OK. This is for real. No joke.
Down deep, floating along the river of my “unconscious” (deeper, actually: the Lizard Brain) is the “Chef” character from Apocalypse Now, who made the mistake of “stepping off the boat” only to be attacked by a tiger within 5 minutes in the Jungle: “I don’t need this shit man! I’m bugging out! I didn’t stay in school all the way to the eighth grade for this shit, man. All I wanna do is cook! I’m a fucking cook, all I ever wanted to do is fucking cook!”
I’m positive the “Lizard Brain” (medulla?) controls every aspect of the physical. When The Lizard says “Lungs, breathe!” they breathe; when it says “Heart, beat!” it beats; when it says “Fight!” your fists go up, and when it says “Flee!” your feet do their stuff. It’s an intelligent lizard, erudite. Can read your DNA. Knows how you’re gonna live your life and when you’re gonna die. Doesn’t speak directly to your conscious “I,” though, except through neurally transmitted messages interpreted, translated and converted by the Unconscious, usually via dreams, to signals your comparably dim-witted Consciousness can understand.
Once or twice a year my Lizard sends out some alleged “terminal illness situation” or alleged “crippling back/hip/bone” thing. All I gotta do is take the physical “hit,” sit out a few weeks or months, do some hospital time, and for the rest of the year pursue my Object Oriented Prose Programming, related reading and maybe post the occasional feckless diatribe against Power on a website like this one and be left the hell alone.
My congenital condition is Diamond Blackfan Anemia, an extremely rare blood disease that should have knocked me off years ago, from which my wily Lizard Brain concocts odd and sundry “get outta jail free” cards, all verifiable on x-rays, lab-tests, MRIs, etc. But again: the whole Quantum physics thing about observer and observed. Some Medico looks at tests and sees a new Mercedes or down payment on a condo; I look at the same tests, which I can more or less read by now, and see me walking away after the “hit” relatively intact, and free to get back on the boat and “cook.”
So, I honestly do think I’m pulling some kind of “scam” with this disability/Medicare shit. Seems like a good hustle, no? Beats getting drunk daily so I can work in an office as an Ad Exec. I thought I was a pretty fucking smart dude — or a lucky one, to have such a like-minded medulla (or whatever surreal, sub-cerebral dessert night it is where The Lizard resides).
But the other day, I had to “organize my records” for Medicaid/Medicare, etc. Piles and piles and piles of paper — just for the past three years alone, never-mind the other 15 years I’ve been dealing with this shit, albeit without government “subsidization.” I’m looking through these 6 hospitalizations (not counting various ER visits and one-day stays), three surgeries — six blasts of chemo from April through July (“strange brew, kill what’s inside of you”), a zillion cat scans, pet scans and other domestic animal scans; twice monthly blood tests and lab work; about a dozen transfusions (not bad considering I’ve had over 100 during my career); 2 pneumonias needed super-grade anti-biotics that permanently blew out the hearing in my left ear and required subsequent hospitalizations for that godawful C-diff, kinda like synthetic dysentery (career total: 16 pneumonias); expensive, painful yearly bone-density infusions; the “chemo-lite” I have to take to clean the excess iron from my blood, which makes me so fucking sick I can only do it a few times a week though I’m supposed to drink it every day (which is cool, cause I save the extra pills, which total $6000/year for this alka-seltzer-like substance that’s prevented me from checking out “before my time” since 2007; honestly, you’d think “my time” would be up by now; am I scamming the Grim Reaper himself?) and visits to doctors for the blood thing; impending hip surgery to replace the full right hip replacement I had fifteen years ago, age 32, which was rained-out by an emergency splenectomy in March; and impending eye-surgery cause some kind of film is growing over the cataracts I had removed from both eyes ten years ago, when I was in my 30s (nix on both hip and eyes: so I’ll gimp around in pain for a while, and let the fucking cataracts grow back for all I care: no more surgeries until after my 50th birthday — three years from now).
All this totals to well over a quarter million dollars. Roughly $150/year; at least $50 grand in a “healthy” year.
Again, nothing’s free. Gladly take the physical hits for freedom to “cook.”
But then I started wondering: Cui Bono?
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few years. From WHO to WHOM? As Deep Throat said (no, not “come all over my face;” that other Deep Throat, the guy who ratted out Nixon), “Follow the Money.”
Now, the kitty all these government agencies dip into, the “tax-payer’s money” is allegedly under “fire” by Tea Party-type clowns, simpletons and lunatics. Bullshit. The $50-100 Billion, if it’s even that much, reserved for Social Security-type benefits, which always carry significant out-of-pocket expenses, is chump change compared to the $Trillion/year “defense” budget or the $3 Trillion ear-marked (at least a $Trillion spent) “bailing out the banks” by allowing the five too-big-to-fail banks to consolidate into three even-too-bigger-to-fail (and if they do, so what? it’s YOUR dime) mega Banks run by executives who most certainly failed but were rewarded with government subsidized bonuses anyway.
Suddenly I’m thinking I ain’t such a smartypants after all.
Like all government money give-aways (as if they cared either way), everything spent goes back into the economy, more valuable to the Big Players than if it was paid in cash to all recipients and socked away in their little “savings” accounts. This money in particular is going to Big Insurance, Big Medicine, Big Chemistry and Big Pharma, not to mention subsidiaries and add-ins like hospital cleaning and meal services. Essentially, I really am a “franchise,” like good ol’ Tom Seaver when he pitched for the NY Mets. My presence on the mound ensures a nice pay-day for alotta folks — and minimum wage for the sanitation and cafeteria workers and other “unskilled laborers” around the stadium (“Beer here!” “Hot-dogs get yer hot-dogs, only 3-bucks!” etc.)
In this scenario, I am a first class sucker. I am generating hundreds of thousands in business for Big Business for a poverty-level “stipend” of $11,000 a year, from which Medicare and other expenses are lifted immediately, not to mention doctor copays, drug copays, etc. leaving me with just enough for rent, rice and beans and whatever e-Cigs I can get working the occasional free-lance gig.
Still a good deal, in my opinion; better live modestly, if somewhat painfully, in freedom than die daily in luxury as a cubicle/office slave.
Sure, I shrugged off the whole lymphoma/chemo thing like it was nothing (didn’t puke, didn’t even burp; went bald but it’s growing back…), like every other “life or death” or “potentially crippling” situation I’m faced with once a year or so, making me even more certain it’s a Lizard Brain “mechanism” for saving my ass from The Job — extremely difficult for an Object Oriented Prose Programmer to get any work done at The Job.
But what if I really were “disabled?” What if I really did “succumb” to all the evil shit I was supposed to deal with from cancer and its strange Brew “cure” and really did need the zillion transfusions I was supposed to need just in order to withstand chemo without croaking?
THIS is what I’d be “surviving cancer” for? Penalties for being too sick to “re-up” the Medicaid they canceled cause it was sent to the wrong address? Having to spend what would be my “recovery and healing time” dealing with all this paper-work, hustling to various hospital and government offices and being “responsible” for the 90-percent Medicare didn’t cover — to the tune of about $10 grand — might as well be $10 Million. Hey, I brought them millions over the past 15 years. They could at least cut a deal.
Again, better to take the yearly physical hits than sacrifice my time to The Company — and worse, pay taxes for the privilege of complicity in the Empire’s conquests: blood on my hands rather than transfused into my veins. I’ll take the latter, thank you very much.
But the real deal is this: Am I the scammer or the scammed?
According to the above analysis, I am the willing scammed, but scammed nonetheless. Imagine how much all the institutions that receive the hundreds of thousands of $$$ I generate (which if measured on a “per-capita” basis, is really decent money) would miss having me around, especially since I’m only one of many, some of whom probably bring in even bigger bucks.
I really am shameless…but honestly, I’m no worse than those Wall Street guys who pull off much bigger hustles (destroying thousands of people in the process). Also, unlike them, I’m willing to put my body “on the line” to get what I want…
Multiple Choice:
Willing wily scammer, or willing albeit witless scammed?
Just type (a) for willing wily scammer, (b) for willing witless scammed, or (c) for “both”