkable things being accomplished with creative public funding and bright, young professionals who are dedicated to the highest traditions of the medical sciences and the healing arts.

At the end of my first visit to Parkland Emergency, they presented me with a bill which was over six thousand dollars. When I said that I had no money, they didn't blink an eye, just referred me to their financial assistence department. The care I received that day, some blood-tests, a spot of morphine, the odd x-ray and CAT scan, could have easily been done for under a couple of thousand in a family clinic or a doctor's office. If I lived in England or Canada or Denmark I would simply have handed them my medical ID card and everybody would have been happy. I probably would have sought care a good deal earlier in the course of my illness and might have saved my voice in addition to the thousands of extra dollars in care costs. But in order to cling to the myth that America has a 'free-enterprise' healthcare distribution system and that somehow such a system works better, the kind taxpayers of Texas paid for my first-class medical care and did it in the most expensive way possible. I would like to thank them for that.

[mistertroll]

Just been visiting with LRod. He's doing quite well, goes in tomorrow for follow-up. Still on liquid diet, but may be able to switch to real food pretty soon. All is well.

[Arcadia]

l-rod: it sounds like Kafka with a luck-touch... , gracias for your notes!
& gracias mr.troll for keeping the link!