I find strengths in so many things. A great wife and good friends are critical to me surviving this storm. I also find strength is places I never thought I would such as an online game.

All of us hurt in our own way and we think we are so very alone, but there are so many others that may not completely identify with our current problem, but can relate to the shattered pieces of our lives. When you put the mosaic of acquaintances and friends together you find that as a whole, the world understands you so much more than you might realize.

I feel like I am at the end of the line. There is nothing more I can do or want to do about my situation. I wanted nothing more to go skiing this year, as I have so many years in the past. When I finally started to feel better, when it looked like I could my leg started to twitch. Oh Shit here we go again.

I cannot count the hours I have spent waiting for a doctor to show up, driving to appointments, and the gross feeling that I am a name on a file that the doctor only thinks of two minutes before he sees me.

I want to be active, to run around and play, but I cannot. I hope one day I will. There are times when I feel nothing but pitty for myself, but most of the time I try to find some good in the hell that is thrown my way. I pay attention, observe, and learn. One day I hope to help the missing pieces of their own mosaic.

I don’t know when or if this storm will ever end. What I do know is with each drop of rain, every bolt of lightning, and all the damage that is done isn’t lost on a forgetful mind. I am paying attention, I am learning, and one day I will make this right for someone else.

Storm or no storm, whatever is thrown at me, as long as the arrow on my leg points up is a day I am still standing, and as long as I am still standing, as much as I may want to surrender, their will be fight in me. Because there is no way in hell I am going quietly, to be processed, and lost.

I will fight for a voice, my voice, the voice in my head, and it will take stage and be heard. Not for me, but for all those around me. Something is wrong and it will be fixed or I will die trying.

This world is now, officially on notice.

Here is the short version of the last 13 years of my life. Remember, I am 35.

When I was 22 I had pain in my right testical. A lot pain. I was going to school at Chico State. Rewind a year prior I was in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona State. had something similar happen. A very *bad* It was diagnosed as epididimitis. Infection in the part of the testicil that produces your sperm or semen.

The condensed version of that story is that it made me very uncomfortable to see doctors, especially when my nuts were involved.

A year later, Chico California I started to develop the pain again. The lump was there too. Shit, not again. I went to see the nurse practitioner there, and he was a very nice guy. Though I knew it wasn’t gonera, the symptoms were there and I was given a lot of antibiotics and pain killers.

Next week pain is getting worse. Nurse Practioner gives me more antibiotics (shot) more pain killers. I told him it couldn’t be Gonera, but he told me there are other ways to get an infetion there. Back to the Epitidimitis.

Week 2 pain a lot worse. Terrible. I can’t sleep, I feel like I had been kicked in the nut and the pain never went away. Back to the clinic. Another shot of antibiotic and more pain killers and a long weekend.

Entering into the next week. Pain unbelivable. I see the doctor, he refers me to a Urologist. Shit, I was just recovering from the last prick. I had no choice.

Wednsday, pain really really bad, Uroloogist in under 5 minutes makes the diagnosis. Testicular Cancer. Now I was apparently lucky. The tumor was hemerging on the nerve center causing pain, normally TC doesn’t.

Friday Testicil removed. Due to circumstances I elected for a surgery to dig out any other tumors. One was found. Small tumor, but warrented 2 rounds of Chemo.

The fucked up thing is, TC spreads quickly. If I was properly diagnosed I would have been spared the full RPLND, in which I was litterally gutted, intestines placed outside, dug in, and removed some lymphnodes. The cancer had spread. Most likely if I would have been diagnosed correctly at the beging. The lump being slightly away from the epiditimis, thus being very obvious to someone that took a 2 hour course in diagnosing it. Very Simple.

Testicular Cancer is the most common cancer for young men between 15-35 years old. (laugh or not, but if you are in range, check your balls daily, feel a lump, go to the doctor, this is as important as Women doing breast exams)

In a college setting you would think this was something the medical people would know. They didn’t. The schools website had in depth education on breast cancer, but a horribel, hard to find on TC.

Ok, that was a little longer than expected, but the point is coming.

I had my mother’s medical insurance, the best I have ever had. The clinic at the school was free, though could have used a simple course to figure out my problem. But it still could have been more than enough to figure out my problem sooner.

The problem was not in the health care, but in the lack of knowledge of the doctors. It was poor planning that could have been corrected. And should be now. If not I need to have another chat with them.

Fast forward 10 years later, the chemo weakend my disks, and being sesptiple to disk degeneration already, my back show signs of a 5mm buldge. This has created off and on back problems. In 2008 I started to have this pain in my femeral nerve. The first 3 months of 2008 I had Kaiser.

At first it was great. I got right into see a Urologist, Cancer ruled out. I was then refered to pain management. Where through a series of blunders and misteps, the doctors once again did a poor job at figuring out what the pain was.

I have many surgical clips left in me. The doctors assured and even mocked my wife for claiming that was the source of the problem. After painful nerve blocks, having to go on disablity for a couple months, nearly loosing my job, I left Kaiser for my insurance.

I was lucky to get Roy Disney Jr.s old doctor. A doctor to many executives at Disney, and a kick ass doctor. He through me in the hospital for 10 days to figure out what was wrong with me.

They found a lot, but could not figure out what the pain was from. That is what my doctor wanted to be fixed.

5 doctors, a Urologist, Pain Anastisologis, Muscular Anistisiolgist, my doctor, a Neurologist all thought that sending a scope down in me to figure out what was there causing me the problems.

I was released from the hospital and went in search of a doctor that would do the surgery. UCLA rejected me since I no longer had cancer. USC Urologist threw his hands up and said he didn’t know, saw another pain specialist. Then saw 2 more Urologist that didn’t want to do the surgery. Then a general surgeon. He didn’t want to do it either, wanted to school all the other doctors for not seeing it was simply scare tissue.

2 Doctors said he was wrong, that would be on the other side, not the good side. It was effecting my last nut which just pissed me off.

Finally my doctor tossed me back into the hospital. The general surgeon’s assistant (hottie) agreed surgery would be best.

1 week to get an appointment (shit load of pain) 2 weeks for the surgery. F that, my doctor told me to go into the ER Sunday night. I was in the hospital until Tuesday.

This is now 1 year and 20 days since the problem started. They had found pressed firmly against my genital femerol nerve a surgical clip. Score a billion for Jen (wife) who said it was that all along.

It took me 9 months to recover. 6 weeks ago my back took a turn for the worse. No pain, but some bad symptoms. MRI done. But there is an added problem. My neck, which I just had an MRI done, and made the mistake of looking at the pictures. Not too thrilled and curious to how bad the doctor thinks it is. To me, it hurts like a bitch. It has been a problem since I was 11 years old. Bad neck spams through the years.

So I am not looking forward to another round of this shit.

Now I have good insurance. My insurance is very similar if not the same as the executives at Disney. Kaiser, though a sloppy machine of poorly executed processes, all were capable of finding this a lot sooner. What got me was the process, the procedures, some of these doctors were just robots going from a handbook.

The doctors were unable to work as a team to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. And I paid the price. From the cancer in Chico to the finding of the surgical clip.

Now my oncologist, when I was with him as a team, he helped people from all angels. He made more than enough money so everyone didn’t need to pay the same. It is amazing on how much the doctors want to work with what they have. But when you too much away from the doctors and put price tags on things enters in the buracracy and decision makers then you have a real problem.

It isn’t that the US has bad health care, it is that the good parts of it are so hard and made almost impossible to access. There is a fundemental problem that goes beyond the bill.

I have spent a lot of time in the Emrgency Room, Clinics, doctors offices, to see what is broken here it so over looked, but so easy to fix it makes me ill to think about it.

Where the true concern with reform is the fact that if I don’t work for a company like Disney I am boned. I am almost uninsurable. I can’t be an independent contractor, only Disney could get away with finding someone to insure me. And the insurances are the ones that put me in this position to start with. Well to some degree, cancer played a role too. I don’t like cancer, especailly cancer that goes for the balls., but that is just me. All cancers suck, lost too much to it, but after having it, at least I can make cancer jokes about it. And I have gotten out of a few thousand dollars worth of fines, and literally played the cancer card to get a friend out of a mistermeanor. But I digress.

I don’t like to brag, but healthy, I am freaking awesome! I do great work, I have a lot to be proud of, and have paid a great deal into the system. To think that those two things cannot help me. There is something wrong with the approach. Until we fix that, we are screwed.

Enough with that, my ships are back. For those still reading, check your balls, and when it comes to health care, be smart until they can catch up.

In the summer of 1997 at the age of 22 I began to feel a painful lump in my right testicle. I was attending my second semester at California State University Chico. I left Norther Arizona University in the spring of 1996, my fiance broke up with me a few month later in August of 1996. 1996 was a rough year for me, it seemed just when things couldn’t get any worse they did. My time at NAU was an onslaught of misery and despair. My father filing for bankruptcy caused my credit to tank, my checking account canceled, credit cards gone, all because he did not removing me from his American Express account prior to filing for bankrupcy. I had my apendics and was molested by a doctor when being examined for epididymitis. These were someone of the highlights.

Those that were with me during that storm left for higher ground. After almost a decade and a half of getting out of Simi Valley I found myself back home living with my mother. As luck would have it an old friend called me from Chico needing a roommate, though a series of ambitious steps I found myself attending CSU Chico in the spring of 97.

That summer I spent working as a camp counselor at St. Nicolas Ranch. This is when the pain in my testicle started. I thought it was the same as the pain I had a year prior, a pain that came with a lot of problems when a doctor acted wildly inappropriate and pushed me further down a spiral that only seemed to end when I had nothing left to loose. Naturally this scared the shit out of me.

As September came I was sleeping less and less. The nurse practitioner at the medical center on campus insisted on treating me for gonorrhea, something I knew I didn’t have. He tried to tell me that there are other ways of catching something that would cause an infection in the testicle than sex, we said that but I doubt that he believed it. After three weeks and a pharmacy worth of pain killers and antibiotics the lump and pain was still there. I was then referred to a Urologist.

It took the Urologist less than two minutes to make the diagnosis and to speak the words that rank among the most feared words in our language, “it is cancer.”  Followed by a phrase that no man wants to hear, “we are going to have to remove your testicle.”

Next came a task that no son ever wants to consider, especially a 22 year old college student that until recently thought his life was finally getting back on track. I had to call my mother’s work from a pay phone to tell her that I had cancer. I could hear the wind leave her lungs and not return. I could hear her feeling for a chair to sit before she fell.

I was upset for a while, cried a little, was scared out of my mind. I told my good friend Heather and she cried too. Then in a moment she looked at me and said, “so now are you going to be the uniballer?”

I chuckled and responded, “yea, a one nut wonder.”

We both laughed and proceeded to make jokes. It was then we realized crying, feeling sad or scared would not make the cancer go away so why not have some fun with it. Heather and I had a long tradition of getting lemons and trading them in for a pitcher of beer, which is exactly what we did.

I found out I had cancer on a Wednesday, two days later on Friday I had my testicle removed. The cancer was non-sonomic embryonic carcinoma. This is really imported because non-sonomic does not respond to radiation therapy. In the best case testicular cancer scenario you would have the diseased testicle removed and then have your retroperitoneal lymph nodes radiated in case the cancer had spread.

I was now faced with two decisions. I could choose surveillance or have a surgery known as a modified Retro Paraneal Lymph Node Dissection. If a second tumor is discovered then it has the potential to be one of the most invasive surgeries one could have.

I chose to have the second surgery and the risks were considerable. I wanted this cancer gone and my life back and I was willing to do what ever it took. Of course I was looking at this through the lenses of a 22 year old man who wanted nothing more than not to have to return to Simi Valley.

Towards the end of September, less than three weeks after my first surgery I was under the knife again. I awoke to some of the worst timing I had ever encountered in my life. My mother was there with tears in her eyes telling me that they found a second tumor and I would need chemo therapy. I would have to go home to Simi Valley. At the time I could not imagine a worse fate.

Upon hearing that I was refusing to go home for chemo therapy my Uncle Chris visited me in the hospital. He was instructed by his mother to “talk some sense into that boy.” He told me not to mess around with this, it is my life, and do what needs to be done. Which is exactly what I did.

I returned home to Simi Valley the first week in October. Three weeks later I started my first of two rounds of BMP chemo. The pain from the surgery coupled with the nausea of the chemo, the painfull pimples all while living in Simi Valley, I could not imagine a worse fate.

December 2, 1997 I was officially done with chemo therapy. I had one what I foolishly thought was the war. As it turns out the victory would be one in many battles that would be waged over the course of the next twelve years.

In January of 1998 I ventured back to Chico State. I will be the first to admit that I went too soon and that I should have stayed another semester perhaps two in Simi Valley. Life was so miserable there I saw the cold freedom of Chico State to be far better than where I was currently living. My mother and I always had problems living together, especially when it was just the two of us, and I knew that this wasn’t easy for her and her behavior was more from a lack of experience than love. In the end it came down to the fact that she made it so difficult for me to live there I would rather take my chances in the only other place I was able to go, Chico. The 145 pound, bald, pale, and sick Vincent Clark moved north 400 miles away from his mother’s home in Simi Valley.

In the summer of 1998 I contracted campo bacter, a mild food poison that would present to most as a bad case of the flu. Unfortuntly the symptoms are much harsher to those who’s immune systems have been compromised by chemo therapy. I was forced to cut my week short at St. Nicholas Ranch and quit my job so I could return to Simi Valley to get better. The doctor gave me a choice to stay in the hospital to get the antibiotics or to return home with my mother. I chose three days in the hospital because I quite simply could not return home, especially when I would be too sick to go anywhere.

In December of 1998 I contracted an almost fatal case of pneumonia, a type of pneumonia only seen in elder ally patients and those that had recently received chemo therapy. This furthered my feeling that I came back to school too soon. I spent three days in the hospital. During that time the only time I heard from my family was when my mother called to yell at me for getting pneumonia and wanted to know how that was going to effect Christmas, after all my two sisters were going to be home and she wanted to make sure I would be there so we can all be a family.

Completing my classes was difficult. I was tired most of the time and the college life in the cold was not helping matters. In the Spring of 1999 I chose to finish my classes via e-mail and return once again to Simi Valley. Again, I simply had no place else to go.

Two years after my diagnosis I found myself once again living at home with my mother. My mother threatened to kick me out of the house shortly after my return home in 1997, being in her eyes “healthy” I was being threatened with eviction every other meal. Fortunately for me I found myself dating a lovely sociopath in a similar situation as me. Both of us were left in a town were we started while all our other friends had long since left.

Since my surgery I could never take a punch to the gut, I always had the feeling that I was not put back correctly. I would have sharp pains that quickly went away. I suffered from retrograde ejaculation, which is where instead of the semon coming out in went into my bladder. I was a healthy 160 pounds and alive, the rest was just cost of doing business. I knew that the pain would be a part of life from hear on out. At the age of 24, that doesn’t seem like too long anyway.

During my last year at Chico when my friends were at the bars and I was too tired or sick to join them I was at home on my Pentium I 60 mz computer learning HTML, Java Applets, and Flash. The Internet was ramping up and there seemed to be a lot of money to be made. I never joined the Get Rich on the Internet club, I knew to be successful at anything it would never happen over night.

The summer of 1999 I spent most of it my mother’s garage on my now upgraded 200 mz Pentium computer with a wopping 16 megs of Ram and a generous 2 meg video card. It was a great computer when it wasn’t catching fire blazing a hole in my mothers carpet, hence why I was outside. When I was not painfully searching the web on a 56k modem I was learning JavaScript, HTML, or Flash. I knew that it would be these three technologies that would launch my career.

The dotcom boom was in full swing and I was not dumb enough to think that this wave would last much longer. I knew that I wanted to work with computers and the Internet seemed to be an appealing new field full of potential and opportunity. I also knew that if I wanted to get into the field with no experience or formal education I would have to act fast and make a name for myself. I was originally hired to integrate Disney’s D-Cards but I proved to be gifted at Flash and found myself being assigned to special projects.

As the dotcom world crumbled and a virtual blood bath ensued the web and all that worked on it I found myself protected by the knowledge I gained during those late and lonely nights in which I could hear my classmates parting in the streets, too sick and too tired to go out on that night.

Together with my friends I built one of the first Web 2.0 applications, which was the first for Disney or any other entertainment site, it was also the first all Flash website of its kind. At the time the scale of the project was unrepresented. We tied in personalization and account information in a new never before seen way. The subscription product known as Blast was not Disney Online’s first attempt to an online subscription based site, however it is a site that forever transformed Disney Online. The drive and determination of this ragtag group of 4 individuals layed down the foundation for the Blast Technology team. This was Disney’s first technology team centered around Flash. This team developed into a full blown engineering team ultimately replacing Application Technology the engineering group at Disney Online.

Over the course of the next two years we continuously blazed a trail on the World Wild Web. In 2002 we once again broke new ground in Flash Application development creating the first all Flash e-commerce site for kids in which kids were able to play games earn points and purchase digital downloads.

For almost three years my life seemed to consist of late nights, lost weekend, and a turbulent relationship. As 2002 came to an end my less than stable girlfriend who was also my best friend parted ways. This was not a mutual decision. After almost two years of helping her through her masters degree Brownwyn had her fill of me. As the winter set in so did the winter pain, something at the time I did not recognize. Work was not going well. We had succeeded so much that those who impeded our progress for the previous two years now wanted a piece of our success. Once again my world was crumbling around me.

In 2003 I regrouped, still in good standing with work I had left Blast to join the application technology team, before it was merged into the Blast Technology team, which would be renamed to the Premium Product Technology team.

Sometimes I feel the reason why people don’t write about this time in history is because one can go mad trying to remember was is called what.

In the beginning of 2003 I weighed 170 pounds at its end I would way 230 pounds.

In October of 2002 I had taken up tap dancing and was forced to quit it when I began to develop a great amount of pain in my groin and side. After a few weeks the symptoms went away. As 2003 progressed and my weight increased I found myself in another spiral of cause and action. As the weight increased so did the pain. The doctors would discount the pain in my abdomen and focus on the lower back. They would find a degenerative disk budging in my lower back, however the failed to take it seriously since where I was pointing was inconsistent to what the MRIs showed.

The storm was brewing once more

The hardest part about starting any story is finding that point in which it begins. This is something that sounds far easier than it really is. Two Perfect Cents is the story of how my wife saved my life and all the bright beacons of light, love, and joy she brought to my darkest days.

Given the fact that Jennifer and I are two very unique individuals it should not be too much of a surprise that our story would be told in a unique way. In this book I will give some back story to how Jen and I became a husband and wife, however that is not the focus of this book. Nor is the story of my survival of testicular cancer.

This is the story of an absurd promise the two of us secretly made with ourselves in which we pledge to save one another and how we did just that. This is the story on how our world came tumbling down around us, and how our stubborn ways made giving up not an option. Throughout a spiritual holocaust the two of us found love and beauty within each other giving us the strength to see the light of the world once more.

Everyone in this world needs someone to believe in them when they loose faith in themselves. For someone to loose faith in themselves something awful needs to happen, something terrible, something that would be life changing if it is not life ending. When the storm comes the acquaintances leave, then some family,then work friends, old friends, siblings, good friends, and then a mother. The longer the storm stays the more people venture away in search of brighter skies. It is always easy to rally support when the storm first hits, it is a little more difficult to get the help needed to clean up the mess left behind, it is even harder to get the help to rebuild long after the storm has left. That one person that sticks around, that person that never loss site of the home that would be built on the ruins left by the unforgiving storm, you hold that person close and tight and you never let them go.

I hope others will read this story, but this story is not for them, this story is like a house, a nice house in which I hope to invite, entertain, and inspire. This house, this story, is written for only one person, the most important person that has ever been in my life. It is written for the woman that is not just my reason for living, but my cause of living, she is someone that who if I never met, I would quite simply be dead.

Jennifer, this story and all the ones I write are for you. I love you more than words can express so I will use actions and shout them from the mountain tops.

No McDonnies Softserve! Barabdoucie in Paradise, Barba Barba, and the Barba is waiting for you!

This is that post in which you will need to see the big picture to understand exactly what this means.

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Today I am very grateful for that eternal beacon of light that guides me on my dark journey, Jennifer. I will never fully be able to sum up what she means to me, more importantly what her belief in me means to me.

I worry often that if my collection of writings, video, photos, and audio, is not fully put together then then the story “knowing vince” will never be realized and some of my more “eccentric” stunts that I have pulled over the years and all that I have done will simply seem “crazy.”

My journey did not begin on January 20th, 2009 when it was revealed the cause of my pain, but a way-point of my story. I have long championed the idea of being in the middle, that there is no start, and no end. This has proven to make the epic “knowing vince” almost impossible to produce.

Two months later I still have a long road of recovery ahead of me, both physically and mentally. Even when I am all healed and in the best shape a man my age can be in the story will still not be over.

What is “knowing vince?”

knowing vince is my life story told in different ways through not only my eyes, but those that know me.
The story will be in print, video, audio, on the web, in a book store, on a DVD, and on a midnight showing at the Lemming House theater in Pasadena.

Will this story be any good?

I think it will, I honestly think that my story will make people laugh and cry, inspire and infuriate, loved and hate, but most importantly, The story will be told.

The simple act of producing knowing vince is the accomplishment.

The good times and the bad times, the triumphs and embarrassments, are all on displayed and produced for you to see and hear. People like to say “take lemons and make lemonades.” The first book of “knowing vince” is called “Painting a Fence” it is about building the juicer, it is about taking doing something positive with all the negative. The story is essentially the making of and first chapter of 2008.

I only hope that this story comes into focus and these words form more than sentences on a blog in some obscure corner of the Internet, more importantly, I need to know that I can do this.

We had left Simi Valley at 4:00 am for the Garlic Festival. Along the way we almost hit a chicken on an off ramp, played drums with a friend in Santa Maria, and slam danced on both lanes of the 101 at sun rise, and went to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy California. After leaving my four friends at an old friends house so I can see my old neighbors (hour and a half).

My good friend Bryan McQueen was out parting the night before, so he was a bit more tired than most. Though my cousins who used to live down the street from me were in Europe I found out that Scott O’Brien was having a party at his place. I will never forget Erin and Bree’s confused face as I walked through the door. At the age of 17, I don’t remember ever meeting these guys, it seems like I just always knew them, proxy cousins in San Jose. It was this crowd who got me drunk for the first time at the age of thirteen at Clay’s Hedgehog House. Since more than one of those people are reading this right now, it is safe to say that I still keep in touch with them.

So there we were, we had been on the road since 4 am, we only checked into the hotel before hitting my old neighborhood. It was around 8 pm when we got word of the party and directions. Adriana, Carie, and Nichole all followed me into the party. Bryan chose to get sleep in the car.

After drinking a bit and talking with Dwane and Kyle, two former football players, I thought, you know what would be really funny, if Dwayne and Kyle scared Bryan by threatening to beat him up. Before digital cameras, we traveled with a good memory and no camera. While looking for a camera Dwayn said, I have a video camera, with a light on it.

So I video taped the two scaring the crap out of my good friend Bryan. The tape was copied and distributed. Over the years Eric Wolf (raveballs) was the only one that did not loose his copy. Finally, Eric was able to get it online. Naturally I embedded it into my website and am hoping for the rest of the footage of that night soon.   

When watching imagine yourself in Bryan’s position, he is at a party in San Jose sleeping nicely in a car in a neighborhood he has never been to before. Some might think that I am a jerk for doing this, but in my defense, I was 17, and as the next 17 years of my life played out I am able to see this again and I remember that night and that trip so well. So we will get the “Vince is a Jerk” out of the way and just laugh at this video.   

Extra Commentary:

See Bryan thought he was going to die, he had no idea who these people were or what girl they were referring to. He was praying to God for help and to spare his life, for this some how to not really be happening, for this not to be real. As it turns out it wasn’t. His prayer was answered, now am I comparing myself to God in which I spared Bryan’s life by making it just a joke, I am just saying … His wish did come true, and it came true because of me, so am I a Jerk, or did I grant my good friend a wish that saved his life. 

I am a jerk, still 3rd funniest prank I ever pulled. Thanks Eric.

This is an episode I would like nothing more than to have my family watch it. The story is about a man that has been suffering from chronic pain for 2 1/2 years and is finally at the end of the rope. The writing here is simply brilliant since it examines chronic pain from the perspective of not only House and the patient suffering, but that of his son, wife, and doubting doctors.

Though this story is not a word for word account of my ordeal, it does show very well the impact of unexplained pain has on someones sanity. The episode also shows how doctors view people that are in constant pain starting with their first interaction as well as their continuous interaction. The first thought that goes through one of the doctor’s mind is that he is a drug seeker, this is quickly refuted when it is brought to his attention that he has at home a pharmacies worth of narcotics.

If you have already watched the episode or would not mind spoilers continue to read more about how I relate to this episode. 

At the start of the show we see the patient suffering and he wants nothing more than to end his pain, after 2 1/2 years of suffering and seeing doctors he still has no explanation, the medication has become less effective, and the pain is getting worse. The patient sees no other alternative than to end his own life. This action infuriates one of the doctors causing anger and hostility towards the patient. The doctor could not understand why a man with a wife and son would be a coward and try to kill himself because he is in pain. The doctor cannot understand why this man could not just suck it up for the sake of his family.

The son makes a notable observation when he says, “That isn’t my father, just please let him die.” When the wife wants to take him home with the obvious but not verbalized intention of allowing the character to end his life House agrees. House, who is suffers constant pain of his own empathizes with the character much more than the rest of the staff. This is something that only someone has felt constant pain for an extended period of time can understand. 

In my journey through the past couple of years I found the only one that could truly relate to what I had been going through was my uncle. My Uncle Joe, who was very badly wounded in Vietnam, told me that only someone that has been in a similar situation can relate to the pain that I was suffering. Only my wife Jen could really see the day to day impact that this pain has had on me as well as the impact of doubting doctors and family members. 

In the end we find that the patient suffered from eplisy, however the seizures were in an abnormal place, his testicles. The character lived virtually every day feeling like he was constantly kicked in the groin. This is something that men can relate to far better than women can, however only to a certain point. To truly relate to the character a man would have to be kicked in the groin multiple times a day for two years. Then while suffering this intense pain imagine being treated like you are a drug seeker and or as weak for not being able to “suck it up.” Though the doctors rarely if ever say that to the patients face, those that suffer from persistent unexplained pain know when a doctor thinks that. 

In my situation despite being in intense pain the wait to see a doctor was ridiculous to me, however the doctors felt that if I have had it for a month then what is a week, it isn’t cancer so there is no hurry here are some pain killers. When one month turned into two, two to four, four to eight, the sense of urgency for me to be bumped to the front of the line was all but lost on 99% of the people involved. When surgery was inevitable and we were looking at an extra week before the surgery was to be performed the insurance refused to hospitalize me on the grounds that I had been suffering for so long, what is an extra week? This would make sense to anyone that was not in the pain, or having to watch their husband or patient suffer the way that I did.

Please don’t laugh. If you do laugh keep it at a sniker. She is making me posted
In a vacant room of an unnoticed building in the middle of the street
a soul sits and waits for something it has long forgotten
as the soul wonders if he is haunting the room he remembers that he is merly visiting
void of furniture the soul presses against the crevice of two walls converging
as the soul scans the divisions of the room
the east wall
west wall
north wall
south wall
all fitting so nicely together
the spirit sees patterns of east and west, north and south
as the soul sits and waits fpr the door to open
the spirt has long forgotten who or what he is waiting for
the yellow paint is all but faded to the man
the colors have never been more vivid to the child
the man sees the holes where pictures used to hang
the child wonders what pictures he could he use to fill the space
the man sees a carpet that is old and is in need of replacing
the diry carpet goes unnoticed by the child as he wonders what is making the ceiling sparkle
the man’s foresees the building demolition
the man sees all being laid to waste
the child imagines the man that designed
the child imagines the men who built it
while the man images the work needed to patch the holes
the child is thankful that he can easily fit a nail in to hang his favorite pictures.
with a grin the child imagines what the room could be
with a tear the man struggles to forget what it could have been.
A single window in the middle of the room brings in a ray of light let loose by the storm’s cloud
the light shines on the imperfections the darkness was hiding
only the man notices the imperfections for the child knows not what perfection is
while the man gazes out the lone window he sees an alley without much room
the child gazes through the glass and sees a playground full of a multitude of grand adventures
like the two walls converging the direction is obsecured by perception
the man sees a corner
the child see a corner
but the two are not the same
the child pulls the man to his feet
the man picks up the child
it is only a vacant room they both try to convince each other
the child knows the man is lying 
the man knows the child is not buying it

I would like to say Katinka was a road sign, but that would not do her role in my life justice. I would like to say that she was an angel that gave me a gift of hope, but that would not do her role in my life justice. To say that she was a beacon left by God to guide me, would not do her role in my life justice.

Katinka was Katinka, and until you were to spend a moment with her you would never understand what an amazing person she is.

knowing katinka is vital in the story of knowing vince.