That's great Barb.

Thanks, belle—and while I think Bev put it most beautifully, let me add my wishes for the best for you in the next year.

I hope, since she hadn't expressed as much where I could hear, that she hadn't given much thought to her privacy under these circumstances. She did, however, care a lot about not burdening people. She wouldn't want you to be overburdened for her sake.

Bon Bon makes a good point here.

Something else just occurred to me. You certainly COULD have chosen to let ita's parents be told through some sort of official channels. I bet that didn't even occur to you as a possibility. You did it yourself as an act of love, as the actions of a good friend. In some ways, telling her parents yourself was the last thing you could do for her personally and you did it unblinkingly.

If talking about it will help you, you can talk. If something feels too private, you can go back and nuke it and ask anyone who read it to not discuss it further.

A facebook "friend" posted this ED Doctor's screed today and it is taking all of my strength not to respond in anger [link]

However, I have to remember that anger is not my strong suit- I don't usually sound righteous, I sound deranged, and I am unlikely to convince anyone. I am much better with the "finding common ground"

But I am already angry about how ita was treated at the ED, and this was written by an actual doctor and being spread to the common people as truth. Yes, our system is broken if the only way that poor people can get care is to go to the ED. But first of all, not everyone in the emergency room is poor! Maybe some are having an emergency!!!

You certainly COULD have chosen to let ita's parents be told through some sort of official channels.

That's true. When DH died I didn't think I could deal with telling his mother and I let the police do it. They did not do it well and I have regretted that ever since.

When DH died I didn't think I could deal with telling his mother and I let the police do it. They did not do it well and I have regretted that ever since.

The police wouldn't for me. Rob's parents were out and not answering their cell phone either. The police only left them a message that they needed to contact me immediately. I will never forget that call.

A facebook "friend" posted this ED Doctor's screed today

That's precisely what I was talking about yesterday: doctors who have nothing but contempt for the people they're meant to care for.

The sad thing to me is that it is some nurses, too. Especially in the ED, where I think it is high burn-out. I think of myself in my retail days and how much I thought people were just the worst and multiply it by 1000. They really should be rotated out once they start to have too much contempt.

Also, you do not want to hear some nurses talk about people with fibromyalgia, who they think are lazy women faking so they do not have to work.

-t and Maria, I am hugging you both. It's a shitty, cruel hand to be dealt, no matter what you do.

I was talking with one of my bosses about the ER thing, and he said that it's impossible not to get burned out and bitter -- he did a bunch of ER rotations as a student and resident, and saw an endless stream of people who were there because they had nowhere else to go, and his guess was that 95% of those asking for pain meds were drug-seekers. And plenty of them had stacks of paper and cards with what they told the on-call folks were their doctors' phone numbers and pager numbers. He said that, essentially, there couldn't have been a worse place for ita to be sent or a place where she'd be more certain to be treated badly and disregarded.

I said, "But if that's the only thing keeping them functional, wouldn't it be less harmful just to *let* people have their physical addictions and just try to make their circumstances as safe and non-shameful and non-criminal as possible?" And he shrugged and said, sure, he agreed 100%, but that's not up to him or to anyone not in Sacramento or Washington or any other capital; the ER docs have more power than the drug-seekers and the genuinely sick, but not by much.

It was not a cheery conversation.

Happy birthday, msbelle!

EDIT:Sorry, my post sounds off-tone. It wasn't meant that way. I am having a hard time keeping up with the conversation.