Be careful what you wish for

Is this really what the people who elected Trump wanted?  Not the people who were behind getting him elected, but the real people who voted for him.  The ones like you and me, who get up every morning, go to work, play with their kids, you know just folk.  Did they really want to have a fascist country, where one man makes decisions for all of us, whether we or they like it or not?

It is easy when you have an idea of what you want your government to look like to pick a candidate and vote.  This time I think the people who voted for Trump were fooled into believing he stood for what they believe in.  I don't think they had any idea of his true agenda.  I don't think they realized he was as sick as he is.  At least I would like to believe they did not know.

I wonder how many of them are as shocked and upset as those of us who did not vote for this lunatic.  I cannot believe they wanted a dictator who would, in a very short time, turn much of the world against us.

I guess it is like the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it."  But did they really?

America, Home of the Brave and Land of the Free

I thought we lived in America, Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.  I have never lived in a fascist state, nor did I want to, but I guess all of that is changing.

We have a lunatic in the white house who is taking away our liberties by executive order and because of an article in the constitution he can do that.  I keep asking when is congress going to put a muzzle and a leash on this guy.  Well they can and can't.  They assume, as we did that this guy could be reasoned with.  Have you ever tried to reason with an out of control teenager?  Good luck with that.

I find it truly sad that Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of our neighbor to the north, is more compassionate towards people fleeing oppression than we are.

Did 911 frighten us so badly that we have become hardened to the plight of people fighting for their lives.  Don't get me wrong 911 was devastating.  It was despicable, but not every Muslim is a terrorist any more than every American is a Trump supporter.  We have people who are waiting to come into this country, who have legitimate papers, now stuck in no-man's land because we have an insane guy in the white house.  So I suppose that is all right as long as they stay in the countries they came from or in the country they are now stuck in.  Well isn't that swell of us.  Let's let the rest of the world deal with this since we are now bigots.

I do not want to be classed as a bigot.  I have stood up to bigotry since I was a child.  I do not want to live in a bigoted, fascist, elitist country, where everyone looks the same, talks the same, and thinks the same.  How boring that would be.

I hope my guy is right and due process will win out, but the damage that will be done between now and then frightens me more than at any other time in my adult life.  Where is the reason?  Where is the justice?  Where is the compassion?   Think people, think.

It made me so doggone sad today to look at a sweet man who was in fear of what was going to happen to some friends of his.  It made me sad and then mad.  The man was a Mexican-American who has friends who feel they must move back to Mexico with their daughter for fear of what may be coming in this country.

How dare Donald Trump and his insanity to invade people's lives like that.  Even though nothing has happened so far and my guy keeps reassuring me that this whole thing will be tied up in court for years, who cares.  These people are in fear right now.  Can you imagine living in fear that someone might come and knock on your door and haul you away from the only life you have known for years.  You are a law abiding, work hard person who is in danger of having your whole life ripped from you.  That stinks.

We here in America have never had to live like that, except during WWII, when Japanese families were hauled off to camps and lost everything.  Since then it has not happened.

So what do we say to those people we know who are in this position.  Don't worry, it will be all right.  We do not know that and those are pretty hollow sounding words if you ask me.  Or do we say, oh don't worry it will take years of litigation before Trump can seriously do anything.  Same hollow words.

There is truly nothing we can say, because we do not know.  Those of us who did not vote for him did not think he would be elected, either legally or illegally.

At this point the only thing we can do is pray and hope that God intercedes before this idiot blows us all up.

More scary stuff

Everyday now we see our country turning into something we don't even recognize.  What happened to the words on the Statue of Liberty that so many immigrants gratefully looked at as they entered what they hoped would be their promised land.

Oh, I forgot their skin was the same color as that guy in the white house.  I watched in horror as Jorge Ramos, an award winning journalist was ejected from a Trump news conference last August for trying to ask a question.  Okay, so I am sure it probably had something to do with Trump's stand on racism, which we have now all pretty much come to know.  He is a racist, but the guy was not even civil about it.  He just ejected Mr. Ramos without even hearing the question.  Yeah that is our president.  That is the kind of guy we want to represent us throughout the world.  Considering that most of the population of the world does not have the same color skin we do, not to mention our native American population, who must be scared to death right now.

How do we stop this?  Forget writing to our representatives, their hands seem to be tied or their heads are so far up Trump's butt they cannot see their constituents, much less the rest of those who are shaking our heads in disbelief.

I do not have answers, but I do have a lot of questions.  One is who the heck really elected this guy?  We can blame the Russians, but so far no one has been able to prove that, although I am not sure how hard they are really trying.  And, God knows, if Trump does carry out an investigation how accurate would it be.

The problem is he has lied so much and treated people so badly how can we ever trust him or his party?  It is so doggone sad that we are a great nation, we always have been.  Yes, we have issues but we have always been able to move on and feel proud to be American.  I can truthfully say this is the first time in my 67 years that I have questioned my pride in America.  Not the people, the government.  It has quit working and what seems to be coming next is terrifying.

What now

Okay, we watched as over a million people marched in cities all over the world to let our leaders know we do not like what is happening in the world.  They marched to let leaders know that their voices would be heard.

What now?  It is all well and good to demonstrate for lofty ideals but how do you make those ideals stick.  Obviously legislation does not work that can be changed with the stroke of a pen.  As that guy in the white house is showing us.  So what does make permanent change.

I would challenge those amazing people who marched and showed how much they cared about this country and the rights of the people in it to come up with a plan that will work.  A plan that cannot be legislated away.  Laws truly change nothing.  They are only rules by which someone says we have to live.  They do not have much to do with how each and every one of us lives on a daily basis.  They do not have much to do with how we treat our neighbors, our friends, our families or strangers we encounter.  That comes from our hearts and our beliefs about how the world should be.

Right now we are dealing with a government who does not see any of the people in the United States as real people with real lives who mean something.  The leader of this country seems to spend far to much time in the mirror telling himself what a great thing he has a accomplished and how he is the best thing in the world.  He does not know we exist and we can march, scream or anything else and he will not hear us.  He does not care.  He got what he wanted.  Power.  Power over millions of people.

We have a narcissistic egomaniac in the topmost leader role of this country and he has surrounded himself with people who want a piece of that power and will do whatever it takes to get it.

We better come up with a plan to fight this and it better be a good one or our democracy is done and we will have a dictatorship before anyone can even begin to stop him.

An episode of Cops

It seems that we folks who were young adults in the 60's and 70's learned how to demonstrate and voice our opinions.  We learned that very well and we felt as though the rest of the country would hear us and agree.  Well in some cases they did, thus many strides in civil rights for minorities and women.  What we failed to see was an underlying current of resentment and hatred for the very things that we thought everyone wanted.   After all they were reasonable, humane ideals, who would not be for them.

What we failed to realize was that there is another force that seems more powerful in these times and that is power and greed.  When I have heard the elected white house guy (no I cannot call him Mr. President) speaking I have never once heard compassion for anyone.  It has all been about what the "fake media" has said about him or the "useless" individuals he has insulted, most of whom he is not fit to lick their shoes.  So, he is a president of this generation where many do not want to take responsibility for their own actions and would rather blame their actions on anyone but themselves.

I would have had more respect for this guy if he would have just owned up to his blunders and said, "Yeah, I acted like a moron, I have learned from my mistakes and I will strive to do better."  But, no, every time he is caught at doing something it is someone else's fault.  It is kind of like watching an episode of "Cops", you know the one where the person gets caught with the dope and keeps saying, "It's not mine, man."

So I suppose if we just consider the next four years an episode of "Cops" we can get through it just fine.  After all, the bad guy does finally get taken into custody and right does prevail.
 

I broke a rule I had made for myself yesterday.  Actually, I had done it before, but for some reason this time it struck some nerves with folks.  I shared on Facebook a post I had received from a friend.  It related to Donald Trump insulting John Lewis, a US senator and prominent civil rights demonstrator back when it was a dangerous thing to be a civil rights demonstrator.  He suffered a fractured skull and time in jail for his courage.  Since then, he has served this nation as a voice of reason in the legislature.

Anyway, one of my friends, a Trump supporter, and far too young to even know who John Lewis is commented on the post, as well she has a right too.  Another friend of mine, actually a friend since 1976, went off on her, calling her stupid and saying how sick he was of the stupid Trump supporters.  I was so embarrassed I still don't know what to say to him.  I apologized to my Trump supporter friend and got some very encouraging comments from other people on the post.

My thing is, how do we come together as a nation if we cannot even dialog without calling each other names and insulting one another.  That makes us no better than Trump, who does not seem to care who he insults and calls names.  He just flings the words because he thinks he is untouchable and no one will stop him, as if they could.

My Trump supporter friend suggested we give him a chance. We have no choice, we have to give him a chance, but I must say I am terrified of giving him a chance.  To me that means a chance to make our nation a laughing stock all over the world.  That means that we will be going back to a time when women and minorities were seen and not heard and all of the years of struggle to get where we are will be gone, with a long way to go.  Where hatred and bigotry are the rule.  Not a world that sounds like we are making America great again to me, but then I forgot that making America great means lining the pockets of already rich corporate executives and politicians who follow the Trump line of thinking.

As we go into the next four years we all need to talk to one another.  I mean really talk. We do not all need to sit around a campfire and sing Kumbiya (I never can spell that word), but tell each other who we are, what we believe in, and why.  I have found that if I know who another person is it is much easier for me to understand why they believe what they do.  We do not need to insult each other and become crass and crude like the guy that will be in the white house.  We all need to take the high road with each other.  That is what will truly make America great.  Understanding and compassion for another viewpoint, whether we agree or not.

By the way, sorry about lack of posting of late.  Our modem decided to act silly and we had to figure out what was wrong and then life kind of got in the way, but I am back.  It did give me time to think of some stuff that has been on my mind, so you will get the results of that.

As those of you who may know me can attest I am not the poster child for political correctness.  In most cases I am okay with that.  However, it seems that corporations take political correctness very seriously, as I learned awhile ago.  That being the case, why is our new president not being held to the same standard that every person working for a large corporation is held.

Now, you may say "Well, he is the President and he can say what he wants."  I beg to differ with you on that one.  Seems to me he should be the example of how we should treat our fellow man.  Instead, he gives every excuse in the book as to why his words and actions are okay.  Mostly it is the "unfair" media's fault that he is a putz, according to him.

It amazes me that he can lie to our faces and expect us to believe him.  I suppose to track down all of the facts is time consuming and downright tedious, but come on, some of it is so blatant and obvious it only shows that he thinks we are all morons and he of the big ego is the only one allowed to spout nasty words and gestures about people and get away with it because he is the Pres.

I do not remember when I have been so upset with a president.  This guy was a bullying, egomaniac on his TV show and now he has brought the show to the American people.  I hope the media goes after him with a vengeance.  He deserves it and we deserve better.

I spent over 30 years in the medical field. I was a medical transcriptionist.  What that means is when you went to the hospital or the doctor's office I was the person who typed your reports.  I knew what they were saying, so you did not end up with a report that said you had a tonsillectomy if you really had an appendectomy.

Over the past year-and-a half I have had more tests and been to the doctor more than I have been in my entire life.  I have a kidney that is, basically, dying and blood pressure that is finally under control.  In the process of all of this I ended up in the hospital back in June.  While there, I found out I had an ischemic bowel.  That means that the blood flow was restricted to my bowel.  Scary, yes.  Dangerous, could be.  I made it through that episode, but I could not get an answer as to what had caused it.  I heard that I had had a low blood pressure event that caused the blood vessels in my bowel to be restricted.  You would think if I had a low blood pressure event of that magnitude I would have had symptoms of some sort.  Nope.

Well, being me, I kept asking the doctors what caused it.  No one gave me a straight answer, not even my primary care provider, the one who is supposed to know me the best.  Hmm.  I finally got an answer and I was floored.  Apparently, my blood pressure had been treated too aggressively and caused this "event".  So, in other words my physician's treatment caused me to spend 3 days in the hospital and be scared to death that I was going to have another episode.

Now that in itself is enough to send most people into a fit of frustration, but I asked her why there had been no follow-up from the hospital for this condition, because it seemed to me they would want to keep an eye on it to see if the blood flow was coming back normally.  Her answer to this was to say she did not realize there had been no follow-up and she would examine my "tummy."  When she did she said she heard a "bruit", which is a sound like a whish, that was in tune with my heart rate, according to her, indicating there might be an abdominal aortic aneurysm.  News to me.  No one had mentioned that before, and believe me there were enough tests to show one if there was one in June.  Aneurysms do not generally grow rapidly, so what was the deal.  She then decided to send me for an abdominal ultrasound, looking for this aneurysm.

By now, I am getting close to furious.  If there was an aneurysm, why hadn't someone said something before, and why is this the first time my doctor had even slightly examined my stomach.  I have heard about this kind of thing happening to other people, but certainly not to me.  I have always felt I was getting really good medical care and watched carefully to make sure I was. If I did not like something I said so.

What has made this different is that I bought into the idea that doctors know what they are doing and they can be trusted to take good care of us.  In most cases that is absolutely true.  It just so happens in this case, not so much.

So, today, while getting the abdominal ultrasound I got copies of all of the reports from my hospital stay in June.  I read them.  There was no mention of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.  There were at least 2 errors in the reports, one was my height.  It was stated twice that I am 5'1" tall.  I wish, I am 4'11".  It also stated I weighed 93 pounds.  Two days later I weighed 109 pounds, which is my actual weight.  These sound like minor details, but inaccuracy is inaccuracy.  Besides if another doc is looking at the report, it could put a question in their mind and treatment options could change.

The point of all of this is, first of all, to vent, because I am still angry about the lack of follow-up and the abdominal aortic aneurysm, which could be a serious issue, and, secondly, to let you know that no matter who you are or how much you may know you need to be aware that doctors make mistakes.  Be proactive in your own healthcare.  If something does not sound right or you don't want to do it say so.  After all you are the one who has to live with the consequences.  Don't expect them to own up to the fact that the treatment they provided damaged you.  It took six months for me to get a straight answer and I sure was not happy with the one I got.