Season of Hypocrisy

My my my what a playoff loss does to a team's fans, or fan, I guess I should say.  As in The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy.  Mr. Milloy who over the past eight weeks has had no interest in ruining the Washington Redskin's success while they went seven and zero to secure a playoff spot has now seemingly found the need to pounce on the issue of the team name after their loss, calling it bad karma for a racist moniker.

Yet, for some reason, it seems Mr. Milloy didn't have time to mention it when the season was ongoing and the team was winning, now with a playoff loss, he says "Washington’s professional football team has raked up one disappointing season after another since 1992 — the year D.C. resident Suzan Harjo became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to change the team’s disparaging name" - a lawsuit he seems unwilling to admit she lost.  Nonetheless, Mr. Milloy is a champion of civil rights issues.

He likes to complains about why the GOP is so white (predominantly racist) or why blacks don't play baseball (not enough resurces).  He even complains about Denzel Washington's kissing in the movie Flight (apparently his heart wasn't into it kissing a white woman).

I have to wonder if he concerns himself with any other significant issues other than the racism he seems to see to justify his rampant reverse racism.  I note he has not come running to the defense of Irishmen everywhere concerned about Notre Dame's use of the fighting Irish symbol, nor is he concerned about white men with black women in movies.  His articles are inbstead the usual drivel...the GOP are white and therefore racists, despite the fact that it was President Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and it was the religious beliefs of Republicans in the mid 19th century that brought about the abolition of slavery.  His "Democratic" Party fought vigorously to continue the subjugation of men, even to the modern day when Klansmen United States Senator Robert Byrd worked against equal rights for all men.

It is sad that the Washington Post spends so much of its ink on a writer whose only ability seems to be finding racial fault lines in places where they likely would not exist.  The responsibility he seems to show to the issue of race is non existent and that is unfortunate because he demonstrates his only interest is in setting fires, not extinguishing them.  Unfortunate that this is the level of leadership all too often shown, claim racism and stoke a fire until some change is made, which doesnt address any inequity and is disconnected from reality like an apple that has fallen from the tree.  Or in this case, since I am white and I am sure he will claim a racist, the cacao seed falling from the South American evergreen tree.

EMS Rights

Several articles have been posted lately across the United States about EMS organizations demanding that judge's and police organizations hold accountable those people in the public who assault paramedics.  I have no argument with any of these organizations or what they are trying to do, but I would add the caveat that we (a) do have laws against assault, and (b) we signed up for a profession where we don't see people at their best.

Having said that and having worked in a career where on more than one occassion I have worked the ominous forty-eight hour shift consecutively due to overtime, I am appaled by West Midlands Ambulance Service's recent statement on the death of an infant after a delay in EMS response of 41 minutes.  Their statement that their EMS crew having a right to a break misses the point.  A short article on the topic indicates the child went into cardiac arrest shortly after arriving at the hospital - a potentially preventable occurrence in my mind - when you bring into play your physician and nurse partners into the care of the patient.

The "what me worry?" attitude of the NHS's West Midlands Ambulance is scary when you consider this is the same health "service" which is placing hundreds of patients, including infants and children, on a death pathway.  This is not health service at all, but a bureaucratic plan to make life easier for the provider.  It is even scarier for me when I think that this is the same healthcare plan that President Obama wants here in the United States where care is rationed and your end of life becomes an issue not of morality, but of money.

I understand that we all get hungry, we all get tired working the long shifts on the box, but the bottom line is when the bell rings, you go.  I know that in a single shift I worked we had an unconscious inmate who required intubation and aggressive treatment for hyperthermia of unknown origin, followed by a head on MVC which resulted in double traumatic cardiac arrests - my patient ultimately had ROSC secondary to our NEBR resuscitation method and pericardial centesis, and then we had a cardiac arrest following that - all before we were fully restocked on our rig.  Three consecutive patients in a four and a half hour window.  During that time my EMT partner and I had three patients plus managed the accident scene from a MCI perspective until fire arrived.  We ended up with three tubes, two ROSCs out of two cardiac arrests, and an empty stomach.  We had been on calls all day and the accident wasn't even our call, but due to our proximity versus the dispatched unit, we went.  We didn't have a responsibility to go, but we had a moral code to go.

The crew from West Midlands seems to believe that a meal is more important than the next life you can save.  It is scary on more than one level to think that these are emergency responders.  Day one of EMT school I was told have a pen, penlight, stethoscope, and a snack because you know you need the first three for documentation and assessment and you never know when you might need the last one.  West Midlands step up or step off the dance floor.

For the hangover

For those of you who may have overdone it two nights ago and are still nursing the feelings of nausea and headache, I offer you the Red Eye.  It may not be the most appetizing to look at, but sure to help with that over indulgence.

Red Eye
3/4  cup tomato juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
dash of Tabasco sauce
cold beer
slice of lemon (or lime)

Mix your tomato juice with the Worcestershire and Tabasco in a tall glass and stir.  Add the beer while stirring to combine and garnish with the lemon or lime.

Enjoy!

Beginning Anew

 

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. - Mark Twain

Mark Twain may have rightly noted the realities of the New Year, but perhaps not the purpose of having a resolution.  While many of us will quickly fall off our wagons to fight cholesterol, lower our weight, increase our exercise, or be friendlier, I prefer Edith Pierce's words that "we will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

These words give us the hope that we might take the challenge, the opportunity to make for both ourselves and the world a better place.  Like the birth of a new child, a new year is the beginning of possibilities.  The chance to find peace, a little something extra at work or at home, but it does not come without effort.

A New Year requires us to look deep into ourselves to start anew.  We must start the marathon of a year with those steps that are hardest - the first ones.  Those steps which require us to get off the couch and lace up the sneakers, the steps which require us to change the baby's dirty diaper before putting on the newest outfit, the steps which involve us practicing our skills prior to getting on the ambulance or fire engine, or even the steps that ask us to go out in 40 degree temperatures to begin throwing long toss for a Spring baseball season which is still at least ninety days and thirty-five degrees away.

These exercises in stretching our own minds and daily habits may be tough, but they are worth it.  They might cause us to pause in the face of our self created crisis, but we should not.  President Kennedy said crisis written in Chinese is made up of two elements.  One represents danger and the other opportunity.

This being the case, I wish everyone a happy, prosperous, and content New Year!  One filled with the pursuit of those opportunities awaiting all of us.

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K. Chesterton