WHAT IS HOSPICE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO ME The Verdict From Norm Kent OPINION

Kent

Iwas first diagnosed with damage to my cerebrum and cerebellum in June of 2021, and had to cancel a trip with John Fugate and Brian Swinford to the summer all-star game in Denver. it was rough.

We were going to popularize the SFGN van and promote our paper and magazine, The Mirror, at gay festivals nationwide, from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. Life is what happens when you are doing other things.

If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans for next month. Or even next week.

Fate intervened and we watched the AllStar Game from the Hospital at the University of Miami on NW 12 Avenue, where a team of brain surgeons from Dr. Ashish Shah and Ricardo Komotar performed life-saving brain surgeries, from biopsies to brain drains because of swelling on the brain.

But nothing worked perfectly. It is science after all. So, I bit the bullet in a life-or-death surgery, where we decided the best chance at life or death was to risk everything and remove the entire brain tumor. It worked. It was successful and here I am two years later.

Thanks to the advice of people like my brother Alan, and his partner, Phil, who taught me about free will and independent choices, and of John and Brian, their courage and conviction.

Yes, even my older brother Richard who inadvertently gave me a stone from my Dad’s gravesite to bite into, instead of the biscuit I thought it would be.

I was lucky. The repeated scans for brain cancer revealed a very early stage of pancreatic cancer, which by an operation for extraction was survivable.

Most people my age are just not so lucky. They find out the stages of cancer and what condition their condition is in too late and too deep into the pancreatic cancer to do anything about it. They are gone in no time.

American health care? First, I remember being placed in a special government protocol, but ran into bad luck there too. The sample physicians took from the surgery was not large enough for a concrete observation so at best they would have to do another biopsy and maybe further surgery, which it did.

Too boot, when we got the letter from the government for the protocol, they said it could cost anywhere from $5,000 to $9,000 a month, a tad bit more than your monthly Master Card bill, though I am not sure about your new Wilton Manors rent. Ask Jimmy Cunningham.

Through my stressed-out body and brain, it was easier to watch the Marlins finish in last place, though they played adequate major league ball during COVID. Thank you, manager Don Mattingly.

I endured, and doctors complimented me on my “fight.”

But to me, it was just not a “fight against cancer.” It was an episode of the play called “Life.” We all go through it.

Everyone is challenged somehow and somewhere. Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s not how many punches we take. It’s how hard we can hit back.”

I refused to look back. You never saw a downhill skier look behind. Always forward. Like “Annie,” the sun will come out tomorrow.

I fast forwarded through many procedures, often in freezing emergency rooms, cold hospitals, and nurses so overwhelmed they could not just get to you in time, though they care, are compassionate and our first line of defense, for love and life in a time when there was already too much death in America. When they were bagging bodies behind Broward General in 2022. Unreal.

Last week, the doctors told me about a new and invasive cancer and tumor that would require even more sudden and maybe midnight trips to the ER and hospitals, ending the day with newer needles in my arms and weakening veins.

Doctors everywhere were super kind, saying I have already fought the good fight, that I have not gone gentle “into that good night,” that I have fought amazingly against the “dying of the light.” That I have earned the right to make the most peaceful decision.

Interestingly, I heard them say in-between the lines of their wise admonitions that it would take more courage and conviction to allow them to use a DNR order - a “do not resuscitate order” to let me live and stay at home and be treated there in comfort, with quality of life mattering more than longevity; with loved ones by my side holding my hands, giving me hugs and hot apple cider, with my labs playing in the house, the baseball games on TV, and even watching a life-long comedy tribute to Adam Sandler, laughing and loving with close friends nearby. Or rushed to yet another hospital maybe far way for yet another procedure. The final call is still in John’s hands. But I think you see where I am.

Nope, no more. I think I have done my share for here and now. An activist for gay rights and your rights; for NORML and human rights. Your body. Your life. Your call. I hope I have made you proud.

On this end, with my sports collections and dreams mounted by my side, I love it all. Always will. Friends and family, too.

Blessed forever, knowing even that when someone comes to visit me at the Star of David, Mom and Dad are living there as well, and if a dog comes to visit me, he jumps out of the back door of my 1978 Lincoln Continental, he can take a piss on the side of my grave freely, hopefully not wetting the 1959 Vin Scully transistor radio in my casket, which might pick up a Dodgers game or two, maybe a Nathan’s hot dog bursting with hot juices, or order me some hot fries and a cold Yoo-Hoo. Listening to Carole King from Brooklyn sing “You’ve got a friend.”

I have been lucky. I have had many, including John and Brian holding my hand all these last beautiful months, from Sea World to

Snowshoe, West Virginia. And all the people from the Wilton Manors Business Association. All of you everywhere over the years and past decades. Too many, I hope you see - too many to mention in one column.

By the way, that mountaineer cheddar cheese popcorn was sure good in West Virginia. You see, you are not leaving one chapter. You are just entering a new one. We don’t know which yet.

So folks that all brings me to home health care hospice, like President Jimmy Carter has just done. It’s, not to say goodbye, but to thank you for the many hellos. From the many memories; from your local hospitality establishments and homes and businesses. And friends like Marc Possien, too, Catalog X was started in a spare bedroom in my house. I was Dildo Central! From Laguna Beach in California to the Southport here. Ever special. Always loved. So many can’t ever be forgotten! Even Paul, Victor and the Manor.

With your faith in SFGN and my law partner, the people here and everywhere, you have made it a cherished calling for me. Leaving behind for you to see a book entitled “Ruminations from Chairman Norm,” and a collage of pix one of you can display at Stonewall very soon. It’s love and laughter over five decades.

Keep on doing what is right, remembering what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right. You will always find a path belonging just to you.

Like Yogi Berra, New York Yankees Hall of