The evening of November 17th 2012 I started feeling like I was catching the flue or something, so Sunday I just took it easy and stayed home and rested, I was feeling worse by Monday but had to work. Short week I figured I could make it three days then have four days off for good bed rest and kick this thing.
After work on Wednesday I started with the vomiting, Thanksgiving Thursday was in bed all day with very little to eat, certainly NO turkey!, Friday morning I had problems with my eyes so I went to the Dr. and got something for that. Came back home. Then on Saturday morning I had a rash on the palms of my hands, I called the VA, informed them of my concern and also that I already had an appointment for Monday morning at the hospital. They said as long as I could hold down liquids that I should be fine until then. Sunday morning the rash had spread, I was not holding down liquids, and got a friend to take me to the VA hospital's ER. Eight days later I finally got released from the Hospital, still not feeling great, but certainly better. The discomforting thing is that the Dr. is still not certain about what put me in the hospital in the first place! This leaves me with a couple reflections that I want to share. The first is the need for comprehensive and universal health care for ALL. This came totally out of the blue, the Dr.s don't understand it. Fortunately, thanks to my service to the country I am covered by the VA. But what if I wasn't? Eight days in the hospital would financially destroy millions of un-and under-insured in this country. Obama Care is an important first step, but I hope it is only a first step toward real single payer universal health care in this country, so that if people are facing a health disaster they are not also faced with a financial one at the same time. Secondly, while I sincerely thank all those who have been praying for me and I know you are sincere in your good intentions, one of my reflections is that I felt no divine healing or hand of God. Again this came totally out of the blue, the Dr.s don't understand it. What I felt is that if there is no God that makes some sense, it fits, it's just one of those things in life that happens and that you (hopefully) get past. (personally though, I'd rather win the lottery!) BUT if there is a loving, caring, compassionate god, something like this makes no sense at all. It's an experience that re-enforces for me the reasons I stopped believing, things like this and the doctrine of Hell simply do not fit or make any sense with the concept of a loving, compassionate God. Things like this just make more sense without the supernatural. In real life stuff just happens sometimes, and sometimes there is just no explaining WHY. The important thing is what we do with the stuff that happens. Hopefully we use it to help make life better. What I did very clearly sense though and am very thankful for was the hard work and dedication of Doctors, Nurses, and other support staff at the Bay Pines VA hospital working to restore me back to health. I'm not there yet, but certainly much better. I am very thankful to ALL of them.
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