Gradually degenerating into ignorance and complacency.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

profiling

If you are sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting ... your mind tends to drift ... find anything fascinating! I don't often give a care about the persons unknown to me, walking around, but I did see a guy, friendly looking, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shorts in ninety degree weather. Now ... if you want to look like a drug dealer, that's it! You have the inappropriate clothes (too hot, too cold) to point out you are a beacon for something. Other ways would be to carry no wallet, but cash in a roll; bounce your eyes back and forth as if watching tennis demonstrating paranoia; smell like drugs, and others.

If you dress vegabond, have no money for food, but buy yourself and mate smokes and soda, you set yourself apart for scrutiny. The emergency room has people in need and some are in need of SHOWERING and regular daily hygene. If you have to stand in the smoking section outside of hospital with hospital gown, pole with drip drugs; I've got absolutely no sympathy for your condition at all!

A float nurse today stated that at times there are patients brought in with addictions; so staff sometimes administers the class drug that the patient chemically needs instead of having them go into D.T. leading to cardiac arrest. Ya know ... maybe cardiac arrest wouldn't be a bad thing.

Sewer daytime soap

My sister is constantly telling family of the soap opera of her son's life, daily stupid; all about the drama. I told family that I don't watch soap operas on TV, I certainly don't want to see or hear that one. Like other bad TV, it won't change.
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The soap opera I would like to catch is some of my other sister's family, but then I find that I might not like that either.

In the end, I think I'll take the documentary on one person's line of failures -- mine.

schools of thought

My father is a doomsdayer when it comes to some health issues. He would rather do a messload of procedures and outpatient surgies on my mother to "get her working", regardless the efficacy of it -- risk vs gain. On this subject, he and I cannot talk -- as strong as abortion issue for others. I know she's a surgery risk and the fewer procedures done, the liklier she is to do well or okay.

steps to improvement

My mother is making yet greater strides in improving. She pulled herself up on the walker twice today, at other times needing help. She is more mobile and "with it". Some of her rotten days are a blur and she still has memory jumps, but she is presently highly-medicated.

The cardiologist came in today and stated that he thought that her heart arhymmia wasn't too serious and was planning, likely, to discharge her with oral medicine to thin her blood. He said it would be trial 3 months, perhaps for life, but that is of little cost. It is much better than a semi-invasive or dangerous procedure not quite surgery.

The orthopedics think that she's doing well, but I'm not sure of the physical therapists thoughts. Each group has a different interest in her and each has high goals. She has met the minimum requirements, it seems to be on the track for discharge from hospital to rehab. Certainly there, things will settle closer to normalcy.

I then have installation tasks with my father to outfit the bathrooms with appliances. Her first few baths will be painful, lifting her legs over the full tub-shower. I know that he has a lot of plans in his head. He doesn't share them with me.

I thank eveyone for their prayers, wishes, hopes, support. She is improving at her own speed -- aggrivating for the spectator, but she'll get there.

Who's the guilty party?

One of the funniest conversations with a woman, assistant manager, I had was, "... Who put the penis on the Tom Hanks?"

She instantly started laughing hard about it. She spent five whole minutes not asking, building up the courage to ask me, who put the "penis" on the Tom Hanks standup poster for the Burbs. There was indeed, as I then looked, a penis on the Tom Hanks where a PJ fly might be. Upon closer inspection, it was a sticker that went on a different movie cover. This movie cover was Bad Taste, an EARLY Peter Jackson film. The "penis" was actually a finger sticker meant to make the cover a little less rude that the alien flipping off viewers.

I saw the movie at the library and was instantly reminded of this stupid thing. I think the penis being on the standup for a couple of days wasn't nearly as funny as this poor woman building up the nerve to ask me. I didn't know, later it was told to me by many, the guilty party (TS).

Good work

A Victory for Justice

Over the last 50 years, the psychiatric profes­sion has made a mockery of our criminal justice system. It has gotten to the point that the insanity defense, bolstered by psychiatrists masquerad­ing as expert witnesses, can be invoked any time someone commits a heinous crime.

Thanks to a recent US Supreme Court decision, we may be coming to our senses. In 2003, Arizona courts convicted Eric Clark of first-degree murder for “intentionally and know­ingly” luring a policeman to a parking lot and killing him. The defendant didn’t deny that he killed the officer, but he pled insanity. The state ruled, however, that in order for an insanity plea to stand, the defendant must be incapable of knowing his actions are wrong at the time the crime is committed, and Eric Clark did not meet this criteria.

He appealed, stating that his rights to an insanity defense had been truncated, and his case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court. These astute justices didn’t buy it. They ruled that the state of Arizona was perfectly within its rights of limiting the insanity defense, and Clark was not deprived of a fair trial.  They also put psychiatrists in their place, stating, “No matter how the test for insanity is phrased, a psychiatrist or psychologist is no more qualified than any other person to give an opinion about whether a particular defendant’s mental condi­tion satisfies the legal test for insanity.”

I truly hope this decision will allow other states to wrest the justice system from the fraud­ulent grip of psychiatrists and psychologists.