Opining Online

Or call me whatever.

I don’t like the new Yahoo homepage. The two things I use the most seem to be gone. Of course, I’m sure if I spend my valuable time I might find them again… but WHY should I have to?

Is this progress or change for the sake of change?

Finally, the appendix gets respect.

And we learn that a system that sees its need reduced just might cause problems. It’s odd to think that because we have learned sanitation techniques that we are underutilizing our immune system so that it attacks something else that it would have ignored previously because something more dangerous was there.

This is just so interesting on so many levels and analogies can just fly off the shelf.

But it makes sense. Haven’t we all read about the absolutely horrific (to our modern standards) sanitation was hundreds of years ago? I have often wondered how anyone survived. Now it’s possible to think their appendix was doing great things for them.

Now I’m wondering just what benefits I’m not receiving from not having a gallbladder and tonsils that were removed because they “might” cause me trouble rather than because they were.

Or, at least I hope it turns out to be one. Previous discussions on the issue at White Coat Underground haven’t been too rancorous or acidic.

What is “health care”? is the primary question, I think. I’m not sure Congress has even considered that question and that worries me when it comes to legislation they might pass.

Rather, what socks are explains their behavior. As recently as 30 years ago, it was assumed dryers erratically connected with a parallel universe and socks went randomly back and forth, most being destroyed somehow in the transfer.

Now,  new theory explains why that is not necessarily true – Socks are Fermions:

I have come to the conclusion that socks are fermions, and that this explains much of the behavior of disappearing socks. (There may be other factors at play, of course) Clearly they are not bosons; you cannot make two socks occupy the same space: Put two socks on the same foot and they wll be layered, and there is a finite number you can fit into a washing machine or a dryer. Socks worn in the normal fashion are distinguishable by being on the left or right foot (or hand, in the case of the sock puppet effect; I won’t be discussing the very interesting Lamb-Chop-shift one can observe). The individual socks in a pair, however, are indistinguishable and they must have an antisymmetric wave function and thus obey Fermi-Dirac statistics and follow the Pauli exclusion principle.

Physics may well be on the way to solving this age-old mystery.

One of the things that has bothered me about being in a big hurry to pass a health care reform bill is that I could not figure out exactly what was trying to be reformed. A lot of the conversation seemed to be a discussion of whether the UK does it better or not.

I’d rather see more discussion of exactly what is wrong here beyond anecdotes about no access and insurance not covering needed medicines and procedures.

Here is one example of the kind of conversation I wish we were really having:

A Prescription For The Health Care Crisis

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that if he had an hour to save the world he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes solving it.  Our health care system is far more complex than most who are offering solutions admit or recognize, and unless we focus most of our efforts on defining its problems and thoroughly understanding their causes, any changes we make are just likely to make them worse as they are better.

Just go read it, OK? Stay over there and check out some of his other writing.

One thing, and one thing only IMHO, is promoting the idea of open carrying of firearms and that is an attempt to lessen the fear of people who own firearms.

Of course, I could be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

The shock and horror of some people when they see a firearm is what has spurred this movement. It’s an attempt to debunk the idea that anyone who owns or carries a gun is a domestic terrorist.

It is a backlash against years of scare-mongering from the media. The question of whether one should do something merely because they legally can is somewhat (not entirely) mitigated by concerted efforts of those who desire to remove legality from the action.

It is designed for ambiguity.

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood…” – The Federalist #62, James Madison (a founding father, the primary author of the Constitution, and a founder of the Democratic Party)

The topic is HR 3200, the proposed health care/insurance reform bill under discussion at numerous locations across the nation.

Dr. Rich’s explanation is better than any I can come up with and it illustrates my concerns accurately. Read it, please.

unidentified, first-time shooter trying out various handguns

UPDATE: What does mulch do?

• Retains water
• Inhibits weed growth
• Moderates temperature
• Prevents erosion

of someone.

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

via Tigerhawk (who I shouldn’t link because that is a much better compliment)

For background, see here, here, and here. 

This morning, my father, brother, and I met with several St. Michael’s staff, including the director of the medical staff and the director of the nursing staff. It was a very cordial and informative meeting for me, and I hope it was for everyone else. We all left the room on the same side, so I’d call that success.

Of course, one thing that helped from our point of view was that the St. Michael’s staff was obviously very upset that such things had happened and were anxious to tell of us ways they’d already worked on to prevent such in the future. This, basically, is what we wanted.

The nursing supervisor on duty when my step-mom fell was devastated that something like that had happened on her watch.

We, as patients, learned a lot about how some hospital systems work. For example, we learned that when we need to call a nurse to be sure to say what we need, as they can get the message to the right person more quickly.

The director of medical staff explained some of the problems they were having implementing a hospitalist program and contracting with a separate firm for ER physicians. It was quite honest of him to say that these two groups of physicians do not always cooperate in a timely manner and explained how the hospital was working on this problem.

When we asked whether charges for the x-ray after the fall would be included in the bill, we were told it didn’t matter whether they were or not. Now this was upsetting at first – it seemed like the hospital was not taking responsibility for something they admitted was their fault.

But we were oh so wrong. That’s not it at all. My step-mom has Medicare and no matter what tests or procedures or how long she was in the hospital, they were going to paid the same, based on her problem at admission. To my way of thinking, that just ain’t right.

The final conclusion I have come to is that if the hospital staff had all got together and planned to have my father and step-mom treated as they were, they could not have planned it to be quite as bad as it was. These episodes are likely random ones and we were the unlucky family that lost the coin flip twice in a row.

I’m not known for following recipes very well. So, I’m going to try to track this chili as it’s made.

1 lb of ground bison
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped

Brown the above in a tablespoon of butter. Bison is very low fat.

Add…

2 serrano peppers, de-seeded and chopped
1 mexican bell pepper, de-seeded and chopped (while this pepper is supposed to be a bit hotter than a regular bell pepper, it’s quite mild.
3 small tomatoes, peeled and chopped.
2 beef bouillon cubes dissolved in 2 cups water.
1 tablespoon cumin
2-3 tablespoons chili powder

Bring to boil and let simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. At this point, add garlic and onion powder to taste, if you want to add any at all.

Bring to a boil, then cool and refrigerate overnight. This is not a necessary step, it’s just that I didn’t start making this until about 9pm tonight. But, it does give all these flavors a chance to meld and make friends with each other.

Tomorrow… completion.

COMPLETION UPDATE: This was smelling so good, my husband went to WalMart to get a can of tomato paste and a small can of stewed tomatoes. Oh, and a bag of tortilla chips. We ate last night and it was really good. I’ll name this one Midnight Chili

My symptoms.

I’m not even sure the site linked above is a reliable one. The design sucks, but that’s not an infallible indicator of bad information. Nor is bad spelling and grammar, but it makes one wonder.

However… dammit, except for PTSD, every one of those things is happening or has happened to me. I had VBG – vertical banded gastroplasty about 16 years ago. Oh yeah, I lost weight at first, but now I weigh about 5 lbs less than when I had the surgery.

Until recently, I didn’t even consider that any of my health problems were related to that surgery. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia before the surgery, but tended not to say anything about that to anyone because it was not really accepted as a “real” problem at the time.

Several years after the surgery, I found I had a small meningioma which finally grew much larger. It was treated with radiation when it got larger. Many of the symptoms listed in that link, I attributed to the tumor.

I’ve seen neurologists, neurosurgeons, gastroenterologists, psychiatrists, rheumatologists, and… of course, my primary care docs. I recently had a hernia repaired which was due to the incision made by the VBG surgery. Ever since then, the diarrhea is much worse.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do. None of these symptoms alone are serious enough to worry about or cause much trouble, but taken together, they do cause problems. And they’ve become much worse over the past 3-4 years. But how am I — or a doctor — to know what causes what?

I also had a bad fall about 3 years ago. Both knees were injured, but my right knee has never been “right” since then. It was x-rayed and nothing is broken, but it is still very tender and painful at times. My left knee is “unreliable”. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, but it was that way before I fell. It’s just worse now.

Though I’ve joked about losing 25 IQ points, it’s really not funny. I am blessed that even with that loss, I’ve still got at least an “average” IQ and supposedly can express myself well.

Well, not as well I once did and not as well as I want to. I hate the inability to concentrate. Once upon a time, I read two books a week, now it’s a book a month, at best. This is a serious blow to my sense of well-being.

One of the main reasons I have this blog is to try to keep my mind as sharp as I can. It’s also why I read certain blogs daily. But frankly, sometimes I’m a little bit frightened that I can’t communicate the way I want to, whether in a post here or a comment elsewhere.

TV Tropes
If you have the least little bit, the teensiest smidgeon of obsessive compulsive disorder, don’t click there. They have categories and lists and sublists and… they are named so brilliantly you just have to click on them all. Don’t get sucked in, just click on “random item” at the top of the page.

Damn Cool Pics
From silly to awe-inspiring, with a few just a tad scary one thrown in for effect.

Ugliest Tattoos
They are all scary in some way, but some will make you laugh.

Awkward Family Photos
It’s amazing how much fun everyone was having!

I think I’ve wasted enough time on this post. Have a great weekend!