Health

Dan Ciruli, who used to be a percussionist for Lawsuit, posted this status update on his Facebook page tonight:

45,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance, and over 700,000 go bankrupt. How dare someone change that?

Yesterday he had written:

I'm sure those of you living abroad are a little confused. But let me reassure you: we still have all of the freedoms we did last week, and we still want to work. We do have 30,000,000 fewer uninsured people, though.

Like probably all of you, I'm finding all the stuff going on around passage of the Health Care bill very depressing. It seems that some Americans -- some of them in Congress -- are firm believers in "democracy," but only if the democratically decided issues are the ones they like.

If they are decisions they don't like then it seems appropriate to throw bricks through windows, cut gas lines to homes, use words that may not be serious, but which suggest violence to people who used their democratically given right to express an opinion because the vote cast didn't agree with your desires.

The man who held up a vote which might have brought health care to millions of children because he's pro life and didn't like the wording about abortion is now branded a "baby killer."

It took Rachel Madow thirty minutes to enumerate and talk about all the threats that had been made to Democratic congress persons. Today it seems that those on the other side are fighting back and making their own threats.

Maybe it's that we live in a time when crime drama may be the most popular form of entertainment and so we have become enured to the language of violence and think nothing about calling for harm to befall a congressman or a threat against his children. Lord knows I have certainly contributed to the encouragement of more and better crime dramas and look forward to "Law & Order" or "Criminal Minds" marathons.

But this new cloud of violence that hangs over our country is very depressing because we are losing our civility. We are turning to our wild west roots, when all disagreements were settled in a gunfight (if movies are to be believed), or the days past the Emancipation Proclamation, when the way to deal with someone you didn't like was to form a lynch mob and string him/her from the nearest tree.

I, for one, am proud to have lived to see this country actually doing something to give the uninsured an opportunity to have health care. I'm not such a pollyanna that I think the bill is perfect, but as I told the eye doctor, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'd at least like to give it a chance and see what kind of difference it will make in the coming year.

And speaking of health, I don't remember how much information about Walt's mother's health I've written about over the past couple of months.

It started, this time, when we had a call that she had been taken to the hospital with a temperature of 106 and pneumonia. They got her fever down, but couldn't get her blood pressure up above something like 75. Whenever she has a spell like this, there is always the fear that this is "the one."

Walt flew to Santa Barbara the next morning and his brother drove down and they were all there for her in the hospital.

She turned the corner. They got her blood pressure up and within a couple of days she was able to be moved to the convalescent hospital. Since her own apartment is in assisted living and the complex itself only has 2-tier care, and not 3-tier care (which would include full time assistance), she couldn't be released from the convalescent hospital until she could get up into her walker and walk a little bit--at least as far as the bathroom. I don't remember if Walt went down once or twice while she was in the convalescent hospital (the trips are starting to blend together).

But we were thrilled when she was released, I think it's 4 days ago now. Reports were that she was feeling chipper and was even able to go down to the dining room in her wheel chair for her meals. Everybody was feeling great about it.

Then two nights ago Walt had another call. His mother had been feeing so good she decided to try going to the bathroom by herself rather than wait for an attendant. She fell and was rushed off to the hospital again.

Around about midnight last night, Walt heard from his sister that their mother had broken her hip, and possibly her femur as well.

She went to surgery at 9:30 this morning and apparently came through well. They were going to put her on a ventilator for about 12 hours because they are always concerned about her lungs, but she was only on it for an hour or so and the doctor decided she could go without it.

"She's a tough lady," the doctor told the nurses.

We know this is going to be a very long recuperation process. But she's a fighter and she hasn't given up fighting yet.