Monthly Archives: April 2014

These are the outdoor cats tended by jeanne’s family a few blocks away. Note the cat with the pliers and spray lubricant waits patiently while those lower three hang around being useless eaters. The top cat [above] knows all this but doesn’t care so long as the work gets done by the worker cat. It’s all factored in, and the lower three cats are relatives.

Puzzling critter, the human mind.  A year ago I hadn’t been examined by a physician for almost two decades and I took full responsibility for my health, was certain I would continue to do so without the involvement of physicians.

If I manage to remain alive long enough to write another long book I might begin with the premise a person just never can tell.  Or something profound along the lines of ‘never say never’.

I began trylng to understand how I got from there to here last night.  I’m thinking it had a lot to do with the cats.  At the time I had my [what’s now by hindsight clearly a serious] heart attack November 7, 2013, I was in the middle of nowhere on Gale’s property in Texas.  If I’d dived out of this lifetime and the cats were trapped inside the RV they might have joined me the hard way in a few days by dehydration.

Everything else, the week in the Kerrville Hospital, the trip to Andrews and stay with Eddie Brewer while attempting to begin VA medical care, the return to Gale’s and final dash to Kansas all followed in tiny increments of the mind.  Micro-abdications made in ignorance with a growing determination to know what the hell was wrong with me.

All without ever making a clear and decisive, well-thought-out decision to abandon the conscious philosophical position I’ve held twenty years and never doubted during that time.

So here I sit with a stack of monthly co-pay payments to make out of a skinny pool of finances, taking a lot of medications, carrying a defibrillator in my shoulder, and not profoundly improved in my physical capabilities over November and December, 2013.

Please don’t willfully misunderstand me and think I’m implying my choices were ‘wrong’.  I don’t know whether they were wrong, or right, or whether concepts of wrong and right even fit into the equation.  What I’m saying is that my life enjoyed a major change in direction without the guy in the pilot seat ever having given the matter any thought.

If not wrong or right, probably irresponsible at the least.

A year ago the chances of my living long enough to burn through the money, minus interest, I paid into Social Security over half-century was zilch.  I’ve never figured out what the interest would amount to, nor factored in the FICA paid in by employers.

But I confess in all honesty that I’m probably approaching the great divide because of Medicare paying off for my hospital bills and testing during 2014.  Not to mention all the costs the VA is absorbing in other testing and examinations.  This, by virtue of my being a hero and having protected the freedoms of all you vacant eyed US citizens.  Back when men were men and constantly faced the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases in foreign lands.

So without ever having made a conscious choice to do so, I’ve been reduced to the status of health beggar, become the burden on society I’d have sworn I’d never be.

Precisely how such a thing could come to pass certainly ought to be the subject of a treatise.

But it’s mostly because of the damned cats.

Old Jules