It's Memorial Day, and at some point today I will pause to remember those who sacrificed so that the rest of us can pursue our individual paths of happiness.
But in the meantime, it's been one of those months. One of those months when you wonder why you ever became a doctor . . . and what things might be like . . . and how different life might have been . . . had you had the whimsy to chase the whales when you got the call.
Little things add up.
Annoying/fundamentally clueless/whiny baby-liberals at Guarino's. Infatuated Elizabeth Edwards groupies at the N&O.
The N&O and N&R themselves . . . newspapers on the brink that still don't have the slightest clue as to why they're on the brink.
And then there's the culture of rude entitlement that permeates our society . . . passed from generation to generation . . . now to even the smallest cognizant beings in those generations. A couple of tastes of that over the past week or so might have been amusing to the average observer . . . it just made my heart heavier & sadder. Cuz folks, I gotta say it, we're just doomed if we don't get our act together and stop breeding this stuff.
I've also pretty much had it with colleagues-who-should-know-better behaving very badly (yet again) . . . and "friends" leaving you alone in the room when they do. It's been a long time since I was a medical student . . . or a resident. And I will simply not be talked to like I'm a dog. At my age and with my level of experience, it's not something I'm going to put up with or let slide . . . especially when I'm in the right and the "colleague" is way-beyond-wrong.
I'm more than a little put out with employers taking much for granted as you slog through the 24/7 call in the ruralist of rural (in a county whose Federal clinic got its funding because you're there - and whose OB services are still up & running because you're there). Moreover, you're doing the 24/7 because the "grateful" (or so they say) doctors whose lives you've made so much easier for months & months have decided they cannot help you out even the slightest little bit (it's all about politics and power - no matter where you go). In my book, that's just selfish. I realize everybody likes their weekends, but I wish some people could grow up and cooperate and pull together and DO THEIR PART in order to take of the kids that are supposedly their "business".
It's all given me pause to re-evaluate where I'm at and what I'm doing.
And then there are the friends meaning well on Facebook or online saying exactly the wrong thing. I actually opened up a little bit more during a recent FB conversation than I have in quite a while . . . we doctors having to take all the slings and arrows with great big smiles on our faces and all. I'm just not in this blogosphere to be someone's entertainment when they pause to think, ever so briefly, about what is actually going on around them. I'm here to right a great wrong.
OBTW, the Facebook account has since been de-activated. I found everything about Facebook shallow and superficial and not-at-all a habit I need to fall into right now. I know who my real friends are - they've walked with me all along.
I also know who left me on the curb. Some of them were on my "friends" list. Don't need that now.
Speaking of friends, I've also had to process a revelation about someone I trusted that was just the biggest kick-in-the-gut.
Let's just say that long ago, the answer to a fervent prayer was thwarted.
Of course, upon contemplation, the easy thing to do would be to dump on that friend about that one missed opportunity in eleven years. But I've come to understand that sometimes people have no clue as to what you're fighting until they themselves become the target. They have to feel the burn themselves. Moreover, in this particular instance, my Mama, in her infinite wisdom, has pointed out that sometimes people need to take responsibility for what they did or did not do - and not deflect the blame upon others. This "miss" was, in fact, just one miss among many opportunities on the part of many people . . . missed because those people "have to live in this town" without taking any responsibility for what goes on in it.
If you're not willing to stand up and be counted, don't whine when your children run from the town screaming as soon as they graduate . . . and/or your little town dies a slow death.
There's other stuff. A sore/aching/hot foot. Missing day-to-day stuff with your family & friends . . . and the simple joy of living amongst your things. Watching other people get on with their lives while yours seems to be on permanent stall.
Like I said. They're little things. But they add up.
Moving on to what I want to talk about, it looks like someone hit a septic tank with a load of buckshot when it comes to the muck and ooze spilling out of Raleigh. John Edwards and Mike Easley/his cronies may finally get theirs since Kay Hagan saw the angry writing on the wall and decided not to recommend a "change" at the U.S. Attorney's office just yet.
I sincerely hope that the wolves at N.C. State exercise their voluntary termination clause and give Mary Easley the same stellar treatment I got at the hands of Randolph Hospital. I'd love to watch "Queen Mary" spin her wheels in Court fighting the same antiquated "right-to-work" laws I did. Given that her always-sounds-like-he's-constipated husband turned up his nose at my predicament . . . first as N.C. Attorney General, and later as Governor . . . that would be some really, really SWEET irony working itself out in the "what goes around" category.
And/so we come to the "little thing" that got to me most of all . . . related to what's oozing from Raleigh's political septic tank. It was a conversation I had a couple-of-nights ago with a good friend I made during the Dave's Mountain annexation wars.
It's not exactly news that some VIP's in Asheboro are bound and determined to get the Dave's Mtn Racket & Tennis club specially annexed. It has something to do with helping the owner keep the club financially afloat by lowering his water rate. FYI, Dave's Mtn residents pay a higher rate for our water and are glad to do it if it will keep the 20/200 visionaries at Asheboro's City Hall from blasting our yards and cracking our foundations in order to put in a second-rate sewer system (so the city can tax the crap out of us).
I don't know why the city can't admit that it plays favorites and just lower the rate for the club . . . as word on the Mountain's cracked and pot-holed streets (I haven't forgotten about you Billie Wilson) is that Asheboro is selling gobs of water to the city of Seagrove for the straight "townie" rate.
Hell, Randolph Hospital got its water FOR FREE for years. Most folks don't know that.
The big brass at Randolph Hospital (I include the oh-so-honorable Board of Directors), being the clueless morons that they are (my opinion), are behind this special annexation effort . . . on the premise that saving the club is a must in terms of physician recruitment . . . the reasoning being that it's something to show off to new doctors apart from the Country Clubs.
Asheboro, you see, has been having a very tough time in the physician recruitment department lately.
And that's because, over the last decade-&-a-half, during the rule of the aforementioned morons (because the morons who run the hospital rule the town), the public schools (innundated with children who had to be taught English as a second language) have deteriorated from the stellar systems they once were (and options for private schools are limited), "good" restaurants & grocery stores have come & gone, crime has exploded (Asheboro being on the junction of two major north-south & east-west highways and ripe for the drug trade), and the town was even diagnosed with a terminal illness. Ergo, the things that "the morons" think are important to young doctors are few and far between.
For the most part, they're right. Asheboro is not the land of promise it once was when I was doing the dance of recruitment in 1994.
Getting alcohol was big on the morons' (excuse me, right peoples') list. Doctors, you see, drink a lot. Especially after they get here.
It's just amazing to me that when it comes to physician recruitment, the biggest "little thing" that no one on the hospital's board of directors really wants to address is how the hospital's executive team treated the doctors who have come and gone in the past . . . some of whom might still be here had they not been regarded as just pawns on Bob Morrison & Steven Eblin's big chess board of greed.
One of those very-well qualified-doctors-done-way-beyond-wrong still "lives" in Asheboro, yet works very far away (what kind of sense does that make?) . . . and that's the angry Pediatrician/author of this blog burned in public service who refuses to just roll over and go away after getting the mill-town cluster-screw.
Any smart newbie doctor worth their salt is going to be Googling before they interview . . . certainly before they take a job . . . in two seconds, they can be reading all about how Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin drove the Pediatrician out of her own hometown . . . in order to perpetuate an ugly medical cover-up.
The newbies also can read all about the big swindle . . . and having done that, they can decide for themselves how much "the twins" word (or signature on a contract) is worth . . . or how much what they contribute to the community will actually be valued.
Tennis club or no tennis club, do "ya think" the newbies will bite on the recruitment pitch to the "dying town" with the same unconvicted felons in charge?
Of course the geniuses on the Board of Directors of our local "non-profit"hospital don't think that's anything that needs to be fixed . . . by say, oh I don't know . . . firing the lying, cheating, way-overpaid dirtbags who lied to everybody about what they did and why.
Back on track, like the banks & car companies, I personally think the racket club should sink or swim on its own. I'm not naive enough to believe that the boys-at-Asheboro's-city-hall have given up on annexing the Mountain, and I have the un-easy feeling that they are trying to devise a way to surround it and conquer.
I'm not alone in that feeling. And we're watching.
It's my opinion that if "the morons" want to save the racket club, they should buy it . . . and not try to pass the expense off to the city-bound taxpayer.
Of course, I could be biased. When I first came back to town I had a one year membership there . . . it was "thrown in" to sweeten the deal on the house I bought . . . and that membership was supposedly worth $700. I was led to believe that was a one-time-only get-in-the-door registration fee, and there'd be a smaller fee every year to renew.
I was so busy at work, being everyone's Pediatric indentured servant, I never got to use the membership. When I got the (rather large) renewal bill (the one-time-only fee turned out to be the yearly dues - Billie Wilson strkes again), I called the club and asked if I could go on inactive status until I had some time to use it, I was told very bluntly that I could pay up or get out.
I got out. Never looked back. And now, as far as I am concerned, the club can pay for its water just like I do.
As for "the morons" collective notions about physician recruitment, a decade-&-a-half ago, a number of very good doctors came to Asheboro because it was a small town with what appeared to be genuine small town values . . . very Mayberryish . . . with good public schools and no alcohol and lots of churches with strong fellowships and little crime and a seemingly tight-knit medical staff sincerely wanting to improve.
If you have any questions about the tight-knit medical staff wanting to improve, I ask you to peruse the side bar on this blog.
And the rest is just beyond the scope of this post today.
Anyway, my Dave's Mtn friend is, shall we say, just a little outspoken and a bit of a character (he reminds me of my Dad). Not a "rich" man in the sense that many people in Asheboro-proper think everyone on the Mountain is rich, he's been an absolute pit bull on this annexation business - fighting mostly for the retirees and people just holding on by their fingernails.
And he's not too keen on the racket club being granted special favors either.
Randolph Hospital CEO Bob Morrison gave my friend a call. Bob wanted try and persuade him to support bringing the racket club into the city's fold (you see, our Bob is nothing if not a team player).
Bob wanted to meet at my friend's house. Instead my friend offered to meet Bob in his lair (excuse me, office) at Randolph.
If I had to bet, I'd bet the whole conversation was recorded.
I'm not going to get into all of the particulars of the discussion as it was relayed to me. But there was a telling moment in it . . . and that moment speaks to the corruption pouring out of that buck-shot ridden septic tank in Raleigh.
At one point, Bob offered to "call Raleigh". I'm not clear on what he was offering to call about, but that does not matter.
What matters is that even with the dogs on the good-ole-boys' scent, and the septic tank leaking, Bob Morrison STILL has somebody on speed-dial that he can call to do his bidding.
Again, Bob didn't say who he was going to call, but it was clear he feels very connected and comfortable and quite safe because he has an important friend (or friends) in Raleigh that he can simply call to get a favor . . . and/or get him out of a jam.
These important friends will cover his ass . . . even as an angry Pediatrician burned by his in-your-face perjury, contempt & fraud continues to plead for someone in the U.S. Attorney's and/or N.C. Attorney General's offices to enforce the law . . . as should have been done over six years ago.
Bob no doubt made some calls back then too. Nothing on-the-record . . . nothing that would have to be admitted or recalled in deposition (because there is actually a written record).
Wink & nod.
In the six years since figuring out just how thoroughly she was bamboozled (thanks so much to Mr. Schmidly & Tuggle-Duggins), the angry Pediatrician has written and e-mailed a number of North Carolina VIP's . . . begging for help . . . pleading with them to put some substance behind their rhetoric about accountability and transparency . . . about the work & sacrifices of "ordinary people" being important and valuable.
Let's review some of those players:
Even as he pushed federal service as a way for young doctors and teachers to "give back" (the Obamas sing the same song), former Senator John Edwards could not be bothered with the Pediatrician's plight . . . even though she completed her Federal service obligation honorably and in good faith . . . and even though EVERY aspect of the Federal agreement she entered into was breached. What happened to the Pediatrician in the Federal public service program didn't reflect very well on the Pretty-Boy's agenda.
It was a little thing. What happened to that Pediatrician and her dreams was not worthy of attention.
John's oh-so-noble adoring wife Elizabeth . . . happier in her choices than Hillary Clinton . . . blogger extraordinaire . . . friend of Cone & Polinsky . . . and healthcare think-tanker, doesn't let a little thing like the abject failure of the National Health Service Corps "mission" in Asheboro move her to bring Mary Johnson's situation to the forefront of public discussion or debate - even as she sits on all those think-tanks.
The umpteen stories in the N&O are ALL about her struggles and her angst (I'm pausing to remember Miss Sue diagnose me as a "malignant narcissist"). We bastard stepchildren (literally and figuratively) can rot.
And then there's former N.C. Governor, Mike Sleazely, apparently the recipient of a number of very expensive (to we more ordinary mortals) favors . . . from people who also felt comfortable calling the Governor for favors or appointments. His wife, "Queen Mary" is going to fight for the $170,000/year job that was created especially for her . . . even as lesser beings are laid off from state service and programs flounder or are cut.
Governor Easley has misplaced entire years worth of e-mails. I wonder how many of them were mine?
Keith Crisco, North Carolina's Commerce Secretary, presided over two Asheboro City Council meetings in which the Pediatrician & author of this blog begged for help (he's not alone). You could say that by destroying a young doctor's practice, Bob Morrison thwarted commerce, but our Keith could care less.
I wonder if the number Bob has on speed-dial is Keith's?
Or maybe it's Governor Beverly Perdue's? Governor Dumpling who cares about kids and their healthcare, but who could not answer certified letters from Pediatricians burned in public service.
In sweet Dumpling's world, the Medical Board and the doctors it licenses are just tools to kill.
Anyway, the view from the public-service cheap seats is very ugly indeed on this Memorial Day.
I suppose I should be grateful that I at least get to indulge my own angst this weekend, and exercise my right of free speech without living in any fear of retaliation from the Medical Board that let me sold be down the river to perpetuate a cover-up . . . because that's what they do.
And it burns my butt that in this era of corruption exposed, Bob Morrison, CEO of Randolph Hospital & unconvicted felon, still has people in Raleigh on speed dial . . .
. . . and they actually answer the phone.
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