Eleven Days in Bureaucratic Purgatory: A Hero’s Tale of Oysters, Honey, and Medical Chaos

It was November 25th, the Day of the rat bastard charlie eviction—a date that should be printed on parade banners and warning labels. The day when the Grand Poobah decided to boot his sorry rat bastard carcass out the door like a rabid raccoon overstaying its welcome in the pantry of fate.

There was no grace, no ceremony—just OUT, with the same bureaucratic enthusiasm one uses to swat flies or discipline a malfunctioning toaster. Like the baby and the bath water, the rat bastard charlie and the eye, OUT.

And then, like the slow grind of some monstrous administrative glacier, we arrive at December 6th. Eleven full days. Eleven long, simmering, Kafkaesque days in the limbo of government healthcare purgatory. On this blessed morning, the VA finally sends me a notice—a relic delivered by mail, presumably tied to the leg of a half-blind pigeon—announcing they had referred my treatment to Austin Retinal. The letter suggested, in the same fluffy tone one might use to tell a child not to poke a hornet’s nest, that I wait 2–3 days for Austin Retinal to “reach out.” Reach out. Yes. Because medical urgency is best handled with the same speed and initiative as a stoned roommate deciding whether or not to do the dishes. Wouldn’t want to rush the system. Wouldn’t want to show signs of efficiency.

Glad my condition isn’t serious. If it were, I assume the next letter would read, “Oops. Our bad. Hope reincarnation works out for you.”

But I’ve crawled, staggered, and cursed my way back to something resembling 100% functionality—though if we’re being honest, that number is more symbolic than factual. A kind of bureaucratic “100%,” meaning “we’re calling it good enough so we can file the paperwork.” Still, I managed to make it to Nate’s in Dallas for half-priced oysters on Thursday, stumbling like a drunk prophet toward the promise of molluscan salvation.

And oh yes—I overindulged. Two dozen of the ocean’s finest bivalves, each one a slippery affirmation that life, despite its many crimes against me, still occasionally hands out pleasures. A couple beers, too. Enough amber lubricant to convince my beleaguered brain that life is good, or at least acceptably tolerable in a doomed, apocalyptic, laughing-so-you-don’t-scream sort of way.

Locally, my depth perception has devolved into a deranged carnival sideshow. Trying to run the leaf blowers or yank the wait-a-minute vines feels like a low-budget documentary about a man locked in mortal combat with his own visual cortex. I am a pioneer of slapstick tragedy, performing acts of precision in a world that wobbles like a carnival funhouse. Losing half my field of vision turns everyday tasks into treacherous pilgrimages. This morning I attempted the simple act—the profoundly human act—of squeezing honey into my coffee mug. Instead, the honey, that golden traitor, launched itself all over the cup handle as though fleeing in terror from the mug.

So close, so far away, so cosmically rigged against me.

At this point, every grab, every reach, every motor skill engagement requires at least two full attempts, sometimes more, depending on the malevolent whims of the universe. Some mornings I’m convinced there’s a team of gremlins inside my optic nerve rewiring things just to enjoy the spectacle.

Maybe things will improve once they unseal the eyelid. Maybe the great cosmic puppeteer will grant me depth perception again. But for now, the eyelid remains literally sewn shut, a detail that sounds like a metaphor but is horrifyingly real. Being sewn shut is distracting as hell. Distracting in the same way being tied to a meteor is distracting.

The follow-up eye doc appointment is on the 11th, when some overworked clinician will peer into my haunted ocular alley and declare: “Well, it’s healing, or mutating—hard to say. Could be worse.” Until then, I wander half-blind through the American healthcare maze—honey-stained, oyster-heavy, embalmed in bureaucracy, clinging to the blind faith that maybe, just maybe, the VA will send another letter before the sun burns out.

The eye doc sees me on the 11th. Maybe they’ll free the eyelid. Or maybe they’ll consult a manual written in hieroglyphs and shrug. Hard to tell with these folks. The VA works in mysterious ways—mostly slowly.

And just when I thought the comedy routine was complete…

The VA decides to pull a final trick from its bureaucratic sleeve:

The urology referral has reached Baylor Scott & White.

Not in 60 days.

Not in 30 days.

Not in the biblical timeline used for optical referrals.

No—this one made the journey in under 12 days. A record. A blistering sprint by VA standards. An administrative lightning bolt. Of course, they don’t schedule appointments on Sundays—because even the medical-industrial complex needs its Sabbath—so I get to call them in less than 24 hours, bright and early, like a contestant on some deranged healthcare game show.

One referral takes two months, the other arrives before the ink is dry on the diagnosis. No rhyme, no reason. No logic, no mercy. Just the VA, rolling dice in a dim, smoky room, deciding which part of me they’ll attend to based on the whims of a drunken bureaucratic deity. Welcome to the American healthcare circus.

I am merely one of its funnier clowns.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler