Occasionally that "got to blog feeling" comes along and even though I ought not to take the time, the urge has overcome good sense. Part of my problem is that I have put it off long enough that there are several topics I want to cover. Having seen blogs where people write ten random thoughts down and leave it at that, I want to go into more depth on my concerns, but yet rather than do a few separate entire posts I will combine a few paragraphs on items that I want to address in one single post.1) Time to wine. I have injured myself. On Tuesday after work I threw away my terribly slow coffee pot and got the new one out of the box, getting it washed up for Wednesday morning. Then I decided I wanted to save the glass pot part, which was then in the bottom of the garbage can in the garage. I am 5'7" so I felt I could reach it. While leaning over into the can, my fingers were barely touching it and I leaned just a bit more into it. Something gave. I am not sure if it was something in me or the edge of the plastic can but i quickly sunk about an inch and had a rather sharp pain in my side that knocked the wind out of me. I caught my breath and was fine but am rather sore. No bruising is present and it only really is painful when I reach down to pick something up. One never realizes how often one does that till it hurts to do it. Things do seem to be getting worse every day so I suppose I messed up my intercostals and expect to be uncomfortable for a good long while. The worst part is I am afraid to do my yoga as I am afraid I will make it worse. Not doing my yoga makes the rest of me hurt. The daily stretching always gets the tension out of my muscles and makes that age 53 stiffness go away. Enough wining on to more positive things.
2) Time to pat myself on the back. Today I volunteered for three hours at a clinic for the un-insured that is located about a half hour from where I live. It was not too busy this afternoon so that gave me a chance to get acclimated without too much stress. The other volunteers seem nice and it was a positive experience. I had wanted to volunteer in such a capacity for a long time. As a nurse I went in to the medical field to serve others and often get discouraged with the business side of health care. But I was unsure how to go about getting an opportunity to volunteer in such a capacity. Late last winter when I went to a meeting at the Allen County Democratic building to help get the health care bill passed I met a person who was there because she was working on Tom Hayhurst's campaign. She also schedules for the clinic for the uninsured (which Dr Hayhurst is one of the docs that is a part of that). Since she had the schedule completed way ahead to free her up for working on the campaign it was not till November that I was free on an open time. But today they had a cancellation and I was asked to fill in so I was glad to do so. Often times working full time at my age is just about all I can do and today my house work went undone between the pain in my side and the fact that I was at the clinic during the time I would have normally been cleaning on my every other Thursday off. Never the less, it was a positive experience that I hope to do more of in the future.
3) My baby will be 27 soon. When he was just under a year old, in fact it was about this time of year, he caught what started out as a cold. I was recently divorced from his dad who was active duty military and we had the kids on what was then called Champus. I had driven to the nearest base to get him assessed and medicine for the cold but he continued to get worse and was getting dusky looking so I took him to the emergency room at the hospital where I lived. I was told that unless I had the money in my pocket to hand over to the doctor that no one would see him. I was frantic as a young mother holding my child who was struggling for his breath. I asked the receptionist to page one doctor I knew of by name and he came and he did look at my son and admitted Scott with pneumonia. Scott was placed in an oxygen tent and spent a week at that hospital. I know that today we have emergency room doctors and people don't have that sort of experience but never the less the event scarred me. I know how it feels to have your child's life in danger and help in front of you but being denied to your little one. That is why I am glad we passed health insurance reform in this country and why I think it was important that we did. I wrote to Congressman Ellsworth and asked him to vote for the Health Insurance Reform Act and promised if he did I would support him in his race for the Senate this fall. I am glad he voted to pass Health Care Reform and just want to say that it makes me angry when his opponent's political ads put him down for that vote. These ads even say that we can't afford to have values in this country. How can people be attracted to vote for a man who says we can't afford to have values that provide health care to our citizens? That we can't afford to have values that provide education for our children? I have values whether I can afford to or not I guess. I can't imagine voting for someone who over and over pounds into heads with constant television ads that we can't afford values.
4) Which brings me to my final point of this post. This coming Tuesday is the day we all need to go vote. Even though I live in an county that not too many people think like me and I will likely be in a minority I will still walk in there with my head held high and vote. Over the years many people sacrificed and gave their lives so we could vote. As a woman I especially appreciate those women who fought so hard to earn that privilege for me. It has not been that many years ago that women could not vote. I want to end this post with the plea to every one to exercise their right to vote this year. It is an important election.
Sometimes we need a little perspective in our lives to bring us back to reality. As you know I have been hobbling along with a bum foot for most of the summer, which still is not 100%. On my vacation last week to Cleveland, I went with my Son and his wife to Findley Lake, NY to visit with her Dad, Al. He is 72 (but don't tell him, he thinks he is 22) and it wears me out just to watch him and it would be impossible to even attempt to keep up with him.
ReplyDeleteHe sort of apologized that he wasn't up to full speed because he was a little "stiff and sore." I actually couldn't see any change in his frenetic activities. My first thought was at 72 he had met my two closest friends Art and Ritis, but that wasn't it. He fell out of a tree.
FELL OUT OF A TREE ! ! ! My first thought was "What in hell is a 72 year old man doing up in a tree?" Before I could answer he said he was in his deer stand with his bow and arrow and the safety catch broke and he fell to the ground ... FOURTEEN FEET ! He said he felt lucky because he landed flat on his left side with all points from shoulder to toes hitting the ground at the same time.
But despite that, the majority of the time we were there he was either splitting firewood (with an axe) or raking and gathering leaves, or draining his boat.
Made me a little embarrassed when I hired the boy down the street to come mow my lawn and gather the leaves. But not much.
I feel we are who we are and wisdom dictates that we know our strengths and our weaknesses.
If Al and I were members of the canine species, I think he would be a whippet or a greyhound and I would be a bulldog.
Medical people for years have insisted I get more exercise. They say, “Just bending over and touching your toes would help.” I insist that if God intended for me to touch my toes he would have put them on my knees.
I get all the exercise I can handle every day just putting on my socks and shoes.
Your experience with you son and the medical system that wouldn't treat him is being repeated day after day after day in this country. Unfortunately, the people who are getting treated this way are old people (mostly veterans, which is really ironic) or others who don't know how to raise enough hell to change it or don't have anyone to do it for them.
My personal experiences with the at times absolutely horrible VA Health Care system could fill volumes. As bad it seems, the only way to get the care you need from the VA is to show up with a "kick ass and take names" attitude when you walk in the door. The louder you get and the more insistent that you become the better your odds are of getting some care. The last thing they want is someone to stir up a riot among the 100 or so old farts who have been sitting in the waiting room for hour after hour waiting to be seen.
Who knows how many of them have PTSD and might revert back into full combat mode.
At the VA Clinic in Baton Rouge, I never saw a waiting room. When I walked in down there, they knew better than to ignore me because they knew that I was a firm believer in Freedom of Speech, and was wiling to exercise it with as much volume and enthusiasm as it took to get the job done.
The sad part is, that should never be necessary. It shouldn't be necessary for your son or anyone else and it sure as hell should never be the way any veteran should be treated.
You learned a lesson with your son that some never learn, i.e., if you want something done, go to the decision maker. If you need to see a doctor, demand to see one, and raise enough hell to see one. Who cares about being politically correct when you or someone you love is in dire need of medical care.
The non-medical administrators out front and the non-medical nurses out front DO NOT want a confrontation with an angry parent or patient. I'm sure they get angry if you go "over their heads" but who cares? Better they should be angry than your son dead.
I was going to argue with you Tim and say that things have improved but as I began to list in my mind all the positive emergency room experiences I have had since, I had to realize and admit that (knock on wood) I have not had the need to go to one this century so I really can't say how things are now. I do know that I had many positive experiences after this negative one in the latter 80s and through out the 90s. And as I have told you before, I have had several people in this area say positive things about their experiences with the VA hospital system here in the Fort Wayne area. I have heard that they don't put up with someone coming in and causing any problems and such people are not treated well. Isn't that sort of the military way though?
ReplyDeleteI do not think what happened with my situation in 1984 would happen today though. I had just relocated and had not gotten settled in with a family doctor yet for myself and my kids. That was why I had driven to the base clinic earlier and gotten Scott an antibiotic. When I had the emergency with Scott I could not ask for a family doctor. That was before this particular hospital had an ER physician on staff. They had to call in your family doctor. What the staff member was telling me was that no one would want to come in. Since Indiana is one small town rolling into another, I heard over the loud speaker a doctor paged to the phone that I had went to not long ago before moving from one small town to another so technically was still our doctor as I hadn't found a new one yet. If I had thought that far - that I was still in the same county and it was a county hospital I could have asked for him to begin with. But I was scared and shook up and worried and that er intake woman was not very nice to me. Today I really do think ERs have doctors on staff. Any way my point was that I was not over reacting - Scott really was turning blue - and the entire experience made a psychological imprint on me as far as not wanting people to experience what I did.
ReplyDeleteThe ER intake lady did make the comment about how I needed the money up front for a doctor to look at Scott. I don't think she liked my address or the fact that there I was all alone with three kids under four.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear things are getting better in the VA system down south Tim. Like I have mentioned before I have had several people comment to me about positive experiences at the VA hospital here in Fort Wayne.
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