the very angry caterpillar...

I titled this blog as a play on words for a cherished children's book...because this week I cannot get the images of 21 murdered souls out of my head...19 children and 2 teachers...19 children still caterpillars...not yet butterflies...there is so much crowding the space in my brain that never seems to shut off at night...reading some of the background story of the killer...wondering where he might have fallen through the cracks...young bullied girls seem to let anger churn inward...cutting and starving and a host of other tragic behavior...young bullied boys sometimes churn and explode...we have seen this on repeat...why do we still make it so easy for them to arm themselves...when do we learn...the answer is not to seal children in their schools...it might seem like some half-baked solution...but fire, anyone?...then there is the old NRA defense card...mental illness...that guns don't kill...people do...then, I ask...what would be the harm in having age requirements...background checks...permits...do you hand your 10 year old kid the keys to your car and say..."go take a ride on the LIE...at 5pm...weekday...eastbound"...maybe a small course so that people really learn how to be responsible gunowners...2nd amendment, you say...it begins with "well-regulated Militia"...what we have is not well regulated...and abolish all AR 15's...that's it...if you have a problem with that...you have a problem...but anger...it is sucking the oxygen out of life as we knew it...and the grown-ups keep yelling...and the kids are dying...and I can't cry anymore...I'm becoming numb...and that is the most terrifying thing...next time I see a butterfly...I will marvel how it even came to be in a world suspended in hate...

bang...bang...

 shot...shot...boost...mask...mask...shit...Covid is an eye opener to the mess that is healthcare in this country...if you didn't already see it before...years ago, many of you probably had a primary care doctor you just called your doctor...maybe there was a partner, maybe two...you knew the front desk, you knew the nurses...urgent care was reserved for weekends when you had no choice...but even there, the doctors took their time, listened...if you needed meds, they were at the pharmacy you used for years...they knew your name...gradually, over the last few years this all evaporated...your doctor became part of a large group...your pharmacy was now dictated by your insurance provider...and now due to Covid... your urgent care is the McDonalds of health care..."I'll have a strep test with my fries please"...the driving force of all of this is not you...it is often not your doctor...he or she could not keep up with the black hole of reimbursements...it is insurance on one hand...and pharmaceutical companies on the other...and all the unsavory deals made in conference rooms and conference calls...you don't believe me?...start streaming "The Dropout" about Elizabeth Holmes, her company Theranos, and how Walgreens...yes Walgreens...was duped...how if it wasn't stopped so many people could have been seriously impacted...but back to doctors and your care...a broken thread of continuity...how many times are people seriously misdiagnosed...over diagnosed...to what end...all of this ruminated in what was left of my brain this week...working its way through a very unpleasant earworm of "Tubthumping"...watch out for what pops up on that car radio when there's fever floating in those brain cells...urgent care...once my rapid test was positive they couldn't wait to get me out of there...spitting out my treatment options...my quarantine requirements...but my cough, my chest I asked...barely a listen...it's Covid cough...which it was...a repeat visit confirmed, despite wheezing in a most unsettling way...that second visit, a doctor who listened...gave me a few minutes...her weary eyes above that mask...this is a war...and the soldiers are tired...but we sent them to battle without the weapons...we let our system go into the toilet and then we got hit with a nuclear bomb in 2020...and nothing has changed...so we start from the bottom up...next local election...see what those running think about issues like this...more importantly...if you go one level up to state elections...who are their donors?...shot...shot...boost...who rules their roost?