Don's Review: Law, Politics, Science, Philosophy

Feb. 21, 2010

The use of torture by anyone in the world, except cats as they play with their mice before eating them, is inexcusable and should be punishable by imprisonment for life in a penal institution or until a cure is found in a mental health facility.

I cannot believe the U.S. even contemplates it, yet alone uses it. Torture includes: indefinite imprisonment after renditions (disappearing people) without counsel of attorney or habeus corpus or contact with family or friends to dark holes in Afghan or faraway unknown holes; waterboarding; solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; beatings; and those are the LEAST of methods used by the shining city on the hill of Saint Reagan and his cohorts of the last 30 years.

This is intolerable. If it wasnt for the in-place totalitarian, dissent-crushing machine in the U.S. as continued and enhanced by Obama, I would run naked through Wall Street and the Capitol Mall until I was arrested. In the 1960s, that would have meant a night in jail. Now? Who knows?

Yes, people from other faiths and countries want to kill thousands of innocent U.S. citizens. So do extremist U.S. citizens like Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City during the 1990s.

But I dont care. Thousands of innocent babies, children, and adults get excruciating, horrible, torturous illnesses every day in the U.S. just because of this morally neutral world we live in. I saw both of my parents die that way, from myelofibrosis (inability of bone marrow to produce red blood cells) and from a massive stroke since 2000. I heard about my aunt and uncles painful deaths in 2002 and 2005, when my uncles nurses were nominated for sainthood by my cousin when his father lost control of his bowels on his death bed.

If we are ever to grasp hold of our situation as human beings, the dominant species on earth, and create a worldwide society that focuses on having the least amount of suffering for all, we have to spend money on cures for hunger and vicious diseases such as those that took my mother and father, instead of money on scarring innocent people for life or to death after years of detention without reason in an unknown place and without contact with their loved ones. Would we have tortured McVeigh if we thought he and his cohorts were planning another bombing (the ticking clock scenario that is used to justify most of the torture)? Studies show that torture does NOT improve the knowledge gained from criminalsmuch less innocent people. When McVeigh and friends killed 180 innocent people, including children, there was no talk of torture. Torture, as installed by the Bush-Cheney kingdom, also is racist. It would not have been considered if al-Qaeda members were white Protestants.

Ive been through torture of sorts because of an illness. I emphasize that it was NOT because of the U.S. government, but was brought on by our morally neutral world and no ones fault. But it has given me insight into the plight of innocents scooped up by the U.S. and put into Bagram and other dark holes in Afghanistan (Obamas attempt to close Gitmo was just another sugary distraction).

In 2004, I contracted either extreme pneumonia or ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome). In any case, a doctorwhose name I dont knowordered me put into a medically induced coma and onto a mechanical breathing machine. He or she likely never thought Id be in a coma for one month. He thought perhaps one week, at most. But that one-month comain which I drifted in and out of horrible nightmares, half-conscious sometimes on the opioidstook away 50 pounds and all of my muscles, including those that operated my voicebox.

When I finally awoke, I was skin and bonesmuch like Holocaust survivors you see in World War II photosand paralyzed due to neuropathy and muscle atrophy. I could only move my lips and a few fingers on one hand for two months. I could only mouth two-word phrases that only two or three of my friends and hospital team workers could understand, and I was given no counsel with an expert, in this case a doctor (in the U.S. torture cases, an attorney) to tell me what happened and what my prognosis was. Was I paralyzed from the neck down forever? I didnt know. The last thing I remembered clearly was having lunch with friends at our usual diner and my voice being raspy. The next things I recall from that nightmare year were murky sounds from my hospital caregivers--finally, after two months of nothingness. This must be what happens to innocents shoved into cars, hooded, drugged and dumped in a six-by-six cell for months before they hear sounds of guards or their fellow detainees through the walls. It must be similar to what a Bagram or Gitmo survivor has experienced: the extreme terror of having no knowledge of how he came to be in this hole or whats in store for him.

That is what happens to peopleincluding American citizens nowthat the U.S. renditions and tortures. Although the female or male doctor who ordered me put into a drug-induced comawhile my wife was having a well-deserved lunchand who is responsible for the paralysis and scars that persist to this day, both mentally and physicallyis not known to meunless I spend thousands of dollars to get access to the hospital recordsId like to question him or her. His decision was fateful.

My life now consists of two parts: pre-2004 illness and post-2004 illness. I barely remember moments and attitudes that I had pre-coma and the ensuing paralysis and rehab. Was his decision made in good faith or in haste, by rules of hospital engagement or because he needed practice with the mechanical ventilation machine? Those are questions Im sure innocent Bagram and Gitmo detainees have: Who did this to me? Can I get revenge? Or even closure? Or at least a face-to-face meeting? Were rules obeyed? Can I sue?

There is a fine line between life and death that young people certainly dont understand. As you gain middle age and watch your friends and relatives and parents die, you realize the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us. One minute youre fine. The next minute dead. One month youre driving 60 mph down a highway, the next you are unresponsive in your nursing home bed because of your lung cancer.

Theres a fine line in torture and hospitalization. If waterboarding goes too far, the detainee dies or goes crazy. If opioid and coma-inducing drugs at U.S. hospitals arent administered correctly by doctors to patients, the ARDS victim dies or goes crazy.

You learn that death can come faster than you ever imagined it could.

My mother had a cold in February. It wouldnt go away. The doctor gave her ultra-strong antibiotics. By mid-April, she was dead.

Since my torture-like experience of 2004, which Ill describe below, Ive come to realize that I could have died, but for the luck of having a wife and a good friend advocating for me at the hospital. Do detainees in Bagram and did those at Gitmo have wives or friends there to pester the doctors (authorities) with questions? No. The authorities were totalitarians playing god. Bullies.

Since W., the child-king, and Cheney, the dark-side, long-distance master of sadism, thousands have been left with scars for lifeif they lived. Just as I endured a seven-month rehab in which I had a tracheotomy tube sticking out of my throat, a feeding tube out of my stomach, a shooting-pain bedsore on the back of my head and at the top of my butt-crack (always a threat to create a sepsis attack like the one that killed Christopher Reeve), and one centimeter-deep bed sore on the outside of each leg just above the ankleall of which left me with no side to sleep on. I needed Percocet pain-killers for those seven months and more and still require sleeping pills nearly every night because my feet both tingle and hurt six years later from negligent care of bedsores and the resulting neuropathy and one severed tendon in each foot.

Imagine what released detainees of Gitmo and Bagram and other sites still sufferif they are alive, if their wives and children are alive and accept them back, if they need daily medicines or mental care thats unavailable, and if they can earn a living within their country or anywhere.

What follows are passages from my in-progress book (I am Joe):

Joe had survived the ordeal by the skin of his teeth. He had approached the edge of sanity many times after waking up without the ability to move his arms, legs, or vocal cords. He had become a quadriplegic, unable to communicate except by mouthing words. If his nurse, doctor, nurses aide, or relative or friend couldnt read lips as they stood by his bedside, he was out of luck. It struck him as funny how some people had a skill for reading his two-word sentences that were inaudible. He would mouth change diaper or water or change channel (the TV had only two main channels) and only three or four people would understand. Gradually, his left hand and arm came back and he was able to point to his mouth (indicating water) or to his diaper (indicating change it). One of his few pleasures was the ability to control when he would pee. Peeing itself felt numb and tingly at the same time, but at least he could control it. He could do nothing else except form two-word, silent sentences and slightly move his left hand and right big toe.).

Joe had awoken to the glare of bright lights overhead and dingy yellow walls before him. To his right were two windows, which let in the reflected light of the wall of another building apparently only six feet away, at the most.

Joe heard voices and saw a few blue-clad nurses scurry around him. One grabbed his right hand and pressed and prodded for a vein to take some blood. One on his left refilled the IV with liquid food. Then another, a burly, big-boned woman came to his side. He moved to address herbut couldnt. He was paralyzed from the neck down except for tingling in his toes and an ache in his right shoulder.

The burly woman gently held him up, away from the bed with one hand while sponge-bathing him with the other. It was then that he realized his ability to turn toward her was imaginary She unabashedly pulled down his bed shirt and washed his chest. Then, she moved to his diaperDiaper!! God. God. God. This cannot be true. How could this happen? She expertly bunched his poop into the diaper and tossed it into a hamper. She then washed his genitals and buttocks and the ease of a nanny washing a baby while chatting with her friends at a play-date. A new diaper was taped on, and they were finished.

Joe gazed fuzzily at the TV monitor above his right leg, but could not reach it. The tug of an oxygen tube to a tracheotomya hole in his neckalso restrained him.

Youve been through a lot, said a male voice to his left. His wifes voice to his right said. Youve got a long road ahead of you. Lots of hard work.

He could just make out the figure of Kenny, his friend from church and his wife on the right.

He tried to talk, but couldnt. The air escaped out the trach tube, missing his vocal cords, which were slack anyway from atrophied muscles. He had no idea what had happened.

But something had happened and here he was perhaps on his own death bed or, perhaps, paralyzed for the rest of his life, voicelessa vegetable.

Still, Kenny and his wife spoke only of a long, hard road, much work to be done. His doctor came in later that night, must have been past midnight, and smiled. She was a fetching Indian woman of 30 or so with long, dark locks and a glistening smile. Still no word as to his accident/illness or prognosis.

He mouthed the words, Poison me to her as his head lay, facing left and she adjusted his feeding tube. He knew she understood, but she smiled and said, No.

A parade of his wifes church members came to his bedside for four weeks while he lay there, full of tubes, so many that personnel couldnt turn him unless part of a team, and his friend could see bed sores, pressure ulcers on his back, sacrum, head and even the outsides of his ankles.

He fought the panic. Often he tried to use his left arm which had the most motion to leverage himself over the railings (He was sure he could land on his hands and knees and crawl out of the hospital.) He hated the good-will counselor, an oh-so-cute lady of 70 or 80, meant to cheer him up. She said, keep moving even though he could only barely move one arm and three toes. I was in your position and look at me. If I can do it, you can do it. He soundlessly screamed I need physical therapy but the good-will lady couldnt read lips.

There had always been a sense of wonder in Joes mind when, as a young boy, hed laid in front of the TV watching anything from professional bowling to reruns of The Lone Rangerwell, half watching and half staring out the window. All he could see was a patch of branches and some sky. Theyd change with the seasonyellow and brilliant blue in fall and brown twigs against gray clouds in the dead of winter

He used that time to contemplate everything from Gods existence to the girl in geometry class with the short skirt and wondrous legs.

Now, as the effects of the hallucinogens that theyd used to put him into an induced-coma while they had groped around his lungs for tissue to explain his pneumonia wore off, he could only gaze at a window literally a three feet from another building. No sky showed. He could only guess whether it was a sunny day or a cloudy day.

His mouth was a wasteland, as dry as the Sahara and, as the artificial air whistled through his tracheotomy, like a desert foxs burrow slowly closing with sand. He begged nursesby means of gestures and mouthed wordsfor some water, but they were only allowed to give him ice chips. And, at that, he had to turn his head to the left to keep the water at a pace easy to swallow.

This was doable, although his nerves were as taut as piano strings, because nurses were more prevalent during the day and could suction out the saliva and phlegm from his throat via the trach tube. This was necessary nearly every half hour.

At night, he met God. Fewer nurses were on duty and/or more were dozing at the coffee machine. His throat filled up with saliva and deposited, quick-hardening gunk from the artificial air and phlegm until hed nearly choke. Hed have to pray and pray and pray that hed get another breath. And then, itd come, as finally, the gunk reached a tipping point and spilled out his mouth and he could breath.

Sometimes hed purposely hold his breath until the machines at the nurses station would show no breathing in Room XYZ, there that bald guy with ARDS was writhing on his bed sores. Oh my God, Theyd think, is he dying? Id better save my job and help him. And theyd come and suction him.

He finally got through to them that he needed a call-button to summon help and that he needed someone to check him at 3 a.m. because he was either trying to kill himself or saying to himself, I accept your will God. Be merciful on a fool like me.

He had two doctors who came by most often. One was a long-haired beautiful Indian woman who looked about 30. She could read his lips and did give him water. At one point, he mouthed the words poison me, let me die to her, but she only smiled. Nevertheless, he thought she understood, but just wouldnt comply.

He forgave her because she was one of three people who could read his lipsgiving him some control over his lifeand she was one of another three who overlooked the choking danger and held a glass of ice-cold water to his mouth in such a way that he could guzzle it and actually quench his thirst and wash out his mouthsomewhat.

His friends came around and hed smile at them and nod as theyd read the sports pages to him or try to read his lips or help him change the two channels on his TV setall he could move was one foot half an inch and one arm slightly from the neck down. He clung to those people, knowing they were his lifeline even though every fiber of his being wanted to be alone and selfishly contemplate the building three feet away outside his window. He consciously told them to tell his two brothers and one sister that he loved them and he consciously shook left hands with one friend from church who came every night, always thanking Joefor what, Joe couldnt understandhe, Joe, should be thanking this saint, not vice versa.

Gradually the hallucinogens wore off and he could think more steadily. Now his bed sores on his sacrum, head and both ankles were endangering his life. Hed read about infections from bed sores killing people. Yet he had sores on his left side, right side, back of his head, and butt plus a feeding tube out his stomach, so he could only tryand mostly fail to position himself on primitive foam sponges to relieve pressure from those ulcers. It was impossible.

He screamed in hoarse barely audible whisper for physical therapy to get his muscles back but the hospital didnt have a therapist and the rehab hospital would not take him because of all the fluid in his lungs and the required suctioning every half hour.

He had no control over anything, except as to when hed release his pee. He could do that with some degree of control and it gave him pleasure to do so. His bowel movements were diarrheic and threatened to infect, in a deadly way, his butt sores.

So, peeing and watching the 24-hour tribute to Frasiers going off TV air were his main pleasures.

He did find God though. He saw God in the friend from church who came every night. And he saw God when he was giving his life up to saliva and snot at 3 a.m. and then he began to see God just outside his window, somehow hanging on the ledge, watching him. He vowed to join the church of that daily visitor and the church of his wifethe Mormon churchbecause 90 percent of his visitors were Mormon and he wanted a church that functioned 24 hours a day, seven days a week..

While first waking from the drugs, Joe reached over very slowly, with great effort, with his right hand trying and trying again to reach his eye-glass case. It was the new cell phone in this new opioid world he occupied. His old cell phone was no where to be found. Finally, he reached his glass case and punched its side as hard as he could with his numb, tingly fingers.

He didnt know how it worked, but, each time, about 10 minutes later, his wife appeared to help him. He wondered where his old cell phone had gone. This modern one seemed to be constructed of his skin stretched over the eyeglass case. He guessed that the signal must bounce off a satellite somewhere and reach his wifes skin stretched over her glass case. She then came in off the beach upon which his hospital unit rested. [My hospital was in the middle of the Bronx.]

All visitors checked with the nurses station first before waiting on the Caribbean beach just outside the lobby door.

He needed reassurance from his wife. His yelled whispers of Help me I need help! Come here, NOW! had gone unheard by the nurses and the station.

Now and again hed notice a nurses aide come to reposition him so he lay straight and not askew on the bedthe bed, with its damned rails pulled up on all sides one and a half feet above the surface. He felt claustrophobic.

His nurses seemed to think that TV, with hits two cableless channels, was a god-send, asking him which channel do you wantas if he gave a damn.

The doctors slipped in and out, on rotation and always seemed to be planning where they were going to eat that night. I dont like Mexican. But this place is different. Its sooo laid back. But I have to get back to do paperwork. Were closing on our new house this month.

One nurses aid took special care in him and his wife. He tried to help all he could. Joe was half awake from his coma when the aide said, Youd look cool with a shaved head. Joe, through a fuzzy brain, thought so too, and knew what was going to happen. But fefore he REALLY knew it, however, he was totally bald. Cool man. You like it? Yeah, his wife said, squeamishly.

The opioids took their time wearing off. The TV was on and the Mets were playing, but it was a new form of baseballsqueezed into the top-right corner of the TV screen. The object seemed to be to crack hits through the infield and move runners along. It was more like billiards than baseball.

He still could not talk. Some of his first thoughts were: Why me God? What happened? This is NOT a good time for this to happen. I dont have the desire or energy to fight this! After all the pain Ive been through, the years of therapy, bankruptcy, separations from my familyIm here! And all I hear is Its a long road ahead, Joe. Its going to be difficult, months and months, may be years. (Maybe never was the unspoken corollary.) And the deafening silences of the doctors and his wife and friends as to what happened and what his prognosis was. Bits and pieces: maybe you aspirated a piece of vegetable into your lung. You scared us to death. From the doctors: We have to get some of that fluid out. What well do now is stuff this metal flexible tube down your nose and suck fluid out of your lungs. Then two big quarts of yellow-brown fluid were waved before Joes eyes by the unthinking doctors.

No one told him that his paralysis and inability to talk were nearly 100 percent temporary. His wife told him that on that fateful night he had jumped into a cab and hissed the ER to the driver as his dry cough grew worse and worse. All he heard during the three weeks after his awakening was bits and pieces: nursing home aspirated a vegetable, probably a piece of broccoli funeral what do you want sweetie. I cant read lips be sure to sleep on one side or the other, your butt bedsore is horrible, we wouldnt want to infect that would we?

Throughout all of this, he had been entertained, as he called it, by hallucinations brought on mainly by the doctors use of opioids. These were repeated dream-like excursions into scenarios that remained crystal clear in his memory for weeks, now years, on end. They had involved nearly everyone he knew before his illness. He didnt even attempt to interpret them, just relaxed and enjoyed them or replayed the memories in his mind.

After the ordeal, the easiest one to relay to his friends involved TV talk-show host David Letterman. In his hallucination, he himself was reading the local paper and upon turning to a middle page found a photo of Letterman sitting at his New York Rockefeller Center office reading something about cancer. The caption in the newspaper said, Mr. Letterman has come to grips with his impending death from cancer. Joe saw this dream several times and thought it was true. He couldnt discern reality from fantasy. When he finally was transferred to the rehab hospital a month later, he was shocked to find a brand-new Letterman show playing on his TV one night when he couldnt sleep.

Another dream involved himself and a homeless man, both visiting an apartment in the upper corner of a shabby building in midtown New York. The woman was young and beautiful and Joe, in the dream, found himself competing with this beggar for her affections. Gaining access to her apartment for a date required intricate maneuvering of the metal lock. If she decided to spend the evening with either Joe or the man, she would stroll with one of them throughout the parks of New Jersey and the date would end with them climbing back up to her apartment through yards and yards of wooden hallways. Then Joe and the man would somehow get to the other corner of the building where a balcony or fire escape landing awaited them. They would then compete for her affections by diving from 10 stories up to the pavement below, landing on one yes, one finger and, somehow, propelling themselves backwards 10 stories to land on that same fire escape platform. In the dream most remembered by Joe, he bested the beggar by being slightly faster and fancier in his dives. When Joe awoke at his first hospital and later at the rehab hospital, he thought there might, indeed, be a letter or call waiting from that woman.

Some dreams he recognized as fantasy, even though they, in fact, contained an element of truth. In one, his mother and father had come out of retirement to become con men. Both worked as a team fleecing a Korean airliner at LaGuardia airport out of the meals it had prepared for its customers. In the dream, his dad, a normally diffident man, was a fast-talking con man, who helped his wife dress as a flight attendant. They then pretended to know everything about the airliner convincingly enough for the guards to let them in the back end of the airplane. There, they would serve some fliers with the meals before slipping out the back again. The meals invariably were peanuts and chicken in soy sauce. The two then would call him, Joe, and his brothers, inviting them for supper at the house they had owned in Torrington (2,000 miles awayalthough it was blizzarding in both Torrington and at LaGuardia) for 45 years. Only Joe would show up always in a blinding snowstorm, having to fight his way through whipping snow and frigid temperatures.

His dreams had kicked in as the hallucinogens needed to keep him free of pain as the doctors probed his lungs for pieces of tissue, stuck a tiny metal filter shaped like a spider up his vena cava, and hooked him up for dialysis as his kidneys began failing from lack of oxygenkicked in.

He felt nothing and saw nothing but skewed images of the people who entered his ICU room. Later he would remember nearly all of his visitors and doctors as participants in his dreams. Years later, even now, he remembered abut 20-30 different dreams better than if hed dreamed them just last night.

Another recurrent dream had him valiantly crawling over the guard rails on his bed, landing on his hands and knees and crawling until his muscles and feeling returned. He then would take the No. 1 subway train to the apartment he shared with this wife and sleep with her with all the windows open. Her mother would appear and all would set sail for the Virgin Islands. There his wifes entrepreneurial father was running an illegal clinic, but doing a booming business. They waited patiently for him, but he stalled and stalled. Then his wife, her sister and her mother stood up and threatened to call the police. He called their bluff. But they brought the cops in, but not before filing their bags with a huge supply of xanax and prozac and Percocet for Joe. Their screaming and hysteria shattered the dream, however, leaving him disgusted.

On another night, Joe stepped onto the semi-trailers cab and started to hoist himself in. The foreman said, No. Wait for the next one. Joe took two steps back as a different man took the reins of the 40-foot tractor-trailer and headed it south from Minneapolis to small-town Iowa. It carried a load of food for the Mormon bishops storehouse.

Joe stepped up again. Again the foreman stopped him. Joe was pissed and happy at the same time. He really was scared to drive that big rig down ice-covered, wind-blown two-lane highways to Iowa. Yet he felt ripped off that he couldnt.

Finally, on the 9^th or 10^th time, the foreman assented. And Joe took the wheel. The next thing he knew he was in an Iowan farmhouse with Mormons from his Minnesota ward helping unload the truck

The only thing Joe enjoyed when he came out of his coma was being able to release his piss at his will. It was the only thing he could control. The nurses got a bit tired of coming in and having him point with his eyes or his half-good left arm to his diaper for them to change it.

Joe half liked and half hated having his diaper changed and being hand washed each day. At one time he was embarrassed and yet, it was the only contact he had with people-so he savored it. He was being fed via a tube into his stomach and breathing via a tube into his neck. So when the nurses wanted to change him or his sheets, it involved the danger that the tubes would come loose.

Each day, Joe fought the desperation, but found himself losing. Actually he started from ground zeroI dont think I have the strength for this to Get me outta here! Help me!! in his silent mouthing. No one could hear. The nurses wanted to wrap him in bedding so hed have to face left or right the entire nightthey only worried about his anus sore getting infected. But, if he was confined by sheets to the right side all night (away from the door, which brought PEOPLE), he felt claustrophobic as he didnt know who was coming into his room and he could only see the dingy blinds, so he demanded to lay on his back. The pain from his butt and head was excruciating, but the drugs put him to sleep eventually. All the sores remained nearly untreated.

He couldnt talk. Anyone could have come in and cut his IV, pulled his tube out of his trach or stomach, poisoned him or just forgotten to give him medications

He began to watch the clock. Time began to warp. It seemed like 10 years since hed been playing with his son, yet the half hours passed like minutes. His world revolved around the nurses visits. They came, it seemed, twice a day, but he could hear their carts rattling in the hallway many more times. He coudnt see the door, so he lay there hoping and hoping the rattle would be for him.

Sometimes the nurses would come and say Ill be right back, a few minutes and his eyes would dart to the clock. Time would warp again. The minutes seemed like hours and they came back on average within 45 minutessometimes two hoursnever in a few minutes.

At night, hed fall asleep fitfully, perched on his back, directly on top of his butt sores, directly on top of the bed cushion fold and on the back of his head directly on top of a growing patch of dried blood. The pain shot and shot and shot through his body, but he refused to give up the control of having his eyes, being able to see everything in his room. Despite the pain, hed finally fall asleep Then at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m., the nurse came---not caring about his sleepand stuck needles into his stomach, just under the skin, took his blood pressure, and changed his diapers Most times wordlessly. He detested them. Let me sleep you assholes Hed never fall directly back to sleep.

He was awake for the 6 a.m. news, weather and sports, the 7 a.m., the 8 a.m. and on and on. With only two channels and nothing but glare-white walls to look at, his mood fell further. He hated the happy talk of the newscasters.

Sometimes his wife would come or Kenny from church. Or a group of Mormons or their missionaries. Joe would reach out with his left handthe only movement he had and shake their left hands. Thank you hed mouth and tried to smile. He did his best, although he sometimes wanted silence, a chance to absorb his condition. But that was worthless too as he didnt know his condition. No one had told him what had happened or what may happen. If hed move or talk again.

He demanded physical therapy, but got only two 15-minute sessions Were not equipped for physical therapy.

His body wasnt his own either. Everything either had no feeling or tingled. His legs on top were numb and partly tingly as the nurses washed him. He had to beg, wordlessly, pointing with his left hand to his mouth and teeth to get one nurse to understand he wanted his teeth brushed. It was a miracle that she understood. He also wanted the half-inch of crud scraped out of the roof of his mouth. The mechanized air must have contained special anti-germ chemicals. His mouth felt like the Sahara coated with space-shuttle caulk.

It also took a miracle for another nurse to understand that he wanted a shave. The hospital was mandated to give hand baths every day, but nothing else. They would have let his beard grow and his teeth fall out.

Before this full awakening, he could feel his hair dragging around his half bald head as they pulled him to one side and the other to change him.

It amazed him that he still was sane. A control freak to begin with, he now had NO control. He thought: I cant even kill myself. I dont have the right or ability to get myself out of this hell. There is no electric wire around this camp that I could run into to kill myself. The men at Auschwitz had more control than I have. What did I do to deserve this?

Joe coughed as the nurse scraped the far side of his trach with the suction tube. She asked, More? Joe reluctantly shook his head, No. He couldnt take the pain of the scraping any more, but knew the trach would be clogged again in less than 20 minutes.

The nurse looked bored, OK. Joe shook Yes. She took off the disposable suctioning tube and tossed it into a nearby trash bin.

Joe let his head drop back onto the pillow. It hit with a jolt. The back of his bald head was like tenderized meat. Here, honey, lets try this. She put a foam rubber circle, really an inner-tube-shape, under his head. The raw-meat area was bigger than the hole of the foam. So part of the raw meat always touched the cylinder. He groaned to himself: they can save my life by operating inside my lungs, they can send people to the moon, and they cant prevent bed sores?

It was true, his ARDS had nearly killed him, yet his one-month coma had put him into a nearly impossible position--a position of continued agony. Besides raw meat on his head, he had one-centimeter-deep sores on the outer sides of each ankle, a 1-centimeter-deep sore at the top of his butt crack that was nearly impossible to bandage and had to be rebandaged each time he pooped, and a hole in his stomach into which the feeding tube flowed. So, he could not lay on his stomach at all. IF he laid on his left side, the outer side of his left ankle deteriorated more during the night. They gave him Percocet for the pain. If he laid on the right side, the same with his right ankle. On his back, then the back of his head got worse.

They lobbied him strongly to let them rap him in bed clothes and pillows on either the right side or left, but he wouldnt let them. But he needed to be able to see the clock and to see the dooror hed go nuts. If he let them rap him on his right side, hed see nothing from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., just a dreary wall and a dirty curtain.

He stayed on his back most of the time even though his sacrum felt like nails were driving into this bones. After awhile he got used to the pain and could sleepwithout the claustrophobia.

He felt like he was hanging on to his sanity by his fingernails any way and didnt need claustrophobia on top of it. Plus, he heard the screams down the hallway: I want outta here! Get me the fuck outta here. I dont belong here! He didnt trust the patients or their relatives or the staff. Hed had dreams in which someonehe thought his motherat night would run her fingers through his hair

Finally, he let them roll him onto his left side so he could see the door and tell when someone an aide, nurseanyonewould come and break up the numbing silence or the blah-blah of his two-channel TV set.

Tsk, tsk they would say about this butt sore. You got to lay on your side, Mister?

Then, tsk, tsk oneand only onenurse would dress his ankle soreswithout consulting a doctor. When he finally got into the rehab hospital, the surgeon there gasped and said she could see his tendons moving. Slowly it came out, after weeks, that he may need ANOTHER surgerytaking skin from his belly to form a flap over his ankle soresa MAJOR operation within two months of his coma operation. He had lost 55 pounds. He said. Doctor. Do you really think I can stand another surgery?

He remembered being an all-fired-up Christian as the missionaries spoke of the Plan of Salvation and 80 percent of his visitors were from his wifes Mormon church. He also felt the presence of a parallel universe just behind his rooms wall and from which his life, his return to real life would come. He felt most religious and believing when, at 3 a.m., there was no one there to suction his saliva and mucous via his trach and he was suffocating in his own fluids. The hospitalthanks to George Bush and the Republicansdidnt have funds for people to come around every 20 minutes or his room to have a call button.

His brothers and sister had come to see him once. When he was bloated and near death and his wife had called them to help make life-and-death decisions about him. After he got to rehab though, only his sister called regularly. His brothers alienation continued even though theyd seen him as a bloated, beaten man whose liver and other organs had begun to fail. They were unforgiving because he had wanted to put their mother into a hospice and save the life of their dad, who, at age 80, had to care for her at home. Their bitterness had not receded one bit.

It was the beginning of his retreat from Christianity.

Finally, by mouthing the words Call and Button to one of three people who could read lips--Oh, he wants a call button! Thats what hes trying to say! and Joe nodded his head; he finally got one. But he couldnt hold it, because he couldnt grip things yet with his fingers, so it had to be wound carefully between his fingers, and the rail so as not to slide out onto the floor at 3 am.

It was at those points, at 3 am, when Joes throat was a bucket of mush and he couldnt breathe that he found God. His Christianity, drilled into him by his parents and the Catholic schools catechism classes took over.

Those factors also took over when his move from ICU with no window and only two TV channels to a rehab center in another town was delayed over Memorial Day weekend because of paperwork and people off eating cherry pies and guzzling pink lemonade until fully quenched. At those times of sheer mental exhaustion and depressionbored silly with no window and repeating commercials on TVthat Joe swore he could feel and half see a parallel world just beyond his rooms wall. He could feel it and felt eyes staring at himperhaps eyes of God, Jesus, his grandparents, his cousin, who had died of Lou Gehrigs Diseasebut he knew hed make it out of this paralysisat these times of pure, undiluted desperation.

Hed look out the right side of his eyes and swear he could see a gray-head and bearded old gentleman watching him carefully. When Joe would turn his head, the old gentleman would duck behind the respiration equipment or behind a screen for any would-be roommate of his.

Take me God. Im yours. Have mercy on me. Knowing God was there. He had to exist. You could taste him, nearly see him through the window. You loved your visitors now and wanted to be like themselfless and helping, as you saw God just around the corner, or in their faces. It was calming enough to let them stick a four-inch needle into his back to drain more fluid. Giving his wife the thumbs up sign as they led her away from the drastic procedure. Confident that the procedure would turn out OK.

The weekend was hell. The presence wouldnt leave him and he imagined the rehab hospital to be a big room of cubicles with each patient lying on the floormat shouting encouragement to each other.

The cries of the man across the hall came loud and clear: I want out! Let me out of her! I dont want to be in this damn place The rush of feet as nurses and aides came to the room across from Joes. His heart cringed. He felt the mans pain. Hed had the same reaction a month ago when he had first woken up.

During his delirium, he had known he was in a hospital, but thought it was as a small collection of campus-like auditoriums and classroom-style buildings much like his grad school at the University of Minnesota. He also thought the ocean, the Atlantic was right outside the lobby door. He felt his wife and other visitors would wait on the beach until given the OK to come see him.

When first in the ICU, he had sometimes panicked and tried to get a hold of a nurse or his wife buy screaming through his useless vocal cords: Help me! I need help! and always in 10-20 minutes someone would appear. Or hed manage to flop one of his paralyzed arms over to his glasses-case, which now somehow, had become the cell phone of the day He would clumsily push the side of the case and then his wife would come 10 minutes later. He figured he had been in the hospital so long that the old cell phones had been replaced by ones whose main component was the users skin, stretched over a glass case. Touching it would somehow send a signal to the satellites and it would reach the intended caller via genetic information within the skin.

He could feel the tugs on his arm as nurses tried to find veins in which to insert his feeding tube or from which to drawn blood. It was slightly painful despite the drugs he was on. His legs felt tingly and numb at the same time and the outsides of his ankles felt flat and numb, like there were two-inch square areas of tendon laying on sheets transmitting no signals to his brain.

He slipped back into an opioid haze and was now a reporter covering the 2004 primaries via a wheelchair and bed. The leading candidates were scheduled to take a series of tunnels under some New Hampshire hills and he was waiting to interview them at a concession stand. They came and he managed to flip a leg over the side of his bed and land on the floor. He followed the candidate Kerry to the elevated train and waited. Finally, he took the trains and returned to the hospital He was so proud when he told his wife and friend from church, I did it myself! They smiled approvingly.

As he woke up, he felt the numbness and tingling grow over much of his body. He could feel the bed sore on his sacrum by his anus. He was in danger of sepsisa whole-body infection from feces getting into the bed sore. The nurses and aides who walked wearily, shuffling around him, tried to convince him to let them roll him up in his bedding at night to one side, facing away from the doorbut that was his only escape hatchbut he refused and fell asleep despite biting pain from his sacrum. He couldnt stand being there at all, much less tied up facing away from his lifeline-the 1-2 hour patrols of nurses checking his pulse, shooting him up and changing his diaper.

But Joes voice started to come back that weekend. It sounded like it was the skin at the back of his throat vibrating, not his real voice; he wasnt sure if it was his real voice; no one had told him anything about his prognosis and no one told him this was his real voice coming back. Oh, come here! His voice is back yelled an oafish assistant. Most were oafish, white trash without an inkling of what he was going through. He doubted that it was his voice. He still hadnt been told anything about his condition. Only that the rehab hospital wouldnt take him because they couldnt suction the mucous from his trach every 20 minutes as required.

His other doctornot the Indian beauty--came to tell him that the rehab hospital wouldnt take him. They cant suction [the phlegm and saliva] out every 20 minutes like we do. So we're going to try a procedure tomorrow. It wont hurt. Well suck fluid out of your lung branches. If that doesnt work, well have to stick a needle into your back just within the lung lining and suck it out.

Joe hesitated. He wanted rehab and that was ALL. But the salt and pepper-haired doctor persisted and he agreed. The doctor winked at his assistant and said, in an aside he thought Joe couldnt hear, I knew I could convince him.

They drew two pints with the first procedure and one and a half quarts with the second. The need for suctioning diminished and the rehab hospital finally agreed to take him but not until after Memorial Day weekendpaperwork you know. So he gave himself to God for the 10^th time in two weeks and resolved not to break down. He watched the hands on the clock go slowly around while the one-channel on his TV set (he couldnt reach the TV to change to the one and only second channel; there was no remote control) ran through infomercial after infomercial through the long nights and long golf games he couldnt keep track of during the day. At night were lousy prime-time shows. He had hated primetime shows for 30 years.

But, in the ambulance ride ($400 worth) to the rehab hospital, he could see daylight and green trees going by for the first time in memory. He really didnt remember anything about his life pre-op, because he had veered into a laser-like focus on a primary objectivemoving and walking. Thats all he cared about. Still no diagnosis was given. Still no reason given for his being in the hospital paralyzed, but apparently it was at least partially curable since a rehab hospital finally had taken him.

When the time to go to the rehab hospital had finally come, his wife was there and they lifted him out on to a gurney. His feet felt numb and his ankles didnt feel at all--he was told bad sores had exposed his tendons there. His bedsores on his head and sacrum fired up like rockets.

Each time Joe wanted to turn over at the rehab hospital, he had to pull on the railing and walk his buttocks to the far side, so that when he flopped down to the other side, hed have rooom on that side for his arms, glasses (which he kept on the mattress with him), and the tubes that ran into this neck and stomach. He then would be pinned against that side for three hours until he had to pee. Hed have to reach over the railing for the plastic, half-gallon size bedpan and get his penis in it and pee. Then get it back without spilling onto the bed-side tray. If he happened to be pinned against the wrong side when he had to pee, he had to complete the entire scooching and rolling procedure to get near the milk-carton-thing.

The sheets were not tucked in and the nurses thought his head should be raised to avoid choking on phlegm, so that meant hed slide on the slippery mattress toward the end of the bed and have his size 10s pinned against the bottom railing or hanging over onto the cold, hard metal.

At first, hed call the nurses, who had to assemble a team of three or four, to slide his 160 pound body (formerly 220 pounds) to the head of the bed. Then they tired and insisted on his stretching his neck back, arching his bedsore body, and inch-worming his body to the head by himself. This pissed him off, but it was easier than waiting 45 minutes for a team to be assembled.

This was the peak of Joes religious fervor. For months after, he attended church regularly and prayed and read from Scriptures. Then real life seeped back in as his numbness and inability to walk wore off. The pressures of day-to-day life and the people who obsessed over whether they wanted cole slaw or potato salad with their KFC meal had him snapping at people for their stupidity: Youre going to die! You idiot! Who cares whether its cole slaw or potato salad! Dont you have something better to think about? hed say to himself. Worthless assholes or jerks, depending on the day.

Joes experience with ARDS had left him leery and weary of life. He shuffled along because his feet still hurt from oxygen deprivation. Tendons had been severed by bedsores a centimeter deep created his coma. And he no longer trusted his heart, although he could climb nine flights of stairs without too much trouble. The problem is that his pulse had been recorded at 170 or more beats per minute during the crisis. And doctors had placed him on heart medication something designed to slow his heart rate.

It had been a couple of years now since the crisis, but each year at that time, he relived it in part. Images flashed across his brain: the uncontrolled peeing into his diaper; the humiliation of having grown women change his diaper; the stark, shattering images of six or seven people working on him and his imagining one nurse sneaking into the melee to cut squares of skin from his forearms to sell for experiments; the pointless hollering and rasping through his trach tube: INEEDWATER. I.NEED.HELP! I NEED .REHAB; the image of his cell phone having been replaced by sheets of skin attuned to satellite signals.

Now two years later, his faith in God was wavering. How could an involved, benevolent god have had him contract pneumonia, black-out, and awaken a month later unable to move from the neck down and unable to talk? His faith had been shattered, his gait had slowed to the gait of an 80-year-old man, and his eyes were devoid of any joy in living.

When he had been at the peak of his belief in a gracious god, two young Mormon men, no older than 23, came to his rehab room to spell out Heavenly Fathers Plan of Salvation, as the Mormons called it. They made a timeline on a blanket, over his motionless legs. They told him that his mortal life was a flicker in his real lifelinethe prelife as a spirit--his parents conception providing a mortal body for that spirit and lowering the veil against memories of the pre-existence, the after lifeif he followed Mormon laws, his eternal life in the celestial kingdom. If he paid tithing and fulfilled temple covenants and was married in the temple, he and his wife could--at the highest celestial glory, populate their own planet and become, in effect, another Heavenly Father and Mother.

In his haze and in his gratitude at the visits LDS members had made to him (only 3-4 people from his office had visited), he consented to being baptized.

At the time, he was unhappy with the Catholic church, the perfunctory visits of his brothers and sister and of a priest.

But after returning to work, his so-called friendship with the 7-day-a-week visitor disintegrated. And his Mormon wife wanted to break up. He realized they had helped him only to gain a higher celestial glory.

More than seven months later, he lay next to his wife, his eyes filled with water for the third night in a row, sleepless at 1:30 a.m., hoping to fall back to sleep soon, so he wouldnt get pneumonia again and ARDS. And die. A beaten man at age 50.

He now would lay next to his wife and still feel the pull in his right breastit was either scar tissue from the lung tissue samples they took or the filter in his vena cava to catch any blood clots that still could form and kill him in seconds.

Addend:

And the beat goes on:

Justice Department Clears Bush Interrogation Lawyers of Misconduct

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Department lawyers showed "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Feb. 19, 2010 found.

The decision closes the book on one of the major lingering investigations into the counterterrorism policies of George W. Bush's administration. President Barack Obama campaigned on abolishing the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding and other tactics that he called torture, but he left open the question of whether anyone would be punished for authorizing such methods.

An initial review by the Justice Department's internal affairs unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department's top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed.

"This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda," Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released Friday.

Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos "flawed" and said that, at every opportunity, they gave interrogators as much leeway as possible under U.S. torture laws. But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct.

The Office of Professional Responsibility, led by another veteran career prosecutor, Mary Patrice Brown, disagreed.

"Situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the client wants to hear," her team wrote in a report that criticized the memos for a "lack of thoroughness, objectivity and candor."

The internal report also faulted then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and then-Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff for not scrutinizing the memos and recognizing their flaws, but the report did not cite them for misconduct.

Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bybee is a federal judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco. The decision spares them any immediate sanctions, though state bar associations could independently take up the matter.

The memos authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding, keep detainees naked, hold them in painful standing positions and keep them in the cold for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family were also used.

The memos have been embroiled in national security politics for years. Democrats say the Bush administration used shoddy lawyering to legitimize the use of torture. The memos laid out a broad interpretation of executive power, one the previous administration used to authorize warrantless wiretapping and secret prisons.

Republicans said the memos, authored by two well-respected attorneys, gave the CIA the authority it needed to keep America safe in the panic-filled months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Many have criticized the Obama administration for trying to politicize legal advice.

"We can only hope that the department's decision will establish once and for all that dedicated public officials may have honest disagreements on difficult matters of legal judgment without violating ethical standards," Bybee's lawyer, Maureen Mahoney, said Friday.

Yoo's lawyer, Miguel Estrada, was more pointed. During the lengthy investigation, Estrada accused internal investigators of trying to be "Junior Varsity CIA" that second-guessed intelligence decisions. Friday, he said the two lawyers never deserved to be investigated in the first place.

"The only thing that warrants an ethical investigation out of this entire sorry business is the number of malicious allegations against Professor Yoo and Judge Bybee that leaked out of the department during the last year," Estrada said.

Obama has said CIA interrogators who relied on the memos will not face charges for their behavior. A separate criminal inquiry is under way into whether a handful of CIA operatives crossed the line, leading to the death of detainees