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| Martin Luther King, Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Today is the 50th anniversary of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous I Have a
Dream speech, delivered August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, DC. I’d planned to do a special blog about the
significance of that event, but ‘the best laid plans of mice and men,’ and all
that interfered. This is, in fact, the first day in a couple of weeks that I’ve
been able to sit comfortably at my keyboard long enough to write more than a paragraph
or delete a few dozen emails. Since the day is here, and I’ve not had time to
think about what I wanted to write, I will refer readers to my reminiscence of
that day on Yahoo! Voices, ‘Living
King’s Dream in a Most Unlikely Place.’ Instead of my planned blog, I will
regale you with my adventures over the past two months, and maybe show how it
relates.
On July 4, I fell prey to a situation that is all
too common to people of my age, a fall. And, yes, I broke something – a very
critical bone in my hip. Unfortunately, the fracture was small and didn’t show
up on the x-rays in the ER when I went for treatment. It was only in August,
when it still hurt more than the bruise we suspected it to be should hurt, that
they did an MRI (on Aug. 14) and found the break. My primary doctor referred me
to an orthopedist – that took a few days – who immediately scheduled me for
surgery.
I checked into the hospital on Aug. 22 and the
following day they put three screws in my hip to close the fracture and hold
the bones in place until they heal. There followed three more days in the
hospital; being awakened every three hours to take my pulse and blood pressure,
or give me pain medication, changing dressings, checking the catheter,
etc. The day after surgery, physical therapy
started. How to walk with crutches or a walker, how to stand, how to sit,
exercises to keep the leg muscles from becoming flaccid and prevent blood
clots, and all the other things I need to do over the next two to three months
to be fully healed.
A trip to the hospital is, I’m sure, a traumatic
experience for everyone. For me, it was compounded by the fact that I’d reached
my 68th year without ever spending a night in a hospital since being
born in one, so I didn’t know what to expect. I think I was just learning
hospital protocol when my doctor decided it was safe to send me home and had me
discharged. I’ve never been happier
getting kicked out of a place.
So, on this day, as we look back 50 years at Dr.
King’s historic speech, how does my stay in the hospital relate? To start with,
had this happened in 1963, the delays in getting treatment in the little East
Texas town from whence I come wouldn’t have been administrative or technical –
I might have actually been denied admission to some of the local medical
establishments in my area. And, with all due respect to the Hippocratic Oath,
the treatment I would have received from the country doctors in that era would
have, in most cases, been limited to only what was legally necessary.
We still have a long way to go in this country
before we’ve fully realized King’s ‘Dream,’ but we’ve also come a long way. I’ll
spend this day thinking about the progress that has been made, and what I can
do to help make more.
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