15 posts tagged “hope”

I really enjoy reading Steve Lopez's LA Times columns, and this one is no exception.  The LA forum recently hosted a free-clinic for residents in need of medical & dental care.  While the health-care debate rages on, this story highlights an organization making a difference - Please enjoy~

latimes.com
At free clinic, scenes from the Third World
Doctors and dentists volunteering their services at the Forum see scenes like those in impoverished areas overseas.

Steve Lopez
August 16, 2009

"Do you want to see the tooth?" Dr. Mehrdad Makhani asked me Friday morning at the free clinic being staged inside Inglewood's Fabulous Forum. "Come. I'll show you."

Jenny McLean, 36, opened her mouth and Makhani aimed a little flashlight in there.

"You see here?" he said.

The area around a back tooth was red and swollen, and McLean's eyes were teary with discomfort. She'd endured the pain for more than a year because she's had neither insurance nor the money for a dentist since losing her job as a social worker.

It was a story repeated hundreds of times last week at the Forum, where a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical had brought in volunteers to treat legions of the uninsured.

"Here, look at this," said Makhani, pointing to a second tooth that would have to be extracted and yet another that needed a root canal.

Makhani pointed me to another dentist. "Talk to him. He's worked in Brazil."

That would be Joseph Chamberlain, a Westwood dentist who said he's done charity work in Brazil, but not in conditions like this.

"They have a nice system of public hospitals and clinics," he said.

But don't patients have to wait for treatment?

"Yes," Chamberlain said. "But not like this. Not for a year."

Stan Brock, who founded RAM in 1985 to bring medical care to Third World countries, told me that in 1992 he began getting requests to do the same work in the United States.

"The people we're seeing here have teeth as bad as the people in the Upper Amazon," said Brock, who used to tangle with wild beasts on "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom."

It would be nice if we could send Brock to the nation's capital and have him grab the vipers and hyenas by their necks until they work out a healthcare reform plan. But Brock has a better idea: The nation's leaders should instead come spend a day at one of his clinics and learn a thing or two.

He pulled out a chart showing that at his last medical jamboree, in Virginia, volunteer dentists performed 4,304 tooth extractions in two days, among various other medical procedures.

"President Obama was just down the road somewhere a couple days later, talking about healthcare," Brock said. "I think it would have been a lot more interesting if he came to our clinic."

Eugene Taw, an ear, nose and throat specialist with the Buddhist Tzu Chi Free Clinic in Alhambra, was one of many Forum volunteers who has worked in other parts of the world. Yes, he said, there are far too many parallels between the uninsured in the United States and the residents of impoverished Third World nations.

At the Forum, his patients included a diabetic amputee who had not been able to buy his medicine for months, a retiree who couldn't afford an X-ray for a lung problem, and a 30ish female diabetic with a kidney ailment so serious that Taw called for an ambulance to take her to a hospital.

"This is great for helping people in need," Taw said of the Forum clinic. "But it's not a good way to do healthcare."

Diabetes and hypertension require regular maintenance, Taw said, rather than occasional urgent trips to an emergency room after the patient deteriorates and the treatment is more expensive. By some estimates, Taw said, 85% of the estimated 47 million uninsured Americans are members of working families. So why not divide the cost of their health insurance evenly among employer, employee and the government?

Taw said he'd seen the Friday headline in The Times about the latest cut in California's Healthy Families Program budget, which means nearly 670,000 children could lose medical coverage by next June. A disaster in the making, he said. Yes, and Brock told me the biggest difference between the Third World and the United States is that in our country, children have had far greater access to doctors.

The huge turnout each day at the Forum made it clear that although Southern California has quite a few free medical and dental clinics, there aren't enough to handle the demand. Among those waiting patiently for help was Walter Samwel, a 70-year-old Vietnam vet from Gardena who has been putting off a root canal for two years.

I asked Samwel why he didn't go to the VA and he said they're swamped with recently returning vets, and more severe dental problems take priority. He had arranged time off from his part-time job as a maintenance man at a Long Beach senior center to come to the Forum, but this was his third attempt to get help. The first two days, his number was too high, and the dental clinic shut down before he was called.

Would his Medicare cover the dental work?

No, he said. There's lots it doesn't cover.

There's something shamefully wrong, I told him, when a man who served his country overseas for seven years can't get basic dental care.

"This is true," Samwel said, "but nobody wants to hear it."

Across the Forum, Adrienne Teeguarden was waiting for her first eye exam in 2 1/2 years. Since her layoff as a clothes designer, she's been working as a part-time nanny and can't afford health insurance or glasses.

Greg Pearl, an optometrist who has done medical relief in Mexico and South America for Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, said it's outrageous that vision and dental care are not in most U.S. insurance plans and are rarely part of any conversation on healthcare reform.

When I asked him about differences in the patients he sees overseas and in clinics such as the one at the Forum, he had a quick answer.

"Here, the patients speak English."

I can't say I was surprised by the spectacle at the Forum, but with each of two visits, I knew I was witnessing the perfect distillation of an unconscionable societal failure. Whether the answer includes the public option Obama has pitched, or the clampdown on obscene insurance company profits proposed by a doctor friend of mine in Wednesday’s column, a civil society has no excuse for not finding a better way.

"I don't have the answers," said Makhani, the dentist who insisted I look closely at his patient's ailing mouth. "I'm not a politician. But I have people here with infected teeth, gums, abscesses. I saw a lady bus driver who lost her job and she's walking around here crying. Her tooth is infected, she's in pain and she can die from this. This is disastrous. This is a Third World country and people need to come and see this."

Like hundreds of other volunteers at the Forum, including roughly 20 dentists simultaneously working on patients while many, many more waited their turn, Makhani had but one motive.

"Why do I do this? What do you think? Look at the need," he said. "What would you have done? Just look at the need."

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Only a few days before Christmas...and family stress is already creeping up on me.  And I do understand that aggression and anger can surface, and potentially ruin this special time of year.

To help "talk me down," I am posting this inspirational message from the Daily Om.  This passage speaks to Loving What You Hate, and understanding your relationship with anger.  It reminds me that releasing my frustration and forgiving is a better way to live.  And it certainly makes for a healthier holiday..

Wishing you a stress-free (anger-be-gone) holiday ;o)

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Words of Love

The Great Transformer

Loving What You Hate

Hatred can be irrational, and it has a greater impact on the individual who hates than the person or object being hated. Yet overcoming hatred is difficult because hatred reinforces itself and causes greater enmity to come into being. The most powerful tool one can use to combat hatred is love. Deciding to love what you hate, whether this is a person, situation, or a part of yourself, can create a profound change in your feelings and your experience. There is little room for anger, dislike, bitterness, or resentment when you are busy loving what you hate. The practice of loving what you hate can transform and shift your emotions from hatred to love, because there is no room for hatred in a space occupied by love.

Granted, it is difficult to forgo judging someone, love your enemy, and seek the good in situations that seem orchestrated to cause you pain or anger. But in deciding to love what you hate, you become one less person adding negativity to the universe. On a simple level, loving what you hate can help you enjoy your life more. On a more complex level, loving what you hate sets you free because you disengage yourself from the hatred that can weigh down the soul. Responding with love to people radiating hatred transmutes their negative energy. You also empower yourself by not letting their negativity enter your personal space. Rather than lowering yourself to the level of their hatred, you give the other person an opportunity to rise above their feelings and meet you on the field of love.

Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Loving what you hate sends a positive, beautiful energy to people while spreading peace and harmony throughout the planet. Instead of reinforcing hatred, you become an advocate for love. Hatred responds to hate by causing anguish. But hatred responds to love by transforming into blissful peace.

Hello friends..

I've been absent from Vox due to a recent battle with a head cold, which became a painful sinus infection.  However, it hasn't stopped me from watching some interesting films and I have one I would like to share with you:  Inheritance

Inheritance on PBS

This documentary shares the story of two women who's lives were shaped by the Holocaust.  It tells the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth, and Helen Jonas, who was enslaved by Goeth and who is one of the few living eyewitnesses to his unspeakable brutality.

From the PBS website:

"Inheritance is an extraordinary, gut-wrenching account of the continuing effects of Nazi horrors on human souls. The Schindler's List portrayal of the Plaszow concentration camp and its brutal commander, Amon Goeth, set in motion the events recounted by this new documentary. Inheritance is a Holocaust film like no other. It tells the stories of two women with very different scars from the World War II genocide of Europe's Jews — whose sorrows and angers intersect in the haunting memory of one man."

Granted, the subject of this film is heartbreaking, and at times, difficult to watch.  But it also features one of the most honest, and personal moments on film.  Watching these two women meet for the first time, on the site where so much pain was delivered, was incredibly moving.

The film is streaming live in its entirety on PBS through January 4th.  Please take a moment to watch the film ~ It has reminded me just how precious life is, and how we can connect even in the face of tragedy.

My NetFlix Review: Dark Days

I've been pretty dissatisfied with the latest blockbuster films released by the major movie studios.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I'm over the age of 35 and female?  And as much as I love Jane Austin-esque stories, I just cannot satisfy all my film needs by re-watching Pride & Prejudice for the 50th time.

So I have wandered into the documentary film genre, hoping for something original, maybe something that inspires.  And I have my first offering to share with you: A documentary from 2000 called Dark Days..

Dark Days

My personal opinion
I found this film challenging, uplifting at times and thought-provoking.  And the filmmaker's personal journey to make & produce a film about the homeless is almost as shocking as the film.  The homeless people's stories are compelling and I found myself identifying with their words, actions at times (which was pretty surprising to me).

My personal rating
4 out of 5, worth renting & will make you appreciate your life

Hello friends,
I hope you all are having a good weekend so far ~ It has been a crazy couple weeks for me personally, and I was inspired by this message from motivational speaker, Patrick Combs. 

I wish for you time filled with joy & a life fully lived ;o)

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Open Letter to a Friend
By Patrick Combs

An Open Letter

My friend,

Your life is now.

I tell you this from the bottom of my heart. It is not what you did yesterday. It is not what you will do tomorrow or in your future. It is now.

Today is your opportunity to live the real life. Today is your time to get out of the swamp of the status quo. You need to be different on purpose:

- Don't sit around your house and watch TV.
- Don't sell your soul for a great benefits package.
- Don't buy things to have a cooler image.
- Don't hang around with people aiming low in their lives.  
- Don't chase money and stuff.
- Don't let the majority shape you.

You are a great-spirited person; it shows in your ambitions and dreams. However, you are not taking your potential seriously. You're trading invaluable days f or mere "good times" and "getting-by," because you're letting your fears get the best of you.

You fear the time is not right, the resources aren't there, you don't have what it takes. And now, your fear is slowing you down like an anchor that slips overboard and drags along the bottom.

The only fear you need is the fear that you might continue living a life much smaller than your spirit and awake someday to find yourself a shell of a person, a product of hundred small mediocre choices. Or worse yet, you might die unexpectedly tomorrow, next week, or next month with your music still in you.

Your life is now.
Your life is now, or never.

- You can't choose money over your real dreams, without a negative consequence on your spirit.
- You can't keep putting your true talents on hold, without ending up talentless.
- You can't keep putting off your big move, without bit by bit, killing off your desire to make a move.
- You can't go on trading away your true power for comfort, without someday ending up weak.

Call on your tremendous mental and physical resources. They want to be stretched, exercised and challenged. They demand to be used to their full capacity. Your reward for doing so will be greatness and excellence.

Let me be blunt, in hopes of making my true point: Everyday you do not commit yourself to greatness, you are falling asleep, allowing yourself to suffocate on an atmosphere of mediocrity. Is the spirit-killing atmosphere I reference real? You only need to look at the news paper or TV to know we are surrounded by negativity that cares little about inspiring greatness. We are often exposed to people who care nothing about being different, trying harder, or aiming higher. And you are barraged by a constant stream of products and services and efforts where average makes the grade.

Yes indeed, you live in an atmosphere of mediocrity, and like poison gas it will dull you, bore you, disillusion you and lessen you if you don't wake up and do something about it.

My friend, your life is now.
Make the best of it.

Sincerely,
Patrick