Here is a statistic from the University of Hawaii School of Integrated Medicine: four years ago, pre-med students were asked "Why do you want to be a medical doctor?"
Almost 90% answered, "I want the economic, social, and political status of a MD." "I dream of owning a $10 million beach front home, and owning Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars, etc."
Who would want to put their health in the hands of young medical doctors with this kind of attitude...?
Please explain just what it is that you do not agree with! Be specific because she shows verry scientifically, and historically the unvarnished truth so please I invite you to critique anything that you do not agree with, Jack. Scientific fact is not a point of view!
I have looked into all this as deeply as I wanted to, and I am completely happy to agree or disagree. There is no need for us to think the same thing! Anyone's position on viruses has very minimal impact on the outcome of the fight against tyranny, and that's the fight I prefer to focus on at this time! There is a strange fanaticism around this topic, people want you to agree with them or else. I find that to be a sign of a psychological operation that wants to distract people from what matters, which doesn't mean that all, or even most, people who are militant about it are on the payroll. Just maybe lacking perspective? But it's good to think it all through and come to any conclusion that one feels to be correct at any given time!
Which is to say, I am preemptively saying, I am not going to do a three-hour-long debate in comments. :)) I respect everybody's honest views, I am happy about curious investigation, and I think this investigation has been hijacked. If you want to know my views, I wrote about them. And if I choose to change my mind from the inside at any point, I will do that! For now, I don't think it's the most important thing in the world.
For some reason your anecdote brings up in my mind a great line from a good movie called Bite the Bullet. In a sub-plot the wife of a really nasty criminal helps him escape. Once free his 'real' nature shows up. After the crash and burn she say 'Yes, the people some people marry.'
Ah. Now we go deep into the nuance of what defines a relationship. From my chair in the unusual heat today at a tiny cafe in Oaxaca City, you described with beauty and nuance all the important bits that are the heart of a relationship. And timing adds some spice, as age adds further nuance as the compulsive importance of sexual intercourse wains and is replaced by, if desired by the dynamics of the relationship, true intimacy of the hearts. That is the challenge, of course. Bueno.
I've believed for a long time now that "the inmates are running the asylum." But I had no clue until the past 4 years how very deep all the insanity & psychopathy go. Ai-yi-yi. It's beyond sobering...
I would suggest going to Dr. Sam Bailey.com and see the reality of the covid scam, the virus fraud, and the germ theory for what it is and has been, nothing but a theory, never proven. They are like the IADS vaccine that has been in the works for forty years, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and no vaccine, why? Because AIDS is not a virus and HIV does not lead to AIDS, never did never will, and yet they keep telling this lie. Putting healthy people on antiviral drugs that damage their health, and calling it prep. It is prep, but prep for the grave. Money, despised groups and ethnicities are targeted by the adds. Peddling poison for profit and pilfering the pockets of people, pathetic planned destruction of healthy people for profit and death.
Thank you, Jack. I am aware of her work, and own "Virusmania." I don't necessarily agree with her on everything but it is good to check out different points of view and make up your own mind!
Tessa, I think most people do not know the difference between Zionism and traditional Judaism! I myself did not understand this as a gentile. Like most Americans we were told this story about Israels reestablishment in 1948. A land without people for a people without land. Of course, the pulpits, priests, Rabis at al were told this same fairytale, and like good little mind-controlled dupes that we were taught to be, we never questioned it. This was the plan you see! Take the propaganda in and then regurgitate it as truth without any background. I think Miko Peled and Tarashinksy both dispelled this myth without much success, due to the machine being in control of the information. Voices in the wilderness so to speak. I have had friends who were Jewish American Zionists, and I went to the JCC in my neighborhood. We socialized together without any conflict about religion. It took me decades to find some light as to the history as it actually was as opposed to the propaganda. Israel was founded by Zionist atheists, not traditional Jews practicing the traditional faith. Zionism is a conquering violent kind of political system. Israel is a divided country that is not a Democracy in any way. It was a strategy of the western powers to be used as a buffer and future method of gaining the world island as Mackinder stated. This land mass includes all the middle east, China, Russia and all the countries we have invaded in the last twenty years, thanks to the Patriot Act, that was made possible by the world trade center being demolished by our own government. A false flag needed for all this to happen. Israel will not stop with Palestine; it will keep on going to entail several surrounding countries. History! If you do not know where you came from then you do not know where you are going, and we have not been introduced to any real history in school because it is not there. Back to the crazies running things. They are not crazy at all; they are following the eugenics dream. The club of Rome stated this verry plainly. The population of the world is too large and needs to be non-violently reduced. So, not by war with bombs but a more non-violent method! False pandemics, injections that kill slowly, and change the human genome in a way of controlling the birth rate by still birth or sterility of hundreds of millions of men and women. It is a perfect strategy, and it is obvious that it is being done now. No, they are not crazy, they are evil.
The history is indeed extremely complex, and so are people. I went through a phase where I felt very sad about the whole "depopulation" sentiment, the Kissinger report that I wrote about and linked to multiple times, etc. But now I am of the opinion that we are just living history, that our time is special and yet, it's fundamentally no different from what the aspiring masters have been trying to do to the people for a few thousand years, it's what Steven Newcomb calls the System of Domination. And while ideologies and talking points change, the spiritual energy that drives it is what we need to deplete by our everyday actions., by our refusal to be afraid or to throw other people under the bus. That is where I stand today.
on one hand, it's easy to understand how first responders get battle fatigue. of all the jobs that cops hate, it's having to interfere in a situation that involves a homeless psycho, in NYC police vernacular, a "BOS" i.e. bag of shit
cruel, i know.
but from a medical POV, somebody who looks like they're high on whatever could just as easily be having a medical episode (or both). can't help but suspect that the guy who helped you out in your hour of need may have had ulterior motives.
i guess sometimes we just need to be grateful for help, whatever the source. god works in mysterious ways.
I am so sorry you have this ordeal on your hands!! The best of luck to you!!!
As far as this friend of mine, I am pretty sure he was sincere in helping me. As he was and probably is sincere in hating "the Arabs." People are very complex, sometimes tragically so!
I find that all too believable; in fact I'm a bit surprised your acquaintance did not become a psychiatrist; many do so in the effort to comprehend, and unscramble if possible, their own scrambled minds. That was a lesson I learned on my psych affiliation as a student RN, which involved 10 wks, 5 days a week, in a residence at a state psych hospital (it was the "dark ages" still, you understand). The yr before, I had tended 2 survivors in tertiary syphilis from the Tuskegee experiments, and allegedly had been "cured" with penicillin. So, no, I don't find this any stranger than a lot of medical practice I encountered before I reached even 25 yrs of age.
As for the crazies running the asylum, that happened 14 February 1871, in the US, with the last keys snatched in 1913, with the ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments.
Ha, you have a point, Sandra!! The field of psychiatry harbors a lot of people who are crying out for help whether they know it or not!! And some go into into it out of desire to be on top, and some may even be sadistic....
In psych it would be good if the doctors and nurses actually had more rights. Here in NZ the patients abuse the doctors and nurses physically and verbally and get away with it even though they are the personality disordered patients as opposed to those too ill to know what they say and do.
Here is a paradox, people that don't care about people get into occupations that require caring about people.
I think that people getting into it for the money find out quickly that they are getting horribly underpaid. Also the irony is that you probably would not want someone who got into it for the money, which might be why pay is so low.
I've encountered techs that care for others, and they are really priceless. And those that do not... One woman left my bedpan unattended in the bathroom for some other staff to dispose of it. Same can be said for nurses. Some nurses are all numbers and protocols. The real gems are those that you could imagine hanging out with on karaoke night. The ones that see "you" and not a sea of symptoms. The ones that know that despite what you did that ended you up in the hospital, they still care. I had a nurse named Beth who even when I was not one of her patients, she would come and check on me. She'd bring me coffee, ask if I had taken a roll around the hospital.
When I was discharged from the hospital as a newly minted (unminted?) amputee in 2021 without insurance I had no place to go. The place I did live at did not have doors wide enough for a bariatric wheelchair (bariatric is medical code for "fat" for those playing at home.) I was dropped at a personal care home. The EMT, unlike your friend, was at crossed purposes. He was under orders to discharge me, but the room had a number of problems with it. His reservations were first brought to me when he came back up to the ambulance to explain to me he inspected the place and there were problems with it. His main reservations at that point were that it was dirty and smelled like smoke. I stated that I had lived with a chain-smoking mother for many years, so that would not be an issue. He wanted to tell me more, but either could not articulate it, or did not want to (maybe liability issues?)
Once in, there were problems.
1. The room that was to be mine was in a corner. It is hard to corner a bariatric wheelchair.
2. The doorway was too narrow. This meant if they did somehow get me into the door, I would be crawling around or have to be somehow helped. A third option could have been to find a narrow chair without arms to mobilize in.
3. The room was a disaster. It had ductwork coming out of the ceiling. It was in a basement. There were two other tenants living there in the main basement. The reason I was given the corner room was because I would have to make use of the bedside toilet, which would be ridiculous for others to have to endure on a daily basis.
4. The place was dirty and smelled like cigarettes.
Inside the house, the "landlord" of it was a pastor. He was almost a central casting of what a hypocrite was. I knew this without knowing what would transpire. Heck, the mere condition of the place was an indicator of how much he cared about his charges. If I had heard, for instance, someone was coming to stay in my room, I would have picked the place up, made the bed, probably changed out the sheets.
The Landlord whose name eludes me was trying to placate me as I expressed my reservation for being discharged here. He kept tapping and rubbing my shoulder like I was a genie's lamp. I think because rubbing me gave him 2000.00 a month. I found out later that the hospital was paying 2200.00 a month for three months for my "discharge."
Eventually, at one point, the EMT talked to his supervisor and informed me that I had to stay. My guess is this does actually violate some patient rights thing somewhere. I could see he was at torn purposes. They tried to stand me up and get me into that corner room, but I am heavy, and its hard to lift my body with one leg. Finally they settled on moving another tenant into the back corner room. I was setup on a mattress that had been placed on stacked milk crates. It was below my wheelchair so my being able to transfer to the wheelchair or bedside toilet was a big ? as they left me there. For two days thankfully I never felt the need to make a necessary. I was on my smartphone with close family members trying to figure out getting insurance (and getting educated in the process). I don't even remember who handled my urine bottles. I think he must have because I don't remember getting into a wheelchair at that point.
At one point before the EMT's left. I was crying. The pastor was trying to be conciliatory. The EMT was following orders, but I would tell he wasn't happy, but stern. I remember feeling like why not just roll out into the weeds and let the outdoor elements take me.
The personal care home/group home was more like a glorified boarding house. I found out later many of these places are set up for people that slip through the cracks. A lot of the mentally ill find themselves houses in places like this. One tenant I think was mentally ill, and the other suffered from Stage 4 cancel and a horrible attitude that accompanied it. He had a makeshift bed setup as well with a computer/tv monitor that was playing MSM news most of the day.
The first meal I got from the place was a combination of Dominos Pizza and McDonalds. The pastor lost his car for some reason and had to walk to the restaurant to get food. Back in 2021, I think a McChicken still cost around $1.00 and a piece of pizza was about a buck a slice. This is what was meant by "healthy meals?"
Breakfast was probably the best meal of the day, followed by lunch which was one of those sandwiches you can buy at RaceTrac. When the pastor was downstairs he was all lowered voice, kind words, and placating gestures. Upstairs, we was loud, raucous, and abusive to other family members.
This is "caring for people" looks like, at least from one person's point of view. Not everyone is like this, but this was my first exposure to it, and wow.
It's also a warning out there for those of us that fail to plan, we will, inevitibly, plan to fail. If you are diabetic, have a chronic condition and are not taking measures to address it, plan for what will happen when things end badly. For me it was diabetic cellulitis.
What a horrible story! In South Africa we have many good nurses BUT because of unemployment there are also many nurses that become nurses just because it is a "job" and they really do not care about their patients. I suppose you get it everywhere, I have even heard stories from what happens in expensive private hospitals and I have witnessed a lot when my brother's son was in hospital for cancer, they expected him to take the bowl he vomited in to the sluice and clean it himself while he was in so much pain he could hardly move.
Wow, Jimmy, thank you for sharing your story!! And it is so true, a lot depends on the individual kindness of the "healthcare worker." And we are increasingly finding ourselves in a place where individual kindness of the healthcare worker is the key element in what happens, because the "procedure" is getting more and more terrible!
No they aren't, and. the landlords have no experience in dealing with the mentally ill. I could tell you some of the horrible things the landlord said about some of them..and my response always was "why do you call them that, they can't help who they are."
The part of this article I like best is that you can recognize and accept both the good and the bad in your friend. Being able to love someone including (not despite) their flaws is sadly uncommon these days, and it is a joy to read your work because you still do. Seeing you express that, I hope, inspires your readers to know that they can too.
There were no patient rights really, ever. I have worked in Psych for years as a nurse and counselor. Patients tested and challenged us to be the best version of ourselves while they were being the worst version of themselves. I will be forever thankful for all of the moments I had to hold back my impulses to act normally in their presence.
We have seen a lot of broken, sadistic, and mistakenly superior and "chosen" doctors over the last three years, and especially now. I suspect the field appeals to a segment of the population who genetically are incapable of seeing others as more than chess pieces or scenery. It is especially dangerous when people with that mindset huddle in enclaves and only marry others in the enclave with similar outlooks.
Arrogance is a dangerous drug, indeed! I was surprised to see the status of doctors in the U.S., it is very different here from how I grew up. I grew up in a medical family and spent all my time before I came to America around doctors and research, and it was considered "ordinary." Nothing prestigious, just helping people, working a lot. But here doctors were indeed "chosen," very prestigious, very uppity. I guess this is because of the financial structure that was set up around medicine in America, and the role the doctors are supposed to play in enriching the pharmaceutical executives and investors. :)
I think that status harkens back to the days when doctors made house calls in all weather, by horse back, or in buggies, to care for their patients, and might get paid with a couple of chickens, a piglet, canned or fresh produce, or, repairs on his own home, rather than cash, that was in very short supply in most parts of this nation still! They were among the small minority with college educations in those days too. Aspirin was still new in those days too; laudanum and morphine, for major pain were in use,; and chloroform or ether for anesthesia were still pretty new. Sulfur was about the only antibiotic of sorts, and everything else was compounded on the spot to treat symptoms, from plant sources.
Possibly. But the doctors plays this role everywhere, and back home, they still didn't earn the "exceptional prestige" the American doctors have (had for a while?) in the U.S. The doctors used to do home visits all the time when I was a kid, and probably for a while after!
That extends back to the days of the "opening of the west", so contending with hostile Commanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, Lakota, etc , to make those "house calls", who didn't distinguish doctors from others, indeed considered " white man's medicine" evil. Over the decades, respect evolved into something more like reverence. In '66, the AJN (required reading for student nurses) carried an article that encapsulated it perfectly: it was written as if a anthropological study of a primitive society, having its own language, deities, and religion, etc. The article was spot on, and hilarious to read.
I know; they even came when I called late In the evening, once when I was twelve. I think I scared the answering service lady, but I was scared too. I already knew enough to be quite accurate about the situation: my Mom was flat in bed with a temp of 103° F, too high for an adult, and it only went up after aspirins and fluids. When I called it was 103.6°F, and I had already experienced the worst possible type of febrile seizures 2 yrs earlier when my sister caught meningitis; I didn't need, or want, a repeat of that. So I know well they still came to the house... But that stopped for the most part in the '70s when HMOs moved in and unions began demanding coverage for routine ailments, and procedures, that just been out of pocket payments up 'til then, along with expanding EMS coverage into rural areas.
Thanks Tessa, for turning me on to Rev. Tina.
Radiating a warm big Aloha to Rev. Tina!
Here is a statistic from the University of Hawaii School of Integrated Medicine: four years ago, pre-med students were asked "Why do you want to be a medical doctor?"
Almost 90% answered, "I want the economic, social, and political status of a MD." "I dream of owning a $10 million beach front home, and owning Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars, etc."
Who would want to put their health in the hands of young medical doctors with this kind of attitude...?
Is making faces a big deal? I guess it's fun to dump on exes.
Thanks Tessa. I'm sorry to say that opportunistic tormenting of mentally-ill homeless people is not rare. This case was just less subtle.
;-(
I kind of had that idea :((( but this one, that I kind of filtered out at the time (a long time ago), is just sadistic in a strange way!
Making fun of the suffering of others is not healthy humor.
Please explain just what it is that you do not agree with! Be specific because she shows verry scientifically, and historically the unvarnished truth so please I invite you to critique anything that you do not agree with, Jack. Scientific fact is not a point of view!
I went over my views here https://tessa.substack.com/p/jj-couey-virus-no-virus and here and here https://tessa.substack.com/p/on-pandemics-viruses-wars-and-keeping
I have looked into all this as deeply as I wanted to, and I am completely happy to agree or disagree. There is no need for us to think the same thing! Anyone's position on viruses has very minimal impact on the outcome of the fight against tyranny, and that's the fight I prefer to focus on at this time! There is a strange fanaticism around this topic, people want you to agree with them or else. I find that to be a sign of a psychological operation that wants to distract people from what matters, which doesn't mean that all, or even most, people who are militant about it are on the payroll. Just maybe lacking perspective? But it's good to think it all through and come to any conclusion that one feels to be correct at any given time!
Which is to say, I am preemptively saying, I am not going to do a three-hour-long debate in comments. :)) I respect everybody's honest views, I am happy about curious investigation, and I think this investigation has been hijacked. If you want to know my views, I wrote about them. And if I choose to change my mind from the inside at any point, I will do that! For now, I don't think it's the most important thing in the world.
For some reason your anecdote brings up in my mind a great line from a good movie called Bite the Bullet. In a sub-plot the wife of a really nasty criminal helps him escape. Once free his 'real' nature shows up. After the crash and burn she say 'Yes, the people some people marry.'
LOL. Luckily, I never had a relationship with him. I don't think it would have had a chance of working out. :)))
Ah. Now we go deep into the nuance of what defines a relationship. From my chair in the unusual heat today at a tiny cafe in Oaxaca City, you described with beauty and nuance all the important bits that are the heart of a relationship. And timing adds some spice, as age adds further nuance as the compulsive importance of sexual intercourse wains and is replaced by, if desired by the dynamics of the relationship, true intimacy of the hearts. That is the challenge, of course. Bueno.
I've believed for a long time now that "the inmates are running the asylum." But I had no clue until the past 4 years how very deep all the insanity & psychopathy go. Ai-yi-yi. It's beyond sobering...
I hear you, Janet!! I had some idea but I did not expect this kind of shamelessness from the aspiring masters! And yet... :)
I would suggest going to Dr. Sam Bailey.com and see the reality of the covid scam, the virus fraud, and the germ theory for what it is and has been, nothing but a theory, never proven. They are like the IADS vaccine that has been in the works for forty years, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and no vaccine, why? Because AIDS is not a virus and HIV does not lead to AIDS, never did never will, and yet they keep telling this lie. Putting healthy people on antiviral drugs that damage their health, and calling it prep. It is prep, but prep for the grave. Money, despised groups and ethnicities are targeted by the adds. Peddling poison for profit and pilfering the pockets of people, pathetic planned destruction of healthy people for profit and death.
Thank you, Jack. I am aware of her work, and own "Virusmania." I don't necessarily agree with her on everything but it is good to check out different points of view and make up your own mind!
Tessa, I think most people do not know the difference between Zionism and traditional Judaism! I myself did not understand this as a gentile. Like most Americans we were told this story about Israels reestablishment in 1948. A land without people for a people without land. Of course, the pulpits, priests, Rabis at al were told this same fairytale, and like good little mind-controlled dupes that we were taught to be, we never questioned it. This was the plan you see! Take the propaganda in and then regurgitate it as truth without any background. I think Miko Peled and Tarashinksy both dispelled this myth without much success, due to the machine being in control of the information. Voices in the wilderness so to speak. I have had friends who were Jewish American Zionists, and I went to the JCC in my neighborhood. We socialized together without any conflict about religion. It took me decades to find some light as to the history as it actually was as opposed to the propaganda. Israel was founded by Zionist atheists, not traditional Jews practicing the traditional faith. Zionism is a conquering violent kind of political system. Israel is a divided country that is not a Democracy in any way. It was a strategy of the western powers to be used as a buffer and future method of gaining the world island as Mackinder stated. This land mass includes all the middle east, China, Russia and all the countries we have invaded in the last twenty years, thanks to the Patriot Act, that was made possible by the world trade center being demolished by our own government. A false flag needed for all this to happen. Israel will not stop with Palestine; it will keep on going to entail several surrounding countries. History! If you do not know where you came from then you do not know where you are going, and we have not been introduced to any real history in school because it is not there. Back to the crazies running things. They are not crazy at all; they are following the eugenics dream. The club of Rome stated this verry plainly. The population of the world is too large and needs to be non-violently reduced. So, not by war with bombs but a more non-violent method! False pandemics, injections that kill slowly, and change the human genome in a way of controlling the birth rate by still birth or sterility of hundreds of millions of men and women. It is a perfect strategy, and it is obvious that it is being done now. No, they are not crazy, they are evil.
The history is indeed extremely complex, and so are people. I went through a phase where I felt very sad about the whole "depopulation" sentiment, the Kissinger report that I wrote about and linked to multiple times, etc. But now I am of the opinion that we are just living history, that our time is special and yet, it's fundamentally no different from what the aspiring masters have been trying to do to the people for a few thousand years, it's what Steven Newcomb calls the System of Domination. And while ideologies and talking points change, the spiritual energy that drives it is what we need to deplete by our everyday actions., by our refusal to be afraid or to throw other people under the bus. That is where I stand today.
on one hand, it's easy to understand how first responders get battle fatigue. of all the jobs that cops hate, it's having to interfere in a situation that involves a homeless psycho, in NYC police vernacular, a "BOS" i.e. bag of shit
cruel, i know.
but from a medical POV, somebody who looks like they're high on whatever could just as easily be having a medical episode (or both). can't help but suspect that the guy who helped you out in your hour of need may have had ulterior motives.
i guess sometimes we just need to be grateful for help, whatever the source. god works in mysterious ways.
I am so sorry you have this ordeal on your hands!! The best of luck to you!!!
As far as this friend of mine, I am pretty sure he was sincere in helping me. As he was and probably is sincere in hating "the Arabs." People are very complex, sometimes tragically so!
I find that all too believable; in fact I'm a bit surprised your acquaintance did not become a psychiatrist; many do so in the effort to comprehend, and unscramble if possible, their own scrambled minds. That was a lesson I learned on my psych affiliation as a student RN, which involved 10 wks, 5 days a week, in a residence at a state psych hospital (it was the "dark ages" still, you understand). The yr before, I had tended 2 survivors in tertiary syphilis from the Tuskegee experiments, and allegedly had been "cured" with penicillin. So, no, I don't find this any stranger than a lot of medical practice I encountered before I reached even 25 yrs of age.
As for the crazies running the asylum, that happened 14 February 1871, in the US, with the last keys snatched in 1913, with the ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments.
Ha, you have a point, Sandra!! The field of psychiatry harbors a lot of people who are crying out for help whether they know it or not!! And some go into into it out of desire to be on top, and some may even be sadistic....
There is no question of that! 1 psychiatrist there got his "jollies" watching his patients going through ECT!
In psych it would be good if the doctors and nurses actually had more rights. Here in NZ the patients abuse the doctors and nurses physically and verbally and get away with it even though they are the personality disordered patients as opposed to those too ill to know what they say and do.
At least the right to self-defense! That was true in the US, as well!
Here is a paradox, people that don't care about people get into occupations that require caring about people.
I think that people getting into it for the money find out quickly that they are getting horribly underpaid. Also the irony is that you probably would not want someone who got into it for the money, which might be why pay is so low.
I've encountered techs that care for others, and they are really priceless. And those that do not... One woman left my bedpan unattended in the bathroom for some other staff to dispose of it. Same can be said for nurses. Some nurses are all numbers and protocols. The real gems are those that you could imagine hanging out with on karaoke night. The ones that see "you" and not a sea of symptoms. The ones that know that despite what you did that ended you up in the hospital, they still care. I had a nurse named Beth who even when I was not one of her patients, she would come and check on me. She'd bring me coffee, ask if I had taken a roll around the hospital.
When I was discharged from the hospital as a newly minted (unminted?) amputee in 2021 without insurance I had no place to go. The place I did live at did not have doors wide enough for a bariatric wheelchair (bariatric is medical code for "fat" for those playing at home.) I was dropped at a personal care home. The EMT, unlike your friend, was at crossed purposes. He was under orders to discharge me, but the room had a number of problems with it. His reservations were first brought to me when he came back up to the ambulance to explain to me he inspected the place and there were problems with it. His main reservations at that point were that it was dirty and smelled like smoke. I stated that I had lived with a chain-smoking mother for many years, so that would not be an issue. He wanted to tell me more, but either could not articulate it, or did not want to (maybe liability issues?)
Once in, there were problems.
1. The room that was to be mine was in a corner. It is hard to corner a bariatric wheelchair.
2. The doorway was too narrow. This meant if they did somehow get me into the door, I would be crawling around or have to be somehow helped. A third option could have been to find a narrow chair without arms to mobilize in.
3. The room was a disaster. It had ductwork coming out of the ceiling. It was in a basement. There were two other tenants living there in the main basement. The reason I was given the corner room was because I would have to make use of the bedside toilet, which would be ridiculous for others to have to endure on a daily basis.
4. The place was dirty and smelled like cigarettes.
Inside the house, the "landlord" of it was a pastor. He was almost a central casting of what a hypocrite was. I knew this without knowing what would transpire. Heck, the mere condition of the place was an indicator of how much he cared about his charges. If I had heard, for instance, someone was coming to stay in my room, I would have picked the place up, made the bed, probably changed out the sheets.
The Landlord whose name eludes me was trying to placate me as I expressed my reservation for being discharged here. He kept tapping and rubbing my shoulder like I was a genie's lamp. I think because rubbing me gave him 2000.00 a month. I found out later that the hospital was paying 2200.00 a month for three months for my "discharge."
Eventually, at one point, the EMT talked to his supervisor and informed me that I had to stay. My guess is this does actually violate some patient rights thing somewhere. I could see he was at torn purposes. They tried to stand me up and get me into that corner room, but I am heavy, and its hard to lift my body with one leg. Finally they settled on moving another tenant into the back corner room. I was setup on a mattress that had been placed on stacked milk crates. It was below my wheelchair so my being able to transfer to the wheelchair or bedside toilet was a big ? as they left me there. For two days thankfully I never felt the need to make a necessary. I was on my smartphone with close family members trying to figure out getting insurance (and getting educated in the process). I don't even remember who handled my urine bottles. I think he must have because I don't remember getting into a wheelchair at that point.
At one point before the EMT's left. I was crying. The pastor was trying to be conciliatory. The EMT was following orders, but I would tell he wasn't happy, but stern. I remember feeling like why not just roll out into the weeds and let the outdoor elements take me.
The personal care home/group home was more like a glorified boarding house. I found out later many of these places are set up for people that slip through the cracks. A lot of the mentally ill find themselves houses in places like this. One tenant I think was mentally ill, and the other suffered from Stage 4 cancel and a horrible attitude that accompanied it. He had a makeshift bed setup as well with a computer/tv monitor that was playing MSM news most of the day.
The first meal I got from the place was a combination of Dominos Pizza and McDonalds. The pastor lost his car for some reason and had to walk to the restaurant to get food. Back in 2021, I think a McChicken still cost around $1.00 and a piece of pizza was about a buck a slice. This is what was meant by "healthy meals?"
Breakfast was probably the best meal of the day, followed by lunch which was one of those sandwiches you can buy at RaceTrac. When the pastor was downstairs he was all lowered voice, kind words, and placating gestures. Upstairs, we was loud, raucous, and abusive to other family members.
This is "caring for people" looks like, at least from one person's point of view. Not everyone is like this, but this was my first exposure to it, and wow.
It's also a warning out there for those of us that fail to plan, we will, inevitibly, plan to fail. If you are diabetic, have a chronic condition and are not taking measures to address it, plan for what will happen when things end badly. For me it was diabetic cellulitis.
What a horrible story! In South Africa we have many good nurses BUT because of unemployment there are also many nurses that become nurses just because it is a "job" and they really do not care about their patients. I suppose you get it everywhere, I have even heard stories from what happens in expensive private hospitals and I have witnessed a lot when my brother's son was in hospital for cancer, they expected him to take the bowl he vomited in to the sluice and clean it himself while he was in so much pain he could hardly move.
I think this happens everywhere. And of course it happens even in elite hospitals.
Wow, Jimmy, thank you for sharing your story!! And it is so true, a lot depends on the individual kindness of the "healthcare worker." And we are increasingly finding ourselves in a place where individual kindness of the healthcare worker is the key element in what happens, because the "procedure" is getting more and more terrible!
In the US we call them group homes, and they are not geared for the disabled at all.
No they aren't, and. the landlords have no experience in dealing with the mentally ill. I could tell you some of the horrible things the landlord said about some of them..and my response always was "why do you call them that, they can't help who they are."
No, they aren't. I know what you mean.
The part of this article I like best is that you can recognize and accept both the good and the bad in your friend. Being able to love someone including (not despite) their flaws is sadly uncommon these days, and it is a joy to read your work because you still do. Seeing you express that, I hope, inspires your readers to know that they can too.
Thank you, ForceOfHabit!! That particular guy was pretty messed up, looking back at it. But he also was kind to me. The world is so complex!!
Well, human critters are; most of the rest manages to totter along without our interference pretty well, actually...
There were no patient rights really, ever. I have worked in Psych for years as a nurse and counselor. Patients tested and challenged us to be the best version of ourselves while they were being the worst version of themselves. I will be forever thankful for all of the moments I had to hold back my impulses to act normally in their presence.
Wow, Sharon, so fascinating!
I loved my work and all aspects of nursing, but yes, psych ER was the most challenging and the most rewarding.
We have seen a lot of broken, sadistic, and mistakenly superior and "chosen" doctors over the last three years, and especially now. I suspect the field appeals to a segment of the population who genetically are incapable of seeing others as more than chess pieces or scenery. It is especially dangerous when people with that mindset huddle in enclaves and only marry others in the enclave with similar outlooks.
Arrogance is a dangerous drug, indeed! I was surprised to see the status of doctors in the U.S., it is very different here from how I grew up. I grew up in a medical family and spent all my time before I came to America around doctors and research, and it was considered "ordinary." Nothing prestigious, just helping people, working a lot. But here doctors were indeed "chosen," very prestigious, very uppity. I guess this is because of the financial structure that was set up around medicine in America, and the role the doctors are supposed to play in enriching the pharmaceutical executives and investors. :)
I think that status harkens back to the days when doctors made house calls in all weather, by horse back, or in buggies, to care for their patients, and might get paid with a couple of chickens, a piglet, canned or fresh produce, or, repairs on his own home, rather than cash, that was in very short supply in most parts of this nation still! They were among the small minority with college educations in those days too. Aspirin was still new in those days too; laudanum and morphine, for major pain were in use,; and chloroform or ether for anesthesia were still pretty new. Sulfur was about the only antibiotic of sorts, and everything else was compounded on the spot to treat symptoms, from plant sources.
Possibly. But the doctors plays this role everywhere, and back home, they still didn't earn the "exceptional prestige" the American doctors have (had for a while?) in the U.S. The doctors used to do home visits all the time when I was a kid, and probably for a while after!
That extends back to the days of the "opening of the west", so contending with hostile Commanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, Lakota, etc , to make those "house calls", who didn't distinguish doctors from others, indeed considered " white man's medicine" evil. Over the decades, respect evolved into something more like reverence. In '66, the AJN (required reading for student nurses) carried an article that encapsulated it perfectly: it was written as if a anthropological study of a primitive society, having its own language, deities, and religion, etc. The article was spot on, and hilarious to read.
I know; they even came when I called late In the evening, once when I was twelve. I think I scared the answering service lady, but I was scared too. I already knew enough to be quite accurate about the situation: my Mom was flat in bed with a temp of 103° F, too high for an adult, and it only went up after aspirins and fluids. When I called it was 103.6°F, and I had already experienced the worst possible type of febrile seizures 2 yrs earlier when my sister caught meningitis; I didn't need, or want, a repeat of that. So I know well they still came to the house... But that stopped for the most part in the '70s when HMOs moved in and unions began demanding coverage for routine ailments, and procedures, that just been out of pocket payments up 'til then, along with expanding EMS coverage into rural areas.