Over the weekend, John Palmer slept the sleep of the "almost again dead"; and dreamed of a life stolen, miscoded. He dreamed of the tenth hole of his country club (a particular favorite; a par four, dog legged left, but only 320 yards...a good drive right, and only a six iron to heaven...and a birdie!!!!!). He played this hole a thousand times, not once had he an attack of pain so excruciating that his banker buddies ever called the "authorities". Sure as shit, within ten minutes, an ambulance rolled upon finely manicured grass, a fairway worth more than the yearly earnings of the men who labored to keep it perfect. No matter; a MEMBER was in distress.
Right?
Right.
Good old John, (our Johnny!) indeed, clutched his chest, and may have seen the God he cleverly avoided that Sunday morning (his tee time was 11:00 AM EST). 11:00 AM was perfect, allowing him the kickoff of the Steelers game at 3:00 PM EST. The whole of his day removed from a miserable, complaining, sexually boring wife, money sucking children, and other unmentionablely odious commitments. All were moot, on this day. Johnny was a planner.
Except for an attack of indegestion gripping his chest to such a degree, that the tenth fairway ended up looking like a dragstrip. Ambulances and fire trucks are heavy vehicles, remembered in the negative by greenskeepers, and the statusless Mexicans who work for them. Palmer was flat on his back when his escort of salvation arrived, heavy tires spitting grass and top soil his yearly club dues paid for, along with the exclusion of every Black and Jew on the planet. John Palmer got major gas on the most perfect place on his Earth. The EMTs did their usual do, he was tranported to the "hospital", examined by a resident (a polite term for a medical slave), diagnosed with "extreme gastric distress", injected with fluids (D5RL....Lactated Ringers), watched two hours, and sent home to recover.
Those are the "facts".
But in the land of virtuality, John Palmer suffered a Myrocardial Infarction (later, diagnosed, and supported in the ICD-9-CM-2005, as a "True posterior wall infarction"; "posterobasal"). Palmer had four Polish sausages for lunch and two German dark beers of an unmentionable brand. Enough to make a Gorilla feel drowsy. Enough to put an upper middle class, white, elitetist, racist, Republican in the clutches of the "hospital". Enough to sound alarms all across the systemology of the world of the "American Medically Insured Citizen".
Enough to kill him.
Once.
And to ressurect him, as an"not yet again dead' account".
And, because of a medical clerk, confusing the wrong name with the wrong patient, enough to put John Palmer (excellent citizen) into a medical limbo, rivaling Dante's "Inferno"........
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