2000-06-27 - 22:56 MDT

June 27, 2000

Dissent

I don't try to be a cynic or a participant in the soured, pickled classifications of almost professional, pessimistic schools of thought. Some of these people seem to get deep satifaction from trying to portray all humanity as foul creatures from the depths.

I think that the performance of triage should be pursued in all fields. An intelligent estimation of the condition of the things at hand. Triage - - - a life saving and life promoting operation. A quick laying out of the hopless cases waiting and in most cases dying any how, those who were beyond help when bought in. Then next the least wounded then serious cases and so on up the line. The routine is faster than the eye can follow. The least harmed are the last administered to while the seriously critical hurts are taken care of first.

The media, the politicians and the rabid, radical special interest groups try to prevent triage, they don't want anyone to take an intelligent look at situations, they want people stirred up all the time over something as it sells something, a precept, a book, sponsorship by commercial interests, a division of thought. No the word triage is the skeleton at the feast, the leper sitting in the lap of the impressionable ones.

Gee, I wish I could remember who said, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff." He or she should have a medal for that profound thought. After all the bull hockey has blown away it is often found that the scare statistics pushed are small compared to the population of the group in danger of more serious harm or already have been harmed and being threatened with more harm. I don't want to be hard hearted, but triage, triage must be used. If a certain action would prevent one hundred people from being harmed in our country, and the big screamers shout 100, 100, 100 over and over again, but they nor the media give the percentage of the population that it entails. Some of these hundred here and hundred there can keep unpopular but needed action which will give a much greater percentage of alleviation.

Yeah, mindful that it is all small stuff the reasonable mind can see some things are a darn sight smaller than others. If scare tactics and bull hockey are kept out of the picture the money, concern, effort and feelings can be put where they will do the most good.

I sorrow in my heart for the hopeless cases who are put aside during the triage process, but usually the per cent helped is much greater than the per cent of the hopeless. Triage is necessarily used in most every emergency activity, helping the largest per cent seriously in trouble first and then devoting all effort toward helping those ones less seriously in trouble.

It brings to my mind that short verse in the Bible, "Jesus wept." Many, many emergency workers are weeping inside and sometimes break down totally from the sorrow that they cannot help every single one in trouble. They include doctors, nurses and orderlies in the emergncy rooms in hospitals too. The strain of triage and the attendant sorrow are buried, but show up in ulcers, madness and descent into the pit of hopelessness.

Triage is a necessary thing, even in your home - - - if the sink is flooding or the commode is running over and there is a fire in the kitchen, triage is simple there and easily understood and can be understood in much more serious matters if the scare mongers are kept out of the picture by some intelligent journalist or other person of importance saying, "Hey, just a minute, are you going to refurbish city hall when a forest fire is racing toward town and the dam is about to burst ?" Real answers don't come easily, and often, amongst the scare mongers, dissent is stirred up among we peons. By guess what ? Diversion, obfuscation, scare tactics, lies, twisted statistics and the big club of blame for losing the small percentage of "hopeless" cases who would have been hopeless even if given immediate expert attention.

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