{"id":269,"date":"2025-07-31T17:37:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/?p=269"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:37:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:37:41","slug":"writers-block-or-stroke-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/2025\/07\/31\/writers-block-or-stroke-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer&#8217;s block&#8230; or stroke? &#8211; Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(--global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;justify-content:center;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column269_e78f94-0e > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;justify-content:center;}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column269_e78f94-0e\"><div class=\"kt-inside-inner-col\"><div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/all-hooked-up-with-no-place-to-go-576x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Jon in mask at hospital\" class=\"wp-image-273\" style=\"width:388px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/all-hooked-up-with-no-place-to-go-576x1024.jpg 576w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/all-hooked-up-with-no-place-to-go-169x300.jpg 169w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/all-hooked-up-with-no-place-to-go.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>All hooked up with no place to go.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em><strong>This is the second installment of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>This story started only a few days ago, and already details are fading, so I better wrap this up today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saturday was a grueling day at the ER&#8230; er, I mean VIP station of Hospital Internacional de Colombia, that included getting a CT scan and then an MRI. I was told that the neurologist would be making rounds early Sunday morning and that I could either pay extra to be admitted to the hospital, or that a bed in the VIP ward was included in the original 2 million COP deposit that I had already paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I opted for going home and returning the next day. Well, it wasn&#8217;t really an option until I proposed it, but after some consultation with someone I never saw, the nurses agreed to let me leave. But&#8230; you have to be back between 6:30 and 7 am, because that was when the neurologist would be making his rounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fine. A pain in the ass for a tired and expired recovering stroker, but fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before I could physically leave the building, I had to present a document to the security guard at the exit. He studied it and then nodded, placed it in a basket, and cut the wristband on my right arm. I can only imagine that this was a procedure mandated by the business office, and not the medical director, but I can&#8217;t say that I know anything for certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jackson had to return to his home in C\u00facuta Saturday night, so Mikey and I returned to the hospital Sunday morning before six, very early for us, and as directed by the staff the day before. We had no problem passing security or finding our way to the VIP clinic, or whatever they call it. It&#8217;s more of an urgent care clinic, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sit down and wait, we were told, and by now we knew exactly how to do that there, so we sat and we waited to see the neurologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And waited some more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, late morning, a young doctor called us into one of the consultation rooms and asked me all the questions I had been asked before, but that&#8217;s normal, right? For the first time at the hospital, he asked me for my medication list, then asked me what each one was for. Yes, it struck me as a little odd, but everything here seems odd, and remember, I didn&#8217;t yet know that I had apparently stroked out about 30 hours earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He examined me with the usual, how many fingers am I holding, tapped my joints with a rubber hammer and everything else these exams entail, but he forgot to ask me to touch my nose with my finger, which I performed for him just to prove I knew the drill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then he told me that he was going to leave me to go review the MRI! I&#8217;ll be back in approximately one hour, he told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay&#8230; NOW I was a bit dumbfounded. Look at the MRI?! You haven&#8217;t looked at the MRI report yet!? I thought to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fine, I told him. I will see you again in an hour, right? Yes, se\u00f1or. Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About an hour later, near lunchtime I think, I saw the first doctor with two other doctors approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, let me stop and state that I do not think these were three doctors. I think there was one doctor, a neurologist, and two something elses, probably interns. So going forward, when I say doctor, I&#8217;m referring to the newly arrived blue coat and his assumptive intern, who never said a word. Maybe he didn&#8217;t understand English, but the doctor did. And I could understand him when he spoke to me, which is something I can&#8217;t even say about some native English speakers, given my hearing impediments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>But I have to ask: what are we going to do differently, depending on the outcome of this examination?<br>Not lose weight? Not change diet?<br>Not get the inflamed tendon in my left ankle attended to and find out<br>if I can walk 5 or more kilometers a day without limping?<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By this time, all four or five consultation rooms were occupied, but the children&#8217;s playroom and a diaper change room were available. Fortunately, we opted to use the children&#8217;s playroom, and fortunately there was a small but very sturdy little chair that I was able to occupy, because I am not comfortable standing for very long periods of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wish Mikey had taken a video of a neurological exam with the patient sitting in a kid&#8217;s plastic chair, but alas, we are still learning how to be good, cutting-edge content creators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it came to testing the strength in my arms and legs, it was obvious to me that my left side was nearly gone, and I saw the bulb go on for the doctor. He already knew what he was going to find, but he had to go through the motions he was trained for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, he told me, the MRI was not very useful. The cochlear implant messes with the imaging, something I already knew because I was told that prior to the implant. But, he added, it&#8217;s obvious that you have had a stroke. It&#8217;s just standard practice to confirm clinical findings with a scan. Of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lateral lacunar infarct, is what I THINK he said. Doesn&#8217;t really matter. This is my personal blog post, not a peer-reviewed medical research paper. He went on to explain&#8230; well, a bunch of stuff, much of which isn&#8217;t important enough to waste space here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was an extremely small stroke, for one thing. It affected a specific part of the brain so that it did not manifest the same way as many strokes do. The stroke was a result of the cerebral small vessel disease that I have known I have for many years now, though my doctors back home never wanted to talk to me about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, he affirmed for me, it is progressive. No, he also confirmed, there is no cure or treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is only disease management, which as I mentioned in Part 1, is living more healthfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He wanted to do more tests and he wanted me to see the head neurologist on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me just say here that I really connected to this doctor at a level that is rare for me. He seemed extremely competent and knowledgeable. He showed a lot of empathy. When I told him that, while I do want to be as healthy as possible and I do want to lose weight and walk more again, that I do not want any more extreme medical interventions or procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think he got it. I also think that it was hard for Mikey to hear again, but he also needs to hear this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My family needs to hear this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You, dear reader, may as well hear it too, because the rest of this post is based on this very simple premise: I&#8217;m tired of medical care and so-called solutions that just result in new questions. If I break my arm, by all means, please set the bone so I might be able to recover some use from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But no more surgeries that require anesthesia. No chemotherapy. No more toxic drugs that seem to have as many adverse effects as benefits. I&#8217;ll continue to take the medications I take now, and I do not outright refuse any new ones, but it will be a hard sell to get me to take more pills, except maybe for pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did agree to have the echocardiogram done, though past tests have resulted in almost diametrically opposed opinions about the condition of my heart. I don&#8217;t need a test to tell me that my heart is no longer strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was sent home with a Holter monitor before, only to find out it was so old that it couldn&#8217;t do the job it was intended to do. And that was in the country with the finest healthcare in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But let&#8217;s move on with this story and get it ready for bed so I can do something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My Colombian health insurance is consuming way too much of my time, too. HIC is not in their hospital network, so they want to assign me to one of their in-network neurologists. Okay, fine.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico-576x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-272\" style=\"width:344px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico-576x1024.jpg 576w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico-169x300.jpg 169w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico-768x1366.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico-864x1536.jpg 864w, https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mri-wait-room-tipico.jpg 899w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>But&#8230;. (oh boy&#8230; a <em>but<\/em> from a health insurance company&#8230; I think I know what is coming next).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Our medical care team has determined that this care is needed because you have a&#8230; drumroll, please&#8230; a pre-existing condition. Pre-existing conditions are not covered by your policy and the neurological exam will cost $300 USD.&#8221;<br><br>A big but. And yup, exactly what I had anticipated AND planned for. I KNEW that any so-called medical insurance I buy will pull this trump card out. If I had broken that arm I mentioned earlier, the insurance company might very likely use the same excuse to deny the claim for setting the bone:  &#8220;you were born June 30, 1956. If you hadn&#8217;t been born, you would not have a broken bone, therefore this is a pre-existing condition and not covered.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m exercising my right as a writer to be melodramatic and exaggerate, but it&#8217;s not a bad analogy, if you ask me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, $300 for a complete neurological exam, including (maybe) an echo and Holter, isn&#8217;t bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe, maybe not. You don&#8217;t know my real financial status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I have to ask: what are we going to do differently, depending on the outcome of this examination? Not lose weight? Not change diet? Not get the inflamed tendon in my left ankle attended to and find out if I can walk 5 or more kilometers a day without limping?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See where I&#8217;m going with this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why bother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve spent much&#8230; no, MOST of my lifetime chasing medical miracles and cures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had my fucking spine fused, but my back hurts again now. It just hurts in a new place. The pain is still there. It took several months, maybe a year, to recover from that surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The left hip replacement was a gawdsend for years, but it took months out of my life to recover from the surgery. Now I can barely stand up in the mornings, thanks to pain in both hips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m tired. Very tired. Yes, I want to go to the river. Yes, I want to climb that mountain. Yes, I want to ride a zip line across el Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have lived the best life I can imagine. I am proud of the things I have been part of and the things I have accomplished. I have survived more than one apocalyptic crisis and have chosen to flee the latest one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to die. I don&#8217;t intend to die anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I just want to be as free as possible to enjoy what I have left to live. That does not include doctor&#8217;s offices and hospitals in ANY country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My biggest dread (fear?) is involuntarily abandoning the one man in my life who has devoted his life to support me in all ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I still have some plans. I want to write. I want to play with the new technology. I want to tell stories; my own and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m in a safe place now. It feels like I am home. I want to do everything I possibly can to make sure Mikey has a chosen family who will care for him with as much love and compassion as he deserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those of you who think I&#8217;ve made a mistake: you might be right. But I still believe that both Mikey and I can have a better end-of-life here than the Medicaid-approved version of that back in the good ol&#8217; USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Not the way I intended this story to end.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second installment of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here. This story started only a few days ago, and already details are fading, so I better wrap this up today. Saturday was a grueling day at the ER&#8230; er, I mean VIP station of Hospital Internacional de Colombia, that included&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"default","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondbarnett.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}