“Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won’t come in.” ~ Alan Alda.

I have recently been ‘residing’ in my adopted homeland, Jamaica.  When you’re retired, you don’t have to think in terms of vacation, free to set your own return dates and deadlines.  There is nothing like a change of scenery to give you a change of perspective, a chance to examine the world, and the US, from an outsider’s point of view.

But even with all the lush scenery (it has rained almost every day, unusual for this time of year), even with the variety of birdcalls tantalizing in the early morning, even with views of real (not imagined) mountains rising up around me, offering protection from the outside world, even with all of the distractions of Jamaican local news, it is hard to escape what is happening on the world stage.

Many years ago I was the night nursing supervisor at a hospital known as a ‘Long-term acute care’ facility.  This is a hospital for those with complex medical issues, multi-system challenges, too sick for a Rehabilitation facility, but stable enough to be discharged from the regular ‘short-term’ acute hospital. In nursing terms, these patients were ‘heavy’, meaning they had multiple nursing issues, were often ‘total care’, dependent upon nursing for many of their needs.  In order to spread the daily caregiving tasks more evenly across shifts, it was expected that the staff on the night shift bathe some of the patients during their shift.  This relieved the work for the day shift, when things were busier, when physical and occupational therapists would also be delivering care, and doctors made their rounds.  One morning I received an angry phone call from a relative.  His mother, he told me, had been woken up in the middle of the night, and given a bath. ‘What are you, nuts?’ he asked me. When we had made the decision to bathe patients at night, we had assumed that the patients chosen would be those who were unconscious, confused, incontinent, those who perhaps did not know night from day.  In following our guidelines, the nurse had woken up an oriented patient, which of course does sound ‘nuts’!

They say that one of the biggest causes of medical errors is due to breakdowns in communication.  We ‘assume’ (that word again) that because we delivered a message that message has been received and understood.  Nowadays, with text messages being our most common form of communication, we can easily start a chain of confusion due to lack of punctuation, and usually, failure to reread before we hit ‘send’.  Even verbally, especially with cell phone service sometimes ‘breaking up’, we can be misheard or misunderstood.  Yesterday I learned that lesson as I waited to be picked up for a ten o’clock appointment.  My ride thought I wanted to be picked up at ten!

Driving in Jamaica has its own challenges.  The various GPS options can show you directions and arrival times, but it cannot take into account the multiple random taxi drivers who stop anywhere, any time, to pick up a passenger.  They may even go as far as stopping traffic in both directions, acting like a school crossing guard to allow their passenger to first cross the street!  There are more cars on the island than can be accommodated by the roads, so congestion is always an issue.  Add to that the potholes, causing drivers to swerve unnervingly, perhaps into your lane.  So these factors (along with many other interesting twists) have to be added to any computations of travel time.

When not being distracted by Mother Nature, news of a more disturbing nature keeps banging at the door.  When a world leader appears to no longer be in control of his faculties, when are the responsible adults supposed to step in?  Those who are the loved ones and caregivers of people who show signs of cognitive decline often have hard decisions to make.  Taking away driving privileges from someone who gets lost when going to the store is tough, but prevents future tragedies.  Providing round-the-clock monitoring is necessary when that person begins to lose touch with reality, and may decide to go out of the house for a walk in the middle of the night.  It is at first natural to cover up for that person as they forget names, don’t recognize close relatives, repeat the same question every five minutes, but sooner or later hard truths must be faced.

With someone who was already forgetful, or erratic, in the first place, it may be difficult to distinguish their normal tendencies from a new problem.  We may assume that this is just them, only worse.  And so we accommodate their eccentricities, their quirky personality.  But when that person has the biggest job in the world, the consequences are much more serious for all concerned.  As we watch with increasing horror, as the world watches with increasing horror, we are all waiting for the responsible adults (who have so far been ignoring all of the signs, happy in their delusions and positions of power) to finally acknowledge the truth.

I visited my old primary (elementary) school yesterday, up in the hills of Clarendon.  I wanted to see how the champion ‘Robotics Club’ was doing.  I was told by a nine-year old student that ‘programing is easy’! You might assume that a country school in Jamaica, an island still recovering from the worst hurricane to make a direct hit on its shores, does not have students building robots to solve real-world problems.  You would be wrong!  I am happy to report that in this case (fortunately the damage in this area was nothing like the western portion of the island) the future looks bright and is filled with bright-eyed children full of potential and ideas.

This Friday morning, as the non-vacation nears an end, I am happy to see glimmers of hope in everyday people standing up for what is right.  I am hopeful that there is a possibility that the ship that is the United States will right itself, and that the world leaders will challenge their old assumptions to find better solutions.  But it is up to us to call out those false assumptions, and to demand better from our leaders. 

Have a wonderful weekend, Family!

One Love!

Namaste.