GO GET YER DARN FLU SHOT FER PITY SAKE!

Well, I'm having a little opinion. It's like a dizzy spell or a feverish dream where you yell a little.

You know I love you - but nonetheless I have seen so many crazy posts in the last few days. So I advise you to proceed and read with caution and a grain of salt. Just remember to read the OMGs REALLY LOUDLY.

Planes get safety checks before every take off but OMG some still crash so let's just stop checking those planes cause obviously checking is the cause....People who wear seatbelts get killed in car crashes every day - yet we still wear seatbelts. OMG!! People who breathe the air are constantly dying every day yet we still breathe the air!!!\

Warning!! Warning:

Prior sequence does not equal causation. Doing something followed by death is the condition of every human being - every single one. (OMG!!) We're all going to die of something. Sometimes it'll be flu. Flu can kill - that's why we get a flu shot and most of the time it prevents or lessens the course of the flu. Sometimes the person might die anyway - the vaccine targeted a different strain, or the person had a compromised system and immunity was not conferred.

But I know that you know what you know, driven as you are. So go ahead. Throw away one of the readily available and inexpensive benefits of modern research and skip your shots. And drive without your seat belt, represent yourself in court, refuse to breathe this contaminated air!!! LIFE IS JUST TOO Dangerous!

I'm so sorry. Please accept this big cyber bear-hug.
Oh wait. I had a flu shot a few days ago. Maybe you better not.....

File under: Healthcare-miscellaneous discontent

Today I read an opinion piece in the Danbury News Times by Dr. Kenneth Pellegrino, a family doctor in Brookfield. It's one of the best assessments of the current system I have ever seen in such a short space. The title is "The guarded state of American health care: A doctor's diagnosis. Bravo Dr. Pellegrino!!! I read it in the paper paper rather than online.

I borrowed the book  How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, MD from the local library. It reveals an amazing view of what influences a doctor's thought processes, and what reasoning a doctor may use when putting you into a pigeonhole of care -- or instead, actually seeing and speaking with you as a living being..... Eureka!

 I recenty learned there are apparently online "health record vaults" where health records can (supposedly)be shared with insurers or various doctors you might have. Not that you actually would be able to convince anyone to look into it, and it looks like it might be a fulltime job just to get the info up there. And by then I'll be 90.... or not. Sigh.

Healthcare thoughts and a book: The Treatment Trap

Sometimes an office visit for a medical complaint seems more like a marriage than a date.  You not only get  your doctor, but all the relatives - a flock of specialists to look after each body part separately.

I have watched strange goings on as a patient advocate for an elder relative for the last ten years. A kidney is atrophied, for instance, according to some test or other by one kidney doctor, then a stent is put in by a sub-specialist kidney doc who does stents, then immediattely there is a question as to which kidney was damaged, as both appear to be fine....

Or when in the hospital for a fall, the hospitalist says they are going to send a neurologist to evaluate her, and also a specialist to look at her sinuses since the scans of her head revealeved a tiny polyp that might be causing post nasal drip. BUT THE PATIENT HAS ALREADY BEEN FULLY EVALUATED and is under treatment by a NEUROLOGIST associated with that hospital.  She doesn't  care about her perennial post nasal drip and wants to go home. She is stable,  and IS SHARING A ROOM WITH SOMEONE INFECTIOUS.  So MRS X -  How about another CAT Scan or maybe we need another MRI, or five more specialists to consult on your case - If you have good insurance - they have some tests they would like to run..... Never mind that post nasal drip isn't exactly something to make you check into a hospital.

Did I mention that these days seniors go to a doctor for each part of their bodies? Besides her primary Doc, my relative has a doctor for her heart, one for her arteries, one for her kidneys, one for the colon, one for her nerves and another for her thyroid. Then several of them want to see her four times a year which always involves looking at the papers and having a chat. No hands on at all. SO Why not do the blood work and let the primary care guy decide if she needs to see them? No fee in that....

For more of the same foolishness and some outright larceny from all across the country - read the The Treatment Trap -  a book by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh. It's available at the Danbury Library.  It's a sobering read.

Hospital cost containment leaves people barefoot with bad breath

At a hospital nearby the new patient's automatic package of freebies apparently has been cut  and I applaud this cost saving measure.  Or maybe they just ran out?

The requisite plastic basin, bedpan, cups, kidney dishes all in hideous matching pink, etc were a useless recycling nightmare.  But there are some notable and useful exceptions ->>>  toothpaste, toothbrushes, and those nonskid slippersocks

When a relative of mine was there this week, she and her various roommates were asked to walk barefoot on hospital floors. After her second night in the hospital she asked for a third time for a pair because her feet were cold and was finally given one. We would have brought slippers in - if we had only been told this was no longer a policy to distribute nonskid slipper-socks to all patients.

In the hospital people leak and staff steps in it. People bleed, puke, have diarrhea, urinate, ooze all sorts of pus which is dabbed at which things that wind up on the floor. Relatives also track in stuff from the street to mix with all of this. Walking barefoot, even on a freshly mopped hospital floor is nuts. (Have you ever looked in a mop  bucket?)  Of course maybe the socks just hold icky stuff close to your feet and carry it into bed with you. No rationale for or against the socks was given.

In addition she went two days without brushing her teeth - we would have gladly provided a brush and paste if we only knew the hospital no longer did.  Dear local hospital -- if you are not going to provide these items - we understand ---BUT YOU NEED TO TELL PEOPLE. Or maybe if she had asked these would have been forthcoming as well. Maybe this is the Don't Ask, Don't Get policy. Fair enough. Just tell us.  Of course some things you ask for and do not get. My relative, whose chart contains a whole era of syncope due to dehydration, asked six times for  water until she got some. This might be the result of understaffing.... But it is a problem....

There were other changes from my relatives multiple previous visits over the last ten years. The method of re-situating people in a hospital bed has changed.  There used to be an extra sheet under the torso, nurses could each grab a side and heave without touching the patient. They have reverted to dragging them by the armpits and asking them to hitch up while pushing - which is sort of futile without nonskid slipper socks.  Another reason to keep the socks. I guess the extra linen was too expensive.

Something happened that has never happened before to us in many life-saving trips - a near miss at a wrong IV treatment.  A person appeared at my relatives bedside early in the morning and said "I have your sugar."  This is my relative who cannot take statins and whose triglycderides are already stellar.  My relative who is not diabetic.  If she hadn't been awake and alert  or hadn't the presense of mind to argue that she didn't get sugar and had never had it before - the drip would have been attached to the pre-installed just-in-case IV Shunt.  No name checking, no order checking, just fill -er up and hurry off to the next mistake.

Another thing was going on - rooms I noticed were being scrubbed out by people in disposable blue suits.  My relative was not allowed to use the bathroom in the second room she was in (which is why she was asking for water)  --  and she believes that was because the rooms other occupant was contagious and was already using it.   The doctors who visited this patient spoke to her with masks on....  One can only imagine-  and still they were all walking barefoot.  It makes you wonder for sure.

I will give kudus for niceness. People were very pleasant.  And to the transport people who repeatedly asked for names and dates of birth to make sure they were wisking away the right patient. Of course this is academic for me, as this hospital which is a three minute drive from where I live will not take my Charter Oak Insuranse. I have to drive to Waterbury, Hartford or New Haven. After this recent encounter -  I don't really mind.

Disingenuous insurance industry threatens consumers to keep status quo

OOOOH if you regulate us --- ooh we will just have to charge more and it will be your fault. You SEE HOW WE HELD THE LINE ON COST IN THE LAST TEN YEARS! HAHAHAHA. NOT.

No surprise here. Insurers don't want reform - they are making enormous ENRORMOUS profits!!! At the last minute before a vote - they have released this report that THEY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.... hmmm, nothing slanted here oh no.. no ulterior motive....

Why should they want to change?  Their anti-reform ads talk about a mysterious THEY who will choose what we can have or pay after reform.  BUT WHAT THEY DON'T SAY IS THAT --- right now it's profit-seeking executives making huge salaries who choose! And they choose to terminate people with diseases or risk factors. After a lifetime of payments they can shuttle you off into NO COVERAGE LAND.

And the countries where universal insurance works are the same countries where the GOVERNMENT tells them what they can charge.....    So either we need a public option or we need to tightly regulate glutenous insuranse companies who pay cadres of examiners to find ways to CUT your coverage any way they can.....

They have shown they can raise prices to astronomical levels all on their own - so lets try a little government intervention!

Heathcare reform, like some flowers, needs tending to bloom

I'm waiting for the mums outside to break open. They seem plush and plentiful this year, all without care on my part. I have done nothing to encourage them.  The holly harbors a flock of  red berries, and again - I have not lifted a finger for them. Might be all the rain we have had this season.

The summer geraniums remain red in their cement pots, but these I have pinched and prodded, snapping off the dead leaves,  spent blooms, and whatever parts rotted in the excessive rains this year. There are new buds on both plants.  The air is cool - it was in the 40's last night. I am beginning to believe its really September.

I also wrote to both Connecticut Senators and to my district representative to urge them to support health care reform.  Changes in law and policy are more like this year's geraniums than the mums.  They need a little encouragement to bloom unexpectedly....

DEAR JOE LIEBERMAN -what's good for the goose....

"If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it." - Senator Joe Lieberman

Ah how Joe Lieberman loves to send money and support to Israel.  Our government has given Israel $114 Billion dollars since its establishment (See Reference material)  And that doesn't count the dollars sent out of the US by all sorts of individuals and organizations.

But let's look at what kind of healthcare system Israel has...   Wiki says: "Health care in Israel is both universal and compulsory, and is administered by a small number of organizations with funding from the government. All Israeli citizens are entitled to the same Uniform Benefits Package, regardless of which organization they are a member of, and treatment under this package is funded for all citizens regardless of their financial means. "

Dear Joe - lets give Americans the same healthcare arrangements the citizens of Israel enjoy. According to the World Health Organizations rankings Israel has the 28th best health care system in the world, while Amercians have a healthcare system that ranks 37th.  Take a look at the list  - even Costa Rica has a better health care system.  Of course having a system of whatever rank can't help anyone who can't get access to it  - and having access is small comfort to someone who loses their home and everything they have to a collection agency hired by a local hospital......

So Joe Lieberman  - let's hear your reasons it's okay to subsidize Israel but Americans are too expenisve to insure.... Go ahead Joe tell us...

PROPOSAL: NATIONAL REFEREMDUM STRIPPING CONGRESS AND THE SENATE OFGOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE!!!!

Let them all apply for and pay for insurance like everyone else does -- especially after they leave office and have no power..... . Right now, they have guaranteed health benefits from even one term, that will last until they die and which covers their whole family. Let them dial the numbers they give you to call when your COBRA runs out - numbers which are NEVER ANSWERED....

THIS IS DISCRIMINATION. STRIP CONGRESS AND THE SENATE OF HEALTH CARE!!! IF JOE PUBLIC DOESN'T HAVE IT - LET CONGRESS AND THE SENATE GO WITHOUT IT TOO!!! Of course then, the big health care lobbies would bribe them with primo insurance packages.

Second thought lets just break up into states and dissolve congress and the senate. (and What a really awful idea that is.. a stable system even an imperfect and irritating system that more or less works, is far better than violent chaos. So all you revolutionaries go turn yourselves in.... )

April 18 Poem - Home care

the prompt is to write a poem about an interaction

Home care

One woman bends
straps the blood pressure cuff
on the other who rolls her eyes
tries to relax

One woman dabs gauze
sprays wound wash
the other wonders
if the next fall will be her last

She's had this thought six times before
or more, the other listens, concludes
the blood pressue is still too high

Doc will tweak the meds,
but no answers today
They both smile.

--Mistryel Walker

Let's spend a trillion buying hospitals instead

If the feds are going to spend a trillion in tax payers dollars, just like that, I think they should buyout ALL hospitals and medical facilities  - saving millions and millions in health care costs by taking banks and insurance companies out of the equation....

Henry Paulson --- Your wheeler dealers won't be grateful for this bailout you are peddling. They will look at it he way a shark looks at a distressed swimmer -- can I get a meal or not?  The idealist thought that the moguls are not going to make off with as much as they can if unlimited underwriting is involved  --  is naivety of the sort that brought us IRAQ.   I was one of the ones hoodwinked. I thought the president must know about those WMD  and with-held my cynicism, when we invaded. I learned my lesson Mr. Paulson. Officials will hoodwink us if they can for their own obtuse reasons, their own selfish interests or those of their freinds or for their very personal delusions.

And, now I should believe that a TRILLION DOLLARS will fix this  just because Paulson says so....???  

Medical bruohaha needs context

A letter I am sending today to the local paper

To the editor:

The News Times and Connecticut's various versions of television news have repeatedly run stories that illegal immigrants are costing Danbury Hospital $4 million in unpaid bills. The figure has been cited over and over again. Any reporter and any thinker worth his salt knows a figure without context can be a little like holding a dime up next to the moon on a dark night or looking at one line from a drawing. Could be the side of a skyscraper. Then again it could be the side of a jelly jar.

There are two numbers without which the $4 million dollar figure is completely meaningless. It is necessary to know the total amount billed out for medical care (both paid and unpaid) by the same hospital during the same time period - and also how much was spent by that hospital covering for medical care for uninsured and UNDERINSURED American Citizens.

Then there must be a comparison - what percentage of the total billed out for medical care does that $4 million represent? And what is the percentage of the total for the unpaid bills of citizens? Give us context and then we'll know how to consider that $4 million. I suspect we are whining about the jelly jar when we should be furious about the skyscraper...

ADENDUM - As of Dec, The Danbury News Times never chose to print this. They never even called to confirm the letter sender as is usual at most newspapers.