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I remember the days when journalists actually went looking for the news, not let it be handed to them by the powers that be and merely expected to opine upon that which they are spoon fed.
Anyhoo, SECDEF had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which isn't good. To be honest, if I was in the hospital with such a thing, notifying my bosses of that might not be my first priority. Prayers up for Secretary Austin's full recovery.
My big question is this, where were all his staffers while this was going on? Somebody dropped the ball. Do I think national security could have suffered because of this? Possible, but if so, our system is broken. SECDEF ain't a one deep position.
Yup, the gubmint these days, seems like the lights are on, but nobody's home.
I did return to work on Tuesday, kept my distance from my colleagues even though I'm past the contagious stage, as long as I don't expectorate on anyone. It was a bit of a miserable day, stuffed up, the occasional hacking attack as my lungs sought liberation from my chest cavity.
There were some who were worried, thinking perhaps that I should be wearing a mask or something. One guy actually said, "You should have stayed home." I told him I would if he'd give me his paycheck. Yeah, that didn't happen.
My problem is, I don't trust the general medical professionals anymore. The specialists and the like, I still trust them. Their take always seems to be, "here's what we need to do to fix that," as opposed to, "well, let's get some blood tests and I'll set you up with a specialist depending on what those tests indicate." My PCP (Primary Care Physician) is a health manager, every visit is her looking at her lap top after a perfunctory BP and a stare into the old ENT. Oh, and I get to breathe while she listens. She stares at the laptop (looking at my "chart" I presume) while asking me questions about my general health. (I always want to ask the purpose of my filling out a form in the waiting room which answered every last damn one of those questions.)
Okay, she covers the basics pretty well, it's just that I don't feel "doctored," I feel managed. Waiting a day or so for an appointment, then sitting in at least two waiting rooms before being seen¹ can cost some serious time out of work. And my doctor's office used to be near where I live, now it's a good 30 minutes away in a big "run by doctors" corporate sort of place. Does the paperwork flow smoother? I'm sure it does, and I really don't care. It's a big chunk out of my day.
Let me climb down off that soapbox for now. Work on Tuesday wasn't fun, but it was productive.
Oh, a quick word before I go. When I tell you stories, I'm not seeking advice, it appears that some of you think that I am. I most assuredly am not. Have an anecdote to share? Share away, but if I say, "Hey, lucky me, I fell off a ladder yesterday." Don't come back with, "Well, I always grip the ladder with two hands and I have a spotter ..." Okay, I get it. If I do something dumb it's not because I didn't know what I was doing, just cutting corners, M'kay? It's just one of those TTTTRAM.²
Okay, I think that's enough for today. I'm really too darned tired and ornery to be nice.
Maybe it would be better if someone kept a flamethrower handy when I'm in such moods ...
Gomen nasai. (ごめんなさい )
¹ Had that process take two hours once, I told the doctor I didn't expect to be billed for that visit, wasn't my PCP but that Doc looked a little panicked at that suggestion.
² My family and co-workers tell me that I'm too easily annoyed. Guilty as charged. And I am really, really cranky this week. So it ain't you, it's me. Oh, and that acronym is on the acronym page.
As a person who spent their last twenty six years of working in the medical profession, retired three years ago, medical services have truly fallen in quality. It is now being run by administrators and bean counters and has little to do with health, but has become an assembly line with doctors being primarily drug dispensers, seeing as many patients as possible per day. The amount of misprescribed and misdiagnosed patients is astounding.
ReplyDeleteThe pharmaceutical companies exist to sell drugs, they may not work, or their side effects may be worse than the cure, or the new drug they are pushing may be less effective than the older types, but the new drugs are still under patent and are much more profitable. They spend a fortune influencing doctors and politicians and they have no interest in healing, the best drug is one that treats a chronic condition and cause a side effect that requires another drug. I could write on this for pages, but why bother, if you do not take charge of your own health you are a dairy cow to be milked for other's benefit.
Today's medicine makes sense if you think of it as "The Health Care Industry" rather than a health care system.
DeleteAny Mouse - Thanks for confirming what I believed! It's sad, innit?
DeleteRob - Bingo!
DeleteI enjoy using search to see what an interesting phrase means. Like "Gomen Nasai" Japanese informal "I'm sorry" YET the FIRST result was a Japanese Band called Ring of Curse.
ReplyDelete30 some years in the medical field (more a business every year, SIGH) and every year I am getting surer that Grandma's remedies is the correct ones for most ailments.
You don't want advise, OK. Perhaps you should take up cooking whole chicken (carcass also bones are good for you), noodle soup, cooled with fermented Kimchee (don't cook and thus kill the healthy fermented bacteria).
Worked for me when I was in Korea, drinking GI Gin cough syrup for a "I wanna DIE" Flu and my KATUSA solders forced me out of quarters for Kimchee-chicken soup. I had some of the BEST KATUSA's when I was in Camp Humphries.
When I'd start to get a cold in Korea, went straight to the tea shop and got some ginseng tea. Good stuff. The Missus Herself made me some ginger tea with honey and dates, that's doing the trick now.
DeleteGood to hear there's been some improvement in the hacking department, notice I said SOME Sarge. (This statement is uttered softly as I am quietly backing out of the room and turning off the lights.............:)
ReplyDeleteActually slept really well last night, hacking was way down.
DeleteSarge,
DeleteGlad to hear that you slept well. Unfortunately, the good sleep fairy didn't make it over to my side of the bed. Which if she only has one sleep spell left, I'd rather it be used on Mrs J.
juvat
Yeah, if Mrs. J needs it, she should get it first!
DeleteWe used to have journalists that did the news, today we have the corporate owned media that spreads the approved message but it's still called journalism/news...
ReplyDeleteYou should have called in sick... as to the advice thing, well it's FUN to give unsolicited advice!
Well, it is fun. I'm just having a "get off my lawn" sort of week.
DeleteRemember back when Bush's VP accidently shot his lawyer friend while bird hunting? The assigned reporters were too lazy to get up at Oh Dark Hundred to tag along. Then they complained that no one in the Administration had called to inform them about it.
DeleteYup, remember it well.
DeleteBTW what's the name of that Great Coal Burning Beast pictured on top of this page. Looks like a pre-dreadnaught with a ramming bow.
ReplyDeleteThat is USS Connecticut (BB-18) during her speed trials. That impressive bow wave you see actually swamped the boat from which the photo was take. I love that photo.
DeleteThat image is public domain, and extremely high resolution. Makes a great screen saver, for us of a nautical persuasion. Glad to ahve shared it with Sarge and that he approves. In honor of his seafaring kids, of course.
DeleteJB
One of my favorite BB photos!
DeleteBig Corporate Press needs to turn everything into some sort of crisis to manage and manipulate our emotions so as to stir up outrage over something and everything. Big Corporate School Industry needs to manage the emotions of children, convincing the impressionable young minds that everyone except conservative white males are victims of oppression. As you point out the Health Management Industry has become more about bean counting (can Beans count?) than treating everyday maladies. The last couple of years have made that clear. I've lost almost all respect for everyone in it except nurses. More and more we are being managed/herded in whatever direction some unknown and unnamed Powers That Be want us to go.
ReplyDeleteDang! I need more coffee.
It sickens me, but not to the point that I want to see a doctor.
DeleteAnd yes, the nurses are the only ones I respect (other than the specialists).
Even the specialists (aka experts) I'm leery of, except maybe oncologists and surgeons.
DeleteAnd how they all blithly order batteries of tests and referrals that will quickly rack up hundreds of dollars in copays and multiple missed days of work.
Ah, by specialists, I meant surgeons and the type of doctors who actually perform procedures to fix you, not the specialists who just order different tests.
Delete@ Joe L
DeleteI think you're an optimist.
any/all of them did the COVID dance to graduate from medical school/hospital residency programs
since then I'm known as O'Leery.
Yup.
Delete1. The fact that he didn't tell anyone he was going in for surgery, even before he had to go into the ICU, is shocking. The guy in charge of the most powerful military on Earth, at a time when we're not really in the best relationship with a couple of our enemies, is an egregious dereliction of duty. And his deputy was on vacation? How about hold off on that vacation until he's out of surgery? I swear, this administration treats their duties like it's just a fun job that pays them well, with no sense of responsibility.
ReplyDelete2. I like my doc at the VA, but I get you about trusting physicians these days. How they all rolled over and pushed for the vax, not that it wasn't needed for some, but the widespread use and doing so without sufficient testing should have made them question it.
3. I hope "get better soon" isn't considered advice! But putting yourself out there on this blog means people are going to try and help, myself included. It's just how we're wired.
Rolled over and pushed for the vax ....
DeleteBingo.
(My PCP asked me at my last visit if I had gotten the latest booster. I looked at her and said, "Why?" She got the point and moved on.)
Sarge, the SecDef disappearing for four days and no-one notifying anyone is embarrassing at best; his comment that "he will try and do better" is ridiculous on the face of it (and not questioned). I suppose one could blame someone down the chain for not saying something, but likely a lot of people did not know and those that did would likely have had their careers ended in a hurry had they said something ("whistle blowers" are only valued if the people in charge are not impacted).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking from the pharmaceutical/biologics side, 80% of the people there are no more to blame than any other organization (I say that; I do work in it). Most of them are just trying to solve serious health concerns and/or insure supply so people do not run out of drugs. I suppose I could point the fingers are the marketing folks, but they would inform you that the investors want revenue for dividend return, and many of those wanting the returns are the ones who directly or indirectly use the product....and so it goes.
I have been fortunate enough to have minimal interactions with doctors in the recent past and am doing my darnedest to avoid it as I can: besides just waiting with sick people, I do not particularly enjoy the random rounds of questioning which eventually will get to things that have little or anything to do with my actual reason for visiting.
Best of luck on getting better!
Biden, Anybody see the SECDEF?
DeleteStaff No sir
Biden, He must be around here somewhere.
Staff Yes sir
Biden I forgot why I wanted to talk to him, let's get ice cream
Staff Yes sir.
TB - Marketing and investors, last thing I want to hear when talking about medicine, but there it is.
DeleteGerry - Nailed it.
DeleteFriend found he had prostrate cancer. He researched all the different methods of treatment, decided on a cancer center, made apt. and we drove there. Did test one day, surgery next and I picked him up the next day. So my conclusion of defense idiot is that this is a much more serious form if he ended up in ICU for multiple days. Or does he have an underlying medical problem we don't know about? Or was it a bad reaction to the drugs or surgery?
ReplyDeleteAll good questions.
DeleteOkay, is it only me that was surprised that SecDef actually had... you know... balls? I mean, not like there's any sign that he uses them, at all, the weasel, but...
ReplyDeleteThen again, lack of using said juevos can cause prostate cancer, so there's that.
And, yes, very disturbing that nobody above or below him knew where he was. Fire the cad, and yank his damned health insurance. Why? Because that's what he did to a small but significant portion of the Military. Screw the guy, rightly, with a left-handed threaded screw. Seriously, how many people did he and his ilk fire over a nothing-burger?
As to medical bullscat, just spent (at 7am EWTHTWO (Eastern whatever the he(XX)ck time we're on)) an hour at the lab waiting for an appointment we had scheduled at 7:15 EWTHTWO because, apparently, making an appointment a week in advance and snagging the first one available in the day doesn't mean squat any more. Which is a perfect example of the modern medical system.
I hate all doctors. Just hate our primary care physician a bit less than others. Still have to beat him over the head with a polearm to get him to acknowledge issues, and he's the best we've ever had. Like last visit, Mrs. Andrew has had a low chunky cough with minor periodic fevers for over a year, I bring it up, he asks her if she wants a chest X-ray and she says, "No," and that's that. And she still has a low chunky cough, which from my experience with a low chunky cough and minor fevers lasting over a year means "WALKING PNEUMONIA." Any medico out there could probably back me up 100% on that one. No specific issues but low chunky cough and minor fevers persisting over 3 months is pretty much the definition of walking pneumonia.
We go in two weeks. If his answer isn't better than last time I'm kicking him in the juevos, which will hurt me more since I wear sandals....
Sounds like you need a new PCP.
DeleteMy PCP physician (Asst) is a wonderful clearing house. Knows her limits but knows who to refer me to when she suspects something is amiss. She probably saved my life when my PSA levels (she suggested the test) were abnormally high. She referred me to a Dr. that confirmed advanced prostate cancer. He referred me to another doctor that did the surgery.
DeleteDang.
DeleteThe operation was an event in itself. I was operated on by (a) DaVinci. Picture a robot spider with abdomen full of sharp instruments crouched over the operating table. Surgeon sitting playing like at a video game table alongside. In go light, camera and three surgical arms. Awakened a couple hours later - all done. No pain, and five little 2" bandages on my belly.
DeleteWhere technology approaches what the ancients deemed magic.
DeleteOnce a year I must see my VA 'Primary' care physician to prove I'm alive. Weight and BP, then a PA comes in and asks 50 questions. Doc comes in, listens to my chest, and I'm on my way. The young female PA was droning through all the questions when, "Have you been exposed to any SIDS?" came up. My reply, "No, but I wouldn't mind. Is that something the VA offers?" sidetracked her. (MR Maytag, always agitating)
ReplyDeleteMy health care is with a community health organization that is still 'old school', thankfully.
Sounds like my once a year physical. You skipped the gallon of blood they draw for their obscure reasons.
DeleteWhy would you being exposed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome be an issue at your age, WSF? Or is it Socialist Idea Destroys Stuff?
DeleteI'm thinking he meant STDs?
DeleteYeah, clap et al.
DeleteMemo to commenters everywhere - it's okay to take an author to task for typos, etc. But, leave the other commenters alone.
DeleteAh, STDs... Now that makes sense. As to medical acronyms, I hate the way they make a new one every week or so. Or redefine meanings.
DeleteI have a deep seated hatred for most acronyms.
Delete