Diaries of the Beast

How To Die Twice: The Tyranny of the ICD-9-CM

The ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification) is an interesting tomb. Within it's covers are listed every possibility of death, disease, illness, physical malady (accidental or otherwise), of physical decline, the loss of individual dignity, or personal psychological disaster, (a subject Company "X" is particularly suspicious of...) Simply skimming through its pages, or viewing it on a computer screen is enough to turn a normal, well adjusted person into a raving paranoid. The book is three inches thick, weighs four pounds, and is known well by Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies "X", the Government, lawyers, morticians, and anyone else paying or profiting from physical vicissitudes. It covers everything even remotely diagnostic to the human body, from lung cancer, to an infected hangnail.

It is a logically sequenced manual from hell, coded for communicative convenience to all concerned, and is very probably the Devil's second favorite book, from which he can choose a particular item of suffering and send it hurtling upwards to some unsuspecting human, vulnerable to subatomic irregularities, a broken leg, a virus, a pinched nerve, a dysfuctional bladder, endless types of infarctions, hemmorhoids, anal fistulas, blisters, unheard of and unpronouncable conditions, symptoms, and syndromes. Even cellular abnormalities, with the potential to flower into slow, agonizing death, (agonizing death has it's own code too.) are codified and listed in language as  clean and sanitary as an operating theater. No tangible humanity exists here; its business, hard as nails, serving one goal, profit. Very few tears stain it's pages.

For a vast collection of information devoted entirely to the human condition, it is an ice cold version of EVERYONE'S FUTURE. It is the ultimate book of lists. In the "Medical Universe", it is simply the "WORD".

Of the hundreds of thousands of listings, Page's favorite, "Macular Puckering" (listed in Volume I of "Tabular Listings", under the clasification, "Diseases of the Nervous System and Sense Organs", P. 143.), never failed to bring a smile to her tired, over painted face.

A smile hardly shared by John Palmer, still "not yet again dead", completely unaware of his clerical bifurcation, sitting in his office of a major metropolitan bank, staring aimlessly out his window at the streets below, and wondering why he felt as if he was missing half of his soul.

How to Die Twice: A Not Yet Dead Again Man's Weekend

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"........

How to Die Twice: Friday

The check did not come on Thursday. "The Manager", a tall, almost feminish man with an MBA (Yale, 2001), passed her work station several times on Friday; stopping, peering in to her workstation, making sure she was "on the job". Page knew the clock was ticking. Not a word from Company "X". The bastards didnt have the class to reassure her the hold up was a matter of internal bureaucracy, or some rookie coder with no familiarity with the ICD-9-CM 2005, (the fucking bible of medical billing....the Holy Grail, the "Word"). That had to be the reason for such an unpardonable delay. After all business runs on "ethics".

John Palmer rarely left her mind on Friday. Not that the "not yet again dead" man Palmer, Palmer himself, mattered. It was the unmet quota, the threat of terminaton, the dread of being branded as incompetent, of having her exhaulted "Associates Degree" in medical coding thrown into question. Where else upon God's earth could she speak such an arcane, powerful language? A language no one but fellow medical coder-gangsters spoke or knew. Knowing this "medspeak" implied a superiority she enjoyed. Without it, a job at Wal Mart was all she could aspire to. The same fear applied to the hundreds of thousands of "Bees" working for thousands of company "Xs", and within the Government, the ICD-9-CM was the only language accepted. No compromise, human contact, or even a bribe would cause those inflexible robots to budge from the ABSOLUTE, RIGID, application of the "Word".

By lunch, the "not yet again dead", John Palmer, dominated her brain like insulation around a water heater. Palmer quickly became her only reason to live. Frantically, she rechecked (for the hundreth time) the codes she meticulously placed under his personal data, over a week ago. Everything was correct. There was no mistake. She was dead sure.

So why the fuck was "The Manager" observing her like his next meal?

Because HE wasnt gonna take the hit on such an easy score for the hospital. A blizzard of questions would descend upon his head if the money didnt show, if the gaping, sucking, hospital money hole was not fed.

Who gave a shit about the poor "dead again undead" person languishing in a blank white folder in the dungeon of her computer? Not the hospital, or "The Manager", or company"X", or the Government,  or any of the other coders working in her office; themselves torturing some unfortunate "unsoul" with economic terrorism.

As lunchtime pushed inexorably to quitting time, Page stopped searching the "accounts recieved" screen for a check she knew was not coming.

A nasty, institutional battle was heading her way. She could feel it. John Palmer did not matter. The sacred priciple of PAYING for John Palmer's "not yet again death" did.

As the clock struck 5:00 PM EST, she opened, a last time, the folder where the victim sat. Palmer looked straight into her huge angry eyes, and heard her say,

"Have a good weekend, you sucker!"

Shortly after that, the lights in the folder went out, and the dark eyes of John Palmer closed into a deep, temporary slumber.

The Check Was Not Cut on Wedneday

Next Wednesday finally came around. "Worker Bee #2", kept checking her computer to see if insurance company X paid up.

But the wait was in vain.

The check didnt show up on the flickering screen.

It was getting close to quitting time.

Panic began to set in. Bee #2 popped a Klonopin, and began to think of how she was going to explain her failure. Bee #2 knew there were unseen eyes upon her, waiting. A lot of them in fact. It seemed incredible to her that some far off company, an institution listed on the New York Stock Exchange, more valuable and powerful than most third world countries, and utterly oblivious to the mounting angst of a worthless funtionary in one of a thousand hospitals they dealt with on an houly basis, had the ability to completey change her life by not paying the GODAMN MONEY!!!!!

Bee #2 sat watching the clock.

John Palmer sat in the"not yet again dead" folder, awaiting eternal bliss.

The clock struck 5:00.

The check never appeared.

It was like a dream to Bee #2.

But it wasnt a dream.

Bee #2 did not meet her quota, meaning trouble in the morning,  and John Palmer was not going to die again. Not on Wednesday.

Would the check come on Thursday?

Would Bee #2 be redeemed?

No.

Company X employs their own doctors, whose job it is to scan with a fine tooth comb, every single item on John Palmer's hospital bill. The doctor found a possible error in his bill, meaning no check, no funds, were coming outof X's  money hole on that Wednesday. Company X found a loop hole.

And the battle between institutions began all over again.

Just before Bee#2 mournfully left the office, she opened the "not yet again dead" file and looked inside. Palmer sat with his head in his hands, totally bewildered; as bewildered as a "not yet again dead man" can possibly be.

How To Die Twice: Part Two

Vultures normally circle their meal; in this case, your former life. But where is the location of your second life (death)? It is deep in the bowels of a computer, located in the collection deparment (accounts and balances....how kind they are to themselves!); the boiler room of any hospital. After all, it IS a business, right?

Who populates these hospital engine rooms, in every city, town and county all across the nation? Scores of "worker bees"; the usual compliment of people, wholly unconcerned with anything but production, the fulfillment of monthly quotas (the collection of monies for unpaid, hyper inflated, hospital bills), and the avoidance of a tounge lashing (or worse, a behind the door "meeting" with, and called) by "the manager", whose own professional future depends upon driving the "bees", to  squeeze every last kopek from insurance companies or the Federal Government (medicare....medicad...you know THOSE terms, like your own  names, dont you?).

The "bees" fight a continuous war with insurance companies and the "Federals". Neither wishing to pay until they have to; up until the very last second of the very last hour of the very last day the law allows.

This protocol causes tremendous stress amoung the "bees", who call this company, email that agency, all in a foreknown and vain attempt to GET THEIR MONEY!!!!  They even go as far as  to call in the "survivors" (another "kind" word", meaning the family......there is no limit to their ability to rationalize harrassment....) causing stress bordering upon deliberate cruelty.

During all of this, the newly born, "formerly dead", person  becomes conditioned to life in a dreary, dark folder, deep in the virtual catacombs of a "worker bee's" computer.

This, "reborned dead person" is not alone. There are thousands waiting, just like him (or her, the "second life" does not require sex, or nourishment, or dillusions of God, or for that matter, anything at all....except the ability to wait mutely, until the "issue" of payment is resolved.

Listen to the dialouge between two dedicated "bees".

Bee #1 "The emergency room report says that  "John Palmer died of congestive heart failure (COPD), you know the code for that?"

Bee#2 "Its 3-741xj".

Bee#1 "Any blocks on payment from insurance company "X"?".

Bee#1 "No, no blocks that I see, but their check want get  cut until next Wednesday" .

Bee#2 "Shit, that is three assholes, I cant kill until NEXT week! Im gonna miss my quota! Jesus, why cant I kill them this week?  WhatamIgonnado?"

Out of sheer frustration, "Bee" #2 calls in vain to company "X" and to the Federal Government, demanding to know what the delay in paying them is all about. Bee #2 already knows the answers. They are etched, as in stone, in memory. Bee #2 knows that no amount of pleading, threatening, or diplomacy will budge the far larger players in this production.

In projected desperation, fear, and anger, she opens the folder contaning one,"John Palmer", looking with wide, menancing eyes at his second, limited life. He dares not look back. Bee#2 is so very much larger than him.

Larger than the hospital "Bee", is the Federal Government; with "Bees" of it's own, and the multinational insurance companies, with "Bees" aplenty; so aggressive, so relentless, that poor "John Palmer" may live his second life for years. while these "giants" argue over an American citizen, already a candidate for the worms.

This scenario is not rare, or even unique. It happens with every single death, except for illegal aliens, who mow the finely manicured lawns of all three institutions. They dont count, or even rate a folder.

The point of all this?

When you are dying, dont fear hell. Fear for your family, fear for the future, and its victims, who will die twice; just as you will. They hold the power of American closure.

Fear the fact that "Amerisystemology", reveals the ability to give you an extension on your existence, a second life; until all accounts are rectified, all lists rearragned, all questions about who you were, and what you owe, are answered.

To anyone but the people you touch with kindness, or love, or unconditioanl allegiance, your death means nothing to anyone. You do not matter at all. The "Bees" are so relentless, that your "final death" will not occur, until next Wednesday, when the checks are cut.......

                                                          Best Regards,

                                                             ookrana

 

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How To Die Twice: Part One

Some things are unavoidable in "this" life. Dying is one of them. Death has it's own protocols; very much a tradition in this country.

You get an incurable illness. The hospital becomes involved. The insurance companies wait (with widening eyes, thinking about their bottom line), families gather with greedy thoughts of inheritence, or humane grief, or a sense of loss.The funeral occurs, and life goes on.

Right?

Wrong.

Death is, in actuality, NOT the end. But the beginning of a "second life". In America, you are not dead, until many people say you are dead.

The death of an American citizen sets off a chain of actions and intereactions, most of them financial in nature, between institutions; including the hospital, insurance companies, the funeral home, a plethora of government agencies (Social Security, Medicare, Medicad, the Labor Department, the Veterans Administration[if you were a veteran], and even the Office of Homeland Security), retail tracking agencies (oh yes, Wal Mart knows!), banks, debt collection agencies, mortage companies, and lawyers (to name only a few).

Thus, until all accounts are closed, lists updated, and the knowledge of your demise is desiminated throughout the entirety of "Amerisystemology", the hole in which you now reside, resembles a civil purgatory.

You may be dead, however, you become "reborn", acquiring, in fact, a "second life", (implying a second death).

One way or the other, the vultures are going to have brunch.

How to Restore John

Two days ago, I reported on the brutalization of a little boy in a school in Florida. Forgive me for being overly personal, or maudlin, or sentimental. However, I have been pissed off in the extreme, since his mother told me of the incident. I began to imagine what it must have been like to be surrounded by larger kids, stronger and predatory. I imagined what it was like to be alone, totally vulnerable to the purest of evil; the evil of children.

I got the "willies". I got afraid. I remembered what I felt when I FEARED that happening to me. I remember holding my piss, so i wouldnt have to go into a bathroom and risk that happening to me. I remember sitting in class, afraid to ask to use the bathroom. I remember pissing myself, and pulling my shirt out to hide the spot on my pants. I wonder if that ever happened to John? I wonder how long he contained his fears(?), and how long he silently fought a shame too horrible to mention to anyone, even his mother, until two days ago.

This is childhood in many schools. This is childhood wreathed in fear. These are the memories they carry to adulthood. Not many men admit to them. They become ghost, haunting them, until THEY lash out at THEIR families, at the very people they love.

Thus, the beginning of a childs school experience, may be the most crucial period of their entire development.

The next time you watch the local news, and view a story about a kid "gone wrong", take a moment to wonder why. To wonder what unmentionable indignity, buried somewhere in their past, brought out the "beast" in that child.

Our children spend twice as much time with teachers (strangers), than with their parents. This a national average, and reports volumes on why our kids turn out the way they do.

A majority of them are miseducated and underrated by their schools, and never given the chance to realize their own potential. They are hearded, like cattle, through overburdened school systems, taught by teachers, lacking the time and resources, and often experience, to address the core emotional developmental phases children experience. Surely, the nation's future often rests upon incidents like John experienced.

On the other hand, there are thousands of dedicated teachers who try with every ounce of their energy to right these wrongs. However, many kids slip through the cracks, become lost, and underachieve for the rest of their lives. This is more than a tragedy; it represents a direct threat to the future societal construct of this nation, to it's socital health.

John will recover, because his mother is a remarkable, impressive woman. She is fierce, intelligent, brave, never gives up, and would gladly die for a smile upon his face.

Other children are not so lucky.

Those are the ones who make the evening news......

Best Regards,

Ookrana

The Dynamic of an American Revolution

Four days are left until election day. Electricity fills the air, as the nation endures the most devisive campaign since 1860. Of course, the methods of communication differ; now, no one is immune from the constant, relentless blather of lies, half truths, fabrications and retrofabrications from the President (a man so far out of his depth , he needs a snorkel, just to breathe), and his Democratic opponent. This is symbolic blood sport at the highest level. Except, it is not symbolic. It is real; as real as the American blood dripping from the severed heads of human beings, and the ambushed soldiers, unprepared, culturally, emotionally, and societally to face SERIOUS warriors, sure of their cause and lathered with the hate of past colonial history, and present day, "Western" imperialism.

Long ago, Americans learned to avoid politics, proving it by voting without passion, and in declining numbers.

But not this year.

The media has provided a truth no propagandist, or "spin meister" can hope to refashion.

Americans may not know how to read or critically think anymore, but they know when they need Vaseline to avoid pain. That is why interest is so high in this election cycle. That is why History screams like a maniac atop a soap box in Hyde Park. The war in Iraq was not the result of the tragedy in New York. It was pre-planned as carefully as Hitler's invasion of Poland. That is a fact, backed by the testimony of witnesses, members of his own Cabinet. the President's invasion of Iraq is a war crime. It is amoral, and shits upon everything this nation supposedly represents. Our President is a nasty little Christian posturing bully. He is lost, and shows it, every time his hooded eyes face the unblinking camera. He cannot admit the truth, because it contradicts the Constitution, the Nuremburg Trials, the World Court, The United Nations, and every tennet of American foreign policy since the Spanish American War.

Additionally, he is willing to ADMIT (by omission) the American election process is a patent fraud. Observe the twisted, crimminal voting process in Florida, a state his own brother governs.

Let me ask you. Would you become complicit in a murder, a bank robbery, a child molestation? Probably not. Then why are you voting for the President? It is tantamount to any of those crimes. Moreover, Kerry is not much better. But he is not a murderer, and springs from a tradition supporting social programs for the elderly, sincere (as opposed to window dressing funding) government support of education, the protection of a growing, defenseless under class, and an HONEST, realistic promotion of the middle class. It is meaningless that Bush and Kerry are two peas in a pod. However, one pea is dumb as a brick and stinks of international crime, while the other actually served his country in war, and sees an America tolerating only so much extant stupidity.

Best regards,

Ookrana

A Frightened Little Boy

Yesterday, the son of a personal friend, who attends middle school in Deerfield Beach Schools, of Pompano Beach, Florida, was attacked by a gang of student thugs in a school bathroom. He was beaten, robbed, and traumatized.This was the SECOND time it happened to him. The next morning, he awoke crying, not wanting to return to school. Who could blame him? On the afternoon of the attack, his mother, no "shrinking violet", confronted the principal, demanding an explanation.

The principal responded, saying, "What do you expect from an inner city school?"

My friend lives in the suburbs; why her son attends an inner city school is part of the problem. Another part, was the pricipal's answer, reflecting incompetence in controlling his school, and in providing an environment in which studends felt safe, and able to learn. Earlier in the school year, a student was stabbed EIGHT TIMES with a screwdriver in full view of class and teacher. Within an hour of the meeting with the principal, she removed her son from that state supported hellhole, enrolling him in a private school.

Unfortunately, school violence is a sad fact of American education. It is nationwide, and contributes powerfully to the general failure of local school systems. Combined with ineffective methods of instruction, poorly taught teachers, and incompetent administrators,(not to mention the posting of out right lies about student test scores in an effort to convince the public that there is "progress" in American education), can there be any other result but declining student performance?

School systems have reacted. Police now patrol a majority of the nation's schools. However, an unacceptable level of violence continues unabated. This state of affairs will not change, until individual communities demand positive results of school boards, administrators, and teachers (most, currently lacking in effective techniques of student control). In the mean time, more and more students, will learn less and less. And America will sink deeper into a poverty of ignorance. Except for lip service, from state and national educators and politicians, the disaster in American education remains a "back burner" issue. "Back burner", until a majority of the nation's citizens become inapplicable to, and unemployable for, increasingly complex systems of business, the mainstay of national econonomic and societal stability. Generation after generation of American children continue falling victim to "socially sensitive" forms of learning (or "anti-learning"), where instruction in "cultural sensitivity", forced upon states by college "Schools of Education" (unsupported by relaible data or testing), superceeds effective, common sense instructional methods.

There is a direct correlation between increased school violence and incompetent teachers, school administrators, and local school board members with no business making educational decisions for the nation's children.

There is no instant panacea for the restoration to health of America's educational system But we had better begin to reprioritize the reasons our schools exist.

But I will think about that tomorrow.

Frankly, at this moment, all I care about is wrapping my arms around a terrified little boy, and, if possible, restoring to him, the confidence those bastards stole; perhaps forever.

Confessions of a Roosevelt Democrat

I was raised by Democrats; by people who saw the need to cure many domestic and international societal ills. Abroad, a manifest German psychotic HAD to be tamed, and at home, the American economy threatened to create a permanent sub- class of citizens, citizens of intelligence, of enormous promise, of unfulfilled dreams; enough dreams to benefit us all. We beat Hitler, and created an environment in which a revitalized Germany assumed it's rightful place within a society of civilized nations. Roosevelt, as a parting gesture, spearheaded the United Nations; and regardless of today's American reservations of that international institution, it remains a living monument to what man should be. It was flood tide for America; enlightenment for those with eyes to see.

Roosevelt died, time passed, but a recreated America moved on; building upon the advantage the ravages of war gave it. Domestically, America continued it's endless, internal revolution. Racism began it's long death, women began their climb to sexual equality, and an energetic middle class, ever growing, bestowed a confidence upon the nation. Regardless the Cold War, the anxiety, fear, and possibilities of an extinguished world, America continued a steady advance, filling a void Plato would have applauded.

But it didnt last. America became involved in issues and places it did not belong. The darker side of international power cast America in an unfamiliar role; a role at odds with it's citizens.

Why?

Because the American education system began its inexorable decline; until the average American became as uninformed as a blunt instrument. Reading skills declined, year after year. And with it? The ability to think critically or restrain the excess of unjustified societal hubris.

Domestically, the decline in critical thinking led to malaise, to self absorption,to economic decline and to an inability to realize that every succeeding American generation became more ignorant, less able to deal with an increasingly complex world.

And to the present, regardless of the accomplishments of a relative few, the overall picture of American remains dismal and invites pessimism. The promise, and enlightenment of Franklin Roosevelt is not even remembered by generations struggling with basic cognitive skills.

What does my rant on the decline of American cognitive skills have to do with the confesions of a Roosevelt Democrat?

This.

The steady decline in leads to politics as entertainment, to governance as blood sport; to ancient Rome at it's absolute worst.

Unless a radical change in American education becomes a reality, the future leads to a frightening prospect; to an era where Americans become as malliable as Pavlov's dogs, and informed dissent, is an historical whisper.

Ignorance equals societal destruction. Iti s not the first time this occured. But very few of us read deeply enough to understand it's significance.

I will vote the Kerry- Edwards ticket, for my own reasons. However, it will NOT be because it represents the Roosevelt tradition of unbridled American excellence. I will vote the fears of my grandfathers, and the dreams of my father.....
Best Regards,

Ookrana