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Many of you know our colleague and under paid researcher Dr. Vera Lent, who is pictured above in a rare photo. She has been in charge of our medical research department here at the Institute for years and has been instrumental in our obtaining many of our fat, hundred-dollar bill filled grants that we have managed to procure. She has tirelessly worked uncover in various parts of the world and more importantly in our own country, America, finding and rooting out nasty diseases of all kinds. Our aim and hers has been to find particularly horrible things that attack our citizens, isolate the culprit, and then sell the little buggers to big pharmaceutical companies so they can develop cures, make billions and we get to ride the money train with them. Oh, and to help people too.

In the image above, where she is shown waiting for a bus, she is clearly in her First Peoples persona where she was affectionately known as Ta-sina Hlahla Win, or Rattling Blanket Woman because of the sound she makes walking and because she was never seen without her favorite blanket. We’re not even sure what she looks like and she works for us.

She was much over due in filing her latest discoveries and as weeks went by with out her making us any money we became concerned for her welfare. One of the things we didn’t know about Dr. Lent was that she was a veteran having served in the medical corps and was a survivor of what came to be known as the battle of the Femur on Muag, a small little known island in Micronesia, during the war. Due to the treacherous terrain and lousy footing our troops suffered much busting of their various bones like femurs and metacarpals and head bones. It was carnage pure and simple. Our Dr. Lent or Ta-sina Hlahla Win as she prefers to be called  was in the thick of things, tirelessly casting broken appendages like the trooper she is. As a result she was awarded the medal of the Fractured Phalanges the highest honor you can receive from the Society of Orthopedics.

Unfortunately another thing we didn’t know was, we didn’t hear from Vera because she had been a patient in a VA hospital, having been diagnosed with an acute case of Spunkiness. Spunkiness is one of those treatable unusual ailments that initially seem to be a beneficial characteristic and is responsible for people doing many good and beneficial things. Things that just couldn’t have been accomplished without spunk. But like so many other traits that appear to be a real blessing too much of it can be devastating, debilitating and lead to being incarcerated in one of the locked wards of the Veteran’s Administration facilities, if you are a veteran of course. We didn’t know about this or we’d of sprung her right away.

Once we found out we quickly tried to get her released but due to the furloughing of essential personnel we couldn’t begin to penetrate the formidable organization that makes up the VA.  Then to complicate things further, unbeknownst to us, the government began unfunding VA patients due to the furloughing and shutdown, leaving them out on the street. Because their funding was cut off by the geniuses that run our government these folks, our veterans, have been released and left to their own devices, and Dr. lent was one of them. Now thanks to our own leaders she is missing and presumed lost. We can’t even begin to get into the shame that is our own government unfunding the organizations that care and protect our service men and women for their own political agendas.

So if you see Dr. Vera Lent anywhere, she’ll be recognizable because of her blanket and her spunky behavior, let us know so we can come get her. You can’t let veterans that we should be caring for roam the streets because of a little spunky behavior or some politicians desire to win a political advantage by withholding the money needed to care for them. They didn’t withhold their service when they were asked to serve. There are a lot of vets out there and they have one of the largest consistent voting percentages of any group voting, something these elected officials of ours should take note of come the next election.