Author: Dick

Today I wrote my first e-mail to President Obama. I’m sure he will read and get right back to me on his BlackBerry, or perhaps he will Tweet me with Twitter.

Seriously, I did use every one of the 500 characters allowed on the White House Office of Public Liaison Web Page to e-mail a concern of mine which the president alluded to during his Monday-night press conference.

More than once as well as last night, Obama has touted the need for the use of electronic medical records such as those which have been used for quite some time by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The president apparently feels there can be some linkage between expanding electronic medical records throughout the nation’s healthcare system and stimulating the economy:

“We know that health care is crippling businesses and making us less competitive as well as breaking the banks of families all across America, and part of the reason is we’ve got the most inefficient health care system imaginable. We’re still using paper — we’re still filing things in triplicate. Nurses can’t read the prescriptions that doctors have written out. Why wouldn’t we want to put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term cost of health care, and create jobs right now?”

Why wouldn’t we? Well, I am not totally sold that electronic medical records can do all three of those things for one. Do they have the potential? Just making a half-assed educated guess I would say yes. However, my concerns with computerized medical charts are more fundamental.

My own VA medical records have been computerized for somewhere around eight years or so. As I mentioned in my e-mail today, my guestimate is that in somewhere around 70 percent of my interactions with VA medical personnel, the practitioner doesn’t bother to look past the first or second page of the chart. My primary physician is a younger, Indian-educated and board-certified internist. He is much better at navigating around the pages, thus he is able to explore more of my electronic chart than some of the people I have encountered previously.

On the same page, pun intended, and — my oh my do I know about this one — a computer is not going to prevent a nurse or doctor or mental health counselor from making a mistake on your record that could conceivably be perpetuated for the patient’s life (or death if that mistake is sufficiently serious).

It’s like my old computer programming friends from way back in the 70s used to say: “GIGO.” Garbage In Garbage Out.

Plenty of reasons exist as to why electronic medical records are the kitty’s PJs. The fact that someday a paramedic might be able to see your records on the scene of an accident or a heart attack could be a fantastic advance in medicine. It also could be a nightmare. I have known instances of VA personnel accessing medical records who really — at least in my opinion — didn’t have “the need to know.” I know that because I asked those people to look something up pertaining to my own medical records even though those people I asked really were not medical personnel. Plenty more concerns exist depending on your proximity to patients. Donald Lindberg, M.D, the Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine said a study of private practice physicians revealed their own reasons for not adopting electronic records:

“Some other statistically significant, stiff barriers reported by physicians who do not use electronic medical records include:

* Uncertainty about the yield of electronic medical records on a physician’s time and financial investment
* Finding a electronic record system compatible with an individual practice or tailored office setting
* Concern about a loss of productivity during the transition from paper to electronic records
* Concern that an electronic medical records system will become prematurely obsolete.”

Finally, electronic medical charts also have features which may fall both toward the positive and negative sides depending upon where you are sitting. The computerized systems provide various reminders and alerts which are less dependent on human memory. “The good news is it’s time for your prostate exam. The bad news is it’s time for your prostate exam.”

Eventually most U.S. medical practitioners will use electronic records within the next 20 years, by my guess, but I am a nobody when it comes to authority. It’s just a guess and Joe the Plumber might come closer guessing than I would although I seriously doubt it. As long as doctors, nurses, other medical professionals and patients remember that such records are tools and not a miracle cure then everything should be pretty cool. We just have to remind ourselves that computers are only as good as their operators. That, as those who have any sense at all knows, is pretty scary as well.

Brad sez: Where is that drunk chick you speak of?

A tall drunk chick, or perhaps drunk tall chick or maybe not chick maybe female of the species … Anyway, she was a woman, tall and drunk, just knocked on my door looking for Brad Paisley. It wasn’t that she particularly thought Brad was hanging out with me. I don’t know why she knocked on my door. She was looking for another apartment and that is where Brad Paisley supposedly lurked, or whatever. When I made some kind of disparaging sound she, said drunk tall tall drunk woman, looked at me like I was an idiot. Maybe I am. I hope she finds whatever she is looking for though, somehow I don’t think she is going to find Brad Paisley. I need to quit answering my door.

My Dad was a self-employed sign painter and was quite good at it. He also, on occasion, would take a drink and could be quite good at that too.

Actually, Daddy was very talented at a lot of pursuits he just happened to pick sign-writing as he called it as a way to contribute to his family. He certainly never got rich at doing it.

Even though I can remember my Dad laying out as well as painting his signs, I also recall a few quite artistic “sailor” words which would storm from his lips indicating a mistake. Nevertheless, I can’t remember any permanent errors which his lettering brushes had made.

Thinking back about how good my Dad was at his job, I can’t imagine what he would say seeing the two signs above I caught with my cell phone camera at the laundromat this afternoon. Well, actually I can imagine. I’m sure his response would likely include those words he no doubt honed as a merchant seaman during the second World War. In case you are wondering what I am speaking about, I invite you to find the misspelled words in the two signs.

Now I have made my share of mistake over the years in print and perhaps have one or six in this little missive. A good many of those mistakes I have made are still out there for all to see even though one would be hard-pressed to find the correction printed after the fact to say: “Oh golly gee, sorry!” But making mistakes on signs are a totally different beast than those on the news page.

Granted if you have a young child advertising his lemonade stand or neighborhood porno movie kiosk you might excuse an errant word here or there, perhaps even a backwards “S” or the like would add a little childhood charm in the marketing effort. Or if you have a sign by a down-home fellow who perhaps never finished his education and he is just trying to scrape by selling tomatoes on the side of the road or has a two-fer rooster sale and will fix your lawnmower engine.

But these signs above come from a mini-market which sells a major gasoline as well as having thousands invested in, albeit worn-out, washers and dryers.

What does the above signs say to me? Well, knowing the fellows who run the place who are of Southern Asian extraction I have to say it could be an ESL (English as Second Language) gilflirt. I am not certain that the word “gilflirt” is a real world, but I have always heard it mean something like the acronym SNAFU (Situation Normal All F***ed Up) or FUBAR (F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition). In other words, the words in the above signs got lost a little in translation or spelling or both.

The second possibility is that the people who run the “premisis” just don’t give a rat’s ass. That is not a deadly sin but one would think such thought doesn’t exactly translate into a lot of the work and business ethic in this nation.

Finally, all the above reasons plus others might be at work. Who knows? And who knows how long the signs have been there? They actually may have pre-dated the Asian fellows.

I am just saying that in the mind of some the sign is a work of art and while it might not stay around long enough for anthropologists or art historians to study for hundreds of years, they say a lot about the here and now. Plus, the spelling looks downright funky.

Well, it looks as if I just missed the two naked ladies who were supposed to shower at the intersection of busy Main and Crockett streets in downtown Beaumont. It’s right there by our daily newspaper though so if their editors don’t wring their hands too much as to prevent pointing to a reporter and photographer to hit the street then perhaps I may read about it. No doubt the local TV stations will be there, the pervs.

Actually, it’s all one big PETA stunt. Per their new release:

“Beaumont, Texas — Naked behind a banner that reads, “1 lb. of Meat Equals 6 Months of Showers,” two PETA beauties will shower together in a busy Beaumont location to let consumers know that the best thing that they can do for the environment is to go vegetarian.

“U.N. scientists have determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, SUVs, trucks, and planes in the world combined. Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard car to a Toyota Prius.

“It’s impossible to ‘go green’ without going vegetarian,” says PETA beauty Colleen Higgins. “Just by changing their diets, concerned people can help protect the Earth, their own health, and countless animals.”

It makes me wonder if “PETA beauty” is Ms. Higgins’ actual business title.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Oh I’m a vegan PETA beauty.”

“Uh-huh.”

Well, it’s a free country up to a point. I am for green as much as the next non-right-wing-wing-nut. But I like meat, pork, lamb, venison, bison, fish, poultry and veggies and assorted other tasties. So if Ms. Higgins wants to shower in the middle of downtown Beaumont, Texas, I’ll support her right to do so. But she will take my hamburger when she pries it from my cold, dead, artery-hardened hands.

This morning I was somewhat braced for whatever kind of misery one might expect from a body part in protest to some assault or another. The reason is my orthopedic doctor gave me a steroid shot in the area of my arthritic thumb yesterday. The needle was quite long and menacing-looking but for whatever reason, I never felt the stick nor did I ever feel the injection or the medicine’s sting.

Such occurrences are rare for me. Pretty much when I am stuck with anything it hurts to some degree or another. I have had tons of shots and IVs, have been cut open with scalpels and even had a chunk of hip bone lifted from that nether region and clamped together with a little titanium plate in my cervical spine. So when something sticks me or cuts me or produces some type of assault on my person I feel it and I know how it feels. But not the doc’s shot.

The doctor’s reaction when I told him it didn’t hurt a bit was that he had done this quite a lot of times so he has become good at doing it. But I was still waiting for a punchline — as in waking up this morning and feeling as my hand had been punched by Dwayne “The Man Formerly Known as The Rock” Johnson.

My precedent for this delayed pain syndrome emanates from my days in Navy boot camp. We bored little sailors-to-be all played this masochistic game in which a training company in front of us would give us the heads-up on some of the horrors which were on our horizon. We’d get even by scaring the hell out of the company junior to us. We were a little vague on the concept of karma back then. An instance of this sick little game surrounded an anticipated immunization.

Now we got shots, shots and more shots in boot camp. But this one particular shot, I can’t even remember what it was for, was said to be a doozy. The guys ahead of us in training said it was given with this big square needle right in the center of one’s butt. The toughest men in the companies were said to be reduced to whimpering, sniveling little babies from the pain it induced.

Much of the scare stories which we heard from our upper classmen were bulls**t. But there tended to be some truth into this story only it was a time-released truth.

When it came our time for the shot we all went in weary but trying not to be afraid. The first relief came when I noticed that, while very long, the needle wasn’t square. I was given the shot and beside feeling a little stick felt no unusual discomfort. Our senior students had gotten us again! Well, not quite.

The next morning came reveille and as I jumped up out of bed I immediately went down to the floor in agony. My ass felt like it had been impaled with a railroad spike. As we were able to finally move around, march to breakfast, march back and do some exercise, the pain finally eased. The old square-needle shot did hurt, it just didn’t hurt when it was administered.

So I was expecting something similar this morning in the area of my cortisone injection when I got out of bed. But no, it was just fine. The only thing which was extremely annoying was the fact I was awakened at 6 a.m., about two hours earlier than I had intended to awaken, by a neighbor whom I didn’t know. She explained her apartment was having plumbing problems and asked if she could use my bathroom. I finally just raised my hands, including the one which was clearly pain-free, and said: “First door on your right.”