Cheerful Curmudgeon

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.

The most recent issue of Yes! magazine has a series of articles on universal health care, a subject that has been hotly debated for quite awhile here in the US. One article, Has Canada Got the Cure?, neatly summarizes what we are losing by sticking with our privately funded health care system. From the introduction:

most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public–that is, tax-supported–health care system….

The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans’ mortality rates–both general and infant–are shockingly high.

I had assumed that the richer Americans would be benefiting from the private health care. If that were true then it would be easy to understand why the US still has a private health care system: the poorest of the people living in the United States are less likely to vote than those of us for whom employment and health care are pretty much constantly available. Surprisingly (at least to me), this is not true.

the overall improvement in health in a society with tax-supported health care translates to better health even for the rich, the group assumed to be the main beneficiaries of the American-style private system. If we look just at the 5.7 deaths per thousand among presumably richer, white babies in the United States, Canada still does better at 4.7, even though the Canadian figure includes all ethnic groups and all income levels.

Finally, I had erroneously assumed that the US has a larger problem with poor people than Canada. Again, I was wrong.

like the United States, there is plenty of inequality in Canada, too. In terms of health care, that inequality falls primarily on Canadians in isolated communities, particularly Native groups, who have poorer access to medical care and are exposed to greater environmental contamination. The only major difference between the two countries that could account for the remarkable disparity in their infant and adult mortality rates, as well as the amount they spend on health care, is how they manage their health care systems.

Joseph has nicely summarized all of the health-care related articles in this issue of Yes! on his blog, the Corpus Callosum.

We Americans pride ourselves on being bright and able to rapidly adapt to changing situations. It is time for us to learn from the people who have tried universal health care.

Do you care passionately about the situation in Iraq or Afganistan or Darfur? Are you up in arms about the AIDS epidemic in Africa? Does the Palestinian crisis infuriate you?

Did you know that a newborn African-American is nearly twice as likely to die within his first 24 hours than a white baby? According to Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report, the U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world.

How does it feel to have a problem of this magnitude right here at home?

[Among the industrialized nations of the world,] only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

Get mad! Pick something that you care deeply about and do something today! If you cannot choose, here are a couple of my favorite causes.

I had been having persistent pain in my left elbow for three months now, so I figured it was time to see An Expert. I trundled off to Expert #1 who prescribed anti-inflamatory drugs and alternating cold and heat. Merrily, I trundled back home and did as I was told.

The pain persisted.

A phone call to Expert #1 produced a referral to Expert #2. I quickly found myself back in my trusty trundle-mobile, headed off to see Expert #2. Once there, I spent longer filling out the paperwork than learning that a) Expert #2 has a very cool tablet PC on which we peered at x-rays of my elbow, and b) I have tennis elbow.

Tennis elbow? I have never played tennis in my life (for which several thousand real tennis players are eternally thankful).

This definitely sucks. Today I have pain. Tomorrow I get the joys of physical therapy (and the dread of a cortizone shot in the elbow if I don’t do the PT “right”). But I never got the joys of playing tennis across from someone worth looking at while I got tennis elbow.

Worse, in addition to the pain and the deprivation of beauty whilst acquiring the pain, I now have frustration and anger over the whole situation. (It’s good to be an awake man, fully aware of my feelings.) What I need to do now is release my anger by beating the crap out of a pillow with a tennis racket.

But I have tennis elbow so I can’t even do that.