Facing The Medical Music | What It Means To Get Sick

Getting sick shows us how fragile we are; how fleeting life is. One bout of high blood pressure, pneumonia or even the measles can take you out. It can make you pray like you've never prayed before. And it can make you look at things through a different lens.

Funny how trauma causes one to be introspective and spiritual. However, at the root of a medical event is fear at its fundamental best. 

We are this complex human machine which is fragile and subject to break down at any given moment. The body can completely shut down leaving your loved ones and friends to funeralize you. Or it can break down in parts giving you a chance o repair what's weak or the alternative, face the eternal music. 

Like a car that needs brakes or a motor, your body can become worn and tired from abuse and misuse and it responds in kind. Doctors may try to fix it or maybe they just use sick people for lab experiments? They try this medicine, run that test, just to see what works, or if it works. Like heating up a mixture of chemicals over a Bunsen Burner, one mixture of a pharmaceutical cocktail could sustain one part of your body yet create a problem in another area. It's all scientific - one big chemistry formula directed at a living being that has a physical abnormality.  When it's your body being poked and prodded your level of discomfort is relative to how bad you want the sickness to go away. Sometimes you don't get to choose. 

Try getting shot and discover you don't have a choice as to the technique being used to save your life. A surgeon will quickly grab scissors to cut your clothes off you just to get the chance to cut through your flesh to remove the thing inside you that threatens to shut your machine of a body down.  Then you'll get sewn back together like a piece of fabric. But I digress, the greater good was to save a life. At the end of the day that's the end game; to save a life. Side effects, scientific experiments be damned! Doesn't matter how you get to Vegas just as long as you get there. 

Thank you doctors and nurses for putting me back together again.

400 Years.And.Still

They've been tearing us apart from our men folk since they first brought us here on those slave ships.  We didn't ask to be brought here, as a matter of fact we were kidnapped. Maybe because we don't pick cotton from them anymore, and they can't make us slaves again, they don't need us anymore. Like we don't matter. Yet they've found other ways to enslave us.  Poverty, incarceration, homelessness, subpar or non-existent means to education are some of the ways they tighten the ropes around our necks.

They shoot and kill us like stray dogs, all while denying our Civil Rights. No one understands how the sins of 400 years still haunts the black folks of today. We don't even know why we wake up feeling great despair, anger or just out of place. We don't have a chance at building a family when our men are jailed for 30 or 39 years based on a lie. Or murdered before they become men thus destroying another branch on the ancestral tree. 

Everyone knows if you cut off the branches, the tree won't be protected. Black men are the branches. With them dead or incarcerated, young black women don't know how to be; they lose hope and out of desperation do whatever they need to just to make it another day. Without a nucleus the cell erodes and dies; same goes for the black family. Without black men, the familial unit is incomplete and its offspring are lost. Not knowing how to be, not knowing what a family looks like, those offspring never truly grow to their full potential. The Black family unit is dying and no one seems to know how to save it. Too bad this isn't a fairy tale. Truth really is stranger than fiction. 

THE BIG LET DOWN | A NEW SHORT STORY BY LATEASE RIKARD

She left the office in tears. Tamala couldn’t believe what she just heard. It felt like her whole world had caved in on her. The job she held in such high esteem had turned on her like a wild, unfed tiger. At her age she wouldn’t find employment easy. No matter what her skill set was. All she could think about were the friends she’d made, the experiences she’d shared. Now it was over all because of her boss.

Tamala had been out of work for a year now. Being unemployed had seriously eaten away at her savings. If she didn’t find work soon she’d be forced to file for unemployment and food stamps. Tamala was too proud to do that. She was raised to work for what you want. Don’t take handouts, only quitters do that. Her family was strict and self sufficient. There were no exceptions. You either made it in  this life or you didn’t. Tamala was embarrassed to ask for help. She didn’t want anyone in her family to know that she was unemployed so she kept up the façade like nothing was wrong.  But today things hit a bad bump in the road and she felt like she was rolling down the fastest roller coaster to hell. If only Tamala hadn’t asked the question. If only she had of kept her mouth shut. Maybe she could go back there. Not a chance, there was no turning back because reality was in control.

It all started when her assistant manager made his rounds like he did every morning. Making sure everyone had what they needed to get through their day and if he could be of assistance if not. Tamala had been wondering when she was going to get the help she needed. Help on one of her most difficult accounts that had been promised. Her assistant manager told her in front of the entire team that at the end of the month everyone’s focus would shift to help Tamala close out her account. The work load was so heavy it really needed two people to work it. But Tamala’s boss felt she could handle it he had said previously. He felt she was smart and this shouldn’t be a stressor for her. Well he was wrong. Tamala didn’t get the direction she needed to work the account, she was literally walking blindly trying to figure things out. Most times it was trial and error, more often error.

It was the end of the month and the reports had to be accurate for her client. As each day moved closer to Friday she felt the weight of an incomplete project looming. Not completing this project in full meant Tamala would be denied a raise again. Deep down Tamala felt like a loser, like she couldn’t play ball with the younger reps. Tamala was too self critical; she judged herself before anyone else could.  As she was on her way to the copier she had to walk past the offices of some of the executives.she heard her clients’ name. Trying to pretend not to hear the conversation,  Tamala heard her name once again but this time she heard the words “let go,” as well.  Was she going to be fired? Tamala instantly felt sick to the stomach. She needed this job, they couldn’t fire her! How would her bills get paid?

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