I can’t sleep anymore, or it’s very hard to get to sleep. Ever since last Wednesday (and, truth be told, the Tuesday night before because I feared what came), when I found out this cancer is Stage IV, I can’t sleep until 5 or 6 a.m. Which I can’t afford to do tonight since I have a 10 a.m. appointment with (get this name): The Texas Department of State Health Services County Indigent Health Care Program. Sounds rather bureaucratic.
Where: I am the indigent. Three degrees and I fucked things up so bad that I have stage IV colon cancer and have nary a penny to my name, not even a car anymore. It’s a long story and maybe I’ll tell it at some future date, but it does not make me particularly proud of myself. And, I confess, nor does it make me feel particularly deserving of public assistance to pay for my chemo at age 54 after screwing up my life. My mother feels I deserve it, so I’m going along with her, but I keep thinking of some poor, dumb schmuck, or some child, or some woman with child who can’t find two pennies to rub together and needs prenatal care, or some poor dumb schmuck who is exactly in my shoes, but who has lived a more fruitful life ... I was all gung ho, “I’m going to fight this thing and win!” when I got out of the hospital. Not anymore. Maybe I’ll get it back, but I’m pretty down on myself these days and wonder what the fuck is it worth trying for? Surely there are people with better odds and better lives than me. Not that I want to die or even think about it, but ... I was stupid enough to blow my health insurance so maybe I should pay for it. Certainly a political conservative would agree with me. Granted, I was SICK; Major Clinical Depression is a sickness and I would argue ad nauseum for anyone with said disease to get any and all benefits they qualify for. But not for me. Such is the state of this mind. It’s depression, is what it is; that and a lot of confusion and self-hate and truth mixed in. But I still can't put that puzzle together.
So I’m whining. This is my blog. I’m trying to be honest.
Anyway, I’ve got the indigent program people to meet with tomorrow, in the county seat of my county. B.J., an angel of a home health nurse, is giving us a ride at 9 a.m., for a 10 o’clock appointment. I’ll never get to sleep in time so I just decided to stay up. Maybe it’ll make me look more pitiful ...
What a selfish cad I am! Tell you another thing: the shirt and jeans I’ll be wearing tomorrow are from Walmart and Chinese dirt cheap. Indigent-looking, one might say. So I’m a crafty cad who feels guilty all at the same time. What a piece of work. And I’ll BEG the woman, if necessary, I will. Some people would call this behavior Gemini; I call it me, all confused and still, at 54, not knowing exactly who I am.
IF I’m approved for this program, I’ll get the chemotherapy I need. But I don’t expect to be approved. 1) Because of my habitual bad luck, and 2) Because the social workers at the hospital told us that they would probably reject me, but if I had a rejection notice on paper I could then use that to get into the program; they’d have to take me. I don’t understand it, either. Have to take me as the hospital ER had to take me w/o health insurance.
Which bring up yet another tortuous dilemma that’s been torturing me lately: At what point do I let my mother have all these bills pile up before I pull the plug and refuse any and all treatment? I can see that day coming, very soon in fact. Of course, she won’t have it. She’ll scream bloody murder and beg me to keep going, no matter what the cost out of pocket, and it could cost everything very quickly.
Fuck that. I can’t handle that thought right now. I just can’t. One thing at a time, one hour at a time. Indigent health care today. Someone cynical might tell me, “look pitiful”. Hey, I don’t have to act these days.
More craft: I'll look more pitiful after staying up all night. (You said that, cancer guts!)
Hey, all joking aside, I have monsters in my lymphatic system, looking to overwhelm normal cells in every organ of my body and kill me. That's pretty pitiful all by itself.
