RE: 365 Days That Count - Day 44 - I hate hospitals.
Hello Daisy! Couldn't help but thinking: don't meditate, be angry! I assume that the hospital was very expensive (you said it was private) so surely you are all the more entitled to proper service! If I were you, I wouldn't let them get away with treating your mother so badly! Make a fuss, make them feel your wrath! It's probably the only way things will improve... Your text reminded me of something Bill Mollison wrote in his autobiography:
"'What drives you?' This I find a common question. I guess I do work hard at times. I think they expect that I have got religion, found my vocation. No! Anger drives me. Fury. Not, and never, love or self-sacrifice [...]. The anger is against the stupid way people in power handle problems, like spoilt children, like idiots [...]. We can all see it; we should all be angry, all in action with all our bodies out there [...]. I am furious, and will stay angry while I am alive and I will work at real solutions until I die [...]. And I hope all our kids are angry too; their world is laid waste by fools, for greed or power. Fools [...].
First feel fear
Then get angry
Then go, with your life, into the fight.
Scared, but more angry than scared.
That's it."
I LOVE that quote - thank you so much for sharing. And I agree with you but to a certain extent. Unfortunately I have been through enough bullshit in hospitals to know that it's like banging your head against a brick wall, you sign your life away the second you walk in the door. I contracted a lethal infection in a surgery I only had because they missed a huge internal bleed from the previous operation and still somehow had no leg to stand on legally - utter madness. So in this case, my mum's ok and for my own sanity I'll let it go, but I made my feelings very clear on the day :)
I'm glad you like it! After I posted it I was a little worried you might take to be an insult or a call to violence (which certainly is not what either myself or Bill Mollison are about). I still find it hard ot believe that this can happen in a private hospital: I mean, in a public hospital like the NHS in the UK, I know to expect bad service, total disinterest and lethargy, but it still shocks me that a private hospital can be just as bad. I mean: don't they know they'll lose all their clients/patients if they don't provide a service worth paying for?!
You would think so but sadly in South Africa you are stuck between a rock and a hard place as you wouldn't want to go to a government hospital unless you really had to so the private ones are going to get business regardless as however terrible they are they're still better than the alternative.
No insult or call to violence, promise :)