TexanForeverMD

They seem to be based on the idea that people who completed four years of medical school and however many years of residency and worked hard and sacrificed and were constantly pushed out of their comfort zone and didn’t see their family or friends as often as they wanted and made new friends and communities wherever they found themselves, and did this their entire young adulthood, aren’t actually resilient and that the issues they’re facing can be fixed by meditating for five minutes a day and taking a walk at lunchtime.

First of all, since when did physicians get lunchtime?

I get really mad when I sit through those burnout discussions because I feel very blamed.

It is not the fault of someone who works 80-100 hours a week, never sees their family, and puts 100% of their emotional energy into a job that takes and takes from them that they feel burned out. So DON’T tell me to “practice mindfulness” or “do more yoga” or “make time for my family” – like I could somehow fix myself.

I am strong. As physicians and trainees we are incredible to fight through what we do every day. So let’s change the conversation – we’re not burned out. We’re taken advantage of. Our humanity and our love of our jobs is taken advantage of.

Working holidays and not being paid for that - just facts of life. Duty hour violation because we fucked up the schedule? Your fault and you deserve to feel bad about it. We let you out of mandatory teaching time half an hour early, so you can go back to your rotation instead of going home. Because it isn’t like your work day just gets to be shorter.

If I hear another person working in the hospital, especially if it’s a nurse, tell me “you signed up for it. If you don’t like it, shouldn’t have been a doctor” I will flip my shit. No one signs up to be abused because no one really tells you about it until you are too far in. And it isn’t an easy out, because these skills aren’t transferable to lots of other fields that will help me have enough income to pay off the debt I got to get my education in the first place.

while ted cruz fucking went to cancun

And I’m feeling both relieved and kind of guilty that we’ve been one of the people with power–we’re on one of the critical circuits that can’t be turned off, there’s a fire station and other infrastructure they need to protect–and that yeah, my upstairs pipes froze, but they thawed yesterday and no signs of breaks. I’m lucky. And even lucky, I’m still not doing great; we have to keep the temperature low enough (to protect the grid) that my hands are stiffened up, even in fingerless gloves, and my whole body aches, and my already limited spoons are whittled down even further.

The authorities are saying, “Use less power, stop trickling water, insurance should cover it if your pipes freeze, and if not, you may get reimbursement from FEMA…” *Should*. *May*.

Meanwhile, the guys who manage the state electrical grid (and oh, that’s a story in and of itself) live in California and Michigan. Ted fucking Cruz is in fucking Cancun.

The stores are empty, because no trucks have gotten through to restock.

And the worst of all? This is the logical end point of Republican policies. This is what happens when utilities become commoditized. This is what happens when you pursue the ‘free market uber alles’. The Texas electrical grid is independent because Texas didn’t want no fed'rl reg-u-lation, no sir! Which means we have minimal connections to the other two US grids, because selling power interstate would open us up to regulation. Which means we can’t *get* power from the rest of the US, if it had it to spare. On top of that, ERCOT knew ten years ago that the Texas grid was vulnerable to cold weather. But, hey, winterizing infrastructure costs money, cuts profits, doesn’t have an immediate payback.

And if you think it’s a policy set and continued by Republican state leaders, you would be correct. Half of Texas is lacking multiple basic services because rich people playing “You’re not the boss of me” want to get richer. It’s infuriating. And it’s costing lives. (But not rich people’s lives, so they apparently don’t matter.)

People are dying because of this. The number of carbon monoxide poisonings alone… because people are desperate. Disabled people can’t get power to charge their medical devices. Older people get trapped in buildings with no power, surrounded by ice.

Yes. The modern Republican party is a profiteering death cult whose rallying cry is “Got mine, fuck you, die slave!” The Republican state leadership is a shitshow, everyone’s pointing fingers, no one takes responsiblitity for the policies that they’ve been supporting for *decades*.

If you haven’t seen this story, look up his name: Francisco Galicia. 

Galicia says he lost 26 pounds during that time in a South Texas immigrant detention center because officers didn’t provide him with enough food.

He said he wasn’t allowed to shower and his skin was dry and dirty.

He and 60 other men were crammed into an overcrowded holding area where they slept on the floor and were given only aluminum-foil blankets, he said. Some men had to sleep on the restroom area floor.

Ticks bit some of the men and some were very sick, Galicia said. But many were afraid to ask to go to the doctor because CBP officers told them their stay would start over if they did, he said.

I would remind you that concentration camps are actually real. 

“I told them we had rights and asked to make a phone call. But they told us, ‘You don’t have rights to anything’,” Francisco Galicia said.

I want to mourn her and celebrate her and thank her for everything that she did, all the decisions that she made that helped me grow up in an America where I was safe to pursue all the things I wanted. 

Instead the first emotion I felt wasn’t sadness, or humility, or solemnity. It was fear. Chill down the spine, tears in the eyes, heart racing, muscle clenching fear.  

This will be false.

He’s also cut the budget for the CDC every damn year for the past 3 years