Mensch, mensch, mensch....

The past couple of days haven't been very good.

Gamlitz... holy crap. Peter will be transferred to a place in Gamlitz. Because there aren't any open places for three months in Graz or the periphery. Gamlitz is south of here, and west of Leibnitz. It is near the Slovenian border. Tiny village. Some of you have ridden through it on the Weinstrasse, it is a blip on the map.

Social Services is really pressing him on it. The hospital isn't doing much and he's taking up bed space, and that is a bad sign. This is where he will be. Link here. In German, but you can check out the pictures....

Getting there per public transportation is going to be a bitch, and cost-wise, I will probably be able to get there once a week.

They told him it would be a three-month stay, to get him strong, so he can go back 'home'. Hope dies last...

Right....

All the signs point at 'Endstation'. And everyone in the nephrology dept. have been very kind to him, and he isn't doing his usual 'rage against the machine' number the way he did last time. He got so 'mild', says 'thank you' for small things. He's never done that, ever.

All the fight went out of him lately, and his voice has somehow gone off the past few days. It got weak.

I am NOT happy with what I see regarding his general condition, and there will be reasons they are going light... but I cannot, am not allowed to discuss that with the personell there.

Last night, Keith Olbermann had the special comment to end all special comments, nearly fourteen minutes long. Tea-baggers in Dallas challenged him to verbally spar with them, and he declined because he could not leave NY, and they called him a coward for it.

His father has been in intensive care in a NY hospital for the past six months. And he described in the most graphic way, what that had been like.

It made me cry, because I so know the feeling, but his experience is so far worse than mine, even in the darkest, most horrible experiences. His father asked him to kill him. Keith had an ulterior motive for putting out his very, very personal experiences on national television. He is not an exhibitionist, and wasn't self-pitying. And I haven't been putting all this out here because of some exhibitionistic streak. It was about health-care reform, and end of life discussions with family and doctors, and being prepared for whatever life is gonna deal you.

And called them 'Life Panels', not death panels....

If you hear one thing in your life, call up 'Countdown' from yesterday, and listen and watch that, because it was extraordinary.

I don't know how he got through it without breaking down.

I guess he's got a lot of stamina.

Back on the home front... I had gone and withdrawn fifty Euros from his account and put it in his drawer in the table near his bed in his wallet. Said he 'needed' it. He wanted me to take some loose change, and get him a coffee from the vending machine today. All that was left was 20 Euros.

So I asked. 'Where did the other 30 go?' And he hemmed and hawwed.... And said he had had such a gusto, he ordered a piece of Strudel from Café Sacher delivered per Veloped. Uh-huh... He 'forgot' that he told me his former neighbor had visited the night before, and said neighbor had lent him money when both he and I were maxed out. For food.

Somewhere inside, I found it sort of funny. He'd rather rat himself out for his addiction to sweet things than rat out his friend and former neighbor. Who is actually a nice person, met him once...

Am listening to a live feed of the so-called 'health-summit'. I haven't heard so much slime and hypocrisy in decades.

Horrible.

End analysis? I am LIVID.

I get NO information, I cannot ASK anyone what the fuck is going on, and WHY they aren't doing what they usually do, or what the prognosis is, or 'have that talk' and get ready if this is the end-game.

Just shut out. Game over.

I can visit at will... oh, what a 'comfort'.

This isn't fucking good.

I can watch it from the highest seat in the bleachers, with binoculars.

And that is how things fucking ARE.