Category Archives: cry

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Quota

Quota

honestly
I feel despair
when I try
to think about the new schedule

Twenty four slots
Of 20 minutes
See three people
For 40 minutes
Twenty on the schedule

Unanswered questions
Wake me on Sunday morning
If I am called to a labor patient
Must I make up that clinic face time?
What of holidays?
The clinic is closed.
Night call is nowhere addressed
Will they hire more and more
Who don’t take call
Until I am the last woman standing
Red rimmed eyes staring
Numb with fatigue

What of my nearly deaf patient
Who reads lips
May we take forty minutes?
All the fairly deaf elderly?
New parents, anxious
Questions pour out like
Coins from a jackpot win
What of the tearful brokenhearted
And anxious?
I shrink at the thought
Of crushing their hearts
Into twenty minutes

And what if I’m sick?
(sick leave & vacation all one)
It’s not a holiday if I’m on call
No make-up day off
If I cancel clinic
For illness
Do I make up those days
A quota of patient face days

I am in the factory
The mines
People are the shirts I must sew
The tons of coal I must load
I must meet a quota

Doctors die younger
Our life is measured out
In patients
I won’t let the quota
Kill my love

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Emergency preparedness

In Venezuela now
some people get water once a week
and sicken from it

First, withdrawal
When we have our eathquake
Tsumani and roads and bridges are gone

If one in three adults in Utah
Got an opioid prescription in 2014
What are the numbers here?
Opioids
Alcohol
Benzos
Caffeine
After the first wave of death
and grief, withdrawal begins
Not just addictive drugs
from insulin
from blood pressure meds
anticoagulants
seizure medicine
chemo ground to a halt
I read that alcohol is best to trade in disaster
and chaos and loss
Guarded by guns in small gangs
We are told to store water
Where?
If the house falls down
and I can get out, where would I put water?
A bunker in the ground?
I stock straws for water
I wish I could buy 9000
for my town
I stock books for when the computers
go silent
I stock songs in my head
memorized all
I fight for all my patients
Who would I not fight for?
Maybe it would be better to die
or be captured early
I stock love not guns.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2016/05/26/world/americas/desperate-times-in-venezuela/s/27VENEZUELA-SS-slide-3ZIT.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/26/utah-mormons-prescription-painkiller-addiction

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

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I will fight no more

I am tired of fighting
I am tired of fighting for justice
I am tired of fighting discrimination
I am tired of fighting for health care for all

I am tired of fighting insurance companies
I am tired of fighting medicare’s contractee
I am tired of fighting for prior authorization
I am tired

I will fight no more forever

I heal
I am a healer
I am trying to heal patients
I am trying to help patients heal

I am a healer
I help heal cancer
I help heal heart disease
I help heal PTSD
I help

heal cancer
heal heart disease
heal PTSD
heal addiction

I am a healer

heal the insurance company
heal the medicare contractor
heal the pharmaceutical company
heal

heal anxiety
heal depression
heal addiction

I will fight no more forever

I heal

The legs in the photograph don’t look delicate, do they? They are strong and beautiful and powerful. I took this at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition in 2009. Those girls on the edge of being women are strong, they are a team, they work and play together. They have the skills and the strength to lift their bodies out of the water that far using their arms… think about the practice and strength needed to do that. We all want to heal and create fun and play and beauty. Let’s work as a team.

also on everything2.com