Now that your big eyes have finally opened. Now that your wondering , how must they feel, meaning them that you''ve chased ' cross America's movie screens. Now that you're wondering how can it be real, that the ones you've called colorful, noble, and proud in your school propaganda, they starve in their splendor, you've asked for my comment I simply will render -- my country tis of thy people you're dying. Now that the long house's reached superstition, you force us to send our toddlers away, to your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions. Forbid them their languages then further say that American history really began when Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress that the nation of legions that's conquered this land are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best  and yet where in your history books is the tale of the genocide basic to this country's birth of the preachers who lied how the bill of rights failed. How a nation of patriots return to their earth  and  where will you tell of the liberty bell as it rang with a thud oer Kinzua   mud and of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year.Hear how the bargain was made for the west. with her shivering children in zero degrees blankets for  your land so the treaties attest ah well blankets for land is a bargain indeed and the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected from small-poxdisease
d dying soldiers that day, and the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored. A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way, yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived. Their blood runs the rapidt though genes have been paled from the Grand Canyons caverns to craven sad hills the wounded the losers the robbed sing their tale from Los Angeles County to upstate New York the white nation fattens while others grow lean oh the tricked and the victed they know what I mean, The past it just crumbled the future just threatens. Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks and now here you come bill of sale in your hand and surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks for the blessings of civilization you've brought us the lessons you've taught us the ruin you've wrought us oh see what our trust in America's  bought us
MORE further down
Mom, circle, was Coast Guard, Dad,bottom middle, bombadier in Army Air Corps--48 missions plus two doubles, once returning w/o the tailgunner, once w/o two gunners. Grandma's father, above, Red Cross doctor , my spouse, bottom right, Army engineer . My brother,  left, had B.A. in chemistry and no war to serve in; Grandpa and Grandma, left, protect us twins from evil with lots of money, stocks,  savings bonds. Read my story, click here, about Vietnam and   combat engineers Samoan , below front, and Tampa teen (my husband), below him. It was a true tale.
The slideshows below are of the place where God's Country has to be, my grandparents ' life in the U. S. in the 1920's-30s-40s-50s-60s-70s-80s-,and the presence of me, my dad,and my siblings there, in the northwoods of northern lower peninsula Michigan .  Under my left arm is a cassette tape,except when I raise it, and then it is a wall as thin as a DVD box, with corners as sharp, which I can't change the skin of, cuz it's under my skin. It's a pacemaker defibrillator, and with it comes days, weeks to live. I can't pull a shirt off over my head, try on another in a store dressing room, pull that off, try a second, then get mine back on. Arms won't stay up that long--they are too exhausted. I can't hang up hangers of clothes or hold open a newspaper in my arms.I'm also terminally ill but I'm not in a wheelchair so I can't get a disability property tax exemption. I know people in wheelchairs who can wheel themselves, who hold jobs.
The only oral surgeon who takes Medicaid in 4 counties plus mine has refused to see me for 3 years. The first time I was sent  to him his ladies led me to a chair in back while he hid behind the door of an empty exam room where he'd have remained unnoticed if I hadn't thought she said first door on  left (she said third) so I walked in --or started to as the women got all fussy-- but it was too late--I'd seen him.. Then they returned to me and said he refused to take me and I had to leave. In my mind I'm thinking what? He can't even come in and meet me, look in my mouth and tell me what the big lump is under my four-tooth bridge where a hole is, not in the bridge but enamel under it, past some gum? I've been  waiting 3 years for a dentist
After I saw that Medicaid dentist I waited 2 weeks and then called Shands to see that they had everything. "What your dentist sent us is useless," the lady who answered said, after an absence. "She does not refer you or tell us what's wrong with a single tooth."


"You're kidding me. She sat there and named each tooth by a number and told her secretary to put "missing" or "crown" after each while I tried to say it was broken off under the gum ,or the crown had a big hole in it ,and she ignored me."That's what I said.

"She didn't take x-rays?"
"No.She refused."
"Well she was suposed to send us a referral
and a treatment plan for your entire mouth. Call her and tell her to do that."

Although all the house did in 11 years was fall down and delapidate, it is somehow now worth $106,000 and I'm suposed to pay between $2,500 and $3,000 a year in property taxes.







.Slides are as follows:
RED BRICK HOUSE:
house I grew up in
ME CANOEING TO GOD:
me on Au Sable River;
condensation in camera makes me a rainbow. God makes me a force of His while there. Taken by Mary  when 10 years old
CABIN WITH FIREPLACE:
our cabin on the creek
MY DEER: my visit from the sign of my brothers have made it
ME AT SMA: my high school graduation pic, St. Mary Academy, Monroe, Mich. (no longer exists)
PAUL H. YOUNG: Grandpa and his first business
ME& PORCUPINE: porcupines were eating bark off our birch and poplar, making them vulnerable to bugs and disease
GRANDPA HOLDING HIS SONS IN AU SABLE:
introduction to God's Country
AVERAGE ME CANOER: pre-children: muscular lady loving her waters
GRANDMA'S CABIN: : for decades, alone, on South Branch Au Sable. A real nickel slot machine hid in the wall

I hope you the world take care of my two little girls for me when I die. One is in college but she spent her first 2 months there flat broke with no car or internet, so far; one is 12 and needs me and is why I am still alive after being given a year to live in 1996. Dan her dad says I am stubborn and won't die. I  will, but I am hanging on for my baby.When I can't, you people must be good to her. Like your own babies, she is God's flower in His own creation and He loves her and made her to love and she loves Him which makes Him delirious with joy and you better not hurt this little treasure of M'Lord's..

Plus he can't be away from my parents that long--they need him there 4, 5 days a week driving them, answering their phone---that's why making a repeat trip to a dentist is so hard for me--he has to put $10 no one has in the tank to get here to take me, and find $10 to get back to them with.
Trout Unlimited is a national conservation group dedicated to saving our rivers and fish. Paul H Young was my father's dad. They asked my family to come join them for a weekend on my beloved Au Sable River in Michigan for 3 days and 2 nights in a lodge for $20 a person--that's $10 a night for the motel. Free breakfast and dinner Saturday and free brunch Sunday. "Show your kids the changing colors of autumn and  how we enjoy the river PHY R&R style," it said. It is so nice of people to still donate rooms and food in memory of my Grandfather. I wish we'd have had the gas to go. But Dan can't be away from his oxygen tank that long either, the one that fills his 2 little ones. Only one night.

I am terminally ill (I'm not going to commit suicide)so I don't have much time to say, life in the 60's was the best time I ever had on this planet. DDT and all. We had so much and it never occurred to me I could be a dirt-poor adult with absolutely no spare money to neuter a cat even when it goes down to $10 a cat and they throw in the rabies shot and tag free.See, people try to help. One of the neatest things I've seen lately is, I got an email from the Paul H. Young Chapter of Trout Unlimited last week.
window as Dan melted into a tree)( and the guy's fat girlfriend, not told the truth by him why he was fired, called child abuse and said anonymously that we had no running water, often lived without electric, and our oven didn't work, so we were surprize-visited by authorities who all peered into my spanking new but non-working oven looking for grime and roaches they could hold against me, since we had a convection oven microwave and they couldn't take the kids for us not having a working oven), --if a family with minor children has no electric, or no running water, or no hot water, they HAVE to take the kids instantly--the old pioneer spirit is DEAD-- Maybe I'm lucky I'm dying. But hey I like life too. I had fun making a video for U Tube. I had fun watching Heroes and 6 Degrees and Lost and Smith and 7th Heaven and Jericho and Runaway. I feel like I'm in Runaway and Jericho and Lost as I sit here alone night with my 12-year-old and watch them. They hit home somehow.
Hey everyone out there I love you all. Take care.
With my electric at $4,800 a year because we have tarpaper walls (no siding--contractor tore off the wood and then split after saying the repairs cost more than he'd estimated and he needed $10,000 more--which we did not have), my phone at $1,200 a year, water-trash-sewer, like everyone's, at $78 a month, or $940 a year, and gas (hot water heater), $600 a year, we have $2,400 for food a year for 4 people. When my grandmother had my dad, stuff like hot water and electric was optional--people still had outhouses, Grandma kept the milk cold in the 40 degree spring-fed river...but , as the Tampa cops told me on my camcorder while they inspected my home after Dan fired a guy for peeping in our daughter's windows (a Viet Nam vet, Dan was outside taking a leak when he saw his employee sidle into the yard and sneak up to the

There is no way we can pay it --we get just enough a month to pay utilities.When I moved here in 1995 the house and and was valued by the county  tax appraisor at $25,000, and Florida has a $25,000 homestead exemption, so I had no property taxes.
If we, my family, got $5,000 more a year we could fix the oven lightning blew out 5 years ago and cook again. We could replace our stolen lawn mower and not have to live without water or phone all summer to pay someone $40 a week to mow our lawn. We could put our kids in clothes--not the same pair of jeans all year but 3 or 4 pairs of pants and some skirts, a little variation so the whole school isn't making fun of them till they explode and ...or implode and give up.We could afford to rent a home. I'm not kidding--we are going homeless in 3 years. That's how long you can go w/o paying your property tax before they sell your home on the courthouse steps.

.Cheating charities, cheating CEOs back-dating stock-options--even the president of McAfee--; HMOs whose bottom line requires killing as many frail people as possible through planned obsolescence.

Anybody good want to run for these positions?
He'd rather believe in God and that treating people like dirt, even killing them, is okeyed in the Bible.We should have a religious war, dam it. It's his kind of thinking that is screwing up our nation.  Guantanomo, lying about WMD, Foley---that Bible verse assures them they are all going to heaven no matter what they do as long as they believe Jesus already paid for it.That's why we are in the mess we are, with so many cheaters, liars, and snakes-in-the-grass in charge of us all.
Some pain doctor I got once who teaches Catholics they got it all wrong told me that once. He had it on his form--what is your religion? I wondered why in the heck he asked--this wasn't a hospital, you know-----he soon explained why. He loves to tell Catholics they are going to hell if they don't convert right then as he prays over them. He is  filthy rich if his office is any indication and I'm sure it's the Religious Right he represented. I'd rather not believe in God at all and just believe in being just and fair and good and loving.
By making us think the folks on Medicaid are all bums who just don't like to work , and everyone on minimum wage is a teen on his way to better income, they keep the minimum wage down and a lot of good decent people suffer terribly for it. If they really believed in God they'd worry about being held accountable. But their God puts you in hell if you don't believe Jesus paid for all your sins and that you can sin all you want. If you think you have to be good then you don't believe this one particular Bible passage and it means you don't believe God's word and that means you will go to hell.
So if it went up, those on SSI (the only souls allowed Medicaid) struggling to keep utilities on monthly would have money for utilities and loose a lot of stress and live longer which is apparently NOT our goal for disabled Americans--we want them to live shorter. I said if the Republicans really think a family of 4 can make it on $2,250 a year per person, why are they saying only teens are on minimum wage? Why aren't they telling the truth about who gets so little to live off? I know it won't be published, that's why I am saying it here.

It is a program only adults 100% disabled can get on, and kids .Half its members are children and the other half are mostly in nursing homes.They once led productive lives and were not freeloaders all their lives like welfare people could be. I said everytime someone brings up raising the minimum wage the Republicans say oh they are taking that dusty old book off the shelves again? And then argue that the only people on minimum wage are high school students whose parents provide them with cars and pay their auto insurance and they soon move up to better pay, but if we raise minimum wage, a lot of small businesses and chain franchises  will go under.I said minimum wage with one full-time worker gives a family of 4 $10,720 a year to live on, and Medicaid is tied to it.
I said it is not true like Governor Bush wants us all to think , that everyone on Medicaid needs to learn self-discipline and that it's high time they learned not everything in life is free, like the rest of us had to learn.(He got a standing ovation for that one.) I said it is important we make that distinction between the now-defunct "welfare" and Medicaid, because the latter is not a synonym for the former. Medicaid is not this entitlement if you are poor.
I jumped on that, thanking the newspaper for putting a face to Medicaid and telling readers that many people on Medicaid like Nanny had had nice homes,chemist husbands, put on luncheons for their civic-minded lady's groups, and been respected when younger.Even if they didn't work, like Nanny hadn't, they still contributed to the greatness of our country because the kids they raised at home did not throw tantrums in school and diss their teachers like the ones raised by day-care now do.
"No Nanny you have a new room." They hoped to hide the roommate bit from her til they left, so they wouldn't have to see her cry, I guess , but after they settled her in she saw balloons on a dresser and said "What's all that?" so they told her she had a roommate. The surprise ending was that she said she was lonely when the lights went out and her door shut and maybe a roommate would be nice.The author had said that the only people left in her world called her mom, grandma, and Mrs. hername, and there was no one to call her by her first name anymore. Now, she said, maybe there would even be someone to call her "Dot."
An article in the paper the other day was supposed to make your heart cry. It was how the columnist's granny was in a nursing home after living in a very nice home in the 60's and 70's and her chemist spouse died and within 6 years she could not pay the property tax and had to move in with a daughter, then the other, then needed around the clock care in a wheelchair they could not provide so they put "Nanny" in a nursing home. At first she had a private room but now that her $100,000 life's savings are gone Medicaid will not put them in single rooms so she was being moved to one with a roommate. It was about how they hid it from her and took her out to get her nails and hair done while the grandson and son-in-law moved all her stuff to her new, shared room. How when they returned she kept saying "No, you turn that way, you're going the wrong way" till the daughter said no ,Mom, you have a new room. They pulled up in front of the room and Nanny's photos of her nice houses of her past were on the wall. "What's this?" Nanny said suspiciously."I've never been here before."

It is absolutely creepy how the medical system goes on around this land. That's the freedom they all fight for by fighting a national health care plan. Then the thousands of companies that deliberately bill for stuff they never provided would lose their targets and go belly up. Gotta protect the  HMOs and insurance companies ...not the people.
His mind is still sharp--he was paying the bills Mom let accumulate while he was gone and saw 2 from 2 different hospitals for wheelchair loans and he never saw a wheelchair in either place once. So he called his HMO all upset. They reminded him that after he paid the first 5 days down, they paid everything else, so told him to  ignore it.They said it was some outfit scamming to get money out of him . Dad says they somehow find out who is in a hospital and then send false bills to them. Had he died, Mom would not have known the bill wasn't valid, and paid it, and then lost her home . I can't believe how many scammers there are--this is not the America I was taught it was. This is Thailand or India or somewhere where scams are prevalant.
DAD

Dad went into a hospital Aug 22 to have a cow's valve put in his heart thinking he'd be home in a week--and got out Oct 12. He was so weak from all that time in bed he fell the first two times he tried to stand up and began bleeding from the elbow and it never ended, bled 48 hours, ruined his bedsheets--but he  totally refused to call a doctor. He  no way wants to go back to a hospital. He should just reduce his bloodthinners but he is a WW2 vet-- Air Corps bombadier of over 100 missions--and obedient to his elders and betters.

See, morphine dries you out on a cellular level and when you go cold turkey off it you get this fluid shift and I have congestive heart failure and am only allowed to drink 48 ounces of fluid a day and all that extra fluid  building up would , due to my inefficient pump, collect in my lungs and make me unable to breathe.

Except about the 99 years. He got his license to practice in FLorida in 1960 but the way his wife said it he had one in another  state prior. (She was only there once to act as a go-between).So he's at least 76. But he looks and acts a lot older than my 85-year -old dad.

It's like, almost illegal, or something. So I made a special appointment with my primary just to explain to him how he had to call those pain docs, not me. He's 99 and fell asleep once while writing me a scrip. He kept trying now to give me a referral to pain management. I kept saying, don't worry about that till you get me an appointment with one. I really don't think he ever understood because no one has ever called me with an appointment and there's about 10 days til I run out of my meds and die the next day if I don't have more.This all sounds like so much exaggeration but sadly, I am not exaggerating at all.

They then gave me two more doctors but said to have my primary call them as "people have had more luck that way." No guff--just that day, the paper was full of stuff about them busting a clinic that gave pain pills.

"There's only one," they said, and gave me a number. When I called it, the phone said the number was no longer in use. I called Medicaid."Look, if I go off this drug for 12 hours I go into heart failure which last time cost you a pretty penny  for me being in a hospital 3 days," I said.


"Medicaid only pays 25% of what everyone else pays me," he said, "And I have to wait 9 months for it. I just can't lower my price. Last year it was 50%. I can't go lower."That would be the Medicaid cuts the Bush brothers were bragging about.So I went home and called Medicaid and asked to be mailed a listof pain doctors.
Since I first saw her, though, my pain management doctor sent me a certified letter saying he was dropping all Medicaid patients in 30 days and there were plenty of good pain doctors in town and to look in the Yellow Pages under Physicians, Pain Management. I went and saw him to see what I could do. He has this nice clean big waiting room with magazines and TV and even a soda machine. Most Medicaid doctors have filthy scumbag little holes in the wall with nothing to read and no chairs left to sit down and the wait is 2 hours. I had tears in my eyes seeing my nice- doctor- waiting- room for the last time. I asked him why he was doing it.
I wonder what thrill she gets out of recommending stuff she thinks is going to stop me from getting dental--I mean, why she's so happy to do so. I wondered how she'd treat me if I'd  slept with her husband or something .. Scary lady. I can only hope Shands can veer from her treatment plan. Or I have to go back to a new dentist and do it all over.  What a waste of taxpayer money--and it's the doctor doing it!

"OK, you go now and don't ever come here again. And I will not do your dentures. Don't even try."
Like I'd want to run into her anywhere ever again."Is this infected?" I repeated ,touching the white lump.
"Yes." and she left, and the girl says,"You can go home now.""Shouldn't I be on antibiotics?" I said.
"You can go now," the dentist yelled back.

"No," I said,"They won't let me die."
"They have to follow my plan.Medicaid told me," she said stubbornly."They sait most of what you want they won't cover."

"Yah, and I bet you didn't even explain to them I was asking to have them  all pulled, too," I said.Oops.. Not very Jesus -like. Some people do that to me.

Wildly hoping there was some sense in other places and Shands would not have to follow her advice or else reject me, I said,"That's OK .When Shands sees stuff Medicaid won't pay for they will just pull those teeth."
"They will follow my treatment plan," she said, looking at me sadly, like I was too old to be rebellious and was a pity.
"Number one, gone. Number two--broken." Then she went off into rapid Spanish. I was interested in how the girl spoke with a lazy tongue, barely pronouncing her own rapid Spanish words, yet was understood by the dentist. They did the whole thing in Spanish, I guess so I couldn't say "That crown has a big hole in it--that tooth must be pulled!" Then she told me "I'm supposed to send them my treatment plan of what I would do and that's what ah'm sending, ah'm not going to tell them to pull them all. I don't know where you're going to get the money but that's  you problem."

I wanted to say, you don't like people very much,do you? But, I was afraid she'd say "white ones." So I smiled like Jesus would have.Then I said,"Is this an infection?"pointing to a big white lump under a three-tooth bridge.
"Shut up. Can't you see I'm reading an x-ray? You don't say nothin while I 'm tryin to read an x-ray, you got it?"
I sat there, she stood there, I thought of how she'd brought it all up while reading an x-ray.Finally she starts to tell the girl what to write, like she was a medium who after intense concentration finally brought forth  the ghost's words.

"Then why did'nt you go to them dentists?" she said perturbedly. "Why did you come to me?"
"Because they all said they were done with me then and I could never come back once they referred me to an oral surgeon." As in, I'd been denied by the oral surgeon so called the dentist and asked for antibiotics and pain meds and was refused because they'd already "passed me on down."
Then I recalled how the last 3 dentists, who'd tried unsuccessfully to refer me to the only local oral surgeon, had all said to pull them all at once. "I have to have them all pulled, since Medicaid never has paid for fillings or root canals or crowns," I said. "So my last 3 dentists all recommmended they pull them all at once so I didn't have to quit taking chemo to get my blood clotting again before they pulled each one, one by one as they 'went off'. It would kill my chemo program to quit over and over the year I'm on it. It wouldn't work if we had to keep stopping it for days or weeks . So they'd say pull them all at once."
"You know," she said as she peered at it up to a light,"Medicaid told me that most of the stuff you need done they don't pay for so you are going to have to come up with a lot of money--you're just wasting my time and yours (looking me in the eye with hate)--you'll never get that much money. You'll never get this work done."
"I have to ," I said."Or I'll die."
"If you get that much money they'll take you off Medicaid and not pay for the rest of it,"she said. "You might as well give up now instead of wasting my time."

"And DIE?" I yelped. "No way!"

And so what if her fax was down that day? Is that any excuse to do the job half-assed and then call me back to do it the right way when the fax machine worked again? "I'm not going to X-ray you cuz I can't fax the info til tomorrow so I'll just charge the government for a visit and do zip? "She could have done it right and waited for her fax to work! But I smiled and waited my turn and  then I was x-rayed and then the black lady who is the dentist came in with her secretaryand looked at my x-ray.

Bogus, bogus , bogus! She'd faxed something to Shands after my first visit! So that was her story to Medicaid when they caught her taking money for not doing the job! Not very good--she better never try to be a politician--actually, I take this back; like with Foley, everyone would just tell HER how she was acting and that I told on her--and the ball would drop there.Right? But it should be that any one at Medicaid could call Shands and learn that  she'd  faxed stuff to them re me the day I saw her last, and she was a great big liar.

"She must have had a wrong number, then, " the man said, waking me up.That was definitely not the reason this dentist never reached me. I'd given her my ex's cell number too and she had my address.To get all 3 wrong was like, no way.

It was a little pissy that he took her side. When I called her,.."Yes the doctor wants you to come in for part two of your treatment plan," a girl goes. Part Two? She'd mainly told me to never return, and certainly never said I was to come back, or set an appointment, and etc. But you don't argue with people who have your life in their hands.
"Ok," I said cheerfully, and we set a date.

When I got there the lady at the desk goes "Ah, yes--our fax machine is running again so we ready for you now."
from my pillow, I'm in bed most of my life, and I answer every call, even unknown ,because that's how Shands shows up and they are my life: my mother and my father,  my aunt and my brother,  my cousin and my-" (my dental, my interferon and my heart transplant I can't have without the first two first), but he interrupted this segue.
Two weeks later I got a call from Medicaid at 8 a.m.
A man said "Miss Young, why don't you answer your phone?"
"Huh? I 'm here," I said."I just answered my phone, didn't I?"
"Your dentist Dr. Gamble has been trying to call you for 2 weeks and can't reach you!"
"I don't know why,"I said."My only phone is 2 inches
So I called her office and they said she sent what she sent and that was all she was sending. So I called Medicaid and told them I needed to see another dentist and they'd be charged the same amount all over again because the one they sent me to wouldn't co-operate .  An investigator from Medicaid  called Monday and said name 5 teeth and what is wrong with them. So I named the 5 broken off below the gum that slowly vanished under new gum leaving spikes and pain.
Remember that Medicaid dentist? She's baaaaack!
I left. I hoped I was sent there by God to give that girl's mum direction but I don't know, I don't know if either  of us will ever get help. It's like how it is when you don't have a national health system. Individuals get to call the shots that kill people like me. It's a nightmare. I mean, I get depressed. I want to live. I have kids. Damn them all..
"Tell her to call Shands,"
"Shhh," the girl said, as she was walking me to the front desk."I'm not sure she'll fax it, she wants to let you do it,"she confided.Oh, sweet jesus--I'm flat broke! So I begged them to fax it. Finally they said they were..
"They're doing the same thing to my Mom they're doing to you," the girl confided."She can't get any dental cuz she has hepatitis C and prolapsed  mitral valve."
"I have those," I said.
"My mama has the same problem and she can't eat anymore."
She was saying "not there"about about 5 of these.

She noted the big hole behind the half a top front tooth I have left. She didn't see the deep hole in my gold filling it takes me an hour a day to clean out with toothpicks.

Even when I told her she just told the girl,"crown."

When they left I sat there, then the girl comes back.

"What''s the name of the dentist this note goes to?"
"Shands. it's a university .It's a university hospital."
"I'll tell them that you need your teeth pulled in a hospital with a heart doctor on staff."

"Please just look at my teeth. They want the lowdown."

Finally she returned with a girl and she'd name a tooth number and then say "not there" when I knew it was just below the gumline and the gum had closed over the jagged, loose  pieces.Every day as I dug food out of those with toothpicks the pieces of tooth moved around but would not come out.Then my jaw would ache like crazy for an hour or more.
"Please at least look in my mouth," I said."No dentist has looked in my mouth in 4 years--I want to know if I have oral cancer or anything."

"It won't do you no good for me to look in your mouth--I'm not treating you with your heart issues."

"But you need to tell Shands what I  need--that I need an oral surgeon.".
"Actually they sent me a list of names but yours was the first on it who'd see me."
"No, no...don't lie. They sent you muh name cuz you're the third Medicaid patient I got this month and I never got one before. They're doing it, yep..This is the last one--I'm calling them today." Then she looked at me more clearly. "I can't give you a panaramic x-ray, so you have to go somewhere else."
"There isn't anywhere else! I don't need a panaramic one, just any kind." (I was now taking a big chance..)
"I'm not giving you a X-ray at all. They aren't going to get what they want from me,  they going to learn to send you people elsewhere. ALL I'll do is write that note  to that doctor Shands."
"It's a hospital clinic,"I said.
"Whatever."
It was April.

When the 4 months went by and I got there the black lady dentist said ,"Why did you come here? You need your teeth pull't--they broken off at or below the gumline. I can't do that--you need an oral surgeon."

"I know, " I said."I'm here to get  you to fax Shands with what dentistry I need so they can decide to take me or not."
"Do what."
"Send a fax to Shands--I put the number on the paper I filled out--"

"Ma'm, the only oral surgeon I can refer you to is Dr. Bowlin. I'm not allowed to send you to anyone else."
"Medicaid told me to do this!" I said. That's probably who wouldn't let her refer me anywhere else.
"Who sent you here? How did you get my name?"

"Medicaid."
"Unn-uh. I rarely accept Medicaid-- I gotta tell them they gotta quit doin this."
The lady pointedly sighed into the phone."OK, send us a letter telling us the whys and whats and wait a week and call us back. Include a panaramic x-ray."

So I called all 6  dentists on that list. Most said they didn't take Medicaid anymore, or their phone went "ding dong ding--if you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.:" One said they couldn't see me for 4 months--their earliest opening. I said "That's ok, I'll take it." She was alarmed.

"You have time to wait that long? I thought your teeth hurt bad."
"They do but you're all I have."
"I'm sorry about that," she said, sounding compassionate."That's too bad. OK, your appointment is on August 28. at 10:30 a.m."
She gave me the phone number of Shands oral surgery clinic.When I first called them 2 years before they said I had to pay cash, they didn't take Medicaid. This time they said they weren't taking new patients. So I wrote  my congressman.

He wrote back that he asked my local Medicaid office about me and he was sending on a list he got of dentists I could see.

Shands oral surgery clinic was on the list--the others weren't oral surgeons. So I called Shands again.
I said but I've got to have a heart transplant!  I've got to eat!  I 'm in a lot of pain!  The infection could go to my heart--blood pools in my heart longer than  yours. How do I get this done ?  You even told me you'd give me dentures starting Jan.1.  But you won't let me see another oral surgeon.  Surely Medicaid has other oral surgeons in Florida! Can't I go to one in another county? Alabama? Georgia?"
She paused. "They got one at Shands Hospital in Gainesville you can see."

Gas to there is like, a utility being cut off.

But I said "Ok! What's the surgeon's name so I can call it? I mean, him, her."
So I called Medicaid and reported him. They didn't care.

The lady who called me back (Medicaid always has a machine. It always says someone will call back within 24 business hours) said," if  our oral surgeon refuse to treat you there's nothing we can do. "

"I'm telling you, he won't see you.He won't even meet you."
"I noticed. But there are no other options."
"Good day," she said, firmly pushing me out the door.

"My cardiologist wanted to explain to him that he can have a cardiologist present , I can be in Tampa General as I undergo anesthesia...with  a pacemaker doctor there to disable my defibrillator--"
"Ma'm you need to have those teeth cared for in a hospital setting with a cardiologist present."
Duh?"I know! But I need an oral surgeon to do it!"
"But no one believes he won't treat me when he won't even write a  note saying so to show them!"
"He won't say anything about you--you are not a patient of record.It's illegal."
"You mean my doctor can never talk to him?"
"Not about you."

"But he's the only Medicaid oral surgeon and I need oral surgery!"
"He feels it is too risky."
"Then he can at least write a note I can show Medicaid so maybe they'll let me see a different oral surgeon."
"Ma'm he's been the only Medicaid oral surgeon for years."
"So why can't I ?"
"Because we won't file them--we'll just throw them away when you leave.It won't do you any good."
"Yes it will--then you can talk to my cardiologist about me."
She shifted some papers angrily. "Maam, he is not going to let you be his  patient.So he will not keep them and I'm sorry but he will not talk to another doctor or anyone else about someone who is not a patient of his. It's illegal.  So go on, get out."
I said,"You told my cardiologist I needed to fill out some papers when he tried to talk to you about me,"
"That's because we didn't know who you were! But now I remember you.You already filled them out."
"I know," I said, tears stinging my eyes.I hadn't , like, wanted to go without food for a week for this ."So why did you tell him I didn't? Now he thinks I'm a liar."

--They had no openings for 3 weeks, only take Medicaid the last Thursday of each month- and when I got all the way out there, a fur piece,  our last  food money  for a week going to gas ....

I walk in and the girl behind the walled-off area with plexiglas window says "What are you doing here? I remember you! We told you we couldn't

Lady said have my doctor call them. So I went home called my cardiologist and said you have to call him, he won't write a note. My cardio's office called him and his office told them I had to come in first, fill out paperwork--that they'd no file on me to know who I was to talk  about me. When my cardio's nurse called me back she sounded like I was this lying sack of..for saying I'd just seen him. I said I filled out all the paperwork 2 days ago --they do too have it! She said, in a tone like she was humoring a liar, well they don't think so, so just go back and do it again--this is serious and has to be done STAT. So I made another appt.
They said Dr. Bowlin  didn't write notes.I said then how do I prove to all my doctors who say I refuse to get my teeth pulled that it's him refusing to pull them not me ?
(A pacemaker doctor put in  my medical files that I refuse to get my teeth taken care of. Remember that dentist out west who said he can tell a crank addict a mile away cuz they have missing and rotten teeth? He must have read it because he wrote that he was certain I have "early cirrhosis " too. I asked my trusty cardiologist what that meant, all upset, and he said the cad wasn't a gastroenterologist so why was I paying any attention to him? I said but why would he even venture there? he said it's code for "drug abuser" on account of my teeth and all. Man, I hated that pacemaker jerk. I went to another. And my cardiologist even stopped having a partnering practice with him. Ha ha ... Be a jerk, lose the good people ....)
to tell me what it is, if it is infection, that big white bump, or what. My last dentist's pick slipped and made the hole right through the gum into the tooth or bridge I'd like to know which. But every dentist refers me to that one oral surgeon, Bowlin, saying they can't refer me to anyone else and that's when the ball drops. So as usual I got up to leave but I paused at the desk and asked for a note saying he won't treat me so I can show it to every agency etc that doesn't believe me.
Who's in charge of medical for the poor?
I'm the people on Medicaid and I am the rest of us. It is more likely that old Jeb Bush got more freebies, going to Bar BQs and restaurant meals everyone else paid for, and having so much provided to him as Guv, including free house and free health care...I bet even in stores when he liked something the owner said please take it with my regards. I well know nothing is free as I wait til July to develop the film of my kids at Christmas or hear them cry cuz we can't get their yearbook or class ring. People who don't know anything about the programs they are in charge of should not be allowed to make changes in them like he is. (His bright idea is to can Medicaid.)
His brother Ben co-founded The National Bank of Detroit,  which survived the depression and was a big bank in Michigan and Ohio in the 60's and 70's when I was a kid.We used to have Christmasses at Ben's and take an elevator to his library and play on the broad floor while a maid watched us; if we were lucky, Uncle Ben took us to his basement where a model railroad was set up the entire length of the mansion..
An early conservationist and proponent of catch-and-release, he has a chapter of Trout Unlimited named for him and his name is on a plaque in every canoe rented out by every livery on the Au Sable River in northern L.P. Michigan teaching canoists how to respect fly-fishermen they share the stream with.
He fought in Vietnam, my Dad was a bombadier in WW2 and went on over 50 missions, my grandfather worked for the Red Cross for WW1,as a doctor,a great, great, great,great etc grandfather was a foot soldier in the Culpeper, Va. Militia in the Revolutionary War, ancestors owned most of Culpepper County in Va. and were burgesses there,and Elizabeth City County, coming in 1622 from Gravesend , England where Pocahontas died and one group went to Salt Lake City where a great great etc grandfather's son invented the Browning Machine Gun then and still has the most patents held for weaponry ever--with me springing from his grandfather's other son--my grandfather did his own part to make America better by modifying the bamboo fly rod so it could be broken down and carried on planes. And so it could catch strong fish , and he invented not just the midge rod but the strawman nymph fly.
I worked since age 18 as a bellhop, in plastic factories making car parts, in restaurants, wholesale plant nurseries, day care centers, for the state at a university, and for 20 years with my husband designing, fabricating, installing,repairing, and even hand-painting Jesus and Biblical  and other scenes in Byzantine, Rennaisance, and contemporary styles for over 200 churches in my state and also schools, temples, chapels, hospitals, restaurants, banks, theme parks, homes, post offices....we paid property taxes for our business land, our home, intangible and tangible business taxes, Social Security and income taxes, sales tax...
My governor helps keep everyone satisfactorily blind by saying uninformed dumb stuff like "It's time the people on Medicaid paid more out of pocket for their own care and learned that not everything in life is free like the rest of us had to learn," for which he got a standing ovation by a crowd of suits and ties. That was his opportunity to teach these smirking rich folk that Medicaid is not the new word for welfare and that the only adults who can get Medicaid have to be 100% disabled, certified not only by their own doctors but by the state's every few years. He implies they've never worked--far from the truth. ..
My county just found millions of dollars to help the homeless so here is the plan: they're going to build a huge homeless center ya'll can live at but you have to promise to take classes on applying for jobs and apply daily for one. Like that's what I want to be doing my last 3 weeks alive while I've got a book to get out.While movie stars and other well-to-do guys can actually spend their last few weeks typing memoirs. Why can't I? Oh yeah they're taking my house from me because I'm not disabled. No dentist will touch me I am so disabled but not to my county! ..
Only she won't be because the state will take her for neglect. Then they may try to tell me I can live in a nursing home but I don't need one, I mean I had a house I was typing my autobiography into my computer in, why would I want to go live in a nursing home til I die instead? I don't need care--I don't defecate on myself, I can shower, my kid can load a dishwasher--it's a hoax, they say that stuff. Highway robbery. Look for the corpse just off the trail in the weeds. You'll see.
I can't lift a gallon of milk to the refrigerator from the floor but my county says I'm not as disabled as people in wheelchairs. I can't wash my own hair--the government says I'm 100% disabled as do my cardiologists and the govt gives me $900 a month because I'm 100% disabled but the county decided it can make up its own definition of disabled. So I must pay property taxes on my $106,700 home I own free and clear, only they don't give me the money to. They want my house . In three years my house is to be sold on the courthouse steps for being tax delinquent 3 years. Then me and my 12 year old will be homeless...
Above: Our property in snow; below- our property in  Indian summer bliss
Grandma   fished
Grandma, left, worked at Grandpa's stores but took no paycheck
Grandpa made the rod, left, and the net,
and asked for little for them--now each is worth thousands. I sold the rod for $5,000 in 1992. I'm in our cabin here.
Mom, circle, was Coast Guard, Dad,bottom middle, bombadier in Army Air Corps--48 missions plus two doubles, once returning w/o the tailgunner, once w/o two gunners. Grandma's father, above, Red Cross doctor , my spouse, bottom right, Army engineer . My brother,  left, had B.A. in chemistry and no war to serve in; Grandpa and Grandma, left, protect us twins from evil with lots of money, stocks,  savings bonds. Read my story, click here, about Vietnam and   combat engineers Samoan , below front, and Tampa teen (my husband), below him. It was a true tale.
Tony and his long-time girlfriend, Julie Kirke, who had a baby at 14, made this snowman at our deep-woods cabin far from other men
Moisan family once arrived at Elis Island from Marseilles:John Marie, Mom, Max Marie, Gus Marie, behind him, Helen Marie, Dr. Gustav Moisan, Grandma,  Marthe Marie
Above and below:Grandma was a hell of a fisherman
Don't mess with God's Country!!!
Grandpa building his rods.
Me at our property's edge, called the Big Creek Dam
COLLECTIBLE FLY RODS
yA...oNCE i WAS SOMEONE ELSE--i WASN'T ON mEDICAID CUZ i WASN'T DISABLED SO i WENT AROUND SAYING IT'S TIME THE PEOPLE ON mEDCIAD LEARNED A LITTLE TOUGH TITTY.... BUT i COULD JUMP INTO A SPRING-FED RIVER THAT WAS ALWAYS 40 DEGREES , i COULD SWIM. nOW i CAN'T, MY COUNTRY TAKES CARE OF ME--WITH A LOT OF JEERS AND PUTDOWNS, MY GOVERMOR SAYING i'VE NEVER BEEN RESPONSIBLE AND IT'S "TIME" i LEARNED NOT EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS FREE, LIKE I NEVER WORKED , HIM NOT KNOWING WHO THE HECK'S ON THE PROGRAMS HE CUTS AND ALL.
THIS IS WAY OUT WHERE THE DEER HAVE NEVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING ... where I don't have to remember there's this artificial world filled with mistakes that's a riot a minute in terms of laughing at , but really it's pathetic the way everyone hates the poor.
"The mockingbird sings it--it's all that she knows,--oh what can I do, state a powerless view-- with a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, can't you see that their poverty's profiting you? My country tis of thy people you're dying......"        Au Sable bald eagle from canoe
Now that your big eyes have finally opened. Now that your wondering , how must they feel, meaning them that you''ve chased ' cross America's movie screens. Now that you're wondering how can it be real, that the ones you've called colorful, noble, and proud in your school propaganda, they starve in their splendor, you've asked for my comment I simply will render -- my country tis of thy people you're dying. Now that the long house's reached superstition, you force us to send our toddlers away, to your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions. Forbid them their languages then further say that American history really began when Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress that the nation of legions that's conquered this land are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best  and yet where in your history books is the tale of the genocide basic to this country's birth of the preachers who lied how the bill of rights failed. How a nation of patriots return to their earth  and  where will you tell of the liberty bell as it rang with a thud oer Kinzua   mud and of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year.Hear how the bargain was made for the west. with her shivering children in zero degrees blankets for  your land so the treaties attest ah well blankets for land is a bargain indeed and the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected from small-poxdisease
d dying soldiers that day, and the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored. A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way, yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived. Their blood runs the rapidt though genes have been paled from the Grand Canyons caverns to craven sad hills the wounded the losers the robbed sing their tale from Los Angeles County to upstate New York the white nation fattens while others grow lean oh the tricked and the victed they know what I mean, The past it just crumbled the future just threatens. Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks and now here you come bill of sale in your hand and surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks for the blessings of civilization you've brought us the lessons you've taught us the ruin you've wrought us oh see what our trust in America's  bought us
MORE further down
Now that the pride of the syres recieves charity now that we're harmless and safe behind laws now that my life's to be known as your heritage now that even the graves have been robbed now that our own chosen way is a novelty


hands on our hearts we salute you your victory
choke on your blue white and scarlett hypocrisy seeing the blindness that you've never seen that the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
they were never no more than carrion crows pushed the rims from their nests stole their eggs changed their story. The mockingbird sings it its all that she knows oh what can I do state a powerless view with a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye can't you see that their poverty's profitting you my country tis of thy people you're dying.
My Country Tis Of Thy People You're Dying
by
Buffy Sainte-Marie

"Many weak men lied. Though they boast of solitude, God was at their side."
Buffy, singing
Leonard Cohen
Magic is afoot God rules Magic is afoot
Magic is alive
"And soon i'll return to my piney wood home maybe someday I'll find someone who will love as I love my piney wood hills. I'll return to the woodland, I'll return to the snow, I'll return to the hills, and the valley below, I'l return as a poor man, or a king if God wills, but I'm on my way home to my piney wood hills."~Buffy
Abovwe, grandma's cabin, rear; below, National Bank of Detroit, downtown branch
Me hunting as teen.
Dad building fishing rods for family                          business
My brother Tony above North Branch Au Sable's Big Creek tributary
right as it looks from our cabin, way downhill. So much privacy!.
Right,Dad as kid in Au Sable woods he grew up in, too
A deer going up hill from river and us canoists
A letter from author of Anatomy of a Murder to founder/editor of Esquire magazine about my grandma!
Letter from baseball hall-of-famer
Ted Williams to me about
my grandma! And
Grandpa!
Grandma teaching me how to cast
-in her 80's