Category Archives: rural doctor

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out of minutes

I just read your email

my phone was out of minutes

the internet was down

I was really busy working

I didn’t hear the phone

I forgot I turned it down

 

and you are out of minutes

 

The photograph is from 2007. The dunes collapse, sometimes whole sections with trees. It’s not a safe space to play.
I am choosing this for the Daily Prompt: flames.

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Or

For yesterday’s daily prompt: Or.

I am looking through old photographs and wanting to escape, back. Hide. This is from 2007, my daughter on the beach. Nostalgia, but also the picture is imperfect. The horizon is not level. But I love the colors and she is so happy. The water, the sky, serendipity…

…because I am afraid of polarization and anger in our country and I am afraid, very afraid, when I read that the KKK plans a victory march. And then that turns out to be false: yet my son’s friend hears people chanting “No more safe space.” on campus on the night of the election.Β  I won’t get lost in nostalgia or an idealized vision of the past. And I want my daughter to be able to run with joy….

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Veteran

My clinic has gotten three calls in the last week to take more rural Veteran’s Choice patients. One was too far away on Whidby Island. Apparently few providers will work with Veteran’s Choice: but I understand that too, because it took me a full year to get the contractor for the insurance, Triwest, to start paying me. And it took me hours, hours that I could spend doing medicine, instead of fighting with a corrupt for profit corporation.

And I am glad that I won that round.

I took the photograph at our Rhody Parade, in 2006.

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The introverted thinker walks away

We go to our first parent teacher conference for our daughter. Kindergarten.

“Your daughter is unusual.” says the teacher.

“Mmmm.” I say.

“She is unusual on the playground. At recess. She will play with the other girls. But not if they are mean to someone. Not if they start ganging up. And it doesn’t matter who it is. She will walk away and play by herself.”

“Good.” I say.

“The other kids are realizing that she won’t tolerate any mean talk or ganging up.”

We make appropriate appreciative parental noises.

“She is influencing them. She doesn’t argue, she doesn’t say anything, she just walks away.”

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ShelterBox

ShelterBox is a disaster relief organization that delivers a box with a family size tent, solar lights, water storage and purification equipment, thermal blankets and cooking utensils, and some things for children. The goal is immediate shelter and to help start the process of creating a home. The boxes are delivered to people world wide that have been hit by a disaster, man made or natural. They prepare and adjust them for local conditions.

ShelterBox started in 2000 in Helston, Cornwall, UK. That year, the Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard adopted it as its millennium project. The first shipment of 143 boxes went to was sent to victims of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. ShelterBox ramped up during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. ShelterBox provided shelter for 28,000 families after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010, about 25% of the tents sent by charities.

In the US, a ShelterBox costs $1000.00 to sponsor. Our small Sunrise Rotary Club buys at least one each year. We are notified that our box from last year went to Syrian refugees. I am so glad to be part of an organization that is doing something that is specific and positive in the world. Also, we are in a serious earthquake and tsunami zone: I hope someone sends us ShelterBoxes when we get hit. I prepare, but I keep wondering where to store things. If the house falls down, it seems unlikely that I could get to my stores….

ShelterBox gets a very high rating from Charity Navigator. Rotary International chose ShelterBox as their first Project Partner in 2012 and has renewed the partnership with ShelterBox in 2016 for another three year term.

ShelterBox: https://www.shelterbox.org/
Rotary and ShelterBox: http://www.shelterboxusa.org/about.php?page=16
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShelterBox
Charity Navigator: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=ShelterBox&Submit2=Search&bay=search.results
Music: Would you harbor me?
http://ptsunriserotary.org/

I was going to work at clinic one day last week and I was feeling down and tired. I saw this rainbow and stopped in a parking lot to photograph it. And the brighter one is leading directly to my clinic and my work.