the personality dilemma

when i had typed the post's title i instantly thought, well are you right in stating this?
I was to talk about how prejudice around personality causes many sick persons finding it difficult attending doctors.
When i was referring to 'personality' in this context i was thinking more of 'difference' in the context of society's norms.
Society has a set of givens.  we have the 'extravert' and the 'introvert' but what if we have the 'depressive,' the 'manic' the 'hysteric' the 'sulky' and so on?
When does society say that a person has erred too far over on one side of the divide to be given much attention to?
That is, ignore and move on to one of society's acceptable people.
Not every one fits into the basic standard dress size.
Anyway there are always variations on the theme.
so what makes a person acceptable?
Is it...beauty, wealth, or just plain 'normal' or just plain 'plain.'
Does a person have to be a cardboard cut-out, that is, lack all personality to be acceptable?
Or does a person manage to overcome the difference by being different but wealthy or different and from an influential family?
because certainly if celebs say it all, they get it all, and mostly because they have the wealth to buy them just about everything, even if they are wild, drunken, rude, hysterical and everything other than plain plain.
Walking into a doctor's surgery is not for the faint hearted any day, for anyone.
Some seem to get away with the task better than others.
Many don't have to put up with the rudeness.
i have seen this.
I see it too often.
I also see and have seen how some people do have to put up with rudeness, being left until last in a clinic or being shunted to the 'virtual wards' on the side near the laundry baskets.
i will say which bracket these individuals belong to, they are the individuals who stand out from  the  accepting society's norms.
we have as i say the drunks, but here the POOR drunks.
we have the mentally ill, again the POOR mentally ill.
also those who are Not from high society families or who have the support of family who are high flyers.
if you have been rubbished by the family of origin and do not have them supporting you then well, you are also a complete gonner.
they have documented that to be poor and sick means you die younger and sooner.
That has now taken off a sizeable proportion of the people i happen to know.
so if they die off then i can quake with fear.
but mostly the persons who get it between the eyes of hostility are the persons perceived to be mentally challenged, that is, mentally ill or been in the mental health system.
this is all across the board and in not only holy ireland which is my country but all countries.
but being in Holy Ireland i have seen horrible things done to people here.
try this for size...i know a person who was not treated for physical presentations until psychiatrically assessed..that person was myself.
yes, i sat it out until i was and i was many times and all times found to be mentally sane.
what the sender to the shrinks saw was at varience to what the sender perceived or realised.
they SAW tram track slash marks on this person's body.  they immediately percieved madness.
well they were found to be wrong by the shrinks.
the shrinks had never seen me as mad or having a mental illness.
Tram tracks on flesh is not from madness, but say that to the ill informed.
Tram tracks means many things.  Abuse can cause it, neglect, vulnerabilty and also feeling isolated in crowds or not liking oneself, or not being able to express oneself adequately to be heard sufficiently for things to change.
it never is about madness.
but i have seen also mentally ill persons being so badly treated it beggars belief that medicine is about healing not destroying a human being.
You would rather think it would be more healing to lift up than slam down.
A doctor has the ability to do this in such a differnet way to most.
they are after all , the gods to keep us alive.
we depend on them to do this, keep us alive.
they then are 'God.' and believe me they chose to act it.
making judgements that are divine is their supreme skill but in the hands of humans it amounts to ignorance.
Tell me why anyone should be treated badly just because they are different?
tell me please why these people with difference too, should be less believed about their own feelings and bodies than those who have the money and the beauty and the sanity?
because when a person describes how their body feels, most if not all will say it as it is.
why would anyone say less or more, when they go to a doctor for help?
it is very few who are feigners, very few.
again the gods decide that a person with tram tracks are, and they get shunted to the side.
Every time.
they also get treated badly at every turn in medicine without exception.
there may be an individual doctor who will decide to believe you and i have had one or two, but one or two does not mean absolutely everyone.
we started on this blog about personality, and it is so all embracing, all consuming that it goes to the heart of what being a sophisticated species is.
the way to 'take animals' out is so much more sophisticated than the arrow or the mallet.
you simply treat them with rudeness and shunt them away, also shut them away.
the voiceless many as known particularly in this country when we shut more people away behind bars for being different than any other country in europe combined at the time and we are talking about a period of time, the 50's.
Irish people i feel, are far more prejudicial than most would be led to believe.
i put it down to being too long the under dogs.
i see it now having rebound again, just as we began to show hints of tolerance, i believe we may revert back to the dark ages.
mostly economic decline will see a hardening of attitudes, another 'survival of the fittest' tactic.
at the end of this blog i will say one thing clearly.
I DO NOT want to be the Plain PLAIN>
i do not want to be a shrinking person who has no say on matters, who has to grovel, who has to be 'important' in economics or beauty in order to be treated well.
i want to be myself, which is, DIFFERENT, by virtue of birth.
i have not wealth, status, age, beauty or sex gender on my side.
but i have Spirit, Spunk, Laughter, Hilarity and uniqueness that is particularly my own, and my own style.
does this sort of 'difference' along with my pain, my past, my vulnerability and my inability to withstand abuse mean that i am led to the slaughter each and every time i am found wanting by one person and another, those who are the 'acceptable beautiful people' of our society?
when society can be judged as truly sophisticated, humane and reaching out toward difference, then we can say we are nearer the God of Life than the God of destiny, the doctors.
and i see too many of them - for my sins.

a dog's life and no denying it

The fire is lit, the small chihuahuas are asleep (they do not count as dogs), i have a cup of tea.
I am jaded.
Many words would express my feelings about life and Ireland.  I think what i have to say and what i feel is pertinent to Ireland, and pertinent to the Irish dynamic that weighs back to the time we had to pit wit against the enemy.
we have enemies for sure and we have lost the pitbull will to face these, so in our insular, comfortable state and cosiness of armchairs we pit the bull against our own kit and kin.
This i say is Irish.  It speaks of ignorance and lack of both emotional intelligence and fairness.
its the shrewd way of getting the exact response which will  make you feel a bit better around your argument, even if the argument isn't a good one.
its the cunning that the Irish is known for, and boy i have received it in spades, that awful, awful feeling that yet again i as an individual have been 'taken out' because, those who can do so, do it.

Here i do not speak that i am any holy saint for i am not.  He who casts the first stone...so before i throw rocks (not from the water feature i am making in a garden), i will say that i have rocks shored up of vices and nastiness that i do have i guess, certainly i am wrong a lot of the time, but jaysus surely i couldn't be wrong all the time?
so hence i say, why the feck has Ann been at the receiving end of so much.

where can i begin to hurl the rocks?
the medics who still leave me in virtual wards before they ever speak to me, why? Cos i have tram track trauma blade marks all the way up both arms and parts of my thighs and belly.
they let me out of hospital too soon, they didn't believe me when i say i was unwell.
my wound burst.
they send me home and say it is all anxiety when i cannot walk (for gods sake, has this happened anywhere but in holy ireland i wanna ask?)
I then do not get treated unless i am assessed by a shrink, yes, i have been left waiting for a shrink to come back from hols before i am treated for physical complaints - how many people have been treated thus?
I have been threatened with ect, nasal gastric tubing and more besides, the first well, they couldn't but they threatened, the second cos i physically released a build up of bile when my crohn's caused a blockage.
and so in that arena i am continuing to suffer and be terrified, will the next A&E visit actually see me die unnecessarily due to my tram-tracks of yesteryear?
and also now, after a bunch of horror years i have been attacked, by children with guns, and told its again all in the mind, even when i have the photo to prove it, ah sure that not a gun!
it was, and remains a gun, it was a gun!
we had men jumping walls to attack me, and i am asked what did i do to make them!
well the corpo spray painted their car parking bays away from them without telling them, and they took it out on me, for the corpo wanted to give me a disabled parking bay, but did i ask for them to do it over their dead bodies or mine.
it was nearly mine and i nearly had the housing unit i was to occupy burnt down before i ever went into it cos if the corpo gave me another persons bay he was going to torch all three units, period.
no nonsense, like.
so out came the guns after that and me being told to get back to where i belonged, well i would have gladly if i had known where that was or is.
we cobble together a way to get me out of danger and the council nor the hse, that is our health service were able to get me out, cos the council wouldn't and the hse couldn't.
i do what i could and did.
i left, with all my stuff piled onto wheelchairs and into disability van and trip after trip i left.
here is the throwing of the stones, and listen lord they are mighty boulders.
the Mammy's family dear Lord.
Irish mammy's family my dear Lord. Lord hear my prayer for sure as god i hope, that i join you shortly as thats the only way out of continuing hell.
my mammy bred the family as most in Ireland.
there was one eggit in each family called the goat.
I was that goat.  so when you want to win an argument and were not winning you shot the goat, not dead like, but you shot it, again and a gain and again - flogging. Irish style.
and i got flogged.
over and over again, flogged.
so flogged that i fought back, badly - see i have many vices and i have declared them to the lord, but at least i cannot lie so i shot them, them feckless greedy, self serving individuals that my mammy produced.
and they know who they are, the one who said she wished i was dead, the person who was in the psych system who never had a penny who trashed her body, she wished that person dead, why, cos i was that goat, Irish style.
then we had the other who said i wasn't coping and needed sheltered accommodation..this is the one who i asked if she would include me in a cook pot from time to time to help me recuperate from surgery and what do i get - i get cooked.
this is the person who felt i had asked a soup bowl too much.
certainly a fish pie too much cos eventually i got delivered a fish pie to be told 'this is a gesture and nothing more' it was, i saw no fish pie more  nor nothing.
she who knows how to dress a salmon, take out the royal albert and couldn't think christian to help her kit and kin, the one the mammy also produced.
that christian and the other who wished i was dead, go to mass of a sunday.
i dont, why, cos i was abused by a wonderful man, a holy roman catholic priest, nothing less nor more, well actually yes, more but thats another chapter by far.
so where am i at right now in time?
just about on the edge of my armchair, wishing to god that i could go to my Dad, who never harmed me the way the rest of my mammy's children did and continue to.
my dad, my good and lovely dad, i want to be with him.
no one else, absolutely.
but the problem with that is...i dont believe in any more than this shite life so i wont see my dad will i?
nor will i see my two sisters and brothers, my first cousins and my nephews and nieces, cos i am so bloody evil, the evil personified that none visit nor text nor tell me anything.
that my international confraternity of internet friends is called putting a person in solitary and making them suffer cos you can do it, so you do it.
and it happens in the Ryan's daughter Ireland and the Field's ireland and my ireland.
its where you shoot the small guy, doesn't matter how you shoot them, but if you want to be right and proven to be, you blame another, and the only way to be right is to do it this way cos they are not doing it the proper christian way.
The right way is to cherish not only themselves but all, and holding the most vulnerable in their hands.
they are blaming them cos they are too fecking selfish and mean to help a person who honestly could have done with the help they had the ability to offer and didn't.
so to my mammy's children, the children of my mammy's brother and the children of my mammy's children, watch your step, some day not for decades but for maybe a decade or a day, you too can be shot at in the most violent way imaginable and when you are you will feel as lost and as lonely and as sad and depressed as i am tonight, with my two wee chihauhaus, one on either side.
on the lonely sofa where i have always been, on the lonely side of life.
and the killer of me will be that.
the loneliness of a person who has felt so betrayed and continually betrayed by the very people she yearned to feel loved by and wanted to love.
how can i and i doubt if there is any love left after what my family have done to me in the past three years.
i was threatened with complete anihilation if i wrote another blog along these lines again.
anihilate then cos it cannot be any worse.
you have done it already.
you all collectively - the doctors, the pills, the clerics who sexually abused and the mammy's children did this to me.
so cast the stones my christian family when you read this blog.
as for the medics and clerics, the medics are so holy they are the untouchables and will remain that way until someone tells them they are daft naked kings all along and the clerics well they are in worse shit for their boss, the real king has the supreme ability to send them all to fry in hell, if you believe that you believe anything.
shit life, and pretty shit people around i say.

Visiting a large dublin hospital

I don't like hospitals, period.
I think i have good reason at this stage of my life and with health 'issues' in abundance, which would dictate a certain level of 'understanding' in my Irish System.
No, wrong words, not MY system, but the system i personally am part of as being, in it...very much in it.
to my disappointment and regret.
When our Health Minister says that He and the present Gov inherited a mess, well who ever inherited it, it is just that...a mess...words fail to describe how much a mess actually.
I can attempt it, but it would all fall short, this is not the definitive set of volumes but only the prefix to the introduction which then leads on to the first volume of volumes into the next decade kinda thing.

We, the sis and i arrived early at the hospital.  We were directed to 'Admissions' ...closed..we were..too early.  This was our fault not the hospital.
Off we went, i for a cuppa, twin to watch.
Back to the Admissions and we were there as 'opening' was declared, first in queue as i say 'the twin was enthusiastic!'
she signed in..i watched.
It was then up to the ward.
We were beckoned into the day room..store room for chairs-cum-day-room. I have a horrible sense of deja about this, and wonder will i find the cigarette butts jammed into the cracks of the toilet if i go there, for thats what i found when i was a patient here last and more besides.
I attempt to open the doors to a small balcony.
Failed (suicide prevention tactic to have it locked?)
Baking.
I try to separate two sandwiched chairs and succeed.
we then are summoned to see the reg doctor.
she was lovely.
My twin only light up when she saw the familiar face of the cancer nurse.
she rubbed hands and admitted 'now we are down to business, and comfortably so!'
not spoken but implied.
we were really.
My twin was prepped up for ever and i sat it out down stairs.
I now was on a mission to find  my own surgeons, or rather possible surgeons, and here the difficulty started.

I actually was peaceable for a change.

I mean i am known not to be.. but this time i was...sickness can cause two things..a sabre tooth or no tooth at all.

physcially i have little but realistically i can have some in spirit, and it all depends. but i am sickening and so the teeth that i can have left me, entirely, and so peace reigned, and in that regard all were lucky.

I was grinding what was left in my mouth though.

down to the cafe where i saw a wonderful inviting Wifi symbol which usually means what it says on the tin, but not in this hospital it doesnt.

why? the Wifi services are for the elite, and that doesnt include them patients and the relatives.

the elite are the doctors no less!

and you and and tudder can think other.

I then tried my mobile to extract a contact number through directory inquiries, but i was out of money...so...next tack being to put money in!  i was told i coudlnt do this at that particular cafe but one a couple of hundred yards further into the jaws of the hospital, which at this moment in time i wasnt enthusiastic about.

I go to the reception desk.

I first ask if he - the male receptionist, if he can find me a phone number of another hospital, where my consultant resides.

he cannot.

Can he find me the number of another consultant within this hospital, i have rather a lot of them, see start of blog for explanation, if it is one.

he cannot.

But he does tell me that this consultant's secretary is near by, in fact, nearer than the furthest cafe, which is a blessing.

i go, but am told by that person, a woman this time that she doesnt have a number to the consultant, so she doesnt have a clue how to give it to me, naturally.

i leave.

I go to get the yellow pages and sit down again, in the first cafe.

I cannot read the darn thing for my sight is too bad.

I then go back to the receptionist.  He suggests i pick up the phone by the entrance door and ring the operator.

i do so, but its the wrong phone, as he has come over to tell me this.

i take up the right one.

but nothing happens.

he is back at his desk.

i cannot leave as i have a heavy bag i am reluctant to lift again, in this moment in time.

i shout 'excuse me!' he hears, thank god.

he gives me the number, one digit, so thats a blessing too.

i ring.

sucks, i cannot hear, i do hear garble but apart from that, thats my hearing for you.

i wasnt deaf for no reason...i have not heard the operator.

tears are now welling up in my eyes.

i feel sick and in pain...i have been outta A&E two days now, i have been told i have Gallstones, plenty of em, so now i want outta pain and them outta me.

but i am not getting very far to realise either ambitions.

i pick up a heavy bag with a heavy heart and cart both self and it, back to the wards.

See, they were to find me a 'way in' so that i can get a 'way out' of the hospital, in communication terms.

I ask the secetary if she can ring IT department and get the password and user name for getting logged in on my laptop.

she raises her eyes to heaven, pretty much the same way as the porter/receptionists did downstairs, and i am feeling that there are a lot of unhappy people in this hospital and i am not the only one.

she hands me the phone, i am a bit startled at this but evidently its the IT department.

he, the guy at the end of the line, recites a password, and i have no pen and paper.

i ask for one from the raised eyebrow woman and she rips off a sheet of paper from a pad in an alarming fashion with more raised eyebrows.

jaz many got out of bed the wrong way this morning.

I wasnt one, for a change.

i attempt to get logged in, and fail.

i am banned from entry, i have been blocked and denied for some unknown reason.  my next plan for getting out was to physically do just that, i left the ruddy building no less, i nicked the twin's wheelchair and off i went to the Merrion Centre or tesco or whatever it is beside the hospital on the merrion road.

i got onto the internet, all for the sum of one euro, but did it at a booth, and very successfully so.

i have now an appointment to see the consultant about puffy knees, one of my probs and in the process or at the consult i will ask about the surgeon and the other matter of an ovarian cyst which i insist will all be done and dusted on the same day, that is three lots of surgeries all on one day, job lot fashion, knees sucked out, gall stones blasted or ribbed out and cyst removed all together, one lot of anesthetic, one lot of taxi fares, and one bout of out of my own home. what more could a woman want, in life.

well i want more, but never seem to get it.

we moved on...well she did, the twin that is...down to theatre and poor twin was upset and nervous.
there was really no going back, but the staff nurse who was not in good mood said that the image of her appointed 'assistant surgeon for the day' could stay in her room...the black assistant with the knife...that is.
well we had other ideas, to which i encouragingly said that actually would the black assistant not go and stay close to her hearing aids and specs?
and it was more of a 'grrrrr...the black assistant GOES to theatre...grrrrr..gnarl...grrr...'
the Black Assistant went!
who is this Black assistant, none other than her Saffi, holding the large lethal weapon of a knife, nothing stands in the way of our Saffi and the knife...Saffi the wonder...black..dog!
Saffi went where she always goes, with my twin in mind and spirit if nothing else, this time.

and you  and tudder can think other.

She has gone and so do i, leave.
I leave the hospital, she stays.
i go for lunch, grand plan to get out and use my laptop and see what is happening my world via the internet and the only place to do that is the nearest hotel.
i hail a taxi, and he wasn't pleased either, another grumpy soul who just wasn't pleased to get a small fare.
all of E7 but as my dad always said, 'look after the pennies and the pounds would look after themselves.'
its Euro now and they don't seem to look after themselves for this man wasn't interested in the pence, not a bit of it.
again i was near to tears for i find all this unsettling and begin wonder do i have the same effect on others when in similar mood?
i possibly can, and do.
i sit three hours out in the hotel.
jaz i was in pain.
and info on a four wheel was less than promising as the two weeks wait had now extended to three.
(another story for another day).
i then leave, deciding to save my E7 back to the hospital i have the brainwave to catch the bus.
i should have thought better.
the toilet beckoned so it was back to the hotel.
and the taxi the reception THERE has requested was waiting after i had peed, so i had now to spend the E7 after all.
another bad mood met me up on the ward.
mags wasn't back from surgery.
and the staffie (yes, the barker) informed me that  she had no idea how mags was or when she would be back.
tears ? yes, again - nearly.
a student told me she would ring if she had word.
on leaving i asked the Staff nurse was she always in such bad mood as today?
she didn't know what i was talking about - the student did!
ah for a cuppa cha.
and when i then saw my twin wheeled in, it was her screaming desire for the same. the tea.
and mine was for the bed.
we got our wish in due course.
I also got my wish to make peace with the neurologist at this establishment.
a lovely man actually but i had always known this.
what i also knew was, he has a shite manner, as others know too.
but i made my peace to an amenable guy, who finally announced that he knew all along that my neuro difficulties was Dystonia, but did he have to say too, that 'you don't have parkinson's you just want it?"
this was the pits, and i shall never forget that.
no, bad choice of words and bad manner, very.
He wont cross me again, if he does...them teeth, do you remember them teeth..real or imagined?
I left some disgruntled pack people at that there hospital whose brandished snarls left a bad taste in my own mouth.
i left too, the twin, to face either friend or foe, i was outta there, and  none too soon.