...I'm thinking about how my taste has changed in some things and people, how my lifelong compulsion to make lists in my head and out has not only disappeared it would seem for good but any desire to do so has too (and how that makes me feel at times like a different person, a different personality at least in my interior monologue)...
..and how I get agitated now sometimes when I am confronted with perplexing possibilities, too much stimuli too, but especially when feeling the need to make a decision or respond to something that begins to feel urgent and my mind doesn't seem to be able to do that, at times...
...and how only a year ago I was slowly rediscovering the ability to read and recognize what moves me in a painting or a story or a movie etc...rediscovering my joy in more than just thinking and eating and being alive...
...and how one of the most difficult things to readjust to and accept was and still is the inanity of so much of the public discourse and where our country, our society, our media, our conversation about reality has come to...
...as in the inability of our politicians and many voters to recognize the common sense of a national healthcare system that is guaranteed...
..not too long ago I met a couple who had been living in Germany for a few years. The husband worked for a big "American" corporation (but really international as most corporations are). He made more money than his German counterparts in his division there, but they seemed in many ways to him more fulfilled, happier, less anxious and driven. And he realized eventually that it was because they never worried about things like medical expenses and emergencies because when they needed to see a doctor they just went without worrying about cost...
...I won't get into the fact that the results of our supposed "free enterprise system" of healthcare has left us behind other so-called "developed nations" in terms of longevity and infant mortality and just general wellbeing when it comes to health...
...but I will quote an excerpt from poet Tom Raworth again, the author of the blog that generated my post before the last one about healthcare. In an e mail response to my post he informed me that:
" just for the record, I had open-heart surgery for an atrial septal defect in 1956....8 1/2 hours, heart stopped, blood through a freezer, adrenalin shots, etc. etc. Since when I've had pneumonia, a stroke, appendicitis, various heart problems, a stent, broken bones; Val had five children, eye surgery for glaucoma. The children have had various things in their lives, from knee cartiledge repair to death from AIDS. Never once has the thought of money been inserted between us and the necessary treatment."
...which about says it all for me concerning healthcare...
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5 comments:
Mike,
I belive the comparative health results of the comparison of other government systems to the US was skewed. You should also note that many if not all of the government run health care systems are in serious if not fatal economic collapse. The debt crisis in Europe is but one result of socialism run wild. No amount of good intentions is going to stave off economic collapse. The last election was about facing up to economic realities.
The economic crisis worldwide was caused mainly and directly by Bush/Cheney policies that led to the collapse of the U.S. financial system and institutions that in turn led to etc. and the derivative scams that some Euro baks also took part in that contributed to the economic collapse over there were based on those first created and pedaled by U.S, financial institutions and left unregulated by Bush/Cheney, coupled with tax cuts for the rich and two unpaid for wars, as well as loopholes for oil companies to not only pay no taxes by get rebates in the millions!
I think it's time to start deleting the more obvious lies in the comments threads again, there's enough of then out there already.
Michael - I'd love to hear more about how your thinking, perceptions, behavior have changed since the surgery. This is fascinating stuff. I get the impression that you're more content. Oliver Sacks has published some interesting case studies about how brain trauma radically changed people. He had one patient who suddenly learned to play the piano (actually became obsessed with playing the piano to point where his wife left him and he quit his job as a physician) after he was struck by lightning in the head.
I do know those Sacks books and that story in particular Tim. As for my recovery and its interesting stages, you can go back into the blog archives below and start with anything after Nov. 13, 2009 to see some of the developments I commented on. It's been pretty fascinating and you're right, in some ways I am more contented now then before. I'm working on a book about it I hope I finish before too long.
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