Tag: health

The health report, September 2015

Naturally, I started fearing the worst, stomach cancer, or other dreaded disease.

umbilical_hernia01Early in the past week, I went to a vascular surgeon. I don’t have varicose veins, but I have a related ailment in my left leg. So I’m getting compression stockings.

Meanwhile, there was a little lump in my belly, near my navel, a month or two ago. I wondered what it was, then promptly forgot about it. Then it got bigger, and I couldn’t ignore it, so I went to my PCP (primary care physician), or actually, her partner, a couple of days ago.

Naturally, I started fearing the worst, stomach cancer, or another dreaded disease. As some now-disreputable comic once noted, doctors are wonderful people, but they’re always touching things. “Does that hurt?” “DOES THAT HURT! DOES THAT HURT!” Same with this guy. Before the visit, I had minimal discomfort. But now – ow, ow ow, ow.

Still, he believes I have an umbilical hernia, which is rather reassuring. I am seeing a specialist later this week, and I hope that, whatever it is, it’ll be addressed soon.

Meanwhile, I have a Weird Al song stuck in my head. As SamuraiFrog wrote: “This is a song that benefits enormously from having a funny video (which was shot on the same set as the James Brown video). It’s pretty funny, and it’s a good re-creation of a Brown song.”

It’s also very informative, about the different types of hernias. And it ends with, “I feel bad!” I would rank it much higher than Mr. Frog did.

Here’s Living with a Hernia.

$30,193.86

I HIGHLY recommend that you get a notebook when you go to the hospital with someone – and you SHOULD have someone, if at all possible.

hospital-billThe bill came for the Daughter’s two-day stay at a local hospital:
Over $4,000 for the emergency room
Over $4,000 for the MRI brain scan
Over $12,000 for the MRI spine scan (which they probably didn’t finish when she balked after an HOUR)
Over $4,000 for various labs
Over $4,500 in “accommodation fees”
Plus drugs and physical therapy

The hospital actually got $4,889 from my insurance company, with over $25,000 eliminated by the “Insurance Contractual Adjustment.”

That made the total due from us $100.

THAT is why I LOATHE it when I’m without insurance.

One can argue whether it was all necessary, to eliminate what she might have had, but evidently did not. Had she suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, rather than the viral infection she likely had, it would have been terrible.

One more thing on this topic: the Wife and I were at the hospital all the time, but not always at the same time. I HIGHLY recommend that you get a notebook when you go to the hospital with someone – and you SHOULD have someone, if at all possible. You are likely going to see so many different people, it’ll be difficult to keep track of what each one said.

I’m always coming across people – writers, artists, musicians especially – who have no insurance. It’s usually in the context of someone who has had some illness or injury, and is now facing some catastrophic bills. This is why I’ve supported the single-payer insurance plan that never got off the ground in the bulk of the US; Obamacare is definitely a half a loaf, but, I’m hoping, better than nothing for those people going forward.

M is for Monsanto, modified foods and mischief

Monsanto uses “alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly [that] are the subject of worldwide concern, with baleful consequences for the world’s small-scale farmers.”

Monsanto, a large agricultural entity in the US, apparently needs protection, for the US Congress has passed, back in the spring of 2013, what has been dubbed the Monsanto Protection Act, which, critics claim, “effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified (aka GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future”. The bill has been recently reauthorized in the House, but not the Senate. (Meanwhile, while supporting corporate welfare, the House GOP axes food assistance for millions of Americans.)

So what’s the issue with GMOs? It is believed that GMOs are not safe. “They have been linked to thousands of toxic and allergenic reactions, thousands of sick, sterile, and dead livestock and damage to virtually every organ and system studied in lab animals.”

Also, many scientists are calling for further study of a genetically modified bacteria which is used to create aspartame. Moreover, some fear that the use of the Monsanto product RoundUp will cause birth defects.

The desire among many, short of banning these products, is for GMOs to be labeled, but GMO manufacturers are even resistant to that unless they are voluntary. Worst-case scenario, once the FDA finalizes its GMO labeling guidance, the industry uses the FDA guidance to preempt state laws requiring mandatory labeling of GMOs. “Currently, states have the right to enact GMO labeling laws precisely because the FDA has not formally ruled on GMO labeling.”

It’s interesting that a whole lot of the world wants them banned. Activists in Chile are fighting Monsanto’s bid to patent food crops. Also, more than 1000 acres found to have been planted with genetically altered maize crops have been destroyed in Hungary. “The country has boldly banned GMO seed. Peru has passed a ban for at least ten years on GM foods, along with Italy, Greece, Spain, and Austria with their own bans, as well as many other countries.” Here is a list of countries & regions with GE food/crop bans.

According to The World According to Monsanto, which charts “documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin’s three-year journey across four continents to uncover the disturbing practices of multinational agribusiness corporation Monsanto, it uses “alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly [that] are the subject of worldwide concern, with baleful consequences for the world’s small-scale farmers.” This parody piece from The Daily Show illuminates how litigious Monsanto is when farmers try NOT to use their patented seeds which need to be purchased every year, contrary to the agricultural practice of reusing seeds that go back millennia. And the US Supreme Court has supported Monsanto in 2013.

In the Philippines, GMO corn farmers are losing their land and going into debt, thanks to bait-and-switch pricing tactics.

There will a March Against Monsanto event on Saturday, October 12 around the world. The information is now on Facebook, after previously having been removed.

Some other links:
14-year-old girl stands up to Monsanto shill
The list of Monsanto-owned companies you may have seen on the Internet is probably wrong, such as this one, though it may be a fair reflection of companies using Monsanto products and techniques. Conversely, this list I believe to be correct.
Five GMO myths busted.
Leigh Erin Connealy, M.D. of Newport Natural Health – GMOs: Are Your Cupboards Filled with Frankenfoods?
Occupy Monsanto website.


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

The Health Report, Spring 2013

What ARE those thing that look like snow flurries or spent dandelions?

So what’s been going on with me since I got out of the hospital in mid-April, knowing my cardiovascular system was OK? Went to my primary care physician, where we kvetched together about public education. She’s going to schedule me for a stress test.

Meanwhile, I went to an orthopedic practice. My left knee has hurt on and off since I tore the meniscus in 1994. Now I have a touch of the bursitis. (My grandmother always used the definite article before all ailments, such as the arthritis, which she called the arthuritis; don’t think it had anything to do with Kiwis from Chicago.) The bursitis and the arthuritis, which I had in that knee before, sound like an old person’s ailments, but then I took a look at my date of birth on my passport, only to be surprised to find how old I really am! Got a cortisone shot in the knee, which helped some.

I’m supposed to go for physical therapy for my left elbow. Not sure if I have tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow – I don’t play either sport and certainly not with my left arm. The brace does aid me a bit.

Then I went to the gastroenterologist’s office in anticipation of getting a colonoscopy in late June. It’s been 10 years. Not incidentally, my wife gets one every five years because her brother John died of colon cancer at the age of 42 back in 2002.

While my wife and daughter went on a 4.5-mile CROP walk against hunger this past Sunday, I rode my bike nearby. It had been so cold and overcast for so long that I did not prepare properly and got a bit of sunburn on the top of my head, and even worse on the back of my hands, where the vitiligo is prominent; it has been red and itchy for days, and lotions aren’t helping.

Meanwhile, why is it that I’m so stuffed up? Could it be the stuff floating around here? And what ARE those things that look like snow flurries or spent dandelions? I decided to ask my Facebook friends. A couple of them said it was cottonwood, but Lynn Moss, a longtime reader of this blog, added: “It’s probably not the cottonwood that is causing your allergies, but something else coincidentally releasing pollen.” She even provided this video. Another said, “It is the pine pollen. Coincides with the release of cottonwood seeds in our area…” The picture above may or may not be the culprit, but someone sent it to me, so what the heck.
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Here’s some sage advice about the problems with self-diagnosis.

Doctor: my eye…

Jackson Browne’s birthday is coming up.

 

Sometime last month, I suddenly experienced some real pain on the left side of my left eye. It was as though someone had poked me in the eye. It was still inflamed on the fourth day, so I went to my eye doctor on the fifth day.

She said that I was suffering from angular blepharitis. I said, “in English.” Angular I know, and I know that -itis is a suffix suggesting inflammation. Basically, I have a stye in the corner of my eye. I was to use warm compresses, massage, and use of prescription ointment two or three times a day.

From eMedicineHealth:

“A sty is an acute infection of the secretory glands of the eyelids. This common infection results from blocked glands within the eyelid. When the gland is blocked, the oil produced by the gland occasionally backs up and extrudes through the wall of the gland, forming a lump (chalazion), which can be red, painful, and nodular. Frequently, bacteria can infect the blocked gland, causing increased inflammation, pain, and redness of the eye, and even redness of the surrounding eyelid and cheek tissue.”

Incidentally, spelling-wise, both sty and stye are correct.

The treatment seemed to work well. It should, with a $25 co-pay for that tiny tube of antibiotics.
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Jackson Browne’s birthday is coming up on the 9th. I should link to the obvious title, Doctor My Eyes.