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 results are in

And I am iron deficient, big time. [Which would account for my low hemoglobin] Test Result Ref Range IRON 30 59-158 mcg/dL TOTAL IRON BINDING CAPACITY 231 250-420 mcg/dL IRON SAT 13 20-50 % My Ferritin levels were good, but that could be because Ferritin is also an "acute phase reactant", that is sometimes increased with acute or chronic disease. Folate and B12 levels were also within the normal range. The only problem now is determining what is causing the iron deficiency, which in the case of men, is [very] rare. My oncologist has given me a Globin Fecal test to perform, and has scheduled me for a consultation with a colorectal surgeon to discuss performing a colonoscopy, which could be problematic because of my large spleen. In the mean time, I've decided to start taking an iron supplement, it's only the quantity that is causing me some consternation. I've been told by a very knowledgeable person that to overcome an iron deficiency, I need to be taking 300 mg o...

This is just one of those days

It's one of those days you just want to sit around the house and do absolutely nothing, or watch some movies you have recorded. It might even be a good day to read a book, if you were so inclined, which I am not. As you should be able to see from the view out my bedroom window, it is raining outside. The rain started last night, and hasn't let up since. I can't complain too much though, as this is the rainy season, and we do need the rain. Plus Monday's are typically my day off from exercise, so I will surprise everyone, and not complain. I just feel sorry for anyone who might be visiting from, say Argentina, like a friend of mine (fellow MCLer), who happens to be in Cambria today. He might be a little disappointed. Fortunately the rest of the week, when he will be in LA, will be nice, and the real intent of his trip was to visit his son in Tahoe, who works at one of the ski resorts, and ski, so I know he's not complaining too much either. This weather will actually...

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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