Ivan

I’m fortunate enough to have a job that provides me with amazing health insurance that covers things like the surgery I talked about in my last post, so I don’t have so much to worry about.  (Obviously everything went just fine; the doc said that once she got in there, it did turn out to be worse than she expected—severe rather than moderate dysplasia—but they got it all out and I’m good to go.)

Not everyone is so fortunate.

            My friend Ivan is an amazing individual who has fought a long battle with Multiple Sclerosis, and is still fighting it.  After his insurance company determined that his MS was not a “pre-existing condition,” they changed their minds and took back the several thousand dollars they had already paid the hospital for his treatments.  This . . . didn’t go over well with the hospital, and now they’re looking for Ivan to foot the bill.

The Butcher's Apprentice Goes under the Knife

What made you think you were different from any other hunk of meat?

Opposable thumbs?  A heartbeat?  Bipedalism?

You’re nothing but an upright carcass, honey.  They can slit you open just as easily as anything with hooves.  

They tell me I’ll bleed a lot.

Things that are alive typically bleed a lot when they’re cut.

Although, depending on the method of slaughter, things can still bleed a lot after they’re dead.  For example, in Tanzania, the Masai tribe kills goats by asphyxiation, so that they can drink the blood warm from the carcass. 

They say I’ll bleed a lot.  

I’m 29 in a week and I just wrote my first Death List.

Death List, not a Kill List; I’m not Beatrix Kiddo.  You know, that little piece of yellow paper that you give your mom, listing everyone you want her to notify, ya know, “just in case” something goes wrong. 

I didn’t originally plan on writing about this; it’s far too personal I think.  But come on, the irony is just too good to pass up.  Someone cuttin’ on the butcher?  Too good.