Without Borders

 

You’ve heard this: Doctors without borders. We provide independent, impartial medical humanitarian assistance to the people who need it most. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cares for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, natural and human-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries.

A doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments

 Doctors are Audiologist, Dentist, Optometrist, Physician, Surgeon and Veterinary physician.

There are other doctors. Doctor of the Church, a title given to those with great contribution to Christian theology or doctrine, Doctor of Sacred Theology (Courtesy church title), Doctor of Divinity (Courtesy church title), Doctor of Nursing Practice, Doctor of Pharmacy, Doctor of Philosophy.

In the ole days, the ‘doctor’ was the barber. He (it was a male occupation) had the sharp tools. He’d give a shave with a straight razor, pull a tooth with a shot of whiskey or hand you a stick to bite on while he dug out a bullet.

Then these doctors started getting together and comparing notes and forming procedures that were acceptable and had positive results. Schools were built to teach new techniques to men and women who spent years practicing trying to heal, even under tutelage of ‘real’ doctors as interns until they get a piece of paper to frame on the wall. They still ‘practice’ medicine.

Back to the point, these remarkable people go where the trouble is to mend and heal. They are not French doctors or Swiss doctors or Chinese doctors, but just doctors. Doctors without borders.

Which gets us to the other half of this description.

‘Without borders’

A border is a real or artificial line that separates geographic areas. Borders are political boundaries. They separate countries, states, provinces, counties, cities, and towns. A border outlines the area that a particular governing body controls.

When I moved into this neighborhood, all the yards were enter connected. There are invisible lines that neighbors would mow, then bushes were planted and then came the fences. Now each address is separated by tall walls of wood keeping others out or families in.

When you are injured, you don’t ask the doctor if they are Jewish. You don’t ask if they are from Italy or which side of the border, they received their accreditation.  You just hope they can relieve the pain without passing you on to the undertaker.

We seemed to have produced borders to separate people due to religion or ethical backgrounds or family units. We would battle over expanding our borders to increase our labor force and steal the resources.

The Doctors without borders seem to just be concerned about repairing the ill instead of being allowed to follow their Hippocratic Oath.

I’ve crossed counties but could not see the borders. There are signs that mark a border, but without a fence? I’ve flown over mountains and deserts and see the highways but never see those lined borders that show up on maps.

Maybe there are no borders?

What if there were Accountants without borders offering their services. Mechanics without borders? Plumbers without borders? Mothers without borders?

Maybe, just maybe we could become earthlings instead of Germans vs English or Caucasians vs Hispanic or Catholics vs Islam?