WHAT IF......?

 What if the Biden Administration is so cynical that they issued their "loan forgiveness" plan knowing full well it was Unconstitutional and would be challenged and shut down? This "gives" Biden support from those who think the plan is great, while failing to really do anything that can be pinned on Biden in the future. At such a time in the American (and World) economy, it is either Idiotic or Cynical. Neither term makes it any less destructive than the other. 

Pain is Not a Competition

(Nothing in this post is put forth as an absolute. I stand behind what I say here simply because I have seen time and again how this all comes into play in the lives of so many different people I have been honored to have been a caregiver for.  Being an RN for 38 years has taught me, above other things, that each individual is different and while some of what they were dealing with could be covered by the generic approaches given in books and seminars, without the effort to apply that information to the specific individual in front of me, my experience was more often a tendency to have to deal with hurt feelings and lack of participation in self care due to miscommunication. Being able to hear what the "problem" patient is saying is a lot more helpful in the long run than butting heads simply because we assume they are a "problem" patient. They may indeed be an unpleasant individual who will be unpleasant no matter what we do, but again, my experience has been that is the exception and not the rule. Most folks were simply in pain and feeling no one was listening to them.)

 

Pain should not be measured in a way that one person's pain competes with someone else's for a spot on the podium. Each individual deserves to have their pain evaluated based on how it effects them. These days, however, there is a tendency to judge the pain of others the same way we judge a beauty contest. Who gets the highest total score, wins.

Triage is a valid concept when there is limitation of resources and far too many in need of them. The classic situation where one solder is given morphine to reduce his pain but does not get further attention because the odds are high he is going to die even getting additional medial aid at the time, but another is seen to have a higher chance to survive if the resources are spent on him instead. If there are enough resources available for both solders, most of us would see it as negligence or malpractice to use the process of triage to allot medical care. It is a necessary ugliness of life that triage needed to be developed in the first place. How one sets up the protocols for determining who gets the care and who doesn't will always need to be reviewed and revisited. But I digress......

Your pain may indeed be having a much more drastic effect on your life than mine does on mine, and there may come a time when that needs to be added into the equation of when to focus on yours, more than mine, when both can't be treated equally. But it is my view that such times are less prevalent than some would like us to believe.

There is also the element that some pain truly is the "normal" aches and pains that go along with certain times in our lives. Changes in our bodies as we age, requiring us to make changes to our daily routines. A 70 year old struggling with chronic pain is not the same as a 70 year old dealing with the "normal" changes that can go along with the aging process. I use quotation marks for normal as not every 70 year old experiences life the same. Some bodies are better able to keep going without the slowing down, lack of energy, loss of balance others experience. If you are in your 90's and still able to hang with the big dogs, praise be, but others of us are not. That, in and of itself, is not a given for anyone. Diet and exercise can indeed make a difference, but not always. I know folks who did everything "right" to take care of themselves and ended up in really bad shape, and I know folks who did everything "wrong" to prevent problems in their later years, and are doing great. But again, I digress......

Chronic pain is the topic I want to focus on here. It can happen to anyone at any age. It's not the same thing as growing old, although it does seem to appear in a lot of elderly folks. But if we discount the chronic pain of our elderly friends as "growing old," we fail to understand what they are dealing with. So request number one is please don't assume that chronic pain is the same as "normal" aches and pains that can accompany life's changes.

Second, the longer someone deals with chronic pain, even "mild" pain, it can wear down their ability to deal with other mishaps in their life. Their ability to control emotions can be weakened and they can be quicker to snap at things that prior to the chronic pain were very easy for them to handle. Throughout my nursing career I was very good at handling stress brought on by other people acting out in the health care environment. My peers would call on me if such situations arose because I did have a way to deescalate situations quickly. After 6+ years of constant 24/7 back pain, I no longer have that skill at my command. If I'm doing ok at the moment it happens, yes, I can still pull it off, but most of the time my own fuse is so short that I have a greater chance to escalate things far more than deescalate. 

Add into the mix ANY previous personalty traits the individual had going for them, (or maybe against them), and whatever "normal" changes they might be going through, and it can indeed seem like they are a completely different person. I am just now, at 70, learning to talk about some of the coping skills I learned to develop in order to survive the previous 70 years. Some healthy, some not so healthy. While it is still my responsibility to learn new ways and adapt old ones in order to deal with things in as healthy a way as possible, understanding what might be going on when you are dealing with somebody who has chronic pain, can help avoid some complications in our personal interactions with each other.

Closing this post for now, one the things I am finding really can tilt my being calm is the frustration I feel when I have enough energy to go do something, but expend it all in the process of getting ready to be able to go and do it.  I have to prepare in advance for doing many things. My energy level is really crappy these days. If I go shopping, I often find I can do nothing else for the next few days. Same with going to some public activity. This results in me doing less and less due to a tendency to get overwhelmed emotionally when worn out physically. Some days I can take a shower and have enough energy to take in a basketball game that my granddaughter is in. Other days I have to make sure I get the shower in the day before or else I do not have enough energy to also go to the game. A "simple" solution might be to move into an assisted care facility of some sort, but that's another whole can of worms I don't want to open at the moment, maybe some other time.

 

No Expectations, but somebody might...

No longer assume I have anything useful to say, but somebody might want to still read it one day. Will be posting various thoughts and memories here. Might not have anything worth your time. (Or might. Depends on any number of things.) Nonetheless, it will be here. 

If you do read it, whether you agree with it or not, thank you for your time. 

Fact

Too polite to be direct,

Too uptight to really connect.....

UNITY?

If you were not already friends with someone before any divisions arose pre-Trump, I fear "unity", if possible, will take a lot of work on both sides. And even then, I doubt major headway will occur as often as I hope it does. It's more than likely it will take work with many pre-Trump relationships as well. I can work to forgive, and agree to disagree with people, but it's very hard to do when I've been called nasty things, simply because I chose to vote for President Trump. I expect it is the same for anyone I may have slammed with things similar.

I am currently finding that with people that do not know me already, it is extremely hard to find a DMZ where we can meet and together listen and learn from each other. Nothing I personally believe is "cemented" in place. So it is not impossible to listen attentively,  to opposing viewpoints. It takes effort, sometimes a lot of effort, to do this, but it comes down to what is more important to me - Being Right or Learning when I am Wrong? At 70, It's the learning that makes living so exciting and pleasurable for me.

I am more of a hermit in my old age than when I was younger. I don't mind sitting at home alone, really. I once thought, or rather told myself it was "other people" I wanted to avoid, but it's really how "me, myself, and I" recharge most comfortably. I like other people. It's what I loved the most about being an RN. I was able to meet many different people from different cultures, faiths, beliefs, and racial and ethnic groups. Coming home and being alone at night was my way to recharge so I could be fully present for others the next day. (And yes, there were days when that did not go well. On my part.)

Do I have a point? I think I do. I really like people. It indeed bothers me when people are as divided as many are these days. I'm not going to sit here and cry away the rest of my days, but I am aware there has been a lot of damage done, not by whomever is in the White House, but by us. Pogo is still right.* I want to do what I can to weaken his statement. But I can't change you, I can only change myself. I am responsible for what I do and say. No one's behavior makes me do or say anything. I allow myself to respond in anger and choose the actions I take, or don't take, in response to you.

One foundation belief that, in order for me to reject or modify it, I would require a lot of evidence supporting, ? Judging ANY INDIVIDUAL by something they had no choice over when they were born.

Systems that might have been established to favor such a thing over others? I am absolutely willing to listen to such a claim. I know such systems have existed, and still exist. I also believe that some systems do change over time. Not necessarily because of the system itself, but because the people working in that system, change. 

If your presentation of anything includes calling me names, names that carry no meaningful evidence of my own behavior adding up to what the name suggests, it's going to be a lot harder for me to hear you. 

Personally? I'll still try. Not because doing so offers a guarantee we will make headway in our discussion, although I hope we still can, but rather because I want to understand what you are saying underneath all the emotion. That's all I ask of you in return. I require this of myself, it is not required, by me, of you.

"The whole law is made complete in this one command: 'Love your neighbor the same as you love yourself.' If you continue hurting each other and tearing each other apart, be careful, or you will completely destroy each other." (Galatians 5: 14-15 ERV)

 

 

* "We have met the enemy, and he is us." From the comic strip Pogo, copyright by Walt Kelly, 1971.

 

 

Why Another Blog?

What you will find here is the process by which I try to make sense out of the world.  Everything posted here will be a work in progress. (I'd like to reduce the chances of having to deal with the occasional Troll, so comments are disabled.) I'm not an anonymous Internet entity, so you can find me elsewhere if you feel you really need to comment on something posted here.

Sometimes I say things that once I have said them, I change my thoughts on the same. Sometimes I say things I wish I had never let out of my mouth. Sometimes I say things that cover one aspect of an issue on the way to giving a more complete picture of what I think/believe/feel. Throughout my life I've had a tendency to go off on a dozen tangents before finally getting to my "point." My writing, however, tends to be a little easier to follow than my speaking. 

(Please note I said "easier," not necessarily easy.)

There will be posts where I share links to videos, or articles, or other resources, not because I agree with everything in them, but because they play a part in how I work through things. Elsewhere I might engage in talking about how I feel about other people, but here it will be a personal journey, looking at my own fallacies, biases, actions (healthy and unhealthy,) and struggles.

I am not looking to give anyone "answers" on anything. If I say I believe something, I do. That does not mean I am correct in my belief, simply that I believe it at the time I say I do. My life has been a journey of changing my mind as I am introduced to new information, being helped to look at old information differently, or gaining a better understanding as to how my own biases have shaped what I thought was an unbiased interpretation of the known data. 

Nothing here is meant to suggest I am better than someone else. If you wish to look for something negative to pin on me, you will find it.  

I can't make people focus on where my journey is taking me. Some seem far more intent on judging others by where they came from and not on where they are going. I have been guilty of that as well. I have said stupid things I wish I had never said. I have done things I wish I had never done. I can't erase my past, simply learn from it and do differently now. I can also continue to work on letting you do the same.


It is my hope that someone, somewhere, might benefit from reading where I have come from, how I got here, and how I process information to figure out what I think about the way the world is evolving. If nothing else, I hope writing it all down helps me move forward.




(Of course there is always the possibility that I will leave you feeling more befuddled than when you started. If that happens, odds are I am as well.)


P.S. I know there are folks who get their "happiness" by seeking to mess with other people's stuff. Someone might be able to hack my blog and post things that I hope I would not say, think, or post. I ask, if anything ever appears here that seems to be out of context to everything else, that you extend to me the benefit of the doubt and allow me time to address it. Thank you.

P.P.S. When I use terminology that might not be clear as to the specific definition I am using for it, I will clarify.