25- Personal school dispatch

Well, I’ve not done one of these for a while now. In fact, I can’t remember the last one I did. And I find that is completely normal. After all, the not so stated plan for a PhD program is to remake you. It just might take a little longer.

In the beginning I was so energized and full of zeal to learn. What a difference three years makes. I am still energized about learning. I am still zealed (?!?) to learn about research.

Here comes the big but.

If I followed my learning timeline of what classes and when I was supposed to graduate at the beginning of May 2025.

Spoiler alert, I did not graduate in May 2025.

All of the core classes are completed. My pilot study has been completed. I even presented a poster based on the pilot study in April at the AORN convention and I am slated to present virtually at the hospital system research symposium in the beginning of June. I am also responsible for a virtual symposium presentation in November.

Yes, all based on the same research from the pilot. The last two are podium presentations where I have to actually talk to people. Maybe there will be a podium, if not I will pretend.

All of these different presentations, the poster and the podiums, is known as dissemination. Getting the information that I’ve worked very hard on for over a year out to the public. Well, other healthcare professionals.

Instead I had the most challenging health year of my life. Getting older is not for sissies. Midlife crap threw me for a loop. We don’t talk about that enough as women and I am so excited that perimenopause and menopause talk has entered the conversation in the mainstream. Perimenopause can cause a host of problems and I had most of them. Cutting to the quick of it, it certainly made my life hell in the last year and certainly knocked me for a loop. But that is a blog post for another time. And not the core reason my school plans got knocked a little awry.

That not so lovely reason is the 2024 election.

And the crap fall out from that.

Suddenly research was under even more stress, if not outright attacks from the people who find it more profitable to pretend not believe in it.

And then the attacks on the institutions who have massively contributed to our modern way of life through their research began.

Every day it felt like there was another strike.

And another.

I felt as if I had to bear witness to it all because someone has to be paying attention.

It was exhausting. Kind of like never ending bullshit torture akin to what I think being waterboarded feels like. Except it is shit decisions that have set the research community back many years. So many years.

All I could do was hold on and not give into the numbness that this crap is supposed to engender in people. Because that is their endgame.

I felt like we were thigh deep slogging through shit.

And then something flipped the mental switch.

I went from mad at the situation and the relentless attacks on research, on institutions to mad that they were making me doubt my path.

So what if research is a skeleton of what it used to be? I will be part of the resistance.

So what it publication is under attack and will no longer be the same. I will continue to write these dispatches.

So what if teaching jobs and professorships and colleges and programs and universities are retrenching their program offerings and job listings. I will continue to teach as I have, in small settings like the Call Bootcamp I run for new to the hospital nurses.

Because we are at war.

This is the “watch me” mad that fueled much of my other academic endeavors.

They think that they can make me stop? Through their pretend shock and awe campaign against the American people and institutions? Though unending waves of nonsense and threats and more threats?

It was a bad idea to make me mad to the “watch me” level.

Watch me resist this crap. Because I believe in science. I believe in research. I believe that colleges and universities. I believe in love. I believe that people have to right to own who they are. I believe in LGBTQIA+ rights. I believe that people have the right to read whatever they want to read, to watch whatever they want to watch. I believe that people are not pawns for the establishment.

You want me to fail because I am older? You want me to fail because I am a woman and that makes little men feel bad?

Fuck that.

Watch me succeed.

FFS Friday 5/30/25- F’in 5th circuit appeals court

Double F today.

Last week, the rage baiting 5th circuit appeals court. Yes, the same one that has been used as a basis for a Supreme Court judgement superhighway. You know, forum shopping. Also known as court shopping where the right judgement can be bought by choosing the right judge and getting on their calendar.

According to Merriam Webster, forum shopping is the “practice of choosing the court in which an action from among those courts that could properly exercise jurisdiction based on a determination of which court is likely to provide the most favorable outcome”.

The favorable outcome is, of course, a case to be adjudicated by the wildly biased and conservatively weighted Supreme Court. Then the Supreme Court can issue a for or against ruling, depending on the circumstances, that will warp this country to the will of the people who were court shopping.

We know their game. We have seen it in the relentless battering of some people against things THEY personally don’t like and don’t agree with. After all, why should people be allowed to love who they love. And marry them. I am looking at you people who want to overturn Obergefell. Or the shrill voices who pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed against Roe v. Wade for fifty years until they got the result they wanted.

Remember?

Yeah, so those same judge (forum) shoppers are also against books that they don’t like. We’ve seen it in the book bans. No matter that they don’t have to read the books, the book banners want no one to have to right to read whatever the reader wants. They bleat save the children when it really isn’t about the children, never has been. But that’s a rant for another time.

Book banning at schools has reached a fever pitch over the last forever. Well, at least, that’s what it feels like. They are a slow erosion of America’s rights. And I think contribute to the dumbing down that we’ve been experiencing in society.

Yeah, yeah, Kate, we know. But did you know the newest gambit?

Last week the 5th Circuit Appeals Court effectively said that books in schools were the purview of the government and not subject for 1st Amendment rights.

The government is arguing that the books are the property of the government and therefore are immune from 1st Amendment rights arguments.

That is not a typo. I just find it so outrageous that I had to type it twice.

The Fifth Circuit Appeals court has fired a missile against a citizen’s right to receive and have information. In fact, Judge Kyle Duncan wrote those very words in the judgement, “that the First Amendment of the US Constitution does not grant a right to receive information.”

Are they reading the same U.S. Constitution that I am? Or is it the thought that we can have free exchange of information uninfected by harmful rhetoric and without bias that they object to?

I am chilled by the idea that words are not freely expressed in a written format are not, in fact, free. And that I, as an American citizen born in this country, does not have the right to information that they might object to.

Do they know how words work? Or are they just a shill for their corporate overlords who want the book banners to control what is written and read by EVERYONE and is trusting in the slow drip of poison getting them their way.

After all, it worked against Roe.

This is screaming capitals DANGEROUS!

Trust me, I’m a woman and I’ve seen this before. I’ve watched my right to own my body be dismantled. Even though we could see the train wreck coming and tried warning against it. For literal years.

Listen to Uncle Steven (King) on the subject, kids. “What I tell kids is, Don’t get mad, get even. Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned.”

Cookie Thursday 5/29/25- Fudgey cocoa no bakes, redux with different “butter” + special ingredient

I have such an exciting idea for June CTIAT that I kind of blanked the last week of May.

It’s also a busy week with both my mother and my father having birthdays.

In my real life I’ve been trying different versions of cookie butter, because Aldi had some packages of speculous cookies for super sale that I want to make cookie butter out of. An experiment, if you would.

Because that is what cookie butter is. Kind of like peanut butter is made from nuts, cookie butter is made from grinding the crap out of cookies.

I wanted to try different versions of the speculous cookie butter. Never thinking that I was going to be a bear in Goldilocks and the 3 bears.

I bought a jar from Trader Joes while away at the nursing convention in April. Too sweet said my mouth. (daddy bear bed)

I bought another jar from Trader Joes, the crunch version this time, wondering if a texture change would be good. Nope. Too sweet with crunchies in it. (daddy bear bed who has been eating crackers in bed)

The Trader Joes jars were the Trader Joes brand.

I bought a jar from a rather bougie grocery store. This was from lotus Biscoff, the maker of the cookies. Again, way too sweet. I have got to investigate the ingredients. (mama bear bed)

Then I saw a version at the other local grocery store. This is another “store brand”. This one was just right. (baby bear bed)

Not too sweet, not too crunchy.

The only criticism that I have is that the product is almost too smooth. It’s consistency is almost pourable, instead of a semi-solid state.

I’ve made this cookie before with the Trader Joe’s branded cookie butter. The cookies were WAY too sweet and half of them went uneaten.

This time I used the third store jar, and replaced 1 of the cups of oatmeal with unsweetened coconut. And I used dark chocolate cocoa powder.

The resulting cookies were tender and not as break apart-y as the traditionally made cookie with peanut butter and the full 3 cups of oats.

These I will definitely not kick out of the cookie jar.

Tuesday Top of Mind 5/25/25- Be careful, germs are still trying to kill you

In a stunning surprise to no one who is interested in anything other than pursuing power and strengthening the echo chamber in which they live, this past however many days it has been since the inauguration and the shameful confirmation of an avowed anti-vaxxer to the chair of HHS has been an exercise in what the fuck.

Seriously though, is this man and his ilk interested in anything besides the cockamamie bullshit they believe, to the detriment of, well, everyone in the US.

Let’s count the says his administration of HHS has gone.

Number one is his insistence that, against all medical judgement and against swift action of diseases that we know are trying to kill us, that all vaccines must have an extra layer of blinded nonsense, a placebo barrier. The only thing that ‘obecalp’ ever did was kill people. (that is placebo spelled backward, they came up with this nonsense in the 1990s. It is basically a sugar pill to make you think you are being treated. Additional nonsense is up to and including the appointment of a known vaccine skeptic and all around terrible human and has no medical degree, David Geier, to investigate for the umpteenth time the debunked, but very real in their heads, link between vaccines and autism.

Maybe this time they will get an answer they think proves what they think. Spoiler alert, doing research with a foregone conclusion in your head is a terrible way to go about doing research.

THREE HUNDRED Americans are dying and will continue to die every week because of covid.

Yeah, still.

Bet you didn’t hear about that.

That is over one thousand a month.

Last week when the news broke that they were no longer recommending updated covid vaccines to those under 65, I immediately, without hesitation, made a covid appointment for the very next day. Not only that, I immediately texted my husband to make his own appointment. Again, for the very next day. This nonsense was released on Wednesday and by noon on Thursday we both had been vaccinated.

Other vaccine recommendation changes include that the vaccine is not recommended if you are under 65. Unless you have a concurrent comorbidity and are over 50, luckily obesity in the US is 40.3%. Otherwise you are out of luck. Today, they announced a stop to recommending that healthy children are no longer to get the covid vaccine. Never mind the one thousand and eighty six children who died from covid during what they consider the active pandemic. Taken against the estimated number of children in the US of 73,602,753, this comes out to a mortality rate of 0.0015%.

Not significant but not immaterial. Especially to the one thousand and eighty six families.

And whose definition of healthy?

Nothing was ever gained by denial and thrusting our heads into the sand.

Today HHS also came out against recommending the covid vaccine for pregnant women. Why? No idea. Because we know there is a link between covid infection and miscarriage. According to a study in the Lancet that Covid infection before or during pregnancy was associated with a two- to threefold increase in risk of miscarriage before 20 weeks. And since we already know that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, I feel that this is vastly short sighted.

Par for the course.

Of course, covid data is HARD to come by.

As if no one wants us to look at it.

Gee, I wonder why? (this is heavy sarcasm)

Congratulations to us! After canceling the meeting to decide on the 2025 flu vaccine, the FDA got their heads out of their collective asses and chose three viruses to include in the vaccine. Of course, selecting the viruses to be included is always a crap shoot. Just ask the 20,000 Americans who died of the flu in the 2024/2025 flu season.

Let me tell you, as a working nurse in the hospital during flu season and one who monitors bed usage and ER bed availability in my spare time, this last season was the worst one in years.

Tuberculosis remains a threat to school children in Kansas. Why is this important to know? TB kills the most people per year around the world. True it is most common in crowded living conditions. Like in jails or the new housing model for gen z. This is also known as pod living where you rent a bed (pod) in a house with other gen zers.

This most current outbreak in Kansas is still of concern. But you don’t hear of it, do you?

This bring us the third disease in our merry go round of death in America 2025, measles. There have been one thousand and forty six known cases in 31 states. Slightly less than the children who died of covid since 2020 (that we know of) but there have only been three deaths in this latest outbreak. Of course, two of them were children.

Yep, still a thing. Still spreading like wildfire because it is the most contagious illness in the world.

It is as if they want the immuno-compromised to die. After all, we spend sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much money on the chronically ill in America. According to the NIH, over ONE TRILLION dollars a year.

Do you see why medical professionals like me are concerned?

No.

Okay, well get your vaccinations. While you can.

I turn 50 in July and 50 is the age they offer the shingles vaccine. You bet I will be getting it the first week.

Idle question that popped into my head as I was finishing this, what happens if the autism rate goes up without vaccines? Or are they just “kidding”.

Post-it Sunday medical non-fiction series 5/25/25- When Breath Becomes Air

This was another book I read pre-BSN. I was a working nurse and had been for 13 and a half years When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Karanthi was published January 12, 2016.

Admittedly this was mid-BSN course work but I just had to read it. I love neurosurgeon medical non-fiction, I always have. From the first one I read in 1997- When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery by Frank Vertosick Jr., MD. This goes along with the ditty that I learned in nursing school- when the air hits your brain you are never the same.

This is the story of a neurosurgeon resident before and after he is diagnosed with lung cancer in the final years of his training.

Neurosurgeon training is a loooonnnnggggg haul. The google results vary. Some call it 15 years after high school (includes a bachelors of some sort and medical school, internship and residency) and other programs clock it at 7 years (which is minus the bachelors years). In a simpler format, it is seven years after the undergraduate degree and the medical degree. Of course, type-A personalities that 100% of them are, there may be additional fellowship after the end of residency.

In short, you have to REALLY like cutting into people’s heads.

Or the aforementioned type-A personality.

Or just want to care for people who are sick and have no where else to turn.

Sit down.

I’m going to hold your hands and gently explain that I didn’t enjoy this book.

Like, at all.

Take your fingers off your pearls. It isn’t personal.

I get that Dr. Paul Kalanithi wrote this while he was actively fighting lung cancer and actively dying. And that his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi wrote the final chapter explaining his death.

I understand.

I just don’t think it is that great a book.

Seriously.

I re-read it this past week to make sure that I still felt that way. Also I re-read it with the knowledge that I had finished two whole nursing degrees and am most of the way through the third in the intervening years.

There are entire passages of brilliance. I marked 11 pages of them.

This book is this man’s journey to coming to grips with a fatal disease. I can understand that.

I can also appreciate how they let his voice drive most of the way through the book. It starts off strong when he was a boy and stronger when he is in medical school, before petering out over the course of his illness. If this was intentional this is masterful editing. If this is not, it is still masterful storytelling.

My biggest pet peeve with this book is that it is over-confident in its own brilliance and the author is a huge name dropper. Granted most of the names dropped were author’s names but nurses were not named. Not once. His surgical nurses were only mentioned a handful of times, including the conversation about his long hours at the hospital that apparently the nurse didn’t understand? I bet she did. Oh, and they were always women, nameless women who didn’t understand the pressures on a rising neurosurgeon resident. My feminist heart didn’t like this one bit.

I appreciated how he let his patient’s be fully realized people in his mind. I find that is the best way to approach a patient. As if they are people too, not just a problem for him to do surgery on. This I liked.

But I kept thinking how one note the nurses were. In fact the only named women are his co-resident, his wife, and his oncologist. Otherwise they were referred to as the relation to him and his wife and his family. No, thank you.

I stand by my first impression of the book as a memoir of residency. That there were better instances out there. Even as a memoir of his death I give it an 8/10.

Would I read it again? Yes, and I have.

Would I shelve it on my bookshelves? Yes, and I have.

Would I recommend it? Yes, as a book on dying.

School Me Saturday 5/24/25- Graduation month!

With the staggered start times and the staggered lengths of programs of course graduation lasts an entire month.

No, not the graduation itself. That is a very busy day where you wait in the late Spring sun and sweat while listening to all of the speakers and watch the parade of students crossing the stage to receive their diploma. Depending on what level you are graduating at, you might hoist a beer to celebrate.

Whatever level of schooling you’re graduating from, congratulations.

This is the moment that makes all of the late nights and the late assignments (!) and the worry and angst worth it.

Being handed the diploma by the dean or principal is a momentous occasion and should be savored. Until they hustle you off the stage for the next graduate.

But for today, the sun is shining. Today the birds are chirping. Today the flowers are blooming. Today your family is beaming. And sweating a little because, did I mention it, it is nearly summer!

Graduation is a special time. I hope that you had special speakers.

Like the University of Maryland who was able to book none other than Kermit the Frog!

His speech was amazing. Do yourself a favor and google that right now.

Kermit spoke of finding your people and making connections.

This is easy to do at the high school, college and university level. Everyone is there to learn. No one is telling you what you know and what you are learning is wrong. Not so in the outside world.

However, the first point of finding your people aids you in the second point of making connections.

Even if the connections are with people who are decidedly NOT your people. That is what makes the world go around after all, the different species, and types of people.

After all, it is like Kermit closed with, making the rainbow connections is important. And he SANG to the crowd a snippet of his famous song “Rainbow Connections” from The Muppet Movie.

Find your people, make your connections, and I will see you on the other side. Maybe I will get to join you in December. Or next year.

Until then, keep your mind thirsty and filled with new information and don’t let the world’s events and bad crap allow you close off your brain. We need all the open minded people we can get. We also need people who are PAYING ATTENTION.

FFS Friday 5/23/25- f’in cowards- part 2

Well that vote finally happened with the conclusion that they all wanted.

215- yea.

214- nay- including two republicans. Good for them and thank you.

There was also two that just didn’t vote and 1 who voted present. I guess so they can look themselves in the mirror tomorrow. Or brag to those they will BEG to reelect them, promising to do better next time. They are the real villains of this piece.

Except for those 2 the vote was on party lines. Too bad for the Democrat representative that died this week. Gerry Connolly of Virginia.

RIP. You should have retired. Did you learn nothing from the lesson of Ruth Bader Ginsburg? And why oh why does this keep happening. The last 8 congressional deaths were democrats. Maybe look to the younger candidates instead of wiping the assess and mouths of the gerontocracy.

But I digress.

This fucking bill- Why?

Because this is a fucking abomination of a bill.

It strips money from suffering people in so very many ways.

It strips healthcare away from struggling people. By ending Medicaid. Fun fact, Medicaid has many different names depending on the state. There are going to be a LOT of angry and desperate people when their medications suddenly quadruple or higher.

It takes food out of the mouths of babies and children. By nearly ending SNAP benefits. I have known people on SNAP and they were 1) struggling and 2) working. What now?

It kicks grandma out of the retirement home. Because of the decrease in Medicaid. Which we fucking told you was fucking coming. Better clear out the spare bedroom because she’s coming home.

It is a death knell to the declining hospitals in the rural South and everywhere because it ends Medicaid. The already high number of hospital closures is about to go to stratospheric numbers.

But don’t worry there is some good in it. For those who want to buy a tanning bed. The excise tax on it has been decreased. Of all fucking things, of course.

Here is the end of democracy, have to put a cherry on it for their corporate masters.

It is cruelty and project 2025 marked up pretty like. So that they could lie and make pretty speeches about while picking your pocket at the same time.

The end goal is to provide a multi-trillion dollar tax break to those who DO NOT NEED IT! The billionaire class that Nixon started and Reagan fostered and the current president has egged on. Because he is one?

Next it heads to the Senate.

Upon wake up to this piece of bullshittery, I immediately wrote the two senators in my state.

I told them to vote no on the senate bill.

I told them to find their balls.

I told them their grandparents and grandkids would be ashamed of them.

I told them that I, a citizen of their state, wanted them to vote no. This is to take care of people who are citizens in their state, who failing and will fail harder with a yes vote.

I also did a hand written series of cards with a lot less nice wording on it.

I lambasted the reps in my state.

Being the OR nurse that I am I have to wonder what is their end-game?

Slavish obedience to their one true god of a president.

Slavish obedience to the people whose money they will NEVER reach.

Or is the cruelty the point?

Cowards, the lot of them.

Grow a set, will you?

And also get a replacement rep in there ASAP.

The time for mourning will come but now is the time for action.

Write and call as much as you can.

Remind them that they work for us, not the billionaires.

Remind them that they have to be reelected in 18 short months.

Remind them that while some in their district won’t have the energy or the capacity to remember who is to blame for their new worse circumstances, some of us have fucking long memories and will be sure to remind them.

Over and over and over and over.

Your grandparents and grandkids are ashamed of you kicking the other old people and stealing food from the babies.

For shame!

Cookie Thursday 5/22/2025- Going back to where it all began

I am not sure if this is the first cookie I made for Cookie Thursday is a Thing but probably.

It is the cookie of a lot of our childhoods.

It is the fastest cook time, longest dry time of the cookies.

I am, of course, writing about the fudgey no bake cookies.

You know, the chocolate peanut butter haystacks.

If these were in our kitchen growing up, it was gonna be a great day.

Perfect for breakfast with milk. What? They have heart healthy oats AND peanut butter. Perfection.

Perfect for lunches because they travel well.

Perfect for keeping at room temperature because there is nothing in them that can go bad. I’m thinking of you eggs.

If I had to chose a cookie from my childhood to be my absolute ride or die cookie it would be this one.

And the crumbs aren’t so bad either.

In fact, I would hazard to say that the crumbs are the best part. They are certainly the most versatile and can be used in place of granola. Fight me on this one.

Best Kept Secrets of the OR- Frequently asked questions that new staff have part 1

Awhile ago I asked everyone I could in the OR to contribute questions that new nurses might have. And I was not disappointed.

During this limited series I am going by each person’s response.

The questions run the gamut from existential to practical.

For this first post in the series I asked myself what would be the questions I expect new nurses to have floating through their heads at least once.

I wrote down two questions that I know I had when I started in the OR.

The OR was different back then. At least for me.

It was a 3 room OR but we only had enough staff for two of the rooms. The big autoclave was only run once a day, maybe. The rest of the time we made do with flashing. That is the immediate use steam sterilization to those who don’t know. Being people who are keen to use acronyms where there has not been a call for one this is shortened to IUSS. Otherwise known as the flash.

Bear in mind that this was over 20 years ago and the policies that are in place now around flashing were not yet written.

It was 2001 and I had fought mightily to get my senior experience in nursing school in the operating room. The school really didn’t want me to do it, they wanted me to be a good little med-surg nurse. Little did they no. But I finally prevailed. And I showed up for my first experience day as an almost graduated ADN nurse. This was it, the final hurdle.

Only to find there were no scrubs in my size available.

As an aside, most ORs provide the scrubs to the workers. Because no one wants to take home dirty scrubs and wash them in your own washing machine. Also because no one wants to bring in home germs (AKA outside germs) into our as clean as possible rooms.

But there were no scrubs in my size available. I wore scrubs that were two sizes too big. I just shrugged and rolled up the sleeves and pants.

My preceptor for the day was a ditzy blond who took me through the admittedly small department and introduced me to the unit secretary, to the cleaner, to the PACU staff, to the boss, to the charge nurse and, finally, to the surgeon who was preparing to start a case.

The surgeon looked down their long nose at me from their superior height and sniffed. To the preceptor they murmured that perhaps I could hug the wall. Or watch from the hallway.

The preceptor just laughed and said that I wouldn’t cause any trouble.

They led me into the room, explaining all the lights and colors and sounds as the scrub tech opened supplies while watching me.

For those who do not know, the OR can be overwhelming at first. It is cold. It is bright. It is loud. I shrank back into my too big scrubs and just watched.

My preceptor positioned me next to the window. Yes, the OR had a window. Mind blowing to me all these years later. They left to interview the patient and check with the anesthesiologist and told me to just watch the scrub tech.

They left the room after warning me not to touch anything blue.

The scrub tech didn’t say one word to me.

My first question to myself, after I was finished being overwhelmed with the noise and the cold and the light, was “Where do I stand?”

After all, I didn’t want to interrupt the scrub tech or the surgeon or the anesthesiologist or the patient.

All these years later, knowing that where do I stand was my first question in the OR, I am careful to reassure any tourists I get in the OR (these are what I call the outsiders in the OR) that if they accidentally touch anything blue we could fix it as long as we know.

I have other rules for the newbies. But that is the first one. Stand where you aren’t going to touch anything blue.

Tuesday Top of Mind 5/20/25- Adriana Smith, a cautionary tale

Somewhere in a hospital in Georgia a woman lies dead. Her body is being illegally hijacked by the state’s abortion bill and is serving as a dead host to a parasite. Without her permission, against her family’s wishes and permission.

It does not matter that this parasite is a child to be.

It does not matter to the state that she was a nurse.

It does not matter to the state that she was a mother to a five year old little boy who is now confused and

It does not matter to the state that she was a daughter.

It does matter matter to the insurance company who will not pay this astronomical hospital bill because the policyholder has been declared brain dead 12 weeks ago.

It matters that her headaches were not treated appropriately.

It matters that her five year old son cannot conceive that his mother is dead and he thinks that she is sleeping.

It matters that the fetus has been without stimulation from the mother for 12 weeks. No one knows what that does to the fetus.

It matters to women everywhere because we knew this was coming and were unable to stop it.

This is medical experimentation of the worst kind. This smacks of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cancer cells.

Be mad for her.

But be mad at the crazy politician who wrote the abortion ban in such a way that allows for the state to deny this woman a peaceful passing.

Be mad at the mad scientist who just wants to see what they can do with the bill and how far they can push medical knowledge.

Be sorrowful for Adriana Smith’s family, especially the 5-year old, and the mother who has to watch her child be experimented on with no consent granted.

But be mad at the political machinery that has been put in place to prey upon this woman and her family and the child who may never be.

Most importantly, when this fails and this fetus dies a horrible death, stay mad.

Most importantly, when this fails and this fetus survives into a family that is shocked and appalled at this science fiction bullshit, stay mad.

I have written it before and often. This kind of chicanery is about control.

Only now they have added medical experimentation on top of it.

But stay mad.

Stay vocal.

Tell the mad scientists that there will be no more experimentation without consent. Tell the mad scientists that we are ashamed of them and their ancestors are ashamed of them.

Call this what it is, Handmaid’s Tale bullshit.

A nugget of information that I learned very recently is that Margaret Atwood was intentional about the scenes that she wrote. Nothing that happened to any of the women, to any of the Handmaids, was plucked from history.

Be careful out there.