Bless the children

If you recall from prior blog entries, you know that I desperately want a family and struggle with adoption and fertility costs. So when I get summoned to a pregnant women with no job, their third pregnancy, a baby-daddy who beat the death a pregnant mother, or some neglected kids suffering abuse from a bipolar one eyed prostitute it really gets to me. This all happened over one week in a town with 12,000 people. What a statement in of itself in what constitutes the state of my local community. I'm willing to bet this is played out all over the country as people struggle over the general dystopic state of our global civilization. Arguably more zombie and clown like in the nation called America. Frustration isn't a strong enough explanation for how I feel when 3 small kids, none of which are older than nine, come stumbling out of smelly stained single wide with a one eyed prostitute smoking a cigarette and a toddler propped on her hip. The five year old had the family's medicaid card...what a little helper. None of the children had shoes, and most had torn pants and smelled of pot. My head was screaming inside as I wrestled my demeanor into the necessary professionalism to ask the necessary question required to explore why I was called. Fever, a kid had a fever, and she never gave any tylenol either. A kid with a low grade fever does in no way constitute an emergency, but this sorta thing is very common with the folks welding medicaid cards. Like it was a health care credit card to the VIP ER, and in some ways it is. Nevertheless, I was happy to obliged knowing I'd have the opportunity to report the situation to DHS at the soonest opportunity, which would be in a few minutes at the nearby ER. So the whole dirty gaggle hopped into the ambulance module to watch a paramedic blow up latex gloves and draw funny faces on them. Settled in for the short trip, vital signs taken, I open the ePCR (electronic pt care report) to begin documenting my findings when the rough one eyed mommy leans over to ask if I had found Jesus Christ and had been saved? This question has always made me uncomfortable for a number of reason, least of which would be guilt, but after so many questions along these lines from fundies I'm become a little more resolute and hardened when I answer. No. I have seen too much in my line of work to believe there's some paternal, trinity family residing in the heavens above that looks out for us. But I won't say there isn't one either, because how would I know. Seems like superstitious nonsense to me though, a belief structure that gives comfort in world full of grief, pain, and misery.  When I die, if there is a god, a soul, life after death, and so on, then god can judge me. But if I'm sentenced to hell because I didn't accept this Jesus despite my life of sacrifice and caring for others, than to hell with god himself. Wouldn't want to hang around a being like that anyway. I didn't go into all this with the mother of course, but that's kinda how I feel after two decades of putting myself into the human circle of tragedy.

I find out en route to the hospital that the mother was just kicked out of her house last night by her husband, and that she was writing these long letters with religious scripture quotes. Her plan being to send these to her evil husband. She was also hearing voices and desiring to tattoo the children with crosses and other such nonsense.

The kids sat quietly darting their eyes around the ambulance trying to ignore their mothers insanity. I sit still myself ruminating over what I would tell the receiving nurse. With such a frivolous complaint we were sent to triage on arrival, just as if she had walked in. Apparently, the ER staff were familiar with this mother, and told me about her house being covered with wall to wall bibles, or that was what other EMS crews had relayed to them on prior visits. DHS was called just as I left for another call. This time a 22 year old man who just up and died, and it wasn't because of drugs either. How bazaar. Hours later I call back to the ER to find that social services had been in the room talking with the mother but that the child had been discharged with her mother a while later. "You've got to be kidding," I'm thinking, but most don't know that it usually takes many repeated DHS activations to take kids from these types of parents. Me on the other hand, oh no, well I have to have perfect credit, a detailed house inspection, can't be over 40, and a steady job to get the state to allow an adoption to occur. Only after handing over 20 grand to make it all happen too. But natural mommies and daddies are given GREAT leeway it seems. The social rot I immerse myself in dissolves the tolerance I have with the so called "system," and with some invisible man in the sky.

The radio squawks again for a pregnant woman involved in an assault out in a part of town known for drugs, poverty, and what can only be described as human baby mills. 18 year old, 3rd pregnancy, no job, no diploma, who had been beaten up by her so called boyfriend and father of the current one. Elbowed with primitive abandoned straight to the 8 month belly and she was bleeding heavily. Give me a bat and 5 mins with this little punk daddy want-a-be and his progeny making ways would end in blood and bruises. She lost the baby and nearly died herself. There's a god? Really? Meanwhile, no kiddies for me, I'm now 40 with bad credit, so the great state of MS that just released some kids to a Jesus freak hungry for coco puffs and pop smoking babies thinks my wife and I are bad candidates. Obviously the above two examples are the preferred environment to raise children. Not my household it seems which has a nice paid for house, a white picket fence, a dual income earning family with the love and compassion ready to give.

God? Where? A sunset maybe; whereas I must be in the valley of death.