It is all about the money

The two commercials you see on TV constantly are pharmaceutical companies advertising their drugs and lawyers wanting to sue pharmaceutical companies.

Why do so many drugs created to cure one thing, have twenty-times as many side effects.

Through the Cambodian interpreter, retired patient tells me how he got a laceration on top of his thumb while using a handsaw four days previously. He was able to stop the bleeding, but now it was so infected he had to come in. After a prescription for some antibiotics and some instructions to elevate and use warm compresses, he was on his way. Although, I had to say that just because it is called a handsaw, does not mean you saw your hand. Lame, but least I got a small laugh from the interpreter and patient.

New Clinicals

Started a new clinical rotation over the weekend in an urgent care clinic for a large HMO. There were about a dozen MD’s & NP’s working, and my preceptor handles mostly musculoskeletal injuries. She also had a good sense of humor, which helps when you see so many people in the course of a shift.

I found the patients rather pleasant to deal with, maybe because they had insurance and did not have to wait around in some ER to be seen for their minor injuries and accidents. We saw bike riders who found out pavement is not very forgiving and a trail runner who now prefers flat ground after a nice spill. Although she blames her boyfriend because he made her go. A father who was practicing acrobatics with his daughter and had to leave in a foot cast, and I never realized so many people slammed their fingers in car doors. Thirty seconds and the use of a cautery pen to relieve the pressure and they were on their way.  

Suicide

I believe that suicide is not so much about someone wanting to kill him or herself. As it is a desperate attempt to escape their current situation in life.

Some do manage to change, while some retreat into substances or other addictions. Others will do the next closest thing to suicide and runaway cutting themselves off entirely from everything they know and their current world to try to start again somewhere new.

In this world or the next, may they find what they were looking for.

Chain of Knowledge

Finals time again and truthfully, sometimes it feels that all these classes and clinicals have come together nicely to form links in a chain of knowledge to be accessed when needed.
Then again other times, like when trying to take a test and accessing those links and chains of information. It feels like some deranged person has entered my mind with a set of bolt-cutters and annihilated those links.

Lost in Life

Almost forgot about blogging, although probably like most people who are excited about starting a new life and journey in school you get lost. All the sudden you are inundated with work, work and work. Not going to lie, school is kicking my ass and at times doubts creep in about finishing. It is fu***** hard all the work of graduate school.   

I could just go back to travel nursing with no rent or worries. Zero bills, free insurance and travel. That sounds wonderful…. Truthfully, travel nursing has some drawbacks. Like meeting people who become distant friends as soon as you take the next assignment. Or meeting someone you really care about and then they are gone.

Current stress 100%, travel nursing stress 90% less than that. What to do?

Health care law explained

Being in health care, people want your opinion of the proposed health care law, and even want you to explain it. Not having read the over thousand pages of law, including all the added pork Congress members and Senators seem to add to everything. Then this short video does a good job of explaining it while remaining unbiased. Just like the bill, some will like it, some will not.   

Military soldier kills 16

A military individual kills 16 people in Afghanistan and people are surprised. I am just surprised this does not happen more often.

We recruit hundreds of thousands of these young men and women out of their homes. We train them to be killing machines with minimal thinking or questioning involved. We tell these kids when to eat, drink, sleep and shit. Then send them 7000 miles away to live in close quarters away from their families and friends, in a country where they are mostly not welcomed.

Pretend you are not involved, but our tax dollars built this soldier/machine, so it is your fault.

This is not different from someone flying an unmanned Predator drone thousands of miles away, then hitting a button and killing innocent people at a wedding party. Or on the other hand, the President saying drop the bombs to start “Shock and Awe”, killing untold numbers.

This soldier was older, but it does not change the fact that this US machine broke down,  and since we paid for it, it is our fault and not a surprise.

To be continued...

It is not the end; in fact, it is only the beginning of the journey.

Photo: http://www.winnipeglovehate.com/

Evil Stepmother

It is not school and working part time that has been consuming all my time. Longer than I have been in school we have also been fighting a court battle over the estate of my late father. The evil stepmother description fits this situation well. His estate that was put in trust, then disappeared and she is refusing court orders to provide an accounting and hiding facts. The longer she can drag this out and cost us money, the more she thinks we will disappear. Not going to happen, but that is how she deals with problems.

The problem is it involves 3 states and jurisdictions. I have gone to Oregon several times and tomorrow when I should be putting the final additions on a research paper for submission, and preparing for tests, instead I will be flying to Nevada for a 9am court appearance. Next week back to Oregon for another hearing. These are the frustration I would love to blog about and get out of my head, but then again I become more hesitant of who is reading this and giving details about our case.

Life pulls us all in multiple directions and tests us regularly, hopefully this is just another life lesson.