Ok here we go. I really shouldn’t read the paper, I get too disgusted with the whole fucking mess.

There were two articles that got me riled. One was about Dick Cheney and his visit to our city. He showed his face for 15 minutes at a resort here, the most expensive of course, and stayed, on our dime I’m sure, for at least a day. He left Friday morning, although I knew nothing about it until today. I got a taste of it though, but at the time I didn’t know it. They had traffic STOPPED at some of the busiest streets in Tucson, starting from waaaay out at the 'decent' end of town, all the way to the gate, on one of the busiest streets in town. Yes, completely barricaded. I have no idea how long, because I didn't stick around to find out.

Is that a crock of shit or what?! I saw that they raised over $500,000 for the republican senate candidate. So not only did we have to pay for Dick’s stay at the fancy resort, but we also had to fork over to pay the cops in town lots of overtime so they could make sure nobody took potshots at Dick. Just one more way they funnel money from the taxpayer, those that can’t afford personal accountants to get them out of paying taxes, to those that can afford to pay accountants… you get the idea. Ya know, there’s another thing. If Dick weren’t such a major Dick, we wouldn’t have to keep people away from his ass, because there would be far fewer people wanting him dead. I wrote a letter to the paper about it. Not what I really wanted to say, but they wouldn't print what I really wanted to say...

I was going to work Friday morning, and had to take a detour that almost made me late. I live over half an hour away from the workplace, mainly because it’s a radiology company, and I have to cross town to get there. I came up on one of the many busy intersections and there was a jam. There were lights and cops all over the intersection, and traffic wasn’t moving at all. I thought it must have been big to stop traffic dead.

I went over a few streets, and it was the same thing. I had to go 3 miles out of my way one way, cross over the street in question (with cops standing there watching traffic), then retrace the 3 miles back to get to work. I asked at work, but nobody else knew what all the commotion was about. We turned on the news and there was nothing, not even on the traffic report.

Only this morning did I find out what the deal was. I told my wife about the incident, and she related a story about someone she works with, who lives near the fancy resort Mr Dick was staying at. She had gone for a hike that morning, and when she went to get back to her gated community they wouldn’t let her in. She was trying to get HOME, and they told her to come back later!! I then checked out the news, and sure enough Mr Dick was leaving Friday right around the time I and several others in town were trying to get across this road (which incidentally leads right to the gate of Davis Monthan air base) to get to work.

Then there’s the other article I read, and this one’s even more outrageous. That’s just my opinion though. Researchers have come up with a new syndrome. It seems whenever there are people exhibiting symptoms that doctors can’t explain, they are attributed one of a growing number of ‘syndromes’. Syndrome, I’ve come to realize, is just a synonym for the phrase ‘we can’t understand what the fuck is wrong with you’.

What’s this syndrome called? You aren’t going to believe it.

The Broken Heart Syndrome.

I’m not kidding. Here is what I read in the paper….

The problem is, none of these women had a heart attack. All have recovered fully, with no heart damage at all.

What they did suffer was a strange medical phenomenon known as "broken-heart syndrome" or what some doctors call a "fake" heart attack.

Recognized only recently in medical circles, broken-heart syndrome mimics almost exactly a true heart attack, triggering chest pain, difficulty breathing, severe fatigue, an abnormal heart rhythm and a dangerously weakened heart muscle.

But in each of these Tucson cases, and in dozens described in studies nationwide, further tests found no artery blockage or blood clots — almost always the cause of a real heart attack.

These patients had clear arteries and healthy hearts — until that moment of sudden, intense and unexpected stress.

Why is this all of a sudden a 'strange phenomenon'? What this article is really describing is the sad state our medical system has been reduced to. This is just my opinion again, but here goes. In this country we have whiners that need attention. Some of them end up in the emergency rooms of America, whether they can pay or not is irrelevant. By the way, the ones that can pay expect 5 star hotel service because that is what they are used to, and those that can’t pay expect it because those that can pay are getting it, to a certain degree. Anyway, they wind up in the hospitals, and don’t want to hear a doctor telling them there is nothing wrong with them. So, they complain about every little ache they have, and expound on them until the doctors are forced to run every imaginable study under the sun to find out that these aches and pains are just normal everyday life stuff. The doctors are well aware that these people aren’t really sick, but they have to have hard evidence, because if they somehow miss a sore throat someone is going to sue the shit out of them hoping to get enough money to pay expensive lawyers with leftovers enough to pay for a cruise or new car.

I know, I’m a heartless asshole, a bastard, cold as ice. Whatever. I work for a radiology company doing paperwork and dealing with patients getting cat scans. Very few people that come through there are ‘good’ patients. Good in the sense that they know we are doing what the doctors request, and that it will be difficult and painful sometimes to get the shit done. They grin and bear it and put up with it. They are a minority. The others are whiney bitches that don’t get enough attention at home, so they spend money, mostly taxpayer’s money, to have doctors and nurses give them the attention they crave. I have a perfect example…

I had to move a patient to the CT machine. After making her husband scramble to change her socks, she was bitching as she was put in a wheelchair, then she was maneuvered around in the room to get her out the door. Her foot rubbed against a blanket hanging off a bed, and she screamed. I’m not exaggerating either, it was a bone chilling scream, one that forced me to look behind the blanket to see what her toe had hit.

Nothing. There was nothing behind it. I thought maybe her toes really hurt that bad, were really sensitive, until I remembered her bitching about the service she was getting in the hospital while her husband was PUTTING SOCKS ON HER FEET. As we neared the CT room, there is a short distance patients have to endure the outdoors. Takes about 10 seconds to navigate. As the doors opened and exposed us to the naked outdoors, the lady howled and started crying in pain. Yes, real tears. I stopped to make sure she was ok, to find out what could possibly be wrong to warrant such a reaction. “I’m cold!” was the response.

Yes, she was cold. She screamed and cried, a throat scorching scream, because she was COLD! As I moved through the raw open air I thought to myself, ‘Oh my fucking god!!’. Yep, I will never forget that 10 seconds of my life.

This was an extreme but far from isolated case. It’s just fucking amazing to me. All driven by people that expect to feel perfect all the fucking time while they sit on their fat asses and watch mind numbing television shows like Jerry Springer and the latest reality series. Also because of this, doctors are forced to put people through CT studies, 3 and 4 times within as many days. I looked it up, and a CAT scan delivers at least 2500 times the radiation of a typical chest x-ray. Those are the simple ones, anything complicated, like scanning to produce a 3D image, takes more. The doctors have to do it though, because if they miss any little thing they get their asses handed to them by the malpractice insurance companies. Is it really worth it? Do we really need all that exposure to the x-ray machine to tell us we are fine?

These are the things people don’t think about when they are faced with an emergency room triage nurse that looks at them funny when they say their ‘baby’ has a runny nose…