Cheerful Curmudgeon

I like to feel safe and I like to know that my family is safe. I would wager that you do, too. John Goekler has written a crystal clear piece in CounterPunch, The Most Dangerous Person in the World?, which highlights the risks to our lives. Some snippets:

A significant majority of Americans… list terrorism as one of their greatest fears. Like most of our media-inspired interests and worries, however, this one has little basis in reality. In actual fact, unless you’re serving in a war zone, the most dangerous person you’re ever likely to encounter – by several orders of magnitude – is the one you see in the mirror every morning.

and

The single greatest killer of Americans is the so-called “lifestyle disease”. Somewhere between half a million and a million of us get a short ride in a long hearse every year because of smoking, lousy diets, parking our bodies in front of the TV instead of operating them, and downing yet another six pack and / or tequila popper.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we’re ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience “cessation of life” due to medical errors – botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and “nosocomial infections”. (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)

Goekler’s article is a delight to read but if you are impatient or like numbers (like me), here are the Cliff’s notes: Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers have found a strong correlation between newborn feeding patterns and the seemingly immutable “night person” or “morning person”  patterns which govern our adult lives. Dr. Emily Erudita of the Hatch Institute of Mamalian Studies reports in today’s issue of Pan Generational Physiology,

In a study of 1,063 adults, 97.2% of the “night people” had been fed in the evening as newborns. Furthermore, 97.6% of the “morning people” had been fed in the morning as newborns. The remaining approximately 2.5% may have been fed during those periods but conclusive evidence was not available due to failing memories on the parts of the only living adult relatives and a lack of timestamped photographic records.

Dr. Erudita has announced her imminent departure from the Hatch Institute and will be founding a company to provide infant betrothal services, guaranteeing that no married couple need ever be mismatched again.

The Guardian write, Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheap medicine for world’s poor

The world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company is to radically shift its attitude to providing cheap drugs to millions of people in the developing world.

In a major change of strategy, the new head of GlaxoSmithKline, Andrew Witty, has told the Guardian he will slash prices on all medicines in the poorest countries, give back profits to be spent on hospitals and clinics and – most ground-breaking of all – share knowledge about potential drugs that are currently protected by patents.

My hat’s off to you, Mr. Witty. This is a great step and I thank you. One more thing, though: what about the poor people right here in the US and the UK and the other “developed” countries? Will we soon live in a world where high quality medical care is more affordable in Africa than in America?

Colonoscopy: Been there. Done that. Got the tee shirt. No sweat.

Here is a picture of me at the doctor’s office. He is using a new all natural, unified procedure which simultaneously

1. Inserts the anesthesia
2. Performs the exam
3. Urges the patient out the door and onto the path of recovery

I like my doctor. He’s direct and to the point. No dilly-dallying around. A real macho “git er done” kind of fella.

Seriously, the whole thing was no big deal. Lots of people had told me how horrible the preparation would be; they were wrong. It was unpleasant but it was way better than having the stomach flu. The colonoscopy was scheduled for Wednesday morning so, on Tuesday, I a) did not eat any solid food (it’s a good thing that I like Jell-O), and b) drank some stuff which gave me diarrhea for a few hours. Yeah, I was running to the bathroom a lot. On the other hand, I did not have any of the symptoms which usually accompany that sort of thing. My stomach didn’t hurt; I didn’t feel queasy; no fever; etc.

The colonoscopy itself was a no brainer, literally. I slept through it. And I got portraits of parts of me that aren’t really very flattering. And I got good news about my health.

If you are over 50, get scoped. It’s a great way to avoid colorectal cancer which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the western world, killing about 655,000 people per year. You don’t need to be one of them.

Oh, and thank you Scott Youmans for finding that great photo. Scott, you brightened my day immeasurably. No bull.

I don’t often find myself smiling while reading about the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan but I did today when I ran across a short article in Wired, Shrinks Help Drone Pilots Cope With Robo-Violence. Like many people, I was concerned that fighting a war via remote controlled vehicles would turn the killing into a video game, completely disconnecting the soldiers’ consciences from their actions. It is a very hopeful sign that the men and women firing missiles from drone airplanes are disturbed enough by what they are doing to require counselling.

It has often been a problem that the men who run the wars are not the ones on the front lines, personally experiencing the maiming and killing. Even the vocabulary of war encourages pretty much everybody to ignore the consequences: people become “units” or “troops.” We talk about things like “troop strength” and not “the number of men able to stand and fight.”

At least this summer, the people in California who are killing people in Iraq get what they are doing. I am sure that the people who program the drones will try to solve this problem, making the people who do the killing a bit more efficient. With luck, it will take a long time.

For several years, my son planned to join the Army. As a father, I had mixed emotions: pride that he wanted to volunteer for a very tough job and fear that he would be killed… or worse. He and I had several discussions about the dangers; largely fruitless because teenagers believe they are immortal and invulnerable.

The Rand Corp. has just published a large study of emotional trauma to Iraq War veterans. The AP article, About 1 in 5 U.S. troops suffers mental fallout, study finds, includes:

Roughly one in every five U.S. troops who have survived the bombs and other dangers of Iraq and Afghanistan now suffers from major depression or post-traumatic stress, an independent study said Thursday. It estimated the toll at 300,000 or more….

Only about half of those with mental health problems have sought treatment. Even fewer of those with head injuries have seen doctors.

Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said the report, from the Rand Corp., was welcome….

“There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Terri Tanielian, the project’s co-leader and a researcher at Rand. “Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation.”

The casualties of war include many more people than the few who actually die on the battlefield, the few who are officially counted by the US government. We do a disservice to the injured, to their families, and to ourselves by ignoring the problem.

Staying up all night with a coughing child sucks. No two ways about it. And trying to get a kid to swallow some awful tasting cough medicine can be almost as bad. Honey A Better Option For Childhood Cough Than Over The Counter Medications, reported over at Science Daily gives hope.

The study [by a Penn State College of Medicine research team] found that a small dose of buckwheat honey given before bedtime provided better relief of nighttime cough and sleep difficulty in children than no treatment or dextromethorphan (DM), a cough suppressant found in many over-the-counter cold medications.

It seems like a good idea to me. The nice thing is that if you try the honey and it doesn’t work, you can still give a dose of DM.

Better yet, you can have some honey, too, as long as you have the jar out of the cupboard and a spoon in your hand.

I don’t worry about kids these days becoming so involved with social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) and instant messaging (AIM, text messages, etc.) that they become isolated from real human contact. Why not? XKCD says it perfectly:

Long distance relationships are hard. IM can turn a friend down the street into a long distance relationship.

Excuse me. I’d write more but I need to go hug Candy. But before, I go, here’s one for you: <hug>

I sat down to write about something mundane and got distracted reading the NPR This I Believe stories.

Mary Chapin Carpenter just got out of the hospital after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Now, recuperating, she is climbing The Learning Curve of Gratitude. I found her article shortly after the shock of reading a friend’s name in the newspaper this morning: he lost his daughter and three grandchildren to a murderer’s rage.

Thank you, Mary, for inserting a bit of peace into my overly busy life. Today I will breathe, take the dog for a walk, savor the taste of my food, and be thankful for my family and friends.

Tragedy struck on Monday when 33 people died at Virginia Tech. Flags fly at half mast as we grope through feelings of hurt, anger, helplessness, and grief. President Bush was so moved that he offered personal condolences,

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.

Why are these deaths so painful for us?

On the same day, about 116 people died in traffic related accidents. President Bush’s words fit here, too.

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates….

…but not a grieving nation. Why not?

One of those 33 victims at Virginia Tech took his own life. On that same day, about 83 other men and women did the same thing. Again, President Bush’s words apply.

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates….

…but not a grieving nation. Again, why not?

Yesterday evening, a 19 year old young man in my congregation took his own life. It is impossible for me to make sense of his suffering. He did nothing to deserve his fate. He is simply gone and he leaves behind a grieving family and grieving classmates…

…but not a grieving nation.

Why do we publicly mourn 33 deaths at Virginia Tech while ignoring the other senseless deaths in our lives? Why do we order investigations and ask tough questions about one situation and not all of the others?

Here’s a suggestion: take your feelings about a recent death and channel it for good. The next time you are angry with a loved one or a friend, remember that you do not know if you will see them tomorrow. Make peace. Love them now. And, God willing, you can love them tomorrow, too.