When I was a young girl, I decided I should be a doctor. I had all kinds of abilities that stood out like a sore thumb. When I opened my mouth, my classmates seemed to withdraw, and I was usually alone. Perhaps it was my vocabulary, as my father instilled in all of us the love and necessity of reading. He'd take us to the public libraries, and I dreamed of reading all the books on the shelves. We'd take stacks of books home every time. My father was a proud dad. Because as a young boy, he had frequented the Benjamin Franklin Public Library in Philadelphia, (he said it was the first free public library), and he often read the Thesaurus, people would cower away when he spoke, as he set another standard altogether of learning the language.
It seems, as I reflected on my peer experience when I was older, that it might be because my classmates compared themselves with me, thought they were lacking and left me in the dust. It didn't help that I could beat everyone except two boys in racing, tore it up in tetherball, won Spelling Bees, jacks tournaments, jumped the furthest in broad jump, even though I was the shortest in the class, etc.
Reading had developed parts of my brain and intellect. At the same time, I felt strongly that I didn't like being a leader, having people look at me like I was better than them, because I knew inside as a truth, that all of us are equal in value, and nobody should give away any of their own dignity and self esteem. Everyone has unique gifts and talents, which need to be recognized and developed. I sometimes felt very impatient because of the condition of the human race, starting with my peers. My home life was a horror, and the only peace I felt was in withdrawing creatively or noticing the details and beauty of nature.
Just to be clear here, I believe we are merely to use our talents and abilities to make the world better than we found it, and to share love and kindness with each other. Sometimes to make change, we have to become fierce warriors and speak our truth, regardless of the storms that come. The idea of a 'chosen people', for instance has always bothered me. I am half Russian Jew, which people are known for their cognitive abilities. I am also unacknowledged by Jewish tradition as belonging, because my Welsh/English/Pennsylvania Deutsch mother was not Jewish. Since my own family has disowned me because I am not Mormon, and because they are afraid of the truth and their part in the harming of my children and my life, I am one of those lone travelers. There must be some purpose for me in the lessons that are forged in this type of agony and disappointment in one's own blood.
My Jewish father was proud of his children, and wanted to have a dozen, for the twelve tribes of Israel. He used to infer that we were superior to others, because of our genetics. At the same time, his treatment of my mother and us in general, led my sibs and I to think we would never be good enough. His loud screaming, etc. often made me feel ashamed, shocked and embarrassed. With my brown eyes and my mother's disregard, I was convinced I was merely adopted, or they got the wrong one from the hospital. My father tried to hurt me one day while I took care of him as an elderly man, telling me I was not his child. It may have been when I set some boundary he didn't like, told him his behavior was unacceptable, etc., but I remember laughing and telling him -"I'm sorry, dad, but all you have to do is look at your nose and mine."
I think I was fiercely competitive because of the lack of love I felt from my mother, and the violence I witnessed in the home from my father. He favored me from the time I was born, naming me without consulting my mother, etc., and isolated me in the ensuing triangulation. It was as if I had to prove that I was all right when I was young, by my accomplishments. I kept looking for signals for what gave me approval or worth. I had to seek for those answers as I matured.
At the same time, I saw the same bully behavior in my classmates as I saw at home from my father. I would withdraw in horror. I was a sensitive young child, and wrote poetry, walked the woods of Spokane, Washington by myself and home from school by myself, even though I was the second child of ten. At school, I was seen as a leader I guess, being chosen because of my athletic abilities to be the Softball Captain, the fill-in during lunch hour for the nurse and secretary (and paid a handful of candy bars at the close of my 6th grade school year as my annual wage), etc. My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Thomas, one day stopped at my desk, as I was done with her test quickly, waiting for everyone else. "Are you bored?", she asked, with this less than friendly look that made me cringe, and feel almost embarrassed that I certainly might be.
Because of the unkindness I saw among my classmates, bullying those who were seen as 'fat', or Binet's (as the mentally challenged kids were called in those days in the 1960's), I eventually became enraged, and would verbally defend those children, stepping forward with my little frame, until the bullies receded in shame. My next youngest sister told me several years ago that a woman whom she recognized as a school mate, asked about me, remembering how I had stood up for her as an overweight little girl. Somehow that Warrior self emerged, for better or worse. Perhaps it is no surprise that later in life I chose to get my Masters in Social Work which is merely an Advocate for Social Justice.
I sat down to share an illuminating article from Jon Rappaport. The preceding association was what was birthed. Perhaps you will see yourself, or know me better, or realize something for your own life. It is my firm belief, that in sharing our own truth, we not only hear ourselves and make a written record of history, (instead of having it bastardized) but we allow others to learn from our experience and mistakes. It is my strong conviction that being transparent and open is a gift to our fellow man. Why should we all have to learn from mistakes, when we can learn from the path and mistakes and triumphs of others?
I told my grandson Joe last week, that I got tired of making A's and A+'s, and wanted to see what it felt to make a C. The last quarter of my Bachelor's degree, I was taking seven classes just to get out of school, which I saw as a bit frustrating and political at times. I was a little crispy on the edges, burned out, raising the remainder of my 7 children, and when my poor strained eyes finished the last written Final exam, I didn't want to see another written word for a long time. There was a class that I thought was a waste of time, and the book was boring to me. Something had to go, and so I allowed myself to do little there, and made a C. Maybe it was for my own experience and schooling. The perfectionism of my father's culture was something I also wanted to shed. It led to a lot of unhappiness.
My life seemed to derail a bit when I married at 17 to escape a 28- yr. old boyfriend whom I didn't want to marry, marrying instead someone I thought my mother and current way of life would approve of, and to escape the violence and sadness of my home life. I never felt any support or a foggy idea of how to proceed to get into college, as a young woman. My mother and I really had no communication or relationship, and my father was gone most of the time. I would have never fit in with medicine, mainly because I think for myself, and question everything, so the tradition of ignoring nutrition and parasites, for example may have made me very unpopular then, or questioning the origin or findings of corporate 'scientific studies', or perhaps countless other accepted practices and procedures. Pioneers of thought that change our world usually think for themselves as iconoclasts.
Going against the mainstream thought to help humankind advance can be a rough road, as humans fight change and advancement, holding onto what they know. Who wants to admit they're wrong in medicine, and have harmed or killed hundreds or thousands, like millions of false test results creating unnecessary breast cancer surgeries? The unethical drive for money-for status, paying off school loans, overhead or equipment, false superiority, liaison with pharmaceuticals, etc. wouldn't have fit me. It would have 'grated on my aura'. Whether it's the psychiatric 'treatment' field, oncology, etc., we are only an inch from the cave, in my opinion. Many times the knowledge needed is squashed, dismissed, cheated, maligned etc. for humans to save face or continue to profit from human ignorance and lazy trusting without personal research or accountability. Most simply don't have the ability, resources, or time to do less than blindly trust their medical personnel.
Of course, you can read about why I also didn't fit in with my Social work field in most agencies (www.counselingwithpamela.com, ABOUT section) if you wish. I am still searching for my niche, where I will feel welcome and my talents can develop and flourish while I serve my fellow man. Earning a decent living would be nice at some point. I've had a strange path.
Now after this rambling, I want to share one of the best articles I've seen on Medical Mistakes and Intention. I hope you enjoy it. Instead of sharing a link, I'll paste it below. Jon Rappaport is the author. You can subscribe to his newsletter. He has been an investigative reporter (something I relate to very much) for 30+ years, with awards and recognition for his work.
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Eight quotes from a cancer surgeon that will set your hair on fire
by Jon Rappoport
December 6, 2012
His name is Marty Makary. He's a cancer surgeon and researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the School of Public Health.
Propublica's Marshall Allen interviewed him about patient harm, in conjunction with an ongoing propublica investigation.
Keep in mind that these quotes are coming from a mainstream doctor who is inside the system and who believes in the system. That makes Makary's statements all the more shocking.
"...1 in 4 hospital patients are harmed by a mistake."
"A cardiologist in Wisconsin was fired for pointing out that EKGs were misread more than 25% of the time."
"We [doctors] are also evaluated by the number of 'value units' at the end of each fiscal quarter. Our management will sit down with us and say your work units are down or up and in order for you to receive a large bonus you need to increase the number of operations you do..."
"There is New England Journal of Medicine-level data that suggests that almost half of [health] care is not compliant with evidence." [In other words, almost 50% of all health care in America isn't even based on published mainstream studies...and, I should add, there is conclusive evidence that half of these studies are untrustworthy in the first place. Therefore, to say that conventional doctors are winging it is a vast understatement. JR]
"...up to 30% of health care in unnecessary..."
"I saw cases where a patient was not told about a minimally invasive way of doing a particular surgery because of physician preference or training, and the doctor would just hope the that he [the patient] wouldn't find out."
"Medical mistakes are fifth-or-sixth-most common cause of death in the United States, depending on the measure."
"...The desire and reflex of docs to offer something to patients, even when there's not much more else they can offer. There's a strong financial incentive. Doctor groups pay for new equipment that they purchase on borrowed money." [In other words, 'we have this expensive equipment, we have to use it to pay for it.' JR]
Since Dr. Makary works at Johns Hopkins, he is no doubt familiar with a landmark review done by the late Dr. Barbara Starfield, who also worked at Hopkins for many years.
On July 26, 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published Starfield's review, "Is US health really the best in the world?" Starfield revealed the following facts:
In the US, the annual death rate, as a direct result of medical treatment, is 225,000 people. Of those, 106,000 are killed by FDA-approved pharmaceutical drugs. The other 119,000 are killed by medical mistreatment in hospitals. This makes medically caused death the third leading cause of mortality in America.
In 2009, I interviewed Dr. Starfield.
She assured me that, since the publication of her review in 2000, no federal agency had contacted her to ask for help in fixing this unconscionable horror, and no agency had undertaken a significant program to reverse the third leading cause of death in the US.
Aside from the medically caused death rate, there is medical maiming. In 2001, the LA Times published a shocking article by Linda Marsa.
The article revealed that, in addition to the deaths, 2.1 million more people were admitted to US hospitals every year, as a result of severe reactions to pharmaceutical drugs. And, every year, there were 36 million adverse drug reactions in America.
Those people who support the onset of Obamacare might reflect on all these things. With millions of new people brought into the medical system, the horrific pain-and-death numbers cited in this article are going to escalate. And those numbers equal real human beings.
But don't worry. You're humane to want Obamacare. You'll get a gold star on the blackboard for your sentiments.
Keep sending me your emails expressing those sentiments. I print them and tape them to my wall, right next to the death-and-maiming numbers. It's a nice collection.
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com
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