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00:42 Saturday, 29 January, 2005
Endwell, NY
O.K., I've officially now moved my web-log from Xanga to AngelFire.
AngelFire was just more conducive to my style of making a
web-site. Xanga was getting too cumbersome, and AngelFire has
simplified things immensely. So, the Xanga site will still be
there until they cancel me due to inactivity or something, but anything
new will be on AngelFire.
—Fidget
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11:02 Tuesday, 25 January, 2005
Endwell, NY
Feeling *much* better this morning, compared to the previous two days. It still kills me if I swallow without lubrication, but my head feels a lot better, and the lubricated swallows actually feel soothing rather than just less painful. I slept about nine hours last night, though I woke up every hour and a half or so to have another drink. I think I used three Sucrets during the night: I found that they numbed my throat (they're anæsthetic, so they basically just numb the mouth and tongue, and only barely numb the throat) just enough that it didn't kill me to swallow, and I could therefore fall asleep. I felt bad for my teeth, though, because I couldn't brush after each one, and actually fell asleep with one still in my mouth at least once. In the morning I had a clump of sugary drool in my beard. Ewww.....
Anyway, I think the NyQuil had kicked in around midnight because I felt rather sleepy and decided to dive into bed and take advantage of that sleepiness. I woke up at 9 to my Dad plowing the driveway (we'd gotten another two inches last night) and tried sleeping more, but by ten I'd swallowed enough painful times to know I wasn't going to sleep anymore, but only torture myself, so I got up. I went downstairs, made myself another cup of tea and watched Robert Downey, Jr., on Dave Letterman. I think I'll go make some more chicken soup in a little bit. It's about the only thing that actually makes my throat feel good.
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16:19 Monday, 24 January, 2005
Endwell, NY
I've got a terrible sore throat that feels like someone is slicing my larynx every time I swallow. It started Friday evening and has now basically kept me from sleeping for three nights. Every time I need to swallow, I have to lubricate with water or a cough-drop or food, so I'm unable to fall asleep, having to sit up and drink every time I need to swallow. It's pretty frustrating.
As you know, I try to avoid taking medications, because most of them just mask symptoms and don't actually help a person get better. In fact, they're more likely to keep you sicker longer, contaminate others, and weaken your body in the long run. So I've been drinking A LOT of tea and resting. Normally, this works fine, but when I'm unable to sleep, the 'resting' bit of that equation is compromised. So I finally gave in and took some pain-killers Saturday night (which helped marginally), and moved up to cold pills on Sunday. Still, I've probably only gotten about six hours of light sleep over the past three nights. Half of that was last night, when I sat upright with a large cup of tea resting in my lap, and snoozed between needing to sip the tea in order to swallow.
Anyway, so, nothing was working to make me feel better. I don't mind having to drink tea and rest all day, but being unable to sleep was driving me nuts. I didn't think I had Strep throat, but, if I did, I knew I should get on the antibiotics or it would just get worse. So I decided this morning that I'd go to the doctor's. My Mom works for a dermatologist, so she offered that I could come see him, since we all get free visits and he's an M.D. and could therefore recommend something to me. However, a dermatologist's office doesn't normally have Strep tests lying around, so I figured this would mostly be a waste of my time and Dr. Derma's time. So I called the physician's group that I used to go to, and got an appointment this afternoon. It turns out I do *not* have Strep throat, and that the only thing I can do is continue to lay low and treat symptoms as needed, which is as I expected, but just wanted to be sure.
Before getting ready to go to the appointment, I was IM'g with my friend, Boundless, and told her I was heading to the doctor today. She asked if I had health insurance (which I do) and that got us talking about the rapidly rising cost of health-care in the U.S., and the effect that it's having on individuals and businesses. This got me thinking, and, in the shower, I put that discussion together with my Mom's offer to see Dr. Derma for free and it made me realize one of the big factors that is causing health care to cost so much.
Every doctor with an 'M.D.' after his or her name is trained and legally qualified (to the best of my knowledge) to perform brain surgery, set a broken femur, diagnose lung cancer, administer electroshock therapy, and prescribe any of a million prescription medications. Yet one would be stupid to have any of these things done by a doctor who doesn't specialize in that particular field. And, to their credit, most American doctors would decline to perform a specialized procedure he was not proficient in. But that title of 'M.D.' can mask a huge number of deficiencies of ability, and unsuspecting people can be duped into believing their specialized procedure is being performed by someone safely qualified to do it. This is dangerous, but also expensive, because protection against this happening requires a lot of insurance and a hoard of lawyers, and we are the ones paying for that. Even assuming we could trust doctors to not abuse their titles, there still is the matter of long and expensive training. I admit that it is helpful to have a back-ground in the over-all functioning of the human body to be a medical specialist, but does the training need to be as broad as it is?
Let me give you an example. Dr. Derma, M.D., is a dermatologist. That means he specializes in disorders of the skin, hair, and fingernails, basically. So if I had appendicitis, Dr. Derma would know how to perform the surgery necessary to remove my swollen appendix, because it is a part of general medical training. But he would send me to another M.D. who specializes in the surgical removals of internal organs or something. Of course. …But, then, why does Dr. Derma need to be trained in how to do that procedure? Why couldn't he have saved five years and $300,000 by skipping everything that he would never, ever need to do? Because then he wouldn't be an M.D., and nobody would trust going to him, that's why. There's a nurse practitioner in the office who knows just as much about dermatology as Dr. Derma does, but she's not allowed to prescribe medications or perform certain surgical procedures. And some patients will insist upon seeing the doctor, because they think the nurse isn't as good. In reality, the nurse can be better in some circumstances, because she was able to focus her education more thoroughly on her specialized field, rather than having to spend time passing classes on stuff she knew she would never use.
And what about prescription medications? Here's another dangerous area. An M.D. is allowed to prescribe anything he or she chooses to anybody he or she chooses. Again, there's medical malpractice laws protecting us from these abuses, but in the end these laws are just costing us money. Dr. Derma uses his legal qualification to prescribe medications that help with dermatological problems in his patients, as he should. But, if he felt like it, he could also prescribe any number of specialized drugs to lower their cholesterol level or help them sleep or help them stay awake or make them less anxious or make them pay attention in school or anæsthetize them or cause their brains to explode. Again, this ability makes an M.D. both very dangerous and very expensive.
I think that insisting a doctor know about and be able to do every last thing that goes on in a hospital before he can be specialized to do his one particular field is like saying a geometry teacher should have the knowledge necessary to teach every class within a school. It's just a waste of the teacher's time, energy, and money, and it actually detracts from the amount of those faculties that can be spent on the things he's actually going to use as a geometry teacher. Historically, a doctor did just about everything, but as our knowledge and technology progressed, specialization naturally occurred, and that's great. But I think the specialization needs to be honed in such a way that doctors are no longer trained nor allowed to perform tasks outside their specialized fields.
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Mon 2005.01.17.19:16 -- tsunami premonition
Fri 2005.01.14.14:35 -- ...the images "Winter Wonderland" was written about.
Fri 2005.01.14.00:16
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