This may come off as one of those WordPress Daily Writing Prompts; lord knows I can be a sucker for those. But it’s really just another installment in my de facto series about the knowledge bumps on my brain I’ve accumulated while being beaten up by diabetes.

All that really means is there’s been another great learning exercise; one that starts a bit on the gruesome side, but progresses right back to my sorry-ass so-called humor. However, it wasn’t my ass that presented the problem. For that, you need to head all the way down to the artist formerly known as my left big toe.

The very nature of this tale necessitates it having  a bit of a rough start. It can’t be avoided, but at least you’ve been warned.

1) The Gross Hospital Stuff

For the obligatory “full disclosure,” let’s start with what happened. Twenty years ago, I was involved a serious car accident. One thing that happened as a result was a graft to replace a damaged artery in my left leg. On it’s own, the story probably stops there, but in 2022 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.

Combined with the age of the arterial repair, the diabetes caused diminished circulation to my left foot. Somewhere, along the line there was such a lack of blood flow to my big toe that the bone developed an infection and began dying. I had no clue what was happening; I didn’t have any symptoms until one day a I spiked a fever. A couple of days later the toe turned colors and started oozing stuff. The next day it was in a biohazard bag. After the toe was amputated to get rid of the infection, the artery graft had to be redone to restore blood flow.

Since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s some pictures with words in order to exemplify the “gruesome” factor. Look at your own risk…you’ve been warned.

2) Six…By The Numbers

This is an exercise running completely the opposite way; using a small set of numbers to show the larger scale…

• 6: Consecutive days I had a fever greater than 102^o F
• 5: Peak number of IV antibiotics I had running simultaneously
• 4: Surgical incisions on my left leg/foot
• 3: Number of Infectious Disease specialists involved
• 2: Hospitalizations
• 1: Hospital neighbors who died…sorry, Bill.

3) This Is My Cane

This is my cane. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My cane is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My cane, without me, is useless. Without my cane, I am useless. I must fire my cane true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.

I will …

My cane and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count.

We will hit….

My cane is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights, and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes, and my heart against damage. I will keep my cane clean and ready. We will become part of each other.

We will ….

Before God, I swear this creed. My cane and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is America’s and there is no enemy, but peace!!

~#IYKYK

For those of you who don’t know, that is the Creed of the United States Marine…I just replaced the word “rifle” with “cane.” It’s really just my way of realizing that getting back on what’s left of my feet is going to be a battle…but one I must win.

I will.

4) Nurses Are Awesome

While this should be painfully obvious, far too many don’t understand this. You can have all the brick and mortar, shiny floors, and machines that go “bing,” hospitals simply wouldn’t function. Before I go any further, here’s a huge “Tnank You” to all the nursing staff (broken down by floor) I encountered during this recent series of surgeries.

Apologies if I’ve forgotten anybody, but bear with me…I was racked by fever and pulsing with Schedule I narcotics.

2 South: CC, Cole, Hannah (not to be confused with Hannah the case worker because she deserves a mention as well), Jo Ellen, Kassandra, Kris, Lindsay, Megha, Rhyan, Sara, Shay, and the mother/daughter combination of Liz and Tatum the “Towel Girl.”*

*The “towel” thing is worthy of it’s own future episode of Story Time…someday.

3 North: Brooke, Jasmine, Kinsey, Matthew, Viannet

3 West: Alanis, April, Bri, JD, Kim, Lexi, MaKara, Sade, Tye

Home Health: Debbie, Maggie, Mindy, Nancy, Nicole, Tim the Wound Care Man, and the poor girl who answers the “Help Me” line when my wound vac leaks, my IV clogs, or I run out of towels.*

Either way, once I get my disability insurance people to cough up a check, I’d love nothing more than take all of these people out for a well-earned refreshment. Well…maybe except for Cole; that guy probably drinks like he has two livers.

5) Hospitals Are Run By Shitheads

At this point, too many such “Thank Yous” take a left-turn into so much flattery. Sadly, this misses the real gift nurses have. There’s no better testament to their collective dedication than their continued overcoming of a worsening problem.

“Frank’s Hospital” is not unique in being a perfect Petri dish growing a culture where a dedicated staff succeeds in spite of it’s leadership. I’ve spent years in management; a big chunk of that time in industrial engineering and workflow management. That means I can tell a lot about an organization strictly through the relationship among it’s various entities. That’s why my eyes went right to “Frank’s” attempt at visual management…the dreaded white board.

Originally intended to be a snapshot of up-to-date information pertinent both to patient and caregiver, at “Frank’s,” the white board became a living monument to the complete blindness among those who implemented it. See, a crucial component of any visual management approach is that people actually look at it.

Between my last two incarcerations hospitalizations, I’ve spent 15 days in “Frank’s Hospital.” The white board in my room got updated at every shift change, with only a single exception.

Not like it mattered because…

Bad Entity Relationship #1: There’s a member of the management team at “Frank’s” whose job is solely to check if all the bed alarms are activated. Granted, this is a solid strategy from a risk maangement/mitigation standpoint, but organizational blindness is the great equalizer.
Twice a day…for five straight days… this person came into my room and noted the bed alarm was off. Out of ten chances, the bed-alarm Nazi never once looked at that board. That was until I pointed out the white board clearly indicated I did not need a bed-alarm one as I was able to get around with no assistance.

I never saw her again. She’s probably keeping herself in a job by loosening all the bolts on the wheelchairs.

Bad Entity Relationship #2: Like any organization that really has no clue, “Frank’s” loves those customer satisfaction  surveys. The most obnoxious came as an in-person visit from some fat-assed corporate spy who was far more interested in the white board than anything else. That board was so central to her whole raison d’etre, she did little else but to check if I was looking at it to answer any of her questions.

I figured outher angle pretty quickly. This wasn’t at all about my level of satisfaction; this was an intelligence operation aimed at determining if the nursing staff was using the white board.

Maybe your white board should include a space showing how fucking understaffed your hospital is, Frank. On second thought, this might be an ideal career path for the bed-alarm Nazi. I can’t think of a better promotion for furthering a career in uselessness.

6) Purgatory Was Modeled After Direct TV

For those of you who aren’t familiar, purgatory is a place in Roman Catholic doctrine where a state of suffering inhabits the souls of sinners to purify them of sin before going to heaven. In terms of a hospital, you might think the perfect example of this would be in the time between you get discharged and you actually physically escape the building…you know, when you get accosted by the likes of FatAss McWhiteBoard.

But there’s so much more…

The Pope and Baseball

This is one area “Frank’s Hospital” really outdid itself. Being run by a sect of Catholic nuns, “Frank’s” uses it’s TV package to provide all the purifying suffering one could ever possibly need. Start with Direct TV as a provider, which in and of itself means a complete loss of signal anytime there’s a cloud within 50 miles. Top that off with the fact Direct TV has lost it’s carriage contracts with what seemed to be half of basic package, and the result is an incurable sports addict spending fifteen days with virtually no baseball.

Think about it. How can it be in a world with an American pope who loves the White Sox there’s a Catholic hospital in the shadow of Chicagoland with a nearly complete absence of televised baseball?

That’s a whole new level of suffering. How was I supposed to know calling the Mighty Whiteys “historically bad” was a sin?

Cable News:  The Cockroaches of Electronic Media

Hitting “rock bottom” during my forced withdrawal from baseball involved finding out just how low I was willing to go passing those interminably long hospital hours. That means I’ve discovered the true cockroaches in all of electronic media.

But let’s fully understand what I mean by that. Back during the Cold War, several scientists agreed that because of certain biological traits, cockroaches would be the  only creatures which would survive a full-scale nuclear war. True or not, I am certain that in the current war for the future of entertainment avenues, one thing that will survive is the cable news network.

To be fair, they may not look the same in the future; medium will always affect format. But it’s that level of adaptability which drives survival, and the cable news network as we know it now is perfectly suited to capitalize on the shifting landscapes of both content creation and consumption.

In many respects they already have. Formats and vectors not withstanding, the prime tenet of any cable news network is to be a complete echo chamber. They way they work now, instant validation is only a click away. That’s the same principle that fills most podcast playlists, YouTube channels, and whatever populates most stream queues.

Face it…stripped down to its barest essentials, human nature is all about the satisfaction of our wants. Two of the most primal are acceptance and validation. That’s what drives your media choices, and  nobody understands that better than one (no free plugs) example. One cable news outlet dominates the others because it saturates its viewers with media choices. Once it snags a viewer, it floods them with media options. They’ve got podcasts, every one of their personalities has a book for sale, and it has a streaming service full of stuff people might actually want to see.

When it comes to these news channels, it’s far too easy to sucked into the stale bunk about their political leanings. Doing so completely misses the point here. It’s really all about knowing how to make money; one is simply better at it than the others.

Even a no-money blogger can understand the correlation between revenue generation and survival. I’m every bit the survivor a cockroach could be.

After all, they don’t have big toes either.

---

Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at  dubsism@yahoo.com, @Dubsism on Twitter, or on our Pinterest, Tumblr, or Instagram, or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.