Friday, May 4, 2012

4 May 2012 Another exercise in patients



          And another in patience as well.
          We’ve been waiting since Monday for a physician’s office to read a susceptibility report and order a course of antibiotics for Gloria.  It is Friday morning and we are still waiting for a phone call telling us when to report, and where to report.  We would have preferred this be done by a home nursing service.  However, no local service or agency will agree to accept the order because they are unwilling to work with or for Humana, Gloria’s Medicare advantage carrier.  The upside is that should anything go awry, hospital services will be available.  The downside is that we continue to wait and Gloria remains untreated.   We are tethered to the phones and unable to carry out our normal activities. 
          Further taxing our patience, the Tennessee Legislature has completed another round of “Roll Back the Enlightenment – Bring Back the Inquisition.”  Star attractions in the game are bits of legal manipulation that allow the coal companies and those energy companies higher up the food chain to continue their game of “Tear Down the Mountains – Fill Up the Valleys”
          The goal of “Tear Down…” is to create a new Tennessee topography in which the elevations above sea level are equal from east to west and from north to south.  Remake TN to look like a large bit of high prairie without the bumps and high spots in the road is the plan. 
          Persecute the Poor was another favorite game this year.   Requiring welfare recipients to submit to drug testing in order to receive any manner of service from the state is very popular among the GOP/teavangelist mob that continues to grow in religious intolerance, bigotry and inability to understand that the GOP does not represent their interests in any instance.  Requiring the poor to pay for their own persecution is about as petty and hateful as any law passed in the U.S. this year. 
          They passed a set of bills prohibiting “gateway sexual activity” in schools.  That prevents teachers from discussing homosexuality for fear that the little sanctified products of immaculate misconception might somehow be tempted to explore what their bodies suggest to them.  Another attack upon education allows school officials to participate in the “student-initiated religious events.”  Somehow  the idea that requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and to mumble a prayer to the Christian deity, will cause the crime rate to plunge like a red-tailed hawk stooping on  the easter bunny.  They seem unable to recall that there was crime before Madeline Murray O’Hare. 
          However, the icing on the cake is a set of laws dealing with women.  The WASPs have decided to remove any control by women over their own bodies.  It will now be much harder to obtain family planning information, to obtain contraception, and to obtain a legal abortion in TN.   Embryos are now afforded legal status in filing charges for assaults upon women – that only applies to medical procedures – women, for the large part, may still be beaten by males with little or no penalty.   (Of course, this only applies to the poor who are unable to afford trips to Europe or even Mexico, for legal and medically safe family planning.)  I never thought I would be comparing health care in Mexico favorably to any part of the U.S.  There it is Tennessee – No one expected the Inquisition to visit Tennessee either.  The really ugly parts are yet to happen. 
Shabbat Shalom!

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