I was sitting in my living room reading this article when my poor nerve damaged left arm started hurting. My feet and hands have been hurting most of the day. Then I started thinking about pain, and how debilitating pain can be. I know you reading this right now has experienced pain. There isn't a human alive that hasn't at one point or the other. Sometimes pain can be so excruciating that even death looks like a better option.
There has been two times in my life I've had pain that brought me to my knees and made this grown man whimper like a baby. Once was the pain of a dry socket. I remember the dry socket very well. A tooth was pulled, and in the process the bone was broken. I woke up that night with bone exposed to the air. The pain seared through like a hot pick stabbing and twisting. Throbbing and torturous agony had to be endured while tears streamed down my face. I had went through a toothache in the past, but nothing like that. It was all I could do to hold on until the next morning when I could finally be released from the grip of that hellish nightmare.
Lucky for me that at the time I did have insurance. The insurance I has was in the form of cash. That's right. I really didn't have dental insurance. I was paying for it all with cash. Another couple of things was, I had a job with people who didn't abandon me in that trying time. They let me continue to come to work, and gave me simple tasks without expectation of much performance. They all knew I was having a rough time of it.
The reason I mention all that pain is very simple. 99.9% of the time when we are ill, or injured there is going to be a certain amount of pain. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a walk through hell, like my night with a dry socket. Sometimes the pain lasts for one night. Other times it lasts the rest of our lives, like the pain in my poor left arm, hands and toes.
So what do we do when we get in pain? We go see a doctor and try to get out of it. Now days I can rely on the VA Hospital System to help get me out of pain. A lot of people have insurance through their job, or they have a lot of money and can pay cash, like I did with my dry socket. Then other people can do nothing but suffer because they have no insurance, no cash and little help or sympathy from our society.
Disease and injury cause very much pain all across all socioeconomic levels. Pain causes lost wages, and some times, unfortunately lost lives in our society. I know this because I knew a man in Florida in the early 1990's who had a brain tumor. He could not take the pain any longer and chose the relief of putting a bullet to his own head.
Now our society is trying to make it so all of our people might not have to endure such as that by making insurance affordable. They have voted for and passed a law. The Affordable Care Act. But part of our society seems like they don't really care if their neighbor suffers agony. How do I know this is true? Because there are people who have from the start tried their best to deny them help. They try to keep the people who suffer, and can't afford doctors or medical insurance, from getting the one thing that may cause their suffering to end. How can people be so heartless? What is wrong with their soul?
A lot of these people who try at every turn to deny our brothers and sisters of America help profess to be religious too! I heard them the other day. At the start of a session of the House of Representatives, they said a prayer. Then they commenced to try everything in their power to deny suffering people help. They would rather keep the people who are in pain, in pain. Just as long as their precious money isn't touched, or as long as they can pursue a hateful vendetta against a President they despise, let the masses suffer their pain.
Where has America's heart gone? Why is it more important to continue with this hate than to relieve suffering? That night when I was in such pain from the dry socket, had I not had the resources to go to the dentist the next day and stop the agonizing pain, perhaps if you had been there, you would be charitable enough to spend one dollar on a bullet to help me end it? Do you have even that much charity?
Please think long and hard about it. Go to an emergency room for 6 hours, and don't avert your eyes from the pain you see. Think about your family and your friends. We are in this old world together. Lets stick together, and try to make a better place for all of us.
Remember: Injury or illness = pain.
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