Watch where you're shoving that transducer, lady!

Have I mentioned that I don't like doctors, nurses, dentists and other medical technicians very much?

Probably outside of work, these are all nice people, but when they are working....it's another story. They become scary monsters who really know how to hurt people.

When I was in the hospital last March, I learned to hate the nurses who would come and put the world's largest needles in the tops of my hands for the IV's. First of all, they seemed to have a hard time finding a vein that wouldn't collapse on them. So I would have to be poked and poked and poked. Eventually, my hands turned black and blue.

But that pales in comparison to the torture chamber I was in yesterday.

I was getting my kidneys checked over with an ultrasound device. To do this, they first had me fast from midnight until mid-morning. I'm actually getting used to this drill so it's not a biggie any more. A lot of my blood tests require fasting.

Two weeks ago, I was in for an echo cardiogram, which is really nothing more than an ultrasound of your heart, so why should I expect anything different when it comes to the kidneys?

Well, it's because the kidneys seem to hide better.

The technician grabbed her transducer and started punching me in the stomach with it. Well, my first reaction was to tighten up my abs.

This, she told me, was a no-no. "You have to relax," she said, "or I just have to push harder."

Really? Is that possible. Well, I tried to relax, but that's hard to do when your covered with gel and a transducer is being pushed into your abdomen.

So, for an eternity, it seemed, she was squeezing gel on me and then poking her transducer under my rib cage -- front and both sides.

Now, on a horse, this area is called the flanks, and if you want a horse to buck, just go ahead and punch them in their flanks.

I didn't buck, but I certainly knew how the poor horses felt.

I asked her why she kept punching me with that transducer. "It's like a flashlight," she said. "Our window to the kidneys is through the liver and the spleen."

You wouldn't believe my sense of relief when she told me she was done. I felt like pounded round steak.

But my "pain" isn't over with yet. I still have to wait for the results from the doctor to find out if anything is wrong. I hope not, but I really hope I don't require another ultrasound on my kidneys.

The transformation of a Democrat to a Republican

This confession will shock a few of my loyal readers, but when I got married in 1985, I was a Democrat. I married a Republican so we used to kid each other on election day that our votes merely cancelled each other out. However, it was during the Clinton Administration that I switched parties. This makes it a little lonely at times when I discuss politics with my family, most of whom have remained loyal to the Democratic party.

I, however, made a clean split and there is very little of the Democratic Party's platform that I would feel comfortable supporting anymore.

So the questions arise, "Who changed? Was it me or the party?"

Probably both to some extent, but certainly I changed more than the party. I felt like I could be an FDR New Deal Democrat, but I couldn't be a Clintonite Democrat.

During Clinton's years in office, I was really turned off by his seemingly endless succession of sex scandals with women other than Hillary. Bill's affair with an intern in the Oval Office was the last straw. But you can't blame the party for something that is Bill Clinton's fault.

However, I did feel that the "Progressive" agenda being pushed for by the rank and file Democrats in the 1990s no longer squared with my way of thinking. So, after pondering it for a while, I decided that I liked Republicans and conservative thought better. Now I've got to admit, I couldn't stand Rush Limbaugh when I first heard him 20 years ago. And I don't like him today. I also don't like his MSNBC counterpart Ed Schultz. To me they are both blowhards who try to talk louder than their opponents. Still I find comfort in the conservative agenda of lower taxes and government getting out of the way of companies trying to do business.

This is not to say that I liked everything President Bush did during his eight years, but I was really glad that he was in the White House on and after September 11 and not Bill Clinton. Did we really need to send troops into harm's way in Iraq? Probably not, but I remember when both Democrats and Republicans thought that Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction. That feeling is similar to today when both parties feel that Iran is close to building atomic weapons, if they don't have them already.

In the 2008 Presidential election, I felt I had no real choice between moderate Republican John McCain and liberal Barack Obama. That was the election where I felt like staying home; however, I voted for McCain, whom I felt was the lesser of two evils.

Since that time, the presidency of Barack Obama has galvanized my position in favor of Republicans. I especially felt betrayed when the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid and the House of Representatives led by Nancy Pelosi were radically changing my country, and not for the better, in my opinion.

So I was happy when the House tilted in favor of the Republicans after the 2010 election and John Boehner became Speaker. I'm not at all disappointed in the gridlock that is Washington, D.C. However, I am looking forward to the 2012 election when hopefully Mitch McConnell becomes Senate Majority leader and a conservative Republican takes the White House.

I would like to see a return to less government and more emphasis on family values. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that a paycheck is something to be earned and not something to be shared.

I've been proud of my country since I was born, not just since 2008 when Barack Obama was elected President. I would like to see a little more common horse sense played out in Washington, D.C., such as "living within our means" and making government "accountable to the people" and not vice versa.

Yeah, I know that the United States is still a great country, but I would like it to be a greater, stronger country with low unemployment and well thought out domestic energy program.

My mantra comes from a Merle Haggard song popular in the 1970s, "If you don't love it, leave it." But I'm reminded of an old line from 1930s humorist Will Rogers, "We live in the greatest country on earth. Heck, even the people who hate it don't want to leave."