Post US Sum up.

So we did a holiday to the US. 3 weeks Aeroplanes, spare ribs, supersized sodas, las vegas, Disney, knots berry, visiting family, freeway freaking out, freeway ACCIDENT, catching up with old friends, meeting NEW family, sleeping eating, walking in malls, running in malls, shop til you drop and fast food on the go all you can eat seafood chinese buffets. Uma laia.
It was a fun filled trip. We all put on weight (shock horror) .Most satisfying are the people we met/caught up with and taking the kids to theme parks, the looks on my kids faces meeting mickey mouse and Cinderella....my daughter yelling at the top of her lungs (she is 4) at a robot-olaf snowman (from Frozen cartoon) "OLAF! ITS ME MOANA,YOUR FRIEND" on top of a roof of a shop at disney because she was over the moon to see him in "real life"...was awesome.

We have done that trip, ticked that box. Would I go back again...I don't know, it would be hard to say yes to that. Thats my honest answer. Maybe for a wedding, or a family function, or even a shopping trip if I had lots of money (to pay the fare!) ....but as a holiday?? it was actually kind of hard to relax. Maybe because we had a jam packed itenirary, maybe because it was just too fast for me...life on the go, on the run it felt like.

The impression that the big USA left on me was....masses. Mass consumption, mass production, everything is Massive so as to make life more convenient. I was giving way to people at a park one day on scooters feeling sympathetic that they were disabled, only to watch one lady hop off and say to her partner "ok your turn I'm gonna get my legs moving for a little while" ie....the sit on scooter was actually just so that they didn't have to walk ...wow.

What I saw was that everything is done great- packaged and perfected, even 'having a good time' had been well thought out. We went on a 3 day cruise to mexico and were told it was all about the fun. And it sure had fun thought up and mastered. At 12 noon a big disco broke out on the main deck by the pool, a handful of waiters marched around with really inviting looking cocktails, cheap too, handing them out and charging peoples rooms in all of about 2 seconds (like fastest waiters ever) , then a really cool looking pirate gets up and MCs and manages to get everyone on the dancefloor and teaches them a pretty cool looking line dance . All pin pointed and pasted..12 oclock awesome boogie.  Fun is timed and on time. The whole trip was planned and thought out like this. And there were plenty options.

But where it started to suck for me, was when rote learned greetings replaced common sense. I stood in a line to get off the boat (which holds >1000 passengers) and my dad had to turn around for 5 mins and backtrack to grab something he had left around the corner, and me my kids my mum and husband got chased back to the end of a loooooong ass line because some (dickhead)staff member was(yelling) giving instructions- NO WAITING IN LINE....the line needs to MOVE (ie we were letting people overtake us waiting dad who only took 5 minutes) but they had no ears for our explanations and we just kept getting that above instruction yelled at (infront of everyone) common sense no more.... instances like this cropped up throughout our entire trip..in stores, in restaurants , in the park even by "park police" ( which by the way - who the freak are park police??) people did not have the time of day to listen, there was no common sense. Maybe this is why this country has gone bonkers and sues every tom dick and harry for the dumbest things......?

Then, I started to miss just fresh food....all this fast food, burger pizza taco shit....every corner every street you drove on had fast food places side by side...like 4 burger places on our block on one street across the road. How do they make money? How could they make an all inclusive breakfast $2?What is in those sausages/hashbrown/bread that makes it so cheap??and How long has that been in the freezer for?? Give me an oka, limu or a poke any day over a burger. Then the waste..so much waste...waste of food in restaurants etc....all I could think was, consume, produce and let someone else deal with the devastation. That someone is people in the pacific who will be the first to suffer from rising sea levels from the by products of mass production which is getting out of control The side effects of the waste of mass production are already known but only few are worrying about it. In Samoa, everyone is aware of all the climate change stuff that is in the media all the time. In the US, I honestly felt like no one gave 2 hoots. You never caught a drift of this issue anywhere. You had fast food and a glamourous life being shoved down your throat (the latest gadgets, clothes, celebrities in the media all the time) Climate change?? I don't know....SMOG. I don't get why someone cant build a big suction fan mop in the sky and just filter all that crap out of the air. Honestly I am sure it could be done??SURELY. It is so thick it obscures buildings sometimes so its like a blanket hanging in the air. I say put a wet cloth in the sky and suck air threw it...ok, patent that idea :)

So what else has that made me think of ?? Ancient civilizations - I can't get over the fact that there are civilizations that existed 1000s of years ago who were so brilliant. History tells that some like the Indus valley civilization housed about 5million people (! like waaaaa) they built great buildings, had smart architects (like...what happened to all that knowledge??) had sewage systems and bustling trading centers etc...artists and all sorts... one day ,that all  disappeared. All their awesomeness , their intelligence, all that they had built and gained and acquired over time...lost. Why and how they can not be sure of but there are theories of getting too big for ones boots and being unable to sustain so many people, disease, climate change droughts and famine. Then they just disappeared off the face of the earth, their 'peoples' maybe resettling into smaller nearby villages but without all the grandiosity that they once had. This is what I worry will happen to  us again, except it will be larger scale...we are getting too big (well , 'some of us' ) for our boots. too greedy to gluttonous with the way we live, we are going to out do ourselves and destroy the earth we live on ..and poof everyone will die and disappear. Then maybe 10,000 years from now,pockets of surviving humans revive a new era of humans  and " our time" will be discovered and remnants of our buildings etc will be dug up and our history pondered on, and it will be found that we were stupid enough to destroy ourselves. Amen.Uma laia i'i ga.

My ra raa RAHHHH for the day ;)

Why is it that-

When the sign says we close at 12  people RUSH into the carpark…at 12.02 ..ie we are sweeping the floors and closing the windows…everything has been counted balanced put away and turned off. The last available appointment is- 11.45. They then  proceed to stand in the window and frown and hold on to their sides  like they have appendicitis or are going to give birth to a baby or something.

You

Had

All

Morning.

But obviously, mines a  a job where a closing time is non existent so….my babysitter develops a headache because she wanted to leave at 12.30 to go look after her own kids but now…I'm running late. My receptionist is grumpy because not only is it the time I need now to see someone but all the closing procedures have to be repeated. Count, balance, put away, turn of. Been there, done that. ALREADY. My kids get to see LESS OF ME..and more of the TV. Because –you decided to come at 12 and not before 12. The phone even dares to ring and a sulky voice on the other side goes “eeeaaaaa….you guys close at 12?a ea?....” to which the answer is obviously YES. Then they go “mmmm…ua ke'a le sefulu lua a ea?   eaaaaaaaa….mafai ga ou laku pea loa le kaimi gei fai vave a saka kalavai?’’…..

leeeeaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiii

Why is it that.

People do not see the hysteria and comic of their actions when they come to see me for the first time (ie their file is BLANK) and they pronounce…”FAAFOU  IFO KA FUALAAU KOKO”…and then when asked what they take the proceed to go “KAILO- e pa’epa’e lapokopoko le fualaau”- do you take Panadol for your BP?? Oh wait maybe Metformin?? Oh but septrin looks like that too…goodness grief there are a million white round tabs and you are one person whos been drinking this pill from a packet with a label for 5 years dont know what its called....even a cizzzaaa-something I can do (and I get alot too) but a kailo?? ok...I'm gonna write that on your script.

Go

Learn

Your

Tablets

Names.

Fullstop.

Why is it that.

I go on holiday for a few weeks and then come back to a hoard of angry patients. Most of the convos go like this “ia, well I ran out of my BP pills and now  I have nothing so of course my Bp is UP”- followed by a glare that  kinda looks like a ‘its all your fault’ kind of glare….then a “So I came for a repeat script and YOU WERE NOT HERE”- say it loud incase I didn’t hear or know, that I-was-not-here

Many conversations like this and I was actually saying sorry. Hold up.

Take

Charge

Of

Your

Own

Health

Ie- use another dr the hospital etc….a ou oki ga a lea??? I did have a notice up for a month before I left to which only 2 people were pro-active enough to come get future scripts.

Just a couple of white hair moments..nothing like being welcomed back to Savaii hamo style.

Why oh why ??

OMG
If another male patient takes my polite "building rapport" -ness the wrong way and decides to share with me  all the weird and quirky things they feel  and dont feel while bonking their wives/girlfriends/whoeverIdontgiveacrap.... when they intially just wanted me to check their cold out or refill their script...I might just have to shoot myself. Seriously. like WTF. Is there a sign on my head that says SEX THERAPIST....ok I know my scope of work can sometimes cover some man problems (and sometimes women too) in that department and their are some diseases and meds that can help in that arena...but old men with bedridden wives who want to describe in detail this feeling and that feeling and then BANG...honestly.... and young men who are like " then when I go faster and faster" when the convo initially started off with "my stuffy nose and sneezing wont stop"....I seriously just want to spew in my mouth....

Im trying really hard to tell myself that sometimes, people may have a legitamate problem they need help with. But more often then not, the things that get described are absofuckinglutely normal and I dont know why people feel the need to share with me. Like seriously. You are crossing a barrier. I am just uncomfortable now. The same way your daughter should feel uncomfortable if you told HER about you freakin sexual excursions....it freaks me out too.

And to add to that, I dont need to know that you think that 'cold rush' you feel at the end ...is because you walked over that grave last week and you think a spirit is floating in and out of you. Like seriously, freaky and then scarey...

I am a lover of signs. Signs tell people all the unspoken stupid things that they should be doing that I don't want to waste my breadth on like "please wait patiently until  your name is called  before entering the office" (and not just barge in on other patients  when you feel like it) and "If you would like a repeat prescription, please bring in your medications or at least write down their names"(as oppposed to "koe faafou mai ka fualaau", and then you ask what they  are taking and they say "kailo")
Im contemplating a sign for the above problem but how would one word it ?? please keep the sexual talk to a bare minimum and only if requiring treatment???

eh se kailo se...

Things you can't see

This week, I've had a rollercoaster of experiences over things you cant see. Some my own, some of other people. In my job, often I am a listener. I think its important in a job where you provide a service, to be a good listener.  So I have been listening alot to people that have been suffering, but they suffer from things you can't see. Funnily enough, Ive been experiencing this a little myself. I have found myself the unfortunate victim of a symptom called "Tinnitus" which is basically a ringing sound in your ears. Like, all the time. Its kinda really annoying when trying to appreciate the stillness of the night, the quiet, the full moon, the stretch of black water...and then this darned ringing like someone has a high pitched radio stuck on no station just going EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
 You get my drift.

So, this week Ive listened to people who have things in their eyes (blurred vision aching eyes), their heads (pulsing headaches and migraines) , some depression and even morning sickness! And its made me feel a whole lot of empathy for these people who have these things that you can't see. You look at this person and they look absolutely fine, a picture of good health really! And then, apparently, they are sick. And the most dissappointing part  about what they are feeling is that no one else understands what they are going through, and are even getting annoyed with them. Basically if you can't see something, its hard to understand the nature of whats there. Its also hard to empathise at the right time, and support people who have (ringing in their heads and nausea left right and centre) ....I can see why someone with a not so obvious symptom, could easily fall into depression. Unless you have a really caring on to it support person who ASKS you how you are ...its easy to feel ignored and left to suffer in your own silence.

I try to encourage these sorts of people to bring their support people, their other halves, or a sibling in with them. Someone who you can reiterate the nature of the problem and the severity of their ailment. That does not always happen and this is not always an ideal world. heck, even I feel like that many a time, but sometimes I think my other half is too mechanical with his way of thinking about life. You have a problem, whats the solution, right you're on that tablet huh..the end.And I don't think he is alone in this mannerism. I think alot of people (men) are like this.... and sometimes it is our job to (knock some sense into them ) tell them about whats going on and what you need from them (eh) I am also sure alot of medical people fall into the trap of everyone expecting them to 'treat' themselves as it is our profession- and that includes, nurse oneself and ask oneself how one is. (!)no need for anyone else to ?interfere.  
Not trying to go all Dr Phil on you but in a way I am so too.

Anyways, so just a word to my friends, if you know someone that has something, that isnt like a broken leg in a cast, make the effort to remember and ask- hey hows that _______(insert symptom you heard about in the past but can not see) Because I think human nature makes us look at our friends and family and partners for empathy/sympathy as a way to help get us all through any sort of suffering. And many types of suffering are unfortunately silent.

Adios people:)