reflections

Dear reader,
I want to comment on the events of the bennymay story.

Hopefully you have been repulsed at some of the things I have said in the bennymay story. That may be unclear. So I will explain it later.

OTHERS:
With respect to the vaccinations. Do you really think any healthcare provider can possibly follow the hundreds of regulations in the few minutes they have with each, new air force cadet? So, do you look for the cause of the problem higher up the chain, and go to the senior medical officer, who cries, ‘understaffing and underfunding’, shifting the blame further north. But isn’t that the cry of the doctors and senior management all the way up to the ministers?

So, what about the failure to report—the refusal to submit incident reports or adverse drug reaction reports? Does anyone have time to complete such reports? And how do the services and the Australian healthcare system in general treat healthcare providers who are willing to document things like this? If you ran a hospital and you were choosing between a doctor who never wrote up reports that showed his hospital broke the law, and a doctor who had a history of writing up reports that his hospital broke the law, towards whom would you be inclined to choose? When you work for the military in a time when many civilians criticise it, in cases like vaccine adverse drug reactions where most doctors really have very little expertise or knowledge since it is in the realm of ‘the exception to the rule’, is it good to give the benefit of the doubt to the military and continually deny that something may have gone wrong?

And when commanding officers of flying squadrons have neither the expertise, time, not authority to investigate the doctors, then how can they possibly keep the rule against dissuading redress of grievance investigations into medical-practice allegations?

When the doctors start concealing and breaking rules in one area—such as administering blood infusions for a squadron leader Hawk 127 lead-in-fighter pilot from 79 squadron—and then they strictly apply the rules to me, does that make them good guys for being nice to the other pilot, and helping the air force return some expertise, or does it make them bad guys for discrimination? When the commanding officer of a flying training school has the hard job of telling young men and women that they are currently unsuitable for a career in military aviation, is he doing good by having the guts to tell me I should not be on course while on blood infusions? Or is he being bad because he is going against numerous doctors and his superior officers and since he is breaking privacy laws and a few medical laws too? Is he being helpful by getting me off some annoying Intragam stuff so I can get on with my flying career? Or is he being bad for delaying me again, and endangering my health? And can you really say he triggered the cessation of my blood infusion treatment, just because he said something like, ‘ben’s military, flying career will die unless the blood infusions stop,’ to a doctor who wants a new patient, and who gets paid to accept new immunological cases and take over on-going management, and who gets paid to do more immunological testing, and who gets paid to make more reports? In a situation like that, would you not feel some sympathy for that commanding officer and say his superior officers were wrong to put him in that sort of a predicament? How can his superior officers make him responsible for flying safety, and send him bennymay on blood infusions ready to recommence flying?

So, as this kind of snowball rolls down the hill, getting bigger and bigger each year, and more and more people get involved, eventually nobody has both the authority and expertise to deal with it. So, when it gets to 2002, and 2003, and 2004, how is it possible for wing commanders, and group captains to cope with it? Is this unjust: less power and resources than responsibility? And when the fraternity of doctors hide their mistakes, fail to report, refuse to report, fail to investigate, then refuse to investigate, and then deny their mistakes, then how can an external investigator uncover the lies? When the fraternity of doctors deems any lay person’s evidence or opinion as inadmissible, then how can anyone evaluate the truth? But when new doctors join the fraternity they are powerless to affect it—they need to choose to conform or to lose—to choose confluence or failure. So the old doctors, who reap the riches of the system, and have spent decades in the game, are they going to care more about [the medical fraternity + their protégés + their reputation + their wealth + their position in the military] or care more about [little bennymay] ?

There is no, single ‘bad guy’ in this story—just a succession of people who felt over-worked, time-pressured, and some need for self-protection.

When you go to work do you care about your family, work, pay, job security, financial security, property security, career progress, reputation, and the opportunity to have a reasonable amount of fun and leisure? Are these the fundamentals?

When a medically disabled person passes through your workplace, and you find that the system in which you work will not permit you to help him unless you risk one of those fundamentals, what are you going to do? Air Force doctor Greg Wilson sacrificed some of his leisure time, going out of his way to help me during his Christmas holidays! Simon Ford, H-Man, Pete Norford, Noddy Sawade, JQ Quaife, Ernie Walsh, David Pietsch, Terry Delahunty, Michael O’Donoghue, Alan Holtfreter, Bernie Nebenfuhr, Feighs, Tater, Slopio, JP. GT, Foxy, Ross Naylor, John Abbott, Beaker, Scooter, Sleon, Yoda, Sammy, Syd, Brad, Dazzler, Stix, Diggler, Vintage, Colonel, Snarly, Jonesy, Johnsy, Saddlebags, Shano, Sib (no seriously! He was sober, once), Mal, Philbio, Peachy, Hawkeye, Tuffers, Special, Kirst, Mick, H, Kel, and a lot of others gave me a lot of their time, considering how they might be able to strategise with me, and work with me through the bennymay story. Do you say they failed? I say they generously game me time and tried to help.

BENNYMAY
Now, I said, hopefully you have been repulsed at some of the things I have said in the bennymay story. I don’t mean just that you are repulsed at when other people did things that were wrong. I mean, it’s appropriate to be repulsed at me as well. I was proud. I fought for my own rights. I fought against the doctors at Pearce when they chose not to report, denied my medical condition, denied vaccine causation, and began inventing restrictions (such as my medical condition means I can fly, just not on oxygen, or just not in ejection seats). I fought against DPO when they treated me badly. I sought justice from air force officers who were powerless to give it to me, and with the unsatisfactory excuse of frustration, I became a thorn in Ronny RAAF’s flesh.

Am I any better than anyone else in the bennymay story? No.

Am I any better than the thousands of others who suffer medical conditions? No.

Thank you, everyone, for your patient forbearance.

Sincerely,

bennymay