@TheView
Coffee Talk: Sometimes bad things happen to good people and karma steps up and does the right thing!
Being positive does not mean ignoring the negative. Being positive means overcoming the negative.
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So let me tell you what happened last week because it was amazing!
Last weekend I was on call and my friend Victoria laid this on my Facebook Timeline.
I watched it and I thought it was amazing! I was in a puddle of tears! It was so real and heartfelt.
Then this happened. My friend and River of Light partner in crime tagged this to me and his other nurse friends.
“It’s been one week since The View returned with a (mostly) new panel of co-hosts and the ABC show is already stirring up controversy.
On Monday, the ladies at the round table, including Michelle Collins, Joy Behar, Raven-Symoné and Paula Faris, were discussing the recent Miss America pageant, during which, for the talent portion, Miss Colorado Kelley Johnson performed a monologue and discussed her profession as a nurse.
Well, the co-hosts were not having it.
“The talent, though, I have to say, the woman who won sang opera, and she was incredible. Really good,” Collins said. “But then there was a girl who wrote her own monologue and I was like ‘Turn the volume up, this is going be amazing, let’s listen’. She came out in a nurse’s uniform and basically read her emails out loud and shockingly did not win.
”
Seriously?!” Joy Behar responded, appearing incredibly perplexed.
“I swear to God it was hilarious,” Collins replied.
“Why does she have a doctor’s stethoscope on?” Behar asked before Collins clarified, “She helps patients with Alzheimer’s, which I know is not funny, but I swear you had to see it.”
At first I was really angry and then I was really baffled as to how a person could be so ignorant and rude. It made me think I need to look at what’s on TV (Beside my beloved GH) during the day. That’s a blog for another day.
I don’t watch “The View” because I’m usually working as a nurse.
If I had anything to say at this point these folks it would be this:
There are a lot of people who are ill and poor. Many of them do not have food. One of things they do have is TV. Please try every day to make a difference in the life of your viewers.
Some of my nurse friend’s became quite upset. I was too.
Roxanne Viccaro Kovler wrote this:
“Here is my letter I posted to Joy Behar. An Open Letter to Joy Behar and The View
Hello,
I have waited to respond to your insults to nurses to make sure my response was thoughtful, informative and not full of anger. You, Ms. Behar, have insulted millions of nurses in this country who give of themselves to their patients with little to no complaints.
Let me tell you that you have shown how ignorant you are. Do you really believe that it doesn’t take talent and skill to be a nurse? What talent and skill do you possess other than sitting at a desk and talking like an arrogant individual who believes they know everything about everything? You criticize people for things of which you have no knowledge, and this week, you have stepped on one of your own, a woman.
Let me give you a little background so you can understand where I am coming from. I am a 55-year old mother and grandmother. I spent 27-years of my career in Sales and Marketing with the dream of becoming a nurse one day. At the age of 44, I walked away from a very successful career and began my education to become a nurse. I was a single mother and I waitressed, took care of 2 gentlemen who had strokes in their past and had difficulty performing their ADL’s. (I’ll be nice and tell you that is Activities of Daily Living so you don’t have to take the time to google it.) I also worked at a car dealership part time. All the while I was doing this, I raised my children on my own, sacrificed many things so my children could have all they needed. All of this was done because I wanted to be a nurse and give of myself while doing something that was noble and worthwhile for other people.
I spent many years in an ER and have held new born babies, performed CPR on infants and adults, I used my NURSE stethoscope to auscultate lung sounds, heart sounds and bowel sounds to assure that my patient was not decompensating or deteriorating before my eyes. The doctor was not around for the majority of this assessment.
Think for a moment how you would react if you were in one room performing CPR while the family is sobbing outside the room because they know you have their loved ones life in your hands. At the time that loved one is pronounced dead, a Nurse cleans the body so it is presentable for the family to view and grieve over. You will never know the heartache of hearing family members sob over a loved one who is still warm with life but has no life left in them. Fast forward to the next room to help a patient celebrate that the pains they were feeling in the lower abdomen is not a virus but a symptom of no chronic disease other than a positive pregnancy test. I just watched a life slip away and in the next room I celebrate with people who will be bringing a new life into the world in a matter of months. Multiply these events by thousands and you may begin to see the “talent” that it takes to be a Nurse.
I was brought up to lift others up and not knock them down. You have shown what lack of character you truly possess. And to bring another woman down is even worse and knocks your character down to an even lower level than I previously thought.
I have seen an uprising in my profession and believe me, it is a beautiful sight to see. You have awoken a sleeping monster and whatever consequences arise for you from that is all your responsibility and I for one will not feel sorry for you.
I currently work in a Cardiac Cath Lab where we go into a person’s heart and look for life-threatening blockages in the arteries of their heart. I’ve watched a heart that is ready to stop reperfuse with the insertion of a stent and know in my heart that this person will be going home soon instead of to the morgue in a body bag because of my commitment and dedication to my profession.
I have seen a challenge made to you to shadow a Nurse for 12-hours to see if you are able to do it. I for one think you don’t have what it takes would last a minimal amount of time. I am attaching a photo for you to see how physically demanding my “costume” is to the simple every day movements that you take for granted.
Ms. Behar, should you ever find yourself in a position that I am your Nurse I will treat you with the utmost respect and give you the care that I give each of my patient’s with no regard for your ignorance or your insults to my profession. Do you possess a talent like that? I think not.
Roxanne in the cath lab
That photo is the “The View” (LOL) of the patient when your sitting the cath lab scared to death about what is going to found in your heart. It’s your in a space ship and all these kind and wonderful people are holding your hand while they are looking at the depths of your heart. I know this first hand.
Tagged tool doctors nurses
Then THIS happened!
Kelly Johnson does not have to defend anything. She is amazing person and all us nurses out there are very proud of you.
To take all the goodness a little further, Ellen Degeneres did not make any mention of “The View.” She did not make nasty remarks. She took a bad situation and she turned it up side down and inside out into a wonderful positive experience.
I do watch Ellen almost every day because she’s on while this nurse is charting. For the first time ever I added her show to my DVR.
The View still needs to do some kind of community service here. I would suggest an entire show on nurses and all the great things they do. It would be educational to the people that work there.
So that was great right!
So the other thing that happened this week was this:
“The tech community has a message for Ahmed Mohamed, the the tech savvy Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school: Just keep building.
Mohamed, a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, was taken into police custody on Monday when his homemade digital clock was mistaken for a bomb by school officials and police. Since the incident, Mohamed has been fielding a slew of invitations from some of the biggest names in the tech world.
He is an award winning engineering student.
“Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you. Keep building.”
While Ahmed has a busy schedule ahead of him, including a meeting with President Obama, the offers from the tech community haven’t stopped there. Twitter offered him an internship.”
A child named Ahmed Mohamed bring a clock to school to impress his teachers. The interrogating officers would not allow him to talk to him parents.
They think it’s a bomb that arrest him and cart him off to jail. But its not a bomb its a clock! He still got suspended for three days. And this kid is so smart. President Obama invited him to the white house. MIT has invited him for a tour. Mark Zukerberg wants to talk to him. Nasa gave him a free trip space camp. Plus much more. What impressed was his wire box. I have a wire box like that and I know that Adam has a wire box too. So sometimes when people are assholes amazing things happen. I love this kid.
I think I totally related to him when I saw his wire box. Ahmed you should see my wire box and my sons! I have a wire cabinet.
BTW Robin from Good Morning America did a great job on this piece!
I’m including this article and I hope that Ahmed gets a chance to see.
This Florida Teenager Knows What Ahmed Mohamed Is Going Through. It Happened to Her in 2013.
“Wilmot, who is black, was suspended for 10 days and recommended for expulsion. She was also charged with two felonies, though—after great public outcry—these charges were later dropped and her record expunged. After completing her junior year at an alternative high school for troubled kids, Wilmot returned to Bartow High School, which is 60 percent white, her senior year and graduated on time.
I spoke with Wilmot—now 19 and a sophomore at Florida Polytechnic University majoring in mechanical engineering—this morning about Mohamed’s predicament. She said that her first reaction was anger: “I honestly thought, ‘How could this happen to somebody else?’ ”
Islamophobia has been cited as a (or the) factor in Mohamed’s arrest; did race play a role in Wilmot’s? When asked if she thought she would’ve received the same treatment if she’d been white, Wilmot said, “I’m not sure.” And then, after a judicious pause, “No, probably not.”
When she returned to Bartow High her senior year, Wilmot said, “There were a few students who started a beef with me, they’d say stuff like ‘next time you plan to blow up the school, let us know’ and that kind of thing,” but the administrators who’d called the police on her never apologized or even acknowledged the incident to her face.
“I still have people who harass me about it and call me a terrorist, but I’ve moved on,” Wilmot said. And some good has come from her arrest, too: “I got a scholarship to space camp and got to meet Homer Hickam,” former NASA engineer, “who’s my hero,” Wilmot said.”
So I know this was long and this is why I never go out for coffee with my friends!
Ahmed is looking for a new school. I hope that some wonderful school invites him to go someplace great!
Here’s a little mood music. In my virtual coffee shop there is always inspiring music playing.
So as Ellen says “Please be kind to one another.”
Sometimes bad thing happen to good people and karma steps up and does the right thing!
cyndi lenz 