Jim Hare classic posts Archives

ranting and news

Hi Walt,

I am still lurking about and wanted to express my good wishes to
you, share a little news, and vent frustration over the schizophrenia
we know as our medical system.

You know where you would be now if it were not for your knowledge
of the “disease-care” system. And I know you’ve heard the countless
horror stories of the adventures of the “uninitiated“. We're living it!

Sharon and I are now faced with the demise of the last parent,
Sharon’s mother. She is trapped painfully in the system of
bureaucracy and myopic specialties that constitute our care system.
Everyone is overbooked, overworked, and there seems to be nobody
talking to anybody else and nobody looking at the big picture. I know
this is no big surprise to anybody. You would think we’d have come
farther since the days when stragglers were left on an ice floe or on a
hillside as wolf food. Seems pretty similar today, except with lots of
paper and fancy gadgets.

The really excruciating irony is that our family members, at the end of
life, have consistently made horrible choices. For instance, Sharon’s
mother insists on being “treated” by her long-time physician who is
in the midst of changing his practice to laser cosmetics! He has had
setbacks in his life and is obviously trying to make for lost time in
the income game. Imagine where his head is. That is only one small
example of many fatal choices we have watched the three other
parents make.

And don’t get me started on short, Napoleonic surgeons! If I had
been there and heard what he said to my wife, he would have had to
hire another surgeon to extract the DSM from his posterior.

But what do we expect when there is little money in care for the aged.
There is only time for docs to throw pills down their throats, a
practice that really only greases the skids. Isn’t is weird that with all
the control the AMA exerts, they have allowed their profession to
become slightly overpaid mechanics?! In all their greed and
pomposity, they have lost ground in prestige and income too. The
docs I know are all employees of corporations, and they punch a time
clock and deal with more paper than they do people. I know I’m
preaching to the choir here, and Sharon’s mom has scleroderma,
which is a dead-end even under good circumstances, and the docs
don’t seem to have the honest temperament to deal with it or the
families, so even at best it's bad.

There, I feel better for having ranted for a moment.

The news I have for you is I’m hanging up my erasers and heading for
that hammock long since occupied by my mental recall ability. June
9th will be my last day as a public servant in that other great
bureaucratic nightmare, the education system. I’m retiring. Time to
raise tomatoes; whatever form that takes for me. Time to be a
grandpa, dust off the guitar and write some songs. Time to dream
freely and see what comes.

I think of you often and, as always, wish you well.

Jim

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Re: ranting and news