But you know, it is Christmas tomorrow and tonight is Christmas Eve. Santa is coming. It is not “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” it is Christmas.

Trying to be politically correct because of the perceived offense to those who don’t celebrate Christmas just adds the generification of holidays. It’s bad enough that we see Christmas supplies appearing in stores in September, mixed together with Halloween and Thanksgiving. The holidays aren’t even given a chance to breathe and stand on their own.

If you celebrate the Solstice, then say “happy Solstice.” If you celebrate Hannukah, the say “Happy Hannukah.” Ditto for Kwanzaa, or any other holiday that happens to fall around this time. I won’t be offended if someone wishes me a greeting for a holiday I don’t celebrate. I think it is very kind of them, and I will wish them the same.

So Merry Christmas! And I hope you’ve all been good boys and girls.

And special thanks to all of the nurses, doctors, and other healthcare personnel who are working on Christmas. I hated having to work on holidays, even though it was time and a half pay. But thank you for being there, for as all of us in healthcare know, its a 24/7 job that doesn’t take time out for holidays, weekends and birthdays.

What pink onslaught, you ask? Why Breast Cancer Awareness month, when the world turns into one sickening shade of pink.

In fact, the pink has now crept out beyond October, and the rest of the year is becoming sporadically dotted with pink.

I can’t stand it. I think it is overdone, and quite honestly, I think its time to move on.Plus the pink propaganda can also be deceiving–a lot people buy pink stuff thinking they are helping a worthy cause, but instead, are just contributing to some company’s bottom line. None of the money spent on the pink frou frou may be going to breast cancer research, for example, as the pink items are notorious for omitting any information that tells you where the money is going, what percentage of the purchase price is going to research, etc. And thus far, almost none of the big “pink groups” has done anything to try to reign in the fraud.

There is an interesting article in the LA Times about downside of the so-called awareness campaigns. This  is what I found very disturbing:

“If it’s not broken, I don’t think we should try and fix it,” said spokeswoman Laurie Casaday, senior manager of corporate affairs in oncology for drug maker AstraZeneca, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month’s founding sponsor.

The campaign’s website states that the organization remains “dedicated to educating and empowering women to take charge of their own breast health by practicing regular self-exams to identify any changes, scheduling regular visits and annual mammograms with their healthcare provider, adhering to prescribed treatment and knowing the facts about recurrence.”

Other campaign literature highlights the stories of women who believe their lives were saved by a screening test. But the unsettling reality is that many of these lives were never actually threatened, says Gayle A. Sulik, author of “Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health.”

Sulik says the problems of over-diagnosis and over-treatment are rarely discussed in ads, promotional literature or advocacy messages. Neither of those terms appears anywhere on the websites for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month or Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the oldest and largest breast cancer advocacy group.

But note, nothing is said about real prevention in the campaign’s mission. Overdiagnosis aside, there is not one peep about preventing the disease to begin with. Mammography is not prevention, it is a screening tool and a diagnostic tool. It can only tell you what’s there. Taking charge of your health goes beyond a visit to the doctor or looking for lumps. You want to prevent the lumps, but real prevention involves taking on powerful industries–the kind who make junk food, pesticides, toxic household cleaners, the chemicals that go into cosmetics and toiletries, etc.

It means taking on the FDA and forcing them to do their job. It means a lot of things that the major advocacy groups don’t want to talk about.  And women themselves, I think, prefer to think that all they have to do is wear pink ribbons, and breast cancer will be cured. Many do not want to be inconvenienced by having to exercise, or lose weight, or give up happy hour every day, or their breakfast donuts.

Anyway, this is the only post I am going to make about pink, unless there is something else really juicy in the news. Otherwise, I plan to ignore it. I will not buy anything pink colored, or even wear pink. That’s my political statement!

So blogging has fallen a little by the wayside, and will probably be somewhat sporadic until Easter. By then I should be more caught up and back to my regular schedule.

I have been ignoring the healthcare reform debate because I just can’t bear to listen to it anymore. It just drones on and on, and the final product–if it passes–is not really going to change very much.

But has anyone heard a peep from our Surgeon General yet? I mean, in the middle of all this commotion with healthcare reform, has she ever made a statement? Does she support the president, the bill, anyone or anything? The only thing I’ve read about her since she was sworn in is that she thinks that we need more minorities in medicine. And when she threw out her statistics, it was obvious that she was talking about needing more black doctors, and not minorities in general.

The real issue is to get more students interested in careers in science and medicine–students of all stripes, colors, size, shapes, and origins. Our nation needs physicians, scientists, healthcare workers in general–we don’t need more lawyers, stockbrokers, MBAs and politiicians. But that seems to be what we are mass producing, rather than people who produce anything of substance.

And with all of the problems in healthcare, and with this big debate over reform going on, is this what our Surgeon General sees as the most pressing problem? That this topic is what she has devoted her first talk to?

Kind of pathetic. I don’t want to write this woman off completely, but hey lady, let us know you’re alive and kicking.

The pink campaign, as this video says, began with good intentions, but it has mushroomed into a mega marketing campaign, with many unscrupulous companies selling pink products to “raise awareness,” and do not donate any money to breast cancer causes. In other words, they’re cashing in on an illness and trying to increase their profit margin for the month of October by “pinkifying” their inventory.

Cool. Thanks but no thanks. I refuse to buy anything pink in October.

But really, this is nothing new. Calorie restriction has been discussed and studies for decades.  The article even says that:

Evidence has been mounting for years that the practice of caloric restriction — essentially, going on a permanent diet — greatly reduces the risk of age-related diseases and even postpones death. It has been shown to significantly extend the lives of yeast, worms, flies, spiders, fish, mice and rats.

A lot of people have also practiced calorie restriction, with varying results, although it is safe to say that the vast majority of healthy centurians are not overweight.

But what makes this study so special? Beats me as to why it is even news.  The article goes on to say that the “study comes as some validation to the cadre of several hundred true-believing Americans who profess to practice caloric restriction in their daily lives.” Well, it may add more evidence, but again, this isn’t exactly a news-breaker. It’s just a repeat of what’s already been studied. This time it was done in primates.

Now, if it was a study with human subjects, and they had some profound results, that would be a different story.  But all this study is doing is confirming findings of other research in non-human subjects, and still unable to answer a multitude of questions about calorie restriction. Should I or shouldn’t I?

And how do we explain this one, this little glitch which somehow allowed hackers to break in and kidnap a significant wad of data and hold it hostage until ransom is paid?

Kidnapping is getting exotic these days. It used to be people snatched and held for ransom, and now its data. Changing times.

This is from Bruce Schneier’s blog:

On Thursday, April 30, the secure site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) was replaced with a $US10M ransom demand:

“I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”

More details:

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site’s homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents.[...]

Whitley Ryals said the state discovered the intrusion on April 30, after which time it shut down Web site site access to dozens of pages serving the Department of Health Professions. The state also has temporarily discontinued e-mail to and from the department pending the outcome of a security audit, Whitley Ryals said.

Photo courtesy of Stock.xchng

Next, as I said yesterday, I am consolidating the topics a little more and trying to stay on track. Of course, I may stray every now and then, if something juicy pops up that doesn’t quite fit neatly into any of the categories above.

If you notice, there is a new category called “Careers.” The healthcare industry is booming, despite any of the chitchat of economic downtown. People are getting sick, the rate of chronic diseases has never been higher, and unless our new president does a major coup and forces the agri/chemical/oil/biotech industries to clean up their act and remove toxic crap from our food and environment–and completely revamps the FDA by removing the parasites currently in control–then the high rate of illness will continue.

Healthcare reform is another issue in and of itself, and if dramatic reforms do ever transpire, that may change the job market. But even so, the job market will still remain strong, and the opportunities in healthcare go far beyond physician and nurse.

So this is a new area which I would like to address and expand upon, and offer real information about different fields.  Go beyond the nonsense, for example, that you would find in Johnson & Johnson’s Discover Nursing website, which makes nursing seem like a Hallmark card. Where people find that they can “be myself” by working as a nurse. I promise, I will try not to make you gag.

Another new topic is that of nomads. Healthcare nomads roam the earth in search of jobs, and also medical care. Travel jobs, either short or long term, are available to nurses, doctors, etc, both in the U.S. and abroad. On the flip side, patients are traveling abroad in search of less expensive care, whether it be cosmetic or life saving. Medical travel is a rapidly growing industry that shows no signs of slowing down. Unless something miraculous takes place within our own healthcare system–like everyone suddenly being endowed with terrific, comprehensive and inexpensive coverage–medical travel will continue to blossom.

So stay tuned and let me know what you think.

His potential choice of the surgeon general is Dr. Gail Rousseau, a neurosurgeon who was an early Obama supporter and hosted a fundraiser for him at her home in 2003. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I would prefer that he select someone with a broader expertise in public health. I don’t know anything about her, but neurosurgery seems very limited–it is something that is highly specialized so I don’t know how that translates into being the public health advocate for the nation. True, the Surgeon General doesn’t have much power, but again, neurosurgery is extremely specialized and unless this woman does a lot of advocacy and research in her spare time,  I can’t see how this is the best choice.

Of course, it is nice that a woman is being considered, and if confirmed, she will be only the third woman to fill the slot. And of greater interest, is that she was a surgical nurse before going to medical school.

Yes, a nurse.

I know that nurse purists will be outraged that this woman dared to leave the sacred calling of nursing and attend medical school, but that’s the reality. Nurses leaving nursing, for any number of reasons. And while I’m sure the nurse purists will scoff at her as a traitor, I think that it is impressive that she rose from nurse to neurosurgeon to possibly being confirmed as surgeon general.

Then again, one of our most effective surgeon generals was Everett Koop, who was a pediatric surgeon, but yet he stepped up to the plate to battle the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s (which the Reagan administration did its best to ignore, but that’s another story).

Anyway, there may be other contenders, but the reason I even posted this was because of her nursing background.

His latest idiocy and insult to this country is the “conscience law” which allow health care providers to refuse to dole out treatment that is contrary to their conscience. The major problem with this law is that it is so broad that virtually anyone working in health care can invoke it. For example, a receptionist who feels that sterilization is morally wrong can refuse to schedule an appointment for a man to get a vasectomy. A nursing assistant can refuse to give a bedbath to a gay man, or change his bedpan if she feels that homosexuality is wrong and the man is a sinner and doesn’t deserve to be cared for.

The list is endless. But what is missing from this scenario is the patient. Healthcare is supposed to evolve around the patient, not the provider. If you work in healthcare, you better get used to people coming at you from all walks of life.

When I worked in the NICU, we had many families that made my flesh crawl. Like the 27 year old woman with a 14 year old daughter giving birth to her 10th kid. All with different fathers, on welfare–well, you get the picture. I’d personally like to snip her tubes, but the best we could do was counsel her, and take care of her baby. Get social services involved to make sure that the baby whose life we worked so hard to save would be cared for.

From USA Today:

Under the rule, which takes effect mid-January, anyone from the brain surgeon to the pharmacy cashier can opt out of participating in care to which they have a moral or religious objection. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt described it as a rule to protect “the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience.”

The Family Research Council calls the rule “an early Christmas present to pro-lifers” which will “reinforce the rights of doctors, pharmacists, technicians, and even receptionists …

Protecting the right of all health care providers to make professional judgments based on their moral convictions is foundational to federal law. The next administration will inherit these rules, and we strongly urge President-elect Obama to defend them. True tolerance would allow the choice of conscience to be defined by individuals — not the government.

Are these people daft or what? Health care providers are supposed to make decisions based on standard practice, science, and the needs/wants of the patient. Not their moral convictions, which should play no part in any healthcare decision making because they can be in direct conflict with what the patient wants.

Well the Family Research Council must be drinking spiked Kool-Aid if they think that Obama is going to defend this assault on healthcare. Hopefully Congress will block it immediately, so that Obama doesn’t have to deal with it. Senators Clinton and Murray have already introduced a bill to repeal it.

Women seeing reproductive health care, gay individuals and couples dealing with emergencies or even routine treatment, even people who see vaccines or antibiotics for their babies will face health care roulette on all fronts. Who knows the beliefs of the triage nurse in the ER?

What the defenders of this law don’t realize is that it can affect them. Their brain is focused on abortion or emergency contraception, but little do they know that they can be a victim of moral conscience. Gee, what if a nurse invokes her Jehovah Witness status and refuses to give them blood? Maybe they can bleed to death? Or if the pharmacist refuses to fill their prescription for a drug he considers “objectionable” such as a painkiller, and he’s the only open one in town. Tough luck, kiddo, you’ll have to suffer all night.

People who are carrying around too much moral baggage should not be working in health care, or at least, choose a niche where it won’t be a problem.

Under this law, even a cashier can refuse to ring you up, if they don’t like what you’re buying. Gee, they think deodorant is immoral, hiding the natural scent that God gave you. Oh my, you should not be buying tampons–how icky.

Merry Christmas, George Bush. How about giving the nation a present and resigning now? Just remember, what goes around comes around. Wait until you’re sick, and the health care team refuses to care for you, saying that it is against their conscience to care for a mass murderer….

Photo courtesy of Clipartguide.com

So now what does a snowy scene have to do with anything? By the way, this is how the world looks outside my front door.

We are having an unprecedented cold spell, with below freezing temperatures and lovely snow which will not turn black and sotty as it does in the city. True, I may be less than enamored with with the snow if I had to drive somewhere, which leads me to the subject of the day.

I only worked one year as a nurse in a climate where weather conditions could hamper travel. Other than that, I worked in Florida and California. I was fortunate during my brief interlude in sunny buggy Florida not to bump heads with any hurricanes, and working in California was also benign, weather wise.

But I was thinking today, as I took a walk in the winter wonderland, in my bright red snowboots and red gloves, what I would do if I had to report to work at a hospital? Well, it wasn’t much of a brain bender–I would not show up. The roads here are minimally cleared, although it gets better as you get into downtown. But without chains, I surely would not attempt to drive in my neighborhood. Since heavy snow is quite uncommon, most people tend not to keep chains in their garage or have a set of snow tires. Many do have SUVs, but some of those were even slip-sliding today.

How devoted do hospitals think that nurses are? Do they expect you to risk your life to get to work? Really, do they get their knickers in a twist if you call in and say, sorry, I am snowed in? I understand that patients need care, but still. Of course, hospitals could hire transportation to come and pick up nurses (and bring them home) in inclement weather, but that will be the day….

So I’m curious–what do they expect? Do they threaten you if you call in? Would I get fired if I explained that the roads are not cleared, they are slick as glass beneath the snow, and that the bus has reverted to “snow route” meaning that I would have to walk a mile and a half in below freezing temperatures with heavy snowfall to get to the bus stop?