Looking back to when I was a youth, I have to wonder “what was I thinking” when I wasn’t satisfied with Dr. Reneau’s diagnosis. “Aren’t you going to order any tests?” I asked him. Dr. Reneau didn’t have any time to play with me. He went straight to his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper with his letterhead, and scribbled a note. He then ordered me to a corner and jabbed me, and then he gave me a little prescription for some pills.

The tests were a waste of time. The one for my heart I passed with flying colors and the one for my stomach couldn’t be done because the hospital lacked some kind of liquid that was necessary for me to drink.

I told you how my mom and dad REALLY wanted a girl when the stork brought me. Yap, as per their plan they had five boys in a row, and then they wanted a girl and got my older sister, Christine. The best laid plan of my mom and dad was that they would have another child, a girl, and then they’d close the shop. They got me next, then my brother, Ron, and then came their last child, a girl, whom they named Francine.

If I had been a girl, I would have been a traditional flop. I detest washing clothes. Put me in the yard with a machete or hoe every day of the week. I hate cooking, and I hate cleaning pots even more. That last, the anti-cooking part, was the source of my heartburn. At the farm where I worked, I ate salchichas and bread plastered with that mayonnaise with the little fruit chunks in it, and for wash-down I drank juice, sometimes orange, sometimes Tang.

When it comes to doctors, I want them to use their knowledge, their intuition, and the information I give them, to make their diagnosis. What was I thinking to question the Great Reneau’s diagnosis, what craziness overtook me to want to get lab tests?

Forwarding to Covid days, Belmopan insists on giving blood pressure tests (BPT) when you report for your vaccination. I failed the first BPT, but the nurse waited a couple minutes and gave me another BPT, and while she still thought it high, she said it was okay for me to get the shot. One down, one to go.

I’ve very rarely been to doctors over the last 30 years. Cholesterol, not good, was a big story on me from the lab back then. About 25 years ago, a doctor looked at my blood test and said, well, he said I would need a further test. I said no, no más. I knew most every doctor when I was a child, I met quite a few after I grew up, and, like, I didn’t want to get to know any more.

I’ve told the attending nurses at the Covid desk that I never had a high blood pressure reading until after I had the virus back in November, but the jolt I got when I went for my second jab got me to thinking. No, I didn’t lie. Time can sneak up on you. Prior to my first BPT after the Covid, I hadn’t had one in must be ten years, when I went for a tetanus injection, and the BPT was done per routine.

So, the BP has been creeping up all along. The nurse said it was way not good, and I said…, and the nurse said, okay, you don’t have any symptoms, but trust me, you have to do something about it. The short here is that hopefully I’ll be fit enough to get the second jab this week.

The vax, it’s for our good health, for to fight the mutation, and for the economy. About the mutation, you must have read the story about the person who was sick for many weeks with Covid, and how many times the virus mutated in their body. One of my mentors has an excellent explanation for one role the vax plays in stopping the virus in its track. If you’re vaccinated, the virus won’t have much chance to mutate inside you, because you won’t be sick that long.

PUP stalling on a CJ again?

I have no clue about the experience and other credentials of the present Acting Chief Justice, Ms. Michelle Arana, but I know she’s got to be good to climb that high. Like most Belizeans, I like the idea of one of us in the saddle, so I’m wondering what the PUP is about with their latest stall. From April 2020 the GG swore in Justice Michelle as acting, and today she remains that, acting.

Dean Barrow, nobody’s all bad, might have decided to not confirm her after what the PUP did the last time a UDP government selected a Chief Justice. Let’s move backward to 1998, when a UDP government installed Justice Manuel Sosa as the Chief Justice of Belize, just before a general election. In the case of Justice Michelle, we’re talking 7 months before the big election, and in the case of Justice Manuel, it seemed like 7 days. Back then there was also cheering for Justice Sosa because he is a Belizean, but the PUP had their plans.

There’s not a lot of information about these judge choices in Belize; these selections don’t get the fine-tooth comb, not the way it’s done in another great democracy in our hemisphere. We have seen the contortions of the fabled US democracy when they go through the process of selecting a judge for their supreme court. Critical matters like civil rights, abortion, gay marriage, smoking marijuana, their health system, all kinds of things hinge on these judges.

I remember the selection process for Justice Clarence Thomas, a black man who was rejected by the Democrats, the party that traditionally gets the vast majority of Afro-American votes. I remember that a fortyish black woman who still had a lot of charm came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. Despite the accusation of despicable sexual behavior, Clarence Thomas got the nod as the second Afro-American to sit so high over there.

Clarence is a Republican, and he was the choice of a Republican president. It’s no aside when I mention that the story goes that Clarence’s white wife had to make a big apology to a lot of people after she endorsed that January Trump 2021 rally that disgraced that nation.

Coming back to our sometimes tangled history, the Wikipedia is refreshing my memory big time. One Wiki page says Sosa succeeded the ailing George B. Singh, and we don’t have to guess who appointed Mr. Singh to the big post. If you need a refresher, let’s just go and brush up on some Derek Aikman history.

If I have the story right, Singh came out in clothes over pajamas to strike legions of false PUP voters from the Freetown Division in 1984. Get out the weeping vial, for following on that adjustment of the voting lists, the formerly invincible PUP hero, George C. Price, got shelled at the polls.

You know I’m in a glass-bottom boat looking down on the scene, an lat a fish from riva batam deh bowt. The people who should talk, noh di taak. Will Cathy and Manuel E. reveal anything?

Aha, the UDP installed Justice Sosa, and the PUP came in and said, nyet. Justice Sosa was given the lesser position as Justice of Appeal, and the PUP went abroad and brought in Justice Abdulai Conteh in January 2000 to fill the post, and we all know he was the man at the helm when the case for respect for Mayan Land Rights was brought to court.

Now, the decision on Justice Michelle awaits, and really the big people in the Bar Association should be weighing in. On Justice Manuel, I’ll say I thought the PUP were some daam dastards the way they ditched him. I don’t know enough to talk about the present situation…but I can say dehn di stall again, and, and I might add, maybe they don’t have to rush.