Is it Morgellons or Cancer?

Crystal invites listeners to play a fun game of can I afford to die right now and hosts the World’s Worst Patient Awards, also sweeping every category. Convulsions of laughter and actual convulsions ensue. Please listen at your own peril, and tell us about it by sending an email to [e-mail].

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
All right, welcome to the first annual World's Worst Patient
Awards hosted by Crystal Clear, produced alive in the psych ward
of reality, itself sponsored by the makers of Please fill out
this form in triplicate. And this is a binding
arbitration agreement. The category one most expensive
temper tantrum Well star December 2023 nominee $5000

(00:25):
COVID visit special twist paramedic who thought EKG lead
placement was foreplay. I'd like to thank Wellstar for
confusing patient care with speed dating and for inspiring
me to invent the crystal clear brow beating trademark pre
litigation demand e-mail. No I will not pay.
Yes, I will remember for the rudeness award as voted by the

(00:48):
CEO himself. Piedmont 2018 nominee being
dubbed the rudest patient in thehospital while running a 102
fever. If it were for God and being
unarmed, I may never have won this award.
Darling, that wasn't rude. That was advocacy through
delirium. If you think that's rude, you
should hear me. Well rested and the double your

(01:11):
money back and guarantee urgent care.
June 30th 2020 nominee misdiagnosed scabies.
Decadron shot hot red skin. Scathing letter outcome not just
refunded. Doubled to the clinic owners who
folded faster than a lawn chair.Thank you for my bonus check.
It's the only treatment that's ever worked.

(01:32):
And finally, most litigious lifetime Dermatology client
award goes to. And finally, to all the billing
departments across America, thank you for making me the
world's worst patient. Without your incompetence, greed
and creepiness, I'd be just another anonymous nurse.
Instead, I'm a legend. Hello listeners.

(01:57):
It's more mortal ones. I'm your host.
Crystal clear. Thank you for joining me again
or for the first time. This is easy listening for
difficult people, so I think you'll enjoy.
We're going to have a great episode today.
Stay tuned. Welcome back.
OK, listen, we can laugh at the worst patient awards, but here's
the punchline nobody laughs at. America's healthcare system

(02:19):
isn't broken. It is working exactly as
designed. You want healthcare first, show
me your insurance card, your marital status, your credit
score, maybe even your grandmothers maiden name.
Actual symptoms are at best a subplot.
Doctors and nurses, most of themgood people, get turned into
middle managers for a billing department.

(02:40):
The Hippocratic Oath. It's now the hypocrisy oath.
Do no harmless anthem says they won't pay.
And if you show up sick, scared and God forbid insisting on
answers, congratulations, you are now non compliant.
Difficult a problem. Translation, you're awake, you
notice the con. Here's the kicker, every patient
is forced into impossible risk calculations.

(03:02):
Do I gamble my health against A5figure bill?
Do I roll the dice and wait it out?
It's the system where survival depends not just on your body,
but on your ability to outwit the hospital's collection
department. So yeah, I laugh about it
because if I don't laugh, I willscream and rage like one of
those horror movie chicks screams like I will do it.

(03:24):
And the truth is, this is not a healthcare system.
It's a casino where the house always wins.
And the house is Goldman Sachs and fucking Morgan Chase.
Whatever, except his house has scalpels, inflorescent lighting,
and real human beings scared that should be treated with
honor and reverence and absoluterespect and dignity.

(03:50):
But back to reality, which depending on who you ask is best
described as late stage capitalism.
Thanks Chet GPT. Others like to call it the
tribulation. I tend to myself from time to
time. Just really not sure.
The crumbling of the Western Empire and America as a
superpower, and the slow creep of autocracy and oligarchy and

(04:14):
to others, the time when we're making America great again.
It all just depends on the soap you're using to wash your brain.
No matter how broken the system is, though, no matter how many
hoops or humiliations they pile on, I refuse to be quiet.
Laughter takes the edge off. But truth?
That's what keeps me from havingto pay $5000 for somebody
fucking me over. And I suggest that you do the

(04:37):
same if you get substandard care, All you got to say is I'm
about to call the OIG. Even if you don't know what that
means, it's the Office of the Inspector General.
Just say that. Tell them you're calling the
Joint Commission. All of a sudden, we've decided
to put you in business class. Oh, thank you.
Is this where the clean needles are?

(05:09):
So about 13 days ago I was feeling good.
Just got back from vacation withmy family.
It was had a beautiful time, well rested, well fed, well
nourished, well hydrated, playing some horseshoes.
Yeah, I'm pretty good. I've got a few ringers playing
some horse basketball. I don't know if you've ever, I

(05:31):
don't know if young people know what that is, but it's where you
take shots with another person and if you miss, you get extra
letters on your bike. We actually played whores, 8
WHORES because we have no semblance of, what's the word,
decorum. Anyway, I was feeling good.

(05:53):
I'd just gotten out some sidewalk chalk and I was about
to draw a scatter shot. Probably annoying to the
neighborhood mural, as I like todo sometimes on the basketball
court. Oh yeah, I remember it even said
our play names. I was playing with a friend of
mine. His name that I gave him was
Bobby Knee Socks and my name wasSmokey the Bear.

(06:15):
Also, self given, he was on the Cubs team, I was on the Cougars
team. You can kind of guess what the
dynamics were there of this play.
So everything's going good. I'm starting to write the legend
of Bobby Neesox and Smokey the Bear on the actual basketball
court pavement 'cause that's what I do, legal vandalism as

(06:39):
art. And I remember feeling kind of
strange just all of a sudden. So I walked up and I leaned
against the basketball pool, andthen a black curtain fell over
my eyes from top to bottom, justlike that.
Like blackness just fell from the top of my eyes to the bottom

(07:02):
of my vision. And then when I woke up on the
ground, my friend was beside me.And I looked up at the sky and
it looks like a veil had fallen away.
And I thought the first thought in my brain was, oh, so this is

(07:23):
the real world. And then the next thought in my
brain was, why does my head hurtso bad?
What are all these bruises on mybody?
And my friend looked at me and said, Crystal, you had a
seizure. You had a seizure.
And I said, did you see me fall?And he said yes.

(07:45):
And I said, did I hit my head? And he said, yeah.
It made a loud thunk before I was able to get over here.
I'm so sorry. I said, you have nothing to
apologize for. But we got to get back home,
which was like, you know, probably a half a mile away.
Not even half a mile away. Quarter mile maybe.

(08:09):
But of course, I couldn't make it.
I did stand up with his help. It was a it was scary, it was
scary. I hit my head hard, no question.
I got a concussion #15I hold many records, y'all, Many

(08:31):
records. So to go back to that episode a
while back, the biopsy or I'm sorry, the yeah, it, it was like
crystal dermatology visit or something was a few episodes
ago. And you know, I had that biopsy
thing on my arm and I said, I'm sure it'll say nothing.

(08:54):
Well, the doctor diagnosed me with cancer and the biopsy
performed was not the appropriate clinical procedure
and therefore the biopsy report was inconclusive.
Which did not stop them from calling my phone and saying

(09:14):
yeah, the results came back fine, nothing to worry about,
just let us know if it comes back and we'll freeze it off.
And I'm like, did you read the pathology report?
Also, can you please correct thedocumentation that says ventral?
It's on the dorsal side of the right forearm.
I mean what? Y'all remember they asked me are

(09:34):
you a new patient bitch? No where are your do you not
keep records? Healthcare is broken.
So anyway, I've got this thing biopsied and no, you know,
conclusive answer. And then right before I go on
vacation with my parents I get these new lesions.

(09:58):
Beside where the beside in the area where the biopsy was
incorrectly performed. So if her clinical guess of
neoplasm was correct, it is a known thing in medical
literature that performing a shave biopsy incorrectly can
sometimes spread the cancer cells around the area.
So I don't know if these new weird lesion wounds that don't

(10:24):
really heal, which are now 4IN number additional ones, one of
which was spontaneously bleedingthe other day.
I know you guys don't want to hear all this, but my point is
here I am, uninsured, unemployed, I've got maybe skin

(10:45):
cancer, new onset seizure. Oh yeah, and I got COVID there
in the between time. So that was fun too.
Just a regular standard once every 5 to 8 weeks COVID.
No, I mean, I do get it at leastonce every year, sometimes
twice. That is not because I didn't get

(11:05):
the vaccine. I did get the vaccine.
I got the first modernist shot abillion years ago and pretty
sure we've all established through the only research that
I've ever seen that it doesn't last very long.
Even the influenza vaccine you get once a year, not once. 1/4

(11:26):
What the fuck? It's not a vaccine, that's a
fucking subscription program. But I don't know if this stuff
on my arm is cancer or if it's just Morgalon's like I said in
that episode, because Morgalon'sis like, it looks like cancer
sometimes. This is the fucked up thing.
OK Jen who's been on the show before and is now a good friend

(11:48):
of mine and I hope that you willcall in with your stories is to
say hello more [e-mail].
I love being a part of good community even though I'm a
really shitty friend a lot of the time.
You guys, sorry about that. I'm also extremely self
absorbed, hence the 372 fucking podcast episodes about my

(12:08):
morgalons and yours. But what the fuck was I talking
about? I got hit on the head.
Y'all cut me some slack. One weird thing I will tell you,
since I got hit on the right occipital, meaning the base of
the skull to the right side partof my head really hard 13 days
ago, I have developed a new capacity to see color in things.

(12:35):
Not visually see, but conceptually.
Like chroma index of tears. Because there are different
color tears. There are blue tears for sorrow
and grief. There are red tears for rage and
bad romance. There are green tears for
cleansing and baptism. There are gold tears for Holy
Ghost Spirit, ecstatic effervescing yellow tears for

(12:58):
pure sunshine, double joy. Purple tears for pride.
Molten metal tears cried for both your own suffering and the
suffering of all the world. There's orange tears.
Those are the hysterical, maniacally overwhelmed,
paralyzed and terrified. Oh, and silver tears.

(13:21):
Silver tears are fuel plus ignition plus perception, IE
Eureka. Oh my God, I cannot believe it.
Discovery, inspiration, realization, dawning.
Silver tears. I have cried every colour this
week. They have painted my face a
rainbow and not a gay one but I am gay ish.

(13:45):
I just don't meet chicks anymorebecause I'm banned from every
dating site. Anyway, those rainbow streaks
down my cheeks, That right therespeaks to all the true hues of
being human. This may all sound crazy to you.
To some of you who are trained, it may sound like a potential
ongoing either micro bleed stroke or concussive

(14:06):
inflammatory issues, small foci.We, you know, we don't know.
That's the good news. The good news is, is that I
don't know yet. The bad news is this that I
don't know yet. I'm supposed to get insurance on
the 1st and I'm glad Morgalon's prepared me to deal with
uncertainty because this is hard.
I want to say a word on that because if you're listening to

(14:28):
the show, then it's quite possible that things have been
pretty tough for you recently aswell.
One of the things that happened when I awakened from hitting my
head, having that seizure on that beautiful Georgia day.
Blue skies, not a clown horseshoeing and playing horse

(14:49):
like the legend that I am. I said.
I still got my bones unbroke. I still got my teeth on chip.
I stood up again. So stand with me, friend, 'cause
I never quit.