• Bad to worse

    The ill-conceived placement with the assisted living facility came to an abrupt end this morning. We got a call from the facility reporting that our family member was “out of control,” wandering the halls breaking lamps, overturning furniture, and upsetting the other residents. My dad left straight away, telling them he’d be there soon to pick her up, with no idea where we were going to take her next.

    When he got there, a police car was waiting outside… with my mother in the back seat.

    I am at once depressed, discouraged, tired, and enraged. What the F&%$ was the hospital thinking when they placed her at such a facility? Weren’t they listening when we brought her into the emergency room? Were they taking notes of ANY kind while she was there? And what the F&%$ was the ALF thinking taking a patient that so clearly needed more care than they could give? Didn’t they see from the first night that she was going to require too much care?

    What the F&%$ are we going to do now? The psych ward beds are no less full than they were six days ago. She’s still too old for the major non-profit, inpatient psych facility in the area. Her F&%$ing psychiatrist is still not returning our calls. F&%$ing health insurance is still useless (until next year). My prescription for Xanax may need to be refilled… that or I may need to take up drinking.

    I think a politician against universal heath coverage should be required to take her in for a week.

  • Vietnam versus Iraq

    If you’re like me and you read the news in print, on the web; you listen to it on the radio, in the office; and you watch it (seldom) on TV, you may have heard comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. Although I’m rarely reading over your shoulder, or in shouting distance while you read these entries, I can hear a few of your responses:
    “Please. Not another list.”
    “What comparisons?”
    “You can read news on the web?”
    “Is he EVER going to go back to work full time?”

    Well, I decided to do a little research… stressing “little.” Here’s some of the highlights (I use this term lightly):

    Vietnam peak (number of U.S. troops: 1968 – 1969: 550,000
    Private Contractors (approx 10%): 55,000
    Total U.S. Personnel investment: 605,000
    Total land area: 128,000 sq mi
    Population: 41m (approx – in 1970)
    Population density: 320/sq mi

    Troops in Iraq (the U.S. contingent among the dwindling “coalition of the quasi willing”): 160,000
    Private Contractors: 160,000
    Total: 320,000
    Total land area: 169,000 sq mi
    Population: 27m
    Population density: 171/sq mi

    Taking the recent population totals for Vietnam and comparing it to the the number of troops there, you get a U.S. Personnel to Vietnamese ratio of 1 to 140. Looking at the total land area and the population density – along with a bit of reading about the country’s geography, there’s a fair bit of the country that his habitable.

    Now that the “surge” is underway in Iraq, our U.S. Personnel to Iraqi ratio is 1 to 84. Furthermore, looking at the population density – along with a little reading about the country’s geography, there’s very little of the country that is habitable.

    So… by my rough calculations (and with no military training or expertice whatsoever), it appears to me that we have almost twice as many U.S. personel commited to Iraq on a per capita basis as we did in Vietnam, to cover far less habitable territory.

    Granted… we lost Vietnam, and since the mission was supposedly different**, the value of these numbers may be limited. (**Since the mission seems to be a moving target in Iraq, it’s difficult to determine just how “different” it really is.)

    My point to this entry is that Iraq is not another Vietnam. In some respects this may be worse. Although the overall numbers are lower, you can make the argument that we’ve got a BIGGER investment of personnel in Iraq (when you consider the size and make-up of the objective) – and with all due respect to Mr Bush (which at this point isn’t much), we’re still losing.

  • Where art thou innocence?

    I don’t know when it was, but sometime between my childhood and parenthood, bare footed children became the height of neglect. As a child, freedom from footwear followed freedom from responsibility. The backyard was our summer oasis, relieved from the yolk of academia. The bare, dirt stained foot was no less an icon of liberty than a bald eagle soaring on the updrafts of a hot summer day.

    Now I can’t let my son wander the back-country of our family room, sans stockings, without risking the wrath of the in-laws. You’d think I was letting the poor boy run naked through the neighborhood. You ask me, a boy’s feet can’t be coddled. Feet are our ambassadors with the ground; and it’s everywhere… in all shapes, textures, and temperatures. Part of being a child is learning about our world, and not all of not all of it is sheathed in a lycra/cotton blend with rubber exteriors.

    I say, let thy feet know the world!