Bloody Furious

I'm not naive enough to belive I can make a difference, but it's important to vent. Today's topic is not exactly nursing related, but it is health related. Although the nasty sorts of people involved do tend to make life miserable for medical people. So, here's the story: Yesteday, the school where my son is at had a serious health issue. Withing the space of an hour around 40 kids out of 120, suddenly developed fever, vomiting, and stomach cramps. Fortunatley my son was one of the ones that didn't get sick, but my wife had to go and pick her son up. There were about six ambulances, plus police cars and even several fire trucks. I found out later the firemen were looking for environmental hazards, eg gas leak among other things. When my wife picked up our son, the media were there and interviewed her. She said the school was great, and that although this is really unfortunate, she is not angry at the school. The reporters moved onto another parent. Not surprising. We all know reporters look for dirt. Anyway, day two of the incident, and it looks like the kids are going to be fine, although an investigation is still underway to determine the cause of the problem. It just so happens that we know someone on the city council. This council member spoke with some reporters and bascially said they were not going to go on the 'war path' and attack the school. The reporters didn't bother reporting this. They openly admitted they were looking for some dirt to tear the school to pieces. I'm furious, although I shouldn't be. Good news can sell. We're all sick of bad news. Actions like these just reinforce the fact that the media cannot be trusted. In fact not only can they not be trusted, but the actions demonstrated here are those of a terrible leech whose sole purpose is to thrive on misery and pain. My wife has spoken to many other mothers involved in the incident. The mothers all had the same story, they were interviewed, but the reporters left, disinterested, when the parents said nice things about the school. I'm sure one parent will say something unpleasant, and this will be all the media need, to create a bullshit story and hurt a place, a school.... a school that does a good job looking after the children and providing caring, effective teachers. Well, that's enough ranting from me. Maybe I'll start a newspaper, with the sole purpose of printing the real story, as well as some real good news.

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Don't write when you're angry

But it's sometimes so therapeutic when you write when you're angry. I'm going to break my own rules and tell what happened today.

Eastern european doctor prescibes injections for a patient suffering from neck pain. The patient has had every test imaginable, and everything has come back normal. The prescription list two injections I am to administer.

I don't accept prescriptions from foreign doctors with unidentifiable medicines. The local doctor (western trained) does some research on the injections prescribed. He finds out that they are not only banned in all western countries, but they have very dangerous side effects, and that they would not help in any way. The local doctor even said that if he gave them, he would most likely lose his licence.

This is actually not unusual. What made me angry is when I politely explained to the parents that we cannot do this, that I got yelled at. The parents demanded that their child see a 'specialist' and told me that western trained nurses have a terrible reputation.

This is actually not new. I've heard this, and worse, many times. I don't know why it's bothering me so much. Perhaps what's really bothering me is that this child is going to have a potentially harmful treatment, and no one is listening.

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