The article linked at the bottom of this blog should only concern you if you have a human body that might one day require hospitalization to recover from illness or injury or need support if there is no longer hope of recovery...which is basically anyone reading this.
One remarkable thing about this article is that since it was on a nursing website, it will most likely only be read by nurses which means its basically preaching to the converted.  So  I think it should be dragged out for some non nurse intellectuals to ponder.
The second remarkable thing  is that it makes me know that I'm not alone.  I'm a nurse who has watched the level of patient care in hospitals steadily decline since I got my first job in a hospital as a nursing assistant in 1982, while still in college .  That's why I, like many many of my colleagues, have left hospital work. When I read this article, it reminded me that the reason I dread the thought of ever going back to hospital ER/Trauma nursing is because I have morals and standards. I'm a nurse. Healing, caring, teaching,curing is our business, not profits.  And it really doesn't have to cost a lot to keep a population well.  They just want it to cost a lot.  How else would big pharma and insurance companies, hospital execs get rich?
I once had a nurse manager tell me that the executives at the hospital we worked for actually respected the Ladies Auxillary Volunteers more than the nurses because the former raised money for the hospital-they were a credit, whereas the nurses used resources and with their salaries and benefits cost the hospital money-a debit!!  Never mind that the resources the nurses use are to care for sick injured and disabled people and the entire purpose of a hospital is to care for sick injured and disabled people!!!  HELLO, is anyone listening?  We don't think they are.   That's why we're leaving.  That's why I called this blog entry "No one to watch over me"  cause that's basically whats going to happen when you should be unfortunate enough to have to be hospitalized.(honestly, for me, at this point the way I see it, its scarier than just dying outright!)
It's a business now.  The business of caring.  Yeah .Sure. 
Don't listen.  Just read:

.http://nursing.advanceweb.com/editorial/content/editorial.aspx?cc=114327

One of the public’s worst nightmares is to go to an Emergency Room seeking help, being ignored and dying. In fact this is also a nurse’s worst nightmare: having a patient in your care die needlessly.

In this latest (but not last, I’m sure) episode of a woman dying in the ER while waiting, I noticed that the sister was quick to blame the nurses, saying “I want to see the nurses pay for what they did.”

Amazing. Did she not even consider that any doctor could’ve acted as well?

Whenever a person is saved from some life threatening illness or injury they are so quick to thank the doctors. Nurses rarely get a nod. But when something goes wrong, it’s the nurses.

I think it’s awful that patients die waiting to be seen in an ER. But sadly, after having spent 16 years as a NYC ER nurse, I can honestly say I can see how it could easily happen.

Nurses plead not to have things like mandatory overtime and high nurse patient ratio but hospitals and the health care industry consistently either ignore, or fight against these pleas. The public’s not getting quality care and we’re not getting fair working conditions, yet it’s costing a fortune and somehow the hospital, HMO’s/health insurance companies and pharmaceutical company’s are making out like bandits. And they just don’t care-plain and simple. Why change a good thing? (for them)

The ER I left 3 years ago still has a nurse patient ratio that is often 2 ½ times what is considered to be safe according to the California law which is the only one in the country setting compulsory safe nurse patient ratios.

Nurse are too tired, there are just too many sick patients to care for..no time, no available ER stretchers for anyone coming into the ER, with ambulance arrivals lining up in the hall. ..no beds upstairs to move admitted patients to…no meal break to replenish-too busy, can’t be spared. The same story. That’s why I left. And I’m not alone. More and more are leaving (and not being replaced), so the problems in hospital care are bound to get worse.

Many primary care doctors send their patients to ER’s on weekends holidays or at busy times, as they too are feeling the crunch that HMO’s and health insurance company’s are placing where reimbursement for services rendered is concerned. Again these company’s just don’t care… Stay well or die, cause they don’t want to pay.

Add to all of this, the patients who use the ER as a primary care doctor. There are some patients who would come weekly to our ER. What do you do with a patient who calls an ambulance weekly complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath, basically because she’s bitter and lonely and her children don’t want anything to do with her? Chief complaint: c/o CP & SOB…every time. EKG, labwork, chest x ray-all at the taxpayers expense and always negative. After a while the one doctor would see her on the EMS stretcher, tell them to take her off it and sit her in a chair and call social work and psych without even registering her. I told the doctor its the “little boy who cried wolf” syndrome and she agreed responding, “Exactly, she’s gonna die in a chair in this ER one day. One day she’s gonna come in here and it’ll be real but we’ll ignore her. It’s crazy.

But do you do the “million dollar workup” every time?” These are questions we deal with and say “No”. I wonder if the general public would agree. I’d love to know.

Worse yet, are the many patients who use the ER as their primary care physician, yet will often not follow, in any way, the medical advice they are given. They continue to eat junk, smoke, drink too much alcohol, not exercise, etc. They get a prescription and are told to follow up at their doctor or their clinic. They don’t bother to fill it, or they fill it and don’t take it as they should or stop taking it maybe because they felt it didn’t work or made them sicker, yet they don’t follow up with their doctor, or a clinic as they should, to let anyone know this. Then they return to the ER having done nothing to help themselves and expect the ER staff to solve all their problems. Or they decided to skip that appointment for a wound check and now they are back with a raging infection. What do you do with someone who makes no effort to be an equal participant in their own health care? The list of specifics in these situations is long but the end result is the same: a huge crunch of people in city emergency rooms.

Much of the problem is lack of insurance but surprisingly, many of these people have insurance or Medicaid so there is no excuse. There is only ignorance and the belief that it’s someone else’s responsibility to take care of you. And for many with no insurance (certainly though, not all), there is no excuse as well. We all consistently make priorities in what we choose to pay for. Health is a priority yet most people would pay their car insurance before health insurance!

The system is strained beyond measure. The conditions in large metropolitan ER’s across the nation is similar: overcrowding and misuse of ER’s-lack of nurses willing to work under those conditions, leading to worsening levels of care. More people will die waiting for care.

(Not-soon-enough-to be-ex)President George Bush continually amazes me. The Iraq Study Group expressed what the large majority of Americans have already long since realized-we need to start to draw down the military presence in Iraq. Yet he's decided to INCREASE the troop level. It’s as if our president is a rebellious teenager, doing the opposite of what the wiser elders tell him to do, just because he can get away with it. Impulsive, all ego,acting without fully considering all the possible outcomes, just the desired one-yup, sounds like a teenager to me.

Increase the troop levels. Hmmmm. If this isn’t what my Mom would've labeled “a day late and a dollar short" then nothing is.

I remember Mr. Bush saying that he wouldn’t send our troops anywhere to die without good cause, yet that is exactly what he did. Everything he supposedly thought was true and lead us to believe was true wasn't true. There was no reason to send our troops to Iraq. The lives and talents of brave, courageous, dedicated, unselfish, devoted patriots are being wasted for no reason, many lost forever-the light of life and all the gifts and talents for that young life are gone. As some would ask about aborted fetuses or frozen embryos, "Who knows what diseases might have been cured or inventions born or novels written, paintings painted or lives saved by those who have been killed?" I ask this about our troops.

Based on his decisions it seems that Mr. Bush places more value on the lives of frozen embryos than those of living adults. It’s as if these people are simply toy soldiers in the war games of the Boy King. Increase the troop levels….say what??? These are people, many whose gifts and talents and light of life will be extinguished forever. People-who we need to fight off the real enemy-those who actually damaged us and who are out there still, seeking to do more. People-who were taken away from fighting that real enemy in Afghanistan, or rather, never sent out to fight them at Tora Bora in the first place. (btw where is Osama? thought Bush was gonna git 'em dead or alive-more empty talk).

But if Mr. Bush is so devoted to this cause in Iraq, then I think he should kick off the process of troop increase by sending the twins there-or at least one of them, geez. This act would be the only indisputable proof of the sincerity of his dedication. Because then he would be really risking something-something precious that he has asked far too many American parents to risk. And he himself might have something precious to lose if the results of his decision are a disaster.

Don’t let them fool you. There is no nursing shortage in America. Two million plus nurses is NOT a shortage. There is however, is a shortage of nurses willing to work under the conditions currently being offered by the hospital/healthcare industry/corporations. Nurses joke about it, “Yeah, yeah, lots of nursing jobs are out there. Trouble is they’re all basically the same crappy one!”

A veteran of 20 years of hospital nursing, I was recently talking with a nurse I worked with for years in an ER-Level I Trauma Center in NYC(veterans we are-we worked in ‘the trenches’). She is now doing legal nurse consulting and has cut her time down at the hospital to one per diem day a week, just to keep a hand in it. She says the old ER is like being in hell and I believe it. I’ve been out of hospital/ER work myself for over 2 years now and it was hell when I left. We discussed two other nurses who also left, one to do outpatient radiology at private practice and the other who joined a traveling nurse agency. They, like us, got fed up and got out. And we are not alone. Nurses are leaving hospital work in droves and of those who aren’t, most want to leave.

I consider nurses to be the “canaries in the coal mine” for the healthcare delivery system. And since we’re leaving or seeking to leave hospital work more than ever before this should be alarming to anyone who is…shall we say…HUMAN.

You might be perfectly healthy now but can still be in an accident and end up in a hospital at any time. Many of the patients I cared for did not plan to be in an ER that day.

Sure, anyone who has tried to help out a sick or injured relative who has been shuttled out of the hospital days too early to save the HMO money knows the value of good nursing care. So does anyone who has ever been critically ill in a hospital and survived. I could go on with other examples but the fact is that too few people really understand what nurses actually do(can’t imagine why with such accurate portrayals in the media!) let alone what they want, so here’s a simple rule of thumb: What’s good for nurses at a hospital is good for patients. This is a very, very important concept to bear in mind.

And what is it that nurses want/do not want?

1. We want safe nurse to patient ratios. This means not being so overwhelmed with such a large number of patients that you might make a mistake or are not able to give the most thorough of care. It’s common sense. One nurse can do more for 4 patients that he/she can for 8. And in our business, mistakes are not good.

2. We do not want mandatory overtime. In fact we loathe it with a passion. If you know a nurse, ask them what they think of mandatory overtime and you’ll see. No one wants to go to work and not know if they will be able to go home at the end of their shift. No one wants to be forced to work against their will leaving family/other obligations in the lurch. It’s unsafe for patients as well. To John/Jane Q. Public I ask: Would you want the nurse who is exhausted, or preoccupied about his own ill spouse who is at home alone, or the one who is upset about missing her kid’s long awaited dance recital?

3. We want real input into the running of our units and issues affecting patient care and the quality of our work lives-not lip service.

4. We want to be treated with respect for what we know, for what we do and for the mountains that we move every day. Again lip service doesn’t cut it.

But hospitals are run like businesses now. And nurses just don’t seem to fit the “corporate model”.

The hospital I used to work for insisted that we refer to patients as “clients” or “customers”. They changed the name of the Nursing Office to “Patient Care Services”, which was far better than “Customer Care Services”. But still, I couldn’t help but wonder if they would stop calling us nurses and start calling us “patient care servants” instead!

This same hospital had daylong “Customer Service” classes for all employees telling us how to treat our “customers”. I wanted to scream, “We learned how to care for patients in nursing school. We don’t need you to tell us this! We need for you to listen to us so that we can direct you in the best ways to care for people and make them well. We need you to not only listen to our problems, critiques, complaints and ideas for solutions but most importantly, we need you to act on them, instead of blaming us as if we’re the problem!”

But they don’t listen. Why? Because they don’t really care about making people well, they care about money. But to this end even, they are very short sighted. They don’t seem to realize if they gave nurses better working conditions(safe nurse patient ratios, respect, and decision making power for their units) they would save a bundle in so very many ways. Here are but a few: better cared for patients get well quicker and leave the hospital sooner, thus the cost is less for their care. A bit of a nurse’s time and reassurance given to a patient (which is free)can make more of an impact on a patient’s well being than an expensive IV medication. (I once witnessed a nurse lower a patient’s heart rate 25 points by just giving him calming attention rather than running to the doctor to get an order for a medication to do the same thing). Nurses are also the key monitors of the expensive equipment on our units. We make sure these items do not “walk” off the unit. I once stopped a new intern from accidentally opening up (thus contaminating) the wrong sterile kit, saving $600 that quickly, just because I had the time to notice. If I was loaded down with patients that day I might not have noticed. It’s also not very cost efficient to be so rushed you drop and break the $10,000 monitor. Happier nurses don’t leave their jobs, which saves a bundle on nurse recruitment. I read a brilliant analogy in a great article about the current hospital dilemma of inadequate retention/recruitment of nurses-I’ll paraphrase: “Trying to fill nursing positions while providing horrendous working conditions for the nurses already on staff who will simply leave is akin to pouring water into a bucket with a huge whole at the bottom and wondering why it’s never filling up”.

This statement sums up the essence of the nursing “shortage”. The hospital industry has it all wrong. Hospital administrators just don’t get it. They think they can ignore us, the nurses on the front lines of healthcare delivery, and still run their business efficiently. To them, as long as the patient won’t sue its no biggie if they die. And if they do bring suit, they have their trusty team of lawyers who will take care of the settlement and keep it low. Got no insurance? You’ll get no care. True the law forces them to take you in but though may need that ICU bed based on your medical need due to the injuries sustained in your accident, you, Mr Uninsured will lie on a stretcher in a busy overcrowded ER with over whelmed doctors and nurses barely keeping you alive until we boot you out as early as we can. But until then you’ll be crowded in with other uninsured patients and even those with insurance but whose doctors get such poor reimbursement from the insurance companies they send all patients to the ER rather than see them at odd hours or go through the trouble of getting a direct hospital admission to a room(which in fairness is usually not available anyway). An as for follow up care without insurance-good luck.

Our hospital administrators would talk about how they valued their nurses even as they cut nurses from our shift. “You only need one nurse to cover both triage and the trauma rooms in the early morning on weekends from now on.” we were told. Say what?. Yeah that’s fine…unless there’s a trauma!! We were a level one trauma center and the thing with trauma is you never know when you’ll get one. Then no one who walks in to be triaged will get triaged. They’ll sit and wait..cause the one nurse covering both areas cannot be in two places at once (that would be THE ultimate multitasking ability and the only one that nurses have yet to master!) and his/her obligation is to be with the guy who got hit by the car, cause he might die any minute. But the administrators aren’t worried. They’ll pin any problems(like, say, a patient who waited in triage until they died) right back on the nurse. The administrators don’t care. It’s Saturday and they’re off doing whatever they do on weekends. Theirs is a Monday to Friday, 9-5 world. I used to wonder what the CEO was thinking as he would walk thru the ER, appearing to survey the scene but walking quickly without stopping to speak with anyone-God forbid. I wondered, did he hear Ka Ching! when it was packed to the rafters with sick, suffering people? I heard their moans. What did he see, income, as in business is booming? All I saw were the sick suffering people, who had too few nurses available to them and who were consequently getting substandard care for which they were paying more than anyone else in the world!

The hospital administrators would disrespect the nurses by disregarding our hard fought for union contract in too many ways to count but here’s a few: They’d put out our schedule far too late, sometimes only days before its start rather than the 2 weeks the contract stated. This caused problems with the personal lives of the nurses who would have to wait to make vital appointments let alone any personal plans, as the days off were always different. Vacations requests were strictly regulated to be handed to management on time lest the nurse lose her seniority in the granting of the request yet they went unreturned weeks and weeks after the contract stated that the response to our request was due. It’s hard to plan a vacation if you don’t find out you’re able to take it until a week before! They would consistently not pay time and a half for overtime worked as was stipulated in the contract but decided instead to consider the overtime they were asking you to do that day to be per diem work(which is signed up for in advance) rather than overtime, just so that they could pay the nurse at the(much) lower hourly per diem rate(a “redefining” move that George Bush and company would applaud mightily). Here’s the kicker….They spent tens of thousands of dollars to fight our union with their trusty lawyers over the extra $14 a day charge pay that the staff nurse in charge of the 57 bed ER would get!!(I used to say that the $14 was just enough to buy the Pepcid and Mylanta needed to cure the heartburn from the stress of being in charge of the ER for the day!) (PS: we won that one in arbitration)

So, what can the public do to help nurses? (and consequently themselves-see rule of thumb, you haven’t forgotten it already?)

If you or anyone you love goes into a hospital for care:

1. ASK the person taking care of you/your loved one, “Are you a Registered Nurse?” If they aren’t then ask the name of your nurse. Different ancillary staff may do things for patients but still all patients should have an RN assigned to them.

2. ASK your/their RN on each shift, “How many other patients are you taking care of?” or if you’re feeling savy, “What is your nurse patient ratio?” The number is always something to one, the something being how many patients and the one being the nurse. There are researched based specific acceptable ratios depending on the time of day, type of unit and the acuity of illness. In an ER that number is usually 4:1. In an ICU 3:1, 2:1 or sometimes 1:1 if the person is critically unstable. On a night shift on a regular medical/ surgical unit the acceptable ratio might be 12:1 , 15:1 or even higher. Nursing research over ten years has proved that the higher the nurse patient ratio goes above the acceptable safe numbers, the higher the patient mortality. Need to know more? Google Linda Aiken, the wonderful woman who did the research to finally prove what we knew all along, much of which I believe was used by the California Nurses Association in its successful(?) fight to become the first state in the nation to have a state law mandating safe nurse to patient ratios in hospitals. Remember the Governator, Arnie, incurred the wrath of nurses (well deserved wrath I might add) when he tried to delay the implementation of this life saving legislation? To add insult to injury, he attempted to portray the NURSES as the special interest group!! I don’t think he, or anyone else for that matter, realized how nurses all over the country were looking toward California, waiting with great interest for this groundbreaking legislation to pass and be implemented. Arnie said it would cause hospitals to close. Again I ask John/Jane Q Public: Would you rather have safe hospitals but fewer hospitals or more hospitals but have to worry whether you’ll make it out alive?

The California law is a very good thing for nurses and that is good for patients. If only, if only legislation like this could be passed in every state. Then no patient would ever have to fear that there will not be a nurse to answer their call for help or to care for them when they are in a hospital.

3. All people, no matter what age or level of health need to educate themselves about advanced directives(or not and maybe end up like Terry Shiavo). They encompass a living will, a health care proxy and, for the terminally ill, a do not resuscitate order.

4. ASK to speak with a nursing supervisor if you are not satisfied with your care or if you feel you are being discharged and sent home prematurely. Go as high as the CEO, the CFO or the COO if you have to. Write letters to them. Letters to the CEO are huge, believe it or not. In their world they hate bad letters from “customers” and they respond to them by taking action (unlike the lip service they pay the nurses).

You, the American public, do have the right and the power to ask and do all these things. It’s only your life that’s at stake.

It’s been said that for al Qaeda, 9/11 was a tactical victory yet a strategic disaster. But it may be too early to tell. These people are patient; they look far down the road. Perhaps we should too. Consider this:

Bin Laden did his best to insure that when the US responded to the events of 9/11, he had Taliban protection, a place to run and an escape route to someplace safe. If he thinks long term, maybe he figured that if didn’t get killed immediately and instead made it to his safe place, then he could just sit tight and wait it out in order to eventually (say, 4 or 5 years down the road), begin to regroup.

Perhaps Bin Laden was hoping and praying that Bush would do something stupid that might assist him in regrouping, like invade a Muslim country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and thus play right into his hands by winning him more recruits, complete with training grounds, while taking some of the heat off Afghanistan allowing for a resurgence of the Taliban. Wait a minute…maybe it was not such a disastrous strategy after all.

Sometimes things just go right, even with this administration.

Today, well, I’ll just quote from the NY Times Editorial:

“After more than two years of obfuscation and procrastination, the Food and Drug Administration has finally approved nonprescription use of the morning-after contraceptive pills…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/opinion/25fri2.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fF%2fFood%20And%20Drug%20Administration%20

Well, Hallelujah!!

Some common sense for a change on a subject that for me, and my colleagues in health care, was so frustrating. Why? Again I’ll quote the Times Editorial:

“The news is also a reminder of how long the administration has blocked this sensible move simply to placate religious and social conservatives who consider the pills akin to abortion or an inducement to unprotected sex…”

In fact once again the neocons are simply wrong. Scientifically WRONG! They just make up stuff. As the Editorial points out:

“…The morning-after pill, which is actually two pills taken in sequence, is an EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVE that can head off a pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of intercourse, or preferably earlier. That makes it IMPERATIVE to have quick access to the pills without waiting for a doctor’s appointment to obtain a prescription.”

As a matter of fact, one ER doc I worked with for several years would, on principal, not see the patient who came in requesting the morning after pill. She would simply write the prescription and the ER discharge all at one time then hand it right off to a nurse to deliver. I asked her once why she did that and she told me, “A woman shouldn’t have to come all the way to an ER,register,pay a copayment,then wait to get a drug she needs that is perfectly safe for her to buy over the counter at her local pharmacy. Men wouldn’t force men to do this.”

So the FDA commissioner was basically forced to give in and do the right thing.

One more from the Editorial that really hits the nail on the head:

“Since virtually all the scientific evidence shows that the pills are safe, no self-respecting F.D.A. commissioner could reject over-the-counter sales without looking foolish and craven.”

Surprisingly President Bush agreed with the decision. Could he have been thinking of his pretty 20-something daughters?

Thought I'd share an excerpt from an e-mail sent to me by a friend who lives in Zurich and has his 16 year old son staying with him for the summer.

"The city government issues holiday passes for kids up to 16. It gives them

unlimited rides on any public transport in the canton, free entrances to pools,

museums, zoos etc, and offers participation in courses and activities like

rafting, go cart driving, golfing etc. It's an amazing offer for just over 20

dollars, and allows me to focus on my work..."

Any working parent can vouch for the beauty of this one! Your smaller children never pay when you (or the sitter) take them places, and if they're older they have healthy productive things to do (say, rather than drinking alcohol and doing drugs like many bored American teens). To me this shows a society that truly values their children (and its working parents), not just in words but in action.

And in the end it makes the whole society better.

The shame of it is that in the US we have enough money for our cities and states to do the same(God knows we pay enough in taxes, as in- kiss 1/3 of your check bye bye) but for the greed and waste of those in charge of them. Nipping off the old public coffers is just too damned tempting to many. May they rot.

But there's still hope. Perhaps they could borrow from our enormous military/defense budget.

The American Middle Class, the backbone of this country, is becoming extinct. And it's tough to survive without a backbone. Who can spend time with the kids? Most of us have to work 2 jobs just to pay the bills because the cost of living (or at least rent and health care shall we say) goes up by 10-15% yearly yet salaries go up 2 or 3% if at all. It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that the budget gets tight after a few years. Working harder, getting less. The quality of our lives and most unfortunate of all, our family life is slipping because of an overabundance of greed and waste.

So I say borrow bigtime from our enormous military budget for some decent social programs and some lifelines to the middle class, like a college education that’s within the realm of affordability. Otherwise what is it we're defending by spending all this money on defense? Our superior quality of life?

If we like to call the United States the greatest country in the world(and I hear it all the time), then we have to be the greatest, not just talk about it.

I’m an American who’s getting the feeling that the interests of my country are becoming secondary to the interests of another nation, who is a strong ally but is often treated as if it were the 51st state rather than just another foreign country.

Recently my country has cut off aid to a government that was elected freely in elections that were encouraged by my government. Why? Because they don’t want to formally recognize this other nation, our ally.

Why should I care as an American whether this new government recognizes our ally?

Not only have we cut off the money flow to the new government but have prevented other countries from giving assistance via the banks. Now there are many workers there who aren’t getting paid. Life gets miserable when you go without a paycheck for a few months as most people who ever have can attest. That can really piss a person off, so naturally they’ll protest. Wouldn’t you? This foments rebellion actually, which is probably what my government wants to do--destabilize this freely elected government because we decided we didn’t like who was chosen by the people (so much for democracy in action) due to their poor relationship with our ally.

It’s not right for my government to do this. People who work deserve to be paid, no matter who their government is, and we are knowingly causing misery to those people even if they don’t get along with our ally. To me, they’d be justified in disliking us because of this. And all because the freely elected government won’t recognize our ally. How does that benefit my nation? It doesn’t really. In fact it may even harm us. When you do the wrong thing, the wrong thing comes back to you

Our ally has been building a wall which makes life hell for the others. A wall between people literally and figuratively is a bad thing. Would you want a wall between you and your significant other? (OK, bad analogy). The whole world condemned this wall because it is wrong. Did we, in deference to both ‘the right thing to do’ and to our ally, abstain from the vote?(the wisest diplomatic decision, I think). No, we vetoed it. That was wrong. How does it benefit my nation to do this? It doesn’t really. In fact it may even harm us. When you do the wrong thing, the wrong thing comes back to you

Having allies/good friends is good. You help them, they help you. You would go out of your way to help each other. That’s great. But when your friend asks you to do something that is morally wrong, this is something completely different. This is where you draw the line and set your boundaries. If your friend wants you to do something that will be to your peril, that is where you draw the line and set the boundaries.

But consistently we don’t. We seemed to have slowly been brainwashed into thinking that the interests of our ally are always in our own best interest. I don’t believe that they are and I think we seriously need to start making this distinction. I think that cutting off this aid to the freely elected Hamas government is wrong and can only bring the wrong thing back to my country, which is my primary concern.

Perhaps I’m off base here or ill informed but I can’t help wondering:

Are we Israel’s bitch?

Note: Please clearly distinguish in your mind the difference between the political state/ foreign country Israel, and Jewish people in general, because the two are not the same in my mind.

I had to laugh reading about the newly unveiled Gospel of Judas which, after more than 1700 years, is being displayed for the public in Washington, DC.

The bank it sat in from 1983 until 1999/2000 was in Hicksville LI, right next to Levittown, where I grew up and also very near Westbury, where I was living in the late 80's. I drove past that bank many times during those 17 years, and who could’ve guessed that a lost book from the earliest Christian writings of the New Testament was in there? I mean, of all the places in the world that this codex could've ended up.... that no frills, dinky little Citibank near Sears, just a few miles from where I lived.

Now a friend whose opinions I respect says that this historical find is of no major consequence, that the Bible is pure fiction, that God is made up to make people feel better about their miserable lives, that religion is just a way to control the masses and as proof of the ridiculous nature of the Biblical stories he asks, "How did Noah get a polar bear on his ark anyway?"

My argument against my friend’s view firstly, is that this document was written by people who lived on the earth nearly 2000 years ago so for that reason alone it is remarkable and of interest. One expert opined, “The revelations of this ancient document’s text will be discussed for hundreds of years.”

Secondly, God is an almighty and all powerful entity, so what seems impossible for people is completely possible for God. It just depends on whether or not you truly believe that a Higher Power is there. This is what Paul meant by "We walk by faith and not by sight." And it’s what I call being a true believer. If you agree with my friend, save time and stop reading here.

This lost Gospel tells us that Jesus entrusted Judas with the most difficult task of all: To point Him out to His enemies so that God's will could be done.

Judas showed the true nature of what obedience to God means. It certainly couldn't have been an easy request to fulfill. That's probably why he ditched the silver coins and killed himself, because his motivation wasn't greed or to sell Jesus out. It was about honoring Jesus' request for his life's purpose. It was about serving the Lord not the way he wanted but the way God wanted, though it would not only bring the wrath of the other apostles but the scorn of millions of Christians upon his memory for 2 millennia.

I think this rare find is telling us that the 2000 year old grudge against Judas should be dropped. He did what had to be done as directed by the will of God--what he should do, not what he wanted to do, and certainly not what would be the easiest or most advantageous thing for himself.

From this perspective, he who we have vilified for so long, is actually a far better person than most of us are. I mean how many people do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, even if it’s to their personal disadvantage?

So it's time to forgive Judas.

In modern day psychobabble, “He was misunderstood.”

"God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:13)

After 20 centuries, to me, a true believer, things have finally worked out for the good for Judas.

Interesting too, that 2000 years after dying on the cross, Jesus' life is still teaching us about forgiveness and obedience to God.

Yesterday I read “What of the Other Fiends?”,  a NY Daily News Washington Bureau online article by James Gordon Meek.  It said that some family members of September 11, 2001 victims want the masterminds of that horrible day to be prosecuted and stand trial, instead of being tortured in some undisclosed location outside the country.  I couldn’t agree more. 

Before Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured,  I had read that he was the one who thought up the plan that devastated so many lives that day and I prayed he would be caught. When he was caught, I was thrilled but I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t huge news. I never heard anything else about him for the longest except that he was outside the country in a secret location and was in US custody “being interrogated”.

So for three years I’ve been wondering why no one has brought up this subject and I’m so thankful for this request by Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband Ron, and  Harry Ong,  who lost his sister Betty.  Perhaps someone will listen to them.

First let me say that when you do the wrong thing, the wrong thing will come back to you.  Perhaps not in a direct way, but eventually.  Know it.

Torturing people is wrong.  Full stop. What religion condones it?  Not even Martha Stewart can say it’s a good thing.  How in the world can the US administration talk about upholding Geneva Conventions regarding not torturing captives, then turn around and say it’s OK for us to do it?  When you say one thing and do another, or your actions don’t match your words, you simply lack integrity.  Are we a nation of integrity or not?  Or doesn’t that matter anymore if we can still “get ahead” without it?  Does one ever really  get ahead without it? 

Do people really think that torturing someone reveals truthful information anyway?   I don’t know about anyone else but I’d tell you whatever I thought you wanted to hear, truth or not, if you were torturing me.  And it’s been 3 years,  how much information could they possibly have? 

 And don’t get me wrong, I’d secretly love to pummel them myself.  Revenge is part of our baser human instincts.  But can’t we rise above that and go with our own expressed American principles of a reasonable trial?    

As a trauma nurse I have had to care for people who are injured or ill and under arrest for shooting someone, or committing other terrible crimes against innocent people.  I had no choice but to rise above my base instinct of wanting to see them suffer or in some way pay for their crimes. But I’m a nurse, not a judge. I took an oath so I did the right thing by my profession. It’s called having integrity. And it may serve us best this way in the end.

If you do the right thing the right thing comes back to you. 

People are physical, emotional and spiritual beings.  And many times I’ve seen the difference the emotions and spirit can make in the healing and recovery of the physical body.  I  believe it  would be good for the psyche of the American people as a whole to get the satisfaction of seeing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Whalid Ba Attash  prosecuted, and to have to face those whose lives they have destroyed.  I believe the family members who are asking for these prosecutions are crying out for this action.  I can totally empathize.  It’s called being human.  And it’s the American ideal.  That which truly makes us a model for the world.  Open justice, not torturing someone in secret.    Perhaps it would also help Americans to refocus on the real culprits of the worst terror attack ever against us.  It would do our spirits good to see these guys face American Justice.  It’s the right thing and will bring the right thing to us-healing and recovery.

In the Daily News article Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecuter who led Congress’ 9/11 inquiry said that when you try someone in court, you have to use evidence you obtained legally and so the defendant could claim he was tortured and be freed.

Yeah, and I’m Jessica Simpson!  Does this woman really believe that any court  would let them go free?  Puleeeze!   These guys have made no secret of their ties to terrorism-the evidence is in their own words and previous actions, spoken and done of free will. 

So I say, Bring… Them… On!! 

The Bush Administration owes it to the American people. Short of nabbing bin Laden it’s the best thing they can do to give us some sense of real justice here.   Then we won’t need  to watch re enactments like the upcoming and somewhat dreaded ‘United 93’ for “closure”.(bet it breaks box office records).

Instead we can see the real thing to its conclusion, which would be a lot more comforting.