Riding with good people

1906 lake

Mountain bike ride on Seaview Ridge. This lake was supposedly formed
during the 1906 earthquake. Lots of birdlife, scintillating shades of
green, cattails, very beautiful.

False Fingernail Visit in the Emergency Room

In the last few days there was a patient who came into an Emergency Room that had removed their false fingernail. While doing so, it hurt. So they came into the emergency room.

There was nothing wrong with it. No pain upon walking in. This visit cost them nothing because we, that's right, you and I baby . . . we pay for this person to be an absolute idiot.

Who is worse? The idiots running the country who do not have National Health Insurance or fingernail people. Just once, I would like to screen people at the door based on the stupidity of their complaint.

The other day, in another Emergency room a mother brought in her child with the barest visible bruise on her nose. Someone threw a CD and it hit her nose. No crying, no blood, nothing at all. So there is another Thousand dollars or so that this family does not even think of because they DO NOT HAVE TO PAY. So they come in and laugh, play, misbehave to the point where we have to say something.

Welcome to American Medicine.

Speechless . . .

when there is not much to say. We get tied up in our own lives, our 'personal' lives that can hurt so much or be the root of great joy. Till disaster hits and then all of that becomes irrelevant in the larger context of life. We all have personally momentous decisions to make I guess, ones that will have a major impact on our lives. But often these decisions are made in a vacuum, or our personal bubble of life and perhaps a few friends know of what is developing or occupying you.

Then I look at so many dead in Burma, so many dead in Sechuan and I just want to go and work, to stop thinking, to just do and place my own life where it should be in the larger scheme of things . . . unimportant for awhile, not irrelevant but certainly it pales in comparison to many thousands dead, dying, homeless, wounded, suffering.

So easy for a liberal to whine and moan as I do now, to lie awake at the early hours of the morning, wondering just what the hell it is I am doing with my own life when so many suffer.

My own familiarity with what I write here is disgusting and makes me sick. When will I rise up and make those changes in my life which I know are inevitable? They must be made and indeed the formation, realization and actual execution of those decisions began long ago. So despite whatever paltry personal pain I will go through? Irrelevant, unpleasant, necessary.

I must remember those who are in need greater than myself. To take action without endless jabbering.

David