What's Up? Doc.

I had a blog post almost set to go last week. I watched a number of terrific documentaries recently and thought I would pass my takes on each of them, in the spirit of providing knowledge about the crimes might undo the punishments being exacted on the innocents of the nation, which now swims daily in the conglomerate-owned vast seas of propaganda. No one gave me these films for free (those days are so gone) and no one chatted me up  looking for your eyes to capture as a click to some twisted algorithm tie that indicates if you like this plastic disc you must own this underwear. Fuck advertising.

But my blog post got derailed by events in real life, which somehow (even with my near invisible real life presence) takes precedence and routinely spoils my plans.  Ah, Robert Burns. This morning, as I pound the keyboard, finds me waiting on my Hot Coffee. Can't sip until the needle slips in to steal about four vials for some analysis. Have to get a shit sample off at some point today, too. Fun stuff.

Really, though, I can't complain much. My wonderful spouse did the heavy lifting by landing her current job this January, after 7 months on the unemployment dole. I won't get into her job- that is her business, but even though she was hired as "management" she and I had to wait four months for one benefit from the job to begin. All this just means we both got our health care coverage back after almost one year without it this June.

When I wrote that first sentence in the last paragraph maybe I should have typed, "We hit-it-out-of-the-park-fucking-lucky." Last Wednesday I thought I would give our circus dog, Darby, a well needed and deserved ride to one of his fun spots. The little dude likes the short drive, and short walk about the town to sprinkle his Darbiness on his favorite local flora. We hit the road and the trails at the local bluffs off Panorama Drive and had a great time. We got back and had a sandwich together, as we regularly do, and then I began to feel the effects of  having gotten up at 5AM along with the morning chores coupled with the outing followed by lunch, and all of a sudden it was nappy-poo time. And at about 1PM I went down.

Within an hour my chest felt like a pecan being squeezed in a nutcracker, with the back of my neck pouring out whatever liquid contents remained in my shell. Disorientation class arrived, and I was at my seat early. For over two hours I spent the time taking a couple of  baby aspirin tablets and doodling over the sink with some dishes to convince myself all was under control but the vise-grip around my chest up to my throat never let up. I tried sitting but no luck. I could not lay down the pain was too excruciating, and I worried that if I did get prone I might not be able to get back up.

Being the cheapskate I am a 911 call never entered my mind, nor did just calling the local ambulance service. I'd seen those rates from my many experiences with my dad several years ago. I knew the rates hadn't dropped with the housing prices. Shucks, the mayor of this berg who owns the local ambulance service and who basically has a monopoly here in the county, had just gone before the city council and county supervisors and they gave him everything he asked for in terms of service and rate increases for his ambulance business. I hung on until 4PM when I texted my wife if she could leave a little early, because I was not feeling too well.

I might have waited until she got home had I not experienced a very small event like this one about 3 weeks prior in the back yard after mowing the lawn. That episode was not nearly as intense, and one baby aspirin with a sit down alleviated the minor chest pain. I knew all this could just as easily be some GERD attack, but I had no acid reflex feeling in my throat nor any of the usual burping-the brains-out while syncopating farts in rhythm to the ultimate personal humiliation dance routine that accompanies gastritis and all its wonderful subsidiaries like H. pylori and the like. This was probably the heart attack I never worried about, and so I put in the text message with a follow up call which got her voice message prompt.

I could relax a little bit because the hospital and various doctors could not take everything we own, because Jumping-Jeebus in the Cosmic Rebus of Life I had fucking insurance once again. So relaxed as a fool can be we drove to the ER room at the local Kaiser where blood pressure was taken, an EKG produced and a thorough exam of my feeble state dictated a hospital stay with more tests would be in order. The doctor asked if he should call the ambulance service, and, of course, I told him no. We would drive once he confirmed that I had a room ready.

My stay lasted roughly 30 hours. The nursing staff did outstanding and professional work, as did all the various aids and workers who keep a hospital running. I even had the electronics maintenance guy pop in to make sure my television set was working properly. He didn't like walking by and seeing the tv off, so he checked to make sure all was well with his set. He probably thought I was from Mars when I said I didn't watch much television, and really all I wanted to do was sleep in between blood pressure exams and drawing blood for tests on various body parts. "Televisions are here to help you get well." Cool, but I kept the thing off for all but fifteen minutes until the end of my visit.

I saw two doctors. Each visit was brief, but to the points. The doctors were cordial, seemed to care about my well being, and gave me sound professional advice concerning what tests were going to be necessary during my time in the hospital. A CTscan and x-rays revealed no masses or tumors, and gave no indication for the pain. The EKG and blood pressure readings were negative, but a chemical stress test would be necessary to rule out a heart attack. I would get that during my final five hours in the building along with a ultrasound test. Every procedure required my signature, which basically said go ahead and do it,  I know I can't sue and me or my family can only go through an arbitration process should something go terribly wrong. The joys of "tort reform."

The entire stay felt like I was in a perpetual dream state of semi-consciousness. I would doze off in mid sentence talking to my wife, or to the nurse. I don't know if they were amused, resigned, pained or relieved. I was just "sick object" to be treated. Seemed like the perfect mindset from my vantage point, although female nurses and aides always seemed worried when the floppy gown was moving that some "surprise" might be forthcoming. I assured them on the several times this came up that I was no transgender, and had decent underwear all the same. It wasn't a great comeback, but even in my addled state you could feel the immediate relief. I got to wondering how many small ugly episodes of On The Way To Uranus, with all the obligatory slime induced special effects getting emitted,  these aids had to confront in the course of a working day. Then I fell back to sleep. It seemed to take forever to move from the bed to a wheel chair to a room for a scan or exam. I could not tell east from west, north from south and had no concept of time unless a nurse was doing a countdown on some injection.  And food was a no no, because you had to fast for your particular test.  

I could have stayed that Thursday night and checked out Friday morning. I know my wife was relieved to  have me get home that evening cleared of any real damage. I still felt woozy-weird, but, hey, I used to go work feeling that way plenty of times in my youth, and I was alert enough to know that the longer the hospital stay the higher the odds some micro bacterial pathogen gets into that little vein opening where the medicines go in, or the blood goes out, exacting a dread infection that could kill you.  I remembered the packed ER room at the hospital when I arrived, and thought maybe one of those souls downstairs might really need a room. As it turns out, I was the classic ER user- a newly insured churned individual who had been out of the health care market for awhile ( not the uninsured or the illegal immigrant who are both painted by the forces of evil to stir fear in the hearts of the ignorant).

Well, of course, all of the above thinking was just a few onion  rings on the meat of the matter. I did not want another hospital day put on the family tab. Week-long vacations to exotic places at 5-star hotels cost less than a two days in a typical US hospital. And all turned out for the best. I had some pains and a fitful Saturday night, but my Sunday evening was feeling almost back to normal, weak but getting stronger.

On Monday I met with my primary care physician who gave me the seal of Kaiser approval for decent health, but ordered the needle and vials and fecal smear the post started with. All could have been wonderful until on my way back home I get a call from one of my dearest friends that he, too, had been in the hospital over chest pains at the same time I had been. He allowed me to tell my tale, and then quickly described his few weeks of heart wrenching pain that resulted in the heart surgery, which placed several stents into the primary valves leading to his heart. The doctors have finished most of the work, but they still have one more stent to place next week.

Life will never be as it was. Life can be good, but the new reality finds the throttle now has a governor. Stupid cliches such as "A man has to know his limitations"  take on new darker tones as summer days shorten. I need another cup of hot coffee.

Thanks for stopping by and spending some time! 

Have MRSA Baby, Have MRSA On Me

The Rolling Stones did a number some 45 years ago, Have Mercy, and I've got a youtube clip below with Mick and the other original Stones performing the tune to canned squeals of delight.

Today's play on words directs your attention to a crisis condition many of you may not realize we find right under our noses now. MRSA is an acronym for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is a fairly recent bacterial strain of infection that is related to an old nemesis found usually in extended hospital stays, a Staph infection. MRSA was first detected by scientists in the United Kingdom in 1961.

Staph infections, generally, have not been considered altogether too serious unless your system is thoroughly compromised due to a surgery, or due to a serious illness like pneumonia, and any infection poses a grave threat to your health at that juncture. Staph infections usually get treated with antibiotics and routinely clear up after the necessary dosages deliver the knockout blow to the bacteria.

MRSA, however, is a mutant strain that resists these antibiotics, and now poses a grave threat because there are so few drugs left in our nation's medical supply cabinet to treat this recent type of infection.

How bad is the MRSA problem?

What if someone mentioned in conversation that MRSA now kills  more people in this country than AIDS? Would that shock you? According  to the CDC more than 18,000 deaths in 2005 were attributed to MRSA, which was roughly 2,000 more fatalities more than HIV/AIDS for the same year. Another troubling fact concerning this new killer bacteria finds very little current statistical data published today to give citizens the heads up. The last major study of significance available to the public by the CDC only gives information from 1999 through 2005.

I was in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago, and spoke to several of my old business friends. I speak to people here locally. Most people have never heard of MRSA, not to mention that this mutant staph infection now kills more people than AIDS. How is this possible given the information age we now live in?

The first stumbling block in giving people vital information about their health are the hospitals and their owners. Hospitals do not give out the numbers of  those patients treated for MRSA to the public. No big surprise that one of the major incubators of the problem would prefer not to let patients know going into the place that this dangerous and lethal staph infection more than doubled in incidence over the six year study period from 1999 to 2005.

The second major blackout on information for the public regarding MRSA occurs from the factory food industry. A study published in January of 2009 by University of Iowa researchers documents finding MRSA on pigs and humans at a large hog facility in Iowa. The researchers studied two corporate hog production operations, and the one with the highest pig concentration had 70% of all pigs with the bacterial strain ST398 and 64% of all workers with this type of staph. It has only been since 2003 in the Netherlands that the transmission link between pigs and humans of MRSA was established.

The fact that one hog production establishment had 27,000 pigs spread over several smaller locations with no MRSA found might lead one to make a very compelling argument against the horrible CAFO conditions most pigs are forced to endure in this country. A second sound argument against CAFO production facilities on all livestock is the tremendous antibiotic usage that occurs on the animals caged and raised in these facilities.

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production estimates 70% of all antibiotic use in this country goes into the livestock we eventually eat. The PBS program, Frontline, reported that Stuart B. Levy, MD estimated that somewhere between 15-17 million pounds of antibiotics are used sub-therapeutically in America each year. There is a growing consensus in the scientific community that this large unregulated use of antibiotics is directly related to human beings being increasingly at risk from bacterial infections like MRSA. The federal government under President Obama is pushing the FDA to take stronger action against indiscriminate antibiotic use on livestock, and to potentially ban many antibiotics from the food production operations.

You may wonder why I do not call these livestock operations farms, or ranches. It is because these operations have absolutely nothing in common with those pleasant terms. These are quite simply factories used to destroy and part out animals in the cheapest way possible. If throwing dead parts of other animals into the feed along with antibiotics is cheaper than allowing an animal to be an animal before it is slaughtered then so be it. But, please do not ever suggest to me these caged operations are in any way related to a farm or ranch.

There is a tremendous push back from the so call "farm" states in this country against the removal and ultimate elimination of antibiotic use for sub-therapeutic reasons on livestock. Money is all that matters to the very few companies and their paid people who control the current food industry in America today. An informed public is essential to change the unsustainable methods currently employed by the animal factory owners.

To break up these giant food monopolies will not only serve our overall health much better, but can also mean that true opportunities in food production could happen for so many of the currently displaced and unemployed.   

Thanks for stopping by.