About That Leisure Time

That's 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time.

No boss, No rat race to work and home.

Now you make the choice.

You have enough time to play a few rounds

and change the world for the better, too.

www.worldboomer.net

My Calling from God

By David L. Dyer

Three years as a deacon, have come to an end

That’s not so easy, to comprehend

What have I learned?  What have I done?

I know I’ve made friends, with most everyone

So now that it’s over, what’s next on my plate?

Should I wait for God, to decide my fate?

No, I’ve still got plenty to say

I’ll never forget, what happened that day

Eight years ago at age sixty nine, God reached out to me

It took a year to realize, since he works mysteriously

I collapsed on a treadmill and lost control and thought my life was through

An incurable disease called Parkinson’s, was the start of something new

He who knows all knew that I, would never give up my beer

And now that I was near seventy, he felt the time was now here

God reached me through my late brother, Wayne

Knowing what the outcome would be

Knowing I had a story to tell, Wayne uttered these words to me

“David, don’t give up, you must continue

Do not die, with your music still in you”

Next came a trip to the Vietnam Wall

That’s when I gave up alcohol

It took quite a while to understand

It was God who put that pen in my hand

There are fifty plus thousands, of names on that wall

God’s calling to me, was “remember them all.”

I began writing stories, and even a book

My efforts continued, whatever it took

Eight years have passed, I’m now seventy seven

I’ve been lifted from hell and I’m halfway to heaven

I’ll continue to write and take my stand

Til I can no longer hold, a pen in my hand

davidldyer@gmail.com

A Better Outcome Than Expected

By Gail Albin, RN

When I left the hospital late that night, I told my husband Leon, “I think you will be fine.”

I lied.

We had spent all afternoon dancing at a park for Senior Citizen Day. We later stopped at a restaurant.

There was something about him that made me ask, “Are you OK?  He denied problems. He went to the bathroom and came back staggering and clearly having a stroke.

911 was called, he went to a nearby hospital and had excellent care.

We ended up having the best ten years of our lives.

I Gotta Dream

Today is Optimism Day. It’s a day to believe that right will triumph; people will be first in line rather than profit; priorities will be sorted to, "first make life better for all of us"; and, hate will be ploughed asunder.

Say What! “You must be a Maroon,” you say?

Yeah!
Well, the people of London did it!

O.K., so they at least took the first step. They elected a guy named Khan -a Muslim, son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver - over a dirt bag, hate mongering aristocrat.*

You know, I think those Londoners are more American than… Americans!

Now, I gotta dream… Americans will be more like Londoners!

*How London’s Sadiq Khan Triumphed Over Race-Baiting, Padraig Reidy, Moyers & Company, 6 May 2016.

"Berrigan always told us to look at the faces of war."

Some people are blind to their path. Others walk mostly against their will. But, every once in awhile one person blazes his path, cutting it from the imprisoning foliage of our messy, soulless society.

Daniel Berrigan has passed.

During his lifetime he blazed his path toward peace and away from war. He did make a difference in my life. His sacrifice opened my eyes and drove me toward trying to be a Medic in the U.S. Army. I believe, in that role, I could make a difference to a few people in a very small way. If I had to go to war, then let me try to help my friends.

During his trial for the public burning of draft records*, Berrigan said:

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.... We act against the law at a time of the Poor People’s March, at a time moreover when the government is announcing ever more massive paramilitary means to confront disorder in the cities....The war in Vietnam is more and more literally brought home to us. Its inmost meaning strikes the American ghettos; in servitude to the affluent. We must resist and protest this crime....”The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.” (1.)

For me, the question was, and remains: Is it not my responsibility to see the faces of those I encounter along my life path? And, with the seeing, is it not true as Berrigan said: “to look at the faces of war?” Then with the witnessing is not my responsibility as a human being and a follower of Christ to walk a path toward peace?

*You may not know how about the draft. I can attest to living under the thumb of the people who ran the local Selective Service Draft Board. They literally made the decision about who lived and died. I was lucky. I got to go to college and enlist in the Army. Many, many others never had a choice. Today, we know for fact that the Golf of Tonkin attack on U.S. Navy ships never happened. The Vietnam War was an atrocity. - RB

1. How Daniel Berrigan Helped Save My Faith, Jim Wallis, HuffingtonPost, 6 May 2016.

 2. The Life and Death of Daniel Berrigan, John Dear, HuffingtonPost, 30 Apr 2016.

Survival Tips

Intuitively you already know this:

Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.

“For real” verification of what you already know was published in two recent Washington Post articles that reported research findings which were published in medical journals.

Here’s the story:

"It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeing care,” explained Dr. Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research which was published a couple of days ago in the BMJ (formerly, the British Medical Journal). (1)

And…

In a paper recently published in JAMA Surgery (Journal of the American Medical Association) , researchers said that they discovered: “…a mere seven procedures accounted for approximately 80 percent of all admissions, deaths, complications and inpatient costs related to emergency surgeries.” 

Continuing…

“The seven dangerous and costly procedures are mostly related to the organs of the digestive system: removing part of the colon, small-bowel resection, removing the gallbladder, operations related to peptic ulcer disease, removing abdominal adhesions, appendectomy and other operations to open the abdomen.” (2)

So, what can you do to protect yourself from becoming an additional bit of datum in a future research medical error report ?

Answer… Do Not Go to the Hospital for Any Reason!!!

O.K. I know that at some point you may wake up in the emergency room. And / or knowing that there is next to nothing you can do to protect yourself from errors made during surgical procedures. Then, if you must be in the hospital, here are ten suggestions aimed at enhancing your possibility of surviving your post-surgical hospital stay.

1. Empower someone you trust and who loves you to be your patient advocate.
2. Each day, especially Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, at the beginning of every shift, your patient advocate must meet and be confident in your assigned nurse. Follow this practice until you leave the hospital.
3. Move to a room, as close to the nurses’ station as you can be. If the room is semi-private, ask for the bed closest to the entry door.
4. Make sure your patient advocate understands which medications your doctor has ordered for you as well as how much of each medication you are to receive.
5. Make absolutely certain that your patient advocate ensures that your nurse correctly administers your medications as your doctor has ordered.
6. Do not submit to any procedure unless you understand that your doctor has ordered it for you and you have agreed to have it done.
7. Closely observe the nursing team and make certain that they wash their hands and use clean gloves; do not use suction tubes which have fallen onto the floor or onto your bed; and maintain sterile technique when required, e.g. when changing a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) dressing.
8. Question everything and ask your questions in three different ways.
9. Ask what are the known side effects of every medication and procedure.
10. Research everything until you feel comfortable that you understand.

1. Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, 3 May 2016.

2. ‘Looming catastrophe’: These 7 emergency surgeries account for 80 percent of deaths and costs, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, 27 Apr 2016.

Carnac Delivers!

Carnac The Magnificent, a.k.a. Johnny Carson,
30-year host of the Tonight Show.

It’s time to bring back the greatest prognosticator of all time… Carnac The Magnificent… to shed some light on the likely winner of the next presidential election.

Carnac said, “Just like Winston Churchill remarked, ‘The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives,’ we will do the right thing this November. We will elect Co-Presidents!”

Yes, Co-Presidents!

Due to Republican and Democratic party intransigence, Americans will be forced to go outside the existing two-party, sold-out system and elect a third party candidate.

For the first time in our history, we will elect the Third Party Candidate because the existing parties have so miserably failed. The good news is that rather than rebellion in the streets and outright anarchy, we will invent a better way to go.

We will elect Bernie Sanders for his humanitarianism and true-to-the-Constitution Americanism and Donald Trump for his hoped-for ability to get the “good deal” (whatever that means) for America.

Thank you, Carnac The Magnificent! I feel greatly relieved now. Don't you?