Sick and Sad

I finally got a job, started it, was doing well enough to be offered extra hours and -- after I accepted the etra hours, I got sick. I went to the Emergency Room and got medicines and went back to work for those extra hour days.
Not the best plan, but I had said I would do it, so I did it.
But by the time the time was done, I was dragging, and went to the doctor.
Who put me off work for the next five days.

Who gets sick like that? Babies? Old people?
I am neither, although I often feel very, very old.
Being widowed, losing my caretaker role, being unemployed (maybe unemployable) are all aging factors.

Being free of caretaking, being employed, I hope will be freeing. Will restore some youth, some joy, some energy.

So, I got sick.
Boo!

Seems to be a family thing going on. A curse upon our house, or something bad written in the heavens. A  curse upon us!

One sister had bleeding issues back at Thanksgiving and ended up with a hysterectomy in April.
She is doing much better these days -- even has energy to take walks for fun.

Another sister, more recently, fell and hurt her back. It has just come to light that she actually broke a bone in her back. She's still walking and stuff, although it's been painful for her -- but the broken bone isn't even the cause of her pain and discomfort!
She is, ever so slowly getting better.

Bronchitis, even the ever-lasting kind, looks like a walk in the park (for fun) after those experiences.

I'll get better, too.

After all, it's in the stars.

Welcome Armaggedon

I think it is time.
The world should end.
For all of us.

The only reason I can't end my own world is because I can't inflict that pain on Hailey. I can't even wish for my world to end, because I can't inflict that pain on Hailey.

But if the world itself came to an end, Hailey would be there, too.
No pain for her, whatever there might be in the next world.

If there is such a thing.

She could see her Mammaw Candy
She could run and laugh and play with her Pappaw. She could hold his hand and they could walk to the park together.
Something she has wished for.

And Warren, he could get to know his Pappaw. The man he brought smiles to, the man who had him laughing. The man he called first "a-a" and then "yaya" while now, months later, none of us have names yet.
The man who lit up when the boy was put in his arms.
The light of love and the light of happiness.
Laughter is oh so much that same light.


For myself, I want NOTHING.
Rest and peace and nothing.

I am broken.
I have been broken for a very long time.
I have been broken so long that I doubt I can be fixed.

Those that would fix me can't; those that could fix me (maybe) won't.

And it really doesn't matter.

But if the world were to end, the whole world, we could all be NOT sorry, NOT guilty, NOT alone;abandoned;hurting.


But, for now, the world goes on.
There will be yet another endless tomorrow.
And another.

Lower the numbers; raise the profits

This is the latest strategy of the health industry. Everybody is sick and needs us -- and our products. Whenever the numbers start to decrease, we'll go back into our laboratories and jiggle some statistics around and we can PROVE that a lower number for the same high-number illness is just as bad for you. Therefore, the lower number indicator means you have the higher number illness and you MUST have our medicine to survive.

I've seen this happen with hypertension. It happens every few years. People, I am sorry to tell you this, but no one has normal blood pressure anymore. It is either low or high, according to the professional experts. The parameter for normal has become so narrow as to be nonexistent.

It's been happening about every five years with diabetes. Numbers that were low-normal just a few years ago are now borderline high. Diabetes can now be diagnosed by one high reading in a doctor's office, instead of making a patient undergo that intolerable glucose tolerance test, or instead of tracking the blood sugar levels over an extended period of time.

I read a study yesterday that says that  "over 60% of people are obese"

Now, I'm not a scientist, nor have I studied health. Another thing I am not is a math genius. But I vaguely remember things about averages and norms and suchlike. When something is in the 60% range, that, mathematically, means it's pretty much the average, the norm.

Just because someone educated drew a line on a paper and said everyone above this line is sick doesn't mean they are. 

There are still doctors who go by the older numbers if their patients aren't in distress. They are few and far between and often work in isolated, rural areas. They don't go along to get along with the insurance companies. They ask "Why?"
When they ask "Why?" they become estranged and ostracized.

They generally don't want to practice that kind of medicine anyway, so they go to where they are over-needed and where they are listened to.


What really bothers me about medicine by the numbers is that it leaves out the element of change. Evolution, or mutation, or whatever you want to call it. Humans began as five-foot tall bipeds who could live thirty years.

Science and scientists have had no problem with embracing our growth and evolution from that standard.
Imagine if some nearsighted observer in the Whatever-ithic era said that anyone over 5'2" was an aberration, and had an illness and needed to be treated for it. Maybe had the afflicted eating weeds known to stunt the growth. Would we still be five foot and old at thirty?

No, we would not. Change and growth are not aberrations. At first as those numbers begin to trickle in, they are an anomaly, and yes, worthy of study. Worthy of tracking. Maybe even worthy of treatment, until it reaches the point where there are more 'anomalies' than there are 'normals'.

Once that point is reached, it is the duty of responsible scientists, researchers, and statisticians to take another look at a new definition of normal, a new average. Not to hit the panic button and start name-calling those they are trying to help.

We're not getting sicker -- we're getting different. We're changing, evolving, mutating.

We are growing.