The Broken Soldier

Got a call from Knox yesterday.  A doctor.  Of what he didn’t say, and frankly I don’t care.  We talked for a few minutes about what’s been going on for the last 15 months.  He seemed confused.  Though I’ve observed feigning confusion is a common tactic used by Army leadership.  Example, “What?  Soldiers need body armor and up-armored Hummers in a war zone?  More common sense rules of engagement?  Hospital rooms sans black mold?  Aduhhyyyyeee.”  But he promised that if surgery is what I need, the seeming consensus opinion of every fucking civilian doctor in Michigan, then surgery is what I’ll have.

We talked about my symptoms, the results of the many diagnostic batteries I’ve had and of the converging conclusions of each, and of standard treatment conventions.  At first he was standoffish and condescending.  He tried to test me, or perhaps more accurate, my understanding of this injury.  I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, metaphorically speaking.  Fhufhufhufhufhu.  He recognized, giving him some credit for being mildly observant, unusual for a government employee, people with my educational background teach neuroscience and human anatomy and physiology to people with his educational background.

He ended our discussion with a cautionary of the risks of surgery, and a promise to resolve this matter by today.  Wonder if Bruce’s email to Ireland Community’s commander, full of piss and virulence, threatening, not idly, to name her as top co-defendant in the writ had something to do with this ‘positive’ development.

Sarah sent me the following link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354985,00.html
“Increasing numbers of U.S. troops have left the military with damaged bodies and minds, an ever-larger pool of disabled veterans that will cost the country billions of dollars for decades to come — even as the total population of America’s veterans shrinks.“

Just got back from the neurosurgeon.  He was late for our appointment (again).  MRI confirms the other tests.  MRI also reveals new problems: L3-L5 desiccation.  Fuck.

This started as a ’simple’ lateral disc herniation at L5-S1.  After over a year of neglect, two to three discs are now involved.  As anyone with any understanding of biophysics can tell you, one fucked disc places additional stress and torsion on the others above and below it.  Additional stress can cause desiccation and injury.

More good news.  Because the herniation is so far lateral, the surgery on my spine, tentatively scheduled for 5 June, pending pre-authorization from TriCare, will have to be performed going through my side.  Yes, they’re going to cut through about a foot of Jimison flank to get to my spine.  Cover your eyes darlin’.  Fuck!

If this doesn’t work, which it probably won’t given the severity of desiccation at L5-S1, the doc is talking fusion instead of replacement.  Something of a backpedal.  He said he checked on the types of replacement devices available in Michigan, and they are, according to him, prone to failure.  Though I have reservations about fusion, given that approach creates additional pressure on discs above or below (c.f. above).

But there is good news.  While looking at the gross, in every sense of that word, morphology of my spine and attending structures, the doc said my cauda equina was ‘cute.’  I wasn’t sure what to make of that statement.  But as he’s going to be cutting into me soon I humored him and agreed.

I just got back from dropping Sarah off at her old office.  She’ll be gone for a couple/few days making her old company look smart, much much much smarter than they really are, in front of various Lindens.  For the next few days I’ll be sans babysitter.  The bad habits of bachelorhood are already creeping.

I probably shouldn’t self-incriminate, as my wife will likely be reading this, but in two hours I’ve already violated several rules.  I drank milk from the container.  I smoked in the living room.  I’ve been eating pecan pie from the tin with my hands.  Unshaved.  Unshowered.  I figure I’ll be fully feral by the time she returns.  It’s cold and rainy here in my piece of Heaven, and my injuries are bothering me.  It’s unlikely my fits of graceless depravity will spill outside.  And I’ll do my best to keep the crude condiment cave drawings of me sustenance-hunting my pets and couch cushion-gathering to a minimum.  That’s a lie.  I couldn’t reach the tip top of the cathedral ceiling anyway, and there’s plenty in the freezer to eat.  Though I may throttle the squawking parrot anyway.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be violating another rule: Driving.  That is, unless I can convince a friend or family member to rip themselves from a warm bed before 9 a.m. to take me to the neurosurgeon.  I’ll keep ya posted.

I’m on Twitter now.  Always late to the party.

I met a really nice lady there.  Trish.  She has a really cool website, cool in its design and cool in its purpose.  The site allows one to contact men and women of our armed forces serving overseas.  The importance of this program can’t be overstated.  For some, it is the only contact with the home front they have.

http://emailourmilitary.com/

H.S. Thompson, God rest his soul, had a great gift in the 70s.  A gift, that if we are to honor his own oft offered Voltaire quote ” to the dead we only owe truth,” squandered in many respects to pump out popular ‘gonzo’ image-enhancing wheeze for drug money in the 80s and 90s.  “… hellishly intense introspective nightmares” is one of my favorite phrases from his “productive” years.  Though not the product of similar process, the phrase captures, as perfectly as an imperfect tool like language can, my experience since coming off pain medications.  In particular, a subject I can’t seem to escape these days, what to do now given my physical limitations.  The Army Officer ship, the basket into which my wife and I placed most of our eggs, breached the blue without us.

I am fortunate, though, to have knowledgeable family and friends caring for me.  Unlike our dead friend, for reasons not slavish and or self-serving.  One such friend is Brian MacPherson.  I’ve mentioned Brian here a few times, and he has posted here a few times.

Brian and I met on one of the worst days of Brian’s life: The last day of the University of Michigan Diversity Conference of 2001.  Basically an administration initiated, tax and tuition-funded week of self-congratulation between professors and their eager-for-head-patting sycophantic students for their vision and wisdom on matters of collegiate diversity.  (Not to be confused with a thoroughgoing promotion of diversity of ideas, because as we all know, intelligent, knowledgeable, well-intended people can only have one opinion on thorny topics like this one.)  Nauseating really.

Brian was coerced to perform and read a critical analysis of Michigan’s affirmative action hiring guidelines.  Note well, Brian didn’t really want to do this.  It was a hit job meant to give the faculty, all of whom had less publications and less impressive academic credentials, a reason to terminate Brian’s adjunct contract at the satellite campus.  But Brian did as he was told, and did it to the best of his abilities.  Too well in fact given the straw man his “colleagues” were hoping for.  Brian argued, quite effectively, that Michigan’s policy was immoral from any standard moral precept.  The best the opposition, as well as the “unbiased” mediator, could do was roll their eyes at him behind his back.  Did I mention how nauseating it was?  Not that virtually everyone participating had a different point of view.  No, people are free to think and believe what they choose to.  The collision of ideas is, or at least is supposed to be, an essential part of liberal post-secondary education in Western Cultures.  That practically everyone was lock-stepped in counter argument-suppressing group think, and not by strength or clear rightness of position, was what bothered me.  Brian was rode out on a rail.  A “feminist” critic of logic - who, unlike Brian, whose contributions to analytic philosophy cannot be overstated, contributes to our collective knowledge justification claiming disjunctive syllogisms are tacitly sexist - leading the charge.

From the bloody steaming pile of feeling sorry for him, and sorry for what the Academy has become, sprung two phoenixes.  The Friday Hedonism Club, a reason for a group of us, truly diverse but not by force of policy, to get together and eat and drink and smoke and search ’til we passed out or threw-up, and a life-long friendship between Brian and I.

Brian’s counsel has been valuable, but at times I feel his devotion as a friend clouds his vision.  Below are excerpts of our recent discussions.  My feeling, to give these discussions context, is that my next steps, after surgery and recovery, should be a JD and PhD combo platter.  I can’t see myself sitting or standing in a courtroom, but at least with this sort of education I could advocate for soldiers’ rights - something I probably won’t make money doing - and possibly teach - something from which I could make a small salary.  One hour at a desk talking about shit I already know about to people who don’t, punctuated with naps in the broom closet I’d be officed in, is about all my body can tolerate.

“J, my 2 cents worth is that you would make an excellent doctor - in particular an excellent diagnostician.   You knew more about what was wrong with your back than the doctors.  Plus you have an encyclopedic knowledge of biology (and a million other things.)   You’re a natural.

Even if your right leg never improves, you could still practice medicine.  Maybe you could be a radiologist or a researcher where you wouldn’t be walking from patient to patient.  A disability is not necessarily a hindrance.  A lady I dated in Montreal when I was in grad school was a psychiatrist..  She was legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa, yet she went through Queens medical school and got a post at the Jewish General in Montreal as a resident psychiatrist.

J, I’ve been at the academic game for decades, and I can recognize people of great ability.

I know, in the same way I know the back of my hand (and I know it quite well), that you would make an excellent doctor.  Maybe you can take a course or 2 after the surgery if you’re up to it.  And go from there.  Take it one step at a time.  Hey, if a blind person can graduate Queens medical school, anyone with the brainpower and will can.  You always sell yourself short which is very typical of people with high ability.  The folks with lots of bravado often have little going for them except the bravado.”

While these kind and encouraging words, especially coming from one I hold in such high regard, a man who is on a first name basis with Storrs McCall and other heavy-hitters, have an immediate warm-fuzzy effect, I fear my friend is blinded by buddy faith.  There are realities of medical school, with particular attention to the clinical phases of, that are beyond my body’s ability.

You may be asking yourself “what’s the point?”  Fair enough.  If you’ve made it this far wrapping things up is the least I owe you.  The point is that my past, present, and possibly my future have been destroyed by the failings of Army medicine.  If not in some actual way, in my perception at least, which can be just as bad.  I’ve been destroyed in many ways, and I’m not the only victim.  How many people, people just like you reading this, have to be destroyed before we, as a government and as a society, are moved to action?

I just got back from Michigan Resonance Imaging.  I was very surprised, contrary to the opinions of Dr. Toon, Ireland Army Community Hospital, Fort Knox, KY, and the Army, that there’s actually a fucking working MRI machine in MIchigan.  Only ten miles from my home.  The drive there didn’t hurt too much.  My legs and back weren’t in spasm because of the trip.  The MRI results were clear and usable without having to drug or tie me down.  No loss of bowel function.  My wife didn’t have to take off work, jeopardizing our only source of income, to drive me to Kentucky.  And the Army didn’t have to pay me $600 of your tax dollars for two days of active duty, and the cost of room, board, and gas.  Can this be true?  I wouldn’t have believed it unless I experienced it myself.

I was having a conversation with a high school friend yesterday.  Vince is his name.  He’s in a band.  A band enjoying a fair amount of notoriety and success.  He moved from Michigan to L.A., as all musicians hoping to make a living ‘musicing’ apparently must do.

We were just shooting the shit.  I was asking his advice for getting a group together.  I’ve been in several, but it’s hard to make them work.  Artsy people are a bit weird by themselves.  Several of them in a small place for longer than ten minutes will almost inevitably result in lots of slap-boxing, yelling, spitting, and shoe throwing.  Too much ego and inflexibility and ‘don’t step on my vision’ kind of thing.  It’s hard.  There’s a certain art to it that I haven’t been able to master.

During the conversation I made some off-the-cuff remark about him taking confessions that day.  I forget the context.  Vince said something about having to be a monk or a priest to do that, but even if he were one of those, he’d probably be too drunk to absolve anyone of anything.  Blah blah blah.  Something something something.  Skip ahead a bit of back and forth, and then Vince got to asking me about ‘demons.’  Demons as in baggage.

He started on about the affect these demons can have on one’s creativity.  He suggested I put them to work making music.  He cited Delta Blues singers, war chants, etc., as examples of what he was talking about.  In theory it seemed sound.  But not all demons are the same.  Demons of poverty, pain in service of a purpose, etc., are a bit different than the legions that ‘dwell within.’  While I can’t afford the surgery and post-op care out-of-pocket on one salary, Sarah and I are far from poor.  As well, the suffering Sarah and I endure serves no purpose.  And neither do the demons that suffering has spawned.

…thy name is Jimison.  Yeah.

My brother visited yesterday.  Back from Iraq Cody.  We played Rainbow 6 Las Vegas on 360.  It felt good to shoot again, if only by way of a wireless controller.  After a while the simulated violence and out-of-practice respawning got on my nerves.  As well, it’s hard to play laying down.  I suggested we have a cig break.  We talked for a while.  I showed him our disrepaired pool.  Pretty sad.  Leaves and dirty water.  I can’t keep up with it.

We talked a bit more.  About his deployment.  About what he intends to do now that he’s no longer interested in making a career out of the Army.  He’s still unsure.  Cases of that feeling seem to be going around.  I’m always impressed with Cody.  Given where we were brought up, and by whom, he has really turned out well.  I’d say we’re quintessential ‘nature over nurture’ types, but our natures aren’t so good either.

We got to talking with a neighbor a few houses down.  I don’t know her very well.  She has a nephew at Walter Reed.  Had his legs blown off and shrapnel throughout his body courtesy of an IED.  Army’s trying to show him the door for $10k.  Thanks for your service (and your legs) young man.  Here’s your lovely parting gift.  The price of an average used car, and all the substandard line of duty injury-related health care you care to tolerate.  I couldn’t stand to hear anymore.  We went back inside to play Rock Band.

Found out my wife is quite the little drummer.  Cody, star-grabbing asshole that he is, had to take lead guitar (and wouldn’t even share with his brother).  If we had parents, I’d tell.  I was relegated to bass.  Something especially ego-crushing given my musical background.  I mean shit, of all the people in the room, I can safely say I’m the only one who’d soloed at Notre Dam (Paris), Wesley’s Chapel (UK), St. Mark’s (Venice), and the side of the frickin’ Matterhorn to throngs of drunken Swiss.  Or Swisses.  Or The Suisse.  Or whatever the hell a lot of Swiss people are called.  I think it was a trick to get me to sing instead.  Playing off my musical vanity.  Good technique really.  They know me so well.  Always the perfectionist, I had smoked too much, and was in too much pain to focus well enough to sing.  Even for a two person, one dog audience on Cinco de Mayo.

Just playing bass on Rock Band for an hour in semi-sitting up position has me laid up.  Probably for the next several days.  So I’ll be laying down all day.  At least until my wife gets home to take me to my MRI appointment at 7 p.m.  How’d I get so damned fragile?  Oh yeah, almost forgot.  Close to a year and half of neglect from the same folks who brought you $10k for a young man’s legs.

I’m paying for yesterday’s activity.  I was pretty sure I would.  But pretty sure and certain are coattail relatives.  I’m thankful, though, to be clearer.  Free, as much as an addict can be, from Miller’s Music.

This new clarity has me thinking.  Perhaps thinking better is more apt.  Thinking about the past, present, and future.  Of things I can change, and of things I can’t.  My body was slowly broken.  My body may be broken now and forever.  But life goes on.  And so must I.

So much of who I was was tied to my physical strength and presence.  Figuring out what to do with the new and discorporated me is a challenge.  This has me thinking a lot about squandered past opportunities.  Of the many chances I threw away, in arrogant unconcern for the status or the accomplishments of my chance-givers, to stand on my mentors’ shoulders.  From jurisprudence to personhood, to the ironically fecund research niche of vagal tone, childhood undernutrition, and adult onset psychopathologies, I pissed them all away.  Never expecting to find myself here.  Never expecting to be rudderless and crippled.

This experience has forced me to reevaluate.  Not the sophomoric black-turtlenecked transvaluations of college.  No, my present concerns are less airy.  Who am I now?  What will I do?  How can I contribute?  I have a lot of thinking to do.  I’m fortunate to be unalone.