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