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Every year that passes proves how gullible a kid I was. I like to think that most kids are gullible simply because they're kids, but I may be wrong. Somehow I was taught that people like cops and the family doctors were your friends, and that they wanted to help you, but that hasn't worked out the way I was led to believe.
Many, if not most of the cops are no better than criminals, and doctors are all like Mengele. It's only because they are human, and humans are just another species of animals who happen to talk better than your average bear. Speech is mind. Mind is speech.
Thursday night was practically sleepless again. I went to bed a little early because I had the drive to Durham and the appointment to keep at the arthritis clinic at the VA Hospital. I probably should have taken a sleeping pill Thursday night instead of waiting until last night. I took the prescribed dose of Ambien around nine o'clock, but only after worrying a good bit about whether I might sleepwalk and make a fool of myself by driving downtown in my underwear.
So far this morning I haven't had anybody showing up saying that I slept-walked my way to their house in the middle of the night. This prescription sleeping pill has been in the news a lot in the recent past. People take it and literally don't know they have gotten out of their bed and went about their business in a totally unconscious state. When my new clinic doctor prescribed these pills he seemed to think they were better than the old ones that my former doctor prescribed to me. I don't agree.
As far as falling asleep quickly is concerned they probably are more efficient, but the threat of sleepwalking is scary. I don't think for a minute that I am any less susceptible to exhibiting the traits any other average person anybody else could. In fact, I may be more of the garden variety of gullible fools than average.
"Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." AU
I'm still a little upset that this young doctor tried to convince me that I am a prime candidate for artificial knees and leukemia within a short amount of time. Granted, he might have been showing off his horrible bedside manner to the new guy who accompanied him, but it may not have turned out all that well for him because I might have shown him up in front of his supervisor. Nice guy... eh? I know these things go on. That all sort of professional people attempt to use suggestion to bring in business, but at the expense of compassion.
It irks me to have to employ all these mechanizations to get these people to tell me what's going on. I literally conned the dude into telling me what diseases they were treating me for, and what the drugs they prescribed to me are used for, and to tell me the side-effects of those drugs so that I can act in an informed manner. After he did, I wondered if I was better off not knowing.
Lately I've found myself contemplating a phrase I don't remember the source of. It goes something like "the superior man always stays on the side of the lowly." Somehow I took that to heart, and it's been one of my true tenets for a long time. It's a stupid sentence to take seriously, much less to accept it as a guiding light.
It was very obvious to me yesterday that those young doctors did not take such a statement seriously. When I asked them who I could call for help if the side effects of these drugs they wanted to prescribe went south, and complained that none of them had answered my telephone messages ere now.
He admitted that they didn't have much time to spend with their veteran patients, after all, they spent most of their time across the street with the rich people at the Duke University Medical Center, and they were not available to the lowly veterans. I don't know what the medical equivalent of "Let them eat cake" is. But, it was frightening to see their total lack of concern so openly.
I stopped typing to reflect on how harsh I may sound, and suddenly I realized that I have been sitting here for a couple of hours typing, and haven't once put my eyeglasses on. Some of those mean, nasty, condescending Fellowship doctors over at the Fayetteville VA Hospital operated on my eyes, and fixed them so that I can see again. Of course, they're associated with the UNC Medical Center. Go Tar Heels! Actually, it might seem that I am the grumpy, ungrateful wretch. Not them. It's probably too late for me to learn to be a nicer person. Good. Nice people are patsies. '-)
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