You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's October 2025 Blog/Column
YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART
by Mykel Board
[Sorry I’m a bit late this month. I had… er… other obligations. You’ll read about them right here, I hope.]
You have to treat the injured person not like a human being with a wound, but like a human wound. – Abe Kobo
We
forget that health is a means, not an end – Thomas Szasz
The
hardening of the American heart is far more dangerous than the
softening of our borders. – Marianne Williamson
“Feather… Building… Brown.” [NOTE: I’m making up those three words. I have no idea what they really were.] And how are you feeling? Any pain since the operation? Twinges? Body parts? Can you describe how you feel now?
“I’ll never remember those words,” I
think. “No pain now but my brain isn’t working right.”
“Mdfabadf
ksafsartfa,” I say.
“What was that?
Can you remember the three words?”
“No.” I
answer, “Kiptoesink wastupa.”
I can say a few single
words: bed, door, nurse. Others can go perfectly through my brain…
thought waves… but I can’t spit them out verbally.
“Do
you know where you are?” comes the question.
“Hospital,” I
answer.
“What’s the name of the hospital?”
“I
don’t remember,” I answer. “Koospaf smitzerik.”
“I
see,” she says. “We’ll let you sleep now.”
“Yes, I’m in a hospital,” my brain tells me. “I came here from another hospital. I forgot the name of this one… The old one used to be called … be called… be called... Oh yes, St. Vincent’s… but it changed names. Why did they send me away… I… I… I…”
I drift off to semi-sleep. As I fall asleep, I have a vision of a psychedelic machine… a white thing… looking a little like a parking meter… with swirling black lines on a gray screen. Have I seen that some place before? In a museum? In college during an acid trip? POW! Awake again.
“I can’t remember the words,” I tell the nurse. “ but I remember telling you I wouldn’t remember them.”
Okay, let’s back up…. Go to the recent past… a couple weeks ago… mainly a blur. I remember the pain… in my chest. I use my finger to trace the ache. Hey isn’t that exactly where my heart is? Didn’t I just use the sharp fingernail on my right hand to trace on my chest an exact outline of my heart?
Hmmm, maybe I should see a doctor.
Flash to the doctor’s office: In Chinatown… Yellow pages cardiologist… closest one. She’s on the insurance plan. Make that appointment.
Meanwhile the pain goes away… and comes back 2 days later. My visit with the doctor… of course… prescription for testing… more testing… in Chinatown. Pain again… harder longer… I can’t wait for the tests I’ll go to Saint Vincent’s. It was closed for a while, but I hear it’s open again with a different name… a drag name: Northwell. I don’t know. Maybe it changed genders Emergency room. Late… near 10 o’clock.
NOTE: As I type
these words I feel a mild chest sting. Left side to the upper right
of the heart… I know where that is now. Very light pain… but…
but…
Back to St. Vincent’s, a temperature test. A
blood test for cholesterol… The doctor comes in to tell me the
results. I can’t remember what he says, but I do remember him
saying… “we have to test again in four hours to confirm the first
results.”
It’s now 11 o’clock. I’m not sticking around until 3AM to confirm a test. A fuckin’ heart attack will confirm the test. When the doctor leaves, I wait a few minutes and check myself out the front door.
I don’t know if they’ve got my name… let alone my insurance company. How much is my 3-hour stay gonna cost me? Does it count if they can’t double check.. give me my 3AM confirmation? Fuck ‘em… the pain isn’t bad anyway. I can walk out the front door and no one will notice.. It’s a 20-minute walk home. 20 minutes well spent, I’d say.
I’m out. On the street... no check out... no nothing. I wonder what they’ll think when someone comes up to the bed at 3AM to administer the confirmation. I chuckle to myself thinking about the look on the nurses’ face when she sees the empty bed.
I get to 6th Ave. No pain… maybe a little tension… a little pressure… Aaaaah, home!
I peel off my clothes and, fully naked, lie down on my bed and fall asleep. Yes, a naked glorious sleep. No beeps. No buzzes… no coughing neighbor, just sleep. I stay in bed most of the next day… fading in and out of consciousness… like a boxer getting hit in the head… waking up… throwing a punch… getting hit again.
About 5 the next morning, I wake up with a chest pain… but not a chest exactly… just at the bottom of the rib cage… I think that’s where the diaphragm is. You know, that flat muscle that pumps the air in and out of the lungs. It’s a steady pain on the right and on the left… I fall asleep again.
It’s later… I
don’t know how much later. The pain has moved… up… up into my
chest. A small area right in the center. Easily defined… Using my
thumbnail, I trace the edges of the pain. Exactly tracing an outline
of my heart. Dit.. dit… dit… a heart-shaped pain right where my
heart is. Pressure... then stabbing pain… Exactly there… like an
anatomy lesson in medical school... Exactly….
I force
myself to stand up. Slip on yesterday’s clothes… take my wallet…
leave the apartment… Do I lock the door? I can’t remember.
Elevator down to the street. It’s dark outside… I start walking…
I can’t do this. I hail a cab…
“Get me to the hospital,” I tell the driver, “St. Vincent’s on 7th Ave.”
I hope he doesn’t panic. I hope I don’t panic. We make it. I throw all the bills in my wallet at the driver… $10? $5? $50? Who knows? He’s too panicked to complain… Just wants me out of the cab. Could you imagine the paperwork if your fare kicks the bucket while you’re driving?
I check into St. Vincents again. The guy at the desk doesn’t recognize me from two days before. Maybe it’s a different guy… I don’t remember showing him ID or an insurance card. I don’t remember them undressing me or what they did to get me in bed. But there I am again… in a hospital gown… naked underneath.
Beeps and buzzes… then a lift… on a stretcher like a TV news victim. An ambulance ride… No siren just the ride uptown. An ambulance without a siren. Where’s the fun? It’s like a jerk off without an orgasm… Why bother?
I’m now at Lenox Hill hospital. They explain that the former St. Vincent’s doesn’t have overnight stays… so I was transferred here. “Here, have something to eat.”
Nothing tastes good. Fruit is the best among the offerings… I guess it’s the high-fructose fructose. Even the coffee is awful. The only taste is bitter… bitter brown water... It gives me gas. Here I lay… tooting away… unable to crawl out of bed and would it make a difference. Putttt… putttt … puttt… not like the beer fart which precedes a beer shit. (“Poetry is like a good beer shit.” Charles Bukowski).
FLASH AHEAD: I give up. I’ve got to force out some poetry. I’ve been here a day now… Not taken a single step in that time. I can do it. I’m sure I can stumble from here to the bathroom. I only need to pass the bed of my roommate, enter the room and close the door. First, I swing my legs over the side. More difficult than it sounds…. First the right… uh… uh… uhhhh... then the left… hospital gown rising up as I move. No one there to see junior and his jowls… revealing himself under my hospital gown. What must it be like for people who see this stuff day in and day out? I’ve often wondered how come all gynecologists aren’t gay? Doesn’t over exposure take away the joy?
Ah… ah… ahh… I lower myself from the bed to the floor. My naked feet touch down. Using my arms I slowly lower my weight to those toes.. the soles… the heels… Full weight… My body sways slightly and I grab the bed for balance.
Right foot…
left foot… right foot… Past the cloth curtain room separator.
Past the groaning black guy… around my age… gray beard…
hospital robe slit visible up the side like a stripper… He squints
his eyes open to look at me and then closes them again. I hope he
hasn’t died.
Right… left… right… left… OW!! I
stepped on something. Tiny and hard. I walk with the pain following
me on the bottom of my foot. When I reach the bathroom, I hold the
knob with my left hand and lift my right foot… grabbing it with my
right hand… pulling up. There... embedded in the sole… near the
big toe… is a tiny black speck. I use the nail of my right index
finger to scrape it out… It looks like a mouse turd.
I flick it under my roommate’s bed… enter the bathroom… lift up my robe and sit down. Pffffftttt! (Wasn’t that a Rudolf’s Rache song?) I push. A pain shoots through my head. Fuck! I’ve given myself a stroke in addition to my heart attack. The pain disappears with the next pffffftttt! Then I feel it. You know the feeling… starting about navel height you can feel the clump… clumps… move through the lower intestine… millimeter by millimeter… right to left to right again… then down… gloriously down… PLOP! PLOP! Oh God yes!! Yes!! POETRY!
I tilt my body to the right to look at my accomplishment. Not great… but better than the mouse turd I picked out of the bottom of my foot.
FLASH TO MY RELEASE… I’ve found out they put a stent into my heart. It’s a kind of plastic min-tube that keeps a closed artery open. The hospital has made an appointment with new my cardiologist. A six-foot way plus guy. He’s barely more that third my age with a fashionable (as opposed to Chabadnik) beard, and a slim attractive body. When he speaks, I hear an accent, but I can’t identify it. His name is Dr. Farhan… pronounced “far hahn.”
“I have a few
questions I’d like to ask you,” I tell him.
“Ask
away” says the Doc.
“First,” I tell him. “It’s almost Yom Kippur. Can I or should I fast for the Jewish holiday?”
“It won’t
hurt you,” he says. “But I don’t know how much good it’ll do
you.”
“Are you Jewish?” I ask. “Where are you
from?”
“I’m from Austria,” comes the answer, “but
I’m Muslim.”
“Ah,” I tell him. “I’ve got a friend from Bahrain who complains that he gains weight every Ramadan. He tells me that as soon as the sun sets, the eating starts and doesn’t stop until sunrise the next day.”
Doc shakes his head. “My parents were Muslim so I keep the identity nominally. I don’t like the way my fellow Muslims keep the holiday. You’re supposed to feel the starvation… realize the poverty in the fast… the pain of the poor. But we just focus on watching the sunset so we can stuff our faces.”
“Same with a lot of Jews,” I tell him “Yom Kippur is… at least in part... to feel the pain of hunger so we can understand the poor. But we can’t wait to break that fast. Jews and Muslims are like fighting cousins. It’s so sad.”
“I’m
non-practicing,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. “Next
question: When I was in the hospital something happened to my memory.
First I couldn’t even remember how to speak. Then it got a little
better, but I couldn’t remember the names of my family members…
then cities or places I’ve been. I failed that test… you know
when they give you three words to remember? I couldn’t remember
even one of them.”
“Okay,” says Dr. Farhan. “I’ll give you three words. Let’s see if you can remember them: Jew, Muslim, Christian.” [NOTE: Those were the actual words he gave me. I remember them now… weeks later.]
I laugh.
I ask about diet…
exercise… “Cardiac Rehabilitation”… I got a prescription for
it from the hospital, but the bureaucracy in filling that
prescription has prevented me from doing it. I still don’t know how
much or what kind of exercises I should be doing.
“What
about eating and drinking?” I ask.
I expect he’ll tell me to quit drinking alcohol and subsist on a non-hotdogs and non-chicken wings diet washed down with O’douls non-beer.
“You don’t need to quit the good stuff,” he says. “Just try to cut down. How much do you drink now?”
“I just have a beer with dinner,” I lie. [NOTE: Just after I return home, I see in my spam box one of my weekly newsletters with a sub-title WHY PEOPLE LIE TO THEIR DOCTOR. I don’t read it.]
[NOTE: As I write this, I have actually cut down the drinking to about 8 beers a week. And I haven’t had fried wings, a hot dog, or a Jamaican patty since the operation.]
Dr. Fahrhan
writes me a prescription. It’s for a statin replacement… “you
shoot it into your belly.” He tells me.
“Like
Ozempic,” I say. “I’ve seen the ads for that one.”
He holds up
his index finger. “Wait a minute!” He says, “I have a practice
kit.”
He leaves the office and returns with a box. He
opens the box and takes out a tube similar to the Ozempic one. He
passes me the tube I lift up my t-shirt and press it against my
belly.
“No… no…” says the doctor. “You have to remove the
little red cap in front. Then look for some liquid to fill the tiny
window. Then you should pinch your belly and get a nice chunk of
fatty tissue between your thumb and forefinger.”
I grab
a hunk of flesh and press it between my fingers. “Like this?” I
ask.
“Yeah, but use your left hand,” he says. “You
need your right hand to do the injection.”
I switch
hands.
He nods.
“Now press the tip against
the flesh and push the black button in the back. You’ll see the
liquid disappears as it goes into your flesh.”
I do. It
does.
I feel nothing as the chemical goes into my body.
It doesn’t.
“When you take the actual drug,” he
says, “you’ll feel a sting. This is just a practice shot. Nothing
goes into your skin.”
“You got it!”
He continues. “I’ll send a prescription for the Repatha over to
your pharmacy.”
He looks at some papers. “CVS on
Mulberry Street, right?”
I nod.
ASIDE: PET
PEEVE. Doctors used to write prescriptions. SCRIPT means
write. PRE- means before. Get it? It’s what the
doctor WRITES BEFORE you get your drugs. You should take a written
piece of paper into a pharmacy and get a price for the drugs listed
on it. If you didn’t like the price, you brought it to another
pharmacy. In 2025 YOU HAVE NO CHOICE! In order to prevent fake
prescriptions… say a prescription for heroin or cocaine… There
has to be direct contact between the doctor’s office and the
drugstore. No shopping around for the best price. You pay what they
ask or you don’t get it.
After the doctor, I go home... quickly fall asleep, wake up and go to the drugstore. One of the things I like about it is that it’s open 24 hours… another one is that the people who work there are nice.
The next day, I go to pick up the drug. That CVS is my usual go-to drug store even though they keep half their goods locked behind glass. Maybe they all do these days.
I’m there
around 11 in the morning. I walk to the prescription section in the
back, punch in my name and birthdate [ASIDE: I guess we’ve all seen
and those older have noticed, that birthdays have replaced Social
Security numbers as proof of ID. Hey Gen Z… do you even KNOW your
social security number?]
The druggist greets me... checks
the numbers on the screen… types in some words and then POW! “Yes
Mr. Board, that’ll be four hundred and sixty-seven dollars.”
See you in
hell
Mykel Board
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→ Role Reversal Dept pt. 1: I dislike 90% of what Donny The Trump does and the same percentage (or higher) of who he appoints to office. But my friends don’t think about it. They just hate 100% on principle. It used to be that liberals/lefties hate big corporations and love DIY or “mutual aid.” But when former Democrat RFK Jr. says “mental illness” isn’t like cancer or pneumonia and needs a different type of treatment… oooooh cooties! Look, I’ve got a lot of friends who live on the street. They do not live there because they have mental problems. They have mental problems because they live on the street! The cure for homelessness is not a pill from a psychiatrist’s hand. The cure for homelessness is A HOME… not some stupid psycho drug.
→ Role Reversal Dept pt 2: Historical note: The US did not defend itself from a Korean invasion. The US did not set up a military shield to prevent an attack by the Vietnamese. When some Saudi pilots flew some planes into the World Trade Center how did the US DEFEND itself… by invading IRAQ? The US has, in the last 100+ years NEVER defended itself. It has only attacked. Those of us who protested many of those attacks did not protest a DEFENSE. We were not “anti-defense” we were ANTI-WAR. So when Donny changed the name of the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT to the WAR DEPARTMENT… he was correcting a mistake! He was becoming more truthful. It was absolutely the right move. Though, of course, taking money away from healthcare and giving it to the WAR Department. THAT was a mistake.
AFRICAN LINKS:
Albert
aka Alberto Melody is the reason I went to Kenya. We met on facebook
a couple years ago. He has a blog you should take a look at:
Albertomelody.blogspot.com.
Tell him Mykel sent ya. Oh
yeah… He’s looking for friends his
own age.
So if you’re a 20-something and interested in Africa… or just
meeting new people. Contact him at: albertletowon42@gmail.com
NON-AFRICANS
Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.
I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.
Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year.
Also
on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT
SHOPPERS.
Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the
US
Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD
in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video
around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the
lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it
here.
And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!
Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.
Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.
Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.
You
already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel
Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.)
Their online version is here.
The
Clean Boys
from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we
recorded as The
Bend-over Boys.
Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a
10-incher!
Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart. I’m glad they didn’t call it “anti-defense.”
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. mykelboard@gmail.com
