Where It All Ends...

My perspective.

I’m surfacing from trying to figure out coding and tech issues, which is a whole new ballgame from what I remember (and my memory is kinda flaky anyway) because I’m taking a bit of a break and also because Jade of Where I Break Open, now that’s she back (for the second time), has posted 3 articles that really, really resonate with me, for somewhat different but related reasons (to me, anyway).

They are here, here, and here.

I’m going to be honest. I don’t expect many people to read them or take the time to internalize them or act on them. Now she has over 35 times the number of followers I do, so maybe I’m being unfairly pessimistic.

I hope I am. Because these 3 articles encapsulate most of the key reasons why things are so fucked up right now.

In recommending these articles, I also have to recommend Teez Time, who also casts a brilliant and perceptive light on these and other issues that are crucial to our well-being, in the truest sense.

And, of course, there’s Riley, who’s providing us with so much amazing, awesome fun and super-sexy content, stories and art and video, that we really need and that Stripe is trying to shut down, with Substack’s support, and she is doing that because she’s an amazing, awesome person and also at her own personal cost.

People who care about that will give her some support rather that dropping another $5 or $8 or $10 in Starbucks’ pocket (or wherever; I don’t have to single out Starbucks; their cocoa is really good).

People who don’t care will continue enjoying what she’s offering for free without a second thought (or maybe even a first one) and move on, cuz yeah, there’s always some free stuff out there and why should they care?

Well, they’ll find out why they should’ve cared one day, probably when it’s too late, if they don’t wake up first.

So I’m going to offer my own perspective, even though I don’t think it’s new and even though these 3 women all do what they do better than I do.

No, that is not me “belittling” myself in search of anything. Read them. Watch them. They’re eloquent and gifted in ways I am not. And that’s a very good thing. We need them. We should celebrate and support them. Let’s be clear on that.

Now the perspective I’m going to offer maybe isn’t quite what some might think. We all know (but often don’t like to think about) that our time on this “mortal coil” is gonna end.

That’s not exactly what I’m thinking of. What I’m thinking of is what occurred to me when I lay in the hospital, unable to move.

I mean that. Too weak to raise my head. To lift a finger. For weeks.

I still remember, clearly, the first time I could hold my phone. It took both hands. I couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds but I could put it on my chest and, with a nurse’s help, record a voice note I emailed to a friend so she could forward it to people and let them know I wasn’t dead.

Even when I could lift my head and lift a finger, my dependence was total. I was on a feeding tube and it was over 6 weeks before I was cleared to eat the red jello that’s a traditional first meal (at least I think it is). It was almost 8 weeks before I could eat actual food.

I forget how long it was before I was allowed to take a drink and that was one of the worst things of all. I was so messed up I couldn’t swallow properly and had to be tested frequently to see if my ability to swallow had come back. Trust me, you don’t want to go through that, especially not for weeks.

I had 3 “life-threating incidents” during the month I was in ICU. I think I recall two. (I was intubated and mostly comatose at time.) Not going to talk about that.

Why am I saying this at all?

Because it made me realize something. Well, a few things, I guess.

First, doctors—and mine were awesome—can save our lives but that’s an intervention that keeps us from dying. They don’t guide, assist, and enable our recovery.

It’s the caregivers who do that; the nurses and nurses’ assistants for the 2 months I was in the hospital and the caregivers and physical therapists during the 3 months I was in Post-Acute Care learning to walk again.

Over those 5 months, I got to know those extremely awesome people pretty well. And they’re the reason I recovered, nearly 100%.

There’s something else they did. I know something about PTSD. And when I was in the hospital and starting to come back to life, I wondered “How the fuck am I coming out of this without developing PTSD?”

Yes, it was that bad.

The reason I didn’t is because (I am firmly convinced) of the care, consideration, and compassion these people showed me. Like the nurse who sat with me and listened to me babble all through her lunch break and longer—it was about 90 minutes—at 1 am on the really bad night when I was on the verge of completely breaking down. I’ll never forget her.

Or the woman who brought me an apple and chocolate the first morning I woke up in Post-Acute Care and became a really close friend with an amazing story of her own.

And the physical therapist who got me back on my feet again. And the awesome couple from Hungary who spoke only a little English which wasn’t a barrier to real communication at all.

Those are just a few of the people I thank with all my heart for my recovery.

So here’s that next thing that occurred to me.

These caregivers are not highly paid. The nurses get about $70/hr in my high-cost of living, high-tax area. The nurses’ assistants get paid about half that; barely a living wage here. Many of them work two jobs at different hospitals, picking up shifts to make ends meet. One of my nurses lived 4 hours away and was going to another hospital close to an hour away to work another shift after he was off at my hospital. (He was a hoot too.)

So here’s what occurred to me: the CEO and CFO and the other top executives of the hospital system I was at sit in meetings and whatever and set the compensation of everyone who works for them. They decide what a nurse gets, a doctor gets, a nurses’ assistant gets.

And every one of those people—all at the top of their careers—is, unless they unexpectedly kick off or meet their end in an accident, going to end up in a hospital bed, just like I was.

They are going to be absolutely, totally dependent, just like I was. Their lives are going to completely in the hands of those caregivers and whether they recover, how well they recover, or how they are eased into that Final Night if they don’t recover, will depend on the skills and personal dedication of people they decided (solemnly and with calculation) to often pay barely a living wage.

The CEO of my hospital chain made $3.6 million the year I was in the hospital, according to a publicly disclosed IRS Form. He’s actually way down on the list of CEO’s for major healthcare networks. Tops on the list (that I found) is the CEO of Kaiser Permanente who got just over $16 million in total compensation in 2022. Other CEOs received between $7 million and $10 million.

That’s up to 200 times what these guys decided the person is worth who’s going to take care of them and make them as comfortable as they can possibly be when they can’t lift their heads or lift a fucking finger.

Do you think they ever think about that?

Or are those people just numbers on a balance sheet to them?

If they have a night like I did and young nurse comes in and gives up her whole lunch hour to listen to them and comfort them and save them from completely breaking down, what price would they put on that?

Where’s that go as a line item on their corporate balance sheet?

Because that nurse who did that for me—her name’s Miranda, by the way—didn’t have to do it. No one made her give up her lunch hour for me, plus another 30 minutes. She was just there to check my vitals, check my meds, take some blood.

That required all of 5 minutes.

But she sensed I wasn’t doing well, asked me how I was; I whispered I could really use someone to talk to. She pulled up a chair, sat down, leaned in where she could hear me and let me babble. I babbled about Sappho and Homer and I think the Hittites with some Celtic stuff thrown in. And she told me about our shared love of mythology and the philosophy courses she took in college and her favorite Thai restaurants.

And after she left, I slept peacefully for first time I remember (there’s a lot I don’t remember).

Mr. $17-million CEO, put a price on that.

Because not only did Miranda not have to give up her lunch hour for me, she didn’t even have to be a nurse. She’s young, smart, dedicated, detail oriented, able to learn hard things, able to work long grueling hours without complaint.

In short, she’s valuable. She had choices. And she chose nursing over something that could’ve been more lucrative for her.

She gave up a whole lot more than her lunch hour, if you count things that way CEOs and CFOs do.

I think that says a lot about CEOs and CFOs (or a lot of them; maybe some are OK?).

That led me to my final thought.

All these people at Stripe and who run Substack and all the tech billionaires who have such fun trying to run our lives, police us, shut us down for their own selfish, hypocritical and generally fucked-up reasons are going to end up in that bed too.

Billions of dollars are not worth shit when you can’t lift a finger, can’t eat, can’t take a sip of water. (I won’t go into the rest.)

Being “all-powerful” on the internet won’t mean damn thing. The bots they created to harass us, demonetize us, shut us down won’t do a fucking thing for them.

So when that night comes, when complete dissolution is right fucking there, about to end them, what are they gonna do?

Who’s going to patiently, compassionately, sit by their side and pull them back from the brink?

Because that’s where it ends, in the way I’m referring to in my title. Not the ultimate end, but the end where we face total dependence, absolute lack of control; where all the money and the cool shit they believed was oh so important means absolutely nothing.

Yeah, I suspect some of them are going to say, Haha, I gotta bot for that.

Right. Go ahead. Think that, buddy. Bet your life on it.

Because you are.

That’s my thought for today. Now I’m going back to Code Hell for another round. Dante (I just remembered) had Virgil to guide him.

I’ve got Claude the AI. I hope I don’t end up having to escape the way Dante and Virgil did (or I’m told they did). Eewww… Don’t ask.

Go check out Riley’s new post. Buy her new boxset. Because that matters.

Thanks for reading. Thank you endlessly for you amazing support. Back later.