TRIALS OF ST TIMMY'S 48
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THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S --
The Continued Saga of Paul Ess's Rehabilitation
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Welcome to episode 48. I'm back on the warpath about food. The
cup of disgrace was last Friday's lunch: Fried feesh, grease
peas, and greased corn.
Paul Frederick Schnellbecher
49 Mexican Two-Step Path
San Francisco, California 94169
email 'pauless@rahul.net'
16 October 1996
Miss Henrietta Ralph, Social Services
St Timmy's Tardfarm
23456 Geriatric Row
Hayweird, California 94567
Dear Miss Ralph:
This letter is sent in reference to our conversation today
relative to the continued misunderstanding of my dietary
requirements. [ I had the girl in here sitting her fat ass on my
bed and I was talking to her like she was red-headed stepchild. ]
For whatever reason, I am supersensitive to dietary fat. I can
demonstrate for you that if I eat a porkchop or Asian pork lunch,
my blood glucose will approach 300 points midafternoon. [ Asian
Pork, as served here, is bits of 40-percent fatty pork in
thickened overcooked vegetables and too much ginger. The cook
wanks into this pot; the cook's assistant wanks in the beets; I
know the difference now. ] This is the reason I have sought to
remove fat from my diet as much as I can. To do so I have asked
that my toast and bread be free of margarine. I don't even like
margarine and meat fat. There is no point in my eating what I
don't like especially when it will run my blood sugar sky high
and put more weight on me to boot. [ Why shouldn't I save up my
"bad" calories for something wonderful like Crap in the Box? ]
Last week we had fried fish for lunch with peas and corn. I
could have tolerated the fried fish though it would be better for
me if it were steamed. The peas and the corn both were greased
with margarine. This is a triple fat whammy. I skipped lunch
that day. If I am going to run my BG up, I am going to do it
knowing what I am doing and it is going to taste good to do it.
[ Bring me a fucking pizza; so long as the box isn't greasy from
the sausage, I can handle it. ]
I am surprised at how much carobhydate I can handle so long as it
isn't simple such as sugar. Once every one to two weeks a friend
brings me Mexican food which I chow down on with great gusto. My
favorite meal consists of rice, beans, and chicken tamales. I
wash it down with diet cola. [ There's a great tacqueria down
the road a ways. I will exchange a meal from that place for
sexual favors any day -- prospective visitors take note. Sorry,
offer limited to males over the age of 18. ] My BG readings are
not greatly affected by this indulgence and have sometimes been
lower than if I had eaten what is customary here!
In support of my observation I offer some anecdotal evidence.
The Pima people who live southwest of Phoenix have a traditional
diet of complex carbohydrates, largely corn, beans and a flour
made from palo verde tree seeds. When they took up eating the
white man's way, they experienced an epidemic of Type II (adult-
onset) diabetes. On going back to a more traditional diet, the
symptoms of the disease were considerably eased. Simple rice,
beans, and cornmeal are good food. Lard, margarine, and meat fat
are not.
Here are some points I would like to clarify to make things
easier on the kitchen staff as well as on me:
1. Don't add margarine or other fat to anything at any time.
Don't "butter" my toast and bread. You can put a scant
_tea_spoon of mayonnaise on a sandwich. If the mayonnaise
completely fills the pores in the bread, there is too much. You
can fry my breakfast eggs but please do not drown them in oil.
Don't put margarine in my cereal. [ The morning I am writing
this I had two bowls of Cream of Wheat. One had obviously been
greased; the other had not. They shorted me on lunch yesterday
so I ate both bowls for revenge. See how petty we get in our
artificial old age...? ]
2. I like my vegetables directly from the can or the steamer.
Do not cream them, thicken them, or "butter" them at any time.
[ I hate to see this done because it reminds me too much of the
non-nutritive thickening agent put into a lot of the liquids
served to old folks whose swallowing skill is poor. And don't
expect me to drink juice of any kind around here or to eat
pudding or applesauce. Juice, pudding, and apple sauce are the
covers for drugging tiresome ranters with Mellaril and other such
pacifying compounds. ] If you use pickled beets or green beans,
don't wash off the flavor. It is rare to get anything around
here with a sharp taste to it. [ They will poison anyone with
grease -- not good for people with liver complications or gall
bladder disease as well as diabetes -- but they act like vinegar-
based sweet/sour is a no-no. So they wash pickled vegetables.
The sauerkraut is about as interesting as paper shavings. I
would like to feed the evil kitchen bitch/boss some of my
grandmother's homemade kraut which wasn't ready until it had
blown its own lid off. I have a recipe I developed for pickled
eggs which are pretty authoritative, too. Stuff one up a Tijuana
whore and she'd crinkle up into a virgin. ]
3. You already know I despise common "brown" bread. Soda bread,
"white" bread, pumpernickel, oat, rye, cracked grain, and any
other variety breads are fine. Ordinary wheat bread I find
completely uninteresting.
4. In view of the trouble I have with pork, just make me a meat
and/or cheese sandwich instead, or a small hamburger. If you
leave off gravy I will not miss it. [If you put gravy or other
slop on my food, I will pick out the bits and leave the slop or
scrape it off anything substantial. ]
5. I don't need whipped topping on fruit nor fruit mixed with
pudding. Just fruit will do fine. [ I want to see what I am
eating; I don't trust you people not to cover up something bad by
inundating it with goo. I also like to pick out the pear bits
which are usually hard as wood chips anyway. ]
6. I ask for two cups of coffee at each meal because this is the
liquid I take in each day. I don't drink water and I don't care
for juice much. I need one packet of sweetner for each cup (and
one packet for cereal when present). By the way, there is now
another brand of aspartame-based sweetner competing with Equal on
the basis of price. [ You act like Equal was gold, so go get
something else that's cheaper. How am I supposed to sweeten
cereal and two cups of coffee with one goddam packet? ]
In short, don't tart things up. Keep things simple and
unadorned. Let the food itself speak for itself. [ You'll
really hate me for demanding that I see what I'm getting because,
for one thing, you buy only the bananas that fall off the
bunches. The stem ends are open by the time we get them and the
people who don't like them spotty are in for hard cheese. You're
lucky I happen to like my fruit next to rotten. ]
Sincerely,
Paul Schnellbecher
* * * * *
After I turned in my "95 Theses" to Miss Ralph, here came the
_real_ dietician. I have the feeling she is another consultant
in the manner of the doctors, psychiatrists, audiologist,
optician, physical and occupational therapists, and podiatrist
who come here. I wonder how much it cost the state in MediCal
for her to dump on me.
I got the victim-as-guilty treatment. She flat doesn't believe
me about fats versus carbos in my particular case. It isn't as
though I were rewriting dietary science although maybe it needs
some of that. She scolded me severely for using the vending
machines. Really. I haven't been a real customer to them in
weeks. The last time I bought anything from one was two weeks
ago. Somebody's told her I am buying everything in them.
She pointed her fashionably bony finger at me again and said,
You've gained weight; you weigh 229 pounds and you came here at
200 pounds. True I came here at 200 pounds in May. True, I have
gained weight. Whether I weight 229 or some other figure is open
to question because of the mickeymouse way they have of weighing
me. I sense I am somewhat larger around the middle than
formerly, but if it were 30 pounds I don't think I could get into
or even move around in this chair.
We had a heated discussion about my thang for Mexican food. She
made me promise to do that only once a week. Done deal. I
always make at least partial trade-offs when I want to be bad.
With the hork they serve here, it's no sacrifice at all. I know
I can't eat Tacky Bell because they've got way too much grease in
their stuff now. TB never was healthy, but it is fucking
rediculous now -- almost as greasy as Crap in the Box "Mexican"
food items.
I whined later to the charge nurse on the evening shift who has a
wide-load daughter who has gone through all the discrimination
and been the brunt of all the self-righteousness and do-gooderism
which we fatties seem to attract like shit does flies. Charge
nurse said the dietician is the kind of rigid Ratched who told
her own kid he could have some Skittles only if he went outside
and exercised while eating them. But I have to give some slack
because in hanging around tardfarms, she is used to people who
don't know which way is up, calorie-wise.
* * * * *
I found this item in another newsgroup and have edited it for
brevity:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS OR RIGHT TO
DIE: WHAT WILL TEXAS CHOOSE FOR TEXANS WITH DISABILITIES?
GOAL: To keep people in their homes instead of nursing homes.
To redirect $250 million of the $800 million unexpended,
appropriated general revenue. To change Texas' continued bias
favoring institutional longterm care services. To hold
politicians accountable for their continued support of nursing
homes and other institutions at the cost of community services.
Texans are choosing to die rather than go into a nursing home.
ADAPT challenges the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and the
Speaker of the House to redirect $250 million of the $800 million
unexpended, appropriated general revenue to eliminate the current
waiting lists for community services. ADAPT also challenges
these leaders to make the 75th Legislature, which begins January,
1997 the session in which Texas puts its money where its mouth
is.
On October 10th Dr Jack Kevorkian dumped the body of Wally Spolar
off at a Royal Oaks, Michigan hospital. Spolar, who was from El
Paso, Texas chose to be killed rather than end up in "One of
those rat-infested nursing homes to be warehoused by Nurse
Ratched," said Kevorkian attorney Geoffrey Fieger. The
disability community mourns the loss of Spolar, who was active in
several El Paso community advocacy efforts. Unless Texas puts
its money where its mouth is and gets its priorities right, many
more will follow suit.
Right now all community-based programs are frozen until at best
October, 1997. Waiting lists, many of which were closed months
before this freeze and many of which are years long, contain the
names of over 13,000 souls who need community services but cannot
get them.
While Mr. Spolar himself may not have been on a waiting list for
community services, Texas' message comes through loud and clear:
We will pay to warehouse you in a nursing home; we have nothing
if you wish to remain independent and involved in the community.
A recent series in the "Austin American Statesman" exposed, once
again, the abuses with which the nursing home industry is
fraught. Once again this has stirred up investigations and
recommendations which will, soon enough, lead to more money being
given to the industry. The Board of Nursing Home Administrators
has already been recommended to receive a 70% budget increase,
just one year after it was restructured to to increase its
effectiveness. Each crisis in this rotten industry is met by
buckets of additional dollars being thrown at it. You can bet
your bottom dollar nursing home rates will be raised at the next
opportunity.
In the meantime, the net revenue after allowable Medicaid
expenses (over which the nursing home industry threatened to sue
ADAPT if we called it profit), sky rockets. In 1994, Texas
nursing homes's net revenue after expenses was $175 million.
In addition, Texas has $800 million unexpended appropriated
general revenue from this fiscal year, but the leadership has
refused to redirect even a quarter of that to eliminate existing
waiting lists.
The problem with quality in nursing homes is not financial. The
problem is lack of alternatives. Mr Spolar was far from alone in
his assessment of his alternatives. If he had not had a
disability and had asked to be killed he would have gotten
suicide counselling. But he was disabled and he could see his
choices: Warehousing or death. Is this the best Texas can
offer? ADAPT believes Texas wants to and can do better. But our
leadership must lead.
ADAPT challenges the leadership of our state to finally address
the big picture. Redirect money from nursing homes to community
services. Let the dollar follow the person and allow him or her
real choices. When the nursing home industry has competition
from community services, _then_ their services will improve.
* * * * *
And so I sit in a California tardfarm waiting on waiting lists
for a living space in which I can function independently. It is
small comfort to know that the situation is no better elsewhere.
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