"In My Room:" Brian Wilson spent most of his time looking out his bedroom window

Rob Tannenbaum wrote June 12 in the New York Times:

In songs like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” Wilson did as much as anyone to depict Los Angeles and California as a land of bikinis and warm, honey-colored sunsets. The songs he wrote about the West Coast, he said in “I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir,” were “more about the idea of going in the ocean than they were about actually going in the ocean.” Wilson didn’t like waves, but realized how they could serve as a metaphor for life.

Wilson tried surfing once and his board conked him on the head. He liked looking out windows at other people surfing and driving hot rods. Tannenbaum went on:

The songs, he added, tell stories about teenagers. 'We base them on activities of healthy California kids who like to surf, hot rod, and engage in other outdoor fun.' He saw these activities the same way he saw the ocean — through a window.

This caught my attention because it says a lot of what writers do: watching activities through their window of imagination and not actually taking part in that activity. As Wilson wrote ("In My Room") he spent a lot of time in his room imagining what was happening outside.

I grew up surfing in Daytona Beach, Florida. I surfed for five years, 13-18-years-old. I gave it up the summer of 1969. My surfboard, a Greg Noll Bug, was stolen out of my family's garage. It was the last board I owned and the only short board. I also sold my beat-up old car that summer as freshmen weren't allowed to have cars on campus. Our house burned down, destroying the kitchen, my school clothes, and my father's Barracuda, 'Cuda as the cool kids called it. My eight brothers and sisters and my parents survived and we moved to cramped motel rooms. The End Times were coming, or so it seemed. I began to have dark thoughts, imagined a black ball rotating in my chest. My girlfriend was pretty and nice but she was going off to the state school and I was going to another state's school 400 miles away. I was slated to be a NROTC midshipman and I had no idea why except the Navy agreed to pay my way if I agreed to get ship-shape and squared-away which I failed at miserably.

Depression came to call. I returned home to my beach town, lied in bed, listening to surf sounds drifting up from the beach and rolling through my jalousie windows.

Brian Wilson suffered with crippling depression. I know how that feels. Wilson laid in bed and looked through windows and saw different lives. His head was populated with beaches and endless streets to race cars and meet girls. His head and heart were also populated with monsters and he didn't really write about them. He looked out windows and saw himself. 

When he was 20, Canadian Steven Page wrote the song "Brian Wilson" which was later recorded by his band, Barenaked Ladies. When he heard it, Wilson wrote his own version. But lyrics in the original go like this:

So I’m lyin’ here 

Just starin’ at the ceiling tiles

And I’m thinkin’ about

What to think about

Just listenin’ and relistenin’

To smiley smile

And I’m wonderin’ if this is

Some kind of creative drought because

I’m lyin’ in bed

Just like Brian Wilson did

Well I’m

I’m lyin’ in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh

So,

If everybody had an ocean

Across the USA

Everybody'd be surfin'

In Cal-if-or-ni-a

Or lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did.

 R.I.P. Brian.

A good time to ponder "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World"

I am rereading "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World" by Walker Percy. He will always be a favorite of mine for his mournful yet witty 1961 novel of depression "The Moviegoer," winner of the National Book Award and considered a classic. It's well known that Percy assisted John Kennedy Toole's mother get "A Confederacy of Dunces" published. Toole left the manuscript behind when he committed suicide. Percy had many suicides in his family: his  grandfather, father, and (probably) mother. As a teen, he and his two brothers were taken in by his uncle, a poet in Mississippi. The die was cast.

"Love in the Ruins" is set in a future Paradise, Louisiana. Percy, a trained physician and one-time mental patient, spent much of his life in New Orleans, the setting of many of his novels. 

Love in the Ruins" (Open Road Media 2011 version on Kindle) was introduced to me via a reading list for a contemporary literature class taught by Phil Drimmel at Daytona Beach Community College in 1973-74 At the time, I was returning to college after two years as a college dropout and survivor of the 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery (#128). A 1969 high school grad, I had failures  behind me as a biology major and as a Navy midshipman. I traveled some and lived in an educated northern city where I thought I might be a nursing student like my girlfriend but decided to break with the girlfriend and return to Florida and pursue the lucrative career as a fiction writer. The joke was on me, of course, but along the way I read plenty of good books. 

Percy's dark humor was a good match for the time as I also was entranced with the books of Vonnegut, Heller, and Kesey. I read Rolling Stone mainly for its gonzo journalism and National Lampoon for its wicked humor. And, like Percy's character, I was also a bad Catholic, renouncing the title of Mr. Catholic conferred on me by the Knights of Columbus in Daytona Beach at our Catholic high school graduation awards ceremony. A 50-dollar U.S. Savings Bond came with it, a little something to help with my education or writing career or maybe even some bad choices.

"Love in the Ruins" 1973 was a different read that "Love in the Ruins" 2025. I didn't really get it when I was 22. I liked the satire of this imagined future and psychiatrist Dr. Tom More's journey. I was entranced by his Qualitative Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer which reads the state of a person's soul and later is fine-tuned to read a person's mental imbalances. I was a bit creeped out by More's middle-ager's sex drive, my prudish Mr. Catholic eclipsing my own yearning for community college women. 

So I didn't get it all then. But now, I decided to pay attention to "another person's voice." That's what Borges told his students when they asked why they should read the books of others. 

This Bad Catholic is still reading this 1971 novel about an imagined Bad Catholic. I've been thinking a lot about this subject especially since Pope Francis's death. Just what is a Bad Catholic these days? Is it someone who religiously obeys every tenet of Catholic doctrine? Or all those questioners like Tom More, all those I knew from the 10:30 Catholic Community in Denver. Dutiful questioners all. 

Percy needs my attention, especially now. I am a bad Catholic living near the end of the world. A pope with the heart of St. Francis has died. The Antichrist is in the White House. Books from my past speak to me.

The book's July 3 section recounts a day in The Pit, the slang for the hospital's weekly Q&A among physicians and students. Dr. More speaks of his lapsometer. Meanwhile, a rival has arrived and hands out copies of the doctor's new lapsometer which disturbs its creator. 

As Dr. More says: "This device is not a toy. It could produce the most serious psychic disturbances... If it were focused over certain frontal areas or region of the pineal body, which is the seat of selfhood, it could lead to severe Angelism, an abstraction of the self from itself, and what I call the Lucifer Syndrome: that is, envy of the incarnate condition and a resulting caricature of the bodily appetites."

All hell breaks loose in The Pit. Male and female students glom on to each other. A professor admires the beauty in a male student's face. Fistfights break out. 

Human appetites are unleashed with the predictable results. As one of the doctors tells More: "Your device has triggered a mass hysteria. Like the St. Vitus's Dance in the Middle Ages. These are strange times." 

Indeed. Maybe it takes a Bad Catholic to write about strange times.

I am at the 71% mark on Kindle. I will finish this book. 

Did I really need that ambulance on the September night in question?

Most Americans, it seems, have been following the hunt for the murderer of United Healthcare exec Brian Thompson. But it’s not the manhunt that has received most of the attention. Instead, it’s the deeply flawed American healthcare system which, to most people, represents the American Healthcare Denial System beholden to Wall Street. Valid medical claims are turned down because they hurt Healthcare United’s bottom line. I shall throw my insurer in there, too, as my family has been denied payment by CIGNA for medical claims. Much of that is related to mental healthcare for my children. I could write a book on our experiences with various insurers as we worked to save our children. I will not write a book -- what’s the point? Inequalities of our system have been going on for decades and will continue.

My experiences with my healthcare claims and those of my wife have been great. Heart attacks, it seems, ring a bell with insurers. Near-death experiences with septicemia also resonate in the corridors of both CIGNA and Medicare. Those were claims made by me, the Widowmaker in 2014 and the septicemia in 2024. Seems as if I have a major malfunction every ten years.

The latest issue took me by surprise. I got a bill from Volusia County Emergency Medical Services for an ambulance transport to Advent Health Hospital in Daytona. They write that Medicare has turned me down for the $894.80 ride and said it was a “ ‘non-covered service’ because it does not meet Medicare’s medical necessity requirements.”

This seems quite odd to me as Medicare has partially covered at least one ambulance ride. In January in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I caught Covid and one cold January night I couldn’t breathe from the congestion and an ambulance took me to the local hospital where they got me breathing again and sent me home five hours later. That met Medicare’s medical necessity requirements.

At the ER on the night of Sept. 9, the Code Blue team was called out as my heart stopped twice  after I had two seizures. Chris said it was quite a sight to see as medical personnel rushed into the room and saved me. My vitals were wacko (medical term) and staff guessed I had a massive infection of some kind and they placed me in a coma for four days.

Pause here to let readers know that my dear wife took a photo of the comatose me and I will share it if you ask nicely and agree to publish my next novel. 

When I came to in ICU, I didn’t know where I was and what had happened. To read the full experience, go to my previous posts here and here. Turns out I had septicemia from an unknown source and it blasted my bodily functions such as walking and talking, eating and defecating. I was moved from ICU to a medical floor and then the twelfth floor which Advent devotes to physical therapy for stroke victims, the partially paralyzed, and mystery cases like me. I made enough progress by Oct. 4 that Advent released me back into the Florida Wilds and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

I am a lucky man. I am blessed more than I should be blessed. There is one thing I will not be and that is almost $900 poorer because I didn’t meet Medicare’s requirements for sick people. Twenty-five days in the hospital? A quick survey of my hospital history: I spent five days after my heart attack, three days after knee-replacement surgery, and two days following a spinal fusion. I am so glad I wasn’t sick enough in September and decided to take an Advent Health cruise.

Volusia County Emergency Medical Services sent me a list of items I must file for an appeal. They include all of my medical records from the hospital (“you may be required to pay a fee") and “a letter from any physicians you may have followed up with in regards to your ambulance transport.” I can see how daunting this might be for someone, possibly a retired someone recovering at home from a near-death experience.

There is some irony here. It wasn’t the bad guys at CIGNA that turned me down. That mega-insurer is my secondary and they haven’t had a crack at me yet. I pay too much of my pension for that coverage. I also paid for Medicare which is a government program. I should be railing against the stinkin’ gubment, right. Old Joe Biden let me down.

But during my recovery, I’ve noticed that Medicare is concerned about higher costs and wants all of us to use its new reporting system. This addresses higher costs and the millions, maybe billions, of fraud claims by people who should be strung up on the highest yardarm (archaic Navy term). One of the highest costs for patients and Medicare is the abuse/overuse of ambulance services.

Trump’s Project 2025 may be behind Medicare’s new cost-saving initiative. But wait – Trump is busy enlisting nincompoops to head government agencies and getting his ass kissed at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral and hasn’t yet assumed the mantles of power.

The only thing left to blame is the USA’s antiquated and rapacious healthcare system. The death of a healthcare executive is a tragedy. And it is tragic that some find humor in it.

Delighting in the suffering of others is a MAGA trait, is it not? What in the hell are we doing?

On that stretch of sand near J.D. Salinger's favorite Daytona Beach hotel

June 1966. My boss asked me why I was drilling a hole so close to the frothing ocean. High tide coming, boy. Looking for bananafish, I said, and turned the auger in the soft wet sand, digging a hole for the tourist's umbrella. What you talkin' about boy? Sir it's a perfect day for bananafish in Daytona. He grabbed the auger and told me to pick up my five dollars for a day's work and get off his damn beach. Now, he said. I dove head-first into the fresh hole. Blue-green water gave way to a murky yellow soup where dead bananafish floated. They ate too many bananas, swelled, and couldn't escape into sunlight. It was summer 1948. Salinger's Seymour tried to explain it to the kids on the beach at Daytona but they just thought him crazy, which he was, I suppose. So this is what you saw in the war, Sergeant Salinger? Bananafish floating, mutilated bananafish everywhere. That dreadful allied mistake off the English coast, bloody Normandy hedgerows, the bitter Bulge, the stink of the liberated extermination camp. Dead bananafish drove you into the asylum in Germany and you never came out, not really. You shipped out to another bigger asylum, the U.S.A., wrote about it, and we never understood. Your stories spread the alarm. We never understood. We kept looking for that one yellow bananafish who made it out into the blue-green waters. We are looking still.

Sources: Sergeant Salinger, Jerome Charyn; A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger.

Happy graduation, Annie. You did it!

Annie Shay, happy graduate (LCCC photo)

Daughter Annie graduates from Laramie County Community College on Saturday.

We are so proud of her. It has been a long haul. She struggled with learning disabilities in elementary school. She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was eight. During teen years, she struggled in school, the learning part and the socialization part. She began to depend on drugs and alcohol to get her through each day. She was bipolar and we sought help but nobody seemed to understand it. She spent months in treatment centers in Wyoming and Colorado. She was able to complete some of her school work but fell too far behind to graduate. She earned her G.E.D. and started school at LCCC. It was too soon. She decided to major in music and spent many hours rehearsing and singing with the school's choirs. She has a beautiful voice but is not so confident around colleagues and audiences. 

She dropped out and soon was off again to treatment centers, this time in California and Illinois and Utah and finally back to Colorado. The years passed. She was diagnosed with bipolar and personality disorder. Meds didn't seem to be the solution but she kept at it, finally underwent ECT at a hospital in Boulder. She improved and returned to Cheyenne to live with Chris and I and go back to school. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

That's one thing she always wanted -- an education. Through it all, she spoke of that often. She enrolled again at LCCC. She depended on the Help Center for guidance. She struggled at first. Nevertheless, she persisted. She passed her classes and discovered that she liked school, maybe for the first time. That's one thing that people don't always understand about community colleges. They allow all kinds of learners to get a second chance. May be you aren't ready at 18. Maybe you get married young and find out 20 years later that you want an education. Maybe you're a military veteran looking for new directions. 

I was a university dropout, a scholarship student at a big university who lost his way. I worked and traveled. Four years after graduating high school, I enrolled in the local community college and started in the fall of 1973. My classmates had already graduated from four-year universities and were negotiating adulthood. I felt a bit lost. But the classes I took were wonderful. Contemporary American Literature. Public Speaking. Art History. The teachers were terrific and somehow I was interested in each subject. At night, I worked as an orderly in the Substance Abuse Unit at the county hospital. The nurses locked me in with the alcoholics who had been scooped out of the gutters or arrested for raising a ruckus. This is where they came instead of jail. Many had been to jail. We played cards and smoked. They told tall tales, most of which were true, I suspect. I learned a lot. On quiet nights, I studied. On wild nights, we orderlies wrestled rowdy drunks. That was some year. By May, I had enough credits to graduate and returned to a four-year university where I graduated in two years. 

We all have our stories. Annie now has hers. She is very excited about graduating. So very excited. In mid-June, she moves to Laramie to start summer classes at UW.  She will be thirty-something by the time she graduates. She worries about that, wondering if she will fit in with younger students, make friends in the larger context of a university, be able to excel in upper division classes. Chris and I worry. Annie is an introvert with ongoing psychological issues. She likes her time alone but sometimes too much time alone is bad for her mental health. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

Happy graduation, Annie. Enjoy it all!

P.S.: Annie posted a blog today from her POV. Read "How I got here -- graduating from college class of 2022" at WyoGal. 

Snowbound and Covidbound all in the same week

We received 31 or 36 inches of snow in our weekend blizzard, depending on who's doing the reporting. Anything more than 30 inches is a lot so I won't quibble. What I can say is that I haven't been out of my house since last Friday when I ran a couple of errands on a cloudy day with all the weatherpeople saying that you bastards are really in for it with this Snowmageddon. Pshaw, said I. But they were right. 

Our governor announced on March 12 that most Covid restrictions will expire on March 16. On that day, residents from Cheyenne to Casper were practicing weather-enforced social distancing. Cheyenne doctors and nurses were shuttled to work on a snowmobile belonging to a 17-year-old high school student. You can still get around our neighborhood on snowmobile.

By the time the snow abated on Monday, I could not open our front door. Snow on the porch was piled at least two feet of hard-packed snow. A winter snow is usually what they call "champagne powder" at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. It's light and airy enough to blow into a ground blizzard when the wind blows. When stacked up, it's great to ski in. You can glide and carve into it, blowing up white clouds as you make your way downhill. 

Snowmageddon snow is like concrete. I say "is" because it's almost a week later and our neighborhood is a snowscape. A plow made its first appearance yesterday afternoon. It made one pass down the street and then was gone. It created a path wide enough for one vehicle flanked by four-foot walls of snow. The mounds block our driveways so we're still stuck. Not sure what comes next. Melting is going to take a long time. Our food is running out. We are going stir crazy. 

In days gone by, I would have been out there with the shovel as I was in so many other storms. After the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982 in Denver, I was outside with my shovel on Christmas Day, shoveling my walks and those of my neighbors in City Park South. Chris and I lived on the top floor of a 100-year-old two-story house. We shared it with a lesbian couple who were our son's first babysitters three years later. We sometimes barbecued together on the tiny front porch. I never knew our neighbors in the basement apartment. 

Our landlord was the one-man Danish counsel for Colorado who owned a tie store downtown. His lavish City Park home had a security gate and was surrounded with cameras just in case the Swedes decided to invade. We sometimes drove over to pay our rent just to see how the other half lived. We wondered how working for Denmark in a remote outpost and selling ties led to such opulence. We imagined that a tie shop on a side street might be a perfect cover for a drug dealer or arms smuggler. We wondered what they made in Denmark that might find a black market in Denver. Cheese danishes? Fjord photos? Reindeer antlers? We didn't know much about Denmark.

So here it is Thursday and maybe I will get out of my driveway and maybe I won't. I haven't shoveled snow since my heart attack in 2013. I rely on a walker (a.k.a. personal mobility device) now. It's possible there exists a walker equipped with a snow blower but I haven't yet looked that up on Amazon. Even if I get in my car and get out of my driveway, I'm not sure about the condition in the rest of my neighborhood. I'm really stuck if I get stuck. 

Our neighbor Mike sent over a couple of teens to clear our walks. They did a good job and we paid them $20. We wanted to make way for the mail delivery person but we haven't got any mail since Saturday. I've been missing those fliers for vinyl windows and life insurance. I might have received a St. Patrick's Day card or two but won't find out for a couple more days. Over the years, I have seen USPS vehicles chained up and struggling through the snow. But chains won't help them get through big drifts of concrete snow.

Daughter Annie has been staying with us during spring break. She has many assignments due next week so we don't see much of her. She ordered a grocery delivery yesterday but didn't tell us. The Instacart person drove up in a massive SUV. She dropped off three 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and packages of toilet paper and paper towels. For edibles, she delivered a family pack of Chips Ahoy cookies, a bag of Cadbury mini-eggs, and a carton of eggs. We quizzed Annie about why she had paid a person to collect Cadbury mini-eggs and Diet Pepsi and drive these crucial, life-giving items through snow clogged streets to our house. We wondered why she hadn't asked us if we needed anything from the store such as bread or peanut butter or soup or spaghetti. You know, necessities for the snowbound.

We're still waiting for an answer.

A return trip to the Mind Eraser may help me with mobility issues

I can't walk. OK, I can walk but with difficulty. I fell three months ago and the docs finally figured out I sustained some spinal damage that took its time showing up. My fall was a wimpy fall. I lost my balance and fell into s snow-packed gutter. It was the last snow of the season in Fort Collins and I was helping my daughter move. Nobody saw my fall. If they had, I am sure they would have rushed over to help the old guy out of the gutter. So no witnesses. I brushed the snow from my keister and realized I was going to walk around the rest of  the day with a cold, wet butt. Five days later, my back began to ache. The ache stretched across the entire lower back. It hurt like hell. I started having trouble walking. I retrieved my cane from the closet and used that to get around until I couldn't and then made the transition to a walker. My fingers began to tingle and I lost coordination in my left arm.

It took three months to get to the "bottom" of the problem. My spine sustained some damage from the wimpy fall. A minor whiplash exacerbated my arthritic spine, and maybe a blow that I had sustained in an earlier fall or a traffic accident from three years ago. Whatever, I needed surgery. That's today. I was bummed to hear I needed spinal surgery but I hunted down a great surgeon for the task. So nervous about it. Excited, too, as this might be the beginning of the end of my decrepitude. The doc says I will probably need therapy to get back the use of my legs and arms. I can deal with that. But not walking? I am an active guy and this frustrates me. Even when I write, I get up and pace. I work out in the gym three days a week and swim two days a week. I love to hike but the  mountains have missed me this summer and I have missed them. 

I have a friend Tom with MS. We've known each other for 25 years. He was jut diagnosed when we met at our Denver church. I've seen his struggle. I've been part of the group getting him from his van to the wheelchair. I've helped Tom negotiate non-accessible spots, of which there are too many. He no longer walks and has difficulty with his hands and arms and innards. Still, he keeps on. When our boys were teens, we took them to Six Flags Elitch's in Denver. My son Kevin went off to swim with a girl he met and the rest of us decided to ride the Mind Eraser. Tom's son Brian insisted. Riders with a handicapped tag get to go to the front of the line along with their family members. The Elitch's staff members were good about helping Tom into the contraption that looked like a medieval torture device. The ride picked up speed and five minutes later, my mind was totally erased. I screamed the entire time, or at least I think I did. We were shaking when we disembarked but also laughing like fools. Tom needed help getting back in the wheelchair and we enjoyed some of the more sedate rides the rest of the day.

Tom showed courage and grace getting on that ride. I was skeptical he insisted, as did Brian. Tom's mind has remained sharp even while his body did not. He played baseball but now is just a dedicated follower of the MLB, notable his hometown Red Sox and our regional favorite, the Colorado Rockies. I look upon him as an example of what you can do when threatened with one of life's toughest physical and mental challenges. When I had to use the walker, I stopped going out. I didn't want people to see me in such sad shape. After six weeks of that, I was a mess. My wife challenged me to go to our annual Fourth of July party and bocce ball tournament. I sat and kept score while she refereed. A few of the grown men had stopped at the Fireworks Superstore on the way to the party. They set off smoke bombs and twirly, flashy things. No big rockets as fireworks are illegal in this Wyoming town that everyone in Colorado equates with Fourth of July celebrations. I had fun. We all did. At that point, I began to get out of my shell and get back in the world. That's it, isn't it? You have to get out in the world. No excuses.

Following today's surgery, I will be challenged to see what my body can now do. Sure, that's a challenge. But it's the mind that's the real issue. I get to test the strengths and weaknesses of my physical self. But it's my spiritual and mental state that makes the difference.

Maybe I need a return trip to the Mind Eraser. 

Strong mind, strong body -- take your pick

Just added to my reading list: "Blue Dreams: The science and the story of the drugs that changed our minds" by Lauren Slater. I will tackle it once I finish "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders.

"Blue Dreams" is a non-fiction account of psychiatric drugs and their effects by someone who is both a patient and a psychologist.

"Lincoln in the Bardo" is a novel that explores something that seems a lot like severe depression and PTSD in Abraham Lincoln, who is mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862.

Would Lincoln have benefited from a regimen of Prozac or other SSRIs? Perhaps. Maybe he would have recovered from his dark moods more quickly with a couple hits of Molly or LSD.

We'll never know. But psychedlics figure into Slater's book. Party drug MDMA (Molly) has been tested on those with PTSD. It has shown some remarkable and lasting results. As Slater recently described it on NPR's "Fresh Air:" those who take Molly and relive their trauma are able to shift that experience into another section of the brain, possibly the prefrontal cortex, helping remove it from the "fight or flight" amygdala. They can then get a handle on a horrible memory without degenerating into bouts of anxiety or self-harm, even suicide.

Slater wonders if this experimentation may lead to another golden age of drug therapy. The previous golden age brought on by lithium and Prozac may be nearing its end. Slater testifies that medications have helped her stay sane, raise a family and write books. They also have shortened her life.

That's the trade-off. So goes the old witticism: "Sound mind. Sound body. Take your pick." After five stays in psychiatric facilities between the ages of 13 to 24, Slater's doctors discovered Prozac. In a rush of Seratonin-laced good will, she finsihed finished her education, married, had two children and embarked on a writing career.

Then came trouble, in the form of the return of depression  and the start of her use of Zyprexa, which caused her to gain weight and lose her libido.

We patients are guinea pigs. Researcher still don't know the inner workings of these drugs. And their long-term effects. If you are in the midst of a severe depression, you want immediate help. Doesn't happen. Prozac or Zoloft may alleviate the symptoms eventually. Studies have shown that two-thirds  of those with depression would recover just as well with a placebo. That's depressing enough. Add side-effects into the mix and you have to wonder what in the hell we are doing.

I have been taking antidepressants for almost 30 years. I feel better, go off them, and crash. One of my psychiatrists once lectured me: "You have to stay on these the rest of your life. You have depression."

That made an impression. Unfortunately, I don't always listen. I went off my Zoloft six years ago and the walls came crashing down. I was out of work for a month. My psychiatrist at the time, who fled Wyoming for Hawaii one winter and never came back, tried a return to Zoloft and then several other meds. We finally went back to Prozac with a nighttime dose of Remeron. Several months later, I felt better but also was back exercising on a regular basis and eating right, which helped. Also, I was in talk therapy with a therapist and regularly saw my psychiatrist. Still, that summer I was still experiencing bouts of depression interspersed with anxiety. It probably took a good six months for my moods to stabilize.

Six months later, on Jan. 2, 2013, I had a heart attack. I recovered quicker from a "widow maker" than I did from depression. Got more help, too. Add an inept mental health care system to the fact that the docs know so little about the drugs and the human mind. That makes for a killer cocktail of ignorance. At least I have both Medicare and private insurance which enables me to navigate the system without going broke.

But I am not only here to complain. I am here to critique books. "Lincoln in the Bardo" is a wild ride and I'm only on page 98. This is how an award-winning short story writer writes a novel. Truly unique. I am a short story writer working on a novel. I find encouragement in Saunders work.

I have ordered Slater's book. I, too, would like to know what happens with long-term use of these drugs. My life depends on it.

Dear President Trump: Please don't put mental health care on your radar screen

The most distressing news to come out of the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre is that President Trump is now going to pay attention to mental health.

We have seen what happens to issues when Trump starts paying attention to them. His "concern" about our immigration laws have led to families being ripped apart by ICE and the Dreamers dreams to be abandoned.

And then there is the ridiculous border wall.

He and his Congressional cronies addressed the economy by passing the TaxScam bill that turns the economy over to the billionaire class.

Healthcare? He wants drastic cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the country's two largest health care programs.

SNAP or food stamps? Replace the SNAP system with a plan to send food boxes to those on the program. I would say those "poor people" on the program, but I know better. Our family used food stamps on an interim basis when I was underemployed and we had four mouths to feed on a salary for two. My disabled daughter is now in the SNAP program. SNAP feeds people. I hesitate to guess what kind of Republican-approved edibles would show up in a Trump Food Box.

Education? I have one name for you: Betsy DeVos. She is our so-called secretary of education who wants to privatize our prized public school system and to turn college students into paupers. Trump's base hates the educated class because we insist on using facts in our political arguments.

Now mental health. I have written about the mental health system numerous times. I am not a mental health professional. But my daughter has been in the system for 11 years and I can speak with some authority of her experience -- and ours.

My daughter Annie has been diagnosed as bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. Over the years, our family has sought treatment for Annie in many programs in five states. Why so many? First, she was unable to get the care she needed in Wyoming which, to federal granting programs, is considered a pioneer state, as if we were still rolling across the prairie wagons or handcarts. We are fortunate to live in the state's capital city and have used the services of good therapists and psychiatrists, some in private practice and some who work with Peak Wellness. As a minor, we had some say in the places she was sent for treatment, some of those in Colorado and California. When she turned 18, she made some of those choices, not all of them good. Some were excellent, as was New Roads Treatment Center out of Salt Lake City. Her caregivers in 2018 are at Summit Stone in Fort Collins, Colo. Colorado has a leader and mental health advocate in Gov,. John Hickenlooper.

One of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States is that every state sets its own agenda. Colorado has a Democratic governor and mostly progressive legislature. Wyoming has a Republican governor and a Know Nothing Republican legislature. Guess which state takes better care of its mentally ill?

Just take a look at some of the crackpot bills that are on the agenda for this year's Wyoming Legislature.

Please, I beg you President Trump, don't pay attention to mental health care. It has enough problems without you.

Forget Christmas -- 'tis health care insurance selection season

It's that time again.

Christmas season. Or holiday season if you are a damn liberal like me who doesn't believe in saying "Merry Christmas" to every Tom, Dick, and Donald I meet. I even like the new Starbuck's Christmas cup that shows two cartoon women holding hands, at least that's how paranoid Evangelicals see it.

More importantly, 'tis the season to Make A Decision on Health Care for 2018. The U.S., in its wisdom, has the most screwed up health care system in the world and bound to get worse with Trumpists making the rules. Our family has a triple layer of coverage from private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cash, too, in the form of deductibles and co-pays.

For most of us out here who live amongst Trump voters in Flyover Land, the situation is made worse by indecision. The Republicans sabotage Obamacare in any way possible because they want to totally wipe out any sign of an African-American president. Trump's Ministry of Truth will soon create an America that is all-Trump all of the time.

Meanwhile, the American people are left in limbo. Will the ACA remain or will it be dismantled bit by bit since Repubs can't seem to muster enough votes to kill it outright? This affects millions.

I am 66 and my wife Chris is 61. I am on Medicare and she is not, covered instead by my allegiance to CIGNA via Wyoming State Government, my former employer. I pay $1300 a month to keep my CIGNA policy for me, Chris and daughter Annie, who is younger than 26, the cut-off date in family insurance created by Obamacare. For me, Medicare is primary and CIGNA is secondary. \Once I meet the deductible, I am covered like a blanket through my investment in Medicare and private insurance.

Let me pause here and say that I have no quarrel with CIGNA. While corporate-fueled insurance is expensive (must pay stockholders and CEOs a princely wage to afford those gated communities they are building for the apocalypse), it provides great coverage. When I inconveniently suffered a heart attack on Jan. 2, 2013, I ended up paying less than $1,000 for a bill that totalled $150,000, when you factored in ambulance, ER, oblation, stent, a week in telemetry and great cardiac care at CRMC. That summer, I received an ICD courtesy of  Syrian ex-pat cardiologist Dr. Obadah Al Chekakie. Since I already surpassed the $100,000 threshold, I paid spare change for a Made in the U.S.A. gizmo that monitors my heart 24-7 and sends results to master control at CRMC. It also includes a defibrillator which can kick me back into life should I ever experience Sudden Cardiac Arrest, which is as bad as it sounds.  My heart needs this assistance because it suffered damage during the long-term 100 percent blockage of my LAD artery, the so-called widowmaker. At a recent funeral, a long-term heart patient said that he had never met someone with a LAD who lived. I was pleased to hear that. I am pleased to hear almost anything. Except Trump is on Twitter again -- not that.

Chris is a diabetic so she benefits from plans that guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions. That could go away too. So she's worried that the ACA will go away along with all of its guarantees and she has to shop for health care on the open market which may not cover a diabetic. I am worried with her, as Medicare is three-plus years away for her and we will have the clowns in the White House and Congress during that time. A dangerous time.

This brings us to our daughter. She is 24. She has been in and out of mental health treatment centers for 11 years. With some exceptions, most care was covered by CIGNA. You think our health care system is a mess? Just try to figure out the mental health care system. Annie, fortunately, moved to Colorado and got on the state's Medicaid program and when I received Medicare, she did too. So she is covered. Republicans threaten her coverage. One saving grace is her Colorado residency. It's a blue state south of our very red border. Not too far-fetched to think that we will have health care refugees in the near future, diabetics and cardiac patients and the mentally ill leaving their backward red state to find sanctuary in places such as Colorado and Oregon and Massachusetts. Canada, maybe even Mexico. Wouldn't that be ironic?

I am a retiree with a pension. Half of that goes to health insurance. In 2018, Chris will be covered by ACA and Annie will be covered by Medicaid/Medicare. I will be covered by Medicare and CIGNA. All of these programs (except for CIGNA) are in the sights of Congressional Republicans. They aim to reduce or eliminate these programs to give tax breaks to their corporate masters. We no longer live in a democratic republic but an oligarchy. It will truly be a country run by the rich for the rich if all of these lame-brain actions come to pass.

So it's decision time. You make the best decision you can under the circumstances. I have to remember to be thankful for what I have as there are millions who suffer from inadequate health care or none at all. Those ranks are certain to grow in the next few years. So be thankful -- and fight like hell to stop the Republican assault on "the general welfare" of the U.S. and its people.

No instant remedy for mental illness; no instant cure for Trumpism

From The Hill, (10/14/17): Psychologists march through NY to call for Trump's removal

Let's talk about President Trump's mental stability -- or lack thereof.

It's too easy to label Trump as crazy. He may be unstable. He may be dumb, as is old prof at The Wharton School called him the other day. He may be an asshole.

But the name-calling concerns those of us who deal with mental illness on a daily basis. I am a normal guy. But I do have a case of depression handed down by generations of Irish peasants. I live in the suicide capital of the nation. Depression has many roots.

Our daughter is severely mentally ill. As I write this, she is on a 72-hour psych hold at a Colorado hospital. She went in for an ECT treatment. The docs were alarmed by her mutterings during the treatment, so thought they should keep an eye on her through the weekend. This is not unusual. Millions of Americans get put on these holds every year. A mentally ill person might be brought into the local ER. Maybe he was sleeping in an alley. Maybe he was yelling obscenities at a policeman. Maybe she tried to commit suicide and someone intervened. Many reasons. Your local ER crew would tell you stories, if they could. Mental illness is a problem everywhere. Lest you think otherwise, here are some handy stats provided by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI):

Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year.  

Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S.—9.8 million, or 4.0%—experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. 

People in the throes of a mental health emergency may get held in one of the four mental health rooms at CRMC Hospital. They may be transferred to Behavioral Health at CRMC East. They may be held for 72 hours, as the law allows. They may be held longer. Some go to the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. Others are transferred to community mental health centers such as Wyoming Behavioral Institute in Casper. Others may go to a local halfway house managed by Peak Wellness. There are options. Families often are stuck trying to figure out the health care system, especially whether treatment is covered by insurance. Or not. For family members caught in the insurance maze, life may come to resemble some of the worst scenes from "Brazil" or a short story by Kafka. Our health insurance system is a nightmare. Trump and his cronies are making it worse. What can one say about an unhinged leader attempting to snatch insurance from the ill and mentally ill? You need to call on literary and celluloid references for something like this. We find ourselves in the midst of a cataclysm. We turn to poetry and books for solace and possibly some answers. This is a marvelous time for creative people. A bad time for the mentally ill.

Alas, art will not save us. Civic engagement is what's needed. Your mentally ill family member is too busy negotiating the health care maze to be much help. The rest of us need to act for ourselves and one other person that we care about. Speak up. Write letters. Go to city council meetings. Vote, please vote. We dug ourselves a hole. A "Snake Pit," if you will. A black hole. Darkness at noon. Bedlam. All these references apply to America's current unsettled state.

Let's not call Trump crazy. Our system has experienced a nervous breakdown. We are the cure.

Artistic and mentally ill and homeless in Cheyenne

What happens when you go to an art opening and you run into an old family friend who has descended so far into mental illness that she is homeless?

Her name is the letter A. I know her real name but I can't bring myself to use it. I don't know what's going to happen to her and wonder what I can do about it.

On Thursday, I attended the opening of the new Hynds Building gallery space featuring six of our finest artists. I was perusing Georgia Rowswell's fabric work when a woman in black sidled up to me. She wore a big floppy hat and a black coat over a leotard top and jeans. I knew her right away. She once worked at the coffee shop across the street from the Hynds. She's a local, went to school with my son. She has a son, whom I remember as a elementary school kid. A is a talented artist and musician.

I hugged her. She started crying. "You recognized me," she said through tears. I asked her what was going on. She said her 12-year-old son had run away, everyone was plotting against her, and last night, as she slept in an alley, a man urinated on her.

I was shocked. It skewed my evening art adventure.

As A told her tale, I realized how far she had sunk into despondency. When I say that, I mean mental illness. She had no place to stay, although she told me that some guy had let her use his apartment but other guys kept hitting on her. This is a good-looking woman in her 30s. I am old enough to be her father or grandfather. She and my 32-year-old son used to hang out in the same artsy crowd.

Isn't it dangerous out on the streets for a homeless woman? I suggested she go to the homeless shelter. She told me that she had been banned but that was OK with her because all the people there wore pentagrams and were Satanists. She couldn't go into most of the downtown businesses because she had been banned for various reasons which I was just beginning to understand.

She said she was hungry so I steered her to one of the food tables. She ate hummus and crackers. Filled her traveling cup with punch. "For later," she said. Other people came up to talk to us but quickly veered away when they saw my companion. A looked like an artsy person but people seemed to know to steer clear. She was known. How come I didn't know? Where had I been? Retired, I guess. Old and out of the way.

Meanwhile, my phone kept buzzing. My daughter was texting from an ER at a hospital in Fort Collins. She had experienced a bad reaction to the anaesthesia used in Wednesday's ECT treatment in Boulder. I was caught up in one of those texting rounds when everyone seems to be talking over each other. I was worried that I would have to rescue my daughter from the ER and bring her home. There had been plenty of calls and texts like this during the past few years. Sometimes my wife and I went to her aid. Sometimes we did not, as she has spent time in recovery centers in L.A. and Chicago.

I felt bad for A, but kept thinking, "Hey, I have my own problems." It was clear by now that A was homeless because she did what many mentally ill do. They elude available help because they are paranoid or schizophrenic or drug-addicted or an alcoholic or any combination of these things. The helpers are out to get her because they tell her what to do and how to behave. She freaks out and hits the streets. She sleeps in an alley and a guy pisses on her.

I am upset because I know this person to be a sane, creative person, a single mom who took care of her son, at least when I knew her. I took the last resort and offered her money, I had $100 in my pocket that I was going to spend on drinks or a small art piece. I gave her $40. She said it would get her food and maybe help with a room. I was going to ask if she was going to spend it on drugs or booze. But I didn't have the heart.

As I walked her out of the gallery, we passed a musician and his son. They were homeless themselves at one time. The musician plays his guitar on street corners and the farmer's market. He took one look at A, grabbed his son and hurried off. This was odd as it is usually what I feel like doing when I see him.

I told A that I had to go because my daughter might need me down in Fort Collins. I told her that my daughter was having ECT treatments. She panicked, told me not to do that as it can erase your brain. She then turned her attention to The Hole on Lincolnway hidden behind the Atlas Theatre banner. She pointed to the corner of the rubble-strewn hole. "I used to make a fire there -- it's out of the wind," she said. OK. We walked on. We ran into a downtown entrepreneur known for his libertarian rock 'n' roll roots. He asked what I was doing. "Visiting with an old friend," I said. He shook my hand, looked askance at A. He then disappeared into the Crown Bar. "He doesn't like me," she said."I'm banned from his store."

I got to my car and got in. I said good-bye, said I would meet her a 5 the following evening across from the gallery. I didn't go, as I was taking my daughter to an ECT treatment in Boulder. While there, her psychiatrist admitted her to the hospital for a 72-hour hold. She has been self-harming and threatened to do more. I left her there and headed back to Cheyenne on my own. I carried with me that old sinking feeling, that my daughter will never get better.

On the streets of Cheyenne is a homeless 30-something woman. She once was a family friend.

My mentally ill daughter is not homeless but could be. How come she seeks out help and A does not? All mental illnesses are not alike. A does not equal B. My daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, severe depression and borderline personality disorder. She can hold intelligent conversations. She is a musician and is a talented painter. She cuts her arms with razors.

I read the news today in The Denver Post. It was about a 13-year-old Latina nicknamed Bella in Thornton . She hung herself while her family gathered downstairs making fajitas to celebrate her sister's fiance's birthday. Bella had been the target of cyber-bullying and just couldn't take it anymore.

Even in death, this life doesn't make any sense.

Portrait of a poet as a young man

Back when I was a poet...

I worked as an orderly in a county hospital. I took classes at the local community college. I walked or road my bike from campus to hospital for my 3-to-11 shift. I changed into my scrubs in the restroom. Then I set off to take care of the alcoholics recovering in the 1200 ward. They weren't so much recovering as being refortified to resume their lives on the streets. The hospital staff did its Sisyphean duty. Feed them, keep them locked up and out of DTs for as long as possible. and then release them back into the wild. We had drug cases too -- it was 1973. A young longhair tripped out on LSD and ran naked down Main Street. I had plenty of empathy for him. Two years earlier, I had OD'd on acid and spent the night in the university infirmary. Bad trips were nothing to laugh about.

I gathered plenty of material for poems and stories as I watched over my charges. I wrote on yellow legal pads. I hadn't yet discovered the ubiquitous and portable composition books. One day I emerged from behind locked doors to take a break. The break room was also the meeting room. I looked for my legal pad but couldn't find it. A nurse eating her dinner pointed to the trash can. The head nurse had seen the poetry scrawled on the legal pad, the same kind that nurses used for notes on their patients. "She said that she'd like to know who had the time to write poetry -- then she tossed it in the trash can."

I was mortified. My poetry in the trash. It was probably the most concrete critique I ever received. I hadn't published anything yet. My curious friends asked me what I wrote in my legal pads.

"Poetry," I said. "Observations."

My roomie on Graham Avenue in Holly Hill, Florida, was Bob the Biker. He was saving up for a new Harley. His old Harley had met a bad end which he didn't want to talk about. I just knew that it involved the Hells Angels in Milwaukee and a statutory rape charge. He was a big dude, a fine mechanic who was helping me rebuild a 1950 Chevy truck which I bought on a whim. My dream was to get it fixed up and use it for beach trips with my dog and surfboard. We never finished it. I sold it for parts after Bob moved on, replaced by an old high school friend, Ned.

"Are you observing me?" Bob asked one night when we'd polished off a case of PBR.

"And what if I am?"

"I'd like to see it. See what you think."

"You're not in it," I said. "I do have some poems."

"That's OK. Poetry is not my thing."

Not a critique. Just a rebuff.

The 1200 Ward was a spooky place. I carried around a soft tongue depressor for patients who went into seizures. I used it more than once. Alcohol caused lesions and scars on brains that led to seizures. A seizure is an awful thing. Eyes roll back in the head and muscle spasms cause the patient to bite down hard on his/her tongue. I got called in to plunge the plastic tool into the mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue in half. Once the seizure fades, the patient is lethargic and disoriented. I reported the incident and let the nurses take it from there.  I usually returned to the ward break room where I played cards with the patients. We drank bad coffee and played cards. They told harrowing stories of life on the streets. Most patients were middle-aged males. Some were WWII vets, but we hadn't yet seen many from Vietnam. Some were women, who had their own room. Part of my job was to keep the men and women separated. We joked about it but the women often turned tricks for a bottle. One of the women had a college education and a good job before she went into the tank and hit the streets. During my year on the ward, she was there three times, once with a black eye and a missing front tooth.

One patient came in with cirrhosis of the liver. A black man with yellow eyes and a distended belly . No insurance. None of them had insurance -- it was thee county's charity ward. The cirrhotic man was shuffled off to a room of his own. The supervisor closed the door and let him die. That seems odd to say. But all of our patients were on their way to death, some slowly, some quickly.

How did we keep the patients from all going into delirium tremens? The nurses fed them paraldehyde. What's paraldehyde? Here's a quick description from the Mayo Clinic web site:

Paraldehyde is used to treat certain convulsive disorders. It also has been used in the treatment of alcoholism and in the treatment of nervous and mental conditions to calm or relax patients who are nervous or tense and to produce sleep. However, this medicine has generally been replaced by safer and more effective medicines for the treatment of alcoholism and in the treatment of nervous and mental conditions.

To demonstrate its toxic qualities, nurses demonstrated by pouring a dose directly into a Styrofoam cup. It dissolved the cup in seconds. The nurses cautioned that you must put juice in the cup before the paraldehyde. I was impressed, but knew I would never been serving up this potent cocktail. I wondered: if it does that to a cup, what does it do to your body?

Never found out. The bodies of the patients on the ward were already compromised. The drug stopped convulsions and helped them sleep. I had already seen what the DTs could do.

"The dog! The dog!" The man's eyes were with with fear and he pointed at his feet.

"What dog?"

"He's eating my feet. The dog!"

"It's OK. I'll get the nurse."

I did. The nurse brought a healthy dose of peraldehyde and a calming voice.

"The dog," the man said. "My feet."

"There, there," said the nurse. She urged to lie down and go to sleep. It took awhile but that's what he did.

I returned to the break room and the continuing card game. Nobody said anything. They had been there.

Sometimes a call went out on the hospital address system. "Dr. Blue. Please report to 1400. Stat." Translation: "All available orderlies run to the psych ward. A patient is freaking out and we need help." In 1973, all I knew about psych wards came from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Nurse Ratched. Bull Goose Loony. Electro-shock therapy. Lobotomy.

I know a lot more now. My daughter has been in psych wards and treatment centers in five states in the past decade. I have seen patients freak out during visiting hours and the call go out for this generation's version of Dr., Blue. I have seen my daughter freak out in a Casper, Wyoming, treatment center. You look at these events differently when it involves one of yours.

The charge nurse in 1400 was Mrs. Berry. Nobody knew her first name. She was good-looking in a middle-aged sort of way -- that was the view of this 23-year-old. She reminded me of my mother, who was the director of nurses at a hospital across town. Mrs. Berry had a harder edge, maybe because of her charges. She also had a secret. She was fated to become the mother-in-law of my sister-in-law. My future sister-in-law's sister, my future wife, lived a block over from Mrs.Berry and her sons, frequent visitors at my future wife's house. I didn't know them then.

I worked at Halifax Hospital for a year. I resigned to go off to the University of Florida, where I eventually became a prose writer. My first published work was a poem about a break-up. I do not have a copy of that poem. I'm sure it was tragic and filled with a young man's angst. I began publishing stories in newspapers. I joined the staff of the Independent Florida Alligator. I covered city council meetings, trustee meetings, campus events, etc. I was going to be a journalist although I really wanted to be a best-selling author. All I can say about that is I worked as a writer and editor for most of my career. I blog. Bestsellerdom has eluded me. I still write.

I never worked as a hospital orderly again. I was a cashier in the Shands Teaching Hospital cafeteria one summer. I was the only white employee. The African-American staff gave me a hard time but I won them over by September, or so I like to believe. One of the cooks introduced me to grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. That was what I had every day for lunch. That and chocolate milk.

Back when I was a poet...

Trumpcare is a huge issue as we prepare for Children's Mental Health Awareness Week in May

Republicans are trying to sell us Trumpcare or, if you prefer, Wealthcare -- I also like Tryancare.

Everyone deserves quality, affordable mental health care. The system we have now is not so much a system as a scattershot approach that includes mental health professionals, emergency rooms, state hospitals, and treatment centers. Obamacare has helped insure millions and parity laws passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations have helped put mental illness treatment on par with other illnesses. Some mentally ill have found coverage with Medicaid Expansion (we didn't get it in Wyoming, thanks to the troglodytes in the legislature) or through disability clauses under SSI and SSDI. Negotiating the maze of local, state and federal coverage options can be a nightmare for someone who understands bureaucracy as I do. For a schizophrenic or bipolar person -- not so easy.

This announcement comes from the National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health:

As national events continue to illuminate the critical need for mental health care reform in this country, we must increase our efforts to educate the nation about the importance of prevention and early identification of mental health challenges. We must also highlight the fact that children are an integral part of a family unit and create an understanding amongst policy leaders and practitioners that healthy families are better equipped to support resilient children. Legislation, policies, and practices must fully endorse the undisputed importance of full family engagement and participation in the care and treatment of their children. Further, we must advocate for a holistic approach to children's mental health that includes the provision of supports that strengthen the family as they nurture resiliency. 

Please join us as we create a national dialogue about the importance of finding help, finding hope.  FFCMH is tracking events for Children's Mental Health Week, May 1-7. 

Send them your activities. Here's more info:

What are you doing for Children's Mental Health Awareness Week?  Please share the activities that your organization or group is planning for National Children's Mental Health Awareness Week with us. We would also like to see any photos of your event after the week has concluded. Please fill in the event submission form with information about the events and activities you will be holding in your community for Children's Mental Health Awareness Week.

I don't know of any events in Cheyenne planned for May 1-7. If I find one, I will post here.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness a great read

Imagine it's 2009 and you're a 24-year-old newspaper reporter living and working in New York City. An exciting life, sprinting all over town for stories and interviews. At night, hanging out in bars with your main squeeze and young friends. One day, you wake up with bites on your arm and imagine that your body and tiny apartment are infected with bedbugs. Then you start to hallucinate. Paranoia grips you and you are convinced that your boyfriend is cheating. You have trouble speaking and then erupt in epileptic convulsions.

I'm going crazy. That's your first thought but it's wrong. You are in the beginning stages of autoimmune encephalitis. Your brain is on fire. Your immune system is attacking your brain. Seizures, convulsions, hallucinations are part of it. You speak in tongues, as it says in the Bible, and if you lived in medieval England, your contortions and babbling might be mistaken for demonic possession. If you lived in 2009 America, your loved ones might think you were in the grip of schizophrenia or some other mental illness. You might end up in an institution for the rest of your life, which could be short if you contract the illness in its most lethal form.

Susannah Cahalan was lucky. She found the right neurologist and became the poster child for the disease which, before her, had only been diagnosed 217 times. She recovered and, being a dedicated journalist, wrote a book, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. It's now a movie.

It's scary reading. Compelling. My daughter Annie gave me her copy. She is bipolar and devours books on mental illness or supposed mental illness. She intends to become a music therapist once she and her therapists get a handle on her illness. She will be a good one, too, as she has experienced a good decade of struggles within the mental health system. It's not really a system. It pretends to be but not enough attention or time is devoted to it. We tend to warehouse those with mental illness, especially those who have the more challenging schizophrenia or schizo-effective disorder or are bipolar, which used to be known as manic-depression.  These people are challenged every day. They can be treated but it takes so much time and attention and money which could be spent on more important things,, such as a billion-dollar aircraft carrier to fight Islamic terrorists lurking in an alley in Mosul. Or more tax cuts to the ridiculously rich. Heaven help the needy amongst us now that Trump is running things.

I just finished reading Brain on Fire. It's well-written and, as I already mentioned, scary, especially for those of us who struggle with mental illness -- or have loved ones who do. Highly recommended. Not sure about the movie -- haven't got around to watching it. It screened in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and received lukewarm reviews. Read the Hollywood Reporter review here. Read the book instead. A 2012 New York Times review by Michael Greenberg offers insight.

Science geek in White House signs 21st Century Cures Act

Did you know that we had a "science geek" in the White House? For now, anyway. He points us toward the future even while the incoming administration tries to drag us back into the dark ages.

When you have dealt with a family member's mental illness as long as we have -- 10 years -- you take your good news where you find it. On Tuesday, Pres. Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act which has improving mental health care as one of its key components. In the White House video, Obama explains some of his reasoning behind signing the bill. Letters from constituents helped alert him to the pain that families were going through as they try to get help for family members as they struggle with opioid addiction, cancer and mental health issues. A Republican grandmother pleaded for help with finding the right kind of care for her mentally ill grand-daughter. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the mental health piece was a bipartisan effort. Let's see that spirit of cooperation continue when it comes to health care, Medicare, Social Security, and the environment, which has a major impact on our health.

More info: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/12/12/3-letters-explain-why-president-obama-signing-cures-act

Republican Senator aids in "giant leap forward in fixing our broken mental health system"

U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA).

We know that these senators are at odds about almost everything. However, they recently (Dec. 6) got together to push through HR 34, the 21st Century Cures Act.. This is the most comprehensive effort yet to address the country's mental health care system.

Here's what co-sponsor Dr. Cassidy, from the reliably red state of Louisiana, had to say:

“The 21st Century Cures Act marks a giant step forward in fixing our broken mental health system. It institutes comprehensive mental health care reform and makes resources available to the millions that have been previously denied treatment due to a lack of access. I want to thank all those who helped make mental health a priority in Congress, but I especially thank my colleague Senator Chris Murphy. We have been working together to fix our country’s broken mental health system since day one. Without him and the bipartisan effort he has brought to this legislation, we would not be here today. I urge the President to sign this bill and help the millions of individuals and families affected by mental health become whole.”

Said his co-sponsor, Sen. Murphy, from the true-blue Democratic state of Connecticut:

“This is the most comprehensive reform of our nation's mental health laws in a generation, and I'm so thrilled that we drafted it and passed it with support from both Democrats and Republicans. In Connecticut, I've met too many people struggling with mental illness who can't find the care they need, or can't get their insurance company to approve the care once they find it. This bill means millions of dollars in new treatment, and it creates a pathway to a better integrated, more coordinated system for people with serious mental illness. I’m incredibly grateful for Senator Cassidy’s partnership and friendship. He brought a doctor’s knowledge and a dogged determination to our effort, and a lot of people will be better off because of it.”

Sen. Cassidy is a physician. Do we know of any other medical doctor currently serving in the U.S. Senate? Just one comes to mind. That is Sen. John Barrasso of Casper, Wyoming. Both Cassidy and Barrasso have conspired with Mitch McConnell to sink Obamacare. Not sure what the tie-in is. If Obamacare sinks, so does access to health care by millions. Can you improve mental health care when people who most need help are deprived of insurance? 

Sen. Barrasso, of course, recently (Dec. 3) delivered the Republican weekly address on Republican plans to eliminate Obamacare. They see Trump's win as a mandate to return health care to the health care insurance conglomerates where it belongs. Remember how well that worked? Forty million Americans without health insurance, which meant a lot of your friends and family members and neighbors getting sicker while health care execs buy second or third homes in Dick Cheney's Jackson Hole neighborhood. Of course, Wyoming never okayed Medicaid Expansion which would have helped so many of those people that Sen. Barrasso claims to care about. 

I am taking the 21st Century Cures Act as a sign that Democrats and Republicans can work together on at least one issue. Time will tell.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness had this to say on the passage of HR 34: http://www.nami.org/Press-Media/Press-Releases/2016/-NAMI-Celebrates-Senate-Passage-of-HR-34. Also see NAMI on Facebook and Twitter.

In the waiting room at a mental health center on a sunny Friday in December

I wait. It's a waiting room so I fit right in. A mental health center in a Denver suburb. Its motto on the wall in living color is "Live Life to the Fullest." Who can argue with that? A person with mental illness may have a hard time getting into the spirit of the motto as they usually have more immediate claims to their attention. Such as --
Can I get my meds filled today?
Can you find me a place to live?
Do you have a bus that can take me home?
Things like that.

My daughter Annie is going through an intake with a therapist. She is a new resident of this Denver suburb. She has nothing to prove that, no ID or utility bill. But the staffers at the front desk don't seem to care. They want to get Annie the help she needs. She is a person with mental health issues. She is on disability and has a place to live but no job. She needs a psychiatrist so she can get her meds filled.

The therapist, a young white man who, in an alternate universe, could be making big money in the corporate world, comes out and introduces himself to Annie and me. He explains the process and we listen. They go to his office and I sit again to wait among the other people who wait. There is a young Hispanic women and her two kids. A bearded, tattooed white man. A young black man wearing a black jacket. Others. A young Hispanic staffer comes out and tells me that I can go up to the Medicaid office on the fourth floor and see how I can get Annie enrolled in Colorado Medicaid because they can't accept her Wyoming Medicaid. I have to pay a co-pay for her visit with the therapist this morning. Earlier, I heard a young black man speaking to a family member on the office phone. He needed someone to pay the co-pay because he had no money. The family member obliged and have the clerk a credit card number. I pass a security guard at the security desk and he looks bored. I would think that on some days he isn't so bored. The mental health care system can be daunting. Especially for those hearing voices in their heads. Or someone so manic that they've been awake for seven days and can't think straight. A big sign on the front door says, "No Weapons." A good policy here in the Wild West, where guns abound.

On the fourth floor, a woman in her 30s introduces herself as Sara and attempt to help me get started with Colorado Medicaid. She is a black woman from somewhere in Africa. I am a typical American in that I cannot tell one African from another. I wish that my wife Chris was here with me, as she lived in Africa as an Army brat and traveled extensively there. Sara could be from Ethiopia or Uganda or Somalia. It doesn't really matter but I wonder. She speaks with a heavy accent. She lives in Colorado now. She is trying to help this white retiree from Wyoming and his daughter. It turns out that I don't have the proper paperwork and IDs and I can't remember Annie's Social Security number, which is the gateway to all things bureaucratic. I wonder if Sara was on my side of the desk recently applying for a visa or food stamps or a place to live. If I was on the other side of the desk, would I be helping her or putting roadblocks in her way. She tells me that I can apply online and gives me a card with the URL address. She also gives me her card in case I have questions. I return to the first floor waiting room. It's lunchtime and it has emptied out. One Hispanic boy sits in a chair in the corner. I sit and wait, going through Annie's Social Security file that I brought with me.

A burly bearded white man and a petite Hispanic woman emerge from the backroom. They are young and wouldn't look out of place striding to a Lumineers concert to Red Rocks. They sit next to the 10-year-old black boy. They ask him what he's doing. He says he's waiting for something to eat. His mom and brother have gone to get it. The male therapist tells him to eat while the food is hot and then they will decide the best place for him. The adults are kind and not condescending. They chat for awhile and then leave, telling the boy they will be back when he's finished eating. As soon as they disappear, Mom and brother arrive with sacks of burgers and fries. The two boys take their food to the other side of the room and eat. The 10-year-old asks Mom is she bought any mayonnaise. She says no. He eats the burger. Between bites, thee trio converses in Spanish. I wish I knew more than a few words of Spanish. Not just to listen in but because it would help me understand other cultures that are our neighbors. Also, I could read Pablo Neruda's poems in their original language.

Annie eventually reappears with the therapist. He tells me that they covered everything necessary for a first visit and that he will be in touch early in the week to go over details of IOP, possible living arrangements, Medicaid, etc. He asks us if we had any questions and we say we didn't. We leave, passing a young white man having some difficulty pushing his walker through the door. He is young and disabled. I hold the door for him. Outside, a black woman wearing a long dress and a colorful head scarf paces up and down the sidewalk. A young Hispanic man spoke on his cell phone. The sun shone and it was warm for December, much warmer than it had been the past two days.

You know why I'm writing this. don't you? Meanness and ugliness is all we hear from President-elect Trump and his allies. Here in this mental health center waiting room pass the the people the Trumpians are saying all of those mean things about. The disabled. The mentally ill. People of color. The homeless. Immigrants. When the Trumpians take over on Jan. 20, all of these people will be targeted by regressive policies. Meanwhile, the rich will get richer and the nation will be turned into Trumplandia which will resemble the dystopian future of "Idiocracy" the movie.

Trump and his minions have made the world ugly in 2016. It's about to get even uglier.

Studio Wyoming Review makes first appearance on WyoFile

Studio Wyoming Review debuted this week on WyoFile, Wyoming's online news source that covers  "people, places and policy." And now, the arts.

Camellia El-Antably wrote the first SWR "guest column" last week about Touchstone Laramie. This every-other-year exhibit, now in its sixth iteration, is unique in that it features many of Laramie's artists during a weekend-long event (Nov. 11-13) at a local motel. It may be Wyoming's first pop-up gallery and it does pop-up in a big way, by clearing an entire floor of furnishings and replaces them with art and artists. I won't tell you any more. Best to go read Camellia's column.

Camellia and I worked together for many years at the Wyoming Arts Council. There's a new crew at the WAC and they have come up with some innovative programs the past year, including the Wyoming Independent Music Initiative and Health and Wellness in the Arts. If you have any involvement with programs with health and wellness components, go fill out the WAC survey. You will feel better for it. I did. You might say that every arts program supports health and wellness, especially mental health. I agree, but I was an arts worker for 25 years and had the privilege of seeing that in action. And promoting it. Now I'm retired and get to enhance my mental health by writing every day. I may show up on the e-pages of Studio Wyoming Review. You never know...

As the election nears, remember America's broken mental health care system

The mental health of veterans is tied to the mental health of civilians.

I am not a veteran.  I am a civilian with mental health issues. Depression is in my DNA. I can't help it. I can, however, do something about it. A conscious choice that can only be made when I am not in the grip of a depressive episode. That's how tricky it is.

I'm always on the lookout for Catch-22 analogies.

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.  

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. 

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”  

With depression, it works like this. When you are depressed, you need help. You have to ask for it as nobody else knows you are depressed because you look normal although you may not act normal, whatever that is. If you ask for help, that is a sign that you are coming out of depression. Have some pills, the doc says and sends you on your way to recovery.

It gets worse before it gets better. It takes time for the medications to kick in. With the pills comes talk therapy with a psychiatrist or a therapist or both. This also takes time to bear results. Meanwhile, you have to get on with your life. There's work to do, soldiering to get done, families to raise, bills to pay. None of this waits on your mental health. If your job and family permits it, as mine did a few years ago, you can take a month off of work to allay your latest depressive episode. Some people would rather work through it, take their mind off the problem. But what happens if you can't?

There's a TV ad for Trintellix, a new depression medication. It shows a man trying to get involved in gardening with his wife. A thought balloon perches over his head. Inside is a jumble of colorful spaghetti strands that seem to represent the tangled web depression causes. If you take Trintellix, the word "me" magically emerges from the spaghetti. It's not magic, really, but pharmacological. Antidepressants now can be targeted to the brain's synapses a lot better than when I took my first dose of Prozac 25 years ago. I'm not sure of the science but I'm going to look it up. I'm always looking it up.

My Catch-22 analogy isn't perfect. But it does illustrate the quandary of a person with clinical depression, or with any kind of mental illness. You find yourself in an illogical, Catch-22 universe. It makes no sense. It makes perfect sense.

On my growing stack of books to read is Bruce Springsteen's biography, Born to Run. One of the best-known performers in the world has struggled with depression. Interesting, isn't it, that the man who known for rousing anthems and hour-long encores, can also be battered into submission by the blues. The real blues. The kind that's as physical as a heart attack or leukemia.

Chris and I saw Springsteen in concert during his "Born in the U.S.A." tour in Denver in the mid-1980s. It was September and it snowed at Mile High Stadium. We didn't mind. Springsteen and the band didn't seem to mind. Maybe they minded but it didn't stop them. That's kind of how depression feels. You mind that it's there but you play on. The show must go on, as theatre people say.

Springsteen might have been depressed that day. I was, until I went to the concert. I then was uplifted.

The song, "Born in the U.S.A.," focuses on the Vietnam War and the problems veterans had when they returned home. Not a whitewashed Lee Greenwood or Charlie Daniels vision of wartime trauma. War can transform you, just as childhood traumas can. Some psychiatrists say that childhood trauma can exacerbate PTSD sparked by combat. We also know that people who have been no closer to combat than Donald Trump or Dick Cheney can struggle with PTSD. It's all in your head, man! Last time I checked, my head was attached to rest of me.

It's real. That's why it's so difficult to hear someone like Trump belittle the problems of veterans. After Oct. 9's "debate," Jon Soltz sent out an e-mail call for donations. Here's his pitch:

I am filled with profound sadness after watching Donald Trump's behavior before tonight's debate.  

I started VoteVets after returning from Iraq because veterans, military family members, and those who support them need elected representation that recognizes the cost of war continues long after the last service member returns home.  

This is a presidential election. We deserve a debate on these issues. Every veteran who has ever served deserves better than what Donald Trump has done to the process of deciding our next Commander in Chief.

Contribute to VoteVets here: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/defeat-trump?refcode=em161009

I am not a veteran. I state this as a matter of fact. I approach this issue not from personal experience as a warrior but as a civilian. It's academic and personal. My kids both struggle with mental health issues. So do I.

My weapons are words.

Donald Trump has no mental health plan in his platform. Hillary Clinton does.

As Jon Soltz says, we deserve a debate on these issues. We still haven't had one. All of us struggling with mental illness deserve better.