Nothing was more revealing of why I was so bothered about the way the hospital operated than this quote, “The longer they make you wait, the less money they make.” This came from a nurse who assured a patient he would be in surgery soon.
If it weren’t for the fact that my hometown, Mishawaka, is so small, I do believe that the system would show its ugly side with employees more interested in the work and less interested in healing the patients no matter what saint is watching over the hospital.
When I wasn’t thinking health care, I was thinking on a more extensive level. What are these people doing in their rooms for days as they heal? The answer: watching television.
I am not a regular television viewer. I could not concentrate on my books while in pain so I succumbed to the power of television to just send me images to my brain that would divert my attention. Rarely was there anything worth watching.
The morning shows, the soaps, the reruns, the Law & Orders and CSIs that promote fear and paranoia in society, the edited & censored movies that are a smack in the face to all filmmakers, the overtly patriotic movie marathon on Memorial Day that lasted for three days on AMC, the news channels and all their canting about McClellan, Obama’s church, and the delegates or superdelegates.
What are these patients watching? Nothing. And at a time when they could mentally be absorbing something useful, they are given a button to flip through the most idiotic entertainment ever.
Needless to say, I am grateful the Cubs were on during my stay in the hospital. The 10-9 comeback win over the Rockies was phenomenal for a Cubs fan like me (for the fact that the Cubs didn't use to come back when losing).
There was also this feeling that I needed to be somewhere else organizing rallies, petitioning, attending forums, or having political discussion instead of being here.
My stay made me value the Internet even more than I had before. Not having access to my email, not being able to write for OpEdNews, and not being able to stay up to date on real news or news we need to preserve and continue our democracy was hard to handle. It made me see how important it is for us to not just cling to the Internet as our sole life force.
So many people are not hooked into the Internet like we are. We cannot just accept that the Internet will always be there. And we cannot put all of our fight into preserving the Internet. There must be more action taken especially by people on the Internet to have media reform and justice on television as well as in the printed press and radio.
Thankfully, my recovery should happen quickly enough so that I can be present at the Media Reform Conference in Minneapolis, MN in about a week. I will be covering the conference for OpEdNews.com while there.
I’m a lucky man for the surgery that I had. It reaffirmed my purpose in life. So many of the get well messages called on me to get better and get my voice back out there.
I may not have a hippie summer like I had planned on traveling from Chicago to Berkeley to the Democratic National Convention taking action to continue the fight to drive out the Bush Regime despite the refusal of the Democratic Party to do anything more than discuss how best to resolve the FL and MI delegate situation.
I will be taking a side though. And I will be reminding Americans of who’s saying “no" to America and our basic human needs as I recover this summer.
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