Camp Rock.. What a Summer

You may be screwed!

 

 

GLENN: I want to thank Pat for filling in for me. I called him, like, at 4:00 in the morning to roust him out of bed and see if he would fill in. I had just finished giving a speech at a fundraiser on Wednesday night and I came home and Joe, who's a new researcher, he actually came over to the house and we were going to finish up some work after this speech and my wife and I were -- we came into the house and Joe was with us and there was something downstairs in the basement that she wanted to show us. She's like, "I just cleaned up the whole basement." I'm like, "That's great, honey, I've got to see that." So I started going down the stairs and I was the first to go down the stairs and I got to the top stair and I slipped all the way down a flight of stairs and was in the hospital.

You know, there's one place that should have valet parking. It's at the hospital. Don't you think? I mean, don't you think you should pull up in the emergency room and go, valet, help me. Please take the keys from me. I'm just thinking that maybe that would be a good place, but no.

So I laid down at the bottom of the stairs for a while and the thought, "Help, I can't get up" did come to mind. Luckily my wife and my friend were with me and so I sat there for about 20 minutes and had that typical debate, you know what I mean? Have you ever had that debate in your head like, "I really should go to the hospital, but, oh, that will be a pain in the neck." Ever had that debate where you know you should be going to the hospital. I mean, there was a moment there I thought I was having internal bleeding and I was still thinking, no, I don't want to go sit in that emergency room. So I debated back and forth whether I should go and finally my wife just said, we're getting the keys; you're going to the hospital. "No, no, I think I'm fine, I can almost -- nope, nope, can't get up yet."

So we piled into the car and my wife drove around trying to find a parking space, which was always -- I'm really kind of stuck on the valet parking thing at the hospitals. I really think they should have that. But anyway, we got inside and they walked me to a little room and said, take off all your clothes. "All right. If you have a knife, you can just cut them off me, please." So then told me to pee in a cup right away, which -- all right, I know this is more information than you need about me, but I'm very shy like things like that and I just looked at the nurse and I said, that ain't going to happen with all you people standing around. You know what I'm saying? I'm sorry. And the doctor came in and immediately gave me a ultrasound, and it's never really good when you hear the doctor behind you say, "There's a lot of liquid there, a lot of fluid. I don't know what that -- we should get him to a CAT scan right away." "Excuse me, Doc, what did you just say?" "Nothing, you're great, nothing. Are you feeling really cold right now?" "No." "Okay, just lay here. Whatever you do, don't walk towards the light."

So I go get a CAT scan and I was happy to know that it was being read in India and I said, pardon me? He said, "Yeah, we ship it to India to look at." I said, "You can't look at the CAT scan and figure out?" No, no, no, they're much better over there. After 11:00 at night, everything's read in India. I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. I mean, is this the same guy that's reading it that I call up and can't fix my computer? "Hello, it's me, Bob, yes, I just tried to fix..." no, I don't think I feel comfortable. Who is reading it over in India? "I don't know, some guy, Bob. He is also working on our computer as well."

So they come back and now the two doctors walk in at the same time. Only time I heard them was, "I don't know, that might be a small toy somewhere near his -- I think that's his liver and a small toy." And they both walk in and, "You're the luckiest guy alive." "Pardon me?" "Yeah, when you came in, we looked at each other and thought, oh, boy, this is going to be a bad one." Okay, you didn't tell me that. You just said don't walk towards the light. I don't even have a bruise on me today. I hurt like crazy. I bruised my ribs as I came down. Didn't break anything. My elbow was the size -- I mean, I looked like a -- you know, I walked in and I was like, "I am not an animal. I am a human being." You know, I kind of had that whole kind of John Merrick thing going for me, at least in the elbow area and the back area. So I slept all day yesterday but wanted to be here, wanted to be here for you. Bullcrap, they would cut my salary if I don't show up. "I wanted to be here for you." So I'm glad I'm -- well, I don't know. I was going to say I'm glad I'm alive but then again, have you seen gas prices lately?

So Harry Reid comes out and says John McCain, his plan to start offshore drilling is just the, you know, more of the same old ideas. I love that line. Failed policies of the past, the same old ideas. Drilling is? Really? "Oh, same old ideas." I don't think so. I don't think we've been doing that an awful lot. In fact, Harry, if I may be so bold, we're drilling and pumping out oil as fast now as we were in the 1940s. Same old ideas? We haven't built anything new here since Gerald Ford was in office. I think these -- when you say "Same old ideas," yeah, they are older than Jerry Ford but I don't remember all those gas price problems back before Jerry Ford. Sure, there was the -- oh, wait a minute. This time -- this is weird. The time that Saudi Arabia was holding us hostage back in the early Seventies. But before that there wasn't really an oil shortage problem, you know? It's weird, same old ideas.

You want to talk about the same old ideas, how about not drilling and putting on a sweater. That kind of sounds like Jimmy Carter. And if my memory serves right, I think I would rather have Jerry Ford as the President than Jimmy Carter, but what do I know. You know what I'm saying? I may have a small toy in my liver. So don't look at me for answers.

Yeah, Glenn,  The last time you ended up in there you almost fucking died! I'm so sorry!

Troubled pop star Amy Winehouse won 5 Grammys last night and there is some slight controversy about it. People, why the hatred for Amy? You make this a big damn deal! It's not! She didn't do anything wrong! Come on people!

 Glenn has been told by doctors he needs to take a few days off to heal from his various aliments. However he won't be out for long as Glenn will return on on Tuesday, Feb 2nd. In fact Glenn & Co. are set to work all night covering the Super Tuesday elections.

 to AC 360! Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, but hell, she needs to be with Anderson Cooper!

 GLENN: Here's the thing. I have not been calling for the great crash of 1929. What I have said is if we don't correct our policies, if there is another load put on this table, the economy won't be able to hold it. I don't believe there has been another load put on this table. This is natural. This is -- what's coming here in the next few days hopefully, if people, you know, hold on and don't go into panic, this will be a natural down turn and it needs to purge itself to be able to reset. So this will be a natural downturn. This will be a tough spell. I think we will go into recession but if our politicians don't make things worse, i.e., The Forgotten Man, if they don't make things worse, we're going to be okay. The caveat that everybody seems to always miss is this: You have these conditions which I've been telling you we were headed for ringing the warning bell loudly since August saying, look out, bad times are coming around, really scary stuff is going to happen. Today is the day where you're beginning to really see that. I've been telling you that since August but I have also been telling you it's natural unless we have another terrorist attack or something else that is put on the table. This is where you should be worried if you're worried about the Great Depression.

God forbid we're hit by a terrorist attack now. You didn't see this, or most people didn't, didn't see this back in August or November and everybody was in denial, but these underlying things, this is what's been bubbling since last summer. They've all been there and that's why I said if we're hit by a terrorist attack, we'll hit into the Great Depression, and nobody believed me because they didn't see -- not they didn't see it. They weren't willing to recognize that this was bubbling under the surface. And what "This" is is a fundamental problem with our economy. Nobody has trust in anything anymore. And I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the world doesn't trust America anymore. When Bernanke comes out at 8:00 in the morning and has an emergency rate cut of 75 basis points, which is a big cut, when he makes a rate cut at 8:00 in the morning and futures actually go down, that's not good. That's not good.

When the stock market says, no, I don't think that's a good move, what they're saying is let it eat itself up. You know, here's what we do all the time. When I was a kid, I used to go out and play and I would, you know, scrape my knee and I would fall down on the sidewalk or whatever and there would be rocks in the cut. What we keep doing is we keep putting, you know, Bacitracin on it and we put a Band-Aid on it right away and then we give aspirin so you don't feel the pain anymore. What we don't do is we don't clean out all of the rocks that are in the wound. We always -- because our politicians find it easier to say, hey, don't worry; nobody's going to get hurt here. They never clean out the rocks. The system must clean the rocks out. We must allow it to really clean everything up or it's going to get infected, and it is so close to infection right now because this is caused by the Fed and the politicians and everybody else trying to make up for the tech bubble.

When the tech bubble burst, everybody ran in: "Don't let anybody get hurt," because there was an election, "Don't let anybody get hurt." And so they went in and they tried to fix the tech bubble so nobody got hurt. Then we had September 11th: "Let's go out and spend as much as you can, cut the rates, don't let anybody get hurt." That's what this is caused by, never letting anybody get hurt. It's just like your kids. You know this is true. I mean, the reason why you can see these things coming, the reason why it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure so much of the world out, all you have to be is consistent. All you have to do is understand how God parents us. If you understand how God parents us, how he lets us make our own decisions, he never withdraws, he never really gets pissed at us, we withdraw from him. We remove ourself from where he is, but he's always there and he's always there going yeah, yeah, I could have told you that one. In fact, I did tell you that one, shouldn't have done that. And then what happens? He lets us fall. And only when we fall -- and I mean all the way. There are some people that fall a little bit and then somebody picks them up and rushes to their side and says, oh, are you okay? And then they enable that person to continue to make the bad mistakes. God lets us fall. "Your choice, brother." And hopefully in my case right before death I go, "I get it." So if you understand how God parents you, then you understand how to parent your kid. You know you've got to say the tough things to them. You know you have to let them make their own decisions and let them feel -- you cannot run in and give them a frickin' trophy every time they lose. They lost! Every time they get a bad grade on their test, you can't go in and fight it with the teacher. It's a bad grade on the test. It happens in life. They are going to have teachers who suck, teachers who are against them and they're also more likely going to stink at what they do from time to time and going to get a bad grade. If you'll let them feel the repercussions of that bad grade, maybe, if they have a sense of what bottom is, they will correct that. If they don't, they'll destroy themselves, but they will destroy themselves if you enable them. You know that to be true with your family. You know that to be true universally with God. Why is it we try to make everything so darn complex when it comes to everything else, when it comes to voting for somebody for President? I don't want to babysit them. I don't want to nanny. I don't want somebody that is always there to help my booboo and put aspirin in my system and to put a Band-Aid on my knee and kiss me and make me all better, make me forget about the little booboo when there are rocks in the booboo. Let me fix it. Let me fail because if I fail, I'll only get better.

Edison was one of the greatest inventors of all time. He failed more than he succeeded. If you would have taken the failure away from Edison, you would have never had the light public. And think how green and perfectly temperature controlled this planet would be if we would have just stopped him from inventing the light bulb. And it's the same thing with the economy. You can't make everybody feel better.

Here's what happened. The Fed tried to make everything better by cutting the rates. All of these banks said, "Whoa, there's so much money here, what do we do with it? Let's just start giving it out." They made money because money was so cheap. So they started giving it out to everybody. Everybody was on the bandwagon. George Bush wanted to make sure that everyone who never had owned a home before could own a home. The Democrats, "That's right, oh, look at the minorities that have never have chance to own a home; they can own a home. Look at all of the poor people all around that can own a home." There's a reason sometimes that poor people, white, black, yellow, purple, don't own a home. "Look at all the people who have made horrible mistakes in their life but now suddenly can get credit again because credit is just so easy now."

Meanwhile Wall Street and the banking industry, "Look how great this is. We can just make numbers up. Oh, credit problem, he's got a bad credit problem? No big deal. Think of the money we'll make." So everybody had a stake in making money. Politicians, they kept their power because politicians could tell everybody, "Look, you, too, can have it. Even though you've never been able to get it before because common sense was the rule, you cans it now. Look, it's practically free. We'll pay you to live in this house... temporarily." People who just wanted to have a house, people who wanted to -- you know, I read this great story in the New York Times about why African-Americans spend so much money on really expensive sneakers, et cetera, et cetera. It's not an African-American thing. It's all races. All races do it. And what it is is you're modeling up. It's just more accessible to poor African-Americans than it is to poor whites because poor whites generally don't live in a whole area with a bunch of poor whites. They live with whites that are not -- they are not at the poverty level. They're just a little above. They are the lower middle class. This is what the article says. So when they want to model up, shoes won't do it. They can't afford to model up. They can't afford to appear to be wealthier than they are to their neighbors. But African-Americans, according to the "New York Times," they can model up because they're surrounded by poor and so somebody can buy $150 sneakers and they can afford that and they can, you know, cheat on healthcare or education and they can buy the sneakers because that way they can look like the neighbors.

Well, that's what everybody's doing. Everybody's been modeling up, except everybody tries to model up, I believe to television. Everybody models up to what people, what lives people are living on television. That's the way the -- that's the average American. That's the way it's supposed to be. Well, it's not! And so everybody went, "Well, I'm in this position. I can -- now the money's so cheap, I can model up to here." And the Government is doing the same thing. "We only have this much money but, gosh, let's spend money like we have this much." And because everybody modeled up, because the politicians wanted to make you feel good, they wanted to hold onto their power and because the banks and the credit industry and the insurance industry all wanted just to make money, you are going to pay the price. And here's the beginning of it. Here's the beginning of it. And the best thing we can do was to not cut the rates.

I know anybody who is a financial guru or on Wall Street or anything else, they will talk to you about, oh, no, you've got to cut the rates because people have got to be able to lend money to each other. Yeah, you're right. Short-term, what is it called, paper is really tough and what all that is, if I'm a farmer and I want to be able to plant my field, then harvest it and get it to market, I've got to take a loan out. It's short-term. I buy it, I take the loan out, I buy the seeds, I'm able to hire all my people and then at the end when I get it to market, then I pay the bank back. It happens all the time. That's the way business in America is done.

Now, you go to any bank today and they will come up with some reason why, well, it's a little slow right now. Well, I'm not really sure. But short-term paper is very difficult to get and it's only getting more difficult to get because there's not enough money because nobody knows what's coming next. Nobody knows. They are all hanging onto their money because, for instance, CitiBank, they write off, what was it, $5 billion and they say, that's it. And then there's another few billion and then that's it. And then it's $19 billion and then that's it. Well, how much really is it? The problem is everybody's so interconnected with each other, they don't know. You know, on The Real Story last night, I told you a little bit about the insurance companies, these bonds, these municipal bonds. This is where the city says, I've got to take out a loan, I'm going to issue a bond because we need to fix our sewer system, we need to fix our bridges, whatever. Well, just when you take out a loan, they require mortgage insurance. Same thing with bonds. I don't trust city -- well, to be honest, I don't trust the City of Philadelphia to be able to pay their bills if something goes wrong. I want to make sure this bond is secure. So they have bond insurance markets, and these insurers go out and they say, great. I'm making numbers up here, but a lot of these insurance companies went, oh, money's so cheap and everything's going to be so great, I've only got a billion dollars in cash and assets to be able to cover stuff but I'm going to insure $200 billion worth of bonds. Well, now the billion dollars is gone. How much more am I going to need and where do I get the cash. And that's what's happening. Everybody's holding onto their money because they don't know what's coming. People are freaking out in the stock market because they don't know what's coming.

Don't freak out on the stock market. You know what's coming. A big tightening of the belt, a natural correction. What you don't know is if there's another shoe out to dry. There are a lot of bad things in the economy that is going to cause this to look, I believe, like the 1970s. But we made it through the 1970s. What we don't know is who's going to be controlling congress, who's going to control the White House. Is it going to be Jimmy Carter? And we also don't know is there going to be a spike in terror or anything else? If that shoe drops, then we're in real trouble.

 Nevada and South Carolina. Party!

 

Last week I made a video on YouTube and I didn't think that it would be something that would be so huge. I didn't think that it would be -- you know, it was the number two video watched over the last few days on YouTube. I mean, why, I don't know. Maybe because I was honest in a world where most people aren't, I guess. Most people like me, I'm honest, and I shared with you a bit of the story of what happened to me. I believe if I haven't had listened to promptings, I'd be dead today. I also learned an awful lot about compassion. I went into the hospital and -- well, let me give you the story from the beginning.

It was the day after Christmas. I went in for just regular surgery and I went into a place that's not even -- I mean, this used to be a two- or three-day hospital stay but because better living through pharmaceuticals, I'm sorry, better living through HMOs, we no longer put people in the hospital for this. Nothing has changed. We just don't pay for it anymore. So congratulations on that. You get to go home right after the surgery.

So I went to this place and I'm going to name names. My doctors are Littlejohn and McClain from Stamford, Connecticut and they are the best of the best. These guys are absolutely amazing. I have the best team of doctors you can imagine. So Littlejohn and McClain, I go in and they're performing the surgery and McClain is, you know, the guy with the knife and the anesthesiologist, he's there and he puts me under and I'm at this place called the Tully Hall Center. The nurse, when I first walk in, the first thing I say to her after about ten minutes of talking to me, I said, can I tell you something? Already this experience is the best experience because I am so nervous about all of this stuff and you've made me feel so good about everything. She was just fantastic. And I had a great experience. I go in, I go under.

Now, this is where it starts to go awry. Starts to go awry after the surgery. The anesthesiologist told me later, he said, I didn't want  want to say anything but this is the worst case I've ever seen. He said, and I've never had anybody wake up on the table before. He said, as soon as I turned you off, as soon as I turned all the juice off because we were done, he said, you woke up and turned around and said, I'm in pain. He said, so I turned everything back on. It took three hours to stabilize me on pain.

This is where it went bad. I was on morphine, fentanyl which I found out later is an end-of-life drug, Toradol, percocet, and a morphine pump, some sort of -- it started with an N. I don't remember what it was but something else that they gave me with a pump every six minutes I could take it. Morphine, fentanyl, Toradol, percocet every two hours and a morphine pump. I was screwed up.

When I was in the recovery room, the nurse who was watching me, I would hear alarm bells and she would say, "Mr. Beck, breathe, Mr. Beck, just take a deep breath." I was not breathing. I was so under the influence of drugs that I kept going under and just, I'd stop breathing. And the doctor worked his -- he was fantastic. He worked his brains out to try to keep me out of pain but alive. Well, that evening he wanted to put me into the hospital and the last place I wanted to go was the hospital and my wife, much to her chagrin, let me make the decision on going to the hospital and I didn't, and I went home for about two hours. I went home and I got a blessing from a member of my church and then I got back into the car and I went back to the hospital. 

This is where things went really awry because this is where I came to encounter our healthcare system as it stands today. And by the end of the story you will hear, after this story hit the Drudge Report on Friday, the head of the hospital called me and he was all freaked out. I'll tell you where this guy just doesn't get it but you have to wait for the end of the story. You'll get it right away because I'm betting that you've had experiences just like this.

I went back to the hospital and before we left the house, the doctors said, you call me and we will call in advance to make sure they're all ready for you. So we did. Now, I'm in massive, massive pain. I still have these patches on me, these fentanyl patches which is at the end of life when you have been on morphine for a very long time and you have cancer and you're going to die from it, they put these fentanyl patches on you. I found out later, or I read the directions on the box that they stop your breathing. They can kill you. They're as serious as you can possibly get. I'm still in agonizing pain. I'm still taking percocet on top of it.

I go to the hospital because I can't take the pain anymore and I also can't go to the bathroom. So I have to be catheterized. I get to the hospital, I walk through the front door. I shouldn't say that. Impractically carried by my wife. She's helping me into the front desk, the reception area. The lady barely looks at me at the front desk. Now, I'm crying. I know that's unusual, you know, for me. I'm crying. My wife is holding me up and she says, my husband's doctor called, they're expecting him, he needs to have a catheter put in and he needs pain medication right away; he needs to be admitted. She said, okay, well, have a seat. And I just looked at her with tears in my eyes and I said, I don't think I can. She said, oh, yeah, hang on just a second. So she went back, she came back and said, somebody will be with you in a second. So we waited. She went back behind the counter and she talked to the two other nurses that were standing there and they talked about the things that they were going to do that weekend and, you know, what their holidays were like, et cetera, et cetera. They were having a pleasant old time. Meanwhile my wife is holding me up still waiting for the nurse to come back. Finally I said, excuse me, ma'am, is somebody coming for us? What is the latest? She said, jeez, I'll check, let me look, I'll go to triage and I'll look. 

She went and she looked into a window that was about 15, 20 feet away from us. She looked into a window and said, he's with somebody right now, he'll be with you in a moment. Just then the door opened up and he came out, the triage nurse. And he looked at me and I'm still weeping, clearly in pain, can't sit down. My doctor has called and I said, yes, my doctor has called. He said, just a minute. Next? He called somebody else who was sitting down. He went in. My wife said to me, "Honey, go lay down on the couch." I said, "Honey, I'll never get back up." She said, come on. So she went, she took me over to the couch and she laid me down on the couch there.

  This is where it's a good thing that some of us don't carry handguns all the time because this is where I about lost my mind. As I laid down on the couch, few minutes go by. The triage nurse then comes in and he says, okay, Mr. Beck. Now, I'm trying to get up off of this couch. My wife, who weighs half of what I weigh, is trying to help me up. This guy, this triage nurse, is 250, 300 pounds, big guy. Not only does he not go to help my wife help me up, he actually had the audacity to stand there and drum his fingers against the door and look at us like, come on, come on, come on. He never made eye contact with me during the whole time. He had his back to me most of the time. I went in, he gave the triage and he walked me back to the back. I'm sorry. He didn't walk me back. My wife practically carried me to the back. He kept looking at us. He got way ahead of us. He kept looking at us like, come on, keep up.

Finally a nurse who is about half my size, a guy, he turned around and he saw us come into the emergency room and he said, oh, my gosh, do you need help? He was the first guy, after about 40 minutes of somebody saying, do you need help. Don't talk to me about healthcare. Don't talk to me about HMOs. Don't talk to me about anything else. Don't talk to me about how you need a new CAT scan. Don't talk to me about how you need a new facility. Talk to me about how you could have a hospital full of people that don't see people in pain. When he said to me, "Do you need help," I immediately broke out again in gratitude for that guy not because I was in pain but for the compassion that he showed not to me but to my wife. My wife was suffering just as much as I was. My wife was trying to put on a brave face, was trying to help her husband walk, and he was the only guy that caught it.

We sat in that ER with no pain medication, after my doctor called, with no pain medication and my bladder fully extended. Your bladder usually holds about 400ccs. My bladder, when they finally emptied it, was 1500. It was so stretched out they had to keep me on a catheter for days to be able to bring it back into line. Took almost two hours before I got any help. Then when I went up and I was checked in, I insisted that my wife go home. They checked me in. It was about 4:00 in the morning now. I said to the nurse, I said, I'm having problems breathing. You've got to help me with the breathing. My anesthesiologist said that you need to monitor me. She looked at me and said, you look like you're breathing fine to me. Handed me a pillow and wished me good night. Wasn't until the next morning, I tried to stay awake as much as I could. My doctor came in and said, you haven't used the morphine pump at all. Are you feeling better? I said no; I'm afraid I'm going to die.

It wasn't until there was a nurse change before the doctor came in. She went on her own. She went and she got oxygen to put oxygen on my face. She monitored, on her own while the other nurse hadn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I was afraid I wasn't going to open my eyes up again.

Later that turned into something much more dark. I was in the hospital for five days. They had me on this medication for five days. I got into the hospital after coming off of a huge tour, the most successful tour we've ever done, most spiritually uplifting tour we've done. We just finished, we're what, our book has been number one or number two on the New York Times list now for six weeks? Bigger success than we could possibly imagine. Television is a huge success, radio is a huge success. I went into the hospital on a Thursday, feeling pretty good. By Saturday night I was ready to kill myself. And not from pain but because I was absolutely void of all hope. There was no hope. Darkness surrounded me like it had never surrounded me before, from things that I swear to you are right out of the movie Saw. The things I saw in my mind's eye over those few days and how it miraculously turned around coming up in just a second.


Glenn, if you died, I would be devestated and cry for days. At least you didn't die and I'm so glad you lived to tell about it. My mom went through the same thing in Canada. She was strpped to a gurney in a hospital hallway for the same amount of time. I feel your pain but every country's health care system. It's a crooked system around this world. You have great people around like your wife who will make you strong again. I love you.

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck returned to the airwaves Monday night with a stern message for the health-care industry, after a recent routine outpatient procedure turned into a medical nightmare and had a severe impact on his mental state.

Beck went in for hemorrhoid surgery and experienced breathing problems while he was at the outpatient facility. His doctors put him on a drug cocktail to ease his pain.

 

"I had the best doctors," Beck said on "Good Morning America" today. "I had problem with medications."

 

The doctors warned Beck he only had two options.

 

"You've got a choice: more pain or more drugs," Beck said his doctors told him. At the time Beck wasn't aware of all the medications he was ingesting.

 

"I had a drug in me that was 80 times stronger than morphine," he said.

 

The cocktail had an impact on Beck's mental state.

 

"I had been convinced that life wasn't going to change. It was just not worth living. It was scary place," he said.

 

Every time Beck shut his eyes, haunting, horror-movielike images plagued him.

 

"It's the only time in my life that could have come out of the movie' Saw' — the things coming out of my head, much drug induced with the medication that they had me on in the hospital," a bedridden Beck said on video posted on his Web site. "I had one of the darker moments of my life."

 

"I was full-fledged suicidal," Beck added. "If they would have come into that room with a handgun. … I would have taken the handgun and ended it all."

 

Beck's wife, Tania, said she could hear in her husband's voice something was awry when she called home one day to check up on him.

 

"I could just hear it in his voice that something wasn't right," she said. "He was in and out of sleep a lot just because of all the medication."

 

In a matter of days, Beck's pain intensified so much, his wife rushed him to a hospital overnight, where Beck said he was shocked to see the lack of understanding hospital employees had for him and his wife.

When we got to the ER there was such a lack of compassion. I've never seen anything like it," Beck said. "

 

Tania carried her husband and held him up as they waited for help, Beck said. Two nurses briefly came out and spoke to the couple. Then an exacerbated triage nurse greeted the two, Beck added.

 

"He never even made eye contact with me," Beck said.

 

Finally another nurse, who noticed Tania carrying her spouse, rushed to the couple and asked them whether they needed help.

 

"I started to cry not because I needed help, but because somebody had compassion for my wife," Beck said.

 

He added his wife was there to help him get through the difficult time, but worries about those, like the elderly, who go in alone and have no outside support.

 

Somebody needs to be a strong advocate for the patients, he said.

 

"People connecting with people, let's emphasize the word care in health care." 


Here what he said on his radio show on Monday:

"This is where it went bad. I was on morphine, fentanyl which I found out later is an end-of-life drug, Toradol, percocet, and a morphine pump...I was screwed up. When I was in the recovery room, the nurse who was watching me, I would hear alarm bells and she would say, 'Mr. Beck, breathe, Mr. Beck, just take a deep breath.' I was not breathing. I was so under the influence of drugs that I kept going under and just, I'd stop breathing."

Glenn, you are a fighter and you can go through this. I'm praying for you and your wife through this tough time. It will be a long road ahead for you. The woman you love has saved you from yourself again!