Musings of a minor megalomaniac
“Wah, wah wah, I had a bad reaction, so the vaccine must be bad!” …said a celebrity musician dumb enough to believe he has a clue about the matter. I used to like Clapton’s music, but this public health menace is now just another tired old hack too stupid to keep his mouth shut.
“Who shot the Sheriff? Certainly wasn’t you, mate.”
Here’s a new category combo for ya: Crime and Health. Tennesseans can now look forward to losing children to not only Covid, but measles, polio and a whole raft of deadly diseases after clueless Tennessee legislator fuckwits fired the only person with any ability to proactively deal with the pandemic there.
“Republican lawmakers also admonished the agency for its communications about the vaccine, including online posts. One graphic, featuring a photo of a smiling child with a Band-Aid on his arm, said, “Tennesseans 12+ are eligible for vaccines. Give COVID-19 vaccines a shot.” Some lawmakers even threatened to dissolve the Health Department.”
Not exactly looking forward to another summer trapped indoors. After three years struggling through convalescence and going on two years into the pandemic, with a new fire season looking to become even worse than last year, I am not a happy camper.
At least the COVID HVAC upgrade seems to be performing well, with morning readings still holding down in the single-digit AQI range, anywhere from 10 to 40 times lower than outside, depending on time of day and interior location. I’ll change the ceiling filter today and see how that looks after a year in service. Probably find alot of fine smoke particles that did not end up in our lungs.
I’m so mentally ill it’s just insane. But I come by my shyt honestly. Numerous past and present psychological traumas give me what I call OTSD – Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder. Meh. Whatever.
Then there’s a whole new level being explored in society’s mass mental illness with conspiracy theories and fascist devil worship these days. The devil is the disgraced Fuckwit, and the illness is social media.
“…when the White House reaches out to Americans and asks why aren’t they getting vaccinated, they hear misinformation about dangers with the vaccine. And he said that the No. 1 place where they find that misinformation is on Facebook.”
Looks like this is basically what I’ll have to work with:
13 JUL 21: Impression of lumbar symptoms after a month off decompression seems to suggest fusion with removal of the disc leaves things at that level fairly well solidified and inflammation / stenosis resistant – lumbar no longer responds to decompression. Nerve damage-induced paralysis in all the surrounding / connected right side musculature remains a severely debilitating, painful daily nightmare. Soft tissues around top of the knee (not in the joint itself, like arthritis) up through the quad, ilial on the right and both glutes and erectors are sore to the bone continuously. Nerve symptoms simmer down through the calf crunching my toes similar to how I’m always gripping with my right hand. This condition now prevalent throughout the entire right side of my body, starts first step out of bed in the morning and only gets worse through the day with physical activity – footwork – the term I now use for anything on my feet – walking or even just standing is always a forced march. Left side quad rebound jab stopped sometime recently.
C-Spine has once again become the dominant, disabling injury being “worked on.” At least the lumbar shouldn’t get worse, going forward.
With outbreaks gaining momentum at summer camps across the country, AP reporting seems ominously foreboding. With past pandemic warnings gone unheeded, we appear to be in for one helluva school year coming up in 2021.
That nurse appears to have been making around $14k/hr for the HMO where she works. I can corroborate the insane charges for medical services myself. My most recent spine doctor billed insurance $250 for a fabric and velcro back brace which Amazon replaced for me with a better quality model a few months later for $45.
Of course the math ($700 / 3secs x 60 = hourly rate) is alot more complicated than that, but the point remains. Look at any doctor bill. It’s a total scam.
Eighteen months later, the anesthesiologist from my lumbar surgery keeps sending me bills after I referred them to the VA and also gave VA their information myself. They should be paying me for what they put me through! Francie’s Covid test last year set me back $250. It’s just ridiculous.
Texas has taken on an unusual level of interest to me lately for a number of different reasons. Our oldest daughter Phoebe, now lives in the small town of Mason. Texas suffered some of the worst pandemic consequences. And they have risen to share a large amount of the political angst presently gripping the country. It’s alot to unpack. But Jeff Goodell did a great job connecting the dots in a Rolling Stone article last January.
Climate change motivated me to make a big investment in solar a few years ago, and to start contemplating my 1st emissions-free vehicle. Read the article and learn how the planet is reacting in a wholly unified, predictable pattern. These closely related things stand in stark contrast to the attitudes of people and politicians who recognize only their own selfish interests apart from and literally in denial of the environment. We are all in this world together, breathing the same air. Willfully ignorant or not, things are changing with or without our consent or awareness. It’s just that same old thing about the difference between the mistakes made by smart people and dumb people.
“In Texas, the first state to hit one million Covid cases, better disease surveillance would not have changed anything. People were practically dropping dead in the street from the virus, and still you could walk through a medium-sized town and not see a single person wearing a mask. Texas governor Abbott clashed with mayors and county judges over their authority to shut down businesses and enforce mask orders. The people who suffered the most as always, were poor people. people of color, people without health insurance – people on the margins of our high-tech fossil-fueled society. In the end, pandemics are a political problem – not a scientific one.”
Hickenlooper, circa 2011: “We have to protect the children!”
Anonymous Staffer: “Tax revenues are projected to exceed a $Billion in 3 years.”
Hickenlooper: “Oh, OK then.”
Guess we’ll just have to accept that greed worked out in our favor this time.
Even the Doctors are finally starting to come around. Must get tiring hearing nonstop complaints about all the pharmaceutical garbage.
This religious fuckwit can claim the biggest fraud prize in the whole goddamned U.S. pandemic response. Egregious CDC failures in this ongoing travesty are unforgivable. They lay at the feet of a fool who sat on his fat ass while misguided minions threw one monkey wrench after another into the country’s healthcare system. Fuck you Redfield – eat shit and die.
New acronym definition: GOP = Grand Old Pandemic.
Cue Twilight Zone soundtrack. Between India and Brazil incubating new variants at an uncontrollable rate, and spotty uptake in many places around the world, we can probably start getting ready for a 2nd round of vaccinations with new vaccines. The cycle will continue and repeat until the natural selection process is complete.
I wonder if it’s hard on the nasal membranes?
The sad part is, nothing really illegal about it, potentially even quite useful to many customers, I imagine. The Island Sweet Skunk Live Sugar I got from Standing Akimbo a couple months ago looks like any other white powder of that consistency, if that’s any help. All they’re doing is de-carbing and re-crystallizing it somehow. But like I wrote in the comments, “The chickens have come home to roost from the War on Drugs. It will take decades for Cannabis to live down the illicit drug disassociation alcohol enjoys – at the expense of suffering patients, DUI victims and common sense everywhere.”
Depending how you compare Alaska and Texas, the pot prohibitionist holdouts are starting to look pretty foolish.
With Memorial Day fast approaching and the 3rd anniversary of that ECHCS email update, and in anticipation of our informal review now awaiting scheduling under the 1151 claim, the script I expect to formally convey at that time is given below for your reading pleasure:
Dear VA,
Please allow me to apologize in advance for speaking frankly about this matter, because it affects me profoundly, and that is the only way I can talk about it. And thank you for the opportunity to clear up some sort of fundamental oversight or misunderstanding about this claim.
I never recovered from my left hip replacement in January, 2019. I’ve lost count of how many VA people I’ve told that since 2019. Nor have I previously complained about, or received diagnosis or treatment for any sort of lumbar condition from anyone, VA or otherwise, before then. A year later on February 22nd 2020, L4-5 was fused by Dr. Edward Donner, to remove a leaking disc marginally attached to the annulus from which it was torn. I have no idea where the notion of degenerative disc disease in my lumbar came from. Last year a C&P examiner noted among other things, a lack of ankylosis at C6-7, typically associated with that condition the VA now asserts in this malpractice claim denial. I have not been tested for the HLA-B27 gene, so this administrative conclusion appears to be another presumptive non-diagnosis, with no medical basis. The deteriorating conditions on either end of my spine certainly are issues, but osteoarthritis wasn’t the cause, and it’s not the leading factor now.
With the exception of my still naturally-functional knees rated at Air Force retirement age 45, now suffering nerve pain, all my currently problematic orthopedic issues including the hips, stem either directly or indirectly from injuries. My first claim for the loss of my right hip was precipitated by a motorcycle accident in 1986. The early onset of osteoarthritis claiming my hips as their first victims was an indirect result of that event. The C-spine was another vehicle-related accident, differing largely in it’s immediate manifestation. The knees and mid/lower spine were my only major body parts still functioning as intended, not yet sufficiently damaged from injurious traumas to require surgery before 2019.
A lumbar disc was torn open on January 8th 2019 by Dr. Andrew Park, in a fashion at least an order of magnitude greater than what happened at C6-7 in 2001. Fusion surgery to repair the leaking disc followed an eleven month-long fight for diagnosis with providers at the ECHCS VA facility in Aurora. For some reason they just flatly refused to diagnose me (re: Dr. Knight). What if anything was ever done about that problem remains in question. The abusive, negligent mistreatment I was subjected to in that denial-after-the-fact process is unforgivable.
I’m sure Dr. Park did his best, and the new hip is great, but pointing to that tear already being there calls for an explanation as to why I never complained about it before, why it was never called out in an MRI until the one I demanded in June 2019, and how every person who’s ever done a day’s real work in their lives has any number of benign annular tears up and down their spine. How a guy with a torn/leaking lumbar ever became a hip replacement candidate in the first place might be a good starting point, if the history of that L4-5 tear is in question. Much more pressure that day, and I probably would have been totally paralyzed.
Alarming new lumbar symptoms emerged the day I stopped pain med two weeks after the hip surgery. Dr. Park might remember exactly what I told him about that the day I finally managed to corner him, demanding new imaging after waiting for three hours. Dr. Sluder, my PCP at the time, told me “sometimes it just takes longer to get over an operation like this.” That is not the worst of the bullshittery I have been subjected to in this process, but I have only so much time here today. My pleas for help were systematically ignored while I was sent on the run-around.
I am a sentient being with intimate knowledge of my body, betrayed by the system I trusted to care for me. I know what happened, who did it, where it happened, exactly when it happened, and how it has left me crippled, and my life turned upside down in this ongoing travesty. After holding a Top Secret security clearance for 25 years I never imagined my candor coming into question in any official government capacity. Seems like that old accountability issue cropping up everywhere these days. The fact I was repeatedly steered away from and in fact, directly denied diagnosis (re: Iliev, Sylvestri, Brinkis, Knight, et al) was pure negligence.
Medical records need corrected and updated to reflect the true cause of my current condition. That goes for the topic of this claim as well. I don’t know where the degenerative disc nonsense came from, probably the same sort who tried to adjust my c-spine appeal in the government’s favor. This claim is for the malpractice suffered on January 8th 2019 in Aurora Colorado, resulting in a leaking disc requiring lumbar fusion to repair – period. The records need backed by a written mea culpa from the Director of that facility for the way I was treated during an 11-month long failure to diagnose. I also want a face-to-face meeting with Dr’s Park, Brinkis, their boss and whoever that Director happens to be whenever we get around to it. I have a few questions about some post-op protocols that may or may not be in effect there.
To Mr. Arnold Tovar, the person who managed to get me on the phone one day after my complaints reached The Secretary the 1st time: His response to this issue ending our conversation was “I know what you want…” followed by a long rhetorical pause. THAT should have been a foregone conclusion the moment Dr. Park pushed a little too hard. I came home from the hospital with a black-and-blue left foot. Seemed odd at first, making more sense later after the medication wore off and festering set it. They broke my back and left me to rot. The look on that resident’s face who came to check on me the morning after a 180+BP breakthrough episode said it all. Too bad I was too drugged up to know any better at the time.
Then they refused to diagnose me. Imagine that. Things were obviously done so I would not be diagnosed. A comprehensive look at the record clearly shows that to any cold-eye reader. This type of mistreatment will not be considered acceptably de-riguer, and those responsible will be held accountable. Brinkis’ vague referral after I told him what was wrong with me made a great red herring for the first couple spine guys. Knight spent more time looking for needle tracks than she did trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I flushed out another one in Loveland upon arrival, but got lucky with Donner, because I was at the end of my rope. Imagine living a year with a festering back injury on top of a fresh hip replacement with NOBODY willing to admit there was anything wrong with you. Withholding diagnosis like that was torture.
My repeated response to anyone questioning any aspect of this claim or the veracity of any statement I have ever made about it in any format: What 60 year-old doesn’t have normal low back pain? My mid-lower back was probably the only remaining portion of my skeleton not seriously damaged or degraded by injuries before 2019. The Social Security Administration now asserts that a former tech worker such as myself is not disabled because they can still sit in front of a computer. I imagine if the government had their way, I’d still be in front of their computer in a wheelchair. Being partially paralyzed throughout the entire right side of my body now has me starting to envy some of the new prosthetic limb tech – at least they can move about more-or-less at will.
VA bureaucrats need to spend a few minutes reading the true account of what happened to me, if you haven’t already. It’s a lot easier to understand and much shorter than the medical records, which are well cited. I hope this provides a good example to help future victims. I could see what they were trying to do after Brinkis’ referral, so I wrote it all down. I’m still waiting for somebody to explain how the right side of my body went out following a left hip replacement. Let me know when you figure it out.
Sincerely,
Paul D. Shaffer, MSgt, USAF (ret.)
P.S. CSI gets a pass, only because they were misled – but the insurance shakedown and phytocannaharvaresia were things. Props to the Colonel and his crew. The right hip seems to have held up well under two years of his successor’s abuse. It’s well shielded with the hard limp I have on it now.
(Submitted to the Board of Veterans Appeals 15 JUN 21)
