Bless your heart! What an interesting story--and I feel like I understand you much beter now. You sound quite reasonable, and I see where you're coming from now. And trust me, I didn't think you were a ballbreaker. You're simply passionate and articulate about something you feel strongly about.

I really admire traveling nurses. There are some who come through the hospital my husband practices in. He's a cardiologist, and some of the cardiology and neurology traveling nurses he's worked with are the smartest, best folks he and the other staffers have ever worked with. It makes them sad that they're not permanent staffers sometimes, esepcially considering how short they all are on nursing staff these days.

Glad you're working on the domestic violence issues, too. That's so important. We had a next-door neighbor who was a real creep who abused his wife, and it was truly an appalling situation. Late-night police calls. Loud, vocal fights that were clearly audible to the houses on both sides. We intervened on three occasions and called the police. After that began, I volunteered in our local women's shelter for a couple of years just because the situation piqued my interest. During that process, I sent my neighbor a card, both to her home and her work address in case he screened her mail at home, that gave her the card and contact info for the shelter. I did that anonymously but wrote a little message in there about how everyone deserves to be safe, and it apparently worked because not long after that, she moved out one day when the creep was at work and they're now divorced. That situation really opened my eyes, and it still makes me count my blessings about what a fortunate, loving situation I'm in.

Right now I'm a writer for a big company in the Dallas area. I write ads, brochures, Web copy, speeches. Lots of stuff. And I mostly get to work at home. But my first love is and always has been medicine. I was a paramedic for 6 years when I was younger and my second major in college was pre-med. So now I've been lucky enough to be accepted to med school and have to determine whether, here in middle age, I really want to turn my life upside down and go that route. But as I mentioned previously, I can't easily do anything right now or probably for the next fall school term. My older sister has stage 3 ovarian cancer and is here with us and, I'm afraid, is getting sicker. She's in a very kick-ass chemo program, but it's probably only going to slow down the spread of the disease. That's why I came online here to be able to find weed to help her. It has helped, but I wish to goodness it could really cure her. This is the one very sad, depressing thing in my life.

Wow! Sorry for such a long message. You said you work with hispanic women. Are you down here along the border like we are in Texas? Or in one of the other states that border Mexico? (Not that you'd have to be. Hispanic immigrants are in lost of other areas besides the border states). Just curious.

Talk to you again soon!