Well. Time to face the music. Time to go.
The appointment with death… cannot be put off any longer.
Or rather. What did I call it?
Te Deum? Spiegel im Spiegel?
The going away party for Genghis Khan.
Yeah. That’s what I told Dr. Bilchik. (Anton J. Bilchik, MD, PhD, MBA, FACS, Professor of Surgery and Chief of Medicine at the John Wayne Cancer Institute). My highly rated hepatic surgeon.
I told him that I had named my malignant neoplasm, Genghis, as in… And that I hoped he would be willing to host a going away party for… the venerable Khan… on March the 25th, 2014.
He was not amused. He looked kind of startled, and grossed out. Maybe, insulted that I would ask such a personal favor of him? There was an awkward, obligatory silence.
Fratres.
I furthered with. Yeah. He told me his name. We have long conversations. But. Dr. Bilchik did not laugh, smile, or…
He was chirruping along one moment, answering questions about my chances of survival with humorous insights…
“I’m going to give you an extra year to live. What you’re going to do (about the cancer) after that is the ten-million dollar question?… har har har”…
He appeared… decidedly, not interested… in commenting on my personal relationship with Genghis. Personalizing a tumor was not his brand of… graveside humor? I guess. (Tumor humor… a widely underserved market?) He reminded me coldly that (as host of the death hoopla in my absence, his role… my words, not his) his portion of the surgical costs,
separate from the hospital charges, was going to be ten grand. A certified check on the morning of…
Yeah, right. I knew the routine from my sigmoid colon removal by Dr. Cobb at Mad River in August of 2009. I wouldn’t forget the certified check in the amount of… filled out to…
That was back in the days before I qualified for advanced Obamacare… PCIP… pre-existing condition insurance plan… miraculous health insurance! When I had to sign a check for… a healthy sum, and… agree on the spot to a monthly repayment schedule… in writing, at the front admissions desk… with Madame, the… humorless hospital hatchet lady.
I said to HHH. I talked to Dr. Cobb, and, he said, that if everything goes well… it should take no more than a few days to recover from the surgery and… all cost around… 20-25,$$$ grand.
She looked unimpressed. I’ll see you… 25,$$$ grand… and raise you… 250,$$$ grand!!! That’s what my “hospital code insurance index” lists for this procedure.
EEeeesh. If all… does not… go well? $,$$$,$$$….. Gulp. And that was for a mere… sigmoid colon lop.
Hell. Back in ’09. I was surfing on Oahu three weeks after surgery. With my old high school buddy, turned anesthesiologist, John Hunter. Hello, John Boy!! We had a blast that year! Hope you’re catching some great boogie board rides!
If a measly sigmoid colon snip was insurance coded to cost in the neighborhood of $250,000!? I could only imagine what an up scale… gated community… liver resection could cost. But. This time. Besides the ten grand cash handed over to my… celebrity host… surgeon for his couple of hours of hard work. I had Obama to thank for covering… “the lion’s share”… of the hospital costs of my surgery, and recovery. Thanks, Obama!! You tried to fight the medical mafia! And. Thanks, dad. Thanks, Hugh Liles, for covering the huge costs of saving my life more than once. You’re the greatest!
I wonder when the “unalienable rights”… the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”…. I wonder when the “right to life” will mean quality, affordable… life saving… universal health care… without the endlessly negative, hateful, runaround bullshit… in the United States? Why is procuring and owning a military style assault weapon considered a god given, constitutional right in our country? While access to affordable medical treatment is a bureaucratic nightmare in a maze of hostility, cruelty and indifference?
Anyway. We loaded up Lisa’s Honda Odyssey van with a hundred-and-fifty-something-thousand miles on it. Lisa, Jasper and I. And we headed to Santa Monica for the cancer rager party of the season… on March 25, 2014.
Uuuhhh. For those… one or two? of you. Who may be following this live blog, Adobe Portfolio website performance…
Syrah. My fifteen-year-old daughter. Remember her? Yes, no… maybe?
Fur Alina.
Well. NO. In case you’re wondering… She definitely did not get invited to this party. She was given a one-way ticket to Vermont. To go back to live with her mother. So, it was just the three of us… Lisa, Jasper and…
Actually. I surfed Pleasure Point, Pismo Beach… a few unnamed spots along the way… and two decent days of shoulder-high rights at Malibu. On the way to the party… the Genghis “Get Lost” Santa Monica Beach Bash.
Magnificat.
How about John Cage’s 4’33… and hold the final note.
On the morning of… March 25… I handed off my certified check… and was briskly, promptly rolled… bright and early… into surgery. Before going under, I had a chance to glance around the room.
Wow. Better than the command deck of the Starship Enterprise!! What a gorgeous, spanking new, high tech lit, softly shaded in stunning… sea foam and mauve color accents… polished and gleaming…
What an impressive, aesthetically pleasing operating theater!
Dang nice place to perform, I imagined comfortingly to myself, as I drifted off into silent oblivion.
And then. And then. And then… the shit hit the…?
The Canada goose hit the fan blades of the Pratt and Whitney Canada 118 left turboprop on the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia minutes after…
I don’t know what happened next.
Hours later… after noon? I guess? I sort of woke up? In lurid semi-darkness. In a weirdly swimming room. In a sinking chartreuse submarine filling up with… dingy aquamarine sea water?
There was a… striking chart on the wall in… bold black and pale green—
RATE YOUR PAIN ON A SCALE OF 1-10…
And, a roundish… sickly green colored… Salvador Dali clock, with oozing Arabic numerals, 1-12…
And, someone was saying…
Sir, Sir…
Do you hear me, sir?
I asked you a question….
On a scale of 1-10…
One being the lowest, ten being the highest…
How would you rate…
Sir, Sir…
Listen to me…
Sir, on a scale of 1-10…
One being very little pain…
Do you hear me, sir?
I asked you a question….
On a scale of 1-10…
One being the lowest, ten being the highest…
How would you rate…
Sir, Sir…
Listen to me…
Sir, on a scale of 1-10…
One being very little pain…
Ten being a lot of pain…
Sir, Sir
Sir, Sir
WTF!?
Would you stop screaming in my fucking ear!? It hurts like a mother fucker!! Enough already…
Sir, Sir…
Listen to me.
I’m asking you a question.
On a scale of ten…
On a scale of 1-10…
Listen to me.
I’m asking you a question.
On a scale of ten…
On a scale of 1-10…
One hundred!! Ok. It hurts like hell. Would you stop saying that so goddamn loud!?
Sir.
I’m doing my best here.
Sir, you have to answer my question.
Now.
Sir.
On a scale of…
On a scale of…
On a scale of….
I’m doing my best here.
Sir, you have to answer my question.
Now.
Sir.
On a scale of…
On a scale of…
On a scale of….
Have you ever died and woken up in hell?
Well. Then you understand.
As far as I can remember. That robotic “person” who kept repeating the annoying phrase… “On a scale of 1-10”. That humanoid simulacrum straight out of a Phil Dick sci-fi novel was a shape-shifter. Some kind of multiple, split-personality android with an attitude. That paranoid schizophrenic robot was not a “real person”. What I mean is. That entity that entered my hospital room… suddenly… unpredictably… at odd hours… intent on inflicting pain upon me…
IT.
It just kept metamorphosing… switching bodies. Young black, angry female one minute. Young pissed off, Hispanic male the next. Young distracted, belligerent, arrogant… in a hurry Asian male this time. Young disgruntled, mixed racial stereotype, sexual orientation unknown… fill in the angry… blank—
BUT.
The totally… not awesome… not welcome… negative attitude. That did not change.
OH NO.
We are consistently pissed off, sir. We, the people… We hate our job. And. We definitely don’t like you.
It was insane. Hell is insanity. Hell is John Wayne Cancer Institute, Providence Saint John’s Hospital, Santa Monica, circa. March, 2014.
It all started with… THE SCALE OF 1-10… the sinister harpy robots and…
The monster with the gargantuan green eyeball.
I don’t know what else to call it but… a cyclops?
I don’t know what else to call it but… a cyclops?
THE SANTA MONICA CYCLOPS!
Yeah. Straight out of Odysseus’ yarn.
Santa Monica. Not my preferred saint apparently. Lost. On the Island of the Great Green Cyclops. Jeeez… Maybe that was her… Sister Monica, mad as all hell?
So. It was late afternoon in pale green eternity? And. One of those split personality PKD Blade Runner/Total Recall automatons placed some kind of weird, suspicious-looking, oblong black plastic gizmo with a wire sticking out of it in my feeble right hand. And, it said—
When the pain reaches a “10”…
Push this button.
Push this button.
You see the light?
You see the green illuminated light?
Here, on this box.
You see it?
That light will go on after ten minutes.
When that light goes on, you may push this button.
It will dispense pain medication then.
And only then.
You see?
When this green light is on.
You see the green illuminated light?
Here, on this box.
You see it?
That light will go on after ten minutes.
When that light goes on, you may push this button.
It will dispense pain medication then.
And only then.
You see?
When this green light is on.
Yes—
Otherwise, you must wait.
You must wait for the green light to…
You must wait for the green light to…
So. Buddabuddabudda…
That’s how it all ends, folks!!
That’s how we die these days. In these ritzy, modern times with all the bells, whistles and convenient gadgets…
If you were wondering?
Well. I could elaborate. More glitz? Sure, why not?
A cup of dragonwell… anyone?
Hit me, boss.
So. The green light on the modern clicker-thing? The green light turns into a giant, sinister, angry cyclops. With no name. The cyclops is a lurid, sickly, unearthly… Shrek-green… (naturally). The cyclops has a clock face… for a face. It’s a pallid, ghastly, floating, roundish… hostile, threatening… clock face with Arabic numerals, 1-12.
In hell. One stares at a clock.
In hell. The clock stares back.
In hell. The clock stares back.
Well. A disembodied one. A presence. An awareness. A concentrated, stripped to the bone, invisible self. Stares without eyes. At a cyclopean monster with a flat… sometimes concave, sometimes convex… but, a generally flat… otherwise bland… roundish clock face for a face. With one large bright green eye in its pale green forehead. One green, electrically illuminated eye. That is—
One waits. One watches a lonely minute hand… swim-crawl… like a Tarkovsky slow pan of a pollywog… in a dismal, mesmerizing pond… for an eternity. One waits for ten minutes to pass. Ten minutes that grow longer and longer with each cycle of repetition. One waits for the dull green eyeball to illuminate. One waits for the all-powerful cyclops. To open his stoplight green, magic, electric… singular eyeball.
So one may push.
The pain.
Relief.
Button.
Once. Again.
The pain.
Relief.
Button.
Once. Again.
Hell is infinitely boring. And painful. Oh yeah.
On a scale of 1-10. It’s over a hundred by eternal minute 8… minus 2 and counting…
One is slobbering and begging by minute 6… But. Never mind.
One will get to.
One will get to.
Iterate.
To repeat this exercise over and over.
For as long as it takes.
Each time.
To repeat this exercise over and over.
For as long as it takes.
Each time.
The precious green light.
Goes.
Goes.
Out.
And. That’s not all, folks! Oh no.
Did you think we’re getting off that easy?!
Just watch a cyclopean clock for an eternity in ungodly…
Unending pain?!
Nice try.
Slowly. Eeeevvver. SOOoooooo. SLLlllllOOOOoooooolly…
That disembodied awareness, egoless self-thing? Consciousness, its melting switch? That invisible smoldering fuse of “once was”…
Slowly, one begins to notice that… How to describe the indescribable nightmare?
One begins to notice that a bizarre, alternate reality body… a hideous, imaginary shape is forming. Out of horrible, gnashing teeth sounds…
Out of pure, awful… grinding, wailing, screaming, disembodied noise…
Like a thousand car pile up on the LA freeway at rush hour… in slow motion at first… but, slowly gaining momentum… with metal grinding, tires screeching, horns blaring, sirens wailing, car alarms, screams for help…
One is apparently beginning to reform oneself… like a segmented nautilus shell, out of a silent scream. But. Not the soft, blubbery self… not the familiar protoplasmic, meat bodied ego. Not the pink, conch-like, fleshy sea creature… the pair of clatter-claws, scuttle-bubbling on the bottom…
Oh. No. Fat chance.
One is beginning to take an amorphous, strange… chunky, lumpy, loopy thickening… viscous tubular shape… to jell, crust and scale over… out of molten asphalt, diesel flames, liquified and rigid metal alloys, burning rubber, toxic gaseous clouds…
One’s nacreous, black, nascent… “naked pain body”… is emerging… fusing slowly… fissioning in primordial plasmatic darkness… volcanically erupting… as a celluloid, electro-plated, shifting-tectonic, “evil transformer” dragon… in tunnel Panavision 3D with full Dolby Digital HD… inner boa constrictor surround sound… out of a whirling lava pool… welling up in downtown LA… ripping… through the molten, writhing matrix of underground electric cables… tearing… through the dripping steel foundation girders and crumbling beams of hospitals… and falling high rises… like some blithering, slithering, bellowing… titanous monster in the burning abyss of…
Tartarus, USA!!
It is extremely visceral.
It feels totally real.
Hideously real.
Uncomfortably.
Unavoidably.
Inescapably.
Painful.
It feels totally real.
Hideously real.
Uncomfortably.
Unavoidably.
Inescapably.
Painful.
These agonizingly wrenching, grinding, wailing… sounds, sensations, movements, feelings… regurgitations… of one’s death/re-birth… one’s re-imprisonment… into the matrix of form again… out of emptiness… out of annihilated, putrid nothing… after staring for an eternity… at the great green cyclops clock… on the banal hospital wall… waiting
This post operative… opioid drug-induced sensation… of sliding out of the ragged jaws of… the bellowing womb of hell… in a raw, painful… highly vulnerable… tender… violated state… was… is… most disagreeable.
Bad enough.
But. Then. The sinister, angry robots come. And they keep coming, morphing, repeating…
On a scale of 1-10…
Sir, on a scale of 1-10…
On a scale of 1-10, sir…
Sir, on a scale of 1-10…
On a scale of 1-10, sir…
Sir, you have to answer my question.
Did you hear me, sir?
Did you hear me, sir?
On a scale of ten…
On a scale of 1-10…
With ten being
On a scale of 1-10…
With ten being
. . . . . . . . .
And, how many people have died in the recent opioid epidemic so far?
On a scale of 1-10…
On a scale of 10-10,000…
On a scale of 10,000-100,000…
Hello, sir?!
You have to answer my question, sir
You have to answer my question, sir
