Crime and Punishment

Honestly, I read and watch the news and more often than not, I catch myself wondering what in the world has happened to our once great nation – and great citizens? It’s as if a “lazy, irresponsible, ignorant, selfish bomb” went off and infected at least half our population – if not more.

There are so many things going on today in America that completely sickens me, I’m really not quite sure where exactly to start my rant. To keep myself from rambling too badly, I plan on tackling each issue separately. So, in no particular order:

Crime and Punishment (or the lack of)
I watch the crime shows on TV like American Justice, Notorious, COPS, 48 Hours, Cold Case Files (on A & E, not the “drama” television series) etc. More often than not, I am completely disgusted by the eventual sentencing. 25 years to life for raping and killing two women. Life in prison for killing 8 or more women. Of course, often, life in prison means several decades and then laws will change and these scum of the earth will find themselves in front of a parole board.

The death sentence in this country, for the most part, is a joke. Look at Charles Manson and his murdering followers. Death Penalty – yet, there they all sit some forty years later. Sentences commuted to life in prison – all on the tax payers’ dime. However, they too get in front of a parole board….how anyone who faced the death penalty at one time could possibly end up in front of a parole board is criminal in itself – and makes our justice system look like a farce.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment? No, slaughtering people in their own homes – killing a pregnant woman while she pleads for the life of her unborn baby, kidnapping an eight year old, raping and burying her ALIVE is cruel and unusual. The death penalty (when it’s actually carried out) is probably too easy.

I think a lot of Americans feel that we’ve taken our justice system and turned it on its head. Victims have NO rights compared to the criminals. Someone drags you from your car at gun point and steals your vehicle? They might see the inside of a jail cell. Heck, just watch a couple of episodes of COPS and you’ll see an officer pull up a suspect’s record and it’ll be screen after screen of convictions and arrests – and there the turd is, out on the street to claim more victims instead of tossed into a cell where he belongs and the key thrown away.

Take a good look at California and you’ll see what will eventually take over our entire country. The police chase a suspect running from them in a vehicle, some innocent person trying to go to work or home from work is injured during the pursuit and all of a sudden, instead of the suspect being blamed – there are idiots lining the street cheering the scum on…and the politicians screaming at the police for CHASING A CRIMINAL for crying out loud. In some cities, the police are no longer allowed to even chase a fleeing vehicle. Instead, the same people who screamed to stop pursuits will be the same people screaming the police “let” criminals get away when these same fleeing twits end up victimizing them or their families when they commit another crime. And, they will commit another crime.

*sigh*

So, I say we need to toughen our laws and once again make criminals face consequences – stiff consequences. Here are a few of my ideas:
* Run from the police in a vehicle? Face attempted murder charges for every occupied car you hit, assault with a deadly weapon charges for people having to dodge your sorry ass – a charge for each person in a car that was in danger of being hit. Run those charges up – make mandatory minimums and here’s a concept – make people SERVE the exact time they are charged with! Get 15 years? Your butt will sit in a cell (or preferably a hot tent like the Arizona sheriff started) for the FULL fifteen years from the date sentenced.

* Assault one of our nation’s finest? Automatic LIFE in prison. If these fucks will hit a uniformed officer – what do you think they will do to you or your family without hesitation? I don’t care if it’s just a tussle and the officer breaks a nail. LIFE in prison – no parole. Shoot at an officer or use any kind of weapon against them (whether anyone is hurt or not), automatic death penalty. These men and women have to deal with abuse on a daily basis from the worst society has to offer. The least we can do, as a law abiding society, is to let them know we stand behind them 110% and will not stand quietly by and allow them to be at the mercy of the scum in our society.

* Gangs. Sheesh…if we think it’s bad now, give it another twenty years. Not only does every large city in our country face these thugs, even smaller cities are being taken over. Along with our home-grown gang bangers, our ever growing illegal immigrant population is now importing some of the most deadly gangs the world has to offer. If we thought the Mafia was dangerous and enacted RICO to combat them – we need to take a look at these gangs and find a way to wipe them out too. At least with the Mafia of a generation or two ago, they didn’t target innocent civilians. It was pretty rare for someone who was not involved to wind up hurt or killed. With the gangs of today, killing is as easy to them as deciding you’re the wrong color (or happen to be wearing the wrong color) to walk on “their” street. Never mind the fact that they are unemployed, pay no taxes and have done the LEAST of any citizen to say they own anything – much less a street. They do own it though…they own it by control and fear – and it’s time we stand together and say enough is damn enough. There has to be something we can do to destroy them without destroying our Constitution. If we keep doing nothing, even the smallest towns will find themselves on the wrong end of a losing battle.

* Sexual Assault. Let’s face it, whether it’s against a child or an adult – not much can impact a victim of a crime more profoundly than sexual assault. None of the victims will EVER be the same. Why do we ever let these animals out of prison? I’m fine with the death penalty on this one too – but I’d settle for life with no parole – ever. Invading some one’s body…gosh I cannot imagine what it must do to a person. Victims of home invasions often never feel safe in the home it happened and end up moving. What about sexual assault victims? Where do they go to EVER feel secure, to ever feel safe? For impacting another human’s soul on such a violent scale – the criminal should have to pay an extremely high price and never be given the opportunity to harm another person.

I decided to scale this back and only cover crime and punishment… Originally this post was titled, “I’m Sick of the Nanny State” and I’d planned to vent about the biggest problems with our current crippling of our Constitution, starting with crime and the lack of punishment and ending with the FREE society – free as in, “I want everything free and I have a RIGHT to FREE food, health care, housing” et al. But, think I’ll stop here and tackle the other subjects later. Not like they are going anywhere unfortunately.

One last thought though – if I could afford to live in Florida, I’d be packing us up and moving us there. I like their stance on gun rights and the fact the state government realizes that law abiding citizens have A RIGHT to defend themselves from the thugs of society – including the right to use deadly force. My state is coming around, but unfortunately, with a demoRAT in the governor’s chair, they are coming around much too slowly. It’s much more important to make sure our illegal immigrants have IN STATE tuition than to pass laws that protect a law abiding citizens’ right to defend themselves, their homes and their property. *sigh* Just typical…

Our Baby Had Surgery

Since we found out in January he’d need the surgery, I’ve been a nervous wreck. I’m so relieved that it’s now behind us and that everything went so well.

We found out there was a problem when the school sent a note home this winter that he’d done poorly on a hearing test. I talked with the school and was told that a lot of the children had similar results due to all of the cold/flu bugs going around at the time and not to worry too much.

I scheduled an appointment with our doc here in town and took him in – as the note about the hearing test suggested. Our doc said he had fluid in both ears and gave him a course of antibiotics. He wanted to see him again in two weeks.

We’d noticed prior to the hearing test that he wasn’t hearing well, but he’d been sick with a cold/cough off and on for several weeks, so until the hearing test I’d rationalized it that way. After the hearing test and our visit with the doctor, I thought the second course of antibiotics a month and a half after he’d had antibiotics when he’d had the bad cough would clear it up.

The two weeks passed and I took our little guy back to the doc. Unfortunately, he still had fluid in both ears. Our doctor said we’d try one more course of antibiotics and if that didn’t clear it up, we’d need to go see an ENT doc. As you can tell by the title of this entry, the last try didn’t work and we ended up having to drive our baby an hour and a half to another town to see the specialist. This doc was the closest one to us that takes Tricare. Just hard to believe with two larger towns within 35 minutes of us, no ENT docs in our area take our insurance.

So at the end of January, we made the trek to the specialist to see what he suggested. He looked at both ears and said they were full of fluid. He put a camera in his nose and said his adenoids were taking up 50% of the space – so he suggested we put the tubes in his ears and have his adenoids removed due to son’s history. That history being – daughter can bring home a cold and within a week son not only has the cold, but he has a barking cough to go with it. EVERY TIME he would get sick, he’d get this horrible sounding cough. Doc thought removing the adenoids would more than likely help so he wouldn’t constantly be draining stuff into his ears and throat.

So, Sunday night came too quickly. Daughter spent the night with our friends and their daughter. Husband, son and I made a two hour trek to the clinic where the ENT doc performs the surgery. The clinic an hour and a half from here is new and they are not doing surgeries there just yet. Anyhow, the surgery was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Monday, March 10th. Since it was so early in the morning, we decided to go down the night before, find the clinic and then find a hotel close to it.

We stayed in one of the Suites hotels – can’t remember now which one (yeah, I handle stress real well lol). At any rate, THE WORST beds we’ve ever slept on. They were way too soft – the kind of soft where a mattress is worn out – not a pillow-top soft kind of mattress. We were burning up on the 3rd floor, but then froze when we turned the air on. Just a miserable night. It felt so awful having one of our children with us and our other baby two hours away. I love our friends – they are such great people and their children are the same ages as our children, so our children are friends too. But, it still felt terrible without daughter with us and not five minutes after we dropped her off I think husband, son and I all wished she was with us.

Anywho, after surgery was pretty rough. The surgery itself took only ten minutes according to the doc. While they took him to the first recovery area, we go back to a little room where the doc comes in and tells us how it went. He said that everything went great. He didn’t have hardly any fluid in his right ear, but had quite a bit in the left. We asked how long until he’s hearing better and he said he should be able to notice a difference as soon as he wakes up. We ask a few more questions which he answers in great detail (we really like this doctor) and he tells us that as soon as he wakes up, they’ll come get us and we can come back to the second recovery area and be with him.

Husband and I sit back down in the lobby and about thirty minutes later they call us back. We’re taken to a long hall that has these little cubby like areas off to the left. Each has a hospital recliner in them, a blood pressure/heart rate machine and an area for a child’s size bed. Towards the end of the hall they show us into our little cubby and pull the curtain open. About that time, I see them – no, the first thing is I HEAR my baby – and then I see two nurses pushing a bed around a corner and down the hall to us. Son is laying on his side in the bed and trying to sit up – all the while screaming, “MOMMY! MOMMY! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!”

Now, you have to know my children to know how out of character this is. My babies are pretty well behaved. They say yes sir and no ma’am. Since they were two years old, I’ve not had to tell them to settle down in a restaurant – much less in a store and especially not in a doctor’s office or a hospital.

So, to hear my baby screaming in terror for his Mom, put my heart into my throat and it honestly scared me to death. I’d never seen him like that – ever. Not to mention the fact my babies call me Momma and haven’t called me Mommy since they were itty bitty…

They get him to our little cubby area and I tell him Daddy and I are right here, that it’s OK. He says gasping, “Oh Mommy, I woke up and couldn’t see you and I was so scared. Oh Mommy….” I tell him that we’re right here now and Daddy and I aren’t going anywhere. At this point, I guess it dawned on him that THE MAN was in the house LMAO and he says, “Oh, Oh Daddy…I couldn’t find you and Mommy.” Husband says, “It’s OK buddy. We’re all together now.”

The nurse asks him if he wants to sit with me and he says yes, so I sit down in the recliner and they put my baby in my lap. He still has an IV in his hand and they attach a blood pressure cup to his left arm and clip a heart monitor on his toe. He lays his head on my shoulder and doses for a minute and wakes back up and starts to get upset again, “Mommy, Momm…” I tell him that I have him and he’s OK…just to lay right here on Momma and he’ll start feeling better in a few minutes when more of the anesthesia wears off. He closes his eyes and settles back down and I keep talking to him about any and everything I can think of, just so he can hear my voice.

After about ten minutes he wakes up a little more and says his head hurts bad. The cute little red headed nurse is in there and she asks if he’d like something to drink and he says yes. Then he says, “Oh I think I’m going to be sick…oh my tummy, I’m going to throw up Momma…”

The nurse hands us a plastic hospital issue puke holder and my baby throws up blood two or three times. I tell her that I told the staff that I’m a HUGE puker after being put under and I worried he would be to. She says that they’d given him a phenergan suppository while he was under. Our body won’t digest blood though, so he probably is sick due to swallowing the blood and once he gets it up, he should be fine. He says his head really hurts, so the nurse leaves and comes back with a syringe and a cup of water with a straw. She gives him the medicine in the syringe by mouth and tells him to drink the water to help get the taste out of his mouth.

And that’s when things get scary.

He lays his head back down on my shoulder, closes his eyes and doses back off. Meanwhile, the blood pressure/heart machine starts making a funny noise. Husband, the nurse and I look at it and see that his heart rate is just getting higher and higher. The nurse walks closer to the machine, clicks a few buttons to reset it, changes toes on the heart rate monitor and it counts for a second and starts making the noise again as it registers his heart rate at 191 beats per minute. The nurse says she’ll be right back and husband and I sit there with our baby and watch this monitor count the beats and make the loud noise every few seconds.

A few minutes later, the nurse is back and she has the doctor who put him under with her. We’d met this nice lady prior to the surgery when she’d stopped in to talk with us about putting him under. She tells the nurse that we need to wheel a bed back in here (when they’d put him in my lap, they’d removed the bed). The nurse finishes hooking up a bag of saline to his IV and leaves the room. Honestly, I can’t really remember what the doc did from there…I think she listened to his chest with her stethoscope, but I can’t be sure. Husband mentions that everything was fine until he was given the medicine by mouth. That we’re not sure if that has anything to do with it, but it wasn’t long after he got the medicine that the machine started making the loud noise.

Soon the nurse was back with a bed and she reaches down and picks my baby up and puts him back in the bed. She gets some sticky round things and puts two on his chest and one one his back and hooks that up to the blood pressure/heart rate machine. The nurse had done a print out of his heart rate prior to going to get the doc and after hooking him up to the machine with the sticky things, they printed out another. The doc said to let him get the entire bag they’d hooked up to his IV and she’d be back to check on him shortly.

Son was now more awake and talking normal – without the gasping fear sound to his voice. The nurse went and got him a warm blanket and he snuggled quietly as he talked about how scared he’d felt when he first woke up. I told him it probably had a lot to do with being so groggy from being put to sleep for the surgery…that I always wake up feeling all weird and shaky from surgery. I told him it was normal and the more awake you get, the less you feel like that. He agreed and said he was sorry for yelling, but he was scared and just wanted to see us. I told him it was quite all right – that I’m sure everyone understands and there’s nothing to be sorry for. We wanted to see him really bad too .

*sigh* My sweet little boy…

By the time the bag was three quarters empty, his heart rate was back to normal. The nurse came back to check on him and said he looked really good. We asked her what had caused his heart rate to go up so high and she said she wasn’t sure. She said what had concerned her so much was the fact it had jumped up so high and he wasn’t crying or anything. Him laying quietly on me and his heart rate increasing like it was sent off the warning flags.

When the bag was empty and his heart rate had been normal for a while, she said she could take out the IV and he could get dressed. He was so good when she was taking out the IV…just quietly said, “OW, OW, OW” and then asked why the band-aid lol. We helped him off the bed after she’d removed the round sticky things and he got dressed. He said he was PAST ready to go home ha!

We arrived around 7:15 and we were out of there by 9:45. We had to drive quite a ways to pick up his prescriptions. Where the surgical clinic was located looked pretty ritzy. All the homes were in gated communities and they had high priced little stores in all the strip malls. A winery/steakhouse, no Wal-Mart, but a Super Target that I didn’t even know existed ha! Well, as we headed south towards the other hospital where the pharmacy was located, you could tell there was a BIG LINE between the rich area and the shithole area. A four lane road separated them. On the north side, you had gated communities, everyone driving $50,000+ cars. On the south side, you had land yachts with bling, beaters driving on three tires and a donut, run down dumpy houses, dirty looking people hanging out on street corners etc. I noticed something else in the huge contrasts between the two areas. In the rich area, the speed limit on the main four lane road was 40 to 45 mph. Once you crossed over to the shitty area, the speed limit dropped to 35 mph. I told husband about it and wondered if there are any statistics that show there are more wrecks in crappy areas and fewer in richer areas. It would make sense I guess – when you drive a beater you don’t care where you park in a parking lot because one more ding isn’t going to make that big of a difference (yep, I’ve driven a beater lol). If someone tail gates, you think “Go ahead hit me, I need the insurance money.” When you have a nice vehicle, you park farther down so hopefully you don’t get some idiot opening their door on your car and leaving a dent and when someone almost hits you, the wordy durds fly… Anyhow, just wondered about that.

We arrived home around 1 pm. Little guy and his Dad had some lunch and then took almost a two hour nap. I woke them up at 3pm so we could go pick up big sister from school and hit the local grocery store. We’d promised little guy he could pick out any kind of ice cream he wanted.

Other than his throat being sore when he swallowed, he said he felt fine. He also said he could hear and breathe a lot better! I hadn’t thought about how the adenoids being removed would feel to him. He just couldn’t get over how much easier it was for him to breathe when he was drinking his juice. Instead of having to put the glass away from his mouth after he swallowed so he could take a breath, now he could breathe through his nose in between swallows – and he thought that was a miracle lol.

So, although it’s been stressful these past few weeks leading up to this surgery and we’re all glad it’s over, we are also glad we went ahead and had the surgery done. Not only is he hearing better, he’s breathing better. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

We’ll go back in a month to see the doc and hopefully that will be the end of any ear issues for our baby. The tubes will eventually fall out on their own, so he won’t have to go through another surgery to have them removed. I’m hoping with spring almost here, we’ve seen the last of the cold/flu season. If so, hopefully both our babies will stay healthy and give our little guy’s body time to recoup from not only the surgery, but all the bugs his little system has been fighting since October.

I’m just so glad it’s over. I was finally able to sleep last night. I think it was the first time in over a week I slept more than an hour and a half without waking up. I’m still pretty tired though. Hopefully getting a few more nights of good sleep will get me back to feeling normal instead of being tired and worn out all day every day. It’s definitely time for things to get back to normal around here…