After six months of hospital care, Webster was able to ambulate up and down the corridors, with a portable respirator strapped to his back. Annie walked with her husband, his hand in hers. The noise of the respirator magnified against the walls as the equipment attached to Webster moved like an accordion, with every inhalation and exhalation it processed through the tube leading to his lungs.

“We are having an informal gathering on my ward,” Annie spoke  to the doctor in charge, “and I want to know if it is alright for Webster to leave his floor for this one occasion.”

Annie paused to catch her breath and then went on,

“He could go in a wheelchair with his portable respirator.”

The doctor nodded with approval.

Webster was ready.

The esophagus tube had been removed from the automatic feeding machine and the end of the tube was capped. It stood out of Webster’s neck like a giant earth worm looking for something to eat. The headless figure sat erect, shoulders straight back, as the orderly pushed the wheelchair in the direction of the elevator.

“Have him back and in bed by eight o’clock, Mrs. Page.”

Annie looked straight ahead as she grabbed the wheelchair handles and pushed her decapitated husband into the meeting room full of mentally and emotionally disturbed patients, those considered to be least harmful to themselves and society. Like Annie, they too were relatives adjusting to loved ones who suddenly became medically dependent, either by accident or operation.

Because they were all on heavy doses of Prozac and regularly attended behavioral modification classes, no one expressed much surprise when the headless figure with tubes and gadgets rolled their way. Still, a few couldn’t help but feel their stomach jump up into their throat.

to be continued…

Mrs. Page was taken to the Psychiatric Ward for observation and she was isolated for her own protection. Annie was stripped of her clothing and given a thin cotton gown that tied in the back, which left her rear end exposed. She laid on the hospital bed with her mind in a fog, not yet adjusted to the sight that sent her whirling to the floor.

A full month passed.

Webster page remained on the Patient Care recovery floor, his condition stable, while Annie went through a psychiatric evaluation due to her emotional reaction to her husband’s condition. It was readily determined that she remain on the Psychiatric Ward for drug therapy, until she was stable enough to leave.

The decision was made for her own best interest.

Webster was taken back into surgery. Beads of sweat built up on the brow of Dr. Spark, as he worked meticulously to connect the wires of the Franklin 9000 to the spinal nerve endings that had been responding well to electroshock therapy. This new procedure was bound to become the wave of future medical technology for decapitation victims everywhere.

Mr Page was returned to his room after the procedure was completed and appeared to adapt well to the foreign instrument fused to his spinal column. Two months had passed since the accident and the chart on Webster page attested to the slow but steady progress, thanks to the dedicated staff of Mercy Hospital.

It was another month before Annie was allowed to see Webster.

Annie’s reaction was nonplussed to see her husband confined to the bed on the Patient Care recovery floor. By his bedside were two physical therapists, one on each side of the bed, manipulating his long legs. They told Annie it was their goal to have Webster in therapy until he was able to move on his own.

“Don’t you see that he doesn’t have a head!”

Annie screamed out loud, regardless of her subjugation to the best in-patient therapy anyone could receive. Two strong, rouge orderlies were quick to escort her  back to the Psychiatric Ward, where she mingled with others in the re-education program she attended seven days a week.

“Your husband is making progress, Mrs. Page.”

Annie smiled a faint smile at the doctor, dressed in his smart smock. She knew it was best to say nothing.

“We have increased his respirations to 20 per minute, due to the benefits of his physical therapy sessions,” he paused. Mrs. Page, I want you to consider spending more time with your husband, now that you have gotten over the shock of his medical condition.”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“We are going to have him sitting up on the side of the bed soon. Once he has adjusted to that, we will help him learn to walk again.”

The doctor spoke with confidence to the  woman who confessed that he knew what was best for her husband, and she would do anything to support the procedures he set forth.

Annie helped her decapitated husband sit up in bed and take the short trek across the room, to help Webster build up his strength. She was careful not to look up above his shoulders, to avoid sight of the headless neck as she led him about. Occasionally, as the staff observed the two on the room monitor, Annie could be heard saying,

“You can do it, Web. Come on, you can do it.”

to be continued…

The answer to that is simple. We all are going to die, one way or another, like it or not. Nobody wants to die, yet we all are going to die. Doesn’t God have a wonderful sense of humor?

I recently came across a blog that states that people who are afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s syndrome are Poster Children for Assisted Suicide. The blogger contends that people with Lou Gehrig’s syndrome are,

“…constantly presented in the media as someone who is going to die anyway, in misery, and better off dead, sooner rather than later.” & “…the media portrays us as inutile burdens to society who should be euthanized. It’s totally Hitler-ish!”

These poor unfortunate minds that actually believe they are the target of the planned death movement (which has been around longer than they have been living) because they have Lou Gehrig’s syndrome is simply preposterous. They are feeding off their own fears.

Everyone on this planet has the right to die, just as everyone has the right to think. You know what I think? I think people who are opposed to the right-to-die aka a planned death with the help of a physician are afraid to die.

They have a problem with their personal faith.

Michigan can become the greatest state in the nation if the voters will just shun convention, vote in Dr. Kevorkian as Congressman, and vote yes on the medical marijuana proposal. My God, world, how long do we have to live in the dark ages?

“I told you, Mrs. Page, when your husband’s condition is stable you can see him.”

Nurse Thornton spoke firmly, as her grossly over-weight body stood heavy and solid in its set of polished  while nursing shoes.

“The best thing for you to do right now is to go home and get some rest.”

Nurse Thornton pushed a button located directly under the edge of the desk, as she spoke to the worried woman–someone she considered to be a pest on her floor.

“What… What are you doing? Take your hands off me.”

Annie Page protested as two muscular orderlies took hold of each arm and forced her down the hall to the Quiet Room, where she was immediately injected with a sedative by the QR attendant, because Mrs. Page was seen as unstable and a danger to herself.

Several days later, Webster Page was transferred from the ICU recovery room to the Patient Care recovery floor. He was given a private room, and his condition was monitored by very expensive professional equipment.

A shaft of light, emitted from the small window in the room, moved each day across the headless figure laid out on the bed, as the hours and instruments of time toyed with the preservation of the patient.

After two more weeks, Annie Page was given permission to see her husband. She had been on Prozac since she learned her husband had been taken to Mercy Hospital. She was instructed to do so by the medical staff in charge of Webster. It was common medical practice to chemically subdue family members of any accident patient.

At last, Annie was going to see Webster.

“Respirations are 16 per minute, normal for any resting man.”

The nurse spoke quietly outside Webster’s door.

“Axillary temperature is 97 degrees, which indicates that he dies not have an infection. His pulse is strong and beating a good 80 beats per minute. That’s what we want in a man your husband’s age.”

Nurse Prodder paused to clear her throat before she went on,

“He is still taking food through a tube and still has IV fluids running through him. There are a good number of machines hooked up to your husband for data investigation and research into his condition. Ignore the hardware and you’ll be all right.”

Annie pushed open the door and walked in her husband’s private room to see a tangle of plastic tubes and colored wires encumbering the bed where Webster lay, his shoulders propped up on the pillow. Annie let out a scream at the sight of the decapitated figure and fell to the floor, like a puppet cut away from its strings.

“We are doing everything humanly possible for your husband, Mrs. Page.”

Annie could hear people talking to her as she came out of a  shock-induced fog.

“It’s not as bad as you think.”

Annie couldn’t speak. She felt the urge to vomit.

“Get an emesis basin. She’s going to hurl,” the stolid nurse said to the orderly beside her.

to be continued…

Webster Page never knew what hit him, as the oncoming vehicle came his way with lightning speed and tore his head right off his shoulders in one clean slice. The men and women who made up the rescue team also had no idea what happened to Mr. Page, neither could they locate his head.

The young rescue team arrived at the scene of the accident to find a decapitated man seated behind the wheel of his automobile. The head was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t on the ground. The obvious was of little importance to the skilled rescue team, though, as their mission was to get the victim to the hospital.

The men and women diligently went about their duties. They quickly clamped the veins and arteries of Webster Page’s headless body with a handful of stainless steel clamps, to halt the loss of blood. They strapped his body securely to the stretcher and packed crushed ice around the gaping flesh and gleaming clamps of Webster’s neck, along with the rest of his body.

The headless figure was placed in the back of the ambulance and the vehicle sped down the road with the pulsing sound of the siren piercing the air waves for miles. Red lights above the cab spun in circles, as the emergency vehicle took liberties to reach its destination.

Webster Page was admitted into Mercy Hospital at 11:07 Thursday night. All the information to carry out medical procedures on Mr. Page could be found on the insurance card in his wallet, in the back pocket of Webster’s pants. That was everything the doctors and nurses needed, in black and white.

“Get him ready for emergency surgery, STAT!” Dr. Stump raised his voice above the clamor of attendants cramped for space around the gurney that rolled into the emergency room.

“Careful, now. Make room for the patient,” he sputtered.

The headless Mr. Page was taken to the fourth floor, where he was removed from the blanket of crushed ice and stripped of all his clothing. Doctors stood around the body in the operating room while Dr. Topp, head of the Headless Department, stitched together all correlating veins and arteries in the gaping neck, to facilitate the flow of blood throughout the body.

Dr. Topp attached the latest innovative plastic feeding tube to the esophagus. He stitched another tube, a respirator tube, to the passageway leading to the lungs. After hours of brow-sweating work on the doctor’s part, the patient was taken to the ICU recovery room, where his condition was monitored by numerous gadgets known as sophisticated state-of-the-art, cutting-edge equipment.

Mrs. Page had been notified by the police about her husband’s automobile accident. She had not been told about the decapitation, only that her husband’s condition was serious and that he had been taken to Mercy Hospital, packed in ice.

When she arrived at the hospital, she was not allowed to see Webster.

to be  continued…

Dr. Kevorkian is running for a Congressional seat in his home state of Michigan. It is doubtful that he will make it. He is not affiliated with any party and he is without the financial funding it takes to reach the public. It is true that Dr. Kevorkian has had a strong following in the past and he went to prison to benefit the public desire to have a right-to-die, without state objection.

But, can he make it to Congress?

The good doctor is 80 years old now. He is still a genius and his heart is in the right place, but his genius has always been the element that bewilders people. As much as I would like to see him voted into Congress, so he can educate the people about the 9th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, I don’t see how it is possible for the moral humanitarian that he is to make it.

People are sheeple!

In the state of Washington, November means that the voters will decide whether or not to allow physicians to prescribe the necessary medications to terminally ill individuals, in order to facilitate and finalize the act of dying. Washington was granted the legal right to assist death by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1996.

Now, it is time for the people to take action!

Get ready for unbelievable short stories!

As a social critic and medical satirist I was compelled to write a collection of short stories to reflect the problems driving American society in the 21st century.

Issues brought to the forefront are,

The prolongation of human life for profit and experimentation!

The transplantation of animal and human organs for profit and experimentation!

The abuse of power by the state over the people!

The pornographic effects on men in society!

The pandemic drug abuse eroding the foundation of family life in this nation!

From the ridiculous to the tragic, each story has a powerful statement for you, the reader.

The opening story is

After the Accident

On Wednesday, March 6, 1996, a federal appeals court ruled that a mentally competent, terminally ill adult has a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to utilize a doctor’s assistance in hastening his death!

Which court? The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The ruling was 8 to 3 in favor of assisted death by a physician. This lifted the ban on physician-assisted suicide and nine states were affected by this ruling.

Which states? Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, and the state of Arizona. For states to deny this RIGHT to the terminally ill is to deny DUE PROCESS under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Are we not to listen to Judge Steven Reinhardt who stated, “There is a constitutionally protected liberty interest in determining the time and manner of one’s own death.”

Who are the tyrants that force prolonged, protracted agony on the suffering souls of the terminally ill people in state after state in this country of lost freedoms?

We, the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Fifty-two of the most powerful words in our Constitution, right there, in the Preamble.

Justice! Domestic Tranquility! Blessings of Liberty! The founding fathers had high ideals, ideals in which I believe right down to the quick of my living soul. The fifty-two words in the Constitution’s preamble set a standard of perfection, a standard of beauty, a standard of excellence.

A kangaroo court is not Justice. It was a kangaroo court that put Dr. Kevorkian in prison. It was a kangaroo court that stripped my son, Drew, of all his Rights, while he was in a coma. It was a kangaroo court that helped to torment and torture my beloved son.

Tranquility is the quality or state of being tranquil. To be tranquil is to be free from agitation of mind or spirit, free from disturbance or turmoil. The medical tyranny my twins sons and I experienced did not allow for tranquility. Torment and torture do not equal Tranquility.

Blessings of Liberty. How sweet the words sound to the heart and mind, yet, our right to be free simply does not exist. My dying sons were not free to do as they pleased. They both experienced what it was like to be physically restrained and subject to arbitrary, despotic control.

Will we ever have freedom? Will we ever live up to the words of the Preamble?