A woman walks into a doctor’s office for a scheduled appointment. One of the office staff removes a PIC line—the vehicle that has been providing her nutrition for the past six weeks—from her right arm. Unbeknownst to them, bacteria that had been cultivating at the end of said line became dislodged and literally in one heartbeat dispersed itself to the ever-popular “anywhere but here” destination.

Vomitting followed. Chills followed. Fever followed. Big fever—104.5. Admission followed. Alas, we are back where we began.

Fucking bloodsucking lecherous insurance fucks.

“Routine doctor visits must now be pre-approved…” That sounds a tad foreboding—kind of like having someone forcefully bend you over and then hearing a chainsaw.

“Son, there is a big bill in the mail that you must not have gotten yet. Perhaps y’all should start trying to sell the kids on eBay and figure out how you are going to pay us back before you go and try to get your wife all healed up.”

I’ll see your pathos and raise you one rage.

Fuck. Fuckers. Fuck.

After forty-nine days in the hospital, Mrs. Eaton is leaving the building. She lost the month of November. She missed seeing the children dress up for Halloween. She was in the hospital for Thanksgiving. While there, we caused problems, shook things up, made people angry, laughed, cried and although many times we were scared, here we are.

It would seem that although it takes a few years for a person to become an R.N., I will be expected to give Lovenox injections and setup Mrs. Eaton’s I.V. stuff with minimal training according to my insurance company. That’s right, when it comes to paying out dollars for home health care they’ll get out that medical staff with the snake wrapped around it and knight me Nurse Terry. It’s not that I can’t do it, I can. I can do the whole TPN setup. (I know more about the I.V. pump than most of the nurses taking care of my wife.) I am sure I can give an injection—I think.