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hallelujah. - 2008-08-03
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comedy of errors - 2008-07-30
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2006-11-26 - 9:24 a.m.

Here’s something that kind of pisses me off. I get reports like this every so often. When homeless, drug addicts come in to hospital for prolonged extensive treatment of wounds and infections. Now. I have NOTHING against the homeless. My heart aches for them. It really really does. I can’t imagine having nothing and nowhere to go, especially when it is so bitterly cold out as it is now. And drug addicts, while I have nothing against them personally, per se, and would never wish them any actual HARM….i have known too many of them to feel too much sympathy. I get that addiction is horrible, and overwhelming. I get it. But what bothers me so very very much, is that the people I’m talking about are the ones who are fully capable of holding down jobs. They are fully functioning. They do not have mental illnesses. They do not have chronic physical deformities or impairments that would hinder them from actually getting a job and getting on with life. They are drug addicts who have let it take over their lives. They come in with injuries that they have let fester, because it was easier to smoke crack, than go to the clinic. And then when it actually gets so infected and painful that they can’t walk, or that their flesh is actually turning BLACK, they come in to hospital. And now they need days or weeks of medical treatment with antibiotics and often surgery. And then when they leave hospital, they don’t continue taking their medications, and they don’t go in for dressing changes, instead they immediately go back to the street to smoke crack…only to end up right back in hospital again.

Why should the doctors waste time and money on people who don’t give a shit?? They might as well just throw money down the toilet.

I am so very glad that I live in a place where if my child is sick, I can take him to the doctor or hospital without worrying about if I can afford it. If I take him to the clinic for an ear infection, I’ll still be able to buy groceries at the end of the week. I am very thankful for that. But that same system gets abused all the time. People have the sniffles, so they go the Emergency Department! They waste time/money on something that could be fixed with some vitamin C and a couple of aspirin. People don’t want to go to work on Monday, so they limp into the Emergency Department, whine about how much pain they’re in, and get a doctor’s note. I’ve seen it happen. Wasted resources on stupid people. Meanwhile, people who are in serious need of medical attention are basically given a number and told to wait, and then proceed to have miscarriages right in the waiting room.

Now, after all my ranting, here’s something that frustrates me even more. I don’t know what should be done about it. I mean, if someone comes in with a budding case of gangrene…it needs to be treated, regardless of if he’s a crackhead or whether or not it could have easily been prevented. You can’t just let someone die slowly from blood poisoning while their limbs rot away. That’s inhuman. But it’s their own fault. They didn’t have to get that bad. Sometimes they didn’t have to get that way at all (infected wounds from unclean needles? Totally preventable and avoidable). So…what do you do? Deny them treatment for being stupid and let them die? Or treat them and do the best you can for them, even though it’s really just a waste of time?

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