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Eight feet hell! Trying to hang on to the two which are hard enough for one to handle

Trips to StatCounter are rather infrequent for me nowadays. Since my blog is a writer’s exercise I am not always cognizant of those who might pass by and, God forbid, even read my work. I should be more thoughtful. A frog should have wings.

StatCounter, in case you didn’t know, is a site that tracks Web traffic. All one has to do is copy a little code and paste it into your site’s inner sanctum — sounds like rectum but it’s really more like a brain, strange — and there you go. The counter reveals all sorts of cool numbers and can map where traffic comes in and out of a blog or Web site. I’ve always thought the coolest trick StatCounter does is compile the nations where all the traffic comes from and it even lets you look at page visits beside the flag of a visitor’s nation. I checked it out recently and saw that I had visitors from 30 different countries. Most were one-hit wonders, ranging from a single page view from Brazil to Croatia to Saudi Arabia. The most views, 397 at that particular point in time, were from the U.S. of A. That’s not many but quite a few more than I used to get on my old Blogger site. Thanks for that Tokyo Paul!

A keyword analysis the Counter performs is a slight source of amazement, to me at least, and quite entertaining. For instance, when I recently checked there were eight different visitors searching for the keywords “excited smiley face.” I have no idea what the searchers thought they would find. Scrolling on down, there were four page visits for “Leroy farted.” That one I knew.

It isn’t surprising when I find keyword searches for “feet” or something to do with feet given the name of the blog. I really don’t know what people expect when they see the blog’s name. If I didn’t know the reason behind the name — I’m not really sure that I remember the back story anyway — I would surmise it has some connection to a grave due to “six feet under” is or was a popular euphemism for death or buried. Of course, the Aughts HBO series “Six Feet Under” also comes to mind for some. It was a very dark drama although I would personally categorize it as a comedy-drama because it was pretty darn funny in its own black-humored way.

Thus I am buried in the irony that someone is possibly searching my blog for feet information while I am searching elsewhere on the Web for a cheap pedicure. How crazy is that? It’s not?

Now I’ve never had a pedicure before. I’m not a pedicure kind’a guy. But only in the last year or two have I developed wicked — in the bad sense — looking toes due to diabetic neuropathy. Along with that condition, my toenails seem to each have its own idea as to which direction to grow.  The best I can tell, my left first toe may have a condition called “onychogryphosis,” which is a.k.a. “ram’s toe.” (Warning: Graphic toenail photographs!)

I really need to see a podiatrist  but my medical “team” at the VA said they can only refer patients to the Houston VA hospital podiatry department for conditions such as those requiring amputation. Maybe if I just wait and do nothing … That is kind of the way the Department of  Veterans Affairs can be.

My nurse suggested I get a pedicure but I figured that might be somewhat costly. Looking around at local nail sites it seems the going rate is about $25-plus. But the nurse also suggested a cosmetology school as a place to find cheaper pedicures. Sure enough, I found one, and they said that they would do the nails for $8. Although, I admit I am somewhat leery after reading of encounters with even licensed nail technicians and I am still unsure a pedicure is a good idea for a diabetic foot. I have to do something though. My feet are a mess. I also don’t want my big toe to end up as its own freak show.

Decisions decisions. Diabetes really blows. This I knows. Peace, Yo Rapper Feets!

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Wake up Veterans Affairs, before you die a death by 8.5 million paper cuts!

When one hears an opinion on the efficacy of the nation’s veterans health care system it is usually a discussion of components.

Right now mental health is the portion of the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system that is the “daily special” in terms of widespread interest due to media exposure and congressional oversight. A major sub-particle is that veterans are complaining that it takes too long to get mental health appointments. Growing numbers of young veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries from national engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan make this a particularly topical subject.

There is no doubt that the VA — which sees about 6 million patients each year — is more than capable of what some medical experts have called “the best care available.” One may also forgive the VA, one of the government’s largest agencies, for tooting its own horn over its accomplishments

But like any large organization or bureaucracy the VA also faces its own undoing at times by what most would see as “the minor things” in the bigger picture. It is an expected flaw though treacherous when it comes to caring for a system with the total enrollment slightly more populous than New York City. In bureaucratic lingo, the VA must tackle the constant concern of “death by a million paper cuts.” Or, perhaps, let’s make that 8.5 million paper cuts, the aforementioned number enrolled for VA care.

Just today I was about to use the VA Web page for its patients, called “Myhealthevet.” Yes, that’s an “e” in there. I have now since forgotten what I was going to do on the site. But over the years that the site has been around it has grown in capabilities. Only, the growth has not been fast, nor on an even keel, and to be honest, it has frustrated the hell out of me.

Veterans who are enrolled in VA health care may join this site and have access to his or her prescription medicine information. Refills may be ordered from the site. This capability has been around for awhile. At times, one would only be given the prescription number and not the name of the drug. That isn’t particularly helpful say, you just happen to remember at work or while waiting to eat in a restaurant that your metformin needs to be refilled.

Likewise, the site has been unreliable when it comes to receiving medicines you ordered. I once ran out of meds after ordering them online and that is all it took for me to say, “No thanks.” As if an afterthought, a VA pharmacy person told me, “Oh yeah, don’t order them off the Web site.”

The ability to send secure e-mail to your medical professionals has in recent times been made available. One has to show up in person and see a video before opting in. Once through those “rigors” you may e-mail your medical team and perhaps even your doctor in some regional health systems. That is perhaps the most promising development out of the entire site, so far, at least. However, the real utility of secure messaging to communicate with your medical “team” comes from the fact that most VA hospitals and clinics I have encountered have massive difficulties with telephones.

Call the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Medical Center in Houston. During the day, you will likely get a recording and can wait from here to yon until you get an operator. Then, the operator transfers you and the phone rings and rings and rings and rings. If you are lucky you will get a voice mail. If you are luckier you will get a voice mail that doesn’t say this voice mail is filled. Ordering prescriptions is the main reason I call the VA. I have learned to bypass all the “blah, blah, blah” and head strait to “Option 8” where you can hear recordings of your appointments or reorder prescriptions using your keypad by entering your Social Security Number and then the prescription number.

Great promise lies in the Web access to your medical needs. Veterans may download or view their entire medical record eventually. Well, not the notes where the doctor says you are a sociopath and don’t wash behind your ears. But otherwise, Myhealthevet has already shown its use. However, such a system fails miserably in reaching its potential when one needs to use it for something only to find it is shut down for maintenance. This has happened to me more times now than I am able to count.

The chaotic phone exercises, the Internet in a perpetual state of maintenance along with long waits for specialists or appointments help build from bottom up just where the VA medical system reaches a bundled package of failures. The system has its larger problems as well, money being the generically prevalent one. I speak of funding which may result in the socioeconomic triage where, sometimes, having insurance bodes well for those seeking better veterans health care.

This is not to say the VA health care system is bad and certainly I am not speaking ill of the employees in any general way. Rather, it is my personal wake-up call for an organization that performs miracles every day. I could go on. But all I am saying is that the VA should try harder at healing these millions of paper cuts. This system is all that is keeping many of us alive and healthy.

 

 

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From the DeBakey Center to DC, our veterans deserve better than what we’re getting from the VA

Normally, I don’t do this, but today I went off on the Democratic Party.

The party sent me a message saying we should thank our veterans. Naturally, I don’t have any problem with that. But I wrote back a message that they wanted me to share with the veterans so here it is, that we should really thank them. One way to do that is to stop the arrogance that has seemingly become institutionalized at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yes, I have my problems with them and tomorrow I go back to the neurologist at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Center in Houston to see if this new doctor can do anything. I know the last “neurologist” — a resident — sure as hell didn’t do much except piss me off.

Over the past several years the VA has done nothing for my often crippling condition except for providing false diagnoses and say there is nothing they can do. There is this doctor who supposedly runs the VA pain clinic and doesn’t know my case from Adam’s. But he knows I need to be taken off methadone, the only thing keeping my neck pain in check and preventing me from being a total physical wreck. Hey Doc, it’s my lower back that hurts. The methadone mostly helps my neck. Now you want to get me off of it because there is some kind of national jihad against opiods. Little Jack and Jill, best teens ever, go out and get wasted on Oxy, and do too much and die. Yeah, well sorry for your loss. But I don’t get high on methadone. It doesn’t space me out like the Vicodin and Tramadol the VA had me on 24/7. It enabled me to make what living I have been able to make.

Today I got a response as well from an appeal of a copayment waiver request I made. I guess I’m just too freaking rich for the VA to give me a break on copayments of prescription drugs. Here is what the VA’s letter said as a reason for their denial:

“The following information was influential in this decision:

–No additional appeal information submitted that would substantiate a decision change.”

I’m not kidding. They basically said we don’t have to tell you jack and there is no reason to ask again. Thank a veteran. Give him money to go elsewhere for health care.

The VA has established these regional “consolidated patient care centers” or CPACs where these anonymous bureaucrats make decisions on veterans’ health care. These are the men behind the curtain. They’ve got their call centers where people tell you crap just to get rid of you, just as if you were talking to Verizon or Time Warner.

This is the people who take care of you, your Dad, your brother, your sister, your grandpa. The VA is supposed to help people who were starved as Japanese POWs in World War II, or got blew up by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan or Iraq, or stepped on a mine in Vietnam, or maybe they weren’t in a war but they served at a time when everyone else was partying and getting high on Panama Red or mushrooms and having all that free sex. But those who served at the latter time did so because someone had to do it. Where’s their parade? Where’s my parade? By the way, I went to boot camp with hair down to my shoulders and got it all cut off. Then out on boot camp liberty in Wisconsin, all these people around my age looked at me like a leper. Hey, we weren’t in a war, we must’ve been doing something right.

So, this is why I went off on the Democrats today. Sorry, you just caught me on a bad day. It’s a bad day brought to you by the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was hoping you would make the VA better Gen. Shinseki. I am sorely disappointed.

 

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A “rat” awesome blog post, it is

Holy Foley, there is a lot going on and I don’t have time to put my two-point-five cents’ worth in, to escape ending with a preposition. I haven’t been here in a few days thanks to Verizon. I finally got my second replacement for the 4G upgrade I received a week or so ago. The replacement’s replacement is a “MiFi,” or “Jetpack.” which is basically a device smaller than my cell phone that provides a mobile wi-fi hot spot wherever I go. In theory. The device and battery arrived in two separate boxes on two separate days. It’s a funny thing but there is little communication between Verizon and FedEx. I bet that surprises the hell out of you if you’ve ever dealt with either one of those companies. I still am awaiting a charger for the MiFi which will come in maybe one, maybe three days. I can use my phone charger on the MiFi for the time being, thankfully.

I have a doctor’s appointment at the local VA, the monthly type, in about 1.5 hours, but I will write a few things, go to the doc, well, nurse and then come back to this labor of love (Say what?) when I finish my rat-killing. Oh lighten up, PETA, I’m not really killing rats except the ones that come inside where I live and chomp on rat bait. “Doing your rat-killing” or “Finishing my rat-killing” is just an East Texas way of saying I am going to run errands or do some chore or the other.

All hail the President

President Obama just held his first news conference since October. He announced that SEAL Team 6 has been sent to take out Rush Limbaugh. That’s a joke, son. I think the most poignant remark Seamus O’Bama made today concerned all the saber-rattling taking place all over the place. Some folks such as John McCain — who never saw a problem that couldn’t be taken care of with by a Cruise missile, Tom or otherwise, wants us to bomb Syria. Captain McCain wants us to help out the Syrians fighting against the dictator Assad. That might not be so bad if we knew Assad would not be replaced by some Hezbollah-Bolla-Slop-Bucket or that rockin’ group named Al Cicada and His Exploding Crickets.

Then there is Iran to bomb. Israel would probably have already bombed them had there not been more targets in sunny Teheran than Newton Yahoo has in his Tel Aviv arsenal. President O’Bama said it is easy for folks to stand on the sidelines and say “bomb ’em,” to paraphrase.

“Now, what’s said on the campaign trail — you know, those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities, said the Prez. “They’re not commander in chief. And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war; I’m reminded of the decision that I have to make, in terms of sending our young men and women into battle, and the impacts that has on their lives, the impact it has on our national security, the impact it has on our economy.

“This is not a game,” the CINC said. “And there’s nothing casual about it.”

Soup or Tuesday?

Remember the movie “Willard?” The original is the only one I remember. There was a remake too. The point is that Willard loved rats. Whether Willard Mitt Romney loves rats, I don’t know. If he thought it might get him votes, he might get in bed nekkid with a whole passel of rodents and roll around with them. You can probably substitute rodents there with $100 bills. Tonight, Willard could lock up the Republican presidential nomination. And then he might not. I’m kind of tired of that whole rat race. What is it with the rat theme today, anyway? To celebrate Soup or Tuesday, I will hopefully watch “Justified” tonight because the stupid hotel in which I was staying in San Antonio last week didn’t carry FX on its cable.

I’m off to the VA!

Ugh. What a way to spend an afternoon of leave. That is it today, bucakangaroos!

 

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Giants-Patriots SB XLVI game better than most commericals with a few sweaty exceptions

What a great Super Bowl weekend. He said facetiously.

My weekend was spent with my jaw feeling as if it had been clobbered by Justin Tuck. It seems as if I somehow developed a TMD, which stands for temporomandibular joint disorder — and not some social disease get your head out of the gutter. That is the initial diagnosis I get having visited my VA “medical team” today. I didn’t even get to see my physician assistant, who is not a doctor, but who plays one in the VA clinic. Take an ibuprofen and see a dentist if it doesn’t get better. Then tell me, if it’s a medical problem, why should I spend money that I don’t have to see a dentist — I am not eligible to see one at the VA because of my patient status — who would likely say something is wrong with my molar(s) one way or another? Okay, rant out of the way. The ibuprofen is really doing the trick. He said facetiously.

The Super Bowl turned out to be a really good game, which was fortunate because the commercials that I really watch the game for when teams I have no interest in play — which has been pretty much the case in all but one game in the last 25 years — fell quite short.

My favorite commercials of all during this Super Bowl and pre-Super Bowl (hype) games were those of GEICO’s. The spot that made me roar in laughter despite a torturous jaw was the GEICO Gecko-meets-Richard Simmons.

Now pretty much anytime you have Richard Simmons “sweatin'” to something or other you can get a pretty good laugh. The poor gecko, in this outing, seemed as freaked as one might expect to see their Las Vegas hotel suite trashed in the morning. Sure you were out saving people money, little dude. Now it is understandable the gecko would become downright alarmed to see a deer wearing a lei come wandering out of the hallway. What a mess, what the deer and … why is Richard Simmons on the big-screen TV? But, wait, Richard Simmons in all his “glory” is in the room, exercising to himself on the TV. He shrieks upon sighting the gecko: “Hi!!! Come sweat with me me.”

Capping the hilarity is how the gecko backs slowly out of the room, away from Richard Simmons and quickly turns tail, fleeing from the little sweaty gay man. That is pure gold.

Maxwell, the GEICO pig, is also back from the zip-line commercial which didn’t do a lot for me. I suppose it is hard to top a supreme performance such as “Weee weee weee all the way home” of the original spot. This SB episode features Maxwell with his traditional “Weee … ” while zipping downhill on a street luge. Pulling up beside a guy also in the downhill race, Max gives the dude a cool upward nod of the head and suddenly yet calmly tells the racer “ah … head’s up” as a sign appears warning: “Reduce Speed.” Ah … ends badly for the other guy.

I give second place to the oldie but goodie CareerBuilder.com chimp trip commercial. And third to the E-trade Baby.

The Chevy “2012 Apocalypse” ads get an honorable mention. Ditto for the Elton John Pepsi commercial. The Bud Light “Platinum” commercials were the most disappointing. You can look all of these up here.

It seems every year since 9/11 the Super Bowl afternoon ads have overall provided less and less entertainment. Maybe it has something to do with a change in the nation’s sense of humor. I give as my example “Saturday Night Live” for the past decade which presents a comedy that appears alien. Plus, all the commercials can’t be “laugh out loud” amusing. I just wish more were clever.

Oh well. Thank goodness there are commercials that can both deliver laughs and effectively but expensively market its products. Kudos to the firms like The Martin Agency! That is with the exception of the Cave Man. He just creeps me out for some reason.