The day before I was due to come home from the hospital, I developed a case of hiccups that proved impossible to stop. The nurses tried various drugs, but nothing worked. Every five seconds or so, I’d hiccup, all day without respite. That night, even morphine couldn’t keep the hiccups from waking me. In my severely weakened condition, death-by-hiccup was not an unreasonable fear.

The next day we were homeward bound. It was, for me, a surreal day. Mentally, I was still somewhat delirious and can’t even remember significant chunks of the day. Physically, I was exhausted. And I just kept hiccuping.

We drove in a little caravan from Bellingham down to the ferry. Penny had rented a car with heated front seats since the day was cold and I wouldn’t be able to go upstairs on the boat. We’d arranged with the ferry folk to have the front position on the deck so I’d have a great view for what we all assumed would be my final crossing through our beloved isles.

How delirious was I? At some point, I made the whole caravan pull into a Starbucks for my last latte. Took a few sips and threw it up. I remember none of it.

I do remember the ferry ride, however, and it was lovely, except for the constant hiccuping. Once home and in my hospice bed (courtesy of four paramedics who carried me there), we tried a number of remedies, including homeopathic and acupressure, both of which worked, but only briefly.

Finally, after all the friends and caregivers had cleared out, I asked Penny to get me my pot. Took one toke and the hiccups stopped and never returned.

“Unfortunately,” the doctor said, pointing to the cat-scan, “you waited so long to come in that, unfortunately, you now have a large tumor in your esophagus, and signs of cancer spreading to other organs and, unfortunately, there is little chance that we can stop it now.”

You never want to hear the word “unfortunately” three times in a doctor’s opening remarks. Nor, in his prognosis, “three weeks or less.”

It was past midnight on what had been a long, hard day and in my malnourished and dehydrated state — the tumor had been blocking food for several days and liquids since that morning — I was a tad delusional. Though my wife, Penny, understood too well what the doctor was saying, in my brain-fogged state all I wanted was to close my eyes and go to sleep.

Later I woke alone in a hospital room, five a.m., still dark. The bed rest, supplemented with a few hours of an IV dripping sugar-water into my system, had me thinking clearer.

I turned on my ipod, connected with the hospital’s wi-fi, and googled “esophageal cancer.”

Hi all,

First, thanks so much for the guestbook entries. They are SO appreciated, each one a little packet of love-magic that Penny and I just lap up. And it’s working.

I have been home now for ten days and have been improving in just about every way. Not really dealing with cancer now — it is either in remission, or inactive, or just not able to overcome something in my system.

But I still have the tumor, and it’s still blocking my esophagus, allowing not even water to get pass. So I’m still on a feeding tube and still way skinny and tire out pretty fast each day.

So, the affirmation now is “shrinking tumor.”

The real good news: I have been able to get back to work on my writing and my novel should be released in just a few weeks.

Again, thanks for caring!

blessings, Michael

To my many friends and neighbors: as you may have heard I am going through a fairly nasty form of cancer. However, early reports that I had just three weeks to live were not entirely accurate. Here’s the current story:

Back in July, I started having trouble swallowing food. As someone without health insurance, living on an island, with little savings, and who hadn’t been to a doctor in forty years, I approached it as I had always done—as an issue of diet and nutrition. Gave up certain foods, tried different supplements, and worked with several local healers trying to figure out just what was going on and how to fix it.

Unfortunately, while we were doing all that, food was getting more difficult to swallow, and I was losing weight and energy. Finally, had a round of blood work, stool tests and an x-ray which all came up negative. While eating just got harder and harder.

Two weeks ago we finally opted for an emergency room visit to St Joe’s in Bellingham. First, the good news: a lady named Lucia sat us down and said “Don’t worry! One way or another everything will be paid for.” (I was sure she thought she was still living in Cuba). She was followed by a number of angels who each did their bit to make it so. Penny and I are not only NOT sliding deep into debt, I may even be receiving some disability payments.

My dear America, the way it ought to be….

Healthcare shares rose on Monday as a bill to reform healthcare passed the first critical test in the Senate . . . Shares of Cigna rose 5.3 percent to $37.69. Shares of Aetna Inc rose 5.84 percent to $34.41. Humana Inc rose 3.79 percent to $45.17 and United Health Group Inc rose 5 percent to $33.14. Shares of Wellpoint Inc rose 3.8 percent to $60.51. —Reuters

A recent, much-quoted Harvard study estimated that 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance. Either the insurance they had turned out to be inadequate to cover their needed care, or their longterm lack of insurance caused them to miss early medical treatments that would have prevented subsequent fatal illnesses.

In the Democrats push to persuade people like Howard Dean to sign on to their awful bill, they’ve used this issue often: How can any good dem or progressive not want to help the 45,000 people who will die this year without reform?

Of course, the fact that most of the people pushing the bill have more than adequate insurance already, and that many who oppose it, like myself, are longterm uninsured should be a clue.

But here’s the real problem: the benefits from the proposed bill do not kick in until 2014. That’s four more years of the rapidly deteriorating status quo. Given the tanking economy and more people losing their jobs/insurance and the fact that the insurance companies will be continuing their profit-seeking ways, likely more than 45,000 per year will die while waiting for the miracle bill to take effect.

In four years, that’s 180,000 dead Americans. The President and Senate have decided that, sadly, nothing can be done for them. Wouldn’t want to upset the insurance industry.

And Wall Street is happy, happy, happy.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

There was a time when passing a bill so that the Democratic party and President would have a significant victory would translate to passing a bill so the American people would have a significant  victory. Those were the days.

Now, the only beneficiaries from passing this healthcare reform bill will be the corporations that the democrats serve, who will in turn shovel vast sums of money into democrat coffers. It’s a nifty get-rich scheme that has nothing to do with the American people.

Jane Hamsher and the folks at FireDogLake have nicely summed things up:

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations – whether you want to or not
2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS
3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums
4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court
5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays
6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits – like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions – until 2014 when the program begins.
7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others
8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years
10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year – meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

For documentation on all of these issues and more, go to FireDogLake.

For a healthcare system that works, go to Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain……….

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry — regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies).

In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry — tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations — and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model.

It’s undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can’t get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well).  If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor.  But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign.

Glenn Greenwald | Salon

The study at Karolinska focused on the white blood cells in the umbilical cords of Caesarean babies and found mutations in their genetic makeup. The researchers noted differences in DNA sequencing of babies delivered via Caesarean and those delivered normally. —The Swedish Local

For most of human history, the two primary causes of premature death have been traumatic injury and infectious disease. Mainstream American medicine, with its heavy emphasis on hardcare practices, grew out of the challenge to solve these two problems. To a great extent it succeeded, with at times miraculous results. Yet the development of hardcare — a combination of complex diagnostic technologies followed by treatments of drugs and/or surgery — has come with unintended consequences that have brought American society to a profound crisis.

Hardcare medicine creates a specialized class of experts to administer to the sick while diminishing individual responsibility for the health of one’s body and mind. Hardcare drugs and surgeries can cause serious side-effects, often worse than the symptoms they attempt to cure. Hardcare treatments prove inadequate against a host of modern illnesses, yet hardcare tends to deny and actively campaign against other healing approaches. Finally, hardcare medicine is extremely expensive and thus exacerbates all of our current economic difficulties.

The failings of hardcare medicine have arisen where it has over-reached its ability and over-stated its role within society. Though hardcare medicine provides excellent tools for dealing with the problems of traumatic injury and infectious disease, it fails terribly for most other health problems.

Curing Birth

Risky labor inductions for “convenience” and all the complications associated with them–increased risk of prematurity, C-section, bladder and bowel injury, and maternal death–are now on the rise all over the country. It troubles me that more women don’t realize that a Cesarean section is major surgery. And it carries with it a risk of maternal death that is five to seven times greater than a normal birth. —Christiane Norrthrup, OB/GYN

Nowhere is the hammer of hardcare medicine more recklessly applied, and with such dire consequences, than in the practice of modem American obstetrics. Though most obstetricians are well-intentioned and extensively trained, to the extent that they follow hardcare practices (not all obstetricians do) their chosen tools are inappropriate for 90-95% of the births they oversee.

Hardcare obstetricians approach pregnancy/birth as if it were a life-threatening illness demanding invasive, high-tech intervention. Thus, while birth can be the most natural and sacred of life processes, hardcare medicine turns it into a messy female problem to be fixed. While birth can unfold as awe-inspiring theater, co-authored by the mother, infant, midwife, father and other supporters, hardcare turns it into a futuristic thriller, starring the doctor, and featuring the very latest in techno-controls. And though birth can be a joyful initiation into the human family — Welcome, child, to a world of love and absolute nurturance — American obstetrics turns it into a mechanical, impersonal, and too often violent medical emergency.

Because hardcare medicine diminishes individual responsibility for bodily processes, hardcare-conditioned women typically turn birth over to their doctors. Such women can be sadly uninformed about the nature of pregnancy and about the purpose of and ways to a fulfilling labor. They tend to let the doctors take care of everything, including time of delivery, drugs for the pain, and surgery if labor goes on too long. Unfortunately, the more that women cede responsibility for their bodies and birthings, the more problematic birth becomes, and the more necessary are the “birth-improving” interventions of hardcare medicine.

Well-Intentioned Interventions

Using an obstetrician for normal birth is like using a pediatrician as a babysitter.—birthing specialist Marsden Wagner

Hardcare interventions into birth begin with the mistaken notion that we can expect, and even schedule, birth to happen at a certain time. If it’s late getting started, then the obstetrician may use drugs to induce labor.

If we expected a rose to bloom on a certain day and then tried to pry it open with pliers when it was “late,” it would not surprise us that the flower would turn out poorly. Nor should it surprise us that chemically-induced labors often progress poorly — the mother/infant was not ready. (The ultimate perversion is caesarian deliveries scheduled according to hospital and doctor needs.)

Once labor begins, most American hospitals now require high-tech fetal monitoring. This consists of a wide belt wrapped around the mother’s waist and attached to a bedside machine that makes irritating noise throughout the labor. The belt prevents the mother from easily moving around according to her needs; it also prevents mother, father and midwife from placing their hands directly upon the lower belly or from massaging the lower back. All of this interference comes from a machine that has been proven in several studies to be of little if any benefit in most births. The main reason we continue to use fetal monitors — instead of non-invasive monitoring with a fetoscope — is so that doctors and hospitals have a record to refer to in the event of malpractice suits.

Other common interferences with labor include: the use of the counter-intuitive supine posture (rather than squatting); the lack of a well-informed labor supporter (simply having one such lay person, or doula, who stays with the mother throughout labor is of great benefit); the use of sterile, medical environments for labor and delivery; and the use of statistical norms to judge and direct the mother’s progress. All such interventions and interferences ultimately lead to a poorly progressing labor and, in reaction, to more invasive interventions.

In such cases the obstetrician might perform an episiotomy — surgically cutting the perineum to widen the mother’s vagina. Or might use forceps to mechanically pull the infant down the birth canal. Or might forgo labor and perform a caesarian delivery. (Roughly 33% of American births are now caesarians. This compares with 9% in Japan and Scandinavian countries.)

However the baby makes it out of the womb, we can expect further interventions. Doctors may cut the umbilical cord prematurely — before the baby has initiated breathing — leading to the classic abuse of hanging the infant upside down and slapping it. The infant will most likely be needle-poked three or four times during the first hour of its life (one or two blood tests, a vitamin K shot, and a hepatitis vaccine). The infant might be separated from its mother and placed alone in a nursery (especially if the mother is less than conscious due to drugs and/or surgery). And the infant might be fed ersatz formula food (hospitals and obstetricians have financial incentives to discourage breastfeeding.)

Obviously, all such interventions have been developed with the best of intentions — birth is risky, it sometimes goes poorly, and hardcare practitioners work hard to keep the mother and baby alive and relatively healthy. Yet studies of births in other countries, combined with studies of midwife-directed births in America, show that for more than 90% of births, obstetrical interventions do more harm than good.

The Damage Done

In 1979, [California] appropriated $750,000 for the first scientific study ever made of the root causes of violence. Two years later a first paper was issued, listing the ten principle causes of crime and violence in our nation. At the top of the list was the violent way we bring our children into the world. —Joseph Chilton Pearce

Harm to the mother can include various side-effects from drugs and surgery, and a further diminishing of her sense of responsibility for body and life. Harm to parents and child includes the medicalizing and mechanical-demeaning of what could have been a profound life experience. Harm to society includes vast amounts of unnecessary anguish and expense.

But it is the babies who suffer most, though hardcare practitioners say otherwise. They claim that babies are unaffected by the events of birth and early childhood. Babies don’t remember, we are assured. The infant born into a cold, brightly-lit room staffed with masked technicians; the infant who is slapped while choking for breath; the infant who is poked, jabbed, weighed, measured and then separated from its mother; the infant boy with the foreskin of his penis sliced off: it doesn’t matter, the experts assure us, babies don’t remember.

It is the grossest of misunderstandings, a terrible foolishness, for which we pay dearly. Humans are conscious, growing, learning and developing from day one. Babies are influenced, positively or poorly, by each and every human interaction. To cause unnecessary physical or emotional pain to an infant is child abuse, plain and simple. To do so under the rubric of “good medicine” is a continuing nightmare from which America must awaken soon.

Power to the Midwives

Studies have repeatedly shown that in healthy mothers with no risk factors, home birth is as safe as hospital birth. Increasingly, savvy women who trust their ability to birth normally are opting to avoid the hospital altogether (or at least have the foresight to hire a midwife or doula). —Christiane Norrthrup, OB/GYN

Fixing birth is so simple: pass a federal law mandating power, status and privilege to the softcare practices of well-trained midwives. Hardcare obstetricians can carry on as they have, for parents who want such deliveries, and for the small percentage of pregnancies that present as high-risk situations. But for those who desire safe, natural, and joyful births, let midwifery become a socially-supported option. Take away the legal and financial barriers that now impede midwives throughout America, and let pregnant women choose.

The return of midwifery will give us healthier children and mothers and will save us a lot of money in the process. Moreover, if the first step in our healthcare system is positively transformed, the rest might naturally follow.

I never had a chemistry kit when I was a kid. It was my least favorite subject in school and killed my grade point average. I doubt that I retained a single chemistry fact or principle five minutes beyond final exams.

Yet when it comes to the care and feeding of my own body, I have become something of a chemistry expert.

Brief background: I was born with digestive problems that persisted chronically throughout childhood. I was constantly sick growing up, with two or three bad colds a year. I missed most of 5th grade with mono. I was hospitalized when I was 14 with ulcerative colitis so severe that the doctors told my parents that nothing could be done and they should prepare for my death.

Two weeks of hospital food and removal from the stresses of my life and I improved enough to be released from the hospital. I had learned two important lessons: first, the doctors didn’t know why I was sick or why I improved; second, my condition changed from day to day depending for the most part on diet.

Even while I was struggling in chemistry class, I had begun a long-range chemistry experiment with the simplest of protocols: pay attention to what I was eating and drinking each day and then, starting with the next morning’s trip to the bathroom, pay attention to my results, including the condition of my hair and skin. If the results were less than ideal, I would consider changing something in my diet.

Or: input chemicals; observe outputs; reassess and make adjustments to inputs. Repeat daily.

Right under the Capitol dome, conveniently situated between the Senate and House chamber, is the Office of the Attending Physician. Inside are more than a dozen navy doctors, nurses, medical technicians, pharmacists and other health professionals, all employed by the government solely to attend to a select clientele: the 535 members of Congress.

Let’s say that, after giving a fiery speech on the floor assailing the evils of government-run health care, a lawmaker gets gaseous or has a tongue cramp. He or she can pop right into the OAP for — yes! — some government-run health care. No appointment needed, no pesky insurance forms to fill out, no co-pay — just care.

For this, members pay a flat fee of $503 a year. A year! You and I are taxed to cover the real costs of this elite service. And that’s not the end of public health benefits for lawmakers — if they need a specialist, an operation, therapy, rehab or other pricey procedure, it’s all free at the government’s Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval hospitals.

If it’s good enough for them, why not us? The public deserves what the Congress has, and any member who opposes extending it to us should automatically be stripped of their privileges.

Jim Hightower | Creators Syndicate