Come and Gone

Sacred Heart Hospital
"O, the joy! Oh yeah, uh!" Explorer William Clark upon reaching Oregon's Pacific shore in 1805.

We got up at 3:30 on Thursday morning for the 7:30 surgery. The anesthesiologist and the surgeon, Brian, visited me as I lay in bed in the holding area. The anesthesiologist was mellow; Brian, intense as ever, was chewing his gum violently. If he hadn't come well-recommended, I would have suspected that whatever brains he was born with had been displaced by testosterone. I said that it was time for him to work his magic, and he gave me the best reassurance imaginable, "This isn't magic; it's carpentry.

I received my spinal in the OR where doctors have replaced their masks with what look like helmets. I could hear the saw and smell the stench as Brian cut through my bones. Then came the hammering of metal, and I remembered his carpentry allusion. 

The recovery room nurse said that the hospital regularly books more people into surgery than it has places to put them, but that if I were lucky, a room might open up later in the day. If I wasn't lucky, I would have to hope for a better tomorrow.

Three and a half hours later, a room opened up. The labor and delivery rooms (where Peggy used to work) are spacious and have good views of the McKenzie River and the Coburg Hills, so I expected the orthopedic floor to be the same. It was not. My room was so small (not to mention dingy) that workers were forever having to move some things around to get to other things. An outside wall blocked any view lower than the tops of the nearby Coburg Hills.

The pain was intense, and Brian had gone on vacation without following through on his promise of extra narcotics. When I colored the air with expressions of indignation, the powers that be decided to give me 30 mgs of oxycodone at once each morning and an additional 10 mgs every three hours round the clock. A pharmacist dropped by and said I was at risk of respiratory arrest from what she considered an ungodly amount of narcotics. I assured her that she was wrong, and she went away sulking. That night, a 10 mg Ambien, a 45 mg Remeron, a 5 mg Flexeril, and various other drugs were added to the oxycodone, and I became so shit-faced that I didn't know I was in the hospital.

A few hours after surgery, a physical therapist had me walking (with a walker) and doing flexibility exercises. The next day, I attended my first joint rehabilitation class (two of them a day), and walked the loop that circled around the orthopedic floor (there was even a board on which to advance your magnet every time you completed a loop). While in bed, one machine circulated cold water around the surgical site, another machine massaged both legs in the direction of my heart, and the bed itself had a barely noticeable massage function that increased circulation and prevented bed sores. 

The day after surgery, my temperature hit 38.2 C (100.7 F),  my knee swelled to half again its normal size, and I wasn't getting nearly enough laxative to allay the narcotic-induced constipation. When I said that I hadn't pooped since the day before the surgery, I was given a dose of ExLax. When that didn't work, I opted for a suppository, but the result was more worthy of a housecat than a man. By the next day (two days after surgery), my temperature was normal, but I felt like I had a five pound weight on my chest. I hated to mention it to the Nurse Bridget, because I didn't want pandemonium to develop over something that I really didn't think was a problem. Prudence won the day, and Bridget immediately called her supervisor. When Bridget told her that my color was good, that the pain didn't radiate, and that it felt more like pressure than actual pain; she was told not to worry. An hour later, I felt fine and said I wanted to go home. My total time in the hospital had been 56 hours.

The first thing did when I got home was to exchange greetings with three mystified cats. The second was take a couple of sodium docusates, drink a lot of water, and eat a lot of prunes. A few hours later, I had that long awaited bowel movement, but it didn't amount to much, which was just as well because lowering myself onto the pot took so long that I ended up pooping from a standing position. This very scenario had been a concern of mine at the hospital where I told Nurse Bridget that I'm a refined person, and that refined people rarely take dumps on the floor. 

My embarrassment brought to mind an experience Peggy had when she was a new nurse with a dying patient who was having bout after bout of diarrhea, each of which hit him so fast that he was unable to wait for a bedpan. His last words were repeated apologies to Peggy, and she has never stopped regretting that she was unable to find words that would have enabled that man to die in peace. If she had said what she was thinking, she would have told him that it was an honor to attend to the needs of a man for whom she felt such affection and respect. She couldn't say this because she had only met him that day and because it would have represented a greater act of intimacy than her need for professionalism would have allowed. I can but say that the workers who served me best while I was in the hospital were the ones who seemed vulnerable.

Compared to the pain that I live with and the pain that followed my three shoulder surgeries, the pain from this surgery just isn't that bad. I was told to expect hell, but my primary feeling is joy as I prepare to get on with my life minus one source of pain. My ignorance of how little pain normal people experience had at times caused me to suspect that I was simply a woos, but now that my vision has cleared, I say to you that I really do suffer. To the knee replacement fear-mongers in particular, I would scream, "What! You call this pain?" While I suppose it's possible that I'm so stupid that it takes days for pain in my knee to register in my brain, I am nonetheless optimistic.

Today is Monday, so I'm only four days post-op, yet every time I do my exercises, I see improvement. I just hope I can resist my desire to push myself too hard too fast. Brian said it would be six weeks before I could mow the lawn, but while I was out the backyard just now watching the solar eclipse, I thought to myself, "Hell, I could mow today."

31 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

WONDERFUL that you are already seeing improvement.
And I do hope that you put the idea that you could mow today back in its box.

Jennifer Rose said...

glad you are doing well after the surgery :)

ah the joys of narcotics on the bowels :/ never a fun thing to have to deal with but nothing to be embarrassed about

I wouldn't say you were a wuss when it comes to pain, but "normal" people who don't deal with pain all the time can be. when you deal with pain all the time, you get use to it. so while knee surgery for some people would be hell, for people that deal with chronic pain, it can actually make some pain go away a bit since the problem has been fixed.

PhilipH said...

Great descriptive knee-op report Snowy. I am highly thankful that you have got that job well and truly jobbed. Well done, dear chap. Very well done.

Bowels. Oh yes, bowels. In my younger days the highest level of pleasure was a fully satisfying session of rumpy-pumpy. Nowadays it is a jolly good DUMP.

I wish you a swift recovery and a satisfying session on the bog.

Emma Springfield said...

I read your whole post. I am happy that you are doing so well and so fast too. There are often those annoying problems after surgery but you seem to have conquered them all. The overriding thought for me however is THEY DID YOUR SURGERY AND YOU WERE AWAKE?!???!? I cannot take the thought. You are braver than I.

angela said...

My friend has just had her scone knee replacement she had the first one just a few months ago
She too had the same difficulties you had. But now you're ur both on the mend and hopefully will experience less pain

rhymeswithplague said...

Glad to hear that your knee surgery is behind you and that your pain levels are manageable. I am knee-deep in trying to compose that post you and Lord Pudding requested about the spread of Methodism in 19th-century England. Some day I may actually finish it. In the meantime, please keep improving.

kylie said...

I had knee surgery 18 years ago and did aqua therapy for recovery. i still remember some of the people in my class!

I hope it continues to go well for you, I think the worst of the post-op stuff is over and ow it's just the long and steady improvement you can look forward to

Strayer said...

Wow, I'm really happy to read this and hear the knee replacement might relieve you of one pain location and give you mobility for a long time. I don't think I'd want to hear bone grinding and know it was my bone being sawed. I hated back surgery, the room afterwards, so tiny nobody could enter. I didn't even have a normal sized bed and never used the bathroom. There was just no room to move, was like the size of a small master bath, with two people crammed in it, on little mini narrow beds. I got ousted the next morning, hours after surgery, without a word from anyone on how to survive afterwards. Maybe its because I'm up here where treatment seems a little medieval or trending that way. I like that you had a successful surgery and that things are looking forward.

Charles Gramlich said...

geeze, man. You have sure been through the ringer. I hope your recovery goes well.

Snowbrush said...

“I do hope that you put the idea that you could mow today back in its box.”

I did yard work yesterday, but judging from how I felt last night, it might not have been a good idea.

“never a fun thing to have to deal with but nothing to be embarrassed about”

I have my limits (like pooping on the floor), but one of the things that made my hospital stay easier is that almost nothing embarrasses me because I never lose sight of the fact that we’re all physical beings, and we all share the same bodily parts and frailties. Even our primary sex organs started out being identical in both genders but changed along the way due to hormones.

“Oh yes, bowels. In my younger days the highest level of pleasure was a fully satisfying session of rumpy-pumpy. Nowadays it is a jolly good DUMP.”

Yep, and aren’t we lucky that the latter is something we don’t need another person to go along with.

“The overriding thought for me however is THEY DID YOUR SURGERY AND YOU WERE AWAKE?!???!? I cannot take the thought. You are braver than I.”

I would never have a general anesthetic if I could avoid it (as when I had a biopsy on my C5 vertebra). It’s not a macho preference, it’s a case of severe sleep apnea that makes the waking up excruciating. Hospitals—here anyway—are still uncooperative when it comes to having the patient’s CPAP set-up and ready to go in recovery, yet without it, the pain is so bad that one can never forget it.

“My friend has just had her second knee replacement. She had the first one just a few months ago”

I met another patient who had both knees done at once and, four days out of surgery, was pleased with her decision. I’m just glad that my right knee was still good enough that I didn’t need to make such a decision. Having been through having one done, though, I am sure that I wouldn’t advise anyone to have them done at the same time. For one thing, I can use my right foot to lift my left leg, and without having this one “good leg,” I couldn’t even get into and out of bed without help, and there’s even an order in which foot goes first when going up or down stairs. My main concern is that if a person had both knees done at once, I think he or she would be at greater risk of a falling.

Snowbrush said...

“I am knee-deep in trying to compose that post you and Lord Pudding requested about the spread of Methodism in 19th-century England.”

Ah, good, something for us—if not you—to live for. When that’s done, you might want to take on the topic of Methodism in pre-pioneer Oregon. There’s a state park 60 miles up the road from here (Willamette Mission State Park) that commemorates a failed Methodist missionary effort to Christianize the Indians in the 1830s. The 1830s was a long time ago in Oregon years. Then there were the Whitmans who were massacred up in Washington.

“I had knee surgery 18 years ago and did aqua therapy for recovery.”

What kind of surgery was it? I never hear of aqua classes for knee recovery here, but I don’t know why not. I start my first physical therapy class this Wednesday, and am expected to go two to three times a week for a couple of months.

“i still remember some of the people in my class!”

The large clinic out of which my surgeon works has reunions for patients. I don’t know that I will go, but what the hey, it’s free food.

“I don't think I'd want to hear bone grinding and know it was my bone being sawed.”

What startled me about it was how fast it came about. Maybe I was a little drug-deluded, but I shouldn’t have thought that Brian would have had time to get far into the operation. However, he had told me that it would be over in an hour, and the joint was certainly not very deep in there.

“Maybe its because I'm up here where treatment seems a little medieval or trending that way.”

Next time, challenge your expulsion from the hospital. One can do that, but it needs to be done at the first whisper of them kicking you out. I should think that any patient could offer suggestions for change that could be done easily, cheaply, and bring enormous benefit. The problem is that hospitals are more about money than service; they want to keep doing things the way they’ve always done them; and that the needs of individual patients can easily fall through the cracks. For example, I tried so hard to get CPAP availability worked out in advance, but not only was there no CPAP in recovery, no one would even confess to knowing where my CPAP was. After my last procedure there, I even wrote a letter to the hospital about the importance of patients having their CPAP in recovery, especially if they had been given a general anesthetic, and it still didn’t happen, although I was assured that changes would be made. Changing anything around a hospital is an exercise in beating one’s head against a wall.

“You have sure been through the ringer.”

Yeah, but nothing like the people who have both knees done at once.

kylie said...

My kneecaps have a habit of dislocating so the surgery I had was to reposition my right kneecap, making it less likely to dislocate. The kneecap has never been dislocated ever again but I also didnt recover full use of the knee until an acupuncturist did some work on it last year. I never asked him about the knee, I didnt think it could improve but he offered to look at it and I said yes and it is a lot better now.

There is not a chance in the world I would go to a patient reunion but whatever works for people!

joared said...

Glad to hear your surgery over and recovery in progress. Hope you get a good fix on your limitations so you don't overdo. Sometimes being patient can be the better part of wisdom IMHO.


Snowbrush said...

"My kneecaps have a habit of dislocating"

I haven't had the problem, but I know that habit is the word because every dislocation makes the joint a little loser and the next dislocation more likely.

"Hope you get a good fix on your limitations so you don't overdo."

I rarely know is "too much" until I overdo, and then have to cut back to even less than I had already been doing.

All Consuming said...

By the gods and small dogs this is wonderful news!!! And much as I expected or at least very much hoped in a positive fashion. Onwards, forwards and upwards dearie, the worst is over with and most of that will have been the worry. I'm SO glad it's done with. I had no idea when it was of course, my brain knows nothing on a regular basis but that has nothing to do with how much I care, for I care acres. Peggy and that patient - she is a love, and I get how hard that must have been. Xxx

Winifred said...

That's great news. Continue the good work Snow it will definitely pay dividends.
Take care!

Sue in Italia/In the Land Of Cancer said...

I can't believe you could tolerate the sounds and smells of them cutting through bone. Did they give you lots of Ativan?

But as you are in less pain than anticipated, yay! And you are gaining strength, double yay!

And you are not a wuss. No one really knows how their pain compares to anyone else's. I am blessed with a relatively pain free life but when I was doing PT for a frozen shoulder, the therapist would push my arm back way past the point of unbelievable pain and hold it. I told him if he ever did that again, I would scream rape. Of course he just thought I was a whiner. And this is while I predosed myself with opiates.

I thought they had some

Snowbrush said...

“I had no idea when it was of course”

7:30 a.m on August 17th. I didn’t mention the date in advance on the blog because I didn’t want the world to know when I was going to be away from home. I had initially intended to email people privately, but didn’t want anyone to feel that I was trying to obligate them to send me a card.

“Did they give you lots of Ativan?”

No, but I would have refused it had it been offered because I hate the effect. When a person gets a spinal, the anthesiologist might also give him a little “twilight sleep” medication. Depending upon how much of this medication the patient gets, he might or might not remain awake, but even if he is awake, he probably won’t remember more than a occasional glimpse of what happened. This twilight sleep drug can make a person feel really good. I don’t know if the anesthesiologist gave me any of it to start out with, and unlike with past surgeries, instead of a drape being placed between my upper body and the surgical area, a table was placed just above my face, cutting off any possibility of communicating with the surgical team. By looking over my head, I could just barely talk to the anesthesiologist (if I spoke loud enough), so because of the disagreeable sounds and the absence of communication, I finally told him to just go ahead and put me out, which he did by use of the twilight sleep drug (probably Versed). I’m not inspired to put up with a disagreeable situation out of any macho impulse, so I didn’t hesitate to make this request, and I didn’t remember anything following the request. This drug of which I speak isn’t a general anesthetic in the sense that one is in such a profound state of unconsciousness that even severe pain doesn’t register, and it doesn’t require that the patient being intubated. It is this intubation that is so hard to endure when a person has severe sleep apnea. I also wished to avoid a general anesthetic because they're hard on a person’s body.

"I told him if he ever did that again, I would scream rape."

I hope you complained to his supervisor. If he thought it was necessarily to inflict that much pain, he should have suggested that you have a doctor do it under anesthetic. I went for my first outpatient PT yesterday, and one of the things I appreciated about the therapist was that I trusted her to not do the kind of thing with me that your PT did with you. Indeed, she said, "Let the pain be your guide." I don't think that women PTs (or doctors for that matter) in general when it comes to the avoidance of the needless infliction of pain, but I think that if you have two unskilled PTs, one male and one femaile, the female will probably be less likely to brutalize you because it a natural tendency of males to regard force as a good idea.

I don't know how she regards males versus females, but my older sister won't go to a young PT because she doesn't trust the young ones to be as attune to old people's frailties and limitations. I don't feel that way, but I can see why some people would.

possum said...

Glad things sound good. Best wishes for a full recovery. I know, that sounds trite, but it is sincere!

Marion said...

You had me at "cat litter box". Glad you still have that fabulous sense of humor and that you survived your surgery. :-)

I have to have a knee & hip replacement, like yesterday, but sadly, I'm in the midst of a heartbreaking divorce (involving 'my' old SOB using Meth & almost killing me) after 45 years of marriage. Long story, full of Southern family drama, of course. It's like I'm in the midst of a nightmare and can't wake up...So I'm suffering in every way imaginable and then some. Pain management in these parts is a huge joke and therapists want $100 an hour, so that's a bitch. The local Family Justice Center has been somewhat helpful. Right now I'm just grateful that Hurricane Harvey is not sitting on top of Louisiana...but we're due to get lots of rain next week...

Good luck, Snow, and wishing you a speedy recovery! Keep on truckin'!!!! Love & hugs! xo

Snowbrush said...

"Best wishes for a full recovery. I know, that sounds trite, but it is sincere"

Oh, 'Poss, I took it as sincere. The most common expressions (like, "I love you") are the very ones that contain the most depth.

"I have to have a knee & hip replacement, like yesterday, but sadly, I'm in the midst of a heartbreaking divorce"

I was thinking about you a couple of days ago and wondering if you're still happy with Trump. I rather assumed that you and your man had been together for decades, so I'm shocked and saddened by the news. I don't think this sounds like a good time for a joint replacement for you, because: the emotional upheaval would take take so much energy away from healing; you will need 24 hour a day help for a while; and finally because it takes a long time at best to get over these things. Not only have my wings have been clipped in regard to thoughts of mowing the grass, I go through my days purposely staying off my feet because if I don't, the pain and swelling get so bad by the end of the day that I can't sleep at night for the pain. Anyway, I would just have you take joint replacement seriously. In terms of what I can actually do, I'm much better off today (10 days after surgery) than when I wrote this post, but I still have a long way to go. On a good day, I can bend my knee to an angle of 80-degrees (the goal being 120), but even that hurts a lot, and while the exercises look like a piece of cake, they leave me physically and emotionally drained. I'm still told that I'm doing exceedingly well, and I can still say that things aren't nearly so bad as I had feared, but I wouldn't have anyone think of joint replacement as a quick or easy fix, so please don't even think about it until you're able to keep a positive frame of mind.

"Long story, full of Southern family drama,"

I suppose drama follows meth (not to mention immaturity, mental illness, and large families), but I really have no idea if it's more common in the South than in other places. After reading your comment, it did occur to me that Southerners (especially the women) are portrayed as being drama queens, but are they, and even if they are, how well does their behavior and their feelings coincide? I'll give an example. Black people--in the South anyway--grieve more loudly and openly at funerals, and they also act as if they're in a lot more pain during childbirth (Peggy was an OB nurse, remember...). At the other end are Orientals (if you can give me a good PC term that means the same thing, I'll use it) who at least ACT Stoic both during grief and at childbirth, with white people falling somewhere in-between. But does appearance following feeling? I doubt it. I instead think it's simply a matter of people behaving in the way that they've seen others in their community behave.

Snowbrush said...

P.S. I wrote: "you will need 24 hour a day help for a while..."

This isn't just due to the pain and stiffness and to the fact that you have to get around on crutches or pushing a walker; it's also because you are so damned tired. The reason that it's fairly easy for me to settle into being a semi-invalid, is that I don't have enough energy to stay out of bed anyway. No one told me to expect this, and I'm not just talking about being a little tired, I'm talking about being so tired that I could easily spend 3/4s of my time in bed. When I googled the problem, I found that lots of people experience profound fatigue, and that some people continue to complain of it for months. I know that people in their eighties have these replacements, but if I'm like this at 68, I shudder to think how I would feel if I were 15-years older.

Marion said...

Thanks for the honest advice, Snow. Several people have said about knee replacement, "Oh, it was a breeze!" Really?! I've decided to try to hold off until next Spring. The pain is an 8 out of 10 most days... I tend to be stoic to the point of neglecting myself. I'm definitely no drama queen. LOL! I can't even think about politics right now since I'm stuck in survival mode...but I will say that my IRA has been booming. :-). Meth is an epidemic in small towns all around the state. It's a scourge, a plague... on the USA. I had no idea my husband was on Meth. I can't count the number of people, both men and women, who've told me the same thing...and I know (or thought I knew) about drugs!! I have a niece who's been in rehab 3 times for it and she's only 23 years old...Other than her, it had miraculously missed our extended family. One thing I've learned: never, ever think you can predict tomorrow, because you can't. It's really sad.. Hang in there, Snow! xo

Snowbrush said...

"Several people have said about knee replacement, "Oh, it was a breeze!'"

I have a friend whose mother threatened suicide because of the pain she was in after a replacement, and while that's pretty far out there, knee replacement is major surgery, horrible things can go wrong, the road back to function involves a lot of time spent laying on one's back with his or her knee iced, and doing a lot of exercises that range between too boring for words and so painful that you realize that you would gladly betray your dog, your wife, your country, or anything else, under torture. If you don't do the exercises, you won't regain flexibility, and the result of that is that the surgeon will put you to sleep and and bend the knee repeatedly to break-up scar tissue.

I just have two other things to say about knee surgery. One is that for every ten pounds of weight, each knee takes a load of forty pounds when you're walking, so if you've let your weight creep-up, this would be a great time to lose it. The second thing is that the number one predictor of a successful surgery is having a surgeon who does the identical surgery scores of times every year, year in and year out. I think of surgery is kind of like flying (I used to fly a little Cessna) versus driving in the flying is a lot harder to do well, which means that a major cause of plane crashes involves pilots who don't log enough flight hours every year to keep their skills up. Oh, no, you DON'T want your last thoughts while being rolled into surgery to be, "I hope this guy knows what's he doing."

Today, it's flooding at or near where you are, while here the usual summer drought is in progress and the air is foul from the smoke of numerous forest fires. I should think that one major argument against the existence of God is that, surely, a deity could do a better job of creating decent weather because there are few places where the weather doesn't seriously suck much of the time. As much as I'm going stir-crazy right now due to this surgery, I'm really very glad that I don't have to be outdoors anyway. My PT told me today that she's miserable with congestion, and Peggy is on steroids to clear-up the green discharge in her ears and lungs. At least where you are, if the water is actually over your head, you can still breathe the air.

cont.

Snowbrush said...



As to what we agree on in regard to politics, I couldn't stand Obama. I hated him for his persecution of whistle-blowers; for his gum-chewing "I'm just one of the boys" persona; for his detachment that came to look a whole lot like indifference; for his conscienceless waste of a trillion dollars and, perhaps, a million lives; for his unwillingness to keep his promises; and for his endless lecturing to the American public as if he were the only adult in a roomful of dim-witted ten year olds. However, the belief of many Trump supporters that the economy was in the toilet under "politician" Obama, but that "businessman" Trump was easily able to turn it around within days has no bearing in fact. Here are so stats. The stock market was plummeting under the leadership of that Texas dumbass, George Bush, when Obama took office, but it gained 148% during his presidency. Job growth under Obama increased steadily for more than six years--becoming the longest job growth streak on record--and employment was at 4.7% on the day he left office, which is about a percentage point below average. All in all, things were very good indeed under Obama.

Under Trump, the unemployment rate has continued to fall, and the market has gained 30% (it's best year under Obama was 32%). The AVERAGE annual stock market growth is only 7%, but if I could lock-in 7%, I would be thrilled because there have been ten year periods during which the market either dropped steadily or stood still. Large short-term gains are fun, but they're unsustainable and have no bearing upon what the market will do tomorrow. The truth is that only God could bring perpetual growth to the stock market, and given his failure with the weather. I'm not so sure he could pull it off. My concern about Trump is that he's erratic, and the less the market thinks it knows about what's going to happen tomorrow, the more likely it is to plummet. It's also true that market gains this year didn't come about as the result of Trump's business acumen or legislative victories but because the market expected Trump to create a more business friendly environment (primarily through getting rid of protections that are in your financial interest, my financial interest, and that contribute to the welfare of the nation as a whole and the good of the environment). You'll recall that Obama "won" the Nobel Peace Prize, not based upon what he did, but upon what the Nobel Committee expected him to do. That's how I see the market's response to Trump.

rhymeswithplague said...

I think the current PC term to be used in place of Oriental is Southeast Asian. And the people of the Indian sub-continent are now South Asians. You're welcome.

Snowbrush said...

"I think the current PC term..."

PCers, of course, deny the existence of PC, arguing that the term "politically correct" was invented by bigots in an attempt make the praiseworthy liberal desire for good manners and respect sound as fake, strained, tedious, and arrogantly dictatorial as if it had come from a leftist brain-washing camp. I would argue that to refer to someone--or some usage--as "PC" is oftentimes completely valid, just as it is oftentimes valid to label a true disciple of PC as a liar, a manipulator, and a control freak. I think it ludicrous for a person to argue that he's on the side of kindness and respect, and that if you're also on the side of kindness and respect, you'll allow him to dictate what words to use. PC isn't just about spreading the sunshine of love, respect, and compassion. If love, respect, and compassion were its goal, it would find less cause for firing, fining, boycotting, reprimanding, ostracizing, and imprisoning non-liberals.

I heard a story yesterday from down your way. It concerned a Cobb County police lieutenant who lost his 31-year career and presumably his accumulated benefits from that career. His sin occurred when he pulled a white woman over for running a redlight. When she said she was afraid he would shoot her if she moved her hands (she gave the news media as the source of her terror), he tried to calm her by saying that he only shot black people. It was a breathtakingly stupid comment that was akin to joking about bombs at an airport or holdups at a bank, but it was but only one stupid comment (there being no mention of other problems with this officer) in 31-years, and it only came from his desire to "protect and serve" a frightened woman who might not have been frightened had the news media not devoted itself to making the cops sound like a greater threat to public safety than the crooks. This incident occurred in July, 2016, and the police department might have chosen to handle it in other ways. It might have forced the officer into retirement, or issued a reprimand or a suspension. But lesser punishments would have required respect and compassion, and PC is devoid of these virtues. It is my guess that Trump got elected in part as a reaction against the stranglehold represented by PC. Like that cop, Peggy could have lost her nursing career with a single "microaggression," and her hospital's zeal for firing workers that it could ill afford to lose was such that it insisted that its employees report instances of non-PC language that occurred away from the hospital. It held that nothing was too small to be worth mentioning. "Place of healing?" That's not how I viewed it when I was a patient there two weeks ago.

Snowbrush said...

P.S. "You're welcome."

Thank you. I probably will accept your usage because I had just as soon avoid kicking against the pricks in the absence of sufficient reason.

rhymeswithplague said...

You are spot on. There is plenty of evidence online that political correctness actually did come from a leftist brain-washing camp and is in fact arrogantly dictatorial, as you put it. It has been around for decades and decades, originating as Cultural Marxism. Check it out!

Snowbrush said...

"There is plenty of evidence online that political correctness actually did come from a leftist brain-washing camp"

Sources, man, sources! I can't tell but what you're pulling my leg here because this sounds like something O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, or Savage, would have invented. Last week when something about Princess Di was on NPR, I moved the dial to Fox just in time to hear Michael Savage claim that liberals so hate America that they take enjoy hearing about the death of its troops. Do you really still listen to this stuff under the rationale that you want to hear all sides of an argument? These people don't argue; they lie, they slander, they hang-up on antagonistic callers and guests who dare to make a valid point or ask a reasonable question. Fox is poison, and that's all Fox is, whereas NPR takes callers and has guests who hold diverse opinions. The 24/7 hatred that is found on Fox is, I believe, largely responsible for the political climate that we have today. I don't know if Fox has done any critical programs about the removal of Confederate monuments and the changing the names of buildings that are no longer PC, but if they have, it would be one of the few things I agree with them about. I would love to join an organization that opposes such things, but the only ones I hear about are the KKK and the neo-Nazis.

Kranhu said...

I am on my high school reunion committee and it was brought up in an email when discussing memories of our four years in high school, that while our class had chosen Apache as our team name in 1963, if we mentioned it in any way shape or form, we would be culturally insensitive.
Kris