Month: November 2015

I have to have the worst nurse on the floor. She may be my worst nurse ever. I saw her pop in during shift change and we explained what needs to happen so that my clusters are controlled and so that I don’t have the medication desert in the middle of the day that happened yesterday. Unfortunately, that wasn’t her plan. I didn’t get my daytime meds until 10:30. She gave me Norflex at 9:30 when I didn’t ask for it because I was going to use it during the drought. It’s every 12 hours, so I can’t have it again until tonight at 21:00. The Thorazine was supposed to be used around 23:00 and the Benadryl around 00:00. Thorazine and Benadryl work together to put my fat ass to sleep (and they do). Sometimes, I wake up and I’m in bed fully clothed and have no idea how or why.

Now, at 15:35, I’m eventually getting the Thorazine. That means I can’t use it again until 03:00. Hopefully, I’ll be asleep without the combo. This is the only place where I actually get some sleep.

It’s not that I haven’t said anything. I have to both her and the charge nurse. The charge nurse’s response was ‘you’ll work it out.’ We obviously haven’t bc she didn’t do what I asked in the first place and she continues not to do it. At this point, it’s nearly 16:00. Benadryl comes at 18:00. I can suffer through another hour and a half. Hell, it’s already been 2 hours. What’s another two? She hasn’t even ordered the new bag of histamine. I told her to put the Thorazine away so that I could use it tonight and to just give me a Xanax and a refill on the histamine. She doesn’t seem to have any clue as to what’s going on. I bet she comes in now and tells me that she can’t give me the Xanax because it’s too early.

My head is pushing an 8/9, up from a 5/6. I’m sure some of it is weather related, but most of it has to do with this situation. I ordered the Xanax abouI tried to avoid it, but I got fucked even harder. Of course the pharmacy was the problem (not ordering ahead of time because the pharmacy is always slow). Then someone tells her that ‘we’ have to wait an hour between bags. I told her that I don’t. I’d already wasted enough time today and could’ve gotten another bag in easy.

I’m really pissed off at the moment both at her and at the charge nurse. The charge nurse should have done something about it because this little girl doesn’t know what she’s doing other than being able to get a really, really bad blonde job. I’m off to the sunroom.

 

Today I’m angry. I’m very angry. On September 11th 2001 the twin towers in NYC fell to a terrorist attack that could have been prevented. Instead, an unelected administration used it as a prelude to war. It was a war we didn’t need to get into. On 11-M bombs ripped through the Atocha cercanías station on a busy platform during Monday’s rush hour. ETA was blamed at first, but eventually, Al-Qaeda took responsibility. Madrid isn’t in the US. Who cares? A civil war and genocide, are going on in Syria that’s displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Syrian refugees were pouring out of the country like angered ants leaving their hill. They have to be put somewhere. They overwhelmed what Europe could do very quickly in terms of humanitarian aid. The civil war may have gotten two days in the sanitized US news. It’s Syria. Who cares? There was an attack in Lebanon Thursday night that didn’t even make the news. There have been many of them.

Friday night, ISIS pulled off a coordinated terrorist attack in Paris. PARIS? A civilized city? PARIS? The FB graphics went up almost before the event was over. At first, they were supportive, but then the right wing went into full blitz mode to continue to scare the poor American mice. All of a sudden, it was no longer about shared empathy with Paris and France. There were no more well-wishers for Paris. I transmuted into this bastardized blind hatred toward a people who were fleeing a humanitarian crisis any way they could. It became, No Muslims in My Back Yard! All Muslims are Terrorists. We should screen the Muslims and only let those who are christian in. When ISIS attacks (they are already here) in the US, just like in Europe, they will be US nationals and not foreign agents/terrorists.

The right wing and conservative christians start the spin machines and it’s no longer a humanitarian cause, it’s another fucking crusade. Now we have jihadis and crusaders. No one is going to force anyone to believe in Islam. You cannot force us to believe in your faery tale either. Nor will anyone expect you to submit to Judaism. Personally, I’d rather be stoned to death as an apostate than live within the fear fence the right wing has created.

Most of the people spewing this vile swill have never met a muslim. They’ve never picked up the Quran; let alone read it. Hell, some of them haven’t even been out of their states or counties and feel that they should be allowed an opinion on what’s happening on the world stage. WTF?!! They don’t know anything about the world stage. Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and the Bahamas don’t count as international travel.

Why does this piss me off so much? I hate ignorance and stupidity. I’ve been to Paris many times. It’s not my favorite city, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. I know and have visited some of the bombed venues. I’ve been to Madrid. I’ve used the Atocha station. I have friends that live there who could’ve been on that train that day if they had been on time. I’ve been to North Africa and met some of the nicest people I’ve ever know and yes, they were muslim and they didn’t care that I was gay. I was another person. I’ve been all over Europe and Central and South America. They all have one thing in common; they understand that terrorist attacks could happen anywhere at any time, but they refuse to live in fear. In the US, our politicians, censors and handlers make sure that we live in a constant state of fear just like the towns and cities under ISIS’s control.

Fuck you! Stop praying to a dead god as if it ever existed and had ‘plans’ for you. A god having plans for each and every individual on this planet and countless more that can harbor life is absurd. Open your eyes to the world around you. Read the press from the actual country. In this case, I was reading ‘Le Monde’ because some moron was quoting Fox. Luckily, I can read French and correct his misinformation.

Do something to help the world around you. Do something to aid humanity rather than scurrying down into your little xenophobic holes. Donate to UN programs or other NGOs. Help resettle your new neighbors and welcome them into your communities. By isolating them, they are far more likely to turn against us than they are to become one of us. If you’re a church-based organization, send your missionaries to the site to help, not to preach. The typical quid pro quo is unacceptable. I’m going to give you this water but you have to come to our church services is a travesty and simply plays on the weak and the innocent.

Finally, he three signs of a nation or civilization in decline are xenophobia, extreme nationalism and religious zealotry. Unless things change quickly, we will have all three in spades. It won’t be pretty.

So, I clearly had the timeframe wrong from the accident, but that’s what happens when you deal with memories from 40 years ago. The accident probably happened in October because school was in session by then and I have no idea where we were going. We were just all in the bed of the truck and dad was driving way too fast for our pock marked driveway. You know the rest of that story.

Recovery wasn’t any easier than injury. I went back to school eventually and after the initial ‘wow, look at that thing’ it all of a sudden turned into an ‘I don’t want to get near it’ thing. This is a small town. There are 500 kids K-12. (PreK hadn’t been invented yet.) Now, I have a classroom of kids I’ve know my whole life who won’t even get near me because I look like a mummy and I’m going to die. They don’t want me to make them sick. The teacher tried to calm them down and tell them that nothing would happen to them and that I was just injured and the bandages and gauze were there so I could heal and to protect the wound. Things got even worse as the gauze came off little by little. Then they could see the stitches. The stitches came out and they could see the scars. Once they could see the scars, even though this was no fault of my own, even my two closest friends abandoned me for a time.

The only person who interacted with me on a positive level was my teacher. So on top of all of the other shit, I was now teacher’s pet, by their own doing. Different is not something you want to be in elementary school. Elementary school kids are all conformists and any difference is dissected, examined and ruled as unacceptable regardless of circumstance. They will pick up on that one little difference and chew on it like a pack of hyena. You are permanently ostracized.

These are the same kids who wrote me the kind letters while I was out right after the accident happened. I was looking forward to being with them again because I liked school and I was kind of lonely and bored at home. Unfortunately, once I returned to school, I got exactly the opposite response. I was now different, strange, marginalized. This was the one singular event that drove the rest of my school experience through the next 11 grades. I was unwanted, unpopular and an outcast. I was disillusioned, angry and incredulous. I would tell my mom and she would just say that they just have to get used to it and once they do everything will be fine. My dad would just growl because I was crying and weak. (This was his fault anyway. I’m not sure why he even got to have an opinion.) Of course I cried at school from time to time when the kids would be especially mean. I didn’t know or understand what was going on.

This particular memory opened another strand of zip line of memories stretching from 1st grade through 12th grade. It was not a strand that I wanted opened yet.