>Grand Am Grief

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Steve Picray

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I worked Wednesday night. Thursday morning I got in my Grand Am and drove home. Well, I drove most of the way home. I was five miles from my house when the engine shut off. I got the car to the side of the road and turned it off. I tried to restart it several times, but nothing worked. At this point (since I had about a ½ tank of gas and the car was cranking but not starting) I figured that my fuel pump had quit. I then used my emergency roadside insurance from State Farm for the first time. The tow truck arrived (the same company that towed our totaled van away in November 2008.) (No, this picture isn’t my car, it’s a junked-out DeLorean which I have placed on my blog to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future. It seemed appropriate.)

I asked the tow truck driver to just put my car in the driveway, which is where it now sits. Even though I had been up all night, I spent the next several hours trying to diagnose and/or repair the car. I found out that the first step in fixing the fuel pump was to replace the fuel filter. This is not as easy as it sounds. I bought the filter for $11 and then spent an hour lying on my back at a -10 degree angle (because of the incline of my driveway) under my car switching out the filter. The bolt that held the old filter in place probably hadn’t moved since this car rolled off the line in 2001, so it was kind of tricky to get off.

Anyway, new filter installed, the car still didn’t start. I tested the ignition system, and found that I had “spark,” so it wasn’t that. I could hear a hum from the area of the tank when the ignition moved from OFF to ON, and the Schrader valve had gas spurting out, so it wasn’t the fuel pump. Just to verify, my father-in-law came over and squirted starter fluid into the intake while I cranked the engine: no start.

All this to say that I think the problem is the timing. I think the timing chain probably broke.

Q: How much does a new timing system cost?
A. $150.
Q: How much will a mechanic charge me to install a new one?
A: $900.
Q: How long would it take the mechanic to do the job?
A: About six hours.
Q: How long will it take me?
A: I don’t know, but I’ll tell you after I do it.

That’s right, boys and girls, after payday rolls around next Friday and I have a few free days, I’m going to take my engine apart, take out the bad part, put in new parts, and see if that fixes the problem. Am I a mechanic? No, but I am an intelligent person with some mechanical aptitude, and I have confidence that I can do this. What it boils down to is this: I don’t want to spend $900 to fix a 9 year old car with 150K miles. At the same time, I can’t afford to buy a new car. Oh, and I need new brakes, but that’s only $60 and I know how to do that (and have done it).

I have already rebuilt and/or fixed lots of things on this car. If I have to do very much more, I will have to get a blue shirt with my name embroidered on the pocket.

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>God’s Reasons

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Steve Picray

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Many times we get into a situation where things are going badly, and we don’t know what to do. We try to do everything we can to fix the situation, and we ask God, “Why is this happening to me?” God is not surprised when bad things happen. He has a plan, and He has a reason for why we are going through the things we are going through.

In John 11, Jesus knew that Lazarus was sick. Jesus knew that Lazarus was going to die if Jesus didn’t heal him. And yet Jesus let Lazarus, Mary, and Martha go through that horrible experience. Martha tells Jesus, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Later, Mary talks to Jesus and tells him, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Then the people gathered around the tomb asked, “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?” The answer to these questions (essentially the same question) is yes. God could snatch us out of our problems and give us an easy time of it. He could keep us from suffering and trouble. But then we would never learn anything. I heard someone recently quote an old Arabian proverb, “All sunshine makes a desert.” If we never had any rain in our lives, then we would be pretty boring people, and we would never learn anything.

I have what seems like insurmountable problems. God knows about my problems. God could take away my problems in a moment. But it seems that right now God is doing what He did in John 11:6, “So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was.” Obviously His followers knew that He had power over sickness, but He needed them to know that He also had power over death. And at the end of the “valley of the shadow of death” there was sunshine and happiness. Lazarus was alive again. God had them go through that experience not just so they would believe in His power over death, but for many reasons. One of those reasons was that it would be recorded in His Word and I would read it today and be encouraged that God knows what I’m going through, and He will work the situation for His glory and my good (Romans 8:28). I just need to keep waiting and trusting in Him.

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>God’s Promise

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Steve Picray

>Two years ago God informed me that He is the God of the impossible, and that nothing is too hard for Him (for the whole story, see this post.). We have made decisions in the past two years that hopefully are moving us toward being debt free. We stopped using credit (of any kind). We have started to go through our “stuff” and find things that we don’t “need” and have begun to sell them.

I have decided to sell my motorcycle because I did the math and figured out that, even though I save money on gas riding it to work, it is costing us more money because we don’t own it outright, and the payments are more than the gas it saves us. So I have listed my motorcycle on eBay (bidders, you can go here to bid on it). We are canceling our DirectTV service and trying to find anything else we can to trim down our expenses. We hope God rewards our efforts.

With all that, I’ve been wondering recently when God is going to start doing some impossible things (like a biig check in the mail or something). Today I looked at another person to whom God said “nothing is impossible”: Abraham. So let’s look at how long he had to wait.

1. Genesis 11:30 says that Sarai was barren. In Genesis 12:2 God promises that Abram will be a great nation. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old at this point. In Gen 12:7 God gets more specific and says “To your descendants I will give this land.”
2. Genesis 15:4-5 God tells Abram that his descendants would be so numerous that they would be difficult to count. He then makes an unconditional contract with Abram, and tells Abram about the 400 year slavery in Egypt (ended by Moses).
3. Genesis 16:3 says that Abram had been in Canaan 10 years when Sarai got the idea of giving him Hagar to bear children. That means he was 85 at that point.
4. Genesis 16:16 says Abram was 86 when Ishmael was born.
5. Genesis 17:1 says Abram was 99 when God appeared to Him, renamed him and Sarai, and promised him specifically that Sarah would give birth to Isaac in one year.

What does this all mean? God kept promising, and kept getting more specific on how the promise would be fulfilled, but it finally took 25 years for the initial promise to be fulfilled. It’s been two years since God promised me He would do the impossible (and I take that to mean He will pay off my debts so I can get back in the ministry, since that was what I was asking Him for at the time). Hopefully He doesn’t make me wait 25 years, but even if He does, Psalm 27:13-14.

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Male Nursing

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Steve Picray

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I am a nurse. What does this mean? It means that I care for people’s physical needs and do for them what they, because of medical reasons, are unable to do for themselves. I am a man. What does this mean? It means I’m not a woman. Are these two states incompatible? Does the fact that I’m a man mean that I am somehow less capable when it comes to caring for people’s physical needs? I don’t think so.
I had a brief discussion at work tonight with another nurse about “male nurses.” She stated that she thinks it’s hypocritical of patients to refuse care from a male nurse when they allow a male doctor to care for them. I agreed.
She then shot herself in the foot by saying, “That’s why I don’t allow a male gynecologist to examine me. I don’t feel comfortable with a male gynecologist.” I told her she was a sexist. She denied it. I asked her what was it about male gyn’s that made her not want one. She said, “Just the fact that they are male.” I said, “That’s sexism.” She said, “No, it’s not.” I told her to change the word “male” to “black” and see how it sounded. She didn’t like that answer and refused to talk to me about it any more. For those of you who need it spelled out, I was asking her what’s the difference between saying, “I don’t feel comfortable with a male gynecologist,” and “I don’t feel comfortable with a black gynecologist.” I’ll tell you the difference: one is racism and one is sexism.
I get so tired of patients refusing care from me because I’m a man. I am happily married and have no plans to do anything to you that I shouldn’t be doing. I am a medical professional. That means that you should be able to trust me to be professional about our interactions and the care that I give you. If I haven’t given you any reason to doubt my professionalism, and you don’t want me to care for you simply because I’m a man, then you my friend are a sexist. You have prejudged me as unfit to care for you, and by refusing my care you have discriminated against me.
Some women have argued that they are “too modest” to allow a male nurse to care for them. I agree that modesty is important. Modesty is defined as “propriety in dress, speech, or conduct.” The definition of propriety that applies is “fear of offending against conventional rules of behavior especially between the sexes” So when people say they are “too modest” to have a male nurse, what they are saying is that they are afraid of breaking societal rules about men seeing them without any clothes. I wholeheartedly agree with this principle as it relates to daily life. However, in the medical field, it is sometimes necessary to see parts of the body that we don’t normally show other people, especially those of the opposite sex. Men seem to have no problem with this when they have a female nurse, I don’t see why women should have a problem when they have a male nurse.
I guess from now on when someone tells me they are “too modest,” I will simply agree with them. Yes, you are TOO modest. The word “too” means “to an excessive degree, to such a degree as to be regrettable.” You should be less modest when it comes to medical professionals. We are only trying to save your life.
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EDIT: Evidently there are those who feel that I am advocating forcing women to subject their naked bodies to male doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers.  I am not.  I believe anybody who touches anybody else without their permission is wrong, no matter if they are a doctor, nurse, or anybody else.In my nursing career I have never forced any patient to be my patient against their wishes.  Every single time a patient has requested a female nurse, I willingly stepped aside and found a female nurse that I could trade patients with (even the one man who refused me because he saw “male nurse” and assumed “gay” and he didn’t want a gay person near him.).   I am not a rapist. I am not a molester.
The main reason I am upset when I encounter sexism is the fact that when a patient tells me on first meeting that they want a female nurse, it isn’t because now I don’t get the chance to see them naked.  It’s because they have rejected me wholly as a person and not just for the intimate things.  They are telling me, in effect, that my years of study to reach my current medical level were wasted.I have had many female patients in the past that were happy to have me as a nurse, let me give them medication, and other things, but when they needed to use the bathroom, get a catheter inserted, etc, they asked for a female, and I have had no problem with that whatsoever.  The people reading my blog recently have confused my cry against their devaluing my nursing skills with some supposed desire to see women naked.  I have a wife.  I’ve seen many women naked in my career and most women in the hospital are not attractive.  I don’t mean these women aren’t pretty, I mean that a woman wearing a hospital gown with tubes coming out of her is not a desirable thing, no matter what people think.
Again, one last time: all patients should have the right to decide if they want a healthcare worker of the same gender.  I just think they’re wrong if they think that all men are rapists and molesters.
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SECOND EDIT:  This is a blog.  It is a place for me to list my opinions about things.  If you want to let me know your opinion, feel free to email me or comment.  However, if your words are vitriolic, hateful, or in any way insulting (such as calling me a rapist as one person did this week), I will delete it.  If you can’t be respectful of other people, don’t bother.   And so, for the first time in the 9 years I’ve had this blog, I get to test the “end comments” function of WordPress.
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