Ireland's Health Famine and the chosen few.

It's a very cold day out there, but the sun is shining and there is a clear blue sky.  My home help is just gone, wracked with worry for her son-in-law with liver cancer.  It doesn't look good, she admits and we share the unfairness of life.  Yesterday my cousin Lucy called and I was delighted.  No-one bar my twin and neighbour Carol ever cross my door and it gets very lonely these days.  I always had visions that my English friends would 'keep in touch' when I left the UK after 42 years but I don't hear much, well, nothing really, from them at all...at all!  Only one has crossed the ocean to visit.  Again this is a shock to the system.  You can tell I'm not having an especially good day today.  I think because I'm very tired and done my back in again.

I wonder really where society is going in it's moral/ethical visions of 'caring', or if 'caring' is really a bygone ethos, almost 'old-fashioned'.  Here where I live someone on the 'community' forum declared that people HERE would not 'walk-by' the needy and homeless as if this place was somehow the centre of 'caring' in these parts.  it was arrogance, for around about me loneliness is killing the elderly and not so elderly. not so long ago I put a note in all my neighbours doors asking if anyone could walk my dog when they are taking their own dog out.  not one answer. so tell that to the woman who believes people here in my new village would not 'walk by'.

then there are the chosen few in society who get all the love care and attention of whole communities, whole nations.  these are usually children.  very sick children.  I'm the first to cry when I see a very sick child, but the almost hysteria-like campaigns around some high profile little kid, usually dying of some dreadful disease, worries me. I look upon the t-shirts with loved pictures on them, whilst droves of 'communities' go on walks, fun raising, and such-like and wonder how THIS kid, became so famous in his/her suffering.  yes, I do like to see families supported, no doubt about that, but there are adults and elderly really in agonies of suffering and because THEY are adults, not being so cute, they don't get the same support, campaigning for their suffering. no-one rallied when the 90 year old man, my sister's neighbour, was in hospital recently and there were no relatives to visit or take his 88 year old friend to see him.  my ill sister did that.  when he came out of hospital none of his neighbours brought food.  we did.

my community nurse spends most of her time with new born babies.  they get the obligatory visits but the elderly do not. so whilst the local 'famous sick kid' is feted, campaigned about, t-shirts made, events arranged, what about all the other sick disabled, elderly lonely people.?  and what about the politics of such campaigns.

is this a real socialist community all-together effort?  no, this is apolitical.  it is like an event,  staged and fun to do.  it makes people feel good.  'the feel good factor' is not political.  it is a sop to guilt. whilst fighting little kid battle, we can ignore all kids battles with the corrupt and dying infrastructure of our health service.  these campaigns say nothing about the state of this nations poor, neglected sick, elderly disabled population.  private entrepreneurship - fund raising, is charity and charity itself sucks the responsibility away from politicians. we have kids living-living in hospitals because they have tracheostomies and no local care/support for them to live with their families.  we have disabled people with no wheelchairs, older people with no home helps, and the list goes on.

so whilst the 'community' makes one life better or easier for one child there is not the out cry about the poor abysmal medical/social services for the majority of public patients in this country.

but I am a hypocrite, for I'm doing just the thing I hate...fund-raising for a medical need not provided by our heath service.  Who am I then to cast any criticisms on these individualised/popularised/mega hyped 'poor kid needs' campaigns...but isn't this the awfulness of it all.  we are all now out with our begging bowls. we are back on the Dickensian streets of Ireland, famine Ireland, begging for what we need.  in my  case, and my twins; we are 'begging' for good powered wheelchairs'.  charity fund-raising IS begging.  is demeaning and humiliating.  and austerity has got us all, who are sick and disabled rattling the boxes and begging bowls. we have opened a bank account in the ulster bank in bray Co Wicklow, acc number 11281838, sort code: 985375. that's the begging bowl!

but we are 60, 61 on Monday 25th November, not cute kids in distress, but old wrinkles trying to just get out and about.  and whilst my feminist-socialist-Christian leanings abhors the culture of begging , Europe, bondholders, corrupt governments, and troika officials force more and more into a famine of need that may yet surpass the last famine of food.  Archbishop of Dublin only this week said there are hungry children in Ireland, that is famine of food, but there is famine of health too... and the health famine is ignored as high profile 'little kid dying needs treatment' campaigns lets the corrupt government off the hook. 

there are hundreds of sick, disabled and elderly needing 'treatment' they are not getting.  we are in a health famine and no-one seems to notice.