There is this rule I have concerning patient viability: if an adult patient of about average height weighs less than my dog, then that is Not Good. This rule, over the years, has become more stringent and more likely a predictor of patient outcome, as we have gone from owning rather quite big dogs to, in deference to my spouse's preferences, sturdier but not-quite-as-big dogs.
So this admission was a cachectic 90-year-old man who looked the part of a poster-boy for cancer or some other chronic wasting disease. My wrists were of greater diameter than his legs, and I am myself rather slight.
His lungs rattled like loose tools in the back of 1960 Chevy pickup truck going over ten miles of bad road. Dragging chains. Karen Carpenter on her death-bed probably looked better. No kidding. And though my dog had been placed on a stricter diet by our ever-chastising Dr. Vet, this patient underweighed him by many pounds.
We settled him into bed, examined him, cranked up his oxygen a little, and then his deranged family came to the nurse station, demanding to know "what was wrong with him."
The oldest daughter seemed most insistent, and after sizing up the situation and escorting people to the patient's room, I pulled her aside and apologized for the lack of a family lounge on our unit. There in the hallway I simply said "Your father is dying."
I just tell people what I think. Of course, I cannot offer a medical diagnosis, but I do not feel comfortable holding back on things about which I feel some certainty.
She didn't want to hear it. "There's nothing wrong with him, he's never been sick in his life, he was very athletic, that's not what the doctor told us," and on and on. You could float a barge on it. And she accentuated her plaints of denial with demand after demand on behalf of her poor dad, who was doing all he could just to draw air without lapsing immediately into a coma. To my ears, his every rapid sour breath said "Vent me."
But as there was "nothing wrong with him" the daughter did not want such matters as artificial ventilation even to be discussed. Ever. Anywhere.
Every obvious and reasonable observation I brought to the daughter's attention regarding her father's plight was met with a ferocity I usually associate with large cats in the wilds protecting their babies from, say, hyenas or something.
As a matter of fact, she demanded that we get him up out of bed. "He wants to get up in a chair and he hates being in bed," she insisted. The tele monitor showed his resting heartrate at 140-something, and I explained that in my humble opinion and in light of the stress already suffered by this patient, perhaps now was not the right time.
"Then get somebody else to do it," she demanded. I looked to her husband, and quietly told him that as a nurse, I could not work like this. The look on his face said "sorry opinionless bastard" to me, and by then the daughter and other family members had assisted the patient to a sitting position at the edge of the bed. A moment later he fell over sideways back onto the pillows.
They were furious with me for assisting the patient to a more comfortable position in his bed. While I left the room they howled at me for my merciless cruel behavior towards their dear father in his moment of need.
As expected, my manager was brought into it, and he was as usual quietly supportive of me.
The next day, actually, it was my manager who cared for the patient, because we had sick calls and I suppose everybody just thought it would be better that way. I remember the family seeming to be a little less histrionic in its demands.
The patient died early that afternoon.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Thanks, Howard
No, not that "Howard." I found this little gem while perusing the comments over at Eschaton:
One huge problem Bush has is that all of the abstract pro-Iraq war arguments--freedom, flypaper, war on terror--are unmeasurable, whereas anti-Iraq war arguments are grounded in concrete facts: lives lost, money spent, terrorists trained in Iraq. You would think our first MBA president would have known that any project needs quantifiable benchmarks. Like the old joke: "Whatcha doin'?" "Nothing." "How will you know when you're done?"
Howard McNear
That's why we here in this portion of the political spectrum are routinely referred to as reality-based. We address concrete reality. Lives. Dollars and cents. Jobs. Numbers. Simple truths. Things that can be counted, and ideas that can be counted upon to work well.
Then, of course, you have all the rest on the Bush end of the debate spectrum: the Intelligent Design is a Theory crowd, the Dominionism fascists, the Light at the End of the Tunnel sect, the Mission Accomplished set-designers, the Save Social Security by Giving it to a Bunch of Rich White Guys proponents, et al ad infinitum. You know, people who have "values." Immeasurable values, that is.
I suppose it is much easier to fool people with talk about abstract values than it would be to fool them with the simple truth.
Cindy Sheehan is not fooled. She can count to one. And that is too much.
One huge problem Bush has is that all of the abstract pro-Iraq war arguments--freedom, flypaper, war on terror--are unmeasurable, whereas anti-Iraq war arguments are grounded in concrete facts: lives lost, money spent, terrorists trained in Iraq. You would think our first MBA president would have known that any project needs quantifiable benchmarks. Like the old joke: "Whatcha doin'?" "Nothing." "How will you know when you're done?"
Howard McNear
That's why we here in this portion of the political spectrum are routinely referred to as reality-based. We address concrete reality. Lives. Dollars and cents. Jobs. Numbers. Simple truths. Things that can be counted, and ideas that can be counted upon to work well.
Then, of course, you have all the rest on the Bush end of the debate spectrum: the Intelligent Design is a Theory crowd, the Dominionism fascists, the Light at the End of the Tunnel sect, the Mission Accomplished set-designers, the Save Social Security by Giving it to a Bunch of Rich White Guys proponents, et al ad infinitum. You know, people who have "values." Immeasurable values, that is.
I suppose it is much easier to fool people with talk about abstract values than it would be to fool them with the simple truth.
Cindy Sheehan is not fooled. She can count to one. And that is too much.
Lazare
This stuff was so bad, that not even Hitler would use it.
In the great carnage of 1916-17 there were approximately 17,700 gas casualties counting the Somme, Chemin des Dames, and Passchendaele alone. These numbers would grow considerably higher due to the large number of deaths after the war that would be directly attributed to gas exposure. Despite this high casualty count for both sides, the use of gas continued to grow. By 1918, one in every four artillery shells fired contained gas of one type or another.
In 1918 a German corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was temporarily blinded by a British gas attack in Flanders. Having suffered the agonies of gas first hand, his fear of the weapon would prevent him from deploying it as a tactical weapon on the battlefields of the Second World War.
(The link is here.)
But of course Hitler had non-tactical uses for gas during the World War Two period. Damn him.
It was really great how the generals knew that these weapons were really just weapons of terror, creating confusion and death both for the attackers and the defenders, but use continued to grow until the war itself ended. What does that tell you?
They never learn. Well, young Adolph did, because he was in a gas attack, unlike the generals of World War One (or, as "musician" Lawrence Welk once referred to it, World War eye. I was at my grandparents house, it was on TV, and I heard that myself.)
I could get sick from the irony. Humor protects me.
Andre Malraux wrote about the gas attacks, and around here somewhere I've got a copy of "Lazarus" in which he describes an episode so chaotic and horrendous that opposing fighters left their trenches and began saving everybody they could, even enemy soldiers. The leaves melted off the trees. Warriors on all sides had come to realize that at that moment, they were not enemies.
The gas was the enemy, and they conspired as well as they could so save themselves from it, dragging one another, coughing and heaving, away from the killing low clouds.
I suppose they did it without even thinking, just going on some impulse deep in the lizard brain activated by a sudden and perhaps unconscious stimulation that made them stop the fight long enough to try to save one another.
Is that the same impulse you felt when you saw little Ali Abbas on the cover of Newsweek back in the spring of 2003? Somebody, some of us perhaps, saved him, Yet some of us also bombed his arms off.
I have not linked to a photo of that famous magazine cover because in your mind's eye you can probably already see it. It has become and will likely remain as one of this folly's lasting emblems, like the famous girl in the picture from the Vietnam War era.
Even if we "win," we will lose, because to win we will just be making a lot more little Ali Abbas. And they will grow up, and they will not be our friends, because of what we did to them. So we will end up killing them, and a bunch of our own soldiers, too, because our leaders are dumber than you-know-who and they will never learn.
To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
Andre Malraux
What does that tell you?
In the great carnage of 1916-17 there were approximately 17,700 gas casualties counting the Somme, Chemin des Dames, and Passchendaele alone. These numbers would grow considerably higher due to the large number of deaths after the war that would be directly attributed to gas exposure. Despite this high casualty count for both sides, the use of gas continued to grow. By 1918, one in every four artillery shells fired contained gas of one type or another.
In 1918 a German corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was temporarily blinded by a British gas attack in Flanders. Having suffered the agonies of gas first hand, his fear of the weapon would prevent him from deploying it as a tactical weapon on the battlefields of the Second World War.
(The link is here.)
But of course Hitler had non-tactical uses for gas during the World War Two period. Damn him.
It was really great how the generals knew that these weapons were really just weapons of terror, creating confusion and death both for the attackers and the defenders, but use continued to grow until the war itself ended. What does that tell you?
They never learn. Well, young Adolph did, because he was in a gas attack, unlike the generals of World War One (or, as "musician" Lawrence Welk once referred to it, World War eye. I was at my grandparents house, it was on TV, and I heard that myself.)
I could get sick from the irony. Humor protects me.
Andre Malraux wrote about the gas attacks, and around here somewhere I've got a copy of "Lazarus" in which he describes an episode so chaotic and horrendous that opposing fighters left their trenches and began saving everybody they could, even enemy soldiers. The leaves melted off the trees. Warriors on all sides had come to realize that at that moment, they were not enemies.
The gas was the enemy, and they conspired as well as they could so save themselves from it, dragging one another, coughing and heaving, away from the killing low clouds.
I suppose they did it without even thinking, just going on some impulse deep in the lizard brain activated by a sudden and perhaps unconscious stimulation that made them stop the fight long enough to try to save one another.
Is that the same impulse you felt when you saw little Ali Abbas on the cover of Newsweek back in the spring of 2003? Somebody, some of us perhaps, saved him, Yet some of us also bombed his arms off.
I have not linked to a photo of that famous magazine cover because in your mind's eye you can probably already see it. It has become and will likely remain as one of this folly's lasting emblems, like the famous girl in the picture from the Vietnam War era.
Even if we "win," we will lose, because to win we will just be making a lot more little Ali Abbas. And they will grow up, and they will not be our friends, because of what we did to them. So we will end up killing them, and a bunch of our own soldiers, too, because our leaders are dumber than you-know-who and they will never learn.
To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
Andre Malraux
What does that tell you?
Friday, August 19, 2005
Sylvia Plath at 2:30 A.M.
Usually there first occurs a mysterious and beautiful introduction, sometimes as brief and soft as a French Baroque unmeasured harpsichord prelude, but sometimes as passionate and driving as Tristan and Isolde. These are actually quite enjoyable, but for the dread of the impending pain, if I am awake to savor it.
Unfortunately, these attacks often come in the darkest night hours. Typically, about 2:30 in the morning. I hate that because then I miss the good part. I don't much notice the aura if I am dozing during it. It becomes interwoven in the loose dream-fabric of my usually fitful attempts at sleep.
Just now I am realizing how the glowing waves of the Encinitas red tides very much resemble the visual light-storms of my auras. The beauty of these is beyond description.
Then comes the discomfort. Often other sufferers employ the term "vise-like" to describe the grip in which the pain squeezes the head; or rather, a good half of it. Throbbing, scintillating, pounding, hammering, the God of Ache arches through the hemisphere with the dull tenacity of an hydraulic lift upon which an auto rises for inspection.
Then all work stops. Other stars in the constellation begin to shine. The bladder calls. For me, a round of explosive sneezes numbering in the teens passes before the wet-sock leprechauns stuff my nose adroitly. At least that stops the nasal runniness. The tour includes a halt for the lower digestive tract, and often an episode of emesis.
Emesis with or without nausea. It depends, like so many things, on nothing. Interesting, that.
I've had hospital patients who get "abdominal migraines" without headache; frequently these are young males. Sorry, those. One was misdiagnosed with porphyria, of all things, for years, becoming addicted to opiates and getting a PortaCath in the process. But that's another story. One of the few times we called the local police to help us with a patient. They all knew him and his mother.
Life before Imitrex: caffeine. With a healthy ibuprofen dose. Not good in the middle of all-precious sleeping time. NSAIDs and vomiting do the esophagus no good, no good at all, and lead to other concerns. I would then be up. and as the migraine leaked out of my head, I could catch up on a little reading or studying.
So as not to disturb the others, headphones are nice, and when the headache fades I am still awake but a little music becomes tolerable and passes the time until drowsiness recurs.
My introduction to Imitrex (sumatriptan succinate,) the first of a subsequent whole family of vasoconstricting triptans, (I think Relpax, or eletriptan, is the latest newcomer,) came after a span of three days of intense sleepless pain. I had missed work, and finally my spouse took me to the local ER at the hospital in which I was then newly employed, in the middle of their night shift. My oral temperature was 94-something degrees from putting ice on my head. Useless, that.
Don, the nurse supervisor who I came to know later (marathoner and demerol thief, another story,) administered a subcutaneous dose of Imitrex, then a brand-spanking-new drug, and within five minutes the leaden fog on my head lifted and I was free at last.
Well not free free. I was uninsured, having just started that job. The ER bill was about $650 which I had payroll-deducted over the next few months, harmlessly.
I was the only patient in that rural ER.
A 3 a.m. code was called on the floor where I worked the day shift.
While lying on an ER gurney, time passes by at the rate of continental drift.
We finished the lovely paperwork and went home.
At that time Imitrex came only in an injectable form, still the best route in my opinion, as then one's probable emesis will not cause one to "waste" a dose (an oral dose, anyways,) away. For a mere $75 you got two doses. I quickly learned that about a half-dose would work for me, and research showed that worked with a good number of other migrainers. Still, it added up over those periods in which the migraines came a few times a week.
Now there are nasal sprays and tablets, and I have insurance so I do not need a $37.50 headache to justify a dose of Imitrex.
Lucky ducky me.
Like an elephant not wishing to confront the mouse in his path, the migraine turns and lumbers away, leaving only the dark quiet peacefulness that slowly succumbs to the dawn.
Unfortunately, these attacks often come in the darkest night hours. Typically, about 2:30 in the morning. I hate that because then I miss the good part. I don't much notice the aura if I am dozing during it. It becomes interwoven in the loose dream-fabric of my usually fitful attempts at sleep.
Just now I am realizing how the glowing waves of the Encinitas red tides very much resemble the visual light-storms of my auras. The beauty of these is beyond description.
Then comes the discomfort. Often other sufferers employ the term "vise-like" to describe the grip in which the pain squeezes the head; or rather, a good half of it. Throbbing, scintillating, pounding, hammering, the God of Ache arches through the hemisphere with the dull tenacity of an hydraulic lift upon which an auto rises for inspection.
Then all work stops. Other stars in the constellation begin to shine. The bladder calls. For me, a round of explosive sneezes numbering in the teens passes before the wet-sock leprechauns stuff my nose adroitly. At least that stops the nasal runniness. The tour includes a halt for the lower digestive tract, and often an episode of emesis.
Emesis with or without nausea. It depends, like so many things, on nothing. Interesting, that.
I've had hospital patients who get "abdominal migraines" without headache; frequently these are young males. Sorry, those. One was misdiagnosed with porphyria, of all things, for years, becoming addicted to opiates and getting a PortaCath in the process. But that's another story. One of the few times we called the local police to help us with a patient. They all knew him and his mother.
Life before Imitrex: caffeine. With a healthy ibuprofen dose. Not good in the middle of all-precious sleeping time. NSAIDs and vomiting do the esophagus no good, no good at all, and lead to other concerns. I would then be up. and as the migraine leaked out of my head, I could catch up on a little reading or studying.
So as not to disturb the others, headphones are nice, and when the headache fades I am still awake but a little music becomes tolerable and passes the time until drowsiness recurs.
My introduction to Imitrex (sumatriptan succinate,) the first of a subsequent whole family of vasoconstricting triptans, (I think Relpax, or eletriptan, is the latest newcomer,) came after a span of three days of intense sleepless pain. I had missed work, and finally my spouse took me to the local ER at the hospital in which I was then newly employed, in the middle of their night shift. My oral temperature was 94-something degrees from putting ice on my head. Useless, that.
Don, the nurse supervisor who I came to know later (marathoner and demerol thief, another story,) administered a subcutaneous dose of Imitrex, then a brand-spanking-new drug, and within five minutes the leaden fog on my head lifted and I was free at last.
Well not free free. I was uninsured, having just started that job. The ER bill was about $650 which I had payroll-deducted over the next few months, harmlessly.
I was the only patient in that rural ER.
A 3 a.m. code was called on the floor where I worked the day shift.
While lying on an ER gurney, time passes by at the rate of continental drift.
We finished the lovely paperwork and went home.
At that time Imitrex came only in an injectable form, still the best route in my opinion, as then one's probable emesis will not cause one to "waste" a dose (an oral dose, anyways,) away. For a mere $75 you got two doses. I quickly learned that about a half-dose would work for me, and research showed that worked with a good number of other migrainers. Still, it added up over those periods in which the migraines came a few times a week.
Now there are nasal sprays and tablets, and I have insurance so I do not need a $37.50 headache to justify a dose of Imitrex.
Lucky ducky me.
Like an elephant not wishing to confront the mouse in his path, the migraine turns and lumbers away, leaving only the dark quiet peacefulness that slowly succumbs to the dawn.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Lucky to See
It wasn't really all that red, but the water near the shore did sometimes look a little muddy. Mostly clear. During the day we didn't notice anything at all, really. That there was a rather uncommon red tide only became apparent after sunset, when the waves began to eerily flicker and glow.
It was beautiful while we stood in the shallow water where the ocean meets the beach. It was beautiful as we gazed up and down the coast for miles. And it was beautiful from the viewpoints up on the sandy bluffs. We went every night.
As the waves crested, for a few seconds the frothy peaks would flare up with an electric green-blue light. This snuffed out as the wave would smooth itself onto the slope of the shore. There was only a faint crescent of a moon, and as the waves lit up rather brightly this phenomenom was visible all along the beach as far as one could see.
Of course, it was nice during the day, too.
It was beautiful while we stood in the shallow water where the ocean meets the beach. It was beautiful as we gazed up and down the coast for miles. And it was beautiful from the viewpoints up on the sandy bluffs. We went every night.
As the waves crested, for a few seconds the frothy peaks would flare up with an electric green-blue light. This snuffed out as the wave would smooth itself onto the slope of the shore. There was only a faint crescent of a moon, and as the waves lit up rather brightly this phenomenom was visible all along the beach as far as one could see.
Of course, it was nice during the day, too.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
And She Just Wants to Ask Him Why
Regarding the Camp Casey movement, and yes, Virginia, it is a movement, President Bush has taken time from his all-important vacation to remind us all that he has to get on with his life. Unlike a certain (currently dead) soldier whose mother is presently changing the debate about this senseless war.
Bush needs five weeks of vacation, just to sit around and think up insensitive and utterly stupid things like that to say.
Somebody remind me where I read this, but the thing about Cindy Sheehan is that she, as stated above, is changing the debate.
It's not about weapons of mass destruction, nor Saddam's non-existent ties to bin Laden, nor spreading democracy (for the women of Iraq this is a particularly piquant point,) nor securing a large reserve of fossil fuel, nor preserving America's freedom, nor even about stuffing Halliburton's coffers with loot.
No.
It's about sending our young people off to die and destroying their families.
Aragorn gets it, so why don't some of your local newspaper editorialists get it?
Bush needs five weeks of vacation, just to sit around and think up insensitive and utterly stupid things like that to say.
Somebody remind me where I read this, but the thing about Cindy Sheehan is that she, as stated above, is changing the debate.
It's not about weapons of mass destruction, nor Saddam's non-existent ties to bin Laden, nor spreading democracy (for the women of Iraq this is a particularly piquant point,) nor securing a large reserve of fossil fuel, nor preserving America's freedom, nor even about stuffing Halliburton's coffers with loot.
No.
It's about sending our young people off to die and destroying their families.
Aragorn gets it, so why don't some of your local newspaper editorialists get it?
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Later
Beach books:
Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Justin A. Frank, M.D.
Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderella Man by Jim Hague
The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore
I usually bring a chess book, so I'll continue working through David Bronstein's coverage of the 1953 Zurich International Chess Tournament. His annotations are golden.
The young one and I, we're taking a break from C.S. Lewis but we will be thoroughly prepared when the anticipated new movie comes out at the end of the year. Instead we're reading-aloud Warriors: Into the Wild, by Erin Hunter, the beginning of a series about the Thunderclan and various other cats. It's a wonderful re-imagination of the local feral and pet cats that inhabit what appears to be an English countryside farm.
I am still moving up the metronome on Fernando Sor's Variations on a Theme From the Magic Flute, which I never played back in my college days, oddly. Searching still for some other fairly large piece to tackle, maybe a Dowland fantasie or a Weiss suite.
No work. No computer. No worries.
Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Justin A. Frank, M.D.
Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderella Man by Jim Hague
The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore
I usually bring a chess book, so I'll continue working through David Bronstein's coverage of the 1953 Zurich International Chess Tournament. His annotations are golden.
The young one and I, we're taking a break from C.S. Lewis but we will be thoroughly prepared when the anticipated new movie comes out at the end of the year. Instead we're reading-aloud Warriors: Into the Wild, by Erin Hunter, the beginning of a series about the Thunderclan and various other cats. It's a wonderful re-imagination of the local feral and pet cats that inhabit what appears to be an English countryside farm.
I am still moving up the metronome on Fernando Sor's Variations on a Theme From the Magic Flute, which I never played back in my college days, oddly. Searching still for some other fairly large piece to tackle, maybe a Dowland fantasie or a Weiss suite.
No work. No computer. No worries.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Over the Rainbow
Where do spoken words go after these are sounded out? Do they just disappear, trailing off into nothingness? Or do they continue to resound throughout the boundless sphere, leaving history in their ever-widening wake?
No, I'm not asking this in the spirit of a religious searcher, I just want to know how all the various things come about; how they are made and how then they become un-made. As in, where do things go?
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser
How do stories begin and end?
Where, precisely, do things come from?
Where do nurses come from?
Well, nursing schools, of course. But some people come out of these programs pretty much as raw material, not as "nurses" yet. They only develop their full potential after sustained apprenticeship in a clinical setting. However, there are others who leave nursing school like Athena, bursting forth in full armor and regalia.
Recently I worked with a student who was Robert-Redford-knocking-the-lights-out-in-the-movie-The-Natural good. Some people are just born with the ability to thread an IV catheter into a vein so tiny it would qualifiy for cosmological string-theory study.
And then there are "the dumb ones," but these are rather rare, only because nursing programs are such meat-grinders that if a student shows any propensity at all for failing the board exams (and thusly pulling down the success rate of the program, which nursing school deans do not like,) then they get the boot. They go to business school, I suppose, and then on into the lost realms of investment banking, law firms, upper management, or congressional politics.
Needless to say, that does little to allay the nursing shortage.
Over the years I have seen many people who, with a little effort on the part of their instructors and other working nurses, could have been pulled along. But these are exactly the kind of people that get the hatchet before the final stages of training.
I enjoy working with both the bright ones and the dim ones. The dimmer the better, as far as I'm concerned, as they will benefit more from training than somebody who already displays skills. It's fun to see the light spreading on their abilities, as these develop.
They become part of the chain. Every day, a nurse will learn something from a patient, another nurse, a doctor, or a technician. And then sometime in the future, they will apply that bit of crust of knowledge on to another's healing process. It gets passed along in an ever-increasing outward spiral. It goes someplace.
No, I'm not asking this in the spirit of a religious searcher, I just want to know how all the various things come about; how they are made and how then they become un-made. As in, where do things go?
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser
How do stories begin and end?
Where, precisely, do things come from?
Where do nurses come from?
Well, nursing schools, of course. But some people come out of these programs pretty much as raw material, not as "nurses" yet. They only develop their full potential after sustained apprenticeship in a clinical setting. However, there are others who leave nursing school like Athena, bursting forth in full armor and regalia.
Recently I worked with a student who was Robert-Redford-knocking-the-lights-out-in-the-movie-The-Natural good. Some people are just born with the ability to thread an IV catheter into a vein so tiny it would qualifiy for cosmological string-theory study.
And then there are "the dumb ones," but these are rather rare, only because nursing programs are such meat-grinders that if a student shows any propensity at all for failing the board exams (and thusly pulling down the success rate of the program, which nursing school deans do not like,) then they get the boot. They go to business school, I suppose, and then on into the lost realms of investment banking, law firms, upper management, or congressional politics.
Needless to say, that does little to allay the nursing shortage.
Over the years I have seen many people who, with a little effort on the part of their instructors and other working nurses, could have been pulled along. But these are exactly the kind of people that get the hatchet before the final stages of training.
I enjoy working with both the bright ones and the dim ones. The dimmer the better, as far as I'm concerned, as they will benefit more from training than somebody who already displays skills. It's fun to see the light spreading on their abilities, as these develop.
They become part of the chain. Every day, a nurse will learn something from a patient, another nurse, a doctor, or a technician. And then sometime in the future, they will apply that bit of crust of knowledge on to another's healing process. It gets passed along in an ever-increasing outward spiral. It goes someplace.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
People Who Need People are the Loneliest People
I do not think that it would be unfair to say that Patrick Haab has a mental health condition that would benefit from treatment. It seems I am not alone in holding this opinion.
Two months after arriving in Kuwait, the records state, Haab was pulled out of the cultural awareness class by his superior and ordered to talk to a chaplain. A few hours later, he became distraught, threatened to commit suicide and got into a scuffle with military officials attempting to take away a hidden knife.
There will be more of our service men and women returning to our shores with problems similar to, and greater than, those displayed by the unfortunate Sgt. Haab. That, after all, is just what war is all about. It's about ruining people.
According to the records, he received counseling for five months and a military official said "he did not think Sgt. Haab was ready to return to duty or become a functioning part of society." Military officials found out that while on "med hold" at Fort Bragg, Haab spent $12,000 on a .50-caliber sniper rifle. They were concerned enough to contact the Surgeon General's Office.
Robert Anglen has the whole story here.
This comes to light after the revelation of President Bush's 2006 budget, which of course includes huge cuts to federally-supported mental health care programs. It is possible that Sgt. Haab may not get sufficient treatment to allay further problems.
I do not think that the unfolding tragedy of his life is yet over. I truly fear for what is yet to come.
I am also wondering why Bush would wish to cut funding for the treatment of people who suffer as Sgt. Haab does. Perhaps Bush really doesn't think that such people even need medical help. So why fund it?
Maybe Bush thinks there's nothing wrong with Sgt. Haab.
Let me also say this: because so many of the homeless and mentally ill are military veterans, any cuts to programs that serve the homeless and mentally ill are budget cuts against veterans themselves.
Again, any cuts to programs that serve the homeless and mentally ill are budget cuts against veterans themselves.
Maybe the Bush Republicans think there's nothing wrong with that. It's really better to give Barbara Streisand a large permanent tax break, no?
Two months after arriving in Kuwait, the records state, Haab was pulled out of the cultural awareness class by his superior and ordered to talk to a chaplain. A few hours later, he became distraught, threatened to commit suicide and got into a scuffle with military officials attempting to take away a hidden knife.
There will be more of our service men and women returning to our shores with problems similar to, and greater than, those displayed by the unfortunate Sgt. Haab. That, after all, is just what war is all about. It's about ruining people.
According to the records, he received counseling for five months and a military official said "he did not think Sgt. Haab was ready to return to duty or become a functioning part of society." Military officials found out that while on "med hold" at Fort Bragg, Haab spent $12,000 on a .50-caliber sniper rifle. They were concerned enough to contact the Surgeon General's Office.
Robert Anglen has the whole story here.
This comes to light after the revelation of President Bush's 2006 budget, which of course includes huge cuts to federally-supported mental health care programs. It is possible that Sgt. Haab may not get sufficient treatment to allay further problems.
I do not think that the unfolding tragedy of his life is yet over. I truly fear for what is yet to come.
I am also wondering why Bush would wish to cut funding for the treatment of people who suffer as Sgt. Haab does. Perhaps Bush really doesn't think that such people even need medical help. So why fund it?
Maybe Bush thinks there's nothing wrong with Sgt. Haab.
Let me also say this: because so many of the homeless and mentally ill are military veterans, any cuts to programs that serve the homeless and mentally ill are budget cuts against veterans themselves.
Again, any cuts to programs that serve the homeless and mentally ill are budget cuts against veterans themselves.
Maybe the Bush Republicans think there's nothing wrong with that. It's really better to give Barbara Streisand a large permanent tax break, no?
Monday, August 01, 2005
Put This on a Yellow Ribbon
Let's see. Say you're a Bush Republican, and you're bored. Nothing to do. Think. What would you do? What would you do?
I know! To satisfy "making the tax cuts permanent," you'd take money away from the troops. AGAIN! Why not? Who's going to try to stop you? John Kerry? Michael Moore? Molly Ivins?
They tried to warn us. They're still trying, and so am I. Lot of good it did the last couple times around, though.
What's it going to be, folks, more hardship for those families who have members serving our country, or a permanent tax break for Ben and J-Lo? If you're a Bush supporter, that's easy. Some military people get shafted out of a few hundred dollar's worth of monthly mortgage money, and the Hollywood celebrities you just love to hate keep enough yearly tax breaks to buy a new Lexus every September until this hell freezes over.
Go ahead. Just try to pin this one on Clinton or the Democrats. Make my day.
I know! To satisfy "making the tax cuts permanent," you'd take money away from the troops. AGAIN! Why not? Who's going to try to stop you? John Kerry? Michael Moore? Molly Ivins?
They tried to warn us. They're still trying, and so am I. Lot of good it did the last couple times around, though.
What's it going to be, folks, more hardship for those families who have members serving our country, or a permanent tax break for Ben and J-Lo? If you're a Bush supporter, that's easy. Some military people get shafted out of a few hundred dollar's worth of monthly mortgage money, and the Hollywood celebrities you just love to hate keep enough yearly tax breaks to buy a new Lexus every September until this hell freezes over.
Go ahead. Just try to pin this one on Clinton or the Democrats. Make my day.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Thanks, Roddy
This was in the Haloscan comments over at Eschaton this morning:
And what does a family need, Rickster?
Lower wages, according to the Republican party. Less access to affordable health care, according to the Republican party. Fewer schools, according to the Republican party. More arsenic in drinking water, according to the Republican party. More mercury in fish, according to the Republican party. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the Republican party. Meat that has not been checked for contaminants like Mad Cow Disease, according to the Republican party.
According to the Republican Party, these are the ingredients for a strong family. And they're working hard to make sure each and every family other than their own has these things.
Roddy McCorley
Obviously a rhetorical response to Senator Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum. He's been on television talk shows like wet paint on a bench all this past week, hawking yet another "family values" book he's written. I'll bet that it's almost as good and wholesome as this philosophical masterpiece. Republican values have devolved into crappy comic book values, and they are proud of this.
It's more bait-and-switch for the red-state high-cholesterol types. Promise them "family values" (also known as homophobia,) but deliver more tax cuts for Tom Cruise and that guy who owns five mediocre Mexican restaurants.
Funny how it gets turned around. I'm for safer water, safer foods, better wages and benefits for working people with families, improved education for anybody willing to work at it, and health care that won't cause bankruptcy.
But according to the likes of Senator Santorum, I'm not "pro-family" because I believe, like most Americans, in a woman's right to control her reproductive life on her own, and I don't hate gay people. (Well, I must admit I do hate some of them, Ken Mehlman, for example. He's a loathesome little jerkwad, in my humble opinion.)
What do you want for your family?
And what does a family need, Rickster?
Lower wages, according to the Republican party. Less access to affordable health care, according to the Republican party. Fewer schools, according to the Republican party. More arsenic in drinking water, according to the Republican party. More mercury in fish, according to the Republican party. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the Republican party. Meat that has not been checked for contaminants like Mad Cow Disease, according to the Republican party.
According to the Republican Party, these are the ingredients for a strong family. And they're working hard to make sure each and every family other than their own has these things.
Roddy McCorley
Obviously a rhetorical response to Senator Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum. He's been on television talk shows like wet paint on a bench all this past week, hawking yet another "family values" book he's written. I'll bet that it's almost as good and wholesome as this philosophical masterpiece. Republican values have devolved into crappy comic book values, and they are proud of this.
It's more bait-and-switch for the red-state high-cholesterol types. Promise them "family values" (also known as homophobia,) but deliver more tax cuts for Tom Cruise and that guy who owns five mediocre Mexican restaurants.
Funny how it gets turned around. I'm for safer water, safer foods, better wages and benefits for working people with families, improved education for anybody willing to work at it, and health care that won't cause bankruptcy.
But according to the likes of Senator Santorum, I'm not "pro-family" because I believe, like most Americans, in a woman's right to control her reproductive life on her own, and I don't hate gay people. (Well, I must admit I do hate some of them, Ken Mehlman, for example. He's a loathesome little jerkwad, in my humble opinion.)
What do you want for your family?
Saturday, July 30, 2005
It's Just
They were hugging by the "time clock." It looked very serious.
I do not know why we all called the device we used to sign in to work a "time clock." Seems like a redundant and useless term. Aren't all clocks "time clocks?"
"Tina" was crying her eyes out. "Leo" gripped her tightly. I walked by puzzled. I had floated to ICU so I didn't need to slide my card at that time clock anyways. I didn't ask.
Their affair was rather well-known. To me, anyways, because one time when I got home they were upstairs in our spare bedroom. I could hear the mattress springs, and I could tell it wasn't just the cats jumping off the bed. Repeatedly.
I never bothered to lock my house when we lived there. On really cold winter days, people would leave their cars running with the keys in while they went in the grocery store to shop so they wouldn't be freezing cold when they got back into their cars. Minus ten degrees does that. Small town mentality. Bears were rare but more common than burglars.
Leo and I were friends outside of work. We would ski in the cold and bike when the winter sands were taken off the roads and the weather warmed.
Leo and Tina had used my house for more than one of their afternoon-before-going-home festivals of love. My spouse had a problem with that. Another time when I came home from work they were again already there. Done, I supposed, because they were sitting on the couch with drinks from my refridgerator. Cordially, they offered me one. Funny, that.
Then my spouse had her little talk with Leo. After which he just moved in for awhile. Even funnier, that.
Tina's husband was a tempermental and difficult man with many problems, so I had heard, and he had finally addressed these issues by blowing his brains out in their bedroom. He was home alone during the day; kids at school, wife at work. The police must have notified her while she was at the hospital, and arrangements were made to get her out of there. The shift was near-finished anyways.
Leo had been consoling her. So it was more than what I'd thought: that they were just coming out at work.
They were, and still are, nurses of great excellence.
Tina took a little time off to move in with her parents and to take care of things. When she got back to work, it was like she was really Superwoman or a Soviet spy or something and we all knew her secret identity, but she covered that up by disguising herself as a nurse. Leo formalized his separation from his wife, who incidentally worked at the same place.
I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of times a nurse plays the role they assume at work, but outside of work their life might be very un-nurse-like, whatever that means.
You might be the same way at your job. Behind your work persona there could be a person in mourning, a person in recovery, a person whose life is just about to take a sudden sharp turn or a slow and wide gyre, or maybe a person who holds the winning ticket. Maybe a person with an undiagnosed dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Nurses can be like that, too, but at work they are always the nurse. Like the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and Holden Caulfield talking about how maybe you just saw a rainbow sheen on a puddle, and you're a different person because of that, but the dinosaur bones are the same.
I left out the "J" word, as usual.
I do not know why we all called the device we used to sign in to work a "time clock." Seems like a redundant and useless term. Aren't all clocks "time clocks?"
"Tina" was crying her eyes out. "Leo" gripped her tightly. I walked by puzzled. I had floated to ICU so I didn't need to slide my card at that time clock anyways. I didn't ask.
Their affair was rather well-known. To me, anyways, because one time when I got home they were upstairs in our spare bedroom. I could hear the mattress springs, and I could tell it wasn't just the cats jumping off the bed. Repeatedly.
I never bothered to lock my house when we lived there. On really cold winter days, people would leave their cars running with the keys in while they went in the grocery store to shop so they wouldn't be freezing cold when they got back into their cars. Minus ten degrees does that. Small town mentality. Bears were rare but more common than burglars.
Leo and I were friends outside of work. We would ski in the cold and bike when the winter sands were taken off the roads and the weather warmed.
Leo and Tina had used my house for more than one of their afternoon-before-going-home festivals of love. My spouse had a problem with that. Another time when I came home from work they were again already there. Done, I supposed, because they were sitting on the couch with drinks from my refridgerator. Cordially, they offered me one. Funny, that.
Then my spouse had her little talk with Leo. After which he just moved in for awhile. Even funnier, that.
Tina's husband was a tempermental and difficult man with many problems, so I had heard, and he had finally addressed these issues by blowing his brains out in their bedroom. He was home alone during the day; kids at school, wife at work. The police must have notified her while she was at the hospital, and arrangements were made to get her out of there. The shift was near-finished anyways.
Leo had been consoling her. So it was more than what I'd thought: that they were just coming out at work.
They were, and still are, nurses of great excellence.
Tina took a little time off to move in with her parents and to take care of things. When she got back to work, it was like she was really Superwoman or a Soviet spy or something and we all knew her secret identity, but she covered that up by disguising herself as a nurse. Leo formalized his separation from his wife, who incidentally worked at the same place.
I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of times a nurse plays the role they assume at work, but outside of work their life might be very un-nurse-like, whatever that means.
You might be the same way at your job. Behind your work persona there could be a person in mourning, a person in recovery, a person whose life is just about to take a sudden sharp turn or a slow and wide gyre, or maybe a person who holds the winning ticket. Maybe a person with an undiagnosed dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Nurses can be like that, too, but at work they are always the nurse. Like the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and Holden Caulfield talking about how maybe you just saw a rainbow sheen on a puddle, and you're a different person because of that, but the dinosaur bones are the same.
I left out the "J" word, as usual.
Reliability Clause
If any of you at all doubt the complete bug-headed idiocy of our dear President Bush, then please click on the video link here. The smirk, the disregard for the power of the camera, his dismissal of the potential posterity of the video record, his insensitivity towards whoever may see it, his lousy judgement, all on tape.
This should be played in every church in the United States on a regular basis, for all congregations to see and meditate upon. This man has his finger, not the same one, I hope, on the nuclear button.
There has been some minor controversy surrounding a video that Leno presented this week on his television show, purporting to capture the president giving a one-finger salute as he walks away from a gaggle of reporters. You can click over to Desert Rat Democrat and take a look, if you are not already familiar with this.
The earlier video, however, is unambiguous. It is a very unflattering glimpse of the man who now leads us. I hope you can both look at it for yourself and then also imagine how it would look to the people of other countries.
Believe me, they don't hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we elected this dangerous plebian second-rate burnt-out frat-boy, twice, to represent us to the whole world.
Thank the stars we have a Constitution that prevents us from electing him yet a third time.
This should be played in every church in the United States on a regular basis, for all congregations to see and meditate upon. This man has his finger, not the same one, I hope, on the nuclear button.
There has been some minor controversy surrounding a video that Leno presented this week on his television show, purporting to capture the president giving a one-finger salute as he walks away from a gaggle of reporters. You can click over to Desert Rat Democrat and take a look, if you are not already familiar with this.
The earlier video, however, is unambiguous. It is a very unflattering glimpse of the man who now leads us. I hope you can both look at it for yourself and then also imagine how it would look to the people of other countries.
Believe me, they don't hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we elected this dangerous plebian second-rate burnt-out frat-boy, twice, to represent us to the whole world.
Thank the stars we have a Constitution that prevents us from electing him yet a third time.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Number 5
If I ever make a rock album, it will have as its penultimate track a parody of "Revolution Number 9" from the Beatles' White Album. But instead of the phrase "number 9, number 9" intoning repeatedly (and which when played backwards allegedly said "Paul is a deadman,") one will hear the phrase "Amendment 5, Amendment 5" which will sound out "due process" no matter how you play it.
From what I can make of it, all the hoo-hah about the recent Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. the City of New London is that it seems to allow municipalities to take private land from private individuals and then turn this property over to other private individuals.
That's kind of like stealing. Hence the concern.
Interestingly, New York State Senator John A. DeFrancisco says this:
Because I strongly agree with Justice O'Connor's dissent, I began drafting legislation to modify New York's eminent domain law immediately after the Kelo decision. The decision left leeway for a remedy. It hinted that each state has the right to decide how expansive its eminent domain laws should be within its borders. On July 21, I introduced my bill that would restrict the use of eminent domain.
State Senator DeFrancisco believes that within Kelo there is a "hint" that it would still allow states to maintain a certain amount of legal sanity regarding this issue. Perhaps even outlawing the inevitable abuse that could inherently flow from the Kelo decision.
I've e-mailed his office to see if I can download a copy of his bill, (or obtain a link,) because I'd like to pass it along to my legislators here in The Great South West.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Not bad, that. I would think that the 5th Amendment still has some advocates, maybe none among the President's business circles where it's probably seen as a hindrance, but here at a local level.
And now it's time to say goodnight.
From what I can make of it, all the hoo-hah about the recent Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. the City of New London is that it seems to allow municipalities to take private land from private individuals and then turn this property over to other private individuals.
That's kind of like stealing. Hence the concern.
Interestingly, New York State Senator John A. DeFrancisco says this:
Because I strongly agree with Justice O'Connor's dissent, I began drafting legislation to modify New York's eminent domain law immediately after the Kelo decision. The decision left leeway for a remedy. It hinted that each state has the right to decide how expansive its eminent domain laws should be within its borders. On July 21, I introduced my bill that would restrict the use of eminent domain.
State Senator DeFrancisco believes that within Kelo there is a "hint" that it would still allow states to maintain a certain amount of legal sanity regarding this issue. Perhaps even outlawing the inevitable abuse that could inherently flow from the Kelo decision.
I've e-mailed his office to see if I can download a copy of his bill, (or obtain a link,) because I'd like to pass it along to my legislators here in The Great South West.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Not bad, that. I would think that the 5th Amendment still has some advocates, maybe none among the President's business circles where it's probably seen as a hindrance, but here at a local level.
And now it's time to say goodnight.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Mundum reple dulcedine
This editorial suggests there are not enough people in the world of Islam speaking out against terrorism.
"Where are the responsible Islamic leaders? Where are the imams condemning the murderers who have hijacked their religion? Why are the mosques not ringing with condemnation of al-Qaida?"
Terrorism, of course, is narrowly considered to be only those bad things that Muslims do to other people. If people who are predominantly Christian steer cruise missles into the neighborhoods of large cities in Iraq, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process, this is called "shock and awe." Not "terrorism." Nice, that.
It is assumed that if an American missle blows up your family in the middle of the night, you will not feel terror. In fact, according to the current American vice-president, you will instead be moved to joyously throw flowers at those who have just pulverized your loved ones to death.
That, certainly, is insane. The subject for some other newspaper editorial, presumably. America would need its print media to widely disseminate information regarding the deranged mental status of its leaders, you might think. Wrongly, in this case, though.
Christ himself was no advocate of mass slaughter. But many of the people who live in this largely Christian country often profess a desire to submit Muslims to genocide. Here is an example of some of the things they say. Perhaps, sheltered as they are, newspaper editorialists are unaware of such sentiments.
*"Can we eradicate Islam now, please?"
* "If there are no Arabs there are no attacks. How many more need be sacrificed?"
* "It is now time to force muslims to make a choice: Live peacefully or die. I prefer the latter."
* "We need to stop fucking with these people and kill every one involved. I mean anyone with prior knowledge, anyone who payed for it, and anyone who supported it. Regardless of nationality."
* "If its Islamic it will probably blow up. All Islamic get full body searches with VERY high intensity X-rays ."
* "The best way to deliver those high intensity x-rays is through some W76 warheads at around 100 kt a piece. It will be easier to give a full body search after that."
* "Britain should END ALL ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION NOW....Continuing to welcome the enemy into your country is insane."
* "subhumans, first time on 2 feet...round em all up, every friggin' last one of them...unfortunately, I still think it will take even more violence from the Arabs before the West wakes up and goes savage on em"
* "Martyring Muslims doesn't seem to make much of a difference to the fanatics. What is needed is to take their human capital out their hands - their children. No more warped children, no more jihadis. "
The calls for genocide and apartheid are flowing freely. There is a reason why blogs like Instapundit and Powerline do not allow comments, and why Time magazine would give its "Blog of the Year" award to Powerline even though Free Republic actually "broke" the CBS story. There is a concerted effort on the part of the right to prevent this sort of overt racism and fascism on the right from being given any sunshine. These, however, are not isolated comments. They are numerous and they are appearing on the second most trafficked right-wing blog in the country, and by far the largest right-wing blog that allows comments.
(Thanks to MyDD for doing the heavy lifting here.)
Or perhaps they, the editorialists, are merely projecting, in both the psychological sense of the term and as a sort of synonym for "broadcasting." I think one could surmise that the editorial cited above does a bit of both, in the sense that it also puts forth a talking-point seen to be beneficial to those who man the White House fax machines. Goodness knows they need lots of help, though perhaps of a different sort.
No, you are correct, I am being unfair. Rest assured that newspaper editorialists will soon, probably tomorrow, exhort Christian leaders and readers to denounce bigotry against Islam and Arabs, and to decry the violence our weapons have wrought upon their innocent children. Surely that will be so.
Pig feathers.
"Where are the responsible Islamic leaders? Where are the imams condemning the murderers who have hijacked their religion? Why are the mosques not ringing with condemnation of al-Qaida?"
Terrorism, of course, is narrowly considered to be only those bad things that Muslims do to other people. If people who are predominantly Christian steer cruise missles into the neighborhoods of large cities in Iraq, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process, this is called "shock and awe." Not "terrorism." Nice, that.
It is assumed that if an American missle blows up your family in the middle of the night, you will not feel terror. In fact, according to the current American vice-president, you will instead be moved to joyously throw flowers at those who have just pulverized your loved ones to death.
That, certainly, is insane. The subject for some other newspaper editorial, presumably. America would need its print media to widely disseminate information regarding the deranged mental status of its leaders, you might think. Wrongly, in this case, though.
Christ himself was no advocate of mass slaughter. But many of the people who live in this largely Christian country often profess a desire to submit Muslims to genocide. Here is an example of some of the things they say. Perhaps, sheltered as they are, newspaper editorialists are unaware of such sentiments.
*"Can we eradicate Islam now, please?"
* "If there are no Arabs there are no attacks. How many more need be sacrificed?"
* "It is now time to force muslims to make a choice: Live peacefully or die. I prefer the latter."
* "We need to stop fucking with these people and kill every one involved. I mean anyone with prior knowledge, anyone who payed for it, and anyone who supported it. Regardless of nationality."
* "If its Islamic it will probably blow up. All Islamic get full body searches with VERY high intensity X-rays ."
* "The best way to deliver those high intensity x-rays is through some W76 warheads at around 100 kt a piece. It will be easier to give a full body search after that."
* "Britain should END ALL ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION NOW....Continuing to welcome the enemy into your country is insane."
* "subhumans, first time on 2 feet...round em all up, every friggin' last one of them...unfortunately, I still think it will take even more violence from the Arabs before the West wakes up and goes savage on em"
* "Martyring Muslims doesn't seem to make much of a difference to the fanatics. What is needed is to take their human capital out their hands - their children. No more warped children, no more jihadis. "
The calls for genocide and apartheid are flowing freely. There is a reason why blogs like Instapundit and Powerline do not allow comments, and why Time magazine would give its "Blog of the Year" award to Powerline even though Free Republic actually "broke" the CBS story. There is a concerted effort on the part of the right to prevent this sort of overt racism and fascism on the right from being given any sunshine. These, however, are not isolated comments. They are numerous and they are appearing on the second most trafficked right-wing blog in the country, and by far the largest right-wing blog that allows comments.
(Thanks to MyDD for doing the heavy lifting here.)
Or perhaps they, the editorialists, are merely projecting, in both the psychological sense of the term and as a sort of synonym for "broadcasting." I think one could surmise that the editorial cited above does a bit of both, in the sense that it also puts forth a talking-point seen to be beneficial to those who man the White House fax machines. Goodness knows they need lots of help, though perhaps of a different sort.
No, you are correct, I am being unfair. Rest assured that newspaper editorialists will soon, probably tomorrow, exhort Christian leaders and readers to denounce bigotry against Islam and Arabs, and to decry the violence our weapons have wrought upon their innocent children. Surely that will be so.
Pig feathers.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
The Typical Dilemma
It had been a while since I'd seen how the patient was doing. Most of the shift had passed quietly for him. When I stepped into the room the visitor at his bedside said to me "You might not want to hear this."
The patient was lying not uncomfortably in his bed but gesturing broadly with his arms. He was slowly and dramatically repeating one phrase with little variation. In a Richard-Prior-like Sunday-morning falsetto he said "My car... in the garage...smells like p*$$y!" He said it as if he were preaching it to some wide but invisible and appreciative audience, and he bowed his head a little after each recitation.
"My car... in the garage... smells like p*$$y!"
Okay, mon ami, I thought, no more drugs for you.
But then I thought again. Maybe he actually did need more drugs.
That was the limit of his strangeness. He wasn't acting out any more than that, and he seemed safe enough. I thought he might have been putting me on a little, because he was not entirely disoriented. He knew he was going for his procedure later, for example.
Hey, I thought, they'd be giving him more drugs there. Perfect. No worries, then.
Problem solved.
The patient was lying not uncomfortably in his bed but gesturing broadly with his arms. He was slowly and dramatically repeating one phrase with little variation. In a Richard-Prior-like Sunday-morning falsetto he said "My car... in the garage...smells like p*$$y!" He said it as if he were preaching it to some wide but invisible and appreciative audience, and he bowed his head a little after each recitation.
"My car... in the garage... smells like p*$$y!"
Okay, mon ami, I thought, no more drugs for you.
But then I thought again. Maybe he actually did need more drugs.
That was the limit of his strangeness. He wasn't acting out any more than that, and he seemed safe enough. I thought he might have been putting me on a little, because he was not entirely disoriented. He knew he was going for his procedure later, for example.
Hey, I thought, they'd be giving him more drugs there. Perfect. No worries, then.
Problem solved.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Pledge a Little, Pledge a Lot
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.
A kid just tries to have a little fun by making up his own version of the Pledge and knickers begin to twist faster than longjohns hanging out on a clothesline in an Oklahoma tornado. Oh well. I suppose in the end the kid will have learned some important life lessons: adults often over-react to things, make great mountains out of little molehills, and a lot of times they just don't get it.
We all know the story but it never hurts to be reminded.
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".
The basically original Pledge, with the word "to" inserted as noted at a later time.
About thirty years after the 1892 creation of the Pledge, the reference to the flag "of the United States of America" was added, and Francis Bellamy, who penned the original, was displeased.
Bellamy did not live to see the words "under God" added by Congress in 1954, but relatives said he wouldn't have gone for it, as he himself was never a cowardly Cold War fraidy-cat McCarthyite eager to villify the people of entire countries as "godless Communists." No, he was simply a Socialist and a patriot.
Maybe the school principal who suspended the kid for writing a more universal Pledge is the only person left who takes it that seriously anymore. There are obviously people in government who do not. The Plame leakers would seem to value their political party and its narrow agendas more than they value the flag and that for which it stands. Isn't that treason?
How many times did Karl Rove stand beside his school desk and recite the Pledge with hand on heart? How many times did he thusly lie?
Lots of times. Lots and lots.
A kid just tries to have a little fun by making up his own version of the Pledge and knickers begin to twist faster than longjohns hanging out on a clothesline in an Oklahoma tornado. Oh well. I suppose in the end the kid will have learned some important life lessons: adults often over-react to things, make great mountains out of little molehills, and a lot of times they just don't get it.
We all know the story but it never hurts to be reminded.
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".
The basically original Pledge, with the word "to" inserted as noted at a later time.
About thirty years after the 1892 creation of the Pledge, the reference to the flag "of the United States of America" was added, and Francis Bellamy, who penned the original, was displeased.
Bellamy did not live to see the words "under God" added by Congress in 1954, but relatives said he wouldn't have gone for it, as he himself was never a cowardly Cold War fraidy-cat McCarthyite eager to villify the people of entire countries as "godless Communists." No, he was simply a Socialist and a patriot.
Maybe the school principal who suspended the kid for writing a more universal Pledge is the only person left who takes it that seriously anymore. There are obviously people in government who do not. The Plame leakers would seem to value their political party and its narrow agendas more than they value the flag and that for which it stands. Isn't that treason?
How many times did Karl Rove stand beside his school desk and recite the Pledge with hand on heart? How many times did he thusly lie?
Lots of times. Lots and lots.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Look Out Behind You
Suppose you are one of those lucky people that actually has health-care insurance sponsored by your employer. I do. It's very nice. It might even prevent my family from going completely bankrupt due to severe illness or injury someday.
Having health insurance is like free money. These benefits certainly have value, which not even initially taxed. Not yet, anyways.
Oh great. More "limited government" from our friends and neighbors who toil so diligently on our behalf inside the beltway.
In place of the current system, the task force, known as the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, is said to be examining a plan that would allow employers to provide tax-exempt health coverage up to a certain dollar limit. Benefits that exceeded the limit would be treated as taxable income.
In theory, that seems fair. But in practice, it would further subject health coverage to the political process. Who would determine which treatments should be included in basic, tax-exempt plans, and which should be considered nonessential? These questions have provoked political storms in the past -- for example, the battle over how long mothers should be allowed to remain in the hospital after delivery. Why invite more battles over basic care -- and more lobbying by special interests for favorable treatment? Of course, Congress might simply set a dollar limit, and let employers and health insurance companies design coverage plans to meet it. But that would create a patchwork system, with some workers getting better basic care than others.
Not only will this proposal see to it that more money is taken from middle-class pockets; it will also see to it that another layer of interference could manifest itself between you and the healthcare you might need. It's personal.
All politics is local, they say, and this is politics that reaches once again into your medical files and checkbook simultaneously. To paraphrase Marx (Groucho, not Karl,) if it were any more local it would be behind you.
Note that this idea is coming from a presidential task force. It's the president's idea. He owns it. It doesn't belong to anybody else. But you just have to wonder how they will eventually spin it as a "grass-roots effort" to increase "tax fairness" while they slather you in newspeak. Kind of like Social Security reform. Or the death tax.
Orwellian soundbites for the lumpen proles.
Similarly, the expression tossing cookies sounds rather nice, like a children's game, but of course it really means vomiting partially digested food. If you are a working American with any sense, then that is just what this proposal will make you do, preferably all over the members of said task force. Don't forget to aim for their shoes. Or higher up. That, I suppose, would be better.
So please tell me again how glad you are that Bush gave Tom Cruise huge tax breaks.
Having health insurance is like free money. These benefits certainly have value, which not even initially taxed. Not yet, anyways.
Oh great. More "limited government" from our friends and neighbors who toil so diligently on our behalf inside the beltway.
In place of the current system, the task force, known as the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, is said to be examining a plan that would allow employers to provide tax-exempt health coverage up to a certain dollar limit. Benefits that exceeded the limit would be treated as taxable income.
In theory, that seems fair. But in practice, it would further subject health coverage to the political process. Who would determine which treatments should be included in basic, tax-exempt plans, and which should be considered nonessential? These questions have provoked political storms in the past -- for example, the battle over how long mothers should be allowed to remain in the hospital after delivery. Why invite more battles over basic care -- and more lobbying by special interests for favorable treatment? Of course, Congress might simply set a dollar limit, and let employers and health insurance companies design coverage plans to meet it. But that would create a patchwork system, with some workers getting better basic care than others.
Not only will this proposal see to it that more money is taken from middle-class pockets; it will also see to it that another layer of interference could manifest itself between you and the healthcare you might need. It's personal.
All politics is local, they say, and this is politics that reaches once again into your medical files and checkbook simultaneously. To paraphrase Marx (Groucho, not Karl,) if it were any more local it would be behind you.
Note that this idea is coming from a presidential task force. It's the president's idea. He owns it. It doesn't belong to anybody else. But you just have to wonder how they will eventually spin it as a "grass-roots effort" to increase "tax fairness" while they slather you in newspeak. Kind of like Social Security reform. Or the death tax.
Orwellian soundbites for the lumpen proles.
Similarly, the expression tossing cookies sounds rather nice, like a children's game, but of course it really means vomiting partially digested food. If you are a working American with any sense, then that is just what this proposal will make you do, preferably all over the members of said task force. Don't forget to aim for their shoes. Or higher up. That, I suppose, would be better.
So please tell me again how glad you are that Bush gave Tom Cruise huge tax breaks.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Fifteen milliliters
He was one of the bigger guys, over 500 pounds. Tall, too, six feet and three or four inches. He said that all his life, no matter how much he ate, he never felt full.
He said that sometimes, even as a teenager, for dinner he would eat two whole chickens and wash this down with a half-gallon of milk, and he would still be hungry so he would have an apple pie, a whole one, for dessert.
If I'm remembering this right, after open gastric bypass the protocol was to allow the patient to take no more than an ounce of nutritious fluid, like one of those canned dietary supplements, and it had to be taken over at least ten minutes, once an hour. This was on the second post-op day. (The first post-op day they similarly took an ounce of just water over ten minutes, once an hour.) Rather stringent.
I was chatting with the patient after checking his vitals, and noticed that he had taken only about half an ounce of the drink since the last time I'd popped in on him.
"I can't finish it," he explained, "because I feel full."
For the first time in his life.
He said that sometimes, even as a teenager, for dinner he would eat two whole chickens and wash this down with a half-gallon of milk, and he would still be hungry so he would have an apple pie, a whole one, for dessert.
If I'm remembering this right, after open gastric bypass the protocol was to allow the patient to take no more than an ounce of nutritious fluid, like one of those canned dietary supplements, and it had to be taken over at least ten minutes, once an hour. This was on the second post-op day. (The first post-op day they similarly took an ounce of just water over ten minutes, once an hour.) Rather stringent.
I was chatting with the patient after checking his vitals, and noticed that he had taken only about half an ounce of the drink since the last time I'd popped in on him.
"I can't finish it," he explained, "because I feel full."
For the first time in his life.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Benevolent Self Interest
My father was a very charming man; so charming, actually, that he could sweet-talk the knickers off a nun.
In fact, once during my college years he did just that. Well, almost. The person who we initially assumed to be a nun was really just some guy who rather resembled Mother Theresa and happened to have been wearing a penguin costume, which apparently was quite warm inside, and a fair amount of tequila had been consumed by many involved.
But that is another story altogether.
It was my father's subtle way with words, and his naive but deeply-held notions of respect for all persons. Though competitive in his fields of endeavor, he always seemed to come off as an advocate for people, even in confrontational episodes. If I am ever seen to be doing something like that myself, it is because of him.
One of the new residents was writing discharge orders for a patient who was on dialysis. Included in the prescriptions was one for PhosLo to be taken once a day. Of course, that is not how the drug is used. It is taken three or four times a day with major meals so it can do its job, which is to bind to the phosphorous in foods and prevent its excess absorption, as dialysis does not adequately clear this substance from the body.
I told the resident that I had a question about that order, and showed him that during the hospital stay the patient took it as I outlined above. Later he handed me revised discharge orders and a correct PhosLo prescription for the patient.
The reason why I am happy with myself about this is not that I did anything, as I tried to leave myself out of it and place the issue between the current orders and the discharge orders. I was careful not to appear to seem like I knew something he didn't, because heaven knows that is not a reliable stance for me to take.
Rather, I just wanted to give the resident some assurance that I've got his back. And that, I must say, is something that I learned from my father, the charming man.
In fact, once during my college years he did just that. Well, almost. The person who we initially assumed to be a nun was really just some guy who rather resembled Mother Theresa and happened to have been wearing a penguin costume, which apparently was quite warm inside, and a fair amount of tequila had been consumed by many involved.
But that is another story altogether.
It was my father's subtle way with words, and his naive but deeply-held notions of respect for all persons. Though competitive in his fields of endeavor, he always seemed to come off as an advocate for people, even in confrontational episodes. If I am ever seen to be doing something like that myself, it is because of him.
One of the new residents was writing discharge orders for a patient who was on dialysis. Included in the prescriptions was one for PhosLo to be taken once a day. Of course, that is not how the drug is used. It is taken three or four times a day with major meals so it can do its job, which is to bind to the phosphorous in foods and prevent its excess absorption, as dialysis does not adequately clear this substance from the body.
I told the resident that I had a question about that order, and showed him that during the hospital stay the patient took it as I outlined above. Later he handed me revised discharge orders and a correct PhosLo prescription for the patient.
The reason why I am happy with myself about this is not that I did anything, as I tried to leave myself out of it and place the issue between the current orders and the discharge orders. I was careful not to appear to seem like I knew something he didn't, because heaven knows that is not a reliable stance for me to take.
Rather, I just wanted to give the resident some assurance that I've got his back. And that, I must say, is something that I learned from my father, the charming man.
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