2025- It is a marathon, not a sprint

However you have arrived to the conclusion, you must admit that we are in danger.

Not only singular we as a personal group of one or two, but we as a nation.

This is mainly by design. Their design.

The chaos, the mass firings, agency by agency.

All those lives ruined.

All those career civil servants who keep the lights on, and the airplanes where they need to be, who kept the national parks open and safe for visitors – gone.

No matter where you sit on the political aisle, no matter who you voted for, or why you voted the way you did, does this feel good to you? Is this what you wanted?

The number one thing that was cited over and over and over and over and over about why the votes were the way they were was the price of eggs. I know that this was a red herring, after all, the price of eggs is higher than it has ever been.

How is that working for you? You realize now that this is a ridiculous argument, right? Right?

We can get mad and scream and shout accusations.

Or we can get to work.

After all, resistance is not a sprint, but a marathon.

I am ready to weigh in with my purchase power. Are you?

Time to let the companies know that the American people mean business. As in, no business to them on those days.

This Friday is the first organized pocketbook protest. It is a no-buy day.

Nothing.

Nada.

Not even a stick of gum.

One of my friends lives near a shopping center and has told me they are going to keep watch on the cars going toward the shopping center on Friday. They hope that the amount of cars will be less. Time will tell.

The Montgomery bus strike lasted over a year. 381 days to be exact. I am prepared to go the long haul.

I have emptied my Amazon cart and most of my lists. The only things that are left are things for school and books for school. I haven’t bought anything from them since Christmas.

We can do this; we’ve just gotten lazy with the ease and convenience of it all.

It is time to make a new plan. I have curated a list of places I will be buying from, of small businesses that get our money. I have made planting plans for the spring, summer, and fall, and plan for the utilization of our fridge and freezer.

And protest with our buying power. A world in which I can make purchases easily but have a boot on my neck politically is not a world I want to live in. This is how we protest, small ripples that become a wave.

My protest begins with a single action. No-buy on Friday. This is the first action step in what will be a marathon of protesting.

It is time to be prepared.

Sometimes the beginning of the protest comes at a shout, like at some of the town halls that happened this last week.

Sometimes, the beginning of the protest comes with a snap, like the closing of the wallet.

What 5 things did I do last week for my employer? I’m not going to tell you.

Tuesday Top of Mind 12/17/24- Your grandparents would be rolling over in their graves if they knew!

I am not going to ask how we got here. It’s bad enough that we are here.

By that I mean the rampant feeling by some LOUD segment of the population that vaccines aren’t important. So unimportant that they don’t want them and, furthermore, their children don’t want them. Yes, I know that is grammatically incorrect.

They feel that the diseases that are currently being vaccinated against are a thing of the past. After all, THEY never heard of anyone getting whooping cough, or tetanus, or measles. And THEY certainly never had it themselves.

Now the anti-vaccinator himself, RFK Jr., has ingratiated himself into an essential job at the government level. He will be handed control of the Health and Human Services. This is a man who caused a fatal outbreak of measles in Samoa tby peddling his snake oil and misinformation about vaccines.

This man is not a doctor.

Like the yummy mummies on social media who are anti-vaxers and never expose their precious offspring to “chemicals” like di-hydrogen monoxide, that’s water, by the way. Until one of their children comes out with a PREVENTABLE disease, like influenza or measles, and dies. Then comes the rending of the clothes and the gnashing of the teeth and the wailing and fake tears. And the claims that no one told them that precious little Timmy-kins could die. After all, they just wanted to fit in with Tiffiny and Karin.

Spare me.

I’ve only read examples of death by tetanus. This is where your muscles lock up so tightly because of the toxin. The muscles are so rigid that bones break. Sounds horrible and not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. If I had any enemies, that is.

My great, great-aunt died of pertussis in the 1930s, even though a vaccine had been developed in 1914. The vaccine wasn’t widely used until the 1940s.

The DTP (diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) vaccine is a 3 vaccine for 1 shot deal. The caveat is that it only lasts for 10 years.

The flu shot is widely available, beginning in the fall. This is a yearly vaccine that everyone should get. After all, 28,000 people died of the flu in 2023 and the young, the old, and the immunocompromised are at risk, even with a vaccine.

Is this ringing a bell?

Same things we said about the covid vaccine and there were still millions of people who died worldwide. How many? We don’t know because they STOPPED collecting/reporting the data.

Your grandparents and great-grandparents lost children to what we can now prevent and would look at you in disappointment when you decide to listen to disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield and his many, many, many, many times disproven paper that linked vaccines and autism.

Double spare me.

Better yet, spare your kids.

Tuesday Top of Mind 12/10/24- Sympathy for the devil?

This is a follow-up from last Wednesday’s post when there were 2 separate healthcare related breaking news items. The United Healthcare CEO who was shot and the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield only paying for X amount of anesthesia for any given case. And the insurance company solves for X.

The entire US was on edge and reacting to both these news items ALL WEEK LONG.

On Friday, December 6th, Anthem came out and rescinded the suddenly toxic policy. You know what dispells gloom in a fairy tale? Or what gets rid of mold in the house? Light. If you shine light on an issue the rats will run. Yes, I am aware that I am mixing my metaphors. The sentiment is true. If we pay enough attention to the shitty things that corporations do, we might be able to stop some of their worst impulses as they chase profit.

I have additional thoughts.

The reaction to the shooting and subsequent death has been fascinating. It has been the man is dead, yes, his wife widowed, yes, and his children half-orphaned yes. But people are flipping the script and talking about how many people have died because of the policies that enriched the insurance companies. Some people are even sharing what happened to them or a loved one. The stories of denial of care are heartbreaking.

Can we have compassion for his family? Yes. Can we hate what he worked and stood for? Another yes. Does the American public who has had their care nickeled and dimed for years have sympathy? Not many, and more would sooner have sympathy for the devil.

No American, not even a rich, conservative Ivy graduate like the accused, hasn’t been harmed or denied by the privatized healthcare in this country.

Note- he has only been charged, there has been no trial, and he is fighting extradition back to New York.

The First Rule of Acquisition is once you have their money, you never give it back. Sounds a lot like healthcare in the US does it not?

I am referring, of course, to the 285 Rules of Acquisition that were set out and explored on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

If they can deny and delay and deny and delay and outlast you, the insurance companies don’t have to pay and they get to keep the money. For whatever it is you want them to pay for, all they have to do is make up arcane rules that the consumer unknowingly violates. Oh, they don’t tell you what the rules are. That would be cheating.

Kind of reminds me of “ignorance of the law is no excuse”; which is a legal principle.

The question remains- which one is the devil?

FFS Friday 12/6/24- Forget

Today’s F word is Forget.

Just like the red states want us to do when women die from not having access to abortion care.

Let’s look at two states that have been wishing really hard, with their fingers and toes crossed, that we will forget that women are dying. These women are dying from their policies and their need for control of women’s bodily autonomy.

And they don’t want you to know about it.

Texas announced that the committee that oversees maternal health and death will not be examining the deaths that occurred in 2022 and 2023. We all know what happened in 2022 and the Dobbs decision.

The committee says there are too many deaths to investigate. No, what they said is that the backlog is too big and doesn’t let them examine more recent deaths.

Think about what that is saying.

women are dying from being denied healthcare
women are dying a LOT from being denied healthcare
so many women have died that they can’t be bothered to look at the past and prefer to look at the more current deaths
the deaths from 2022 and 2023 should not be looked at and we should just forget about them
they don’t care about the women

This leads me to conclude that there have been more deaths than have been disclosed publically. Point 5 is my favorite. They haven’t come out and said this explicitly but I can read subtext.

Don’t forget this is the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Committee. Morbidity is everything else but death. It does not imply that the women are okay, just that they are not dead.

They don’t care about women.

Georgia dismissed the entire maternal death review committee after there was a leak about two women’s deaths after being denied the healthcare that they needed for a miscarriage. They said it was because the sharing of the information, whoever it was, violated state law.

The review committee had found that the women had died from a preventable cause but also that doctors did not adequately treat them due to fear of reprisals.

Let me sum up. Two women, probably more but these two women who have died and the details leaked, died from a pregnancy complication that we have the tools to treat and doctors have the knowledge of how to treat the complication. But they didn’t get the care they needed to save their lives because the doctors were concerned about their freedom.

Let me put it baldly. Georgia doesn’t care about women. They want us to be unaware of the deaths that their abortion ban is causing. Because there have been deaths.

This entire thing boils down to if you don’t look, no blame can be cast. Because they don’t want us to blame the laws that are killing women.

These stories need to keep coming out because we won’t forget about the loss of our bodily autonomy, or the needless deaths, or the continued suffering of women.

Don’t forget about them.

Breaking news 12/4/24

It is rare that I get to write about kind of breaking news.

Today there were two separate reports about insurance companies.

12/4/24- United Healthcare CEO Andrew Witty was fatally shot by an unknown assailant outside of a hotel in New York City, and the killing was captured on hotel surveillance. The victim was due to host an investor day in a Hilton hotel. The suspect has not been located. United Healthcare is the largest private health insurer in the U.S.

I don’t have a lot to add except that United Health Care had the largest denial of care rate of all the major insurers.

11/14/24- (not sure why this is just gaining traction today)- Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announced that it would not be paying anesthesia costs for the entire duration of a surgery in 3 states. The states are Connecticut, New York, and Missouri. Instead, it would only pay for a certain amount of hours of surgery. Presumably, the patients or the hospital, or the anesthesiologist would have to eat the remaining cost of the anesthesia.

Wow.

No idea where this idea came from. Greed, probably. The insurance parent company reported a 24% year-over-year profit increase in June 2024.

No idea how the decisions were made for how long each surgery will be covered. Presumably not by surgeons.

Because a surgeon would know and understand that there are unforeseen things that can happen during surgery that would make it longer. Does the insurance brain trust that came up with this think that surgeons are just making surgeries longer for the hell of it?

To me, 2 1/2 years into a research degree, this smacks of pilot study.

To be expanded to other states when they can.

You know, for the money. Certainly not for the patients.

Tuesday Top of Mind 11/5/24- your vote is private

Over the last two weeks, I have heard many, many, many, many, many attacks on women. Men are interested in how learning a woman, any woman, THEIR woman voted.

Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t owe anyone an answer to this.

It is none of their business HOW you voted.

It is none of their business IF you voted. Although, I wish you would.

Some men even equated not voting in lockstep with their vote to cheating. Cough, cough, jesse watters.

Um.

Take several steps back, sir.

In fact, check yourself. I realize that you think having an outie sex organ entitles you to all the things. But it doesn’t.

A woman in her EIGHTIES voted for the first time because her husband, who had decreed that it is not important that she vote, died last year.

There are so many stories about men and others but mostly men, putting pressure on women to vote the way that the man does. Or even stopping women from voting. Where do you think you live, sir? Iran or Afghanistan. The woman’s right to vote is enshrined in the 19th Amendment and we will not be denied.

Of course, there is a lot of chatter “joking” that the 19th Amendment has to be repealed. Yeah, I’ve seen your jokes. There is always a kernel or even a whole ear of corn of truth.

You and what army?

There are stories of breakups over a woman not telling a man who they voted for. Of men looming over their partners in the voting area in an intimidating manner. BTW, this is not allowed. Men who gave their wives the silent treatment because the wives dared to 1) vote and 2) not to tell them how they voted.

If I was confronted and someone demanded I tell them how I voted, I would tell the truth. I voted straight blue ticket. Yes, all of them, even the ballots that don’t have party affiliations on them. I can research and read up on the people I am voting for before I go to the early voting site.

But not all women are like me. And that’s okay.

This is your permission slip to lie. This isn’t something I would do, but you have to live your life.

No one has the right to know who you voted for.

Best Kept Secrets of the OR #12- What is on back order now?

Your OR life will be spent tracking down instruments and supplies. Some of these supplies are of the urgent nature. This may be a disposable piece that goes to an equipment to a package of sterile towels. This may be the suture that is needed after you, or the surgeon, puts a giant hole in someone to fix their problem.

We have supplies that are by themselves. We will call these one thing.

We have supplies that might come in a pair. We will call these two thing.

We have red supply. We will call these red thing.

We have blue supply. We will call these blue thing.

Now that I am done Dr. Seuss-ing up the post (I hope you got it), we have lots of supplies.

Like lots of supplies.

So many supplies.

You never think we’d run out amount of supplies.

But the thing is that each surgery needs these supplies.

99.999999% of surgeries require supplies. I made that number up but the vast majority of cases need supplies.

These are special supplies that need to come sterile. You know, so that we don’t kill the patient by using a supply that will send them into sepsis. And we might not have the capability to render them sterile on site.

The point is the OR is a supply heavy place. And the supplies need to be sterile.

I would hazard a guess that the OR is the most heavily supplied place in the hospital.

You know what other place is heavily supplied and supplies the rest of the hospital.

The pharmacy.

100% of patients in the hospital require medications at some point during their time with us.

Many of those patients require some form of IV therapy. This is fluids/medications that are delivered to a patient via an intravenous catheter. Straight into the blood stream. And these fluids/medications need to be sterile as well. Same reason.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton did a number on two factories that supply IV fluids. One in Western North Carolina and one in Florida. Guess where many hospitals/surgery centers/doctor’s offices/free standing ERs get their fluids? From these factories.

Immediatly after the hurricanes my hospital put out the bat signal to all of its employees reassuring them that the corporation had IV fluids to continue to operate and reminding us to conserve IV fluids and bags.

The hurricanes were not even been a month ago and some surgeries are being cancelled due to lack of IV fluids.

This is disappointing to patients and providers alike.

Let me tell you about the model that hospitals et al. get their supplies through. It is called just in time ordering. The hospitals et al. can’t have millions of dollars of supplies on their shelves, including IV fluids. For one thing, that is a LOT of money to have in backstock. For another, especially when it comes to IV fluids and medications, there is an expiration date where the sterility of the packaging or the stuff inside the packaging can no longer be guaranteed.

Many hospitals et al. are in trouble with IV fluid supply levels. We in the business call this kind of thing back order. As in we need the supply/IV fluid and the supplier would like to give us the thing but is unable to because of glitches like hurricanes. We’ve had a LOT of backorder for as long as I’ve been a nurse and I don’t see that changing.

Is this model sound? Maybe. Does it hit the fan when it there is a bump? Absolutely.

Does it put patients at risk? Yep.

Tuesday Top of Mind 10/29/24- 50 years ago today, women could open credit cards and own a house

I knew this was the year when the world of credit opened up to women. But I had no idea that today, October 29, 1973, was the day.

I don’t think you understand exactly what that means.

We, as women, have been clawing our way out of the shadows for a very long time. Or should I say from under a man’s thumb for a very long time.

I like the thumb metaphor better than shadows.

I know, I know. I’ve written about it before. But it is important to acknowledge that it has only been FIFTY years here in the US that a woman has been allowed to sign for a mortgage or a credit card.

Oh, wait, I forgot the qualifier.

It has only been FIFTY years that a woman has been allowed to sign for a mortgage or a credit card WITHOUT A MAN.

That’s better and a more complete sentence.

I had a conversation with a guy this weekend and he was shocked when I was mad when he said that men make sure that society runs smoothly.

After my brain stopped smoking from the rage, I asked what he meant.

He said that it was the men who made sure the rules were followed.

After I was able to unfist my hands, I reminded him that men had had control of the reins of power since time immemorial, especially in this country, and that women were, in fact, police officers who enforced the laws. And there were women in the government who made sure these “rules” were enacted. Not as many as there should be considering we are more than half of the population, but women have to start somewhere.

We left the conversation there and I left the place where we had had this conversation.

It was either that or haul off and punch him. Yes, punch. With a closed-finger fist.

What I wish I’d said, “Well, Chris, maybe if we hadn’t only had real power and real representation in the US Congress, or on the Supreme Court before the last 45 years, women might’ve had a chance to do something about the gross interference of men.”

To which he’d reply, “Women could never.”

And I would say, “Well, if men would get out of our way we could.” And I would watch him turn red and bluster and walk away.

Now, that would be satisfying.

But, yay, for us women who’ve had the ability to take on debt, in our own name, for 50 years today.

Let’s get to work on the rest of it.

First thing to do is vote in this year’s general election.

Especially after that blatant dog whistle of a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, 10/27/24.

The last thing I will write is that a person for the campaign noted after all the gross “joke” about Puerto Rico that the people didn’t seem to mind.

No, of course not, Jan. They wouldn’t.

Tuesday Top of Mind 10/8/24- explicative deleted the supreme court

Me again.

Back on abortion news that is so hot it would burn if I had any fingertips left.

Yesterday, the supreme court declined to hear a case from the BIDEN administration about the draconian abortion law in Texas. The state was using that law to say, nah bro, even if a patient is on the verge of dying, emergency rooms don’t have to do an abortion. And they send the woman HOME.

In other words, in starker words, let the woman die instead of performing an abortion, which is the evidence-based standard of care for miscarriage. The problem is that the fetus isn’t dead YET, or at least their cardiac poles are working, and the woman isn’t sick enough YET.

Let the woman die.

Because the output of her uterus has a stronger case in front of the current supreme court than her right to life.

You know, the right to life is in the constitution’s preamble.

But, sure, why not deny a woman her rights?

After all, she is a lesser being than the clump of cells in her uterus.

They had punted a similar EMTALA case in June of this year. Do you remember?

EMTALA is a federal law that means everyone who presents to the emergency room gets the treatment they need. No matter what it is.

Ringing a bell now?

The thing is the Biden administration was asking to send the fifth circuit appeals court ruling on EMTALA and Texas back to a lower court to be retried.

The supreme court said nah.

I am not sure who is paying attention if anyone. There are a lot of other things commanding our attention: the 2024 general election, the devastating loss of life and property over 6 states after Hurricane Helene, the category 5 Hurricane Milton that is bearing down on almost the exact spot where Hurrican Helene hit Florida, the Russian bots that are trolling the news sites and giving out lies. I won’t even talk about their most current lie about FEMA money but it is certainly a lie.

Misdirection is the standard for all magic tricks.

I wonder what else they are doing when we aren’t paying attention.

To be clear, the they isn’t just the supreme court, but news media, and the aforementioned troll bots that are desperate to make you believe lies.

I am tired of being told that my life doesn’t matter, that what I want doesn’t matter by these clowns.

I am definitely tired of being reminded over and over and over and over and over again that because I am a woman my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness matter less than the potential output of my uterus.

Don’t get me started on the fact that my husband and I do not have children. Which also makes us lesser.

Tuesday Top of Mind 10/1/24- Blame the victim… of course

They are weaponizing abortion bans against victims. Blame the victim is the name of their game and it has never been clearer. In their minds and out of their mouths comes language that says that if a woman hadn’t had sex and sought a medication abortion and had a rare complication and sought care from the state in which they live and was denied actual medical care for a true medical emergency and they shun her and turn her away from the emergency room and she dies it is her fault.

Did you get all that?

It is like holding someone’s arm and using your muscles to slap their face, telling them all the while “Stop hitting yourself”. In no way are they hitting themselves. You are. And blaming them for it.

Because she wasn’t a “good girl” and had sex.

After all, the vagina is the root of all evils. Right?

Twas Eve who ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

Twas Eve who tempted Adam to eat the apple.

Twas Eve who got them banished from the Garden of Eden.

Because blame the woman, right?

Some people believe that their holy book forbids abortion. Without actually coming out and saying it. Because abortion is not mentioned in the Bible. Neither the old testament nor the new testament. Not in the Jewish version.

Same thing for birth control. Nowhere is it mentioned that it is banned.

But some people believe it because their god said so. No, no, they say when you point this out. But I know that it is something that he doesn’t want. No, no, not his son when you point this out that their behavior isn’t exactly Christ-like. Not his son. I just don’t want god to be mad at me for a reason I made up in my head.

Do you know what is also not banned? In-vitro Fertilization.

I don’t normally write about essentially the same thing for Tuesday Top of Mind two weeks in a row.

But they need to get over themselves.

Because they are killing women and the potential children they profess to want born. Without any medical support or financial support or legislative support.

No, they want fully-aged people who can work and pay taxes. Because infants and children are messy and demanding. And they don’t have the patience. But they want the money.

And the control.

but mostly the money.