Health Care

I’m a diabetic. Now hold on, don’t go all mushy with sympathy for my degeneratively diseased old self. You can direct that towards the celebrities in those medicine advertisements. No, I’m a type 2 case who fortunately doesn’t need to stab my body with insulin filled needles throughout the day. My treatment consists of frequent visits to the doctor’s office for lectures about weight loss and healthy living, watching my waistline (it seems to be easier to see all the time), walking two or three miles a day and taking a nice white pill with breakfast. Since I was already taking a couple pills for my hypertension (high blood pressure for you medically un-educated folks) one more tablet didn’t seem like a bad idea. Of course about a year ago the doctor told me some of my medicines were lowering my potassium level so he prescribed a couple of chunky pieces of that mineral to add to the pill pile. But all in all, I’m in okay shape and certainly hoping that I won’t be a burden to you all when I go on Medicare in a couple weeks.

Of course my medical insurance will still be supplied by my dear wife as she continues on her quest for more money and benefits in the world of employment. Some day we’ll be looking at those Plan B, D and other alphabetical supplements that are designed to bankrupt old people on fixed incomes. But for now we’re doing okay. In fact (And here’s what I really wanted to talk about instead of Mr. Obama’s health care utopia) I even have a service where a registered nurse calls me on the phone every six weeks or so to check on me.

This program is called DelaWell, or something similar to that. I call it the “Medical Service for People Who are too Stupid to Be Alive” feature of the insurance policy. The program is provided by our health insurance as a preventative measure for people with diabetes. The very nice nurse from the service will ask questions and pretend to listen to the answers. Then she will deliver a little lecture repeating the stuff that the doctor tells me when I go see him. These nurses assume that a diabetic patient has never read anything about the condition. They assume that we have no access to computers, libraries or the literature that litters the doctor’s waiting room or the little waiting area in the pharmacies where we get our prescriptions filled. I don’t know about other people but when I was informed that I am diabetic I did a little research. It didn’t take a whole lot of checking to see that I’d need to make some changes to my cheese steak and french fries lifestyle, which I did. Mostly.

When the nurse calls she (usually it’s a she) asks the same set of questions about weight, diet, exercise and so forth. Since she asks the same questions every time I figure I can give her the same answers, so I do. Then she asks if I’m depressed, tired, having trouble sleeping and if I’ve checked my feet. Those are all valid questions but, again, if she listened at all, or consulted her computer screen which has all the answers from almost two years of this crap, she’d see that her time would be better spent with a patient who wants to let the disease destroy his or her body. I’m not on that plan. But I suppose there are medical protocols that have to be followed. And I’m sure that these nurses, sitting in their call centers or home offices, are sincere in their desire to help people and not just make a few bucks charging the State of Delaware some exorbitant fee for their service.
Well I’ve shared enough of my personal opinions about this stuff. The phone’s ringing again. It might be somebody from DelaWell, somebody selling diabetic supplies or an estate planning telemarketer. How all these companies learned I was diabetic and on my last legs I can only guess. I’m sure a reputable health and wellness advisory service provider would never give away their client lists. No, I’m sure they’d sell it for a tidy sum.

Have a fine day. I will.

Government vs. Catholics

The news of the day has found its way into my usually unbreakable bubble of resistance against any unpleasant emanations from Washington, New York City or the West Coast. Most days, most weeks actually, I can meander through my days without any political conflict or dopey bureaucratic pronouncements marring the pleasant landscape of my life. But once in a while I look at stuff on the Yahoo! (such an appropriate name) news page which sends me into either fits of rage or spasms of disbelief. Before you know it I’m at the keyboard banging out a blog that will tick off at least eighty percent of my eight readers. And here I am again.

And what I’ve been reading today has to do with the battle between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. What the heck is the president thinking about by picking this fight? I’m not talking about the moral issues. I’m not talking about the Affordable Health Care act. I’m not even talking about how dweeby Harry Reid sounds when he talks. No, I’m talking about nuns. And to a lesser degree I’m talking about other kinds of clergy.

I went to Catholic schools for a few years. It’s true that when I went to those schools things were tougher. Fear was part of the curriculum. A lot of that has been toned down over the years but I’ve got a feeling that if you rile those folks up too much then there’s no telling what can happen. The nuns might get back into those ninja looking outfits they used to wear. New strings of beads may appear and they may be made out of heavy ball bearings that could crack a skull before you could offer up a “Hail Mary”.

And if the male clergy starts wearing cassocks again you never know what they’ll be carrying under those skirts. Sawed off shotguns or even assault rifles would be easy to hide.

Back in my school days the nuns could intimidate with stares and glares. In the lunchroom I saw those brown metal trays (plastic ones hadn’t been invented yet) smacked on the heads of unruly boys with speed and accuracy. Even our parents knew enough to fear the authority of the Church.

It’s been a long time since Catholics have lined up behind the hierarchy and set off on a crusade. But Mr. Obama has rattled a lot of cages with his latest silly idea. I read some of the stuff his press secretary was spouting off today. It seems, and maybe I’m simplifying things just a little, that the administration really does think that religious folks who don’t believe in abortion are ignorant dullards. And maybe they do believe that a large percentage of Catholics don’t care at all about the Church tenets regarding that issue. But there’s a crowd of folks who do care and there are a lot of members of other churches that see a constitutional problem with the policies that are being pushed into practice. Those government geniuses better watch out. The knuckle beating rulers are coming out of storage and they’ll have sharp edges this time.

Now have a fine day and leave me alone.

Mental Maps

A friend of mine referenced (On Facebook which I’ll mention later on) a recent article in the New York Times about some research that indicates that using GPS systems may cause folks to lose their ability to find their way around on their own. In the words of my grandson – well duh! The more I read about research projects like this the more I think the funding agencies should just send me a subject and a whole bunch of cash and I’ll just tell them what the research results will look like.

For a short time I used the GPS system that came with the car we bought. I cancelled the service when the trial period was up and not just because it was too expensive to continue. No, I cancelled it because it was messing up my own impeccable sense of direction. On one trip my wife and I were traveling through Philadelphia. I know my way around that town but I was using the GPS to see if that massive computer system would find a shorter, quicker way to our destination. Not only did the thing send us on a longer, slower route than the one I had planned in my head but it also sent us into an area that was torn up with construction and populated by unsavory characters that scared my wife into dialing a 9 and a 1 on her cell phone. That way she’d be only a single digit away from alerting the police to trouble. As soon as I stopped depending on the electronic map gadget I got out of the dangerous territory and on our way to our destination in no time at all.

Many of my friends and family members rely on their GPS machines all the time. They won’t go to the grocery store a mile away without turning the things on. Of course, some of my friends and relatives had trouble getting to the grocery store before the GPS was invented. They always seemed to have to stop in at one bar or another to get directions. But even the ones that could find their way would probably have trouble now if their electronic directional nannies broke down.

The same friend of mine who pointed out the GPS research article wondered if an electronic mapping guide couldn’t be invented for working your way through other complicated parts of life. He suggested some sort of positioning guide for marriages, careers or raising kids. Perhaps a wrist watch type instrument could be worn that would warn a husband to keep his mouth shut when the wife asks him if he thinks she’s putting on weight. Or maybe parents could have the same kind of device talking them through the minefield of sex education with their little puberty bound offspring. Come to think of it, those might be a lot more useful than the one that tells you to turn left in one mile.

But I really don’t think more electronics would be better. In fact so much of the interaction between humans is digital that it almost seems unnatural having a face to face conversation. Facebook, Twitter and all those other substitutes for real talking are getting more and more pervasive every year. Now, I admit that I do use Facebook. And I also admit that it has been a good way to re-connect with family and friends and it has also brought some fine new friends into my life. But I don’t text. I don’t tweet. In fact I’d be embarrassed to even say that I tweeted. It just sounds so dang silly. If you listen to people (usually young folks) who depend on text devices as they engage in regular conversation they sound uncomfortable and oddly disjointed. They seem to have lost the ability to use adjectives and adverbs. And their nouns and verbs are short and punctuated by lapses of intelligible sounds. But maybe I’m just a codger and I wouldn’t understand those youngsters even if they weren’t addicted to abbreviations on glowing screens.

But let me go back to GPS device for a minute. If we become so dependent on those things then what will happen if there’s a major crash of the internet or the national electrical grids? Thousands of senior citizens won’t be able to find their way back home from Florida in spring time. There’ll be huge traffic jams all over the place. Wives will be screaming at husbands as wrong turns are made over and over again. Marriages will fail right and left. (Sorry) But I have a suggestion that can help folks keep their internal mapping abilities sharp. If you’re planning a trip, short or long, take a look at a paper map, jot down a directional note or two and go. Leave the GPS off, or, better yet leave it at home. Then tell everyone about your accomplishment (assuming you made it to your destination) which will make them very envious and ready to out do you on their next journey. In no time at all folks will be in competition every time they travel. IQ scores will rise. SAT scores will be higher than ever as young people try to outsmart their elders. Politicians might even get smarter and figure a way out of the messes we’re in.

Okay, this is where I should probably put in a summary and a nice little encouraging message. But since all of you people are giving up on GPS machines you’re smart enough to fill in this space yourselves.

Now, go find your own way to a fine day.