John Robert Harris

Why I'm Not Dead John Robert Harris

John Harris was rushed to the ER in late February, 2020, with a life-threatening blockage of the urinary tract. He was harnessed with a catheter... and then he inexplicably drifted off the American medical establishment's radar. He sought help at two local clinics. One gave him Flomax with instructions to return in five weeks; the other lined him up for a series of tests to qualify him for various costly surgeries. Neither clinic appeared to notice that he hadn't been submitted to the basic, frontline screen for prostate cancer: the PSA test. Eventually, one of the two clinics managed to perform this simple blood test. The results, which should have been available in 7-10 days, were divulged to John one month later by a nurse (calling for the doctor). They were the worst-case scenario. He lobbied for an immediate biopsy to confirm the cancer diagnosis. Having pressed to gain timely access to those results, he was informed in a "work-in" appointment that the only remaining issue was whether the cancer had metastasized. He arranged the bone scan himself and read its verbal summation from his home by creating a patient portal, thus trimming away further weeks of wasted time. Opening this file was like reading his own death sentence, because his "specialist" had already indicated that the only viable response to metastasis would be pain-killers. And here the story shifts to Mexico-to the Immunity Therapy Clinic. Arriving with an American's cultural distrust of "laid-back", improvisational practices south of the border, John nevertheless discovered that the less clinical, more personal touch had immediate therapeutic value for him after so much institutional indifference. But the hard science was there, too: therapies often developed in Germany or the US itself which could not, however, be practiced in America because the surgery/chemo/radiation paradigm reigned supreme. Five weeks in the care of Carlos Bautista's doctors and nurses reduced John's PSA from an astronomical 295 to 4.3. Today, back home in Georgia but continuing many of ITC's prescribed treatments, he reports that value as below 1. This little book is no "hit piece" on the American medical establishment. It's arranged more like a journal, offering one man's testimony (and including a few excursions on topics like socialism and religion, not in "soapbox" fashion, but simply in answer to peripheral issues that often surface). A published poet, John can bring a certain drama and lyricism to his account that makes some passages work very deep. The overall effect is to draw the reader into asking questions free of presumption instead of accepting canned-and-stamped solutions.