Posts filed under 'FYI'
just to hang our comments on till CMS (i think she’s up tomorrow) writes her post.
make sure you see Wapa’s fun (and addictive, and Evil) game: http://www.hurtwood.demon.co.uk/Fun/copter.swf
so, just to write a little something (well MCB didn’t just do an empty post, and we apparently have standards now), i decided to write about OCDs, as i’ve been thinking about mine. i have a mild (thank bob) case of OCD (which is different from my anal retentive personality, which normally appears when i’m procrastinating) . have since i was a child. like my bedtime ritual: back home, it was shut the closet doors, turn off the lights, check the closet doors again to make sure they’re shut, turn the lights on and off again, check the closet doors again, and then go to bed. up here in SC it’s more mild- make sure all the draws are closed (which they normally are since it’s a tiny room and i’ll break a bone if i leave them open), check the door lock, turn off the lights, get into bed, get up some minutes later to recheck the door, and then go back to bed. and in case you’re wondering, i have to get into bed and then get back up to check it. i can’t just check it twice before getting into bed.
now i am very, very lucky to only have a mild case. i don’t have to observe all my rituals everywhere, though some of them are constant. but if i’m visiting a friend i can skip all that above shit and just go straight to bed, even if her door is unlocked (to her room; i’m into safety- i want that house door locked), the closet is wide open, and i have no clue if the lights are all the way off. just another quirk in my mind, i guess (i don’t question, i just appreciate).
so anyways, i have a mild case of OCD. if you ever want a character to have it, i can give you some insights. cause i follow the compulsion just like the strongest OCD case; mine’s just limited to where it goes on, and how much of it i have.
but to start us off since i doubt we all have OCD, i am also a huge procrastinator. like with my homework, which i should go finish…
January 15th, 2008
A little amusement to get you over the holiday hump day. Hopefully I did this correctly.
That’s Using The Old Onion
Turkey Pardons, The Stuffing of Historic Legend
November 21st, 2007
I don’t want to step on Jen-t’s post time, but this is important. On-topic discussion only, please. Here’s an email I got today:
FROM a nurse:
“I’ll never forget the look in my patients’ eyes when I had to tell them they had to go home with the drains, new exercises and no breast. I remember begging the Doctors to keep these women in The hospital longer, only to hear that they would, but their hands were tied by the insurance companies.
So there I sat with my patients, giving them the instructions they needed to take care of themselves, knowing full well they didn’t grasp half of what I was saying, because the glazed, hopeless, frightened look spoke louder than the quiet ‘Thank You they muttered.”
A mastectomy is when a woman’s breast is removed in order to remove cancerous breast cells/tissue. If you know anyone who has had a Mastectomy, you may know that there is a lot of discomfort and pain afterwards. Insurance companies are trying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure. Let’s give women the chance to recover properly in the hospital for 2 days after surgery.
It takes 2 seconds to do this and is very important .. Please take the time and do it really quick! Please send this to everyone in your address book. If there was ever a time when our voices and choices should be heard, this is one of those times. If you’re receiving this, it’s because I think you will take the 30 seconds to go to vote on this issue and send it on to others. You know who will do the same.
There’s a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require Insurance Companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hosp ital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It’s about eliminating the ‘drive-through mastectomy’ where women are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.
Lifetime Television has put this bill on their Web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.
PLEASE!! Sign the petition by clicking on the Web site below. You need not give more than your name and zip code number.
***********
That link didn’t work for me the first few times I tried, but when I Googled it, I got the page with that link.
My mom had a lumpectomy for breast cancer about 20 years ago. There is no way she could have gone home the same day, and that was without having a major portion of her anatomy removed. That’s major surgery! Sending someone home after an ordeal like that is just barbaric. Which made me wonder if this was just another “urban legend.” So, I went to Snopes and checked it out. Here’s what they had to say:
[[[Home –> Politics –> Medical –> Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act
Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act]]]
Claim: A bill known as the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act seeks to require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing mastectomies.
Status: True.
The examples they gave included the email I received.
Origins: In January 1997, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sponsored H.R. 135, the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1997, in the 105th Congress. The bill sought to “amend the Public Health Service Act and Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to require that group and individual health insurance coverage and group health plans provide coverage for a minimum hospital stay for mastectomies and lymph node dissections performed for the treatment of breast cancer.” Among other provisions, the proposed law mandated that the benefits of patients covered under group insurance plans not be restricted “for any hospital length of stay in connection with a mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer to less than 48 hours.”
This bill was never brought to the floor for a vote after its introduction to Congress. It was referred to various congressional committees, where it languished without action until it expired with the end of the 105th Congress. Rep. DeLauro has since sponsored the same bill four more times: as H.R. 116 to the 106th Congress in January 1999 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1999), as H.R. 536 to the 107th Congress in February 2001 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2001), as H.R. 1886 to the 108th Congress in April 2003 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2003), and as H.R. 1849 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2005) to the 109th Congress in April 2005.
In each case, the bill’s fate was the same: it languished in committee, never being brought to a vote. It was reintroduced to Congress (as the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2007) in January 2007 — the House version (H.R. 119) was referred to the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions in May 2007, and the Senate version (S. 459) was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in January 2007.
Although most efforts to see this bill passed urge supporters to affix their names to some type of petition, we believe the most effective course of action is for advocates of this legislation to contact their congressional representative(s) directly, by U.S. mail, telephone, fax, or e-mail.
Additional information:
AMA letter in support of H.R. 536
Last updated: 7 June 2007
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
**********
There are links on the Snopes page to the various bills and to Rep. DeLauro which didn’t come through. If you want to use them, click the link above this section to get to their original page.
So, IMO, it won’t hurt to sign the petition, but the Snopes page advice to contact your elected reps personally sounds like the best way to support this legislation, should you be interested. Or both.
September 24th, 2007
Today’s my post day, but make sure you go down to read Jen-T’s lovely “Sneak Peak.”
This started with my thinking about what OH will be doing for the summer. In our younger days, for most of us, there were summers off from school. These were the times to earn money, learn a new skill, improve our resume in hopes of a great job once we became grownups, improve our suntan. You know, the important things of life.
For me it was the summer after my freshman year in college. I was off to Yankeeland to be a maid in the Poconos. Four of us headed north from Florida, sharing gas costs, and peeling off when we reached our destination. I was the second, getting off in Pennsylvania somewhere, then catching a train to the mountains. That summer I learned to clean up after older folks (the brochure advertised 40 and over) who had the prune juice habit. I learned to clean bathrooms like you wouldn’t believe. I learned to strip and make beds fast and square-cornered. I learned to mangle sheets and pillowcases.
Leaving the south for the first time was enlightening. I helped ferry 2 lol’s to Yonkers, the nearest I could get to NYC. We stopped on the way to get gas. The attendant who cleaned the windshields was black and had an English accent. It had never occurred to me that black people had accents. I thought they were born that way, ignorant young fool me. This was during the times of church bombing in Birmingham, Freedom Marches, etc. This was also the summer of “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” and “Blueberry Hill.”
I earned just enough money the whole summer to buy a plane ticket back home. Oh, yes. I also had 2 male type persons fall in love with me that summer. The one my age transferred to my school, following me. I treated him like so much dirt. Not too proud of that.
So what was your most life-changing summer job?
June 3rd, 2007
If I can do this, anyone can. I’ll speak slowly:
Sign in.
Go to “Write a Post”
Write your post. Or cut and paste. Whatever.
When you get to the “ick” part, put your cursor on the line above it.
Go click on the thing that looks like two white rectangles, one on top of the other, separated by a horizontal dashed line. It’s right next to the thing that looks like a tree.
And then, once people click on it, they’ll get this:
Bang!
You’re dead.
Do you really want people to think I can do this and you can’t?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
Even The GAM could do this.
Maybe.
(Yes, I’m crossing my fingers now, hoping I can do this without breaking anything. Hell, I’ll try anything once. Especially something guaranteed to piss off my good friend, Jen. Who has been taunting me. For no good reason. PMS, my ass.)
May 19th, 2007
I was going to e-mail this to you all, but, well, the majority of you suck at e-mails, and we’re reaching 100 responses, so…
SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT EVERY WOMAN (but pay attention louis and byran, and tell your female friends) SHOULD KNOW….
My doc in Omaha used to tell me that the conventional “stress” test was ineffective for women because it is calibrated for men…this lends credence to that.
I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I’ve ever read. You all take care out there!
Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction)
Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack…you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack:
I had a completely unexpected heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might’ve brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, “A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.” A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation—the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
“After that had seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta in spasm), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR). This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws.
“AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening–we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, “Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack !” I lowered the foot rest, dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself “If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else…….but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in moment.”
“I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.
“I then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the Cardiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like “Have you taken any medications?”) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stents to hold open my right coronary artery.
“I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the Paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
“Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.”
1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not the usual men’s symptoms, but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act ). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one, and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some
Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation, and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up….which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better tohave a “false alarm” visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!
2. Note that I said “Call the Paramedics”. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER–you’re a hazard to others on the road, and so is your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road. Do NOT call your doctor–he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.
3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high, and/or accompanied by high blood pressure.) MI’s are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive…
A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10 people, you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life.
April 24th, 2007
That’s what I want to know. Because if this is week two for April that means there are three more weeks in this month which gives us five weeks - AGAIN! I think we’re messing with something cosmic here. You can’t just go around reconfiguring calendar months. Only Roman emporers are allowed to do that, I’m pretty sure. And the universe is a bit short on Roman emporers these days. Inflation. This is going to cause all kinds of problems. The months will start bumping into each other and overlapping, vying for dominance. June is right around the corner and then there’s going to be a big fight with July while they each try to wrest control over that poor lost little weekend. In a kinder, gentler world they would realize that they could put that weekend to better use. Maybe give it to poor February which always gets the short end.
So it should be pretty clear to everyone by this point that I have no topic. I think I left it in the pocket of my coat. Which is now at the cleaners. Hey, we had 80 degree elephants a few days ago. Possible snow flurries tonight. I’m sure its due to this whole messing around with the months thing.
Wiki has this to say about it:
April was originally the second month of the Roman calendar, before January and February were added by King Numa_Pompilius about 700 BC. It became the fourth month of the calendar year (the year when twelve months are displayed in order) during the time of the decemvirs about 450 BC, when it also was given 29 days. The Julian calendar reform of 46 BC gave April 30 days, effective in 45 BC.
So its really no wonder that poor April is so confused. And if I did this right, you should be able to click on good ol’ King Numa the Pompous to find out more about him, as well as one or two other items.
Speaking of finding out things, did you know that April begins on the same day of the week as July every year, and as January in leap years. You never can tell when it might be useful to know that. Go ahead, impress your friends.
But more importantly, for this group, is the fact that April is Chocolate Eaters Month, and the second week, specifically, is National Library Week.
April 6th, 2007
Don’t want to step on OH’s time in the sun, but I wanted to slip this in between her post and Jen-T’s on Monday. The category is a new one, “FYI.” It’s really just a heads up, although comments are welcome.
I’ve been trolling Project Gutenberg for that past several days, ever since I got a hit there when I was Googling for info on a very old book, which they just happen to have online. 150+ year old book, and it’s online for free download!!!!
If you’re unfamiliar with PG, they take books which are in the public domain, scan them, run the scans through an optical character reader (OCR), which turns them into editable text. Then they are proofread so that the scanned version matches the original and, voila! Free books!!!! Well, there are more steps than that, but basically FREE BOOKS! Ones you might never see otherwise. FREE. Did I say…/;+)
It’s a great initiative, since it puts books many people use for research right out there where anyone can get them. No more trying to find a library that can get it for you, or saving your pennies to buy an actual hard copy of a very old book. Or just for reading pleasure. I have most of what P.G. Wodehouse wrote, somewhere, but I can download many of his books now and reread without digging through a couple hundred boxes. YAY!
In case anyone is interested, there’s an affiliated site called Distributed Proofreaders, where you can sign up to be a proofreader, or one of the other volunteer jobs that get’s the process done.
If you have books that meet the “public domain” requirements and can scan them or have them scanned, you can submit them for inclusion in Project Gutenberg. It’s a really cool thing. I signed up to be a proofreader, which I think is pretty exciting. You know what a nit picker I am. At least, in this, I only have to make things match, not correct the original. /;+)))
January 21st, 2007