Milestones

I graduated from Nursing school on May 22, 2005 and felt nothing but relief and gratefulness for having survived. It was one of the most singularly unpleasant experiences in my life thus far. To celebrate I had a luau and was honored by what someone termed 'a very diverse crowd' of medical, theater people, singers and so forth. Nothing but Hawai'ian music, wonderful people, great food and a fire to round out the evening.

Thoughts of the many patients I have taken care of and learned from crossed my mind . . . wondering how they are, who lives, who did not, the quality of existence. I think about the patients taken care of as an Emergency Room Technician also. Each day . . . a gift and the longer in this business the better I take it to heart.

Meanwhile the state of the Union continues to deteriorate with a poor excuse of a man at the helm of the Nation. Witness the folksy crap he threw around at a 50-minute press conference yesterday, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, nothing at all. I will not go on an endless and ultimately futile diatribe / rant and rave about Bush because it is too easy and it accomplishes nothing. I get tired of whinging about him and our state of the State. What would Pericles or any of the Greeks do with a 'leader' like Bush? Assassination comes to mind but even I do not advocate such a thing else the Secret Service come knocking at my door. Yet where is our mechanism to remove stupidity, incompetent and dangerous leaders? We, the American public are largely satiated with consumber items, pigged out and porky, we cannot summon the will to overthrow a dunce king and tyrant.

So I am ranting and raving - what a shock. It is just that I see much suffering and nobility in many of my patients. They, and we, deserve to be led by someone so much better. Obviously though, I am one of the minority in America. The people have spoken and loudly. Too bad the one who leads is such an ignorant, dangerous and sad person. The pendulum will swing back again someday but for me, it may just be too long in coming. Better to abandon America maybe? Abandon it to the fascist evangelicals who communicate directly to god through prayer - we usually medicate those poor idiots and put them in psychiatric wards.

Thus, too, I am full of sound and fury.