Keep MSP Afloat
Donation protected
That’s Markham Pyle, in 2012 and in October of 2018: a pretty good editor and writer of nonfiction with a few minor disabilities and health troubles.
Well: that’s how it started.
My name is Dwight Moody, one of Markham’s old Bench-and-Bar-Puck-Club friends; and he’s authorized me to manage this appeal.
In 2012, Markham – “MSP” to all who know him – had recently lost both parents in swift succession, and such cares had taken a toll on his health. All the same, he’d published the first of his solo works on US political history (one of two to date that have been praised by the American novelist Curtis Edmonds) and his co-authored Titanic history, on which he’d lectured as far afield as Connecticut and which journalists even in London and Paris – such as the Sunday Telegraph’s Paris Corresponding Columnist, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet – had applauded.
Sure, he was having some bad nights; and the local hospital had dismissed a stay with the verdict of a touch of colitis, but he was able to keep working and writing.
On the morning of Halloween in 2014, he passed out and face-planted, breaking his nose and splitting open nose and lip. An alert ER doctor, as he was being sewn up, ran some tests. MSP, like his late father before him, had suffered an asymptomatic heart attack: and, it appeared, not for the first time. Even more alarmingly, a scan suggested a bit of damage to his stock-in-trade: his brain.
He was sent immediately to the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, and, a week later, successfully underwent a triple bypass.
Recovery from a triple bypass is slow; but Markham kept – and keeps on – writing, researching, publishing, thinking. And he took on projects as an editor as well. After all, in addition to all else, there were and are medical bills to pay off.
And then, in the Spring of 2018, there was bad news. Gallstones, they told him; change your diet, they said; we don’t like taking out gallbladders in patients who’ve had bypasses. He obeyed.
On September 7 2018, MSP had to go to the ER. It was October 1 before he left the hospital. He’d had several procedures. Twice, he’d nearly bled out and died. They’d hesitated, and left the gallbladder in “for now.” He’d suffered some nerve damage, leaving his left hand almost useless and causing him chronic, incessant pain. There were concerns, too, about brain deficits . . .
In the end, without coverage or money for a rehab stint, they sent him home.
Within two weeks, he was back in the hospital, with acute pancreatitis. A new surgeon wasted no time in taking the gallbladder out; he observed afterward that it ought to have been removed thirty years before, as it had been undermining MSP’s health for that long.
Markham is home now: still recovering, still needing to see a neurologist, buried in bills, and facing an uncertain future.
He's a proud man, and also one humbled by adversity; and a realist. He doesn’t expect that old friends and complete strangers shall or ought to pay off his medical bills in full. But he has authorized me to make this appeal: for aid in getting back on his feet so he can help himself. So he can make a good faith start on repayments; so he can get comprehensive coverage which covers pre-existing conditions; so he can follow up with the necessary specialists.
Your help, if you give it, shall be help indeed, and gratefully noted. If the appeal fails … well, a good man goes under; an excellent writer is silenced; a mind is wasted, and the insights of an acute scholar are lost forever.
I don't want that. I ask that you help if you can.
Well: that’s how it started.
My name is Dwight Moody, one of Markham’s old Bench-and-Bar-Puck-Club friends; and he’s authorized me to manage this appeal.
In 2012, Markham – “MSP” to all who know him – had recently lost both parents in swift succession, and such cares had taken a toll on his health. All the same, he’d published the first of his solo works on US political history (one of two to date that have been praised by the American novelist Curtis Edmonds) and his co-authored Titanic history, on which he’d lectured as far afield as Connecticut and which journalists even in London and Paris – such as the Sunday Telegraph’s Paris Corresponding Columnist, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet – had applauded.
Sure, he was having some bad nights; and the local hospital had dismissed a stay with the verdict of a touch of colitis, but he was able to keep working and writing.
On the morning of Halloween in 2014, he passed out and face-planted, breaking his nose and splitting open nose and lip. An alert ER doctor, as he was being sewn up, ran some tests. MSP, like his late father before him, had suffered an asymptomatic heart attack: and, it appeared, not for the first time. Even more alarmingly, a scan suggested a bit of damage to his stock-in-trade: his brain.
He was sent immediately to the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, and, a week later, successfully underwent a triple bypass.
Recovery from a triple bypass is slow; but Markham kept – and keeps on – writing, researching, publishing, thinking. And he took on projects as an editor as well. After all, in addition to all else, there were and are medical bills to pay off.
And then, in the Spring of 2018, there was bad news. Gallstones, they told him; change your diet, they said; we don’t like taking out gallbladders in patients who’ve had bypasses. He obeyed.
On September 7 2018, MSP had to go to the ER. It was October 1 before he left the hospital. He’d had several procedures. Twice, he’d nearly bled out and died. They’d hesitated, and left the gallbladder in “for now.” He’d suffered some nerve damage, leaving his left hand almost useless and causing him chronic, incessant pain. There were concerns, too, about brain deficits . . .
In the end, without coverage or money for a rehab stint, they sent him home.
Within two weeks, he was back in the hospital, with acute pancreatitis. A new surgeon wasted no time in taking the gallbladder out; he observed afterward that it ought to have been removed thirty years before, as it had been undermining MSP’s health for that long.
Markham is home now: still recovering, still needing to see a neurologist, buried in bills, and facing an uncertain future.
He's a proud man, and also one humbled by adversity; and a realist. He doesn’t expect that old friends and complete strangers shall or ought to pay off his medical bills in full. But he has authorized me to make this appeal: for aid in getting back on his feet so he can help himself. So he can make a good faith start on repayments; so he can get comprehensive coverage which covers pre-existing conditions; so he can follow up with the necessary specialists.
Your help, if you give it, shall be help indeed, and gratefully noted. If the appeal fails … well, a good man goes under; an excellent writer is silenced; a mind is wasted, and the insights of an acute scholar are lost forever.
I don't want that. I ask that you help if you can.
Organizer and beneficiary
Dwight Moody
Organizer
Conroe, TX
Markham Pyle
Beneficiary