There’s been a lot of talk over the past year about the state of healthcare in America. I’ve lived through seven, going on eight decades, tangled in the tubes, pills, forms, and fees of the American healthcare industrial complex.

December 16th marks 12 years since I went to the hospital, where I spent a month on my deathbed. That was the inciting incident for my memoir, Views from Atop My Bedpan, which begins with my death — or at least what will likely be my last dance with the Grim Reaper, then travels backward through time. I figured I’d get the pain out of the way first.

Like most people, I didn’t exactly volunteer for this — I was born into it. But I decided to tell my story differently: in reverse. My picture was taken during a brain MRI required for a research study that determined moderate physical activity improves memory.

That way, I could end things with a bang — literally. The final chapter is a twinkle in my parents’ eyes. Life ends in an orgasm. And if we’re lucky, that’s how it began for all of us.

Why tell a story in reverse? Because healthcare, like life, only makes sense when we step back and look at the whole picture, not just the flatlines and the charts, but the absurd, the beautiful, and the deeply human moments in between.

The memoir begins with me in a senior cohousing community in Boulder, Colorado, where I was asked to leave because I was too healthy. Drunken raisins and acupuncture torture worked better than expected.

Go back a bit further, and you’ll find me navigating the politics of hospital mergers and performing emergency CPR in small-town clinics. Keep rewinding, and I’m a college kid learning how not to die too young, a high schooler enduring the horrors of sex ed, and a grade schooler with thick glasses and bad teeth trying to stay out of the nurse’s office.

Eventually, I was nothing more than a cell in my mother’s womb. And finally, I end as a warm burst of joy in a moment between two people who never imagined the healthcare system would one day bill them for my existence.

Click on the book cover to buy an autographed copy of Views from Atop My Bedpan.

Throughout the story, a question hangs in the air: How can a system built to save lives also depend on people never fully recovering?

Our healthcare industry is a paradox. On one hand, it’s filled with people who truly want to help. On the other hand, it’s an industry that needs customers. If everyone were cured tomorrow, the system would collapse under its success.

I don’t claim to have the answers. But I do have stories. Some are funny, some painful, and many are both. If you’ve ever sat on hold with your insurance company, waited six hours in an ER, or wondered whether a treatment was meant for your body or your billing code, this book is for you.

As of this writing, actuarial tables indicate that I have 10.4 more years to live. That’s 10.4 more years of laughing, griping, healing, and learning. I’ve flirted with death about every 20 years — most recently from an exotic lung disease in 2013. Next time, the Grim Reaper might not be so generous. But until then, I’ve got stories to tell and lessons to share.

And here’s one of them: Maybe life shouldn’t be measured by how long we live but by how deeply we’ve paid attention to ourselves, to each other, and to the strange systems we navigate along the way.

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