Just one more reason to stay healthy, eat well, exercise, and wash your hands

Being a slow health care newsday (referring to my other blog), and not having posted anything to this blog lately, I started getting a little fidgety. So I went blog hopping, and came across this article by a 3rd year med student on the west coast. It may be a little late for me and some others, but his thoughts on why you don't want to be hospitalized just seemed worth sharing.

Hospitals: Worse Before You're Better

"Above all, do no harm," is pretty much bullshit. Let me warn you.

You do not want to be a patient in a hospital. One, it means you're sick enough to need to be in a hospital, which is pretty sick. Two, we'll make you feel much worse until you feel much better. If you do get admitted, please just expect the following to happen. If you're in a teaching hospital, with attendings and residents and medical students, more of this may happen. Be prepared in advance, so that you don't get all crabby when I try to be happy-nice medical student and ask you some questions. (I realize you probably don't mean to take it out on me, and that I'm always trying to put on my nice-happy face so that you won't want to take it out on me, but you're probably tired and frustrated and you'd take it out on Mother Teresa (may she rest in peace) if she were in my place, too.)

You will be poked and prodded, have your blood drawn multiple times per day, from multiple arms and wrists.

You will tell your story to at least three people not uncommonly 8 or more, and you will get annoyed, because we will ask you the exact same questions over and over again.

You will not get any sleep; people will constantly be bothering you with questions, physical exams, or lab draws.

You will be told lots of things, by lots of people, often things that use medical mumbo-jumbo. It will be confusing, probably which test you're getting, or what medicine you're on. Many times people suck at explaining this stuff in normal terms, so please, please ask.

You may wet the bed, or defecate in your bed, and it may not be immediate that you get cleaned up.

You may be in a room with a noisy neighbor, or worse, a demented one that sits in a chair all day with her legs wide open and up in the air, making high-pitched shrieking noises all day.

You will probably smell, and when you do get washed up or get a sponge bath, it won't be that fulfilling.

If you're infected or contagious, people won't want to touch you without gloves, and won't enter a room with you without a mask. Necessary, but I'm sure isolating.

If someone decides you're an interesting case, or you have something about your body that is different or rare or special, you may be made to feel like an object as a doctor teaches using you as an example.

Even if you're not an interesting case, people may talk about your care with other team members like you're not even there in the room, and many times, they will talk in medical code.

I'm not condoning this behavior or this system, but I'm saying often, it's how it works. Many of the causes are medical, part of diagnosis or treatment, but others are political, legal, structural, academic, technologic and institutional in nature. We have a nursing shortage; we must teach future physicians; the law requires this; unions require that; paperwork must be done accordingly; technology is from the 1980s; there are limited resources available for health care. And on and on and on. If I could design the hospital system over again I would, and maybe I will when I'm older, but in 2006, this unfortunately may be your hospital experience.Just more reason to stay healthy, eat well, exercise, and wash your hands, right?

The green tea phenomenon

Despite being a heavy drinker of green tea since my diagnosis, mainly for its cancer prevention, and hopefully cancer curing qualities, I recently have developed a new found enthusiasm for green tea. Now whether it has been the green tea I have been drinking for the past 6+ years, my heavy exercise routine, or just pure chance that has kept my MCL stable, or at least [very] slow progressing, for the past 7+ years is certainly open to debate, but based on past research, I have chosen to believe green tea has at least helped to some degree. So what has given me this new found enthusiasm? Well, a friend of mine, and cycling buddy, was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer, and knowing my daily regimen called to ask my advice on green tea. He had already done a lot of research on the subject, so when I told him my obsession with green tea consisted principally of drinking the least expensive, decaffeinated green tea available (Trader Joe's brand of 18 tea bags for $3, and more recentl...

Alternative treatment blowback

I received some interesting criticism the other day for my stance on alternative therapies. I ......... cannot for the life of me understand why you would not use supplementation and then use an over the counter poisonous liquid which has proven liver toxicity. Especially while taking a statin. She was referring to the use of an over the counter cough medication, I have been taking to help ease the symptoms of my upper respiratory infection. I did this once and vow to never use it again! I have gotten off Lipitor by using Nicotinic Acid and getting much better results but still use COQ10 to protect Liver as you must do while taking Statins. If you are not using CoQ10, I urge you to research this issue. MCL reduces your D3 and should be taken everyday! I use 5000mgs a day. I was sorta taken aback. She was partially correct. I'm against taking supplements, but when necessary I don't have a problem taking over the counter medication, when my ailments finally get the better of me. ...

When is enough, enough?

Today I learned, Lance Armstrong, the most drug tested athlete in the history of sport, is being accused of doping, again . This time by the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA), who claim they have collected blood samples from him in 2009 and 2010 that were “fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.” Really! What took them so long? The French have been trying to make allegations of drug doping stick for years, ever since he won his first Tour d'France, but to no avail. And now the USADA claims to have evidence to support that claim, and they've waited almost 3 years before releasing this evidence. Needless to say, I am skeptical. Then there's this from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): Increasing the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 50 cents per pack eventually would increase Medicare and Social Security spending, slightly. Eventually? What is the CBO suggesting here? That we should encourage smoking, because if we don't, in...

LIVING WITH MCL

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