It is 5.00am on 30th April 2021 and I am happy. I have just come out of my period of mourning for poor old Phil, a man who seemed to have enjoyed life no matter what trials and tribulations were thrown at him from a very early age, with his mad family childhood, through his marriage to a robot and having to watch his assorted brood go off the mental rails as he determinedly kept hold of sanity by hugging some decent females as they wallowed in the security of his royal maledom. From night club singers through royal followers, excellent jockeys, down right whores and ladies of all descriptions who just wanted love at any cost, Phil was there to help them overcome the hurdles of life. His sons tried it also but failed miserably for lack of chutzpah.
Lizzie understood this perfectly, enjoyed his honest tit-bits and allowed her sire to follow his head whilst she concerned herself mainly with matters of state, even allowing his last and latest frauendienst to attend his final, severely depopulated, rites at Windsor. Phil is now happy in the land of his maker and hopefully enjoying all the perks of that realm.
Also, I have to say, I am happy too. I am with my Selene who is doing a mighty fine job of looking after me in my old age and I have stopped worrying about this Covid thing but I still sometimes use the expletive when seeing some fool in our rural community wearing a mask, whilst their nearest neighbour is a cow or a horse and they many metres away chewing grass. My heart leaped last week on a visit to the Farmer’s Market in Carrick on Shannon to buy the fantastic sourdough bread our resident French Sligoman brings to the table every Thursday. In the crowded courtyard in the middle of town there was hardly a mask to be seen. Admittedly the voices heard had a foreign lilt who obviously were there for the money this computer age is throwing at people in the West of Ireland who know how to handle a key board. It is certainly a start unlike the traditional folk from Boyle who hide whatever character they have got behind a scruffy piece of muslim because they have not thought through the down right nonsense that the politicians of the western world are throwing at them.
I have come to terms with idiocy of high order. I realise I can live my life remotely from these foolish people. My only fear is because of my old age I tend to need the services of a doctor more than I ever used to. I get into a complete funk when within a mile of the surgery, because of the antics they put you through. They and their now goulish staff have been brainwashed. They actually believe the shit the politicians and media have thrown at them. In the process it has affected their personas. They are now no longer happy vibrant people. They are all scared stiff thinking they are martyrs to a cause that only non-thinkers believe in. They are curt, disdainful and unresponsive to enquiries made to them. They have now almost stopped answering the telephone to worried patients. Government figures tell me there are far more people dying happily at home then subjecting themselves to the rigours of our health care system. Those three words seem now to be a contradiction. There is no system and health care is no longer as we all have to suffocate behind a mask if we still believe in Hippocrates and his good work.
If the Hippocratic Oath or its modern day equivalent, the Declaration of Geneva 1948 and its many slight additions and the Nightingale Oath for nurses originally formed in 1893 and modified in 1935 are to be examined thoroughly it would seem both doctors and nurses are straying from their honourable pledges.
With the modern day wonders such as telephone, doctors no longer have to take the hard road and examine and talk face to face with patients they do not know. It can be done in a quick chat where patients cannot properly reveal their worries and doctors can just tick a box. Nurses similar who find it hard to work under present circumstances can easily stop caring for a person on the other end of a telephone. The personal character of both ancient traditions soon becomes impersonal and less caring. I might soon write a blog about these two oaths explaining how they now mean nothing to most.
There are however a few exceptions as with all disintegrations. My anciency makes me common with most medics. In fact all doctors now prefer indirect confrontation leaving most nurses to clear up the mess this causes. One notable exception in my case is my cardiac nurse, Rosemary Thorpe at Roscommon University Hospital who talks to me all the time contacting me way beyond her modern duties, assuring me of her constant care. Everyone else tends to treat me like a bag of shit needing to be disposed of quickly. They have become hardened by this Covid nonsense and no longer think of Florence’s nursing ideals.
So, as I said about four paragraphs ago, I have come to terms with this Covid nonsense and the retreat of the medical profession into their shells and the idiocy of people who live their lives like sheep and cannot question or wonder about why and how they are being lied to by government. All I ask of the nurse or doctor is to watch out for my vital signs and tell me if they weaken. I am not bothered about treatment, my time will come when it comes. As for the people, I can live without them, I can navigate myself through this complicated world that should not exist and after all I have my Selene who cares for me far better than old Hippocrates and Florence rolled into one.
I’m glad you have something nice to say about at least a few nurses. It isn’t an easy job. Many years ago I worked for a while as a nurse – strictly speaking, a “Nursing Auxiliary” – in the NHS. It is satisfying work, but it is also demanding work and not well paid. (At least, it wasn’t well paid then.) But people who are ill are likely to interact far more with nurses than with doctors, and someone who can keep people smiling while also providing what we used to call “basic nursing care” – no idea what they call it today – can make a big difference. A patient who is happy and well looked after is likely to have a better outcome than one who is neither of those.
I agree completely that the personal contact element is essential. “Nursing by telephone” just isn’t going to work.
I also think that nurses are underpaid and that doctors are overpaid. The system would be better if the two pay scales were brought closer together.
It might be even better if every doctor was required to do one day’s work a week nursing on the wards. It would remind them that medicine is about caring for people who are ill. Some doctors seem to think it is all about them.
Linda,
You do not have to convince me about nurses, my Selene is one, albeit high ranking, who has fought her way through penury in South Africa to an easy life living with me in luxury in Ireland but having to put in too many shifts because of this nonsense regarding covid/flu that has the nation terrorised for no reason. She has a much simpler remedy “just get on with it” but trying to persuade the sheep is almost impossible.
While we are on medical matters, do you remember that post you made years ago hypothesising that the heart problem that killed Tommy Duggan might have been caused, ultimately, by syphilis? One problem I had with your theory was that anyone who had syphilis could have easily cleared it out entirely, at any time after penicillin became widely available (late 1940s), and although that wouldn’t have reversed any damage that had already been done, it probably would have prevented the late stage damage that you tried to link to an aortic aneurism in 1966. But my objection does require an infected person to know that he was infected. Today I read that the composer Benjamin Britten died of heart problems that were probably caused by syphilis, but he didn’t know he had syphilis. So I had another think about TD. If he had become infected, I think he would have known at the time: the symptoms are usually too obvious to overlook. But the obvious symptoms eventually vanish, and people can assume that the disease has also vanished. In some cases (about half) they are correct, but in others it remains and continues to cause damage silently. Someone who became infected in the 1930s might well have assumed by the 1940s that the disease had vanished, and so would not have thought of getting a dose of penicillin. So that particular objection to your theory doesn’t stand up. In TD’s case we will never know for sure one way or the other: any relevant evidence will have disappeared long ago – or been covered up.
That got me thinking about how “inconvenient facts” can be made to disappear. The composer Franz Schubert almost certainly died of syphilis, but his death certificate says “typhoid” – a disease that he definitely did not have: his symptoms bore no relation to those of typhoid. The facts concerning the origins of Covid – which almost certainly passed to humans as a result of carelessness in a Chinese laboratory – are in the process of disappearing. The facts concerning the origins of AIDS – another screw-up by the medical profession – have been “disappeared” very effectively, so much so that if you mention what is almost certainly the true story of how it was transferred to humans you will be laughed at.
Nearly 40 years ago I read a fascinating book by an Australian lady called Dale Spender. It was called “Women of ideas, and what men have done to them”, and it explored how the contributions of women to science, literature, the arts, and just about every field you can image, have been systematically erased. When men run society, that is what happens. The facts surrounding the origins of christianity bear no relation to what people think is the origins of christianity, but again the true story is rarely heard (and if you try to narrate it you will be shouted down or ignored). Too many people have too much emotional investment in an incorrect story – a bunch of lies, basically – and some people’s power and prestige in society depends on those lies.
I once had an argument with a Greek man about whether Alexander the Great was gay or not. If you read Arrian or Curtius it is obvious to anyone with an open mind that he was at least bisexual, and probably predominantly gay, but since nothing in the text actually says, explicitly, “Alexander shagged men”, and since he did produce some children, the default assumption of this Greek person, and probably of many other people, is that Alexander was 100% heterosexual. They find that assumption less threatening than the truth, and when enough people feel like that the truth gets suppressed. It’s like Chopin, who was also gay – but there is no point telling them that in Poland. They don’t want to know. In published editions of his correspondence in Poland, the gender of pronouns has systematically been changed wherever the true gender would be “inconvenient”.
I have been searching for a word to describe these kinds of phenomenona, but without success. “Conspiracy” doesn’t seem the right word. “Conspiracy” suggests a cold-blooded, logical, carefully planned strategy by a small group of people. (That might actually be the case for Covid, but it doesn’t really fit the other examples I gave.) It’s something different than that, something more diffuse, and English doesn’t seem to have a word for it. The word “erasure” comes closer to the meaning I want, but even that doesn’t seem quite right. Can anyone think of a better one?
What a wonderfully written and well thought out argument for the true Covid story. As with all history the “truth” comes out of the winner’s pockets. In fact it explains all the facts you have displayed. The stronger the “ayes” for a motion, the weaker the actual truth.
But thanks for remembering that little post I wrote all those years ago. It took a little research which was slotted into that era to arrive at my assumption which I think is still correct. In those early days of the Duggan case, the lawyers asked me to pass everything by them prior to publication in case it harmed their case. They did not like some of my stuff which I dulled down for their sakes. They actually liked the Duggan one. After a while however I was more intent on writing what I thought rather than their version and my two fingers went up and our relationship drifted.
With regard to your question asking for a word to use in the Covid case, I cannot at this moment think of one but media cooperation is good but it is two.
On another note I can see the aspiring writer in you, in that you have started slotting your thoughts into my text to arrive at an alternative view without it costing you a hard earned donation to WordPress, a very Grecian thing I think but commendable in these Spartan times.
Linda,
I have looked up the piece you mention Duggan: Was He or Wasn’t He published on 19th May 2013. It was interesting to read again especially the comments including yours. What a memory you have. 8 years ago and lots of water under the bridge. I was a young man then.