MEDS MESS

MEDS MESS

 

       If I didn’t mention it before, I’m headed for total hip replacement surgery on Tuesday, March 13. The lining between the ball and socket is worn out, replaced by “dramatically” bad osteoarthritis, according to my orthopedic surgeon. It’s gotten so bad that I’m already walking the way I’ve been told I will in the days after surgery.

       But no one simply walks, or wobble-hobbles, into an operation. There must be consultations, on this case with the heart people to see if there were any problems (yes—add two more medications to the list of  what I take every day), to a sleep lab to try to find out why there had been a heart problem (will talk with the doc after the operation, to home health (coming to the house to help post-op), to physical therapy (in hospital and after), and to anaesthesiology.

       At each reception desk, I was handed a form on which I needed to write a list of all my medications, plus anything else I took (e.g. vitamins), plus sometimes a list of past operations. Are you allergic to anything? Have you or a relative ever had these conditions? If I came to the same desk on different days, I had to fill out such a form twice, to see if there had been any changes.

       Now, the point: all this talk about electronic storage and sharing of medical records suddenly makes all kinds of sense at retirement age (I’m 62, could be getting Social Security now, though with a financial penalty until I am 66). Updating specialists on one’s medical status should not be the responsibility of amateurs! Even assuming a perfect, memory of past traumatic circumstances, that memory might vary depending on sleep, distractions, or (dare I say it?) medications. In my case, frustration and lack of time resulted in lists that, since they were in my own handwriting, must have been, according to my wife, unreadable. Take two doses of luck and one glorious assumption and call me in the morning.

       A medical account could include past meds tried and rejected, and why they did not work out. It could include past occurrences that weren’t explained at the time. These days, it could include a video record, for instance of how I was walking. The surgeon got out a point-and-shoot and snapped a couple of shots of me walking away and back toward in a hallway—more amateurism, from the point-of-view of a professional photographer.

Medicine today is like a basketball team where a couple of hotshots keep firing at the basket but there isn’t enough teamwork and there are some serious deficiencies in fundamentals. We’re seeing what this produces right now, in the annual March Madness NCAA national collegiate basketball championship, where upsets are so likely that commentators speculate about them before any have happened.

       In a hospital, the patient could be upset, too. Or dead.

 

        

YANK THE PLUG

YANK THE PLUG

 

       I’ve seldom been prouder of the Legislature than when they slam-dunked the Texas owners of the nuclear power plant in Vernon by refusing to support 20 more years of operation beyond the scheduled closing date of 2012, voting 26-4 against both a measure to that effect and Governor James Douglas’ recommendation to wait until all the studies were in.

       The strategy suggested by Entergy, to keep the plant operating so they could discover the source of the radioactive leakage unexpectedly discovered on the premises, ranked right up there with allowing an  emergency room patient to bleed more so there could  be a more accurate diagnosis. But this was right on a par with Entergy’s idea of splitting off their oldest nuclear plants into a separate corporation without enough assets to cover renovations and decommissioning.

       Right then and there, they provided enough of a rationale not to prolong the plant’s suffering beyond the announced timetable for putting it to sleep. If you remember, the crystal in this country’s supersaturated solution of chicanery was bundling together unsound mortgages with others and claiming the resulting “securities” were sound investments. After the demise of that type of derivative setting off the Great Recession, and everyone saying afterward they should never have believed “it’s different this time,” why should anyone have expected Vermont to muster  any enthusiasm for such a toxic asset?

       When the time comes, YANK the plug. In the meantime, for truth’s sake rename it Texas Power.

WRAPPING UP FEBRUARY, 2010

WRAPPING UP FEBRUARY, 2010

 

       During the first week of the month, Toyota started putting ads online for its “upcoming Washington’s Birthday sales event,” which “ends February 15.” Obviously they needed to research the American market better—there was a time when getting the Father of our Country’s birth date wrong would have been an unpardonable offense—and their use of the English language could have been improved as well. They did not specify what would end on February 15, the sale or Toyota.

 

-------------------------

 

       “Yoplait, the yogurt with calcium and vitamin D in every cup.” Just like every other yogurt. Truth told, there’s calcium and vitamin D in every teaspoon. The thing about science fiction fantasy is, it’s not much more twisted than terrestrial logic.

 

--------------------------

 

       “Learning curve.” Why don’t they talk about the learning knuckleball? That’s the one that really throws you.

 

----------------------------

 

       A woman from Mississippi comments online on a picture of ice-fishing shanties on a lake: “I am such a Southerner. At first I thought they were appliances that people had abandoned.”

 

-----------------------------

 

       After a long period of inactivity on the sun—no sunspots, which are big storms, or other flares—things are heating up. Keep an eye on the northern sky late at night this summer, there might be northern lights.

 

------------------------------

 

       In thinking about Vermont Yankee, it’s useful to remember that the letters spelling “nuclear” also spell “unclear.”