OT Colonoscopy tomorrow (Friday)

On Nov 21, 12:17*pm, moonglow minnow
wrote:
The flaw of the US system
is that, were they here, Lesley and Dave would be bankrupt and unable to
afford follow up care at all.

Indeed- what would a 4 1/2 month hospital stay cost? Okay we;ve been
having a problem with one or two bad district nurses but most of them
are okay and now we've finally got in touch with someone in charge
things are back on track. The problem is every NHS Trust has a budget
and it's a sad fact certain services recieve less cash and it won't be
the "higher profile" ones like sick kiddies or cancer services. But I
still think the NHS is a great organisation it's just like any big
organisation (3rd biggest employee in the World apparently) it's not
perfect but at least people don't die for lack of insurance

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs

hopitus wrote:

For everyone...I never thought about Medicare a social service but
yeah,
as you point out, it is. See, in my mind, since you pay for, by
paycheck
deduction tax, future Medicare benefits, in my mind that was not equal
to social services like Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps, for which
the recipients of such contribute *nothing* at all, so to me that
would
be "sucking off the government/state". But the deal is *other people*
are paying for the recipients' benefits!

With the way the system works now, anyone who is not disabled (and too
many people who are disabled, including military veterans) get their
benefits cut off after a certain point. So in reality, most people use
these services as a stopgap to get themselves back into productive
society, and ultimately do end up paying for the services they use
through taxes - just not at the time they're using them.

My mind boggled and went into freeze mode reading about Lesley's
horror story of sadistic stupid pseudo nurses in UK ripping off
bandages
embedded in scabs. That actually gave me a touch of nausea to read.

Unfortunately, incidents like that are not isolated to countries with
socialized medicine, and happen just as frequently here in the US. Our
medical care being the most expensive in the world doesn't make it the
best, I'm afraid.


Maeve ^..^
--
http://moonglowminnow.wordpress.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/minnow/

Lesley wrote:

An old friend of mine had an MSc in pure mathematics but he couldn't
add and subtract anything like as fast as this 0 level maths failure
could

I'm the same way. In college I did extremely well in the theoretical
math courses where you learned about algebraic systems, and proved
theorems, etc, but I'm so-so at basic arithmetic. I'm one of those
people who got an A in abstract algebra but can barely balance my
checkbook. They're really not the same kind of skill at all.

Of course, people who believe that "good, old-fashioned, down-to-earth
common sense" is the only valid kind of intelligence will probably roll
their eyes at my head-in-the-clouds type of intelligence, but I think
it's an important balance and wouldn't sacrifice either type.

Joyce

--
Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram"? Every time I hear it, I think
I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.
-- Jan King

hopitus wrote:

For everyone...I never thought about Medicare a social service but
yeah,
as you point out, it is. See, in my mind, since you pay for, by
paycheck
deduction tax, future Medicare benefits, in my mind that was not equal
to social services like Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps, for which
the recipients of such contribute *nothing* at all, so to me that
would
be "sucking off the government/state". But the deal is *other people*
are paying for the recipients' benefits!

Sometimes. Sometimes people are on our equivalent to your welfare for
short periods of time, and pay in before and afterwards. Sometimes they
are incapable of working anyway, for one reason or another. And of
course, you do get a certain number of crooks scamming the system.

But it's the same with medicare (Canadian version, public health care)
Some of us pay in all our lives, and never get our money's worth because
we're generally healthy when alive and die quickly in an accident or
very sudden fatal illness. Others have chronic illnesses all their
lives, or even one lengthy illness, and use up all the medical care
they've paid for through their taxes and some paid for by the healthy
lot as well.

And there's some government services I'd just as soon not experience
personally but don't mind paying for. The prison system. Roads to remote
communities I never intend to visit. A visit from the fire department.
Education for the children of other people, who I hope will grow up to
be good citizens and get jobs that I'm going to need to have done.

--
Cheryl

hopitus wrote:

For everyone...I never thought about Medicare a social service but
yeah,
as you point out, it is. See, in my mind, since you pay for, by
paycheck
deduction tax, future Medicare benefits, in my mind that was not equal
to social services like Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps, for which
the recipients of such contribute *nothing* at all, so to me that
would
be "sucking off the government/state". But the deal is *other people*
are paying for the recipients' benefits!

Well, first of all, if you die before you can collect Medicare, then
you *have* been paying for benefits that other people will collect.

But also, what makes you so sure you will never need welfare or Medicaid?

I have a well-paying job and I live pretty well, but the truth is that
I'm one layoff plus one bad illness away from destitution, as are many
middle-class people. I'm grateful that I'm not poor enough to need
welfare or food stamps, meager as they are. But my future isn't guaranteed,
and I would really like that safety net to be there for *me* if I should
ever need it.

Joyce

--
Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram"? Every time I hear it, I think
I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.
-- Jan King

Cheryl wrote:

And there's some government services I'd just as soon not experience
personally but don't mind paying for. The prison system. Roads to remote
communities I never intend to visit. A visit from the fire department.
Education for the children of other people, who I hope will grow up to
be good citizens and get jobs that I'm going to need to have done.

Well said! I support social programs for very selfish reasons as well
as for reasons related to morality and justice. I don't want to continue
living in a society that has a large underclass of badly educated, angry
people ready to commit crimes at my expense. The bad neighborhoods aren't
so far away from me. We all have to live in the same communities, so why
not do something to make them better for everyone?

I think most of us would agree that it's pretty short-sighted to say
"I don't have any kids, so why should I pay taxes for schools?" But not
wanting to pay for other people's health benefits is no different.

Joyce

--
Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram"? Every time I hear it, I think
I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.
-- Jan King

wrote:

snip

I think most of us would agree that it's pretty short-sighted to say
"I don't have any kids, so why should I pay taxes for schools?" But not
wanting to pay for other people's health benefits is no different.

We used to have a separate school tax, until the provincial government
(education is a provincial, not federal or local, responsibility here)
decided it was too expensive to administer and took the money out of
general tax revenues instead.

I was astonished at the number of people who said things like "My kids
are all grown up" or "I don't have any kids", and therefore "why should
I pay the school tax?"

I WANT lots of well-educated police officers and administrators and
scientists and clerks and nurses and doctors and even politicians when
my generation gets too old to work!

--
Cheryl

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:20:35 -0800 (PST), Lesley
wrote:

An old friend of mine had an MSc in pure mathematics but he couldn't
add and subtract anything like as fast as this 0 level maths failure
could

Skill in mathematics is different from skill in adding and
subtracting. But like everything else, skill in math improves with
practice. I think people who hated math in school weren't taught
right. The famous mathematician John von Neumann used to say that
people who thought math was complicated didn't know anything about
real life, meaning that real life is more complicated than math ever
could be.

Bud

On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:54:04 -0500, ---MIKE--- wrote:

The subject tells it all. Today I am consuming large quantities of vile
tasting liquids and eating nothing solid. Also, I am not getting to far
from the throne room! At least the cats are happy that I will be home
all day.

As a belated follow-up, I have a cautionary tale for any diabetics in our
group.

I had a colonoscopy this past spring, and had a close call as a result of
the clear-liquids-only dietary restriction. I am a type-II diabetic, on
both oral medication and some insulin, so I have to be careful about my
sugar intake. On the day before the surgery, I consumed a couple of
liters of a diet sports drink (with the laxative mixed in), unsweetened
ice tea, water, and some apple juice (my only caloric intake that day).
I did not take any of my diabetes medicine, but instead checked my blood
sugar several times during the day.

As of bedtime, my blood-sugar reading was still OK. However, I had to
get up around 3:00 AM to use the bathroom one last time. As soon as I
got out of bed, my head started spinning, and I recognized the symptoms
of low blood sugar. So, I grabbed up a couple of glucose tablets and
chewed on them as I headed for the bathroom.

Less than a minute later, I passed out and fell off of the toilet, coming
to kneeling on the bathroom floor with my head and shoulders thrust over
the edge of the tub. I had toppled forward off of the toilet, and,
judging from the bruise on my forehead, I had hit my head on the edge of
the tub on the way by. Fortunately, my knees had hit the floor before my
head hit the tub, so I didn't have any serious damage. I don't think
that I was out cold for more than 30 seconds or so, as I still had a
partially-chewed-up glucose tablet in my mouth that hadn't had time to
dissolve in my saliva.

When I told my diabetes doctor about this a few days later, he said that
I should have prepared and eaten some gelatin as part of my clear-liquids
diet (it was listed on the instructions as something I could eat). The
protein in the gelatin would have been digested more slowly than the
sugars in the apple juice, and probably would have kept my blood sugar
from going so low once all of the apple juice had been digested.

--
John F. Eldredge --
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

On Nov 22, 2:33*pm, wrote:


I have a well-paying job and I live pretty well, but the truth is that
I'm one layoff plus one bad illness away from destitution,

Same here- I'm safe in my job for the moment (there;s some talk of a
10% cut in NHS staff over the next few years also our trust merged
with another one so at some point they are going to be looking at
duplication of services although the other trust doesn't have a sexual
health service so I might escape the chop) and we have some modest
savings to fall back on for a while if we had to although they're
supposed to be for supplementing my income when I retire but they
won't last too long. I;ve seen recently a lot of friends losing their
jobs/working reduced hours etc to be anything less than aware if I
were to get seriously ill or lose my job it wouldn't be very long
before we could be in serious financial trouble...Getting a new job
would be the worse, I get pretty generous sick pay apparently but
there really are very few jobs out there and where there are jobs some
people are taking the p**s, my friend Hugh when he was made redundant
was "head hunted" for a salary nearly half of what he had been
getting- he didn't take it


Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs