Take off Your Hat, Lennie. The Air Feels Fine.

My father was a WWII veteran.  In the late 1980s, while in his early 60s, his health began to fail.  He went to the VA Hospital in Little Rock for help.  He wasn’t assigned one doctor, but saw several and they unaccountably changed from one visit to the next.  None, however, could quite figure out what was wrong with him, although each prescribed drugs.  He was on drugs to counteract the side effects of drugs, and then a drug to counteract that drug.  And so it went. He developed uncontrollable shaking. One doctor quickly diagnosed him as being an alcoholic:  “Mr. Ketzer, you appear to me to have the DTs. How much do you drink?”  My father probably averaged one beer a week, and when he became sick, not even that.  I entertained the idea of tracking down that doctor at the VA Hospital and kicking his ass good, but my mother dissuaded me, saying that the doctor later agreed that wasn’t the case, and my father actually liked him, but then, my dad liked everyone. 

No, my father didn’t have the leisure to become an alcoholic:  He worked all day at the airport and then came home and worked until ten at night up in his shop, rebuilding motorcycles, cars, boats and airplanes.  He saw another doctor at the VA who, after reviewing his record, was aghast at the quantity of drugs they had him on.  The doctor said he couldn’t make a diagnosis with all that going on and took him off everything.  Not long after, but some two years from his first visit, it was found that he had leukemia. By that time, the cancer had spread into his spinal fluid, which accounted for the shakes.  They put him on chemo and pumped him up with steroids and morphine, but it was too late; he went downhill quickly.  I don’t know exactly what they did, but dad allowed them to experiment on him, to try this and that, looking for a cure; although it usually involved pain and sickness.  His thought was that it might help others.  During his many nights at the VA Hospital, he was robbed.  The hospital was located in a bad part of town, and people came in off the streets to sleep, roam the halls, and steal from patients.  He watched a man go through his drawers and take what he wanted.  My kick-ass father was too sick to rise from the bed and do something about it. 

Had they caught and treated the leukemia earlier, perhaps recommended bone marrow transplants from me or his grandson, they might have saved him.  They didn’t.  He passed away in 1993.  My father was not only a WWII veteran, but a combat veteran who served with Darby’s Rangers, a special forces, tip-of-the-spear outfit.  He was seriously wounded in North Africa and captured by Romel’s troops, spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war.  He should have received the best health care this country had to offer, but that’s not what he got.  He should not have received the best care owing to the big hearts of the good people of the United States, but because he earned it and deserved it.  What he received was government health care in all its glory.  I believe VA hospitals are better these days, primarily because we’ve been at war, and have been winning those wars (their job is to fight wars and win, not build bogus nations).  If between wars, or forced by politicians to lose or fight wars to a draw, then many people, and especially politicians, could not care less about the treatment of veterans.  

My mother, on the other hand, lived into her 80s.  Due to her many medical issues, my brothers and I reluctantly placed her in a private assisted living facility near my oldest brother.  My father left her with a nice nest egg, and she continued to receive his POW veteran’s benefits, and also received the appropriate Medicare Part D plan, both by virtue of my brother’s ability to comb through piles of literature, rules and regulations, to make sure she got the benefits and best coverage for which she was eligible.  Even so, she outlived her nest egg and faced the prospect of being moved to a state-run facility, as the private facility would not accept Medicaid.  Her greatest fear was being sent to a government-run old folks home, because she had seen her father (William Ernest, called W.E.), who lived well into his 90s and had no means at all, die in one.  I visited W.E.’s facility with her: It was dark, dirty and the care horrible.  W.E. had been shuffled around between family members, and mom and dad were the last to keep him, but it just got to be too much.  W.E. was hard to deal with, fought with my dad, needed nursing that mom wasn’t able to provide, and one night they awoke to see him naked, standing in their bedroom and pissing on their dresser, at which, dad drew the line, and it broke mom's heart to send her father away.  Mom’s private assisted living facility wasn’t the Ritz, by any stretch; in fact, it too had that ugly smell, wasn’t adequately cleaned, and the care could have been much better. But compared to W.E.’s last stop, it “was” a five star hotel, and it sure the hell cost like one.  I know because my brothers and I chipped in so she wouldn’t have to move: We did that, not the government. 

Now I’m at that unfortunate stage of life myself where medical issues come to the forefront, but I am fortunate that I’ve been able to save and plan, even though the bulk of my money goes to insurance of one ilk or the other: home insurance, car insurance, life insurance, health care insurance, and long term health care insurance.  Except for the incredible deductibles, I’m covered!  I'm also a veteran, so I have access to VA care, but I don’t take it for a few reasons, the first being self-centered: After what they did to my father, I don’t trust them, and prefer to pick my own doctors and dentists.  Additionally, there are veterans without means who can’t afford insurance, and, of course, our servicemen and women who served and continue to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan need immediate care.  I would be embarrassed to get in line with them.  Yeah, insurance and taxes—I still pay taxes.  I just hope I can keep it all going and some unforeseen emergency doesn’t trip me up, because, I am quite content to die in my own bed, just have the nurse bring plenty of morphine.  But if things do go awry, my wife precedes me, and I can no longer function or have knowledge of the functioning, just do Of Mice and Men on me:  “Take off your hat, Lennie, the air feels fine.”