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Cheers in Iowa, Sorrow in Queens Jimmy Breslin January 20, 2004 All politics is local. For so long now, the throat has been clogged with the profundities of all these politicians, each of whom saying they alone have the plan to cure the nation's health care problems. Last night, the farmers came in out of the cold in Iowa and gave John Kerry a crashing victory. On a Queens street, John Hynes, who needs so much help, didn't even keep up with the results. "I couldn't listen anymore. I need anybody but Bush," he said. "I want the candidate who won't destroy Medicaid, who says that the $1,000 a month for the medication I need won't be taken away." Earlier, I was supposed to meet John Hynes in Long Island City at the welfare center or income maintenance center or jobs without jobs or whatever they call the center now, but it was closed for Martin Luther King's birthday. The center was closed in honor of King. If there was anything with which King was identified it was the poor. In his honor, the welfare center on Northern Boulevard should have been open until midnight. And all day, John Hynes was home on 64th Place in Glendale, in Queens, in his wheelchair, going through the foothills of his files on medical and public assistance. For a citizen without a congressional health insurance policy, it costs more time to be sick and broke than it did to build a pyramid. John Hynes has Parkinson's disease. He has had it for 10 years and has fought it through every day. In his front room he has the tapes and law books that he is using to study for the state bar exam in July. Yesterday, on a day when all news was centered on national politicians and their plans, John Hynes sat in his front room and read notices calling for his eviction, for the loss of food stamps and for suspension of other benefits that kept him and his family out of the cold and fed. It all started for him in 1993, when he was driving a bus on the route from Jamaica to Hempstead. He began to notice a stiffness in his arms. Then his speech was lower and lower. One day he forgot where his foot was, brake or gas, and he had sense enough to get off the bus. The doctors diagnosed it as Parkinson's disease. He had a wife, Marian, who was from Costa Rica, and two sons. Soon, he was in a wheelchair and had a home attendant. He looked up and saw through the misery and rolled into the CUNY law school in Queens. His neurologist recommended an operation, which he had intended to have at the end of this month. They were to place two electric wires, one into each side of his head, and they would be attached to his chest and the charge could end the need to take the medicine Sinemet that was sending him into space. Then he began searching the Internet, which has a site for deep brain surgery. This is nothing rare. There are enough people with this disease to take up a president's day. One Internet entry read, "I would like to know if anyone had any different symptoms after surgery that they did not have before surgery. Also, was there an adjustment time, or were positive results felt immediately after surgery, and did they diminish as time went on? I have now developed more pronounced 'jerking' motions, not PD 'shaking,' but more pronounced jerking motions, which I never had before surgery. Please answer back to this forum and thank you for your words." Another entry said: "When they finished the operation, I could dance. It was the greatest. It lasted a week. I am right where I started. Don't trust this operation." Last November, Hynes had a face-to-face interview at the welfare center in Long Island City. It was over the $401 in food stamps he receives each month for his family. The welfare people wanted to question him about this. Their concern was obvious: Instead of using the stamps to feed his family, this Hynes could be out on the street corner in his wheelchair selling his food stamps and using the money to buy heroin. At the start of the face-to-face interview, with Hynes and his wife at the desk, the man asking questions made a pained face as he listened to Hynes' speech, which requires a slight bit of patience and strict attention on the part of the listener. "We'll talk to your wife. You don't even need to be here." His wife, Marian, was given documents, some of which she barely could read and others she couldn't translate at all. There were questions like, "Are you being forced to have sex with someone in your household?" As his wife sat with the raft of papers to sign, he had to go the bathroom. His 27-inch-wide wheelchair would just fit inside the door but would go no farther. They had a form asking which language they would like to receive correspondence in, English or Spanish. He wrote down English. Everything arrived in Spanish, which his wife could read but didn't know what to do with it, and Hynes could handle it if he had something he could read. He and his wife left in a gypsy cab. His next stop was the doctor's office, where he had his visit, which was on a regular five-month schedule. He told the doctor he didn't want the operation. So he was home yesterday with everything ahead of him again. The eviction notice, the food stamps and some procedure that can help with his disease, which, he says, "is an odd disease. People don't understand it." He was asleep in Queens when John Kerry, who has a health plan, stood in the lights and cheers of a victory. SOURCE: Newsday http://tinyurl.com/3eh9d * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn