Do you ever feel that the stars are lined up against you? That you can’t win in your own life? That God has it in for you?
I have to say, that I have felt that way on more than one occasion. On more than one occasion a day on bad days.
I often feel like I’m between a rock and an electric place
Photo Credit: comandoxtreme.xtgem.com
Some days I know that God is out to get me. But I never really thought there was anything I could do about it. I mean, I’m me, and God, well, God is God. He rules.
Right?
Well maybe not. Because you see, an Israeli man has filed a restraining order against God. True story! Because sometimes, God is abusive. And if God can’t be nice, He needs to keep His distance. At least 300 feet away — that’s the usual distance abusive men must respect.
As it says in my “About” page, I do drugs and get paid for it. Drug safety that is. As a general rule, I don’t write about it though. Today is an exception. Consider this a public service announcement.
In 2008, I had some minor surgery where I was given 60 — SIXTY — Oxycontin tablets for pain. I didn’t need very many at all because I am tough. Also because I don’t need to add drug addiction to the list of problems with this ‘temple’ of mine. Plus I really don’t like that out of control feeling I get from serious painkillers.
Still, I ended up with about 55 highly addictive painkillers in a home where my the-15 year old son lived. Jacob is a good kid, but hell, why tempt fate? Ultimately, I managed to get rid of them safely and securely. But not everybody is so lucky. In some places, prescription drugs are what thieves look for when they burglarize homes.
As I said, while I don’t normally mix work with the blogging (except when I’m goofing off), I think this is something everybody should know about:
Ditch your unused drugs Saturday, April 30.
Tomorrow (April 30) is Drug Take-Back Day, the annual nationwide push to stop people from trashing or flushing their unused medications. The DEA has set up hundreds of drop-off centers all across the country to orchestrate safe disposal of drugs. That’s no small feat — in the past decade, the DEA says it has collected more than 5.5 million pounds of unused pills. It’s a continual concern, since drugs at home can cause accidental poisonings, and drugs in landfills can pollute water supplies. [From my Daily STAT Morning Rounds newsletter]
To find a location near you (sorry, it’s US only) click on this link and enter your zip code.
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This song has nothing to do with drug disposal, but it’s a great song.
You may have seen this before, but I tried to write something new about my sister Judy. And, well, this piece really just sums up who she was better than anything I’ve come up with since.
She’s been gone now for 16 years. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t wanted to talk with her, laugh with her, or, alternatively because she was my sister, smack her. There really isn’t a relationship like you have with a sister. Even long after they are gone.
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Today, April 22, is Earth Day! It’s the Anniversary of the very first Earth Day. Here is Walter Cronkite’s report on the first Earth Day, 1970:
It would also be my late sister Judy’s 64th birthday.
Whoever made the decision to turn Judy’s birthday into Earth Day chose wisely. Judy was a born environmentalist and recycler.
On the first Earth Day, Judy was a new, very young mother who believed in saving the planet. She was the first “environmentalist” I ever knew personally, and well, I thought she was nuts. There was a recycling bin in her kitchen for as long as I can remember. And this was back when recycling took effort. She believed in gardens, not garbage, and she made life bloom wherever she was.
“I’ve got kids,” she’d say. “It’s their planet too!”
But years later, Judy took recycling to a whole different level when she helped people recycle themselves. In the 1990s, Jude, who was then living in Florida, began working with the Homeless, assisting at shelters. Then she actively began trying to help homeless vets food, shelter and work — to enable them to jumpstart their lives.
When she died in early 2000, the American Legion awarded her honorary membership for her services to homeless vets. A homeless shelter was named in her honor. So she’s still doing good works, my sister is. That would make her wildly happy.
Jude also gave me the Beatles. So it is very appropriate that they wrote a song for her.
You see, the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, it was MY turn to choose what we were going to watch. And we were going to watch the second part of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan on the Wonderful Wide World of Disney. My four (all older and MUCH cooler) siblings were furious with me. But I was quite insistent. You might even say that I threw a Class I temper tantrum over it, but I wouldn’t admit to that. But hey, I was seven. And it was my turn to choose. Fair is fair, especially in a big family with only one TV.
Somehow, Judy talked me out of my turn. She was always very persuasive. Thanks Jude.
It used to be I was afraid of the future because of the GOP and the Pandora’s Box of hornets/hate they’ve unleashed. But then I realized that there are, perhaps, other signs that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Read on, and try to tell me I’m wrong.
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Seven intelligent faces looked at me, blankly, their heads all tilted at a quizzical angle as if on strings.
Just because I’m saying “Who?” doesn’t make me an owl, ya know (Google image, natch)
They ranged in age from mid-40s to early and mid-20s.
At least I hoped they were intelligent faces. Because they belonged to a team of seven doctors treating me during my recent (thankfully brief) hospital stay for Crohn’s.
I always draw a crowd.
But it wasn’t long before I questioned the intelligence of this group of gastroenterologists and medical students holding their noses and getting through this rotation. Because they seemed to have missed a major part of their education.
“Michael*” — the leader of the pack, put his stethoscope to my belly and listened.
“Not much noise there, Elyse.” He let the others have a listen.
“You guys haven’t let me eat in days,” I said. And then, as a person with a gut so noisy that it has a name (Ralph), I continued. “I always feel like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen! You know, the scene where his stomach is gurgling?”
“Humphrey who?” one of them said. The others nodded their heads in agreement.
“Bogart,” I said, with my eyes getting bigger as I realized that all seven of the people around me were tilting their heads at me in confusion. None of them had a clue who Bogie was.
“I think I’ve heard of him,” one of the medical students ventured. She didn’t look terribly certain, though. “Wasn’t he in all of those musicals?”
Something is very wrong in the world.
*And when did doctors start going by their first names?? Did I miss something?
FiftyFourandAHalf 