Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 4:20 pm
I was in the airport in Chicago last night when I got this terrrible news and have just gotten back in the office to make this post...Kudos to the above posters for your heartfelt sentiments...
I met BIGS one day in Panther Swamp when he was hunting in the "Bag Hole" which lies behind the very treacherous "Ed's Hole"...He was hunting by himself and had limited out before my group finished...He stopped in our hole to rest and we immediately hit it off...We hunted together many times during the following years in Panther, at my duck clubs in MS and LA and he hunted deer in my club at Raymond for a year or two...He guided a few duck hunts for me when I was in the outfitting business and worked for me on a tree planting job in Concordia Parish, LA one year....
We were friends and I will miss the hell out of him...Most recently I saw him at the OM vs. MSU tennis match at RHC (Go Rebels!) in February and talked with him several times over the phone since including right after the epic OM vs. FLA tennis match in Oxford when BIGS DQed a FLA player from the deciding singles match, giving OM the victory and FLA coach Andy Jackson the reddest of arses....
Big Mike had a heart as big as Texas and a sweet disposition...He was smart and did his best to deal with his DISEASE...He was a food addict and could not break the food addiction try as he might...THis is the same addiction as drugs, alcohol, not eating, eating and throwing up, gambling,etc, it just takes on different aspects for different people...
Sadly, he had tried exhaustively to get Medicaid coverage for lap band surgery but told me that MS - unlike LA, AR, TN and AL- does not cover the procedure...Tragically, Medicaid in MS was paying $1200-$1500 per MONTH to deal with BIG's SYMPTOMS but wouldnt pay the one time charge of $15000 or so to deal with the PROBLEM...
Sound familiar? We got 100s of 1000s, maybe millions of mentally ill people all over this country that are not getting the medical help they need courtesy of "managed care" and "survival of the fittest" government policies that have basically fed our weakest fellow citizens to the wolves over the last 25 years....
There is no guarantee that the lap band surgery would have worked or that it would not have killed BIGS, but like with Harden who went to UMC for help and did not get it, we will never know.
Is there anything worse than "we will never know"?
I hope as many of yall can come tomorrow as possible. It would mean a great deal to BIGS mom (Marty). They were very, very close.
RIP my dear friend.
I met BIGS one day in Panther Swamp when he was hunting in the "Bag Hole" which lies behind the very treacherous "Ed's Hole"...He was hunting by himself and had limited out before my group finished...He stopped in our hole to rest and we immediately hit it off...We hunted together many times during the following years in Panther, at my duck clubs in MS and LA and he hunted deer in my club at Raymond for a year or two...He guided a few duck hunts for me when I was in the outfitting business and worked for me on a tree planting job in Concordia Parish, LA one year....
We were friends and I will miss the hell out of him...Most recently I saw him at the OM vs. MSU tennis match at RHC (Go Rebels!) in February and talked with him several times over the phone since including right after the epic OM vs. FLA tennis match in Oxford when BIGS DQed a FLA player from the deciding singles match, giving OM the victory and FLA coach Andy Jackson the reddest of arses....
Big Mike had a heart as big as Texas and a sweet disposition...He was smart and did his best to deal with his DISEASE...He was a food addict and could not break the food addiction try as he might...THis is the same addiction as drugs, alcohol, not eating, eating and throwing up, gambling,etc, it just takes on different aspects for different people...
Sadly, he had tried exhaustively to get Medicaid coverage for lap band surgery but told me that MS - unlike LA, AR, TN and AL- does not cover the procedure...Tragically, Medicaid in MS was paying $1200-$1500 per MONTH to deal with BIG's SYMPTOMS but wouldnt pay the one time charge of $15000 or so to deal with the PROBLEM...
Sound familiar? We got 100s of 1000s, maybe millions of mentally ill people all over this country that are not getting the medical help they need courtesy of "managed care" and "survival of the fittest" government policies that have basically fed our weakest fellow citizens to the wolves over the last 25 years....
There is no guarantee that the lap band surgery would have worked or that it would not have killed BIGS, but like with Harden who went to UMC for help and did not get it, we will never know.
Is there anything worse than "we will never know"?
I hope as many of yall can come tomorrow as possible. It would mean a great deal to BIGS mom (Marty). They were very, very close.
RIP my dear friend.