Monday This and That

Rain, rain, go away

Come again some other day

We want to go outside and play

Come again some other day

It was pouring this morning when I had to leave for work.  Not that I dislike the rain. Actually, I love the rain, but not in the morning when I have to go to work.  One thing I cannot stand is getting wet and having to sit in it all day. I've been home since Tuesday, and it didn't rain until today. It seems like it purposely waited for me to have to leave the house, but I know Mother Nature is not that way.  She's gentle and loving and knows exactly what she is doing.  Perhaps this was her gift to me, to wash away my tears.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

--John Updike--

Meanwhile, I think the worst part of this thing is the not knowing, the waiting.  I'm thinking positively, and everyone I have spoken to has given me hope that even if it is the Big C, it's small and I caught it in time.  I keep telling myself that it is no good to dwell on it, what will be will be, but it's hard to filter something like that out of one's thoughts.

Auntie brought up something interesting on Friday--the problems we face with our healthcare in today's society. Insurance companies are dictating which patients can get what services under what circumstances. For example, I suffer with sinus issues, always have. For twenty years I was treated by New York Eye and Ear, a hospital that specializes with these areas. They have all the latest equipment, and doctors are specifically trained to deal with issues such as those I face. I've not been able to see them since my insurance changed.  I cannot get past my primary who feels it is not necessary for me to see a specialist. A week's worth of antibiotics will do for a sinus infection. 

I also see the effects of bureaucracy, too, when working with my clients, and, to put it bluntly, it is downright frightening.  As most of you know, I work with mentally ill substance abusing clients.  Over half of my clients are schizophrenic, a quarter of them are half bi-polar with psychotic symptoms, and another quarter are on parole and have no mental health issues, or if so, they are minor. All are on Medicaid. For some of these clients, it took many years to stabilize their mental health issues, and now, with recent changes in Medicaid and all these new plans, certain medications are no longer paid for. That means that clients who have been stabilized on certain medications no longer have access to the very medications that have helped them to lead fairly normal lives because they certainly cannot afford to buy them. What happens if and when these patients begin to decompensate?  What happens then?  What happens when these clients begin roaming the streets?

Well, despite having to go out in today's rain and not being able to lie in bed and enjoy it, I was thankful that I was off work on medical last week.  The record setting heat was unbearable.  I heard on the Friday morning news that the power had gone off in my old neighborhood and that they had been working all night to get it back on.  As I recall, this is nothing new. The power was always going off in that neighborhood. You'd best believe I breathed a sigh of relief that I was no longer living there.  Even with the power on, summer got awfully hot there what with the sun beating down on the bedroom windows almost for the entire day and no windows through the rest of the house.  I sit and wonder how I was able to take it so long, and my conclusion has been that I don't take to change as well as I think I do.

Long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain

Interminably, with its nails of grey,

Athwart the dull grey day,

Rakes the green window-pane--

So infinitely, endlessly, the rain,

The long, long rain.

The rain.

Since yesternight it keeps unravelling

Down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling

About the sullen sky.

The low black sky;

Since yesternight, so slowly, patiently.

Unravelling its threads upon the roads.

Upon the roads and lanes, with even fall

Continual.

Along the miles

That 'twixt the meadows and the suburbs lie,

By roads interminably bent, the files

Of waggons, with their awnings arched and tall.

Struggling in sweat and steam, toil slowly by

With outline vague as of a funeral.

Into the ruts, unbroken, regular,

Stretching out parallel so far

That when night comes they seem to join the sky.

For hours the water drips;

And every tree and every dwelling weeps.

Drenched as they are with it.

With the long rain, tenaciously, with rain

Indefinite.

The rivers, through each rotten dyke that yields.

Discharge their swollen wave upon the fields.

Where coils of drown?d hay

Float far away;

And the wild breeze

Buffets the alders and the walnut-trees;

Knee-deep in water great black oxen stand,

Lifting their bellowings sinister on high

To the distorted sky;

As now the night creeps onward, all the land,

Thicket and plain,

Grows cumbered with her clinging shades immense.

And still there is the rain,

The long, long rain.

Like soot, so fine and dense.

The long, long rain.

Rain--and its threads identical,

And its nails systematical,

Weaving the garment, mesh by mesh amain,

Of destitution for each house and wall,

And fences that enfold

The villages, neglected, grey, and old:

Chaplets of rags and linen shreds that fall

In frayed-out wisps from upright poles and tall.

Blue pigeon-houses glued against the thatch,

And windows with a patch

Of dingy paper on each lowering pane,

Houses with straight-set gutters, side by side

Across the broad stone gambles crucified,

Mills, uniform, forlorn.

Each rising from its hillock like a horn,

Steeples afar and chapels round about,

The rain, the long, long rain,

Through all the winter wears and wears them out.

Rain, with its many wrinkles, the long rain

With its grey nails, and with its watery mane;

The long rain of these lands of long ago,

The rain, eternal in its torpid flow!

Emile Verhaeren