It's Not the Cough

I hadn't had bronchitis in nearly a decade. Life was pretty good, at long last, I thought. And then came this summer.

After my exhausting trip out west and back, I guess my resistance to viruses was somewhat lower than it had been before my travels.

So I'm enjoying the thrill of having acquired a very nasty deep cough, exacerbated by the high pollen count triggering post-nasal drip, which, in turn, triggers a constant tickle in the back of the throat, which means a steady shallow cough, and, well, let's just say that a couple more months like this, and my abs should be bikini-worthy. Well, not really, but they're definitely getting an exceptional workout.

Several of my friends have also been hit with this bug, and I'm wondering if they discovered the one thing which I'd almost forgotten, from all my many earlier bouts with respiratory hell: if you're not careful, you can run out of toilet paper.

I'm pretty sure most people, when they hear that a nasty cough is going around, don't even imagine this could be a problem. After all, it's a cough. Just a cough. You know, a little uncomfortable lung activity. Clear the throat, force a little air past those tightening bronchi, all in the upper torso, nothing else (unless, maybe there's the possibility that you, say, throw your back out, or bite your tongue, or some such). And, if you believe people involved in show business, then a nasty cough sounds and looks a lot like Anne Elk clearing her throat.



(I saw a cough medicine commercial where the "sufferer" sounded just like that. Honestly. Real, deep, clear-the-lungs coughs resemble this in the same way that cow pats resemble fly specks. Both are unpleasant, but there are several orders of magnitude between the one and the other. But if the advertiser is treating only this level, I can see how it might be successful. For me, over-the-counter drugs are pretty much useless.)

But there is so much more to it than just a cough. There is that moment when the body, in paroxysm, works to expunge everything. Everything. That little bit of pressure you were feeling from your bladder just a minute ago…no longer.

It's a little bit like being a kid getting ready for a long trip in the car. "Did everybody go to the bathroom?" Even if you didn't think you needed to, you still needed to, because you never knew when the next opportunity would arise, and you couldn't predict how many big bumps there were in the highway before you reached that next rest area. Moms teach you these things. So does experience.

When given a choice of teachers, go with Mom.

And, so, for the sake of my wardrobe – and my sanity, such as it is – I requested that we increase our supply of tissue rather dramatically, just in case.

Because, despite Ogden Nash's claim

It's not the cough that carries you ough,  

It's the coffin they carry you offin 

as bad as it is, the part of bronchitis most maddening, to me, isn't really the illness itself.

It's trips to the potty that drive you dotty.

Why is AARP supporting ObamaCare?

The ostensibly non-profit lobbying group which markets itself as pro-senior citizens is madly campaigning in favor of ObamaCare. Funny thing, that. It's running counter to its constituents' best interests.

After all, by Obama's own admission, the bottom line beats the doctor's advice. Doctors cannot be trusted with your wallet, but career bureaucrats can. If you have an administration which believes that, because you're over, say, seventy-five, you shouldn't get treated directly for a serious condition, but, rather, learn to manage the pain. A hundred-year-old woman shouldn't get anything more than pain pills, because she's going to die, soon, anyway. Money from Medicare could and may already be siphoned off to serve the needs of "undocumented workers". Congress has already discussed "reapportioning" health care funds away from Medicare, after all.

So, why is AARP not crying to the heavens about Obama's policies against the elderly? Maybe it's because AARP is in no wise an actual advocacy group for those citizens who are older. The non-profit group has a markedly for-profit branch: supplemental insurance. The less the government offers those who paid into the program in the first place, the more supplemental insurers will be able to cover in their supplemental packages... and the more they can charge for their policies. It's about supply and demand. Medicare denies, senior citizens seek help elsewhere, AARP profits. For both the Obama administration and the AARP, your health care is all about the bottom line.

Tell me I'm wrong, and that AARP really does care about my parents.

Sniffle sniffle HONK glarg

Okay, so now I remember why I so very much liked having holidays to myself. I love my family (natural and extended), but every virus which ever makes the circuit of this globe will, by contact with vertically-challenged, experientally-challenged persons involved in preliminary academia, have its way with me. It will usually seize the opportunity to ride into my life via a joyful hug at holidays.

I like to refer to this as "Merry in haste, repent at leisure."

So, now that the incubation period has elapsed after Thanksgiving weekend, I'm going through boxes of paper hankersniffs the way I used to go through sketch paper. My budget is not really prepared for this. On the plus side, Mom has graciously provided me with a pharmacopeia, everything from guaifenesin to phenylephrine and Vaporub in between (!), so I sleep well at night. When the cats don't use me as a springboard for their antics.

Naturally, this comes at a time when I have so many deadlines, my head is already spinning, so it doesn't need congestion to kick it up a notch. I had to miss seeing & getting photos of the Living Windows Christmas Walk, which I had greatly anticipated until about two hours before it was to begin, and my little fever spiked. The positive aspect to that is, with this cough, hack, sniffle sneeze, people are a little more reluctant to come visit me during work hours, so I have more time uninterrupted in which to work. The negative is, my concentration is -- hey, look at that squirrel! -- um. Where was I?

Thinking is hard, when your brain is leaking.

Coulter "silenced" by treatment ofr broken jaw?

A few on the left and NBC (pardon my redundancy) are reporting that Ann Coulter is "silenced" after having her jaw wired shut. Somehow, she broke her jaw (no actual journalism to discover why or how, of course). Then, in order to help it heal, she had it wired shut.

I've had a couple of friends who've had their jaws wired shut, and, let me tell you, they were not silenced. One of them, in fact, talked a lot more while she was wired than she had before the surgery. Of course, that was because, before the surgery, she had spend a lot of time stuffing food into her mouth, and, while recovering from the auto accident which cracked her jaw in three places, she managed to lose nearly seventy pounds... mostly through conversation, I think. (I hope she will forgive me, if she's reading this.)

They don't stitch your lips shut when they wire your jaw shut. You end up just speaking a little differently -- say, like Gloria Upson -- is all.

Besides, Coulter knows how to type and use the innerwebz. Even if it gets too hard to carry on an oral conversation, she can still rip through folks with her column's talons.

Silenced, my Aunt Frances.

I'm thinking of taking up coffee again

I quit drinking coffee more than a decade ago, when I discovered it caused muscle spasms in my jaw. But now, I'm seriously considering returning to the old habit. The reason? It just may ease some of my back problems.

Whee!


HT: JWF

Threats don't scare me...

Okay, threats do scare me, especially when they're couched as promises from members of the government or those who would be.

The Clintama campaigns promise mandatory health care, having plans for the the government to make sure I'm properly cared for, just like all those lucky people in Fwance and England and Canada and other lands with socialized medicine and long, long waiting lists for treatment for little things like pneumonia and emergency organ transplant and such.

I think the one thing that always gets my goat about all this stuff they're pushing is the promise that it will drive costs down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, wasn't that what they were saying Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) would do? Join an HMO, it will check you early and often (just like voting in Chicago), and catch diseases like cancer, hypertension, and such long before they became costly and debilitating blah blah blah.

Before the advent of the HMO (back in the dark ages, when disco ruled the day), my average office call to the local quack was about ten dollars. Now the clinic down the way asks for more than that, just as a "small deductible." Allstate only knows how much the actual bill has become! Between the corporate bureaucracies and the government red tape, a brand-name adhesive bandage strip, which I can buy in the store in boxes of 36 for $2.50, cost my best friend's insurer $68 per each at the hospital. I don't remember how much the other parts and labor cost. I'm pretty sure it was more than I make in a month, these days.

If I sprain my ankle, as I did last week, I can put ice on it (or put it in slush), elevate it, wrap it in an elastic bandage and take a couple of over-the-counter pain tablets, as, again, I did last week, costing me... uh... the bandage was one I'd had from a few years ago, the ice (slush) was provided by mommy nature in a puddle by the curb, and the painkillers were from Sam's Club, thousands for under ten bucks... you figure it out. My math is still sucky.

All I can say is, it was way, way cheaper than going to the urgent care facility. I'm walking just fine, too (not counting the occasional swear-word when I bump the bruises against something, again).

And it's pretty much what I'd have done thirty years ago, before the early years of the Health Maintenance Organizations. But then, the HMO began to insist that they peek at our every paper cut, listen to our every sniffle, and indirectly bill us and our employers for everything they did or didn't find. Meanwhile, the HMO stockholders started expressing concern that they weren't getting any real dividends. More bean counters were hired. Costs climbed. Prices climbed. It got expensive for all of us. So the HMO began to say "pre-existing condition" as though it were a mantra, any time somebody tried to upset them by filing a claim. And, then, people started suing the HMO for pain and suffering. The HMO started jacking up prices even more, and denying more claims. More lawsuits, more insistence on paying for piddly stuff and then for non-members, via new taxes, and voilá! Cries were made for more government controls, because the HMO was trying to recoup its losses via raising prices, and jacking up prices due to rising costs for operation just isn't cricket.

And, now, when it's obvious that the HMO bureaucratic system is really pretty crappy at "maintaining the health" of its members, Clintama want the government to take over the same failing system and run it the same messed-up way, only with the force of law behind it, too.

My family knows I have health issues. They know I can't afford medical insurance, let alone regular treatment. They also know that I've done my homework to the best of my abilities, and do what I can to keep myself from falling apart. I avoid "triggers," for mental and physical problems, tot he best of my abilities, and cope with the little daily inconveniences of being crazy, clumsy, and allergic to life in general. If something big happens to my body, I suppose I'll mortgage -- or just plain sell -- my house (if it's really big, I won't need the house any more anyway) to pay costs. I don't expect my family to bail me out (I'm eternally grateful when they do, but if they didn't, it wouldn't hurt my feelings). Why would I therefore want the government to do what I don't ask my own family to do?

And so the question must follow: why should the uninvited government, then, be butting in?

Where is the foaming left, with their old chant of "keep your laws off my body," now? They're campaigning to invade my body's privacy, instead.

Starvation, overwork may make you live longer

Starvation and overwork will certainly make you feel like you're living forever.

But now, thanks to the success of Cuba's economy during the penultimate final* decade of the previous century, we can see that poverty really does make people live longer.

At least, that's what one study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Cienfuegos, Cuba and Loyola University says.

I particularly liked this passage:

"Population-wide approaches designed to reduce caloric intake and increase physical activity, without affecting nutritional sufficiency, might be best suited for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes."

No word yet on what the numbers were for suicides, for childbirth complications -- or, for that matter, precisely how many Cubans skewed the numbers by opting out of this study, via transport to Miami.

But we do have the beginnings of a plan:

"Future steps towards prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes should focus on long-term population-wide interventions by encouraging physical activity and the reduction of caloric intake," explained Franco, who is also affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention and Epidemiology.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to somebody telling me I have to get moving more than I already do. I think my use of a cane might actually have an impact on him.


Update: It might be fun to get the folks from this study together with these guys. Will low birth weight trump starvation and overwork?

* my math skills were always pretty embarrassingly bad.

The system is ailing

Max Borders, at TCS Daily, has taken apart the major pathologies in today's health care system and offered appropriate treatments.

As one of the uninsured masses, and also as one who fears Hillary's plan to give me the same quality of care I might get in Cuba, I heartily recommend that everybody read this article.

Do you have your hooker card?

I'm only just now getting back around to reading the non-family-connected e-mails I've received in the past week, and -- in light of the recent chatter from so many on the topic of Universal Health Care -- came across a very nice TCS Daily article by Arnold Kling: Prostitution Insurance.

Unfortunately, shifting the costs of prostitution insurance to taxpayers was fiscally impossible. Prosticare, the government's popular insurance program for the elderly, was projected to run into deficits of tens of trillions of dollars in another 50 years. Forestalling such a bankruptcy was going to require drastic cuts in future benefits. Trying to expand Prosticare to cover everyone would have forced such cuts to take place today, and no politician wanted to risk a confrontation with senior citizens. So although politicians talked a lot about universal single-payer prostitution coverage, they never seriously proposed enacting it.

The American public had grown accustomed to enjoying unlimited access to the services of prostitutes. They continued to be averse to paying directly for sex, and they had become increasingly insulated from having to do so. As a result, America's share of GDP going to prostitution, already the highest in the world, rose rapidly.

Now, I'm all for getting stuff for free (especially as I'm in the income bracket I'm in... or rather, the income brackets I'm out of). But I can see at least a few of the long term effects of my demanding something out of everybody else's pockets. I'm not liking it at all.

I am liking the comparison, though. Please, take the time to read the whole article.