I’ve spent most of this past year – from April to October – trying to take care of my ill mother, who passed away on October 3 at the age of 90. She fell in April and broke her right hip and arm. Her orthopedic surgery went well, and she got transferred from the hospital to a nursing home for physical therapy, which also was going well—until they stopped the therapy. The nursing home claimed that some kind of Medicare rule prevented them from giving her any further therapy, even if I paid for it myself. Made no sense to me, but that’s what’s what they said.

So, I took mom home with me, and I did my best to take care of her myself. It was tough because she couldn’t get out of the bed by herself, she couldn’t use a walker, she couldn’t go to the bathroom, she really couldn’t do anything. A home health nurse and therapist, covered by Medicare, came to the house a couple days a week. But they were pretty damn useless.

After staying with me for a couple months, mom got a urinary tract infection. That’s a very scary thing. It causes weird hallucinations and it could be fatal. So, she had to go back to the hospital, where they treated her, and she recovered after a couple weeks. Then she had to go back to a nursing home for further recovery from her original fall injuries.

I put her in a different nursing home than the previous one—this one recommended by the hospital. She seemed to be getting excellent physical therapy there and was beginning to use a walker again. In late August, she was riding an exercise bike machine for 20 minutes at a time. We had hopes for her going back home eventually.

But then, mom got hit by a series of serious infections. First it was a C. diff intestinal infection. Then an upper respiratory infection. Just as she was recovering from those, I noticed that her roommate in the tiny room, a woman in her 70s, was coughing very badly. I expressed my concern to the doctor, to the head nurse, and to other staff in the nursing home that my mom might catch another infection, and I asked them to please move her to a different room. They refused to do that, and they all assured me that my mom was in no danger of catching anything from her roommate. Furthermore, they flat-out denied that her roommate had any infection.

Two days later, the nursing home called to tell me that both my mom and her roommate tested positive for COVID. The room was put in isolation and I couldn’t visit her for 10 days. I couldn’t even talk to her, because there was no phone in the room. During this time, my mom’s condition worsened – both physically and psychologically. The worst thing is that she stopped eating. A loss of appetite can be caused by COVID. But I believe that mom also lost all her will to live and was sick and tired of all the struggling and all the hassles and all the medical bullshit. So, she maybe she decided to hell with it, I ain’t eating anymore.

The staff claimed that the anti-COVID drugs worked and that she didn’t have the virus anymore. Then they said she had pneumonia. I visited her for several hours every day. It was heart-breaking to watch her get worse and worse every day and to see her wither away to nothing. They put her on IV but she was still starving to death. All the hopes that I had for her to get better and to go back home were destroyed. She was dying.

They eventually put her on hospice care–off of IV and on with morphine for pain and another drug for recurring bouts of anxiety. She ended up in a coma, but her heart kept beating and she kept breathing for several more days. She was somehow hanging on longer than the hospice nurses expected. Tough old Polish woman. But it was so goddamn terribly depressing to see. She finally died on the night of October 3. Her suffering was finally over.

My sister and I maintain that the nursing home killed her, mainly through the negligence of knowingly allowing her to be exposed to serious infections, especially COVID. I’ve spoken to a lawyer about a possible lawsuit against the nursing home. He said that nursing homes typically have clauses in their contracts that protect them against those kinds of lawsuits, but he said he would look into it more and get back to me.

In the meantime, I had to pay a $12,760 bill to the nursing home, because the insurance stopped covering her stay there and I had to pay out of pocket. I had to pay that goddamn mother-fucking nursing home for fucking up and killing my mother. What a wonderful healthcare system we have in America. Best in the world, they say. Fucking bullshit!

Fuck the medical system

I never use the medical system myself. I’m 63 and haven’t been to a doctor in about 30 years. In regard to my own health, I have a three-part philosophy: 1) My body can naturally heal most problems by itself. 2) If there is any problem that my body cannot heal, I learn to live with it. 3) If I ever get a problem that I can’t live with, I die. Either way and any way, I avoid becoming victimized by the corrupt, evil, dishonest, often incompetent medical establishment, and I live on my own terms.

But like many other old people, both my mom and dad—who died in 2019 ten days before he would have turned 89—got caught in the sticky webs of the medical system when they were in their 80s. In both cases, in my opinion, the system made as much money as it could off of them as it provided them with false hope and slowly tortured them to death.

A person is better off avoiding the medical system and letting nature take its course. And if things ever get too unbearable, assisted suicide or do-it-yourself suicide should be an option. We provide this option (euthanasia) for dogs and cats, but we purposefully extend the suffering and agony of people. Why? Because of the financial greed of the medical establishment, as well as the dumbass religious beliefs of some people.

I had a very close relationship with my dad and my mom, and I miss them badly. I used to talk to them about everything, from politics to personal shit. From my mom, I learned the importance of being an individual, thinking for yourself, going against the grain, being blunt and telling the truth, and pissing people off when necessary. She pissed off a lot of people during her life. She had no tolerance for bullshit and she would let you know it. That was my mom! She had the rarest of personalities. She thought for herself and told it like she saw it. That’s how I try to be.

Gaza and Ukraine carnage

My mom’s long illness and then her death have had me in a lousy, depressed, and angry mood all year. And considering the fact that I have a naturally negative outlook most of the time—even in “good” times—the added negativity has really got me down. Add the news about current world and national events to the mix, and I get totally hopeless. Observing the news, and living in this society of ignorant zombies and group-think clones, I feel pissed off at just about everybody and just about everything these days.

The news lately has been adding mightily to my sour disposition. So much insanity, stupidity, cruelty, and evil deeds are happening all over the place, people in power are enthusiastically promoting it all, and most everyone else just seems to be ignorant of it.

In Gaza, the Israeli military is committing genocide against Palestinians while the world watches. Reportedly, more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in four weeks of brutal Israeli attacks. Many, perhaps most, of the killed have been women and children. There have been massive protests against this slaughter around the world—which is encouraging, I guess—but the slaughter continues, much of it paid for with American money. And the establishment propaganda will surely keep the Israeli and American lies and atrocities going. Hell, even Wonder Woman (a former member of the Israel Defense Forces) is now taking a role in the propaganda promotion.

The slaughtering and propaganda also continue in Ukraine. American money and weapons keep fueling a stupid bloody conflict that should have ended months ago with a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. There is no way that Ukraine can win this war, yet its asshole leaders keep talking tough and sending more young men into the Russian meat grinder. Stupid. Senseless. Insane. But it keeps happening with no end in sight. The U.S.-Western propaganda-war machine is unstoppable.

Both of these conflicts have the potential to lead to World War III. People in power should know that, but they act like they don’t. Or maybe they do, and that is exactly what they want. Total insanity!

Idiots for president

In the United States, we have a multitude of idiot, lying candidates running for president in an election that will be held in about a year. None of them are offering voters much hope. Biden, obviously, is senile and doesn’t even know what year it is or what planet he is on. He belongs in a fucking nursing home. Nothing else to say about that brain-dead bastard.

Trump? I used to like him. I still kind of do. But he basically keeps repeating his same bluster and bombast routine, spouting a bunch of loud proclamations about how this or that never would have happened if he was president. And if he somehow manages to stay out of prison and if the Democrats somehow screw up their election-rigging strategy and allow him to win, he would probably just let the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, and the other corporate special interests walk all over him like he did last time. I know he would disappoint, because he shows no signs of learning from mistakes.

The other Republicans are all so horrible that I can’t even begin to contemplate any of them. DeSantis, Haley, and the others would likely soon have us in simultaneous wars with Russia, China, and the Arab world. The inexperienced, self-contradictory Ramaswamy would likely be so lost and confused that he wouldn’t know what to do.

RFK Jr, for whom I once had high hopes, has already turned out to be a disappointment. He talks good logic and peace on Ukraine, but with Gaza he has fallen all the way down into the usual traps and pitfalls of doom set by the neocons and Zionists—just like everyone else. He has also shown himself to be a stooge of the race hustlers with reparations, though he has flipped flopped on that issue. And how can I support or trust someone who was so over-the-top enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton? Regardless of whatever he might say during his campaign, I don’t think that Kennedy is ever going to get above 20 percent support.

So, who is left? Cornel West? Kanye West?? I think I’d rather have Adam West. Seriously, I do like some of what I have heard Cornel say, though I dislike a lot of other stuff. Needless to say, too much racism BS. In any case, what exactly would be the point of supporting him? It would be about as useful and productive as voting for Pat Paulsen, though not as funny.

Nothing to laugh about

No, I’m sad to say that there is not much to laugh or smile about these days. The American economy and financial system is like a shaky house of cards about to collapse. American culture and society is like an insane asylum with the inmates in charge. Most of the public is living in an online virtual reality with no idea as to what is going on in the actual flesh-and-blood world, in their own country, or even in their own neighborhood. My own personal life is pretty shitty these days (but I can’t blame anyone but myself for that).

So, yeah, I’m depressed and angry about pretty much everything. Of course, nobody cares how I feel. Why the hell should they? Well, mom always cared. And if mom was here, I could at least talk to her and bitch to her about all this shit. She always listened. And we often agreed on things.

I miss you, mom.