Posted by
Catmman on Thursday, November 18, 2010 4:08:04 PM
70% of the public are "uncomfortable" with cutting Medicare, Social Security or defense
according to this survey from the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.
I've got news for people, unless we get over being "uncomfortable" we're headed for some very tough financial times. In fact, our country will go broke. We cannot afford to continue spending, not only on these specific programs but at all levels of the government the way. Everything needs to be cut.
Everything.
We simply cannot afford it.
Back in February, I had a flair up of diverticulitis. In simple terms it is an infection of your bowels, usually in the colon. I've had a few incidents in the past, twice before this one actually. Both times were excruciatingly painful. Those previous time though I was treated with painkillers and given an antibiotic regimen to kill the offending infection. I was better within a week or so.
In February something happened. I developed an infection, yet felt no pain. The infection grew. What made things worse was I was fighting the flu at the same time so I felt bad anyway. The 'under-the-weather" feeling I had from getting over the flu masked the feelings I would have had, had I been healthy. I even remarked to my wife one night that "I just don't feel right". But I blew it off as just getting over a particularly bad case of the flu. Three days before I went into the hospital (here's where it gets a bit gross) I passed blood in my stool. Not little bit either. I have other problems (ahem) which cause me to pass a little blood sometimes, so I didn't think anything of it. I should have.
You see, that was when my colon ruptured. The blood was from the rupture. It didn't hurt. Yet.
Three days later, I was just settling down for bed. I felt a small discomfort in my abdomen. Not intense pain, just some discomfort. I thought it was gas, actually. I took some Gas-X. The discomfort didn't go away, but it didn't get any worse - not immediately. About an hour and a half later, pain was starting to hit, just like it had with my previous flair ups of diverticulitis. But it wasn't a flair up.
In the 30 minutes it took my wife to drive me to the emergency room, I had gone from just having a little pain, to being in full blown shock. The pain was so bad I was literally screaming - screaming - when I got to the hospital.
You see, for three days my colon had leaked detritus from my bowels into my abdominal cavity. It took three days for the wound to result in the pain I was finally having and I was suffering from acute peritonitis. A CT scan (after being pumped full of morphine and a few other pain drugs) didn't show anything. The docs decided to put a scope in my abdomen and look around.
I went to sleep thinking I would be in and out, the docs said it would only take an hour or so to look around, tops. I saw the clock when I went into the ER and thought, "Good, an hour isn't so long..." When I got back to my room I saw that over seven hours had passed. I knew that was bad news.
A little while later the docs came in and explained what happened. They went in with the scope and immediately noticed the (literal) crap draining into my abdomen. That changed the whole game-plan. The had to flush out my entire abdominal cavity - after they found what was wrong. They found the rupture, removed the diseased part of my colon. A few feet all told. Due to the surgery though, they had to install a colostomy, a bag attached to the outside of your abdomen so you can pass solid waste. They cut a hole in your 'stomach', sew the end of your guts to it, then place a special connector to your skin to which you can attache the waste bag.
I lived with that bag for the next three and a half months.
The good news is that in the 'takedown' surgery they were able to perform some more repair work to my colon, re-attache everything and get my 'plumbing' working again. Now, six months after my surgery (other than a couple of huge scars on my belly) I'm good as new.
OK, I know, what's the frickin point...
We are going to have to go through some significant discomfort to fix our nations financial issues. The problem is people still want to ignore it or try other 'solutions' (like me taking Gas-X) for a problem requiring significantly more intervention. What is different from my anecdote is that we know how big the problem is. We know what needs to happen, what really needs to be done to fix things. But people are "uncomfortable" in making those cuts...
Well, I'm here to tell you that you better wake up. We've had our warnings, our flair ups in the economy a couple of times over the last few decades. We've treated those flair ups with painkillers and anti-biotics, doing nothing, not really having the will to go in and remove the underlying cause of the pain, removing the diseased part of the body.
Well, we're on the cusp of having another flair up. Only this time it won't go away with some pills. Things will burst and spill infection into every area of our nations body. If we wait until then it will take ginger hands and delicate fingers to fix things - the mess will be huge and will take a long time to fix to give the patient a decent chance of survival. The doctors told me that had the pain waited another 12 hours or so to present itself I would have stood an even chance of not making it out of the hospital alive. The infection in my abdomen would have probably been too great and it would have been touch and go. A colostomy would have been the least of my worries.
As it stands now, attaching a 'colostomy' to our economy by constant stimulus and bailouts and quantitative easing is only a temporary measure in dealing with the waste.
If you think cutting Medicare, Social Security, defense and other areas of the government is uncomfortable, try crapping in a plastic bag attached to your gut.