"UTMB cuts 3,800"

"UTMB cuts 3,800" Quoted from the Galveston Daily News on Thursday. We received a email from our president Wednesday that they met with the UT system regents and they unanimously approved the cut of 3800 full-time UTMB employees, thats 1/3 of our workforce on the island! They are cutting the 550 beds to about 200! Currently the school is losing $40 million a month paying salaries of those that are still not back at work, which is roughly 3000 people. The hospital is still not functional because all of the food services, pharmacy, blood bank, etc were on the 1st floor. I guess the good news is that they will get paid through January.

We all suspect that this is primarily to get rid of the huge population of indigent care we provide. I guess they send them here from surrounding hospitals, but the government doesn't pay us for those services, so we are always in the red. They are also not fixing any of the section 8 housing on the island. I don't know where all of these people are going to go. You may be surprised but there are many people still living in 'the tent city' on the island provided by the Red Cross. FEMA is the worst run agency we have. My fellow students are still waiting on help. Did you know that people are still living in trailers in LA following Katrina! For this reason, they are not sending any trailers to Galveston. The island is still a mess. Piles of debris, non-functional traffic lights, clogged rain drains, etc. Several of favorite restaurants are still not open...and appear to be far from it.

I am still not back to working fully. We can only be there from 8-5 M-F and I still have no animals to work with! I have paperwork to do, but its not urgent so I don't feel like doing it. Unfortunately, I am getting good at wasting away 9 hours of my day! Some things are starting to come back online so I am crossing my fingers and hope that by December things will be back to 'normal'.

Okay I'll quit being a downer and post about the good things in my life