An expensive proposition

 Some of us need to have a yard sale, a garage sale, or a porch sale...a definitive downsizing...to know what is in the house. And, to find out where that receipt went, the one we need to take back...with that non-functioning blood pressure cuff to Walgreens. The cuff I don't even need.

Super stressed at one point, yer man can have symptoms of high blood pressure. If a doctor continues to take your blood pressure, like a worried grouchy father, you can almost guarantee it won't go be going down...as long as your sitting there spending a hundred fifty dollars just to sit in one of their rooms.

We are told to go in for a six-month checkup. For wellness. Whoever came up with that excuse had popsicles for brains because there's no good reason for it. The only one benefiting from it is the one benefiting from the money I paid them to have them ask me what is wrong. If I am going in for my wellness check, why is there something wrong?

It is a never-stopping merry-go-round, this thing they call "healthcare." We, the people, have to endure an industry that prescribes medicines with side effects that make you sick, that make you dizzy, lower your blood pressure, raise your blood pressure, make your face twitch, give you rashes, and interact with everything else you are on.

And, of course, the pharmacy texts you to demand you get a refill. A refill you may not need. Or want. When did the pharmacist suddenly try to take over my life? This is not good.

Last night, as I went to take a prescription my doctor told me I would need to take the rest of my life, I noticed that there were side effects that read like my morning waking up. Side effects I do not need. Nor does my body. 

I won't be taking that tonight before bed. If the side effect is worse than the condition, I think we have a problem. There are too many of these 'I think we have a problem" issues to continue to be that rat in the maze anymore. I am done with flippant diagnoses. I have passed the point of advocating for my health, I am taking it into my hands.

The best wellness is the one where your life includes a philosophy that is less stressful, a more naturally healthy life, without so many chemicals floating around in your body. My next doctor will be the one who adheres to that philosophy, not the one trying to control people's lives.

Escaping the Executions

in a high-rise apartment, 6500 miles from Tehran, Merat, a Persian man in his late 20s, closed the draperies to darken the room. he glanced at the closed door, and leaned forward...

"I went to army...but I served army just for fifty days."

my other friend, another Persian, motioned him to continue.

"There was regulation in Iran that when you finish high school...or after the university...then you have to serve in army corps two years. I finished. It was the beginning of the revolution.

I was a secretary. One day, the general came to our base and reported to us that the next day is our time to go to the street and shoot the revolutionary people. Those people were making riots, breaking glass. We were supposed to warn them, then separate them so we could shoot them. And I just couldn't do that. I never even shot an animal before.

Some people liked the Shah...and they would kill. Many people committed suicide, they could not shoot the people. I chose to escape.

I bought very fast, expensive car two days before. I drove to the mountains near Tehran, but not too far. I changed my clothes, buried my army clothes.

I cut the fence to escape and the guards saw me and warned me to stop. In the army they only shoot after the third warning. The guards warned me again when I finished cutting through it. I got up and started to run. The guards, they were young and didn't want to shoot anybody.

I ran, and walked, about eight miles. (Unfortunately), I had army haircut, so everybody would know I was a soldier...so I went to a shop and bought a wig. 

I drove home. My father kept me in hiding for two months. Then, one day, I went, with my wig on, to downtown Tehran.

I was walking and I saw a bunch of revolutionaries rioting. My fellow soldiers were there....ninety of them who used to sleep in the same place as I did...and they were shooting the revolutionaries. None of those people had the same faces, all of them were sad, some were crying and shooting.

You could not find a square foot of wall not painted with slogans like Death to the Shah, or Welcome Khomeini. In Tehran, two million people came from the villages into the city because Khomeini promised them everything, 'I will give you free house and free food, and free this and free that.' So, everyone who was hungry came to Tehran. Khomeini promised "In six months, I'm going to make this country like a garden." Many people were Leftists, and they were trying to get rid of the Shah, and with the force of Khomeini, they thought they could. They thought they could get rid of Khomeini too, but he liked the position.

When Khomeini came and the Shah left, everything was mixed up, nobody had records of anything. So, I was able to get a passport and have all my papers work out."

He took some papers out of a drawer. One document had a list from the religious courts banning Mr. Nadir from studying in a school because he was Bahai, not Muslim. The other document contained the names of many executed for their religious beliefs. There were several detailing mass executions, all done on the grounds of "not being a Muslim following Sharia law."

Forty years later, this interview I did as an undergrad, once presented to a writing class, no longer sits neglected in a file labelled "Historical Accounts." For this history has come full circle, as Israel and the United States attempt to cause the removal of that revolutionary regime, the one the Leftists could not control...