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?

My concerns reaffirmed today

When I was first diagnosed with MCL, I pretty much read just about everything I could get my hands on, I attended various conferences, and I talked to anyone who would listen. One of the most important lessons I learned, and which I've mentioned numerous times before was No one cares more about you than you. But in addition to that, I learned to fear the drug Doxorubicin , AKA Adriamycin, Doxil, Hydroxydoxorubicin, or more affectionately the Red Devil. Besides being a deadly chemical, as is the case with most chemotherapy drugs, it is one of the few chemotherapy drugs known to cause permanent heart damage. I even heard Dr. Sandra Horning , a noted Stanford lymphoma specialist, state at the first lymphoma conference I attended in LA, there was no evidence Doxorubicin provided any added benefit to chemotherapy protocols. This was music to my ears, since Doxorubicin is very common in most lymphoma treatment protocols. And even though Dr. Horning has since changed her tune [which my sk...

Bowling: A metaphor on life [sorta]

Over the past 15+ years the game of bowling has changed dramatically. Not only has the equipment changed, making it easier for bowlers of all ages and physical conditions to participate, and score well, but there have even been major advances to how the lanes are prepared for the start of bowling. No longer is it just heavy oil, light oil, long oil, short oil, or no oil, with the latest equipment, the amount of oil can be varied from front to back and side to side, producing a myriad of patterns designed to make the game more interesting, more challenging and as you might surmise, more frustrating. No longer does the "one ball fits all" approach work any more either. In order to navigate all the differing possible lane conditions, you need to have a varied selection of bowling balls. Most pros will tell you the average bowler needs 3 balls, plus a ball for spares, but to be an above average bowler you'll need at least 6 balls, with many possessing more than that. But just...

Fatigue! Part II - Maybe it is real?

Or it's actually Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD (pronounced Mo-Dee-Dee) for short. In a report this week by Roy Moynihan who reports for the British Medical Journal Austrailian scientists may have come across the reason for extreme laziness . The condition is claimed to affect up to one in five Australians and is characterised by overwhelming and debilitating apathy. Neuroscientists at the University of Newcastle in Australia say that in severe cases motivational deficiency disorder can be fatal, because the condition reduces the motivation to breathe. Neurologist Leth Argos is part of the team that has identified the disorder, which can be diagnosed using a combination of positron emission tomography and low scores on a motivation rating scale, previously validated in elite athletes. "This disorder is poorly understood," Professor Argos told the BMJ. "It is underdiagnosed and undertreated." Who knew? Maybe I have MoDeD, from my attempts to become a...

LIVING WITH MCL

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