Compliments of my friend Lisa (Thank you Lisa!) I just read an article about the state of affairs in Ethiopia. Many parts of it were highly disturbing. There is one particular portion that keeps coming back to my mind. The journalist visited a government hospital while there. Here is what he had to say:

Its waiting rooms were packed with patients, including a child with a fractured arm who had waited for days without receiving medical attention. Potential patients in the waiting rooms were better off than those in a dim corridor where beds lined one wall. Those in the corridor were better off than the multitudes waiting outside. Disorder was evident even in clocks on the wall, each of which showed a different time. Doctors acknowledged that a lack of sterility leads to many infections. Limited budgets lead some nurses who drop an IV to use it anyway.....

Can you imagine yourself in that circumstance?

I thought back to how often I have complained about our medical situations. Having to wait in waiting rooms, hauling all the kids into a Dr. office, pediatricians asking us to return for weight checks, the cost of co-pays and prescriptions, the intrusive nature of the hospital care/stay during labor and delivery...the list goes on.
As an insured American woman, with no major illnesses in any of our immediate family members, I have complained. I have complained at times when I should have been rejoicing with gratitude for my most generous lot.My heart aches for the mothers of those children waiting for days on end, for those infected because of lack of sufficient funding for sterile practices, for those waiting in the corridors and out on the streets, hoping, praying, longing for a chance. It breaks for those who do not have their most basic health care necessities, for those who can do nothing but wait. Wait and wonder will their loved one recover? Will their child survive? Will they be given an injection that equals a death sentence? Will their little one's malnutrition lead to permanent developmental damage? Will they have to say goodbye to their baby for something that would have been minor if they had only been born someplace else? Like we were?
Again I find my self shaking my head and looking up saying "Lord, how, how, how did we get so much?"

I have decided not to get a tattoo right now. I don't think I want to spend my money that way.