“I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.” -The Hippocratic Oath (1964)
Kansas is a beautiful state with an incredibly brutal history. Born of an ousted people, baptised in the brutal conflict of both world imperialism and civil strife; torn from a neighbor, with her people strewn across an ungrateful nation, The state of Kansas has borne horrors, humilation, and blood with an uncanny grace. Though her history is especially bloody, she has chosen the path of a healer.
She has watched and helped as her own people with forced onto lands that they didn’t want, and then were treated unfairly by a government that knew nothing of her strengths. She has been a home to immigrants and emigrants, people hoping for a new life in this new world. Populations forced to continuously adapt, grow, and learn, yet through it all remained strong in their conviction that a better tomorrow was possible today, if only one kept at it.
She housed civil unrest as the atrocities from the east found their way to her borders; she herself fought for the rights of humans, while her own neighbors flooded her state, her territory as an evil that she didn’t want reared its ugly head. Yet, through it all, her people persisted; she persisted. As invaders continued theatening her, her people answered the call and fought beside her, for her. When her statesmen faced a divided nation, again they answered the call, fighting alongside the Union.
She fought in the trenches as, yet again, there was a call to arms; she weathered the devastating Dust Bowl alongside the national Depression; she fought in the fields across Europe and Asia, Italy and North Africa; when victory was called and she returned home, she continued her efforts in medicine.
With tragedy, came triumph: She bore a new era of progressivism which led to new growth within her state; she watched the prohibition movement grow in her amongst her people; she watched as her brave civilian, men and women, took u the battle flag to defend freedom at home and abroad; the needs and values of urban America became a common topic, and her personal faith and hope in community only grew during this time; she housed ‘the oil fields that won World War I; and from 1922-1927, she won legal battles against the monsters and won, leading to the collapse of their control and their numbers in her home.
Forged in fire, cast in steel, Kansas and fought and triumphed, fought and lost, and yet she still moves forward. She is both the Wheat Basket and the Jawhawk, the fighter and the healer; a home to a Native people, forced off their lands; home to settler and immigrants, hoping to start anew; a way station for settlers heading west, west, west into the rising sun, into a new future.
Her people have created in her a personal motto, something to hold tight to when the world is falling and the light seems so dim: Do not mistake my kindness for naiveté, my silence for submission. I have willingly done what few have chosen to do: I have put down my bows and arrows, and picked up my wreath and stethoscope.
I have chosen kindness and healing over strife and discord.
She is the Sunflower State
The Wheat Basket and the Wheat State
Alright, so here’s my girl Kansas. This is my personal HC for the Sunflower state, and the picture on the bottom right hand corner I found on a site called Pexels, and the picture was made by the creator Godisable Jacobs. Her pictures are absolutely beautiful.
She’s worked in medicine pretty much her entire life, but took an active interest in it later on.
She knows numerous different methods of healing and has, herself, both created new methods, written about them, and has added hundreds of medical journals and research papers to the science and research of medicine.
She works in different fields of medine, though her favorites are pediatrics and neurology. The former because she adores playing with kids and being around them, and the latter because she finds it pretty cool--its both old and new! Which, granted, is most medicine, but its like some cool sci-fi disovery.
She’s generally very good with kids, but she has lost one in a field of sunflowers before. She found the little boy later, but still.
She and Missouri still have a tense relationship. It’s getting better, but the dude literally militarily attacked her on numerous occasions.
She works with Doctors Without Borders and has donated quite a bit of both time and money on the program.
During the Dust Bowl and Depression, she had lost too much weight and was constantly coughing up dust, so she makes up for that by eating whenever she can, and staying as far away from smoking and cigarettes as possible.
A lot of doctors know her name and by sight. So, when they see her entering the hospital, they know to approach her immidiately and answer all questions that she has.
If she’s not in a hospital, she’s watching netflix or watering her garden.
She sends her siblings sunflowers every year on important dates.
She’s pretty close to CA and FL: the former keeps her on her toes, the latter helps her relax.
She once raised a squirrel and named him whiskers; she once raised a raven and called her Quoth (she loves Edgar Allen Poe, but refuses to let VA know).
She’ll help any mangy animal that she finds.
She’s more than happy to help anyone that needs it, free of charge (she has encyclopedias worth of opinions on medicine and medicare and healthcare. Once she get’s started, she doesn’t stop).
She was a fighter in her early years, and later took up medine.
She was The Head Nurse during both World Wars.
The only alcoholic drink that she likes is C*ke with Rum.
She has a little barn area behind her house where she sometimes helps treat people when they need it.
She didn’t speak to Missouri for a solid decade after the Civil War.
She knows a lot about gods and goddesses of medicine in dozens of mythologies.
She can speak a lot of different languages, and sometimes when she’s angry at her siblings, she’ll snap at them in Greek or Latin. She doesn’t swear at them, just talks to them angrily in Greek or Latin.
During World War II, she once snapped at an especially rude (read: racist) injured soldier and she told him, “Sir, I am an army doctor. Do you know what that means? It means that I have a perfect understanding of the human anatomy. What that means is shut-up, or I’ll break something that won’t grow back. I can take the sight of blood; you won’t be so lucky.”
simultaneously the mom friend, the dad friend, and the big sister friend.
So, this is my personal HC for Kansas, but like I’ve said, states are so vast and all of them carry so much history, that to have one single representative, makes very little sense. So, although this is firmly KS for me, there’s always room for interpretations.
To the person that wanted Kansas, do you want me to tag you in this post? If not, then you know who you are and here you go! I hope you like it! If you do want me to tag you, feel free to pm me and I’ll fix it.
