Some years ago, on a hot summer day in south Florida, a little boy decided to go for a swim in the old swimming hole behind his house. In a hurry to dive into the cool water, he ran out the back door, leaving behind shoes, socks and shirt as he went. He flew into the water, not realizing that as he swam toward the middle of the lake, an alligator was swimming toward the shore. His mother, in the house and looking out the window, saw the two as they got closer and closer together. In utter fear, she ran toward the water, yelling to her son as loudly as she could. Hearing her voice, the little boy became alarmed and made a U-turn to swim to his mother. It was too late. Just as he reached her, the alligator reached him. From the dock, the mother grabbed her little boy by the arms just as the alligator snatched his legs.That began an incredible tug-of-war between the two. The alligator was much stronger than the mother, but the mother was much too passionate to let go. A farmer happened to drive by, heard her screams, raced from his truck, took aim and shot the alligator. Remarkably, after weeks and weeks in the hospital, the little boy survived. His legs were extremely scarred by the vicious attack of the animal. And, on his arms, were deep scratches where his mother's fingernails dug into his flesh in her effort to hang on to the son she loved. The newspaper reporter who interviewed the boy after the trauma asked if he would show him his scars. The boy lifted his pant legs. And then, with obvious pride, he said to the reporter, "But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them because my Mom wouldn't let go."
You and I can identify with that little boy. We have scars, too. No, not from an alligator, but the scars of a painful past. Some of those scars are unsightly and have caused us deep regret. But some wounds, my friend, are because God has refused to let go. In the midst of your struggle, He's been there holding on to you.The Scripture teaches that God loves you. You are a child of God. He wants to protect you and provide for you in every way. But sometimes we foolishly wade into dangerous situations, not knowing what lies ahead. The swimming hole of life is filled with peril - and we forget that the enemy is waiting to attack. That's when the tug-of-war begins - and if you have the scars of His love on your arms be very, very grateful. He did not, and will not, ever let you go. Please pass this on to those you love. God has blessed you, so that you can be a blessing to others. You just never know where a person is in his/her life and what they are going through. Never judge another persons scars, because you don't know how they got them. Also, it is soooo important that we are not selfish to receive the blessings of these messages without forwarding them to someone else. Right now, someone needs to know that God loves them, and that you love them too: enough to not let them go. Have a lovely day!
- Just gott dis from Fr Anil
i gott an ugly scar on my left rist
i despaired of life
it reminds me
God loves me
He didnt let me die
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Are you lonesome tonight,
Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said that the world's a stage
And each must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart.
Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange
And why I'll never know.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
With emptiness all around
And if you won't come back to me
Then make them bring the curtain down.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
-Saby
do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said that the world's a stage
And each must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart.
Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange
And why I'll never know.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
With emptiness all around
And if you won't come back to me
Then make them bring the curtain down.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
-Saby
Thursday, October 13, 2005
mercy killings at La. hospital
Officials investigate reports of mercy killings at La. hospital
By Jennifer Latson and Mark Washburn, Knight Ridder Newspapers Thu Oct 13, 7:25 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana's attorney general is probing allegations that patients at the city's Memorial Hospital were put out of their misery by mercy killings in the desperate days after Hurricane Katrina.
"There have been reports that doctors have been going around injecting people," Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish coroner, said Thursday.
Minyard said that as part of the investigation, his office has autopsied at least 45 bodies taken from the hospital.
It's part of a broader inquiry into the practices of 13 nursing homes and six hospitals where patients died during and after Katrina - some because of mistreatment or neglect, family members have alleged.
New Orleans internist Dr. John Kokemor was treating patients in Memorial when floodwaters rose around the hospital the day after the hurricane, the power cut out and the temperature inside soared above 100 degrees.
Patients were suffering and doctors were panicking, but Kokemor saw no sign of euthanasia.
"There was a lot of suffering going on. It was obviously hard on the caregivers," said Kokemor, 53, a physician with a private practice in New Orleans. "But I didn't see any syringes passed around. If people received anything, it was comfort measures."
Some patients were already near death, and some had "do not resuscitate" orders. They may have been the ones who died, Kokemor said.
The investigation at Memorial, first reported by CNN, stemmed from complaints from relatives and others who had heard rumors of mercy killings, authorities said.
Among the dead taken from Memorial were 11 bodies that had been in the morgue before the storm, three people who died in the storm and were brought to the hospital, one body sent by another hospital for safekeeping and 24 bodies of frail patients in a Lifecare unit operated independently from the hospital, according to a hospital official.
Two days after the storm, rising floodwaters shorted out the hospital's generators and batteries, shutting down critical support equipment such as ventilators and dialysis machines, said Steven Campanini, a spokesman for Dallas-based Tenet, which owns Memorial and four other New Orleans hospitals.
"There is only so much a health care provider could do under such extraordinary circumstances," Campanini said.
The company hasn't been able to substantiate any reports that euthanasia was discussed among the staff of the sprawling medical center in the two hectic days after Katrina.
"I don't know how widespread these kinds of discussions could be going on with 2,000 people focused on evacuation," Campanini said.
Ethically, even in an extreme crisis like the one facing the hospital staff, resorting to mercy killings would be out of bounds morally and legally, said Robert Veatch, a professor of medical ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.
"There is no formal justification for euthanasia in the technical sense of active intervention to hasten death," he said. "It's illegal and no mainstream medical ethical source would endorse it."
Memorial Hospital is the only medical center under scrutiny for potentially euthanizing patients in the storm's aftermath, authorities say.
Patients from the other hospitals and nursing homes will be autopsied to find out if they "died from neglect or being left behind, from lack of food and water or medication," said Kris Wartelle, spokeswoman for Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr.
"We'd heard rumors all along," said Wartelle. "We got enough calls from victims' families asking us to look into it that we did."
One of the nursing homes under investigation is St. Rita's, the St. Bernard Parish facility where 34 residents died. The attorney general charged the home's owners with negligent homicide after autopsies showed patients had drowned.
The attorney general's office has received preliminary results of the Memorial Hospital autopsies but wouldn't release the results Thursday.
The investigation will take weeks, Wartelle said.
"It's a pretty monumental case, but we're not ready to say whether it happened or not," she said.
Kokemor believes autopsies will reveal narcotics and sedatives in many of the patients who died at Memorial Hospital, because that's what doctors give people in pain, but not to kill them.
The doctor said he didn't hear any patients ask to be put out of their misery.
Patients can ask that no extraordinary measures be taken to prolong their lives, but doctors can't make that decision for them, even if they'll likely live only a short time longer in extreme pain, Kokemor said.
One patient, a 92-year-old New Orleans man, was bleeding internally during the hurricane's aftermath when physicians were hampered in diagnosing and operating on patients. The man was given six pints of blood in transfusions but wasn't improving.
"He probably had some kind of malignancy or some ulcer in his stomach that was oozing and bleeding," said Kokemor. "All you can do is buy them some time by replacing their blood."
The elderly man had no relatives, lived alone, and had lost his home in the flood.
"Do you want the blood or not?" Kokemor recalled asking the patient.
He did.
"I wrote the order for him to get the blood," Kokemor said. "Whether he got it or not, I don't know."
Lee Hill Kavanaugh of The Kansas City Star contributed to this report. Latson reports for the Olympian in Olympia, Wash., and Washburn for The Charlotte Observer.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_storms_mercykilling
By Jennifer Latson and Mark Washburn, Knight Ridder Newspapers Thu Oct 13, 7:25 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana's attorney general is probing allegations that patients at the city's Memorial Hospital were put out of their misery by mercy killings in the desperate days after Hurricane Katrina.
"There have been reports that doctors have been going around injecting people," Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish coroner, said Thursday.
Minyard said that as part of the investigation, his office has autopsied at least 45 bodies taken from the hospital.
It's part of a broader inquiry into the practices of 13 nursing homes and six hospitals where patients died during and after Katrina - some because of mistreatment or neglect, family members have alleged.
New Orleans internist Dr. John Kokemor was treating patients in Memorial when floodwaters rose around the hospital the day after the hurricane, the power cut out and the temperature inside soared above 100 degrees.
Patients were suffering and doctors were panicking, but Kokemor saw no sign of euthanasia.
"There was a lot of suffering going on. It was obviously hard on the caregivers," said Kokemor, 53, a physician with a private practice in New Orleans. "But I didn't see any syringes passed around. If people received anything, it was comfort measures."
Some patients were already near death, and some had "do not resuscitate" orders. They may have been the ones who died, Kokemor said.
The investigation at Memorial, first reported by CNN, stemmed from complaints from relatives and others who had heard rumors of mercy killings, authorities said.
Among the dead taken from Memorial were 11 bodies that had been in the morgue before the storm, three people who died in the storm and were brought to the hospital, one body sent by another hospital for safekeeping and 24 bodies of frail patients in a Lifecare unit operated independently from the hospital, according to a hospital official.
Two days after the storm, rising floodwaters shorted out the hospital's generators and batteries, shutting down critical support equipment such as ventilators and dialysis machines, said Steven Campanini, a spokesman for Dallas-based Tenet, which owns Memorial and four other New Orleans hospitals.
"There is only so much a health care provider could do under such extraordinary circumstances," Campanini said.
The company hasn't been able to substantiate any reports that euthanasia was discussed among the staff of the sprawling medical center in the two hectic days after Katrina.
"I don't know how widespread these kinds of discussions could be going on with 2,000 people focused on evacuation," Campanini said.
Ethically, even in an extreme crisis like the one facing the hospital staff, resorting to mercy killings would be out of bounds morally and legally, said Robert Veatch, a professor of medical ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.
"There is no formal justification for euthanasia in the technical sense of active intervention to hasten death," he said. "It's illegal and no mainstream medical ethical source would endorse it."
Memorial Hospital is the only medical center under scrutiny for potentially euthanizing patients in the storm's aftermath, authorities say.
Patients from the other hospitals and nursing homes will be autopsied to find out if they "died from neglect or being left behind, from lack of food and water or medication," said Kris Wartelle, spokeswoman for Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr.
"We'd heard rumors all along," said Wartelle. "We got enough calls from victims' families asking us to look into it that we did."
One of the nursing homes under investigation is St. Rita's, the St. Bernard Parish facility where 34 residents died. The attorney general charged the home's owners with negligent homicide after autopsies showed patients had drowned.
The attorney general's office has received preliminary results of the Memorial Hospital autopsies but wouldn't release the results Thursday.
The investigation will take weeks, Wartelle said.
"It's a pretty monumental case, but we're not ready to say whether it happened or not," she said.
Kokemor believes autopsies will reveal narcotics and sedatives in many of the patients who died at Memorial Hospital, because that's what doctors give people in pain, but not to kill them.
The doctor said he didn't hear any patients ask to be put out of their misery.
Patients can ask that no extraordinary measures be taken to prolong their lives, but doctors can't make that decision for them, even if they'll likely live only a short time longer in extreme pain, Kokemor said.
One patient, a 92-year-old New Orleans man, was bleeding internally during the hurricane's aftermath when physicians were hampered in diagnosing and operating on patients. The man was given six pints of blood in transfusions but wasn't improving.
"He probably had some kind of malignancy or some ulcer in his stomach that was oozing and bleeding," said Kokemor. "All you can do is buy them some time by replacing their blood."
The elderly man had no relatives, lived alone, and had lost his home in the flood.
"Do you want the blood or not?" Kokemor recalled asking the patient.
He did.
"I wrote the order for him to get the blood," Kokemor said. "Whether he got it or not, I don't know."
Lee Hill Kavanaugh of The Kansas City Star contributed to this report. Latson reports for the Olympian in Olympia, Wash., and Washburn for The Charlotte Observer.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_storms_mercykilling
Friday, October 07, 2005
i need a vacation
Ex-haust-ion
I should have seen it coming
I should have seen the signs
I woke up this morning and saw bags underneath my eyes that were so big,
if I were to use them for shoplifting,
I could have walked into the Virgin Megastore and pranced out with the entire Jazz CD department from A to Z .
Why am I so stubborn?
I sometimes think that I can outdo myself, crash and burn, and then I pay for it,
at times looking like I not only put my foot in my mouth, but the entire shoe store.
This past week I have been a little too bold, a little too cocky, a little over the top emotionally and a little too out of control for my liking.
Yesterday I heard myself speak to a client in a way I rarely do unless I am pushed up against a wall.
I felt like I was Tony Soprano making a hard ass deal with a chooch on the low end of the food chain.
And I was actually dealing with the big time Italian $$$ guy.
I was a little too brash for my own good.mind you, it paid off, and this guy now knows I mean business, but at the same time, had he not been so nice, I could have been told to fuck off - we don't need that attitude for the $ you are charging us...
But I was lucky - this time...
So tonight I am going to break my cycle of going to bed at 4:30am and getting up at 9:30am.
Unfortunately, I am not 20 anymore, and doing this sleep deprivation for an extended period of time (now my limit is a week) will completely turn me into a volatile bundle of explosive nerves and emotions that I can't afford to have go off while I am away on my trip.Oh God.
The last thing I want is a meltdown in public!!!
I've had a rare few in the past 5 years, and they were not pretty.
Working too hard, sleeping too little and with the stress factor up to warp speed - I am a 20 car pile-up accident waiting to happen.
Funny - the song that is running in my head right now is
No sleep T'ill Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys.Sleep = clear head, sharp mind, strong will, and silenced volcano.
-Keshi
I should have seen it coming
I should have seen the signs
I woke up this morning and saw bags underneath my eyes that were so big,
if I were to use them for shoplifting,
I could have walked into the Virgin Megastore and pranced out with the entire Jazz CD department from A to Z .
Why am I so stubborn?
I sometimes think that I can outdo myself, crash and burn, and then I pay for it,
at times looking like I not only put my foot in my mouth, but the entire shoe store.
This past week I have been a little too bold, a little too cocky, a little over the top emotionally and a little too out of control for my liking.
Yesterday I heard myself speak to a client in a way I rarely do unless I am pushed up against a wall.
I felt like I was Tony Soprano making a hard ass deal with a chooch on the low end of the food chain.
And I was actually dealing with the big time Italian $$$ guy.
I was a little too brash for my own good.mind you, it paid off, and this guy now knows I mean business, but at the same time, had he not been so nice, I could have been told to fuck off - we don't need that attitude for the $ you are charging us...
But I was lucky - this time...
So tonight I am going to break my cycle of going to bed at 4:30am and getting up at 9:30am.
Unfortunately, I am not 20 anymore, and doing this sleep deprivation for an extended period of time (now my limit is a week) will completely turn me into a volatile bundle of explosive nerves and emotions that I can't afford to have go off while I am away on my trip.Oh God.
The last thing I want is a meltdown in public!!!
I've had a rare few in the past 5 years, and they were not pretty.
Working too hard, sleeping too little and with the stress factor up to warp speed - I am a 20 car pile-up accident waiting to happen.
Funny - the song that is running in my head right now is
No sleep T'ill Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys.Sleep = clear head, sharp mind, strong will, and silenced volcano.
-Keshi
Saturday, October 01, 2005
I am a Dirty Old Man
I guess i was born to be a DOM
"In the spring, a young man's fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of what
The older man throughout the year
Has never even once forgot."
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