My husband had unexpected triple bypass surgery on Friday, and today he had healed up enough to ambulate throughout the cardiac unit. He has progressed well after his coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), and this acronym is why the nurses call them their “cabbage patients.” Here’s hoping you never have to be one.
Today we continue in our appreciation for the medical field, who has been streeeeetched to their limits during these past several weeks, and will probably all be suffering from PTSD for the rest of their lives. But back in July of 1970, high-haired Connie Wharton and Jean Davis were keeping it casual and lowkey while lifting newborns out of stork/kitten/kangaroo boxes at Jefferson Davis Hospital, the first publicly-owned Houston hospital to accept low-income patients.
Fun fact Friday: the hospital was largely abandoned in the 80s, thought to be full of ghosts, named a city landmark, and then destroyed renovated into artist lofts for the rich and crafty. Plus, everyone knows buildings cannot be named after a former president of the Confederate States; we’re too busy erasing history to make everything PC.
This next image shows nurses and patients at Houston’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in the Fifth Ward in March of 1959. Nobody likes to be barefoot, donning a hospital gown, but some encouragement, attention, and a fire truck can go a long way toward healing.
Our final Houston-based medical subject is Dr. Katharine Hsu, a pediatric doctor who came to America from China in 1948. She served as Chief Resident Physician in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital in Shanghai, but when the Japanese invaded the city in l94l, she fled through enemy lines and joined her husband at Chung Cheng Medical College as Head of Pediatrics. Here she takes vitals of a shirtless youngster in July of 1953 at–you guessed it–Jefferson Davis Hospital.
Fun Fact Friday: After tuberculosis took the lives of her brother and sister, she made it her goal to stop the spread. She established a one-room, one-nurse pediatric TB facility which later expanded into the Children’s TB Clinic and Hospital, where she worked from 1953 to 1969.
Per her obituary in 2007, she died at the age of 93.
When the use of the drug Isoniazid proved beneficial in treating TB patients, Katharine envisioned using it as a preventive against the disease. Since her extensive testing and studies proved overwhelmingly successful, the preventive treatment was adopted worldwide…The International Biographical Center of Cambridge named her International Woman of the Year in l996-l997 for her contributions to medicine, research, and education.
Today we salute the men and women in past and present medical fields, doing their best to keep the rest of us alive, with all the skills to treat and diagnose when we are helpless and vulnerable.
A doc who lights it up right after!
Yep, it’s a Camel ad–with beautiful artwork!
If nothing else, blogging makes you realize that you can appreciate (and even follow) blogs of those who don’t share your political or religious views. I don’t want to shove my beliefs down anyone’s throat more than I want them shoving theirs down mine (I’m talking to you, Jehovah’s Witnesses, knocking at my door at dinnertime). I’m pretty set in my convictions at this point, so I won’t lie and say that I try to stay open-minded. I don’t. Bobby Brown says that’s my prerogative.
However, when I walked into an office waiting room and sat down with this magazine as the only option, I tried to keep an open mind.
After all, I like natural things. I buy the expensive eggs from happy chickens; I don’t eat whipped pig part hot dogs. Like most of you, I dig hip-looking older black guys in curved brim hats. The necklace, not so much, but you get my drift. But what is inside this magazine, this bed of deceit, made me want to hoard every copy and set them ablaze in an Aggie bonfire.
Let’s not call this slander; let’s call this my opinion, which is the heart of most blogs. Go ahead and close this post down if you in any way find life coaching a legitimate career. You are certainly allowed to be a gullible schmuck, but you’re not gonna like the rest of this. And remember, I’m not always going to agree with you, either. A rainbow wouldn’t be as pretty with just one color, would it? Diversity…
Now do I believe that therapy can benefit people? Yes. We’re all carrying around years of baggage, and sometimes we need help unloading it. But you can bet your sweet bippy you can’t become a licensed therapist in two days. Lifecoaching, however, you betcha!
Certification is only $595! That’s waaaay less than the bother of actually going to college. It’s like the TurboTax commercial, where the “tax professional” is also a “master plumber.” Sure you are. Let me get some advice on how to run my life by someone who couldn’t even get into the University of Phoenix.
Let me say first that I’ve spent YEARS YEARS YEARS with doctors who were unable to remedy my ailments. Thousands on meds, doctors get paid to pimp new products, the American healthcare system is corrupt, etc, etc. You all know the deal. I was so desperate for help that I resorted to hoodoo guru new agey acupuncture. And guess what? The acupuncturist made a whole heck of a lot of sense. In fact, he knew more about my body by looking at my EAR than most doctors did after seven vials of bloodwork taken fro me. So, yes, I can accept this 5000 year-old art as a legit form of healing. And I can see how people get soooo fed up with doctors, so desperate for relief that they resort to absolute craziness. Like crystals.
Wow! How did they DO that? It’s like magic! Like the incredible Burt Wonderstone waved his magician’s wand across her and boom! Photoshop 101. I’m sorry if I don’t believe that wearing a pendant will strengthen my energy fields. In the words of Hall & Oates, “I can’t go for that. No can do.”
Hey, while we’re at it, news flash: astrology is entertainment. I know when you’re fifteen and you’re infatuated with the cute boy with the good hair, the first thing you do is find out his birthday and look up his sign and discover he’s a Leo, and no wonder he’s so arrogant and self-absorbed, and you giggle with your friends because you’ve unearthed a grand mystery and pried him open like an oyster, and soon he will be yours. Yeah, guess what? It’s pretend.
Haven’t you ever wondered when you’re sitting there, eating your egg drop soup and looking at the red Chinese Zodiac placemat, that maybe it’s just hogwash? You ever think of all the kids in your class in school born in your same year and wonder how you could all share identical traits? Well, you can’t. It’s make believe. Like fairies and centaurs.
Apparently, I was born under the sign of charm and aggressiveness. Ya think? Oh, and my sign “can be talkative sometimes.” Yes, and sometimes we convert oxygen to carbon dioxide JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES.
I don’t know what Pranic Healing is, and I haven’t studied the Reiki of the Fire Dragon, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that psychics are scam artists (or perhaps just evil). Uh-oh. Hit a nerve? Do you recall the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Professor Marvel consults the crystal ball? Note his words:
This is the same genuine, magic, authentic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the pharaohs of Egypt in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony and and so on and so on. You’d better close your eyes, my child for a moment, in order to be better in tune with the infinite.
He ran a good game, though, didn’t he? Cretins and twits and dolts, OH, MY!
Without giving out free advertising, I will say that there is a “Dear Abby” type forum, wherein simpletons write in to ask such deep questions as when they will win a lottery ticket. And the gifted one then channels ascended masters and archangels to tell her to build an altar–BUILD AN ALTAR–to a deity to get the winning numbers. #$%^#(@!!!!!!
And this one–this one is the worst. No, I don’t know what it is either.
I know what quickening is in terms of pregnancy, but I don’t think this is what Pat is peddling. I say Pat because I am reminded of the old SNL skit.
So, Pat–did you mean to put “Safty” or did you mean “Safety”? And you also wrote “Less Then.” Yeah, methinks it should be “Less THAN.” So maybe you’ve got a great grasp of whatever the hell quickening is, but you really should brush up on your basic English. Just saying.
And LASTLY, we’ve got a little Watsu. What’s a watsu, you say? Well, it’s aquatic bodywork. And maybe it does help your joints, and God knows mine need it. But I don’t particularly enjoy feeling fondled by the mammogram tech at the radiology dept when she yanks and heaves my breasts onto the glass. So I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t cotton to cavorting about in the water with some stranger like a sea otter. No lady’s face needs to get that close to mine. Ever.
Wow. I congratulate you on reading over 1000 words. Long posts are the WORST, aren’t they?
I Don't Get It 