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Bureaucratic Injustice


I love sitting at my kitchen table eating hot oatmeal pancakes with fresh maple syrup. I'm gazing at my tall proudly pink hollyhocks growing in my yard. I plant flowers in my garden that hold memories for me, and hollyhocks are pictures of summers spent with my Granny in Peoria, Illinois. They grew in the ally that fenced her backyard and also in between her driveway and her neighbor's. They were multi-colored and festive, and my Dad showed me how to take a bud and place it on an upside down bloom to create the perfect hollyhock doll. I would make a collection, and have them all swirl around as if dancing at a ball. But the best thing about hollyhocks that I have noticed is their resilience. They grow with little care, they don't need much water to grow stately, they withstand the winds, and even bloom when all they have are just a few strands of stem. That's like my Granny who lived to the wonderful age of 107 years. She too was strong even in imperfect circumstances, she never complained of pain that I recall, although she did have arthritis. If you asked her how she felt, she responded with a twinkle in her eye and said, "I feel with my fingers, how do you feel?" I'd like to think that I'm resilient too, just like my hollyhock and my Granny, even when I'm the object of injustice.

The senate bill was signed into law by the governor this past January. It gave Nurse Practitioners the ability to certify disability for their patients, no longer would forms need to be signed by physicians. So now about 5 1/2 months later, I am told by workers at the local disability office that they have heard of no such law and would be unable to take my signature alone. What's worse is when I call to speak to "higher authority" as in a medical director in Sacramento, I am told that "yes, that is the law, but it is not ready to pass onto workers because they haven't been able to write it out in such a way that it can be understood, blah, blah, blah . . ." And of course, there was no answer of what to do in the mean time other than what's always been done before. There also was silence on the other end of the phone when asked how much longer would it be before the law would truly stand as it had been passed? Bureaucratic injustice at its best, and I was now its victim. . .

Bureaucratic barriers are like the weeds that sprout up in my garden. Just when you think you've have cleared them all out, the next morning or so you see that they're there again trying to make a foothold. But I've also discovered the thicker I get my flowers to grow and fill in the ground, there is less space for weeds to grow. So I will appeal to my fellow NP organizations and my Board of Nursing to assist me with this delay. After all, I'm of my Granny's stock and like my hollyhock, I won't bend, break, or give up on this right. . .

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