Thanks to Dr. Billings and Wanda at the Center for Colon and Digestive Disease; Andrew and Amber at Chick-fil-A; Huntsville Madison County Public Library.
Tag Archives: medicine
Is your insurance provider driving your healthcare professionals out of business?
In Tennessee, a microcosm of the bigger national healthcare cost readjustment debate is taking place, as depicted here:
INAM
What does it take — that is, how mature and sophisticated a civilisation — for one person to get a colonoscopy?
Will a colonoscopy increase or decrease my chances of developing arteriosclerosis and heart attacks? Obesity?
I’ve hit that magic age, past 50, where my medical healthcare professionals wish I get a colonoscopy.
Somewhere between the interests of an ENT doctor (general otolaryngology) and a urologist sits the giant worm of an internal body part that interests the gastroenterologist: a colon; not a semicolon.
In the near future, I will drink the fluid that contains the chemicals that encourage my gastrointestinal tract to flush itself clear of semisolids.
Then, under the dreamy, twilight world of anesthesia, I’ll submit my body to the medical procedure of being scoped for abdominal abnormalities.
Polyps, you say…not an ellipse in a solipsist?
“Polyps” sounds like the name of a GrecoRoman deity, the offspring of a Hydra and Cyclops, perhaps, or simply Polyphemus himself.
Ah, to lie there like a cadaver in medical school while poked, probed and analysed like a crashlanded space alien!
One can hardly wait for the experience, can one?!
Shall I put on my tinfoil hat and say, in a whispered conspiratorial voice, “You know, don’t you, that colonoscopies are the government’s way of attaching tracking devices to your body that can’t be easily removed by mere amateurs!”?
The fictional possibilities are fun to imagine.
There are millions of ways to die, including under anesthesia.
There are millions of ways to live the rest of your life as a vegetable, including having seizures under anesthesia.
How often does a scope perforate the GI tract?
How often does a GI tract reveal cancerous growths?
Even better, how often do colonoscopies reveal nothing out of the ordinary?
I’m placing my bets on common outcome of the last question.
And, after recovering from my twilight sleep, I hope my gut flora returns to its healthy state once again.
Now, if I can just change my dietary intake and lose a few stones while increasing my low-impact exercising!
There once was a guy named Bill…
Usually, I find myself at company-sponsored leisure activities trying to figure out what I’m doing at company-sponsored leisure activities and why I’m thinking about why I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing at company-sponsored leisure activities, giving my thoughts an exercise in wondering, thinking and trying, but not always in that order.
Today, while just on the verge of creating an internal structure in the shape of mantra made of the above thoughts, up walked beside me a man named Bill.
I don’t know Bill well. I know of him by reputation and through appearances at his company-sponsored leisure activities, he being a co-founder of the company that sponsored today’s leisure activities.
Bill is an honest man whom I trust implicitly and explicitly, without question.
As a member of the board of directors of his company, Bill is used to being in the public eye.
His health is as important to the company as it is to his family and him.
I looked at Bill’s face this morning, noticing that there seemed to be more blood flowing through his system — his face was redder than it was at the Christmas party but something else about his face concerned me.
His complexion was not as healthy-looking as it had been several weeks back at an American Heart Association walk sponsored in part by his company.
Turns out that Bill had subsequently suffered a viral infection and spent several days in the hospital to get his temperature back near normal after he had worked with a pile of mulch in his yard.
I could write several blog posts about the value of mulch. In fact, my wife and I used to volunteer at the Huntsville Botanical Garden on Saturday mornings to collect monetary donations in exchange for loads of mulch dumped in the back of truck beds and small trailers, the mulch mainly composed of decomposed leaves and twigs scooped up alongside roadways after having been raked to the curb by homeowners in autumn.
Mulch and humus (not hummus (or humour (or vapors (or femurs)))) are valuable components of one’s garden.
One may wish to set up a mulch or compost pile that includes not only leaves and twigs but also kitchen scraps and other organic material.
Bill was not overly concerned about mulch’s benefits.
No, he had apparently picked up a virus that had hitched a ride in a pile of mulch and was wreaking (and reeking) havoc on his body.
Keep in mind that Bill had quadruple-bypass surgery not that long ago. Within four days of the surgery, he could walk several miles so he’s not all that out of shape.
Bill looked me in the eye.
There was something more he wanted to share with me.
Bill pulled out his mobile phone and showed pictures of his new acquisition, a 1959 Corvette.
Instantly envious, despite initially thinking it was a Thunderbird, I leaned closer toward him. What was so special about this car to Bill that he wanted to show the pictures to a complete stranger?
Bill said he had always wanted a Corvette.
Of course, our material dreams are often displaced by other priorities.
As Bill pointed out, the year after the last of his kids finished college, he put a swimming in his yard, along with deck. He invited the kids over and asked them what they saw. They saw a pool. He corrected them — this was what their annual college tuition had been costing him and now he was spending it on something he and his now fully empty-nested wife wanted.
Of course, it was an investment the kids could enjoy, too.
Of course, of course.
But Bill still desired the Corvette.
Before he went in for the bypass surgery, Bill told his wife, “When I get out of this surgery, I’m going to buy myself a Corvette,” in part to give himself something positive to look forward to after such an ordeal, not really meaning it as much.
Well, his wife held him to his word, making sure he had recovered enough from the surgery to remind him of his promise to himself.
Bill found the Corvette online, located physically not far away in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The car is not perfect, has been repainted and needs TLC — the soft top seal should be replaced, for instance.
At a distance, however, it looks brand-new.
Bill has a way to go to achieve the level of post-surgery health that will ensure he lives many years longer.
Unfortunately, the viral infection and hospital stay delayed his planned physical rehabilitation.
Bill’s honesty with others reaches his inner self, where he knows that he has neglected his bodily needs in order to sacrifice himself for the greater good, for the bigger community outside his immediate family and inner circle of influence.
For Bill, now is his time, time to devote to his wife and himself, to spend some selfish moments reaping the rewards of years of success and hard work.
Our lives are shorter than we think they will be.
Bill, you deserve these moments of happiness, of less stress, of giving your trust to the employees who continue the legacy you started.
Your Corvette and your Austin Healey 3000 kit with 350CI Chevy engine are ready for your full attention and fun-filled driving adventures.
Enjoy the open road, see the sites, revisit old hangouts and come back with tall tales about your new friends.
We’ll be here, waiting with virtual pen and ink in hand.
To your health, whatever you choose to do about it!
Freedom to think without an assigned theme or classroom score
Being here, with me, an Internet radio station and the sun-fed trees outside my window, I’m free to expand my thought patterns upon this blank canvas of an electronic writing pad.
Mixing metaphors if I choose.
If still waters run deep, why do oceans have waves?
Mixing media of varying density and thickness.
My father…a year ago, we were working with medical professionals to seek a path of better health for Dad, “better” being a term we wished for and hoped for more than knew was an illusive condition.
My typical reaction to “serious” situations, the result of turning nervous worry into positive joking action, constantly kept me on the edge of making comments my father, should he have been in a better mood/thought set, would not have approved.
Our senses of humour were not aligned.
I can ask myself why at this point, without tears or sadness seeping into my wonderment, why Dad did not understand or chose not to encourage my funny side.
He implied more than said that the man of laughter has a harder way to tread to the pinnacle of success than a man who treats everyone with seriousness and respect for their emotions/life conditions (i.e., the burdens they bear that are eased with sympathy and empathy).
That is, of course, my interpretation.
But I have heard others tell me that laughing at the wrong time or not taking adult responsibilities is not what my physical presence inspires others to encourage.
I have had plenty enough of what others expect.
Splitting into nearly schizophrenic thought sets to accommodate others and myself at the same time is not the set of states of energy I want to maintain and nourish.
After all, the self is a self-delusional illusion, a trick of chemical reactions that has brought nature to this point, with black pixels outlined on a white-light background, to examine itself, without reproductive needs being met, to spin in place while setting conditions for the next outburst of creativity that knows no ethical/moral boundaries, no positive or negative thought patterns, simply taking the sets of states of energy as is and moving on into the next imaginary moment/time period.
While our species holds public discussions about the subcultural struggles of how to treat the non-heterosexual members, how do other species behave?
I, for one, have seven billion friends to spend time with, some I have been conditioned to treat as equals and some I have been conditioned to hold at arm’s length for at least a brief period of time because our differences are sufficient to keep me from immediately understanding what makes us members of the same species.
We invoke the ancient writings of our ancestors to protect us from having to question or having to accept that subcultures rise and fall in popularity.
We rarely see that talking about our “enemies,” whether with good or bad word patterns, gives them validity.
Memes…
Symbols…
From the 10,000 year/mile distance, the memes and symbols merge into bigger patterns.
Tempests in the teapot of a planet, barely making waves in a solar system, practically invisible in a galaxy, hardly discernible in a supercluster.
Entertaining, nonetheless.
Because I am comfortable in the meaninglessness of my insignificance, the self a temporary confluence of states of energy, I have found the longer view a driving force in my writing, in my [non]existence, seeing 13528 days, rotations of Earth upon its tilted axis, into an imaginary future while having fun laughing about the tragedies of the moment, including my own.
It is, at the same time, a self-examination of one as a member of a species.
Is it not statistically normal to want to reproduce and provide shelter for one’s mammalian offspring, the majority of whom are right-handed, heterosexual, male, dark-haired and dark-eyed non-alpha primates?
I am left-handed, heterosexual, male, red/white-haired, green-eyed and non-alpha, without children.
Thus, statistically, not normal. Abnormal.
Why, then, am I here recording my presence for the majority to, perhaps, read?
Why, indeed.
The confluence of states of energy, this “me” that “I” say does not exist, is the answer.
Avoiding the messy, daily adult responsibilities of an almost 51-year old man, that’s who and what.
Long ago mentally prepared to die at any time, having successfully achieved the goals of my childhood desire to be a published author.
The rest is an endless buffet of desserts filled with laughter and inappropriate humorous thoughts, thankful that the rest of the species is here to support me with characters and scenes to write during the remainder of my life.
Let the nurse practitioners free!
I enjoy my nurse practitioners medical professionalism and support as much I did my family practice physician before retired. Therefore, i agree we should let the NPs be our primary care providers with their own private practices.
Eat, drink, smile
Thanks to Nina, Nat and David at Thai Garden; Amira and others at Crestwood Imaging Centre.
When two for one is not a big deal?
So, today I had my physical exam earlier today…generally good health.
As a guy, there’s always the dreaded prostate exam.
Well, today and today only, there was a two-for-one special!
Courtenay had a nurse practitioner trainee, Britney, conducting the first part of the exam.
When it was time for prostate check, I was politely asked and obliged them both checking my prostate.
Not the sort of two-for-one special that gets advertised. I’m just glad it happens only every few years by one person.
My hearing, on the other hand, should have been checked a long time ago.
Gardening is organic by nature, n’est pas?
Do your neuronal connections have labels?
Do you know what your neuronal connections look like?
I think I know mine:
treetrunkdings 