Ode to Working the Health Care

As I've done a solid run through my coverage the other day, and will continue to do so through the end of May, I have a few thoughts.

First off, how does anyone ever find a doctor they like? I've been bouncing around within the Group Health system because I find that really... unless I'm due for someone to poke and prod me, the email and phone networks they have set up work really well for me, especially being on the road. I like that I can fire off email questions, but I've never liked the doctors in my visits that much. The nurses are definitely more interesting to talk to and a lot warmer in personality.

Secondly, I'm not too keen on the fact that I went in to mainly talk about a nagging on/off problem with my anxiety, and the doctor suggested anti-depressants right away. SSRI's are not a laughing matter, and I'm not depressed. After the little 10 point "questionnaire" she said she might say I have "very mild depression," but really, I just get mini panic attacks when I can't sleep for a week straight and have to deal with craziness from my presenter at the same time... which is definitely not the same thing. I've done everything I can to deal with them, but diet and exercise can go right out the window on a BER week. I've had these in the past, and Xanex dealt with them really well... so well that I never even finished the bottle before they expired. So, instead of giving me something that would solve the problem I have (okay, so Xanex pills are potentially habit-forming, but I explained that I knew that and was very careful with them), she wanted to put me on a regimen of drugs for the next 6-10 months! Let's try something that costs less than $10, and monitor that progress before we throw the baby out with the bathwater!!

Lastly, honestly, I knew what I wanted when I went in. There is so much information out there, that I can make an informed decision without going in to the doctor, yet I have to waste most of the half-hour trying to talk her out of putting me on SSRI's and then being referred to someone else for another appointment for the other half of my questions.

At least the dentist and the eye doctor were more straight forward appointments.

I really would like to go to a doctor that was more holistic... but at the same time I hardly need a doctor. The annual tests and bloodwork are fine, but they take all of 15 minutes. And maybe I would like it for someone else to inform me of what tests I should have done at what times, but since I am mostly well, what do I need it for if all they are going to do is try to put me on meds that I probably do not need? I know what diet and exercise means, and I guess I'd love to have someone who is more of a psychologist and nutritionist than a pharmacist, but then again, I have the luxury of not being sick.

What exactly is preventative medicine other than eating a good diet and exercising?

When Worlds Collide

Sometimes when I'm on the road I happen to be in the right place at the right time. This was one of those times.
Sarah Palin is holding her first book signing in Grand Rapids, MI tonight, and I happen to be in that very city. Of course my presenter and I had to do a drive by and see what the security detail would be, and whether the line would be long.

The TV contingent was really the most impressive part, but there was definitely a crowd gathered outside the Barnes and Nobel in question. This morning, my presenter had prompted me to do a search to see if what one of the participants had told her was true, that the former potential second-in-command of the USA was going to be in the same city as we were that night... And Oh, what I found (scroll to the early morning stuff).

Celebrity is always fascinating to a segment of the population, and honestly, I was a bit curious to see what she'd do or say. A bit. If my presenter wasn't really sick, I'd probably have tried to wander over there and see what all was going on. But I was not interested to the point that I was going to stand outside in the chilly weather any longer than it took to snap some photos or sit on a cramped floor for hours waiting to Maybe get a glimpse. Much less interested to the point that I would wait outside all night. Those days are far behind me. I've waited in line to be at the front for a concert, I've done black friday at 5am... I've done the experience and no faux-politico is going to entice me to do it again. Even a chance to see Obama speak wasn't enough to entice me to wait for an indeterminate amount of time and to change my train ticket.

After all, I've gotten a hug from Jesus.

Take that Palin.

The Definition of Silence

I was just driving back from getting a nice Panera lunch in Rockford, IL and I found NPR on the radio. In general, NPR is pretty reliably liberal but evidently when you get out into farm country, all bets are off. I was listening to a segment of Point of View in which a fairly non-radical christian was discussing the idea of gay marriage and the usage of "sexual orientation" in protective laws.

When I first tuned in, they had a weak but almost understandable point that the term "sexual orientation" might be too vague. One of the guy's points was that "there are a lot of really horrible things that people do sexually, and do you want to protect everyone who perpetrates such acts?" which ended up being a rather vague point. Then he went on to discuss how the Boy Scouts are facing the brunt of this law--they are being forced to allow homosexual members or are being forced out of parks since they have a religious mandate that is inherently prejudiced against gays (although to be fair, I have not checked that fact...is that actually true?). Then he went on to say that the media involvement and various laws allowing gay marriage were in fact "silencing those christians who believe in Biblical and traditional values."

He also brought up the recent stupid answer by Miss California USA in the Miss USA pageant (stupid mainly because she never actually answered the question) and even stupider response by Perez Hilton (stupid mainly because the guy is incendiary and not particularly rational in his arguments) as a way to show how any "good girl with values" is turned into a national pariah because of her religious values (I don't think she even mentioned religion in her answer which, included the phrase "Americans can choose between a traditional marriage and an opposite marriage"--both completely false and wtf?! worthy).

Hold the phone... remember this is NPR. NPR!! Oh Illinois... you make me sad today.

Here's why I was bothered by this argument:

#1: Who are you to say what kind of sexual relations are "horrible?" I agree that there are a lot of people out there who take part in various "kink" activities, but who am I to judge when it has no effect on me? Does our constitution and bill of rights not protect our individual rights in our own homes? I'm going to assume that you think that homosexuality is a disgusting, horrible sexual kink, but where do you draw the legal line? Is oral sex a horrible kink that should be considered in job application and other legal circumstances? (Sodomy is outlawed in many states in laws that I think even most "biblical christians" would agree are far past due for repeal.)

#2: To go one step further than your argument against protections for "sexual orientation"... If homosexuality is a part of you from birth, then would you ask for "race" to be repealed from the same laws? If (and in my mind it's just an if to appease those who insist) homosexuality isn't a facet of your innate personality and is in fact a choice, would you also request that "religion/creed" be struck from these laws? Maybe the language is too broad, but then again "race" covers everything from african, asian, jew, norweign, and german and "religion/creed" covers satanists and cultists.

#3: To speak to the Boy Scout point, I'm not so sure that I agree with all of the prosecution against the Boy Scouts, but there are precedents that are allowing these cases to go through. The Boy Scouts are a private organization and have nothing to do with government, but as a private institution they cannot discriminate just the same as any other. Do we allow them to prevent a black boy or a hindu boy from joining or a hispanic man or jewish man from being a troop leader? Then why can we allow them to prevent a homosexual boy from joining, or a homosexual man from leading the group? I like to think that our views of race have changed over time to find the prospect of banning a black troop leader due to his race absurd. Perhaps my argument fails in the backwoods of the country.

#4: My main confusion really boils down to one major question: how does protecting one group of people and affording them the same rights you have silence you? Simply because you allow homosexual couples to have the same rights as heterosexual couples by law and in terminology, how does that "silence" anyone? The act of allowing one group additional rights does nothing to remove your rights. You can still speak out about whatever you want, but you cannot act against a group because of one quality of that group. I pose this question: Would you not hire a Jew? Would you not serve a black person at your restaurant? Would you want the government to not allow inter-racial marriages (oop, depending on where we are, that might be a bad question to pose...)? Have you ever considered that it is your own insecurity with your sexuality and fears about other definitions of sexuality that prejudices you against those of other sexualities much as your own insecurity about your own personal power and fears about other cultures can lead you to be racist?

So yes, there are some things that need to be legislated simply because there are people who are so far off the grid, they refuse to open their minds to other human beings. Laws against racism and religious prejudice are there because there are many, many people out there who would otherwise discriminate. This is simply a law that protects a group of people who are different, whether by their natural condition (race) or their choice of lifestyle (religion), and we are adding another group that fits this law perfectly. If we are going to allow the biblical christians to have their say, we must also allow the homosexual community to have the same rights, not silencing one compells us to not silence the other, and un-silencing one has no bearing on the vocal quality of the other.

Hope and Its Burden

Okay, Vegas stories to come for all you patient chickadees, but there's other things I'd like to say first about the inauguration, if you'll allow me a rather circuitous route to it...

Life has a way of changing what I think of it constantly, especially regarding its purpose. As a child, I can remember being very moment-to-moment about my goals in life. My purpose was always some tangible thing or translatable abstraction--from being a scientist and curing cancer to having a life philosophy of tolerance, it was all very clearly defined, straightforward, and completely rationalized. At some point in my teen years, I lost all forms of faith and optimism, realizing that the forms of spirituality in my life were clogged with human failings and childish obedience rather than any real understanding of hope. I'm sure you all have undergone similar questioning periods or ambivalent stages in your life regarding what you are really here to accomplish, even if they were not so pronounced or disruptive as mine or perhaps more so. We all eventually have to realize that our state of understanding is in constant flux if we are ever to come to terms with our own failings and achieve any kind of real wisdom.

Not that I claim any kind of real wisdom; I am only just now coming to the full understanding that what I think now will eventually be usurped by another thought and that I will never achieve any final pinnacle of awareness. There is no final pinnacle after all, and no better or worse. No, what I am trying to say is that I'm just now coming to the understanding that the purpose of my life, in this moment at least, is evolution (And before you say anything... I don't mean a biological evolution, Jeff ;)). If you pay attention, you'll see a pattern of reoccurrences in your life. Every time a situation arises it provides you an opportunity to react however you want. When you refuse to change how you react, you do not evolve but only continue to perpetuate the cycle. If you break the cycle, new opportunities can arise for you to grow and evolve in new ways. The funny thing is, no one has to be conscious of this pattern and often your growth occurs in a sub-conscious state, but if you pay attention to it, you can start to control it.

I could go into my latest thoughts on life here, but without belaboring the point this last summer I started to see this pattern in a different way than I had before. Deliberately, I pulled myself away from the path that I had found myself on, and stepped outside of the cycle. Albeit, I did it in a fairly comfortable way--with a job that was relatively easy to get (due to strong connections and actual experience I had never realized I had) and that provided me with a short term guarantee of not having to figure out what else to do. My outright, conscious goal with this job was to push my limits of my self-definition, primarily socially. What happened was a strange shift. I discovered that the social definition was a piece of cake to alter, but multiple other aspects of my life shifted far more drastically than I had even dreamed. Somehow, I am now absurdly optimistic compared to the girl I was six months ago. I am happier, healthier, more stable, and so much more in control of my life that most of my anxiety about my future career has become a flimsy shadow of what it once was.

So there's a personal reason that when I sit in my hotel rooms alone with my TV, I start bawling every time I listen to Obama give a speech. It's not that I agree with everything he says, or expect that things will change overnight, it's that the rhetoric he uses meshes so completely with the experience I've had lately. He speaks about the evolution of America, with the obvious example of the gradual change from slavery to an African American president, but he carries it on into the future. While the last 8 years have been about staying the course and fighting any threat to our way of life as if America was a static nation, Obama is explicitly working at changing our way of life while retaining the principles that made us great. America is an ideal, one that may never be fully realized but one that we can strive towards, and while there is real work to be done, Obama's optimism regarding the ideology of our country is absolutely refreshing. After all, I have learned the value of being optimistic over the last few months... Less things go wrong when you optimistically know that it will all work out, if only because you automatically make space in your mind to react rather than anticipate and therefore can rectify any situation far faster.

His message is focused on sacrifice as well, with emphasis on the idea of community and hard work. I have long spent time separating myself from those around me since at one time, those around me separated themselves from me. Again, his message hits a nerve... as I have slowly begun to understand what a true community of friends I have and can have, and what a difference my "new-found" social skills have made. Acting out of Love towards everyone I meet is something I never really consciously decided to do, but I found myself doing it and started noticing it. A warm greeting and the intention of empathy in my heart makes such a difference... it's simply astounding.

So for me, every time our new president has gotten up on his podium to tell the American people that "Yes, We Can," my heart wrenches in the best way possible. I think I cry for the lost time, for the pain we all had to inflict on ourselves before we could come to this understanding and the pain that will continue to afflict us. I cry for the people who cannot fully understand the power of this kind of philosophy, including my own self-consciously simplistic understanding. I cry for the fear that the hope will fade and that the fear-mongering of the last few years will drop a pall over this light. I cry because I feel such immense joy that this world can change if we only let the power of the human spirit burst free of the chains of pessimism. I cry because I am intimately and personally wrapped around the philosophies that I am hearing our country embrace. I cry because I know that tomorrow the practical aspects of daily life will come creeping in on the celebration, and that we will all be tested as to whether we can actually live up to these ideals.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an idealist who never saw his full dream realized. The dreams of today will undoubtedly be similarly long-lasting and long-languishing before they can be fully realized. I smile because I know that there are others in the world that share the burden of hope that one day they will be realized. One day, we will evolve.