If you saw me walking down the street this past Tuesday, you’d think I was a heroine addict – my arms full of track marks, my face pale with exhaustion. The reason: two incompetent nurses that poked me four times and still couldn’t find a vein to draw blood from. In fact, I had to go back to my doctor’s office on Wednesday, when finally a more competent nurse found her way to my juice.
I felt horribly insecure at the end of my Tuesday visit, as the first, incompetent, male nurse fiddled and told me how “spidery” my veins were and how I had to “relax.” I was perfectly relaxed (I’ve never been afraid of blood), until I realized he had NO IDEA what he was doing. Then things started to get scary. He didn’t seem like the brightest berry in the bush, and it got me to thinking, as (Ouch!) there went one poke, and then (Ouch!) another. Then came another nurse who said: “wow, this is hard!” And I thought: What is going on? And I’m not just saying “what’s going on with American Healthcare?” I’m going beyond that. “What’s going on with America? And can we trust the kind of people we are producing in this country?” This is a bigger question and one that feeds straight into healthcare and all of American life (a life which spreads globally due to the ways of the 21st century).
Not too long ago I wrote an article about how the healthcare profession is becoming popular because it is “recession proof;” but what kind of nurses and health care professionals are we dishing out when the only reason they enter the field is because they are secured a job? What happened to the days when nursing was a vocation? And, more importantly, what are they teaching kids (or not teaching them) in elementary and high schools that prevent them from understanding their lessons (for instance the one about drawing blood) when they get to nursing school (and other kinds of schools)? Have we totally lost it?
I read recently a quote by Bette Midler in which she was asked her greatest fear and she said something to the tune of: “I fear the best days of my country are over.” It’s a bleak thought. But, I thought, on Wednesday: maybe she’s right. As bridges collapse around us, and our infrastructure weakens (both physically and intellectually) I have to ask myself whether Midler isn’t right to ask herself this question.
However, and there is always a however in this double-faced and contradictory land we call America, there are a number of hopeful elements to our story as American path. One of which is what leads me to my next blog (which I’ll enter right above this one) – the very idea that McCain finds so negative, and which I find quite positive – that the junior senator from Illinois and presumptive Democratic Candidate for President is a “celebrity.”
I felt horribly insecure at the end of my Tuesday visit, as the first, incompetent, male nurse fiddled and told me how “spidery” my veins were and how I had to “relax.” I was perfectly relaxed (I’ve never been afraid of blood), until I realized he had NO IDEA what he was doing. Then things started to get scary. He didn’t seem like the brightest berry in the bush, and it got me to thinking, as (Ouch!) there went one poke, and then (Ouch!) another. Then came another nurse who said: “wow, this is hard!” And I thought: What is going on? And I’m not just saying “what’s going on with American Healthcare?” I’m going beyond that. “What’s going on with America? And can we trust the kind of people we are producing in this country?” This is a bigger question and one that feeds straight into healthcare and all of American life (a life which spreads globally due to the ways of the 21st century).
Not too long ago I wrote an article about how the healthcare profession is becoming popular because it is “recession proof;” but what kind of nurses and health care professionals are we dishing out when the only reason they enter the field is because they are secured a job? What happened to the days when nursing was a vocation? And, more importantly, what are they teaching kids (or not teaching them) in elementary and high schools that prevent them from understanding their lessons (for instance the one about drawing blood) when they get to nursing school (and other kinds of schools)? Have we totally lost it?
I read recently a quote by Bette Midler in which she was asked her greatest fear and she said something to the tune of: “I fear the best days of my country are over.” It’s a bleak thought. But, I thought, on Wednesday: maybe she’s right. As bridges collapse around us, and our infrastructure weakens (both physically and intellectually) I have to ask myself whether Midler isn’t right to ask herself this question.
However, and there is always a however in this double-faced and contradictory land we call America, there are a number of hopeful elements to our story as American path. One of which is what leads me to my next blog (which I’ll enter right above this one) – the very idea that McCain finds so negative, and which I find quite positive – that the junior senator from Illinois and presumptive Democratic Candidate for President is a “celebrity.”
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