For those of you who are still using Windows 7, but, considering an upgrade to Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, a word of caution. Microsoft has a new feature that they push in these versions of the OS. They push it very hard. In fact they push it so hard you must go through contortions to avoid using this new feature. For those of you who are not computer systems engineers, it may seem innocuous. It appears to make the system easier to use. Allowing integration of many things which often required entering passwords. You will no longer need to enter a password for your email, or things like that. Those of you who use programs such as Windows 360 where many of the components are online, this may seem to be a great idea.
The integration of needing a Microsoft Account, and needing to log into a Microsoft Account using your email address even extends to Solitaire. You will not be able to get to Solitaire without going through contortions. If you are only partially computer literate, you will not be able to get to the game without using a Microsoft Account, period.
The extreme downside of using a Microsoft Account is that you must obtain permission from Microsoft to use your own computer. If you are not connected to the internet, your out of luck. You will not be permitted to use your own computer because you can not reach Microsoft's server to log in. And if Microsoft's server becomes loaded down, well I think you see the problem. Also, this type of account will make you susceptible to cyber attack. While I can not be sure they may have hooks which will place the account in a hidden area on your computer. Keep in mind that, Microsoft convinced the government to pass a law making it a felony to reverse engineer any of their software. As they have not, and will not, publish their source code, there is simply no way to check.
Now, Before you think this is an improvement, let me explain something. Because we are starting to use Windows 8.1 systems on our companies network, I tried a Microsoft Account on my computer just to see what it did. I did make sure that there were multiple firewalls between the computer I tried this on, and our companies network domain. Here is the result of this.
Converting from a normal account to a Microsoft Account is extremely easy. All I had to do was tell the computer that I wanted to play Solitaire. Sure enough, the program came up to the point that it demanded a Microsoft Account and instead of going into contortions to avoid this, I simply clicked on create a Microsoft account. The computer then informed me that I already had a Microsoft Account using that email address. This set me back for a couple of seconds until I realized they could be talking about an account that I have as an Insider. I have access to pre-release software and various other things that require logging on a Microsoft server to download. I used the password for this account and the system was happy as a clam. Next, it asked me for my Administrative password on the local computer so it could update the system. With severe trepidation, I entered it.
Within seconds, everything was working easily. I could get into everything without going through contortions. All seemed to be great. That is when I hit the first of the snags. Like many of you, I use different login accounts on my computer to separate different types of work. For example, I don't like to surf the Internet on an administrative account. Also, I generally do my writing on one account and my work-related computer work on a separate account.
Thinking to get a little writing done, I logged out of the account I had been using. I should tell you at this point, two days ago I upgraded a Windows 8.1 system to Windows 10. I had done this because we have computers on our work network which have free upgrades to Windows 10. So some of the inconvenience of changing accounts is introduced by Windows 10. Still, when I finally pulled up the login to my other account and logged in, I found my first major problem.
I have a directory on my computer which has been downloaded from our business network. It contains files which are used across multiple computers. I often update this directory to the server to make sure that a backup of this information is kept in a safe location. I do have a backup drive attached to this computer, as well as an entire backup computer attached to our computer network. But I have learned in the last forty years that there is no such thing as too safe on data replication. Yes, I said forty years. In fact, it is more than that. My first training with a computer was learning Fortran in 1965. I've gone from cards to paper tape to Univac storage drums to modern systems. One of the things I have learned over the years, big companies such as Microsoft, do stupid things from time to time. Some of these stupid things are accidents. Unfortunately, some of them are malicious intended to give them an advantage. I'm not fully sure which of these two camps Microsoft Accounts falls into. While it does on the surface give Microsoft an advantage, it does open them up to the possibility of a massive number of lawsuits. If our government had not already been paid off by Microsoft, it would open them to anti-trust risk as well.
Before I finish, I think I had better explain that statement. During the Bush the second administration, antitrust prosecution of Microsoft was dropped by the government due to the government's statement that insufficient evidence exist of wrongdoing on the part of Microsoft. However, on the same evidence that our government found inconclusive, Microsoft was convicted on every count in the European Union. If you do a little research, you will discover that for the crimes that Microsoft was accused of in Europe, the standard of evidence is higher than it is in the United States. While I can not prove it, lacking access to the documents hidden by our government, the only reasonable explanation available is that some high ranking political figure was paid off by Microsoft. I wonder who that person could have been? Do the initials George Bush ring a bell? Before you go off, I'm registered as a Republican. The thing is, crooked dealings are crooked dealings, regardless of the party.
But back to the problem of a Microsoft Account. Remember that directory I told you about. I no longer had access to it. I was asked for the administrative accounts password. I entered it and was told that it was not the correct password. Thinking I had mistyped the password, I entered it several more times. Each time the computer told me that I was entering the wrong password.
At this point, I decided to check the directory from the account which nominally owned the directory. I logged off and tried to log back into the account I had previously been using. The computer told me I was entering the wrong password. I was locked out of my own computer. That was when I thought, Microsoft Account, Microsoft password. Instead of using the password which I had set on this account, I entered the password from my Microsoft Insider account. What do you know. I could use my own computer again.
The bad thing is, this was a password which I personally considered at risk because it was used over the Internet. This at risk password had become the master password for my computer. The very first thing I did was try to regain control of my computer. Now, if you have made the mistake of allowing Microsoft to get a toe hold on your computer with a Microsoft Account, and you are not computer literate; either live with it, or take your computer to someone who is computer literate and pay them to restore your computer to it's normal operation using local control of passwords.
Going into system settings, then going to user accounts, I changed the account back to a local account, with Microsoft griping and complaining at every step. I had to enter the Microsoft Insider Account password several times as this was now the Administrative password for the machine, then I had to rebuild, from scratch, the user account I had been using. Microsoft had thrown away things like the password for the account, remember it was no longer needed as I was to use THEIR password, even the login name of the account. As for the login name, who need it if you are using the email address as your account name. However, this presents several other problems which may be even worse than what I have encountered so far. Some of these problems definitely do exist. I have not risked testing too far to see just how bad things can get. After all, I don't want to have to dispose of a brand new computer and purchase a new one. The unfortunate thing about Microsoft Windows is, it is possible to introduce so much damage into the registry that it is not possible to remove it. Yes, some programs claim to clean the registry. However, I have found that almost all of them are either noneffective or dangerous. Some of them do more damage to the point that even with a restore point your computer is not usable. If you use one of them, I hope you have access to the install disks for Windows and all the other software on your computer and a VERY good set of data backups.
But back to the problems of a Microsoft Account. At this point, I have changed the computer account back from a Microsoft Account to a local user account. Still, the ride is not over. All modern operating systems use the account login name as a security tag in every file created on your computer. Not only does this tell the system, who created and updated the file, the security information, meaning who can see, touch, change, or delete the file is tied back to that name. Fortunately, Windows does not attempt to rewrite the account login name of every file on the computer when the account login name changes. Unfortunately, Windows does not attempt to rewrite the account login name for every file on the computer when the login name changes. I just saw the giant question marks pop up over the heads of everyone who read the above statements.
Think about it this way. All of the files which had been created using the old, original, login name (which I have reinstated) had that name on their security data. All files created while a Microsoft Account was in use have the login name of that account in their security data. Once the original account data is reinstated, any file created under the Microsoft Account login will have the incorrect login name. This means that you must use administrative access just to touch that file. Worse yet, this seems to apply to any file which was modified by Microsoft when the Microsoft Account was implemented. Also, the login name, which no longer exists once the Microsoft Account login is disabled, will never go away until you DELETE the file.
It's now time to go back to that other login account and see if I can gain access to the directory that I had used extensively from this account before Microsoft changed things with their Microsoft Account. When I got back to trying to look at the directory, I still did not have the proper privilege to look at it. However, the computer did accept the proper administrative password this time to reattach the directory so it was usable from this account. Still, there is one more thing to consider at this point. This is a very large directory. The first time I linked this directory so it was usable from this user login, it took five minutes. This time, it took over twenty minutes for the exact same directory. Obviously Microsoft did something that I have not yet found. This is making me very nervous and I will keep looking. When I find it, I'll let you know. I'm hoping that it is only some spurious entries in the registry. Anything else definitely implies malicious intent on the part of Microsoft.
Good luck!
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
How Hospitals Break the Law, and get away with it.
I used to be under the impression that it was a violation of Federal law to practice medicine without a license. Over the last six months, I have discovered that:
1) Either the law has been changed and accountants are now permitted to practice medicine.
2) Hospitals in Texas, with the open collusion of the local district attorneys and possible the state attorney general, ignore this law.
3) Worse, there appears to be no interest by federal authorities in correcting this.
In January, I wrote an article which explained the criminally improper treatment a friend received at a hospital in Denison Texas. This hospital is associated with a world famous (blank-blank) center for rehabilitation. (Named after a country and western singer, there you asshole attorneys for the hospital go. You finally got me mad enough). Things have gone from bad to worse. With less than a fig leaf to hide behind, they now say that before they will allow her to be transferred to a hospital in Dallas which can help her; they must get approval. This approval is from the accountants in their home office out of state. THAT IS A MEDICAL DECISION BEING MADE BY AN INDIVIDUAL, WHO IS NOT LICENSED TO PRACTICE MEDICINE.
Obviously the law must have changed. If it had not, the administrator of the hospital would already be in jail. Moreover, the hospital would either be closed or under the supervision of competent medical professionals who ARE LICENSED to practice medicine. It appears that this hospital is in the Jack Kevorkian school of practicing medicine. They believe that they should be the ones to determine who should be assisted to die and who should be permitted to live. Under the REAL, law, that's called murder.
Every single day, either Charles, his mother Suzie or his housekeeper spend time, all the time the hospital will permit them to spend, with Donna. At least once, they deliberately allowed a bedsore, to advance the point it was life threatening. When called on this their comment was, "well I suppose we can treat it if you are really sure you want to treat it." I consider that statement as a direct statement of their intent. To make sure that the only way she ever leaves their care is via a mortician's slab.
I truly believe that the accountants who control the corporate purse strings have decided; if any outside medical facility is permitted to see the true records evaluate her condition independently, their criminal incompetence will come out. They will possibly suffer punishment by the state. Only, if they can kill her in-house, they can hope to cover it up.
The unfortunate truth is that I now know that Donna's case is NOT unique. This very hospital has murdered, I use the word murder deliberately, at least two other people in total disregard for the law. Those people were "disconnected", simply because the people involved did not have insurance. When Medicares limits kicked in it was simply cheaper to kill them than to treat them as they should have been treated. In both cases, the individual had not signed waivers of treatment and had not given any family member power of attorney. Still the hospital convened the family, or in at least one case one member of the family, to sign an order for the plug to be pulled. That order did not make it any more legal to deny treatment simply more likely that the family will not question the matter with legal authorities. In one of the cases involved, death was by slow starvation when the feeding tube was removed. If you will do a little research slow starvation is not a pleasant death. While one member of the family did sign a release to the hospital, legal or not, it did make the family accessories before the fact of murder. It gave the hospital an obfuscation point where they could blame the family for breaking the law. Very few people are going to report possible mistreatment of their relative to the authorities if they will be subject to prosecution for murder themselves.
As I understand the law, yes I checked, if you enter a coma from which you are unable to awaken, if you have not delegated power of attorney to one of your relatives, and you have not given an advanced directive signed and notarized to the hospital; a court order is required to permit one or more members of the family to make this decision for the person involved. If no court order exists, disconnecting life support is illegal and constitutes murder on the part of ALL parties associated with the event.
How can I call what this hospital is doing murder? Look up the definition of murder. As these deaths occurred in direct violation of the law, and they were knowingly caused with malice aforethought, read this as deliberate intent. The fact is, if the decision is made by one of the accountants running the hospital, the murder occurred during the commission of another crime. That crime is practicing medicine without a license. It is possible that this comes to the level of first-degree murder.
Making money almost always trumps correct medical care in many of todays hospitals. I know of cases when no resuscitate orders, signed be the patients themselves, were ignored. Extreme measures were used to keep patients alive. This occurred just as long as the insurance company continued to pay for the MIS-care the patient was being given. In at least two cases that I personally know of, the hospital, I am discussing; improperly pulled the plug the very instant that the feed trough the corporate hogs wallowed in was empty.
Please don't get me wrong. Not all hospitals are bad, but the ones like this one give every other hospital in the world a bad name. Just because the hospital looks new and bright, don't think it is safe for you to place your loved ones into it. Check it's reputation carefully. You may get several very bad shocks.
As for Donna, Charles fight to get her transferred to another competent facility continues. I wish I could say that I think he will continue, but I'm afraid that I have my doubts. To make things worse, one of the men he knows, at one time was, on the board of directors of that hospital. That man resigned when the current operating company took over. Too bad he could not have warned the world about what was becoming of that place.
Eventually, I think Charles is going to be forced to resort to legal action even though it will probably cost him money to do so. That three hundred thousand in pain and suffering will in all probability not pay the attorney fees and expert witnesses required.
The unfortunate truth is that hospitals like the one I'm talking about will quickly turn the image of a hospital from a place one goes to become well, to a place one goes to die.
I wonder why the state of Texas does not simply cut a deal with this hospital to perform their executions. I bet they would be good at it.
POSTSCRIPT:
They did finally succeed in murdering Donna. May her bright spirit rest in peace.
1) Either the law has been changed and accountants are now permitted to practice medicine.
2) Hospitals in Texas, with the open collusion of the local district attorneys and possible the state attorney general, ignore this law.
3) Worse, there appears to be no interest by federal authorities in correcting this.
In January, I wrote an article which explained the criminally improper treatment a friend received at a hospital in Denison Texas. This hospital is associated with a world famous (blank-blank) center for rehabilitation. (Named after a country and western singer, there you asshole attorneys for the hospital go. You finally got me mad enough). Things have gone from bad to worse. With less than a fig leaf to hide behind, they now say that before they will allow her to be transferred to a hospital in Dallas which can help her; they must get approval. This approval is from the accountants in their home office out of state. THAT IS A MEDICAL DECISION BEING MADE BY AN INDIVIDUAL, WHO IS NOT LICENSED TO PRACTICE MEDICINE.
Obviously the law must have changed. If it had not, the administrator of the hospital would already be in jail. Moreover, the hospital would either be closed or under the supervision of competent medical professionals who ARE LICENSED to practice medicine. It appears that this hospital is in the Jack Kevorkian school of practicing medicine. They believe that they should be the ones to determine who should be assisted to die and who should be permitted to live. Under the REAL, law, that's called murder.
Every single day, either Charles, his mother Suzie or his housekeeper spend time, all the time the hospital will permit them to spend, with Donna. At least once, they deliberately allowed a bedsore, to advance the point it was life threatening. When called on this their comment was, "well I suppose we can treat it if you are really sure you want to treat it." I consider that statement as a direct statement of their intent. To make sure that the only way she ever leaves their care is via a mortician's slab.
I truly believe that the accountants who control the corporate purse strings have decided; if any outside medical facility is permitted to see the true records evaluate her condition independently, their criminal incompetence will come out. They will possibly suffer punishment by the state. Only, if they can kill her in-house, they can hope to cover it up.
The unfortunate truth is that I now know that Donna's case is NOT unique. This very hospital has murdered, I use the word murder deliberately, at least two other people in total disregard for the law. Those people were "disconnected", simply because the people involved did not have insurance. When Medicares limits kicked in it was simply cheaper to kill them than to treat them as they should have been treated. In both cases, the individual had not signed waivers of treatment and had not given any family member power of attorney. Still the hospital convened the family, or in at least one case one member of the family, to sign an order for the plug to be pulled. That order did not make it any more legal to deny treatment simply more likely that the family will not question the matter with legal authorities. In one of the cases involved, death was by slow starvation when the feeding tube was removed. If you will do a little research slow starvation is not a pleasant death. While one member of the family did sign a release to the hospital, legal or not, it did make the family accessories before the fact of murder. It gave the hospital an obfuscation point where they could blame the family for breaking the law. Very few people are going to report possible mistreatment of their relative to the authorities if they will be subject to prosecution for murder themselves.
As I understand the law, yes I checked, if you enter a coma from which you are unable to awaken, if you have not delegated power of attorney to one of your relatives, and you have not given an advanced directive signed and notarized to the hospital; a court order is required to permit one or more members of the family to make this decision for the person involved. If no court order exists, disconnecting life support is illegal and constitutes murder on the part of ALL parties associated with the event.
How can I call what this hospital is doing murder? Look up the definition of murder. As these deaths occurred in direct violation of the law, and they were knowingly caused with malice aforethought, read this as deliberate intent. The fact is, if the decision is made by one of the accountants running the hospital, the murder occurred during the commission of another crime. That crime is practicing medicine without a license. It is possible that this comes to the level of first-degree murder.
Making money almost always trumps correct medical care in many of todays hospitals. I know of cases when no resuscitate orders, signed be the patients themselves, were ignored. Extreme measures were used to keep patients alive. This occurred just as long as the insurance company continued to pay for the MIS-care the patient was being given. In at least two cases that I personally know of, the hospital, I am discussing; improperly pulled the plug the very instant that the feed trough the corporate hogs wallowed in was empty.
Please don't get me wrong. Not all hospitals are bad, but the ones like this one give every other hospital in the world a bad name. Just because the hospital looks new and bright, don't think it is safe for you to place your loved ones into it. Check it's reputation carefully. You may get several very bad shocks.
As for Donna, Charles fight to get her transferred to another competent facility continues. I wish I could say that I think he will continue, but I'm afraid that I have my doubts. To make things worse, one of the men he knows, at one time was, on the board of directors of that hospital. That man resigned when the current operating company took over. Too bad he could not have warned the world about what was becoming of that place.
Eventually, I think Charles is going to be forced to resort to legal action even though it will probably cost him money to do so. That three hundred thousand in pain and suffering will in all probability not pay the attorney fees and expert witnesses required.
The unfortunate truth is that hospitals like the one I'm talking about will quickly turn the image of a hospital from a place one goes to become well, to a place one goes to die.
I wonder why the state of Texas does not simply cut a deal with this hospital to perform their executions. I bet they would be good at it.
POSTSCRIPT:
They did finally succeed in murdering Donna. May her bright spirit rest in peace.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Long Time Little Write
It's been quite a while since I have had a chance to catch up on this, hospitals and doctors tend to interfere with the writing process. For those of you who don't know, I have been trying to get over a series of misfortunate interactions with doctors.
It all started simply enough, I had an abdominal hernia, for the fourth time, and my esteemed doctors refused to fix it. Now I won't tell you, they didn't have an excuse, they did, it just was not a real good one.
It seems that my heart has a tenancy sometimes to beat just a bit fast, say around two hundred beats per minute, and this has a tenancy to make them uneasy. I keep trying to tell them, that's not so serious, after all, before my ablation it used to go to four hundred. The thing is, they wanted to wait until it was an emergency before they fixed it.
Now I don't know about you, but to me it seems a bit stupid to wait until things get worse, before fix you fix it. I am not a doctor, so, I suppose this stupid idea may have a basis in medical science. In aviation, however, letting a problem get worse before applying corrective action, is an invitation to disaster. That is an excellent way to crash and burn. Quite literally!
Still, they waited till my hernia strangulated, meaning my little instance twisted allowing nothing could pass. If they did not fix this, I would die. Great idea boys and girls, meaning the doctors, wait until a patient is literally dying before you fix them. That simple surgery just became a lot more complex.
Now let's mix in one of the most incompetent emergency room doctors I have ever heard of. Most hospitals seem to put their most incompetent doctors in the emergency room. I have been taken to the emergency room five times in the last ten years. Two of those times I was sent home by the same, he shall remain unnamed, doctor.
The first time this incompetent doctor sent me home, the same ambulance crew, took me back to the hospital the next morning, at three in the morning. I spent six days in the hospital with walking phenomena. The second time, that same idiot, sent me home, over the objection of three other doctors. These doctors were calling me, before I got home, telling me to go back to the hospital admitting, bypassing the emergency room. This was for my third emergency surgery in two months.
I guess I should tell you more about that stupid emergency room! That hernia the doctors wanted to wait until it got to be an emergency, well it got to be an emergency. The ambulance crew halls me to the hospital. After only about half an hour of laying alone, in extreme pain, a nurse comes in and takes my blood pressure and temperature. She fills out the spaces on her forms for this information and leaves. Half an hour later someone comes in and connects me to the cardiac monitor.
Next comes the X-Ray machine. Someone in the emergency room decided it might not be a terrifically bright idea to try to move me go to the X-Ray room. I am after all doubled up in pain. They bring a portable unit to the room I have been abandoned in. This gal want's to put a two foot by two and a half foot plastic and metal plate under my back. I had trouble just laying on the stupid gurney due to the pain I am in and here I am, having to sit up enough for this thing to be put behind my back. Then things got worse. She wanted to put it down lower, so she could get another picture of my belly.
Now comes the medical assistant, not the doctor, he tells me, I have to have a CT-Scan. I don't know if you have ever been in the hospital being rolled through the halls on a gurney, but the wheels never seem to be perfectly round. There is always at least one wheel with a flat spot. Then there are the raised thresholds in the doors. Next, the fun of fun, you get to move, from the gurney to narrow covered sheet board which pushes you into the CT-Scan machine. The scanner is OK, the picket fence you have to lay on is what kills you.
Anyway, they finish the scan and roll me back to the room where I am promptly left for another half hour to hour laying on the gurney. At last they come in and give me a shot of Morphine. More time passes.
Finally, the assistant comes in and tells me that there is no surgeon on duty so they are going to send me to a blanket-e-blank hospital. I, recognizing the name of the one hospital that well people never leave, at least not without a sheet over their face, say no send me to Wilson and Jones. The assistant leaves and five minutes later the doctor comes in and tells me if I don't agree to go blanket-e-blank I am going to die withering in pain on this gurney.
I was still in pain, despite the Morphine. Possibly confused from the drugs going into me through my IV, so I reluctantly said OK. I should have told that idiot where to go then called a friend to take me to Wilson and Jones.
Now, keep in mind, that this was an emergency surgery. I lay in the emergency room in Durant for a couple of hours. Next, the ambulance takes almost forty-five minutes to take me to that blank-e-blank hospital. OH, to hell with it, it was TMC in Denison Texas. At TMC, they leave me, laying in a room, until around noon the next day. Finally, they roll me into surgery.
The surgeon cuts on me, puts mesh in my belly, sews me up, and, when I leave the hospital four days later, I felt like crap. Now, if you have ever had belly surgery, you know that the belly hurts a lot where the sides of the wound try to pull apart, but other than that you feel fine. I felt like warmed over crap.
A week later I have an appointment with the surgeon and the wound is still weeping fluid. I should tell you that this is my fourth hernia surgery. Belly wounds don't do that for this period of time unless something is not right. He removes half the staples, slap's another bandage on it and sends me home with an appointment for the next week. The next week, feeling far worse with the wound still weeping so badly that I change the bandage every six hours, he removes the rest of the staples. He sends me home with an appointment for two weeks.
I go home, then four days later, I realize that I have been sitting on the couch for over twenty-four hours without moving. Time to call the EMT's again. They come, take one look at me and start trying to stick an IV tube in my arm while they load me on the gurney. This time, the lights and sirens, are screaming while they run to the hospital. Less than an hour later I'm unconscious and in surgery to take out the infected mess put in by the first surgeon at TMC.
Evidently, there was a lot of infection because they had to leave my belly open. They just packed the hole with bandages, put a wire frame in the hole to keep the covering from going into the wound then stuffed me in intensive care. For the first time, in over two weeks, I start to feel better; despite having a six inch by four inch hole deeper than an inch in my belly.
They put foam in the wound and hook me up to a vacuum pump to keep the fluid from building up in the wound. After four days, I get to go home. This time I'm actually feeling better.
Now, things certainly get interesting. Every day from Monday through Friday I go to something called the Wound Care Center. Twice a week, they pull out the old foam, clean the wound, measure it to make sure it's getting smaller, fill it with new foam and reconnect the pump. Every day they put me in a hyperbolic chamber for one and a half to two hours.
You would have fun in a hyperbolic chamber, not! You lay there, twiddling your thumbs or trying to watch TV while they pump pure oxygen into the thing at twice atmospheric pressure. For those of you which remember their history, a pure oxygen environment was what killed the astronauts in Apollo One. Pure oxygen is an extremely powerful healing force which if properly used can make your wounds heal faster. Pure oxygen is one of the most dangerous things you will ever encounter in your life.
Most people don't know that any petroleum based product, such as deodorant, or perfume, or hair jell, or for you gals out there, makeup; can, and often does, spontaneously combust when contacted with oxygen. Remember, oxygen is one of the things which pilots get to play with at high altitudes.
Lots of cloths can produce static electricity. It's called a spark. Sparks of electricity and oxygen tend to go boom. Even if, it does not go boom, I personally don't care to experience an oxygen fire first hand. All this means, no books, no Kindle's or Nook's, no phones; just you, the TV outside the plastic tube you are locked into, and your thumbs to twiddle. NOTE: Twiddle carefully!
Everything goes OK for about a month. I'm getting better, the hole in my belly is getting smaller, then over the weekend I start to feel bad. Monday morning, I go into Wound Care, and they start to change the foam in my belly. The nurse has it off and is across the room preparing things to put the new stuff on me when I lightly cough.
I mean, it was a nothing cough, almost like clearing your throat. Fluid fly's out of my belly, all the way across the room, and hits the cabinets on the other side of the examining room six feet away. To make a long story short, it's back to the hospital for a third surgery in a two month period.
This surgery is supposed to be a little thing. All they need to do is clear the pocket of fluid and close off the pocket. Yea right!
This is the third serious surgery I have in a two month period. The first surgery, second surgery to me, the doctor did not take out all of the mesh. I had been under the impression, based on what he had said, that all of it had been removed the first time. There is a serious infection in my belly. The source you ask? The mesh which had been left in my belly.
I get to start over with the Wound Vac and Wound Care.
All this started around the Fourth of July and here it is two days before the beginning of November's Novel Writing Month challenge. My belly has a three-by-five piece of black foam on it, with a hose leading to a Wound Vac. The good news? The hole is no longer an inch and a half deep. It has filled in from the bottom up and now all I have to deal with is the surface hole, and hyperbolic five times a week.
I can't even write while I lay there, listening to the sound of pure oxygen blowing into the chamber. Twice a day I get to clear my ears from the pressure, once going up, and once going down. I hope I can keep up with my writing, and I wish, beyond all else, to git rid of this hole in my belly losing that infernal pump hanging from my shoulder.
It all started simply enough, I had an abdominal hernia, for the fourth time, and my esteemed doctors refused to fix it. Now I won't tell you, they didn't have an excuse, they did, it just was not a real good one.
It seems that my heart has a tenancy sometimes to beat just a bit fast, say around two hundred beats per minute, and this has a tenancy to make them uneasy. I keep trying to tell them, that's not so serious, after all, before my ablation it used to go to four hundred. The thing is, they wanted to wait until it was an emergency before they fixed it.
Now I don't know about you, but to me it seems a bit stupid to wait until things get worse, before fix you fix it. I am not a doctor, so, I suppose this stupid idea may have a basis in medical science. In aviation, however, letting a problem get worse before applying corrective action, is an invitation to disaster. That is an excellent way to crash and burn. Quite literally!
Still, they waited till my hernia strangulated, meaning my little instance twisted allowing nothing could pass. If they did not fix this, I would die. Great idea boys and girls, meaning the doctors, wait until a patient is literally dying before you fix them. That simple surgery just became a lot more complex.
Now let's mix in one of the most incompetent emergency room doctors I have ever heard of. Most hospitals seem to put their most incompetent doctors in the emergency room. I have been taken to the emergency room five times in the last ten years. Two of those times I was sent home by the same, he shall remain unnamed, doctor.
The first time this incompetent doctor sent me home, the same ambulance crew, took me back to the hospital the next morning, at three in the morning. I spent six days in the hospital with walking phenomena. The second time, that same idiot, sent me home, over the objection of three other doctors. These doctors were calling me, before I got home, telling me to go back to the hospital admitting, bypassing the emergency room. This was for my third emergency surgery in two months.
I guess I should tell you more about that stupid emergency room! That hernia the doctors wanted to wait until it got to be an emergency, well it got to be an emergency. The ambulance crew halls me to the hospital. After only about half an hour of laying alone, in extreme pain, a nurse comes in and takes my blood pressure and temperature. She fills out the spaces on her forms for this information and leaves. Half an hour later someone comes in and connects me to the cardiac monitor.
Next comes the X-Ray machine. Someone in the emergency room decided it might not be a terrifically bright idea to try to move me go to the X-Ray room. I am after all doubled up in pain. They bring a portable unit to the room I have been abandoned in. This gal want's to put a two foot by two and a half foot plastic and metal plate under my back. I had trouble just laying on the stupid gurney due to the pain I am in and here I am, having to sit up enough for this thing to be put behind my back. Then things got worse. She wanted to put it down lower, so she could get another picture of my belly.
Now comes the medical assistant, not the doctor, he tells me, I have to have a CT-Scan. I don't know if you have ever been in the hospital being rolled through the halls on a gurney, but the wheels never seem to be perfectly round. There is always at least one wheel with a flat spot. Then there are the raised thresholds in the doors. Next, the fun of fun, you get to move, from the gurney to narrow covered sheet board which pushes you into the CT-Scan machine. The scanner is OK, the picket fence you have to lay on is what kills you.
Anyway, they finish the scan and roll me back to the room where I am promptly left for another half hour to hour laying on the gurney. At last they come in and give me a shot of Morphine. More time passes.
Finally, the assistant comes in and tells me that there is no surgeon on duty so they are going to send me to a blanket-e-blank hospital. I, recognizing the name of the one hospital that well people never leave, at least not without a sheet over their face, say no send me to Wilson and Jones. The assistant leaves and five minutes later the doctor comes in and tells me if I don't agree to go blanket-e-blank I am going to die withering in pain on this gurney.
I was still in pain, despite the Morphine. Possibly confused from the drugs going into me through my IV, so I reluctantly said OK. I should have told that idiot where to go then called a friend to take me to Wilson and Jones.
Now, keep in mind, that this was an emergency surgery. I lay in the emergency room in Durant for a couple of hours. Next, the ambulance takes almost forty-five minutes to take me to that blank-e-blank hospital. OH, to hell with it, it was TMC in Denison Texas. At TMC, they leave me, laying in a room, until around noon the next day. Finally, they roll me into surgery.
The surgeon cuts on me, puts mesh in my belly, sews me up, and, when I leave the hospital four days later, I felt like crap. Now, if you have ever had belly surgery, you know that the belly hurts a lot where the sides of the wound try to pull apart, but other than that you feel fine. I felt like warmed over crap.
A week later I have an appointment with the surgeon and the wound is still weeping fluid. I should tell you that this is my fourth hernia surgery. Belly wounds don't do that for this period of time unless something is not right. He removes half the staples, slap's another bandage on it and sends me home with an appointment for the next week. The next week, feeling far worse with the wound still weeping so badly that I change the bandage every six hours, he removes the rest of the staples. He sends me home with an appointment for two weeks.
I go home, then four days later, I realize that I have been sitting on the couch for over twenty-four hours without moving. Time to call the EMT's again. They come, take one look at me and start trying to stick an IV tube in my arm while they load me on the gurney. This time, the lights and sirens, are screaming while they run to the hospital. Less than an hour later I'm unconscious and in surgery to take out the infected mess put in by the first surgeon at TMC.
Evidently, there was a lot of infection because they had to leave my belly open. They just packed the hole with bandages, put a wire frame in the hole to keep the covering from going into the wound then stuffed me in intensive care. For the first time, in over two weeks, I start to feel better; despite having a six inch by four inch hole deeper than an inch in my belly.
They put foam in the wound and hook me up to a vacuum pump to keep the fluid from building up in the wound. After four days, I get to go home. This time I'm actually feeling better.
Now, things certainly get interesting. Every day from Monday through Friday I go to something called the Wound Care Center. Twice a week, they pull out the old foam, clean the wound, measure it to make sure it's getting smaller, fill it with new foam and reconnect the pump. Every day they put me in a hyperbolic chamber for one and a half to two hours.
You would have fun in a hyperbolic chamber, not! You lay there, twiddling your thumbs or trying to watch TV while they pump pure oxygen into the thing at twice atmospheric pressure. For those of you which remember their history, a pure oxygen environment was what killed the astronauts in Apollo One. Pure oxygen is an extremely powerful healing force which if properly used can make your wounds heal faster. Pure oxygen is one of the most dangerous things you will ever encounter in your life.
Most people don't know that any petroleum based product, such as deodorant, or perfume, or hair jell, or for you gals out there, makeup; can, and often does, spontaneously combust when contacted with oxygen. Remember, oxygen is one of the things which pilots get to play with at high altitudes.
Lots of cloths can produce static electricity. It's called a spark. Sparks of electricity and oxygen tend to go boom. Even if, it does not go boom, I personally don't care to experience an oxygen fire first hand. All this means, no books, no Kindle's or Nook's, no phones; just you, the TV outside the plastic tube you are locked into, and your thumbs to twiddle. NOTE: Twiddle carefully!
Everything goes OK for about a month. I'm getting better, the hole in my belly is getting smaller, then over the weekend I start to feel bad. Monday morning, I go into Wound Care, and they start to change the foam in my belly. The nurse has it off and is across the room preparing things to put the new stuff on me when I lightly cough.
I mean, it was a nothing cough, almost like clearing your throat. Fluid fly's out of my belly, all the way across the room, and hits the cabinets on the other side of the examining room six feet away. To make a long story short, it's back to the hospital for a third surgery in a two month period.
This surgery is supposed to be a little thing. All they need to do is clear the pocket of fluid and close off the pocket. Yea right!
This is the third serious surgery I have in a two month period. The first surgery, second surgery to me, the doctor did not take out all of the mesh. I had been under the impression, based on what he had said, that all of it had been removed the first time. There is a serious infection in my belly. The source you ask? The mesh which had been left in my belly.
I get to start over with the Wound Vac and Wound Care.
All this started around the Fourth of July and here it is two days before the beginning of November's Novel Writing Month challenge. My belly has a three-by-five piece of black foam on it, with a hose leading to a Wound Vac. The good news? The hole is no longer an inch and a half deep. It has filled in from the bottom up and now all I have to deal with is the surface hole, and hyperbolic five times a week.
I can't even write while I lay there, listening to the sound of pure oxygen blowing into the chamber. Twice a day I get to clear my ears from the pressure, once going up, and once going down. I hope I can keep up with my writing, and I wish, beyond all else, to git rid of this hole in my belly losing that infernal pump hanging from my shoulder.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The New Dark Ages
This is a revision of a post from 2/23/2011. Please keep this in mind.
Lately, I've been wondering if the Internet is responsible for a New Dark Ages descending upon mankind. Throughout history, there have always been crazies around who preach destruction and death. In the past, they would almost latterly stand on a soap box in the park and yell at the top of their lungs to everybody within the sound of their voices. Some of these people seemed quite lucid while most simply raved.
Today, due to the Internet, these crazies who were mostly ignored in the past now have a worldwide pulpit to connect them to other crazies. Take what is happening now in Wisconsin. I don't care if you support the governor and the Republicans or oppose them and support the Democrats. You definitely have the right to do either of these two things. However, the crazies, who in the past were restricted in how much damage they could do by the distance their voice travels are now posting things on the Internet. Things such as "all crazies wanted, must have a gun, training as sniper preferred; target Scott Walker." I'm sorry but to me that sounds like an incitement to murder.
The unfortunate fact is that unless you name one particular individual, in this country you will almost never be prosecuted in conjunction with a murder by calling for one. The crazies who yell things like that are general, far too cowardly, to attempt any of these things themselves. They are also generally too stupid to understand the effect of their snout on the mind of some disturbed individual. (Looking at this with later eyesight, I wonder if it was stupid, or an intentional hope that some crazy would act.)
I don't know what may set the next crazy with a twenty-two pistol off. I do remember several instances of something like this occurring. Remember a fellow named John Hinkley? All it took for him to try to kill the President was the thought that it would impress Jody Foster. There are even a few crazies out there who think that Jody Foster is responsible because she did not give into Hinkley's advances. (I think that is just as nuts as the nutballs who are sending the death threats to Governor Walker.)
The fact is, those nuts are almost guaranteed to shoot themselves in the foot. If some crazy does take a shot at Walker, the backlash against the unions is going to be vicious. These people have never really studied history. All they have ever done is to look at the sanitized version of history written after the fact. I will give a few examples below.
First let's talk about the most famous assassination in modern times. I'm talking about the death of John F. Kennedy. For those of you who were not alive in 1963 the political reality was not what most historians try to paint for you., Kennedy was not a popular president. The simple fact was that, without Lyndon Johnson, he would have never been elected to his first term. In the interim, he had alienated Johnson and a large number of the voters who did vote for him. (NOTE: I did not mention that the Chicago Mob stuffed the ballot boxes in Chicago for him and he had alienated them.) Then along comes Dallas, Texas. After the assassination, John Kennedy became the martyr who stood for everything which was right about America. First he was a champion of civil rights then there was the moon program, etc., etc., etc.
Now for a reality check. EVERY, and I do mean EVERY, piece of civil rights legislation attributed to Kennedy, was actually passed under Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy was dead. As for the moon landing, Kennedy asked Johnson to research what the country could do to get ahead of the Russians in space and Johnson suggested going to the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy did, make the speech.
Now look a little farther back in history, say to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Serbian separatists believed that they could force Astro-Hungarian Monarchy to grant freedom to Serbia. The result was a little temper tantrum called World War One. Serbia did not get what they tried to force with their assassination attempt even though they were on the winning side of World War I. Too much of Europe knew who had fired the first shots and why. Think it was over quickly, search for the Bosnian war in the 1990's.
Now for one last example. In ancient Rome there once was an Emperor named Caligula. Caligula was a mad man. That is perhaps the nicest thing which can be said of him. I won't go into the depth of his depravity but when he was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard, Rome breathed a sigh of relief. After all Claudius was a decent Emperor. The problem came in with Claudius's successor. I will give the name here. I think you may have heard it. In a way, this one name made Caligula seem almost tame. That name? Nero!
Occasionally I hear some idiot wishing an assassination would kill the President, which President; you add the name of the last several I've heard nuts calling for each and every one of them to be killed. Every time I hear this I say, 'God no, all you will do is turn him into a martyr.' The reality is, if you want to turn any President you hate into the greatest President in history, then make sure that every piece of legislation he ever spouted does happen regardless of how much harm it will do or how much it violated our own Constitution, try duplicating Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald changed the world. It's just that he did not change the world in the way he supposedly wanted to. (NO! I will not get into the Kennedy Assassination here! That would take several BOOKS!)
If you are thinking about posting what amounts to a death threat on the Internet, think about it. Some other nut may just post a threat on the Internet naming you a target. Think about having to live with the chance that some other nut, having read that request for a murder, may be waiting outside you door to kill you. Worse yet, they may shoot at you but hit one of your kids. The unfortunate fact is that the nutcase who pulled the trigger is perhaps less guilty than the Internet nut who requested the kill in the beginning. Unfortunately under the system of laws we live under that person is usually immune from prosecution. At least that is until one day when they have to answer for their crime standing at the feet of God.
Lately, I've been wondering if the Internet is responsible for a New Dark Ages descending upon mankind. Throughout history, there have always been crazies around who preach destruction and death. In the past, they would almost latterly stand on a soap box in the park and yell at the top of their lungs to everybody within the sound of their voices. Some of these people seemed quite lucid while most simply raved.
Today, due to the Internet, these crazies who were mostly ignored in the past now have a worldwide pulpit to connect them to other crazies. Take what is happening now in Wisconsin. I don't care if you support the governor and the Republicans or oppose them and support the Democrats. You definitely have the right to do either of these two things. However, the crazies, who in the past were restricted in how much damage they could do by the distance their voice travels are now posting things on the Internet. Things such as "all crazies wanted, must have a gun, training as sniper preferred; target Scott Walker." I'm sorry but to me that sounds like an incitement to murder.
The unfortunate fact is that unless you name one particular individual, in this country you will almost never be prosecuted in conjunction with a murder by calling for one. The crazies who yell things like that are general, far too cowardly, to attempt any of these things themselves. They are also generally too stupid to understand the effect of their snout on the mind of some disturbed individual. (Looking at this with later eyesight, I wonder if it was stupid, or an intentional hope that some crazy would act.)
I don't know what may set the next crazy with a twenty-two pistol off. I do remember several instances of something like this occurring. Remember a fellow named John Hinkley? All it took for him to try to kill the President was the thought that it would impress Jody Foster. There are even a few crazies out there who think that Jody Foster is responsible because she did not give into Hinkley's advances. (I think that is just as nuts as the nutballs who are sending the death threats to Governor Walker.)
The fact is, those nuts are almost guaranteed to shoot themselves in the foot. If some crazy does take a shot at Walker, the backlash against the unions is going to be vicious. These people have never really studied history. All they have ever done is to look at the sanitized version of history written after the fact. I will give a few examples below.
First let's talk about the most famous assassination in modern times. I'm talking about the death of John F. Kennedy. For those of you who were not alive in 1963 the political reality was not what most historians try to paint for you., Kennedy was not a popular president. The simple fact was that, without Lyndon Johnson, he would have never been elected to his first term. In the interim, he had alienated Johnson and a large number of the voters who did vote for him. (NOTE: I did not mention that the Chicago Mob stuffed the ballot boxes in Chicago for him and he had alienated them.) Then along comes Dallas, Texas. After the assassination, John Kennedy became the martyr who stood for everything which was right about America. First he was a champion of civil rights then there was the moon program, etc., etc., etc.
Now for a reality check. EVERY, and I do mean EVERY, piece of civil rights legislation attributed to Kennedy, was actually passed under Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy was dead. As for the moon landing, Kennedy asked Johnson to research what the country could do to get ahead of the Russians in space and Johnson suggested going to the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy did, make the speech.
Now look a little farther back in history, say to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Serbian separatists believed that they could force Astro-Hungarian Monarchy to grant freedom to Serbia. The result was a little temper tantrum called World War One. Serbia did not get what they tried to force with their assassination attempt even though they were on the winning side of World War I. Too much of Europe knew who had fired the first shots and why. Think it was over quickly, search for the Bosnian war in the 1990's.
Now for one last example. In ancient Rome there once was an Emperor named Caligula. Caligula was a mad man. That is perhaps the nicest thing which can be said of him. I won't go into the depth of his depravity but when he was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard, Rome breathed a sigh of relief. After all Claudius was a decent Emperor. The problem came in with Claudius's successor. I will give the name here. I think you may have heard it. In a way, this one name made Caligula seem almost tame. That name? Nero!
Occasionally I hear some idiot wishing an assassination would kill the President, which President; you add the name of the last several I've heard nuts calling for each and every one of them to be killed. Every time I hear this I say, 'God no, all you will do is turn him into a martyr.' The reality is, if you want to turn any President you hate into the greatest President in history, then make sure that every piece of legislation he ever spouted does happen regardless of how much harm it will do or how much it violated our own Constitution, try duplicating Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald changed the world. It's just that he did not change the world in the way he supposedly wanted to. (NO! I will not get into the Kennedy Assassination here! That would take several BOOKS!)
If you are thinking about posting what amounts to a death threat on the Internet, think about it. Some other nut may just post a threat on the Internet naming you a target. Think about having to live with the chance that some other nut, having read that request for a murder, may be waiting outside you door to kill you. Worse yet, they may shoot at you but hit one of your kids. The unfortunate fact is that the nutcase who pulled the trigger is perhaps less guilty than the Internet nut who requested the kill in the beginning. Unfortunately under the system of laws we live under that person is usually immune from prosecution. At least that is until one day when they have to answer for their crime standing at the feet of God.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Of Helthcare and Other Hindrances
Several months ago a friend went to one of the hospitals in Dallas to have surgery. She needed to have her arteries cleared, blockages were slowly killing her. The surgeon did a very good job although the surgery was far more complex than he had believed it would be when he started. That was where things started to go wrong.
First the surgery was so complex and long that her body had swollen while she was under the knife and he decided to not close after the operation until some of the swellings had subsided. To enable this, he decided to place her in a medically induced coma. I had never heard of this before but after an explanation of the reasons it seemed reasonable. After a few days, they took her back into surgery and closed. Then they gradually woke her from her coma. Things were progressing nicely when the inevitable happened.
A nurse in the hospital screwed up and gave her an overdose. Fortunately, the discovery of the overdose happened very quickly, the miscreant nurse admitted rather than attempting to cover up the error. This meant that medical intervention for the overdose occurred very quickly. I can not blame the nurse as humans do make mistakes, it's how you correct your mistakes that are of the upmost importance. This nurse did very well in that respect.
That overdose very nearly killed Donna and her recovery from that point was slow and very painful to her family. In fact, it is the unfortunate truth that things simply went from bad to far worse. After a couple of weeks, the hospital had her strong enough that she could be moved to a facility which could provide rehabilitation therapy to help her recover from the effects of the combination of surgery and overdose by medical personnel.
In hind site, it would have perhaps been better to allow the hospital in Dallas to move her to a facility associated with them. Unfortunately, Dallas is a long way from home. Home is in a small city a few miles north of the Oklahoma border with Texas. There was a facility which was nationally famous and was in a town about seventy miles north from the Dallas hospital on US 69/75 and only about twenty miles south of home. (I refrain from naming names not because the facilities involved would have any leg to stand on in regard to their incompetence and malpractice but rather do to the fact that they all have lawyers on retainer ready to make life very expensive on anyone who has the audacity of pointing a finger at their incompetence, negligence, and malicious intent.)
Once Donna was ensconced in that world famous facility (unfortunately not hyperbole) things rapidly got worse. For the first couple of days, she was doing well and starting to recover her strength. She was up to being capable of performing several hours of exercise daily when suddenly she started to swell up very rapidly. One of the doctors associated with this so-called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation gave her a drug which she was allergic to. This allergy was on her medical record under, surprise, surprise, surprise, (sorry, I let Gomer come out and play) allergies. But, instead of looking at said medical record, this genius asked a woman who was in severe pain, still confused slightly from the month long ordeal she had undergone, if she was allergic to some long medical name for a particular drug. Donna is allergic to sulfa drugs, any sulfa drugs. I wonder just how many people other than doctors would recognize the name of a pain medication as being a member of the sulfa family of drugs. This allergic reaction landed her in the hospital associated with that so called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation with severe swelling.
Now is where Obama care kicked in. Due to changes in Medicare, which were precipitated due to Obama care, just over two weeks after the hospital sent her back to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation, they sent her home. Medicare only pays for a set number of days of Rehabilitation regardless of the severity of the problem involved. If you think I exaggerate, the family was informed two weeks before her discharge date of the date she would be discharged. My question is how can a real medical professional know the condition of a patient two weeks before the date in question. It sounds more like a bureaucrat made an arbitrary decision and to heck with the medical realities. (Thank you most assuredly, Mr. President.) So here we are, Donna is at home, and her husband must hire someone to come in and help him with her. This is also not paid for by Medicare because the changes that have been made in the health care system prevent real care from being given.
One more thing you need to know about Donna, she has sleep apnea. Without her CPAP machine, she may stop breathing at night. This is also on her medical records. At home she has a machine, however after only one day at home the nurse who was caring for her informed her husband that she needed to be in the hospital due to her breathing.
Unfortunately, he took her back to the hospital which had discharged her to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation. The emergency room admitted her, where an incompetent doctor, who's name, unfortunately, sounds very much like my last name, discharged her without telling the ward nurses or her husband. I personally guarantee that there is no relation between me and this idiot. Charles then spent several hours arguing with the medical staff that she needed oxygen and that she should be on monitors to make sure that she was not having problems breathing. Yes, the alert hospital staff was refusing a woman with breathing problems access to oxygen. (Please don't get me started on incompetent doctors denying oxygen to patients who are having difficulty breathing.)
After almost twelve hours, they promised him that she would be placed on monitors as they kicked him off the floor stating that visiting hours were over. What happened next, in my opinion, was tantamount to attempted murder. She was not placed on the promised monitor and she was left unattended in the hospital room. Sometime during three hours she was left unattended, and without monitor, she stopped breathing. This is not all that unusual in persons with sleep apnea. As soon as she was found, they coded her and shocked her and brought her back. That was almost two months ago and she is still in a coma.
I devoutly wish that I could tell you that that was the end, but it is not. The hospital sent out an administrator to "ASSIST THE FAMILY". Normally one might assume that a hospital administrator would have some training in medicine. I learned differently. This (unnamed) female administrator in a very expensive business suit was an attorney, although she never told anyone that. We were tipped off anonymously by one of the nurses who thought that the hospital was not performing to the standards required for a legitimate hospital in the United States of America. Within days of the unfortunate incident, she had called in all of the family and attempted to convince them to pull the plug. As it was a lawyer, who called them in I feel sure that it was more legally motivated in protecting the hospital than medically indicated by Dona's condition.
I should note that this same administrator has attempted to convince Charles to allow a feeding tube to be inserted into her belly against the advice of the surgeon who would be required to do the job. Turns out that there was a good chance that the insertion of the tube would be fatal due to a previous belly surgery that Donna had had. This was why the doctor did not want to do the surgery and it makes one wonder if that was not the reason that the lawyer, protecting the hospital wanted it done. After all if she dies during a procedure authorized by her husband there is no medical liability for the hospital.
Since that time the staff of the hospital has, first informed the family that they will pay for all medical bills which ecru in the hospital. They have given assurances that Donna is receiving the best care possible. Strangely during this time they have pulled every trick they can think of to prevent her being move to another, perhaps, more compliant medical facility. A medical facility which specializes in coma victim care. They blocked outside consultations by other neurologists, and at this point are trying to force the family to move Donna to a "long term facility".
Now things get even more interesting. It appears that a few years ago the hospitals, and doctors, in the state of Texas lobbied the state legislator to allow them to write the tort reform bill which was placed on medical malpractice in the state of Texas. In Texas, there is no limit on the judgment of medical expenses granted in a lawsuit but there is a three hundred thousand dollar limit on pain and suffering and there are no legal expenses allowed. This means that all costs related to the lawsuit must come out of the three hundred thousand pain and suffering portion of the suit. These costs include you lawyers, expert witness as to the malpractice involved, investigators even transportation and lodging for witness. The hospital, on the other hand, has lawyers on staff who deal with the annoyance of a pesky lawsuit without any additional cost to the hospital. Also the for every thousand dollars billed on your hospital bill the actual cost will vary, depending on exactly the type of service involved, from five to ten dollars.
Don't believe me? Look at this example then.
(hospital staff is calculated in positions, not persons)
One Hospital Ward Patients 20 @1500 per Day 30000
RN 1 @720 per day 720
LPN 1 @480 per day 480
Orderly 1 @240 per day 240
Housekeeper 1 @30 per day 30 NOTE:
(figure 3 hours per ward per day)
Power and other utilities 20 @10 per patient 200
Cleaning supplies 10
(generous to hospital)
Drugs: for hospital 200: Patient 10000 (as billed)
Patient cost (all patients in ward) = 40000 billed per patient day 20000
Hospital cost = 1880 cost per patient day 94
Sure there are a few other costs but with this accounting to less than 1% of the billed amount I don't think that the large corporations which own the hospitals are hurting very much. When the average business has a margin of 50% gross and one of the big box stores may have 75%, I think 90% plus is more than sufficient margin for them to pay for the lights and garbage. OH wait I included the electric bill and garbage in the bills above, how silly of me. This is especially true in a state like Texas where the cost of Malpractice Insurance is negligible due to the tort legislation which is so totally one-sided in favor of the hospital. One of these days I may talk a little about the real reason that things are so expensive in this day and age: INSURANCE, but I digress.
What is even more annoying is that hospitals like the one which must remain unnamed, but happens to be in a city approximately seventy miles north of Dallas and is associated with the world famous (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation have the ability to hide behind this tort reform to commit what is in a very real sense murder. I am certain that Donna is not the first victim of their incompetence, or in this case perhaps, malicious intent due to the attitude of the attending doctor and the nurses on duty.
One other damning point about that hospital. Charles almost immediately demanded that the doctor involved be removed from her case. If he had known who that doctor was, that doctor had been assigned to her case by the hospital behind Charles back without consulting him, he would not have allowed the arrogant idiot withing a mile of her, as she had had problems with him the year before. The hospital administrators, remember she is a lawyer but she was hiding this small fact at the time, the reaction was that this was "Very serious and would be detrimental to the doctor involved." Note the extreme care for the patient and her family. There was absolutely no regard for Donna or Charles only for the fact that it would besmirch the reputation of the doctor involved to have it appear in the medical record that he had been removed from a case. When Charles was insistent, she finally agreed to his removal. She lied. He was not removed as her primary care doctor. Charles once again upon seeing this doctor name on the board in her room demanded, for more diplomatically than I would have been capable of, that he is removed. Again the lawyer lied and said that she would personally see to his removal. The next day when we returned he was still the doctor of record. There was a very long discussion with the lawyer again to which I listened attentively.
I should mention at this point that Charles would make Dale Carnage blush when it comes to persuasion. He never once raised his voice or parted from the reasonable tone he used to demand once again that the doctor who was in large part responsible for Dona's condition was not suited to be her doctor. He never once mentioned the things which were running through my mind that that arrogant piece of work would conspire with this female who was trying to dazzle Charles with BS while she shifted her legs trying to give me a look up her skirt hoping to distract my train of thought and making sure that she shifted her body so as to present the most favorable view of her low cut top under her business suit. I had to wonder if perhaps her primary occupation did not involve more than the practice of law.
Not once during all of this had he mentioned lawyers to the hospital or to their pet lawyer, although he had been discussing the condition of his wife with one of his friends who just happens to be one of the very best attorneys in the country. It was Dan who informed him of the condition of Texas medical tort perversion which protected the doctors and hospitals and allowed the victims of their malpractice to assume the position they deserved in the eyes of the hospitals. That position being surf to be stomped on and forced into slave labor to supply their masters with everything their bolted egos could desire. (No before you ask, Dan does not practice malpractice law or criminal law. Knowing Dan as well as I do, I think that both of these are just a bit too dirty for his tastes. Dan is, after all something of an enigma. He is an honest lawyer. He is also a very good lawyer as has been learned the hard way by his opponents.)
As to date, the hospital is still fighting allowing Donna to be moved to a component hospital which does not have a vested interest in her dying. They are circling their wagons to try to prevent any legal action against them by the family. I should state that this does involve the mysterious disappearance of hospital records and I have to wonder if a few more of them have not been modified?
The bottom line is that in today's world, doctors no longer work for themselves. All of them work for the corporations and these corporations are intent on the dollars in your pocket and not on the quality of the medical care they provide. I fear that if you truly look at the rising cost of health care, nine out of every ten dollars of the cost is either fraudulent charges or massively inflated over charges. Think about it, a doctor visit today varies from one hundred to two hundred dollars, most paid by insurance but still paid. This visit consists of your showing up on, or before, time for your appointment at the doctor's office. Almost always you have to wait from one to three hours past the time of the apartment to actually see the doctor. The actual medical visit will be approximately one minute of paperwork, followed by less than two minutes with a nurse. Next, after another wait maybe of between ten minutes to an hour, you see a doctor for about one minute. Then the one minute of paperwork required for you to pay for the doctors services. I don't know about you but one of my doctors treats about a one hundred patients a day plus hospital visits in addition to this. Last time I checked my math that comes out to a total of Twenty thousand dollars a day for less than three and one-half hours of actual work. Please note that this does not include the patient charges at the hospital. It's no wonder that I have literally seen doctors offices have Brinks trucks pull up to transport the deposit. Who else do you know that makes over six thousand dollars per hour.
Perhaps I should point out one more small point. Almost none of the doctors in town actually gets that kind of pay day. All of them work for the corporation which owns the hospital. As employees of the corporation, they receive a salary, a rather good one and receive benefits such as medical and malpractice insurance paid for by the corporation. It is the corporation which is making the six thousand dollars per hour, per doctor. I wonder what it really costs them?
OH well, where else could I have had a hotel room which cost nine thousand dollars a day, other than the local hospital. At that price, I could almost afford the Imperial Suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
First the surgery was so complex and long that her body had swollen while she was under the knife and he decided to not close after the operation until some of the swellings had subsided. To enable this, he decided to place her in a medically induced coma. I had never heard of this before but after an explanation of the reasons it seemed reasonable. After a few days, they took her back into surgery and closed. Then they gradually woke her from her coma. Things were progressing nicely when the inevitable happened.
A nurse in the hospital screwed up and gave her an overdose. Fortunately, the discovery of the overdose happened very quickly, the miscreant nurse admitted rather than attempting to cover up the error. This meant that medical intervention for the overdose occurred very quickly. I can not blame the nurse as humans do make mistakes, it's how you correct your mistakes that are of the upmost importance. This nurse did very well in that respect.
That overdose very nearly killed Donna and her recovery from that point was slow and very painful to her family. In fact, it is the unfortunate truth that things simply went from bad to far worse. After a couple of weeks, the hospital had her strong enough that she could be moved to a facility which could provide rehabilitation therapy to help her recover from the effects of the combination of surgery and overdose by medical personnel.
In hind site, it would have perhaps been better to allow the hospital in Dallas to move her to a facility associated with them. Unfortunately, Dallas is a long way from home. Home is in a small city a few miles north of the Oklahoma border with Texas. There was a facility which was nationally famous and was in a town about seventy miles north from the Dallas hospital on US 69/75 and only about twenty miles south of home. (I refrain from naming names not because the facilities involved would have any leg to stand on in regard to their incompetence and malpractice but rather do to the fact that they all have lawyers on retainer ready to make life very expensive on anyone who has the audacity of pointing a finger at their incompetence, negligence, and malicious intent.)
Once Donna was ensconced in that world famous facility (unfortunately not hyperbole) things rapidly got worse. For the first couple of days, she was doing well and starting to recover her strength. She was up to being capable of performing several hours of exercise daily when suddenly she started to swell up very rapidly. One of the doctors associated with this so-called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation gave her a drug which she was allergic to. This allergy was on her medical record under, surprise, surprise, surprise, (sorry, I let Gomer come out and play) allergies. But, instead of looking at said medical record, this genius asked a woman who was in severe pain, still confused slightly from the month long ordeal she had undergone, if she was allergic to some long medical name for a particular drug. Donna is allergic to sulfa drugs, any sulfa drugs. I wonder just how many people other than doctors would recognize the name of a pain medication as being a member of the sulfa family of drugs. This allergic reaction landed her in the hospital associated with that so called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation with severe swelling.
Now is where Obama care kicked in. Due to changes in Medicare, which were precipitated due to Obama care, just over two weeks after the hospital sent her back to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation, they sent her home. Medicare only pays for a set number of days of Rehabilitation regardless of the severity of the problem involved. If you think I exaggerate, the family was informed two weeks before her discharge date of the date she would be discharged. My question is how can a real medical professional know the condition of a patient two weeks before the date in question. It sounds more like a bureaucrat made an arbitrary decision and to heck with the medical realities. (Thank you most assuredly, Mr. President.) So here we are, Donna is at home, and her husband must hire someone to come in and help him with her. This is also not paid for by Medicare because the changes that have been made in the health care system prevent real care from being given.
One more thing you need to know about Donna, she has sleep apnea. Without her CPAP machine, she may stop breathing at night. This is also on her medical records. At home she has a machine, however after only one day at home the nurse who was caring for her informed her husband that she needed to be in the hospital due to her breathing.
Unfortunately, he took her back to the hospital which had discharged her to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation. The emergency room admitted her, where an incompetent doctor, who's name, unfortunately, sounds very much like my last name, discharged her without telling the ward nurses or her husband. I personally guarantee that there is no relation between me and this idiot. Charles then spent several hours arguing with the medical staff that she needed oxygen and that she should be on monitors to make sure that she was not having problems breathing. Yes, the alert hospital staff was refusing a woman with breathing problems access to oxygen. (Please don't get me started on incompetent doctors denying oxygen to patients who are having difficulty breathing.)
After almost twelve hours, they promised him that she would be placed on monitors as they kicked him off the floor stating that visiting hours were over. What happened next, in my opinion, was tantamount to attempted murder. She was not placed on the promised monitor and she was left unattended in the hospital room. Sometime during three hours she was left unattended, and without monitor, she stopped breathing. This is not all that unusual in persons with sleep apnea. As soon as she was found, they coded her and shocked her and brought her back. That was almost two months ago and she is still in a coma.
I devoutly wish that I could tell you that that was the end, but it is not. The hospital sent out an administrator to "ASSIST THE FAMILY". Normally one might assume that a hospital administrator would have some training in medicine. I learned differently. This (unnamed) female administrator in a very expensive business suit was an attorney, although she never told anyone that. We were tipped off anonymously by one of the nurses who thought that the hospital was not performing to the standards required for a legitimate hospital in the United States of America. Within days of the unfortunate incident, she had called in all of the family and attempted to convince them to pull the plug. As it was a lawyer, who called them in I feel sure that it was more legally motivated in protecting the hospital than medically indicated by Dona's condition.
I should note that this same administrator has attempted to convince Charles to allow a feeding tube to be inserted into her belly against the advice of the surgeon who would be required to do the job. Turns out that there was a good chance that the insertion of the tube would be fatal due to a previous belly surgery that Donna had had. This was why the doctor did not want to do the surgery and it makes one wonder if that was not the reason that the lawyer, protecting the hospital wanted it done. After all if she dies during a procedure authorized by her husband there is no medical liability for the hospital.
Since that time the staff of the hospital has, first informed the family that they will pay for all medical bills which ecru in the hospital. They have given assurances that Donna is receiving the best care possible. Strangely during this time they have pulled every trick they can think of to prevent her being move to another, perhaps, more compliant medical facility. A medical facility which specializes in coma victim care. They blocked outside consultations by other neurologists, and at this point are trying to force the family to move Donna to a "long term facility".
Now things get even more interesting. It appears that a few years ago the hospitals, and doctors, in the state of Texas lobbied the state legislator to allow them to write the tort reform bill which was placed on medical malpractice in the state of Texas. In Texas, there is no limit on the judgment of medical expenses granted in a lawsuit but there is a three hundred thousand dollar limit on pain and suffering and there are no legal expenses allowed. This means that all costs related to the lawsuit must come out of the three hundred thousand pain and suffering portion of the suit. These costs include you lawyers, expert witness as to the malpractice involved, investigators even transportation and lodging for witness. The hospital, on the other hand, has lawyers on staff who deal with the annoyance of a pesky lawsuit without any additional cost to the hospital. Also the for every thousand dollars billed on your hospital bill the actual cost will vary, depending on exactly the type of service involved, from five to ten dollars.
Don't believe me? Look at this example then.
(hospital staff is calculated in positions, not persons)
One Hospital Ward Patients 20 @1500 per Day 30000
RN 1 @720 per day 720
LPN 1 @480 per day 480
Orderly 1 @240 per day 240
Housekeeper 1 @30 per day 30 NOTE:
(figure 3 hours per ward per day)
Power and other utilities 20 @10 per patient 200
Cleaning supplies 10
(generous to hospital)
Drugs: for hospital 200: Patient 10000 (as billed)
Patient cost (all patients in ward) = 40000 billed per patient day 20000
Hospital cost = 1880 cost per patient day 94
Sure there are a few other costs but with this accounting to less than 1% of the billed amount I don't think that the large corporations which own the hospitals are hurting very much. When the average business has a margin of 50% gross and one of the big box stores may have 75%, I think 90% plus is more than sufficient margin for them to pay for the lights and garbage. OH wait I included the electric bill and garbage in the bills above, how silly of me. This is especially true in a state like Texas where the cost of Malpractice Insurance is negligible due to the tort legislation which is so totally one-sided in favor of the hospital. One of these days I may talk a little about the real reason that things are so expensive in this day and age: INSURANCE, but I digress.
What is even more annoying is that hospitals like the one which must remain unnamed, but happens to be in a city approximately seventy miles north of Dallas and is associated with the world famous (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation have the ability to hide behind this tort reform to commit what is in a very real sense murder. I am certain that Donna is not the first victim of their incompetence, or in this case perhaps, malicious intent due to the attitude of the attending doctor and the nurses on duty.
One other damning point about that hospital. Charles almost immediately demanded that the doctor involved be removed from her case. If he had known who that doctor was, that doctor had been assigned to her case by the hospital behind Charles back without consulting him, he would not have allowed the arrogant idiot withing a mile of her, as she had had problems with him the year before. The hospital administrators, remember she is a lawyer but she was hiding this small fact at the time, the reaction was that this was "Very serious and would be detrimental to the doctor involved." Note the extreme care for the patient and her family. There was absolutely no regard for Donna or Charles only for the fact that it would besmirch the reputation of the doctor involved to have it appear in the medical record that he had been removed from a case. When Charles was insistent, she finally agreed to his removal. She lied. He was not removed as her primary care doctor. Charles once again upon seeing this doctor name on the board in her room demanded, for more diplomatically than I would have been capable of, that he is removed. Again the lawyer lied and said that she would personally see to his removal. The next day when we returned he was still the doctor of record. There was a very long discussion with the lawyer again to which I listened attentively.
I should mention at this point that Charles would make Dale Carnage blush when it comes to persuasion. He never once raised his voice or parted from the reasonable tone he used to demand once again that the doctor who was in large part responsible for Dona's condition was not suited to be her doctor. He never once mentioned the things which were running through my mind that that arrogant piece of work would conspire with this female who was trying to dazzle Charles with BS while she shifted her legs trying to give me a look up her skirt hoping to distract my train of thought and making sure that she shifted her body so as to present the most favorable view of her low cut top under her business suit. I had to wonder if perhaps her primary occupation did not involve more than the practice of law.
Not once during all of this had he mentioned lawyers to the hospital or to their pet lawyer, although he had been discussing the condition of his wife with one of his friends who just happens to be one of the very best attorneys in the country. It was Dan who informed him of the condition of Texas medical tort perversion which protected the doctors and hospitals and allowed the victims of their malpractice to assume the position they deserved in the eyes of the hospitals. That position being surf to be stomped on and forced into slave labor to supply their masters with everything their bolted egos could desire. (No before you ask, Dan does not practice malpractice law or criminal law. Knowing Dan as well as I do, I think that both of these are just a bit too dirty for his tastes. Dan is, after all something of an enigma. He is an honest lawyer. He is also a very good lawyer as has been learned the hard way by his opponents.)
As to date, the hospital is still fighting allowing Donna to be moved to a component hospital which does not have a vested interest in her dying. They are circling their wagons to try to prevent any legal action against them by the family. I should state that this does involve the mysterious disappearance of hospital records and I have to wonder if a few more of them have not been modified?
The bottom line is that in today's world, doctors no longer work for themselves. All of them work for the corporations and these corporations are intent on the dollars in your pocket and not on the quality of the medical care they provide. I fear that if you truly look at the rising cost of health care, nine out of every ten dollars of the cost is either fraudulent charges or massively inflated over charges. Think about it, a doctor visit today varies from one hundred to two hundred dollars, most paid by insurance but still paid. This visit consists of your showing up on, or before, time for your appointment at the doctor's office. Almost always you have to wait from one to three hours past the time of the apartment to actually see the doctor. The actual medical visit will be approximately one minute of paperwork, followed by less than two minutes with a nurse. Next, after another wait maybe of between ten minutes to an hour, you see a doctor for about one minute. Then the one minute of paperwork required for you to pay for the doctors services. I don't know about you but one of my doctors treats about a one hundred patients a day plus hospital visits in addition to this. Last time I checked my math that comes out to a total of Twenty thousand dollars a day for less than three and one-half hours of actual work. Please note that this does not include the patient charges at the hospital. It's no wonder that I have literally seen doctors offices have Brinks trucks pull up to transport the deposit. Who else do you know that makes over six thousand dollars per hour.
Perhaps I should point out one more small point. Almost none of the doctors in town actually gets that kind of pay day. All of them work for the corporation which owns the hospital. As employees of the corporation, they receive a salary, a rather good one and receive benefits such as medical and malpractice insurance paid for by the corporation. It is the corporation which is making the six thousand dollars per hour, per doctor. I wonder what it really costs them?
OH well, where else could I have had a hotel room which cost nine thousand dollars a day, other than the local hospital. At that price, I could almost afford the Imperial Suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Books and Things
I guess I'm a better reader than I am a writer. After a few hours of staring, at the screen, I find that I can no longer concentrate on the task at hand. I need to allow my mind time to unwind a bit. Lately, I find that leads me to Kindle at Amazon.
No, I don't think that that electronic reader is better or worse than any other. It's just that often I find myself wanting something new to read, and not wanting to wait the several days it takes to get the paper and ink version of the work. I find a lot of very interesting things that way. One of my recent finds was Nathan Lowell.
Most of my writing is of a highly technical nature. In the last year or so I have started to write other types of work simply as a relief to the grind of producing systems manuals. I work on manuals for a while then try to work on some of my other books but still I find that the little critters inside my head crave the sustenance of other people's work. When I was a child, I found Heinlein and Orwell. Later I found other authors and other types of books.
I think that just as our belly needs food, our mind needs the food found in the words and stories of other people. The mind craves being led down the decks of a whaling ship with Ishmael while Ahab's obsession with the white whale drives the ship and crew onwards. Interestingly enough, however, it is almost never the book with a good story and shallow characters you remember. Think about it. When I say, Robinson Crusoe, don't you see the raggedy old man walking alone down the beach with his footprints in the sand behind him. For those of you who have read Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share, don't you just see Ish being watched by three very sexy ladies. Or perhaps I should say four, as he is fitted for his new wardrobe.
Fiction is indeed the food of our minds. As long as there continue to be new chefs such as Mr. Lowell the future is a less scary place.
No, I don't think that that electronic reader is better or worse than any other. It's just that often I find myself wanting something new to read, and not wanting to wait the several days it takes to get the paper and ink version of the work. I find a lot of very interesting things that way. One of my recent finds was Nathan Lowell.
Most of my writing is of a highly technical nature. In the last year or so I have started to write other types of work simply as a relief to the grind of producing systems manuals. I work on manuals for a while then try to work on some of my other books but still I find that the little critters inside my head crave the sustenance of other people's work. When I was a child, I found Heinlein and Orwell. Later I found other authors and other types of books.
I think that just as our belly needs food, our mind needs the food found in the words and stories of other people. The mind craves being led down the decks of a whaling ship with Ishmael while Ahab's obsession with the white whale drives the ship and crew onwards. Interestingly enough, however, it is almost never the book with a good story and shallow characters you remember. Think about it. When I say, Robinson Crusoe, don't you see the raggedy old man walking alone down the beach with his footprints in the sand behind him. For those of you who have read Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share, don't you just see Ish being watched by three very sexy ladies. Or perhaps I should say four, as he is fitted for his new wardrobe.
Fiction is indeed the food of our minds. As long as there continue to be new chefs such as Mr. Lowell the future is a less scary place.
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Dark Side of Christmas
Hate to say it but just now I'm feeling just a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge pre-Marley's ghost. It's not the true spirit of the holiday that makes me feel this way it is the big-box stores. Here it is, the Monday after Christmas, and I'm already dreading when the big-box stores, you know who you are so I will not point fingers, will decide that Christmas is started. With more than a bit of dread, I'm wondering if this year, they will really wait, until after January 1, to put out the Christmas Trees. I get a little sick of hearing "Chestnut's Roasting on an open fire" for the ten millionth time.
Take, for example, the currently dying year. At least one of the local big box store had its Christmas Trees out before the 4th of July. To them little inconsequential things like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July, and to a lesser extent even Halloween were simply not important. To them, it would be better if those were ignored by the ignorant masses. Masses who are desperate to give them their hard earned funds for whatever crumbs they, meaning the stores, decided to permit them to buy as Christmas gifts.
It seems that we, and I definitely include myself in the unwashed masses that the elitists who manage these chain stores mean when they deign to permit us their largess; are not considered quite intelligent enough to come in out of the rain, much less actually understand when a holiday, such as Christmas, should begin. Our task is simply to salivate over the rude crumbs they decide to permit us to spend money on while they simply laugh at us all the way to the bank.
What is worse still, they have somehow convinced the majority of the people that they, meaning the big stores, are Tiny Tim. We, the dirty rabble they permit to have their largesse, are actually Ebeneezer Scrooge. We have to be shown every year just how much, how long and how early we must give to small, helpless, corporate, Tiny Tim.
I would try to leave you with a word of cheer, but as it seems am become Ebeneezer, I leave you instead with the words of the great corporate Tiny Tim
God bless the dollars and dimes. God bless them, everyone!
Take, for example, the currently dying year. At least one of the local big box store had its Christmas Trees out before the 4th of July. To them little inconsequential things like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July, and to a lesser extent even Halloween were simply not important. To them, it would be better if those were ignored by the ignorant masses. Masses who are desperate to give them their hard earned funds for whatever crumbs they, meaning the stores, decided to permit them to buy as Christmas gifts.
It seems that we, and I definitely include myself in the unwashed masses that the elitists who manage these chain stores mean when they deign to permit us their largess; are not considered quite intelligent enough to come in out of the rain, much less actually understand when a holiday, such as Christmas, should begin. Our task is simply to salivate over the rude crumbs they decide to permit us to spend money on while they simply laugh at us all the way to the bank.
What is worse still, they have somehow convinced the majority of the people that they, meaning the big stores, are Tiny Tim. We, the dirty rabble they permit to have their largesse, are actually Ebeneezer Scrooge. We have to be shown every year just how much, how long and how early we must give to small, helpless, corporate, Tiny Tim.
I would try to leave you with a word of cheer, but as it seems am become Ebeneezer, I leave you instead with the words of the great corporate Tiny Tim
God bless the dollars and dimes. God bless them, everyone!
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