PRACTICING TOLERANCE FOR A TEST YOU DON’T WANT TO FAIL

The idea of practicing tolerance isn’t the same as ignoring the important stuff.

Tolerance: the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

With that definition, you know you’ll need practice.

But does tolerance have to be an extreme hardship?

It depends on who you ask.

There are people you know who see every event, every disruption of their idea of normal, as the right time to explode in righteous indignation.

And they are 100% right to voice their opinion.

Your job isn’t to agree or disagree. Not my job either, but we still hear them.

And sometimes we are those people. Not me, of course, not your sweet milquetoast blogger who avoids divisive topics like the plague.

Besides, I’ve been practicing tolerance for years as a sports fan of Oregon Duck football, Dallas Cowboys, and Portland Trail Blazers. Their time will come, my time will come, and your’s too.

In the big picture sports are smaller, even for billion dollar enterprises.

The Big Picture

Older, sensible, people know what’s coming.

They’ve either seen it in the mirror, seen in the people around them, or heard about it.

But never talk about it.

And they’re not that old. Besides, death ignores actuary tables.

It’s a test of practicing tolerance when football stars like Aaron Rogers speak up with his feelings about the covid vaccine.

And he uses Joe Rogan as a reference.

Tolerance is hard when Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia calls himself a democrat but can’t force himself to vote on measures aimed to help his state.

It takes tolerance to watch college football in the south, the same region known for racial inequity, where the majority of the players are black and the television cameras show a majority white audience in the stands.

But that’s their business, we’re told, so move along.

It’s your business, my business, our business, when we are threatened by the actions of other people.

If you feel threatened and say something, be prepared to hear, “What’s it to you?”

Take covid for example.

I’m in line at the grocery store with a cart and the younger couple in front of me are hugging and kissing and not wearing masks inside a mandatory mask business.

I stand well back and when it’s my turn to check out I asked the checker about the couple and whose responsibility is it to remind them about masks.

They said they leave it to the manager, an answer that left me practicing tolerance.

Do I call the manager when I get covid from unmasked customers?

Save The Trouble And Work On Practicing Tolerance

You’ve heard these comforting words:

“Remember, you’re not alone.”

Maybe you are, maybe you’re not, but I can tell you when you are alone. All alone.

I got neck cancer and started going down the road to a cure. From diagnosis to testing, from tissue sample surgery to having a chemo port surgically installed, I was never alone.

Go, team, go.

Then it was time to start the cure, and what a cure.

I showed up on time for the radiation part and sat in the waiting room for my name to be called by the technician who ran the machinery.

We walked into a room that looked like it could have been in a submarine, a nuclear power plant, or a testing lab. The main decor was the radiation machine hovering above a treatment table set up to lock my head in place.

Three of us started out, me and two techs. They fixed the settings for the proper amount of radiation and left, pulling the foot and a half thick shielded metal door closed behind them.

I was alone, the most alone I’ve ever felt in the most freakish room I’ve ever been in. The table started moving, the radiation machine started humming, then it was over.

Me to the tech: Have you ever heard what the machine sounds like in there?

Tech: No, and I hope I never do.

That’s a shared hope for everyone who has never had to be in there. I didn’t want to be there either, but I was practicing tolerance. I didn’t want to be there for next thirty four radiation treatments, either, but I made myself go.

Every time I went in I was locked to the radiation table with a custom mask that covered my face and neck so tight I could barely open and close my eyes.

I think of that radiation mask when I hear people complain about wearing a covid mask.

Do I roll out my radiation mask story to shame them? No, I don’t.

And I’m not short of breath

If you’re looking for medical advice, get vaccinated and wear a mask.

I’m not a Medical doctor, a Blog doctor, or a Facebook doctor. But I was an Army medic if that means anything to you.

Does it seem odd to anyone else that doctors have to sell the notion of vaccines and masks after covid has racked up over 800K deaths coast to coast?

In addition, does it seem odd that vaccinated people who wear the mask have to postpone their own healthcare because the local hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated patients to the point the hospital has to divert patients to hospitals further away, if even that.

Life Or Death Choices While Practicing Tolerance?

From The Daily Mail:

A wife of a gravely ill father-of-two slammed a Boston hospital for taking her husband off the heart transplant list because he’s unvaccinated, stating they have been pushed into a ‘corner’ and ‘pressured’ to ‘choose a shot that could kill him.’

However, Ferguson’s father, David, said earlier that getting vaccinated is ‘kind of against his basic principles’ and that his son ‘doesn’t believe in it.’

‘I think my boy is fighting pretty damn courageously and he has integrity and principles he really believes in and that makes me respect him all the more…It’s his body. It’s his choice.’ 

‘My son has gone to the edge of death to stick to his guns and he’s been pushed to the limit.’ 

Ferguson isn’t the first patient in need of a transplant who has been denied due to their vaccination status.  

In October, Leilani Lutali of Colorado, 56, was taken off the transplant list at a University of Colorado Health hospital because she and her prospective kidney donor Jaimee Fougner, 45, hadn’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. 

‘As a Christian, I can’t support anything that has to do with abortion of babies, and the sanctity of life for me is precious,’ Lutali said.

Fougner, Lutali’s friend and potential donor, has also denied the vaccine citing religious reasons.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain aborted fetal cells, like some social media users have been falsely claiming. 

Ohio man Mike Ganin, who is vaccinated against COVID, was denied a kidney transplant last October because his donor hadn’t received her shot.

‘I don’t want to get the vaccine. I’ve got reasons — medical, religious, and also freedom,’ the donor, Sue George, told WKYC. 

Home Turf Advantage

There are a few lessons to learn:

When you check into a hospital during a pandemic you are there to follow their rules.

Or leave.

From DJ’s wife:

‘At this point DJ is unable to leave the hospital until he gets the heart surgery he needs. Without the surgery his lungs and heart will continue to fill up with blood and fluid (on top of everything else that’s going on),’ said Ferguson’s wife, on Facebook. 

We are all practicing tolerance?

I’m sure DJ’s wife is hearing from Facebook doctors who are specialists in heart transplant procedures and after-care.

Will a Facebook husband help raise her kids?

A Facebook father in-law will offer the sort of support her real father in-law gave his son?

Perhaps a Facebook freedom proponent will send a Facebook ‘like’ for the stand they are taking?

I feel a lot of Facebook disappointment coming their way.

What do the actuary tables say about the life expectancy of a thirty-one year old man?

They ought to live until age seventy-seven. Dj will miss the forty-six years he has left if he doesn’t comply with the covid vaccine mandate for heart transplant surgery.

Who would you listen to, Medical doctors who will perform the surgery, or Facebook doctors who shit-post and scroll on down the page?

Would your opinion change if it was your husband or wife on the line? Your mom or dad? Your kid?