The Gambler

Today, I told my boss that when this contract year was over, I would not be returning to my job.

I have been at Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy for over six years. I have loved damn near every moment — powerfully. I’ve loved the camaraderie, the casualness, and most of all the students I met along the way.

Hundreds. Hundreds.They think I don’t remember them all. I do.

Those memories, those relationships, those friendships will be in my heart to the bitter end.

I needed these exact years at this specific school in this very precise place.
I would trade them for nothing.
Nothing.

That said, the universe snapped its fingers hard in my face this morning. If my wife and I remain in Northern Arizona, Northern Arizona Healthcare is going to shorten my already fairly truncated life.

I have had bad experiences with NAH since November of 2019 when they botched/lost/forgot my diagnosis of recurrent breast cancer.
They gave me my cancer results over the patient portal
like I learned I had recurrent cancer
over email. You know, it’s the little things. Like
telling someone to their distraught face
they have cancer.

I am not using this platform to bash Northern Arizona Healthcare, but it is, as are so many healthcare systems in America (and the American Healthcare System itself), miserably broken. Great staff, great nurses, a few truly outstanding doctors, but at the top, running the circus? People who care little about medicine or patients or nurses and doctors and care a whole LOT about getting super rich off of the basic human need
to survive.

I am not talking about doctors. I am not talking about Human Resources or nurses or the sweet, baby-faced phlebotomists: I’m talking about the CEOs, the COOs, the CFOs, all that shit.

[Out of curiosity, I googled the CEO of the health system we are fleeing. She’s a fine person, I am sure of it, but I just want to point out that she has spent her career in
“Healthcare admin”
She has a nursing degree. And a law degree.
She has spent most of her professional life in “administration”
that happens to be in healthcare (because that shit is crazy profitable, yo)
but is healthcare her passion? Her lifeblood? An extension of her life’s meaning?
No. But I’m sure it has been a wonderful
extension to her pocket book.]

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to make a decent wage for your life’s work, but if you are in fields that deal directly with the well being of humans (education, healthcare) that field better be a real fucking essential part of your being. You need to be in that shit because you love people and because you want the best for them,
not because you’re really good at balancing budgets
or marketing — — though those two things may be among your skill set
they ought not be your primary passion if you’re running schools
or hospitals.

Healthcare and education are not — or should not be — “jobs.”
Also, if you’re in education for a “job,” you are a mess. Education pays shite. (That should change, but that’s for another post.)

If the “work” of healthcare or education does not feed your soul, you have no business in it. That’s what tech startups and food service are for — you. You who are not FED body and soul by the “work.” There’s lots of work out there you can half ass and nobody would be any the wiser. But guess what? Education and healthcare aren’t among those types of “work.”

So we’re leaving Flagstaff. Soon. Like hopefully in no more than 2 months. We’re moving to Tucson, my wife’s hometown, and a proper city where I can access reliable healthcare that makes me feel better, that makes me better, instead of stressing me out and confusing me and messing up my labs.

I will literally die if we remain in Flagstaff.

And ain’t that America? Having to choose between work you love, a community you love and your actual, material life on the planet?

Today I went completely sane.

Today I remembered that I owe it to those who love me
to stick around a minute, and to be happy, and to be not-so-stressed-out by things
I shouldn’t HAVE to deal with: like a scheduler giving me the wrong time for my PET scan — a long, tedious, scary, consequential test.
Like teaching your classes and thinking about how you have to have a PET scan afterward only to finish classes to a voicemail
telling you they cancelled your scan because YOU didn’t show up at the WRONG TIME THEY PROVIDED.

That sort of stress alone is a killer. No one deserves it. Not now, especially.

I’ve endured moments like this with NAH since I first felt a bump on my back in November of last year. A whole year. Time is kind of of the essence with certain diseases — like, oh I don’t know, CANCER.

However, I will get to say a proper goodbye to this job I loved and needed.
This year has been so full of incomplete goodbyes, that I am thankful
to have from now until May/June — whatever those months look like — to say goodbye.

My kids will still get the best of me until the last bell rings
or the last Zoom call ends.
Because I love them, and I love this “work” which seldom
feels like work and which gives me such meaning and purpose.

I need to save my own life now.

Someday, I hope America gets its healthcare shit together so no person ever
has to decide to leave
what they love most
because what they love most
is competing with their actual human existence.

I hope, America, that you can get your shit together on the healthcare front. I hope you can figure out a way to stop people from having to make these decisions —

about health, about education. This will require heavy lifting. I have no idea
if you’re up for that, America. But I do know I am filled with such hope for
my life today and by extension your life today.

The PET scan is now tomorrow. Provided they gave me the correct time
this time
and as ever, I don’t know what it is going to find. Cancer in my liver?
Cancer in my lungs?
Cancer in my shin?

[Once, on a family road trip, we were listening to Bob Marley and my mom asked us kids if Bob Marley was still alive and I said “no” real surly because I was a pissy teenager. And then she asked what happened to him and I, erroneously, but contemptuously, replied, “Heroin.” And she couldn’t hear me over “Buffalo Soldier” so she said, “Arrows?” Which really fucking irritated me in the way teens get irritated with adults when they ask questions about things we feel like they should know because like yeah, mom, seriously, who the fuck dies of arrows anymore. Almost no one. Certainly not Bob Marley.
My point is I was wrong: Bob Marley died of melanoma that started on his big toe. I wish he died of arrows. Cancer sucks.]

But I know
I am happy because
change is coming.
Deep, seismic change
and change, if I’m being perfectly honest,
has sometimes scared me, sometimes grieved me, but
it has never in and of itself really hurt me all that bad.

I have been hurt by betrayal, and shock, and by
loss, and by the thoughts I allow my own mind to entertain
but never by change itself.

My god, America. You and your fucked up systems have wounded me
like to the core. That said,
I am glad for your Tucsons. I am happy tonight
because very soon — just a few little months, if that — I will be living in a city
where I can go to a proper Zen Center or see the movies that never manage to
make it to the mountain and whenever I like
eat Ethiopian food again

Drinking in one last song before bed: “The Gambler” (RIP Kenny — he died
right?) I have nothing but nostalgic fondness for the music
of Kenny Rogers. No hate for Kenny Rogers in my heart whatsoever.

Plus, “The Gambler” is one of the greatest American songs
of the past 100 years in the singer/storyteller country/folk
genre. Fight me.

You got to know when to hold ‘em/
know when to fold ‘em/
know when to walk away/
know when to run.

Thank you for the wisdom, Kenny.
Maybe it was you in my ear today,
while I waited for my blood draw,
who snuck up from the great beyond
and screamed in my ear, “Gruber,
you gotta get out of northern Arizona with a quickness
or this particular, specific healthcare system
is going to kill you.”
Not because it’s anything personal, mind you.
NAH isn’t out to get me, it’s just that the people running the show
are blinded by small mindedness, money, and fear of losing
relevance or authority. And also they’re broken, so
they have precious little charity or self to give. This makes
them especially dangerous, like virtually all American murderers
from Richard Ramirez
to Kyle Rittenhouse.