Mythomania: A Psychodrama Revisited
Chapter 11
The Cost of a Life
Now, about that money the feds said was
theirs.
This is a public confession. Admittedly, it
isn’t much of a secret anymore, but I was still married to Cookie when Jonathon
was born. He was conceived *Christmas Day 1999, but in my pitiful defense,
Cookie had already filed for divorce. When Cookie’s attorney Denise Kuzniewski
found out that Angie was pregnant, she really tightened the screws. I didn’t
stand a chance in court afterwards. I would have fared better in divorce court if
Angie had had an abortion, but that was never an option in our minds:
“I call heaven and earth to
witness you today: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse —
therefore CHOOSE LIFE!”
---Deut. 30:19
It wasn’t even an option after we found out
that Spring that Jonathon had multiple birth defects that were “incompatible
with life.” We had the ultrasound on Friday, April 28, 2000, and the
obstetrician with the worst bedside manner in the world confronted us with the
bad news on Monday, May 1st. He positioned himself between us and the door,
probably hoping for a safe getaway. He said, “you have to face it. Your baby is
going to die. You need to go home, conjugate the data, and wait for his death.
Come back when he stops moving”. No compassion, empathy, or support. He left us
without hope. But none of us, including Jon, was going to give up that easily.
As an aside, you conjugate verbs, not nouns, which you decline.
My life would have been much easier if we had
aborted him. But life is so precious to me that I couldn’t do it any other way.
Despite all the subsequent losses in my life, I do NOT regret that we decided
to fight. The bastards were NOT going to win.
You can read about our fight and our ultimate victory in Angie’s book A White Rose for
Jonathon. It really is a Good Read.
The first thing I did was to arrange for
weekly high-risk ultrasounds. That is a euphemism for “high-cost ultrasounds.”
Neither of us had medical insurance so I paid between $600 and $1000 each week,
half of the money going to the specialist who read the ultrasounds. So,
starting at 20 weeks gestation and lasting until Jon’s birth at week 38, that
is between $10,800 and $18,000 I paid to keep Jon alive prenatally.
Cash. I never asked for a receipt because who would have thought then that the
government would come after me more than seven years later to get “their”
money?
The prenatal care also included paying for a
Geneticist and two Pediatric Cardiologists. Angie documented all of this in her
book. She gave special agent Bielke a copy of the manuscript. Did he even read
it? Did the judge read it? Angie didn’t write it to prove that I spent a lot of
money to save Jon’s life. She wrote it to show the world how God blessed us.
But in her own words, she proves my point:
“It was time to leave, and we went out front
to pay. This was just the beginning of weekly ultrasounds.”
“We were spending over $2000 per month
for Jonathon’s healthcare.”
“Mike and I
weren’t eligible for any government assistance because of our monthly incomes.
We trusted God for everything, including our finances. We had a scholarship in every child’s name at different colleges.
Those had to go. Our savings account was quickly diminishing. And I hadn’t
worked for a few months.”
Rereading this for the revision, I noticed
something strange that I didn’t pick up when I first wrote it. Note that she
first says, “We were spending...”, and later, “I hadn’t
worked...” In other words, good old Dr. Mike was paying the bills himself! In
fairness to her, she did find a job at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Kenosha one
month before Jon was born, but her health insurance didn’t kick in until she
had been there for a month. That’s our first miracle: 31 days after she signed
her contract, Jonathon was born.
Most of his subsequent medical expenses were covered. Most of them. I
still had to pay deductibles and copays. He had open-heart surgery when he was
only 2 days old, abdominal surgery when he was 5 days old, and a repeat
open-heart surgery when he was 10 months old. The total medical cost of his
first year of life was over $750,000. That did not include travel expenses or
babysitters for the other kids. Again, I have no record of how much I spent. I
do know that it was a lot more than I “owed” in taxes. Note also that we did
file taxes, despite Fox6 News in Milwaukee assertion that I didn’t.
I understand the government’s stance on this
issue. I may not like it, but I understand it. I understand that special agents
are trained to scare and intimidate people and that they delight in being
clever bullies. I get it. I’m not stupid. I understand that people like Curtis
Johnson do bad things to good people because they get scared. Angie didn’t
deserve the pressure and intimidation, nor did my mother, my brother, other
relatives, or my friends. I am so sorry anyone had to go through all of that.
What I really
cannot understand is why Angie later refuted what she wrote in the book to the
federal court.
