Shingles - A tale of burning blisters

I’ve had “Shingles” now for over a week. For those who don’t know, Shingles is a disease of the nerve endings just below the skin. It starts off with pain radiating around a spot or section and then, if not treated, erupts into multiple small blisters.  If you have had chicken pox you’re at risk. There is no known cause for an outbreak although stress is suspected. Type A personalities, of which I am a AAA, beware.

This is my second attack. The first happened in spring of 2000 while I was in Las Vegas on a business trip. I woke up around 6AM with pain centered around my left shoulder and arm radiating into my chest. Good morning 911! After about 6 hours or so of being poked, pulled, strapped, tested and blood work the Doc stepped into what passed as a “room” and announced, “Good news you haven’t had a heart attack.” As I relaxed he followed, “You have Herpes Zoster.”

Say what??????? Herpes???? He must have seen the look on my face. “Herpes Zoster is not genital herpes. It is a chronic inflammation of the nerve endings……”

“Damn,” I said. “You folks need some new names.”

“It’s also called Shingles,” he said.

Valtrix was relatively new back then, they started me on it and I never suffered many blisters. What the drug does is suppress the symptoms but not the pain. Advil worked in 2000 but Advil is not good for us with high blood pressure so this time around I was given some ‘tabs. Hello happy days…

This time it showed up on a Saturday morning. Only it was around my right shoulder and arm which I  had exercised heavily the day before on my Poulan  chainsaw. (Hint: If you know nothing about small engines then buy a Poulan. The educational opportunities are almost unlimited.) So I iced the arm and tried some Tylenol. Felt better but Sunday morning I was still hurting and when I looked I could see the red spots .

So on to Urgent Care where they dispensed some Valtrix and the “tabs” for pain and an appointment to see my PCP on Wednesday. She noted that the  Valtrix had stopped the threat and  started me on Predisone steroid. By Thursday morning the relief was fantastic and by now it is almost gone. She also gave me a script for a vaccination to prevent the disease. Said get it filled in about three weeks. It’s around 90% effective for 100% suppression and 100% effective in reducing the seriousness. 

I’m gonna give it a shot, no pun intended. 

Wanna hear some irony? Maybe a reason our healthcare system is so screwed up???

The shot is around $200. 

Medicare doesn't cover it.

But it does cover Shingles.... I figure this time around the bill is passing $500 with another visit to the PCP to go... and if I had wound up in the hospital with damage to some control nerves... who knows??? Can you say $250,000 or so???

I've got the $200. A lot of old people don't.

But the government has trillions. To waste.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

PUNS FOR THE LITERATE

 1. King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites.. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan.
 Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."
 "But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am the king!"
 Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."


 2. Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed in a fire, ...and so we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.


 3. A man rushed into a busy doctor's office and shouted, "Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!" The doctor calmly responded, "Now, settle down..
 You'll just have to be a little patient."


 4. A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of seagulls. One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road. Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he was arrested and charged with -- transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.


 5. Back in the 1800's the Tate's Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products, and since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California . This, of course, is the origin of the expression -- "He who has a Tate's is lost!"


 6. A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We have absolutely nothing to go on."


 7. An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew, and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief shrugged and said, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."


 8. A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."


 9. There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.


 10. A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal Brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the Brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds

Hat tip to Mike L!

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper


“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Snipper and Pets

I almost always had pets. My earliest memories include a white ball of fluff named Penny. She followed me everywhere and my Mom use to tell the story about how I would share my potato cake treat with her. A bite for her. A bite for me. A bite for her. Mom tried but never convinced me that I shouldn’t share “bite for bite” with my best friend. Penny died of old age and I never had a pet during WWII. We lived for a long time with my maternal grandparents while Dad was at war and we almost slept in shifts as everyone but Granddad and Mamaw worked at the bullet plant.

When Mom finally found an apartment, actually one half of a small house in which we shared the bathroom, a dog was verboten.  Later I had other dogs. In the Fall of 1950 our barn burned and Janie, a small mixed breed, died when she ran back inside trying to find her puppies. I never forgot that. A dog doing what many humans wouldn’t. Try to save their children. I remember vowing then and there that I would be at least as good as Janie.

Mom and Dad bought a small farm in November and we moved into a house that, to be charitable, used the linoleum rugs as weather stripping on the floor to block the cracks. The house had no underpinning and when the wind blew the rugs would “float.” But we were happy. No more share cropping, no more being told where to shop and what to do. We had entered the 50’s southern version of the middle class.

Dad got a job as a machinist and Mom sewed collars on coats at a nearby factory.  When spring came I was 13 and we planted cotton, corn, set out tomatoes and planted a garden for fresh veggies and canning what we couldn’t eat.  The days ran from 4 AM to dark. We milked and tended the stock by the lights of lanterns.

I could drive a tractor and work a pair of horses. That was standard stuff. So was milking three cows twice a day by hand. You’ve never lived until some bovine critter slaps you up side the face with her tail at 5AM when you’re trying to milk her in 40 degree weather.  I had a library card and we subscribed to the county paper. Somewhere in there I discovered science fiction and the world became a much larger place. Amazing Stories cost a quarter and the radio brought us all together.

We had nothing but life was good. The house was slowly repaired and the back porch extended and part of it turned into my room.  We dug a new well and at about 30’ down a flint arrow came up. How it got there was an endless fascination for the drilling crew and me. The land was bordered by a small creek that could have been a river a few thousand years ago and endless floods could have built a plain of rich topsoil. My favorite theory was that we had penetrated a burial ground. I did endless research at the local library and was hopeful that we hadn’t brought down the spirits of the dead on us. Somehow we escaped any curses for disturbing their sleep.

The house was at the junction of two roads that defined the school districts. Walk 50 yards one way and I could go to the school I had attended for years. Walk another direction and I could attend another school. Naturally I chose to stay with my friends.

Sometimes in the Summer of ’51 a collie mix became mine. He was almost grown and would nip at and play with everything. He became “Snipper.” He loved me and he loved my Dad and nothing suited him any better than following us around the farm. He was convinced he could catch the occasional rabbit we would stumble on but the rabbit was never in any danger.

Along about then I had my first “public” job. Handy man at a local grocery on Saturdays. I saved my money and bought a camera and the chemicals I needed to develop and print. One of my subjects was Snipper. His picture survives. The others are gone.

On the morning of April 3, as was his habit,  he followed me down to the bus stop. The school bus to the other school bus came down the road  and without  slowing ran over Snipper. He was killed instantly. There was no doubt that he saw the dog. He just thought he would kill him a dog that morning.

The bus ran early, about 6:30. My Mom and Dad left for work at about the same time. They saw it all. Dad said nothing. He just picked up Snipper and placed him in the back of the truck, told me to get in and drove my mom to where she met her ride to work. After letting her off, and still not talking, he drove to the school where the bus was going. The bus had not arrived. We waited. Eventually it did. The kids got out and walked away unaware of what was happening.

But the driver wasn’t. He finally came out of the bus and my Dad met him. Not a word was said. My Dad calmly whipped his ass, pulled him over to the truck, showed him the dead dog, kicked him in the ass and shoved him away. He then got back into our truck and we drove home and buried Snipper behind the barn. As we covered him I saw a tear in his eye. The only other tear I ever saw there was when we buried his Mother.

That night I took his picture and penned an almost 14 year old’s deep thoughts and wrote his name. Through my hurt and tears I misspelled his name. When I discovered it I was distraught but my Mom wisely told me she was sure Snipper wouldn’t mind since all of us knew his real name.

Those were different days then. Different values. And better.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

About those jobs....

Hat tip to Bill T!

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

A study in Comparative Societies

Yeah, I know. Mean and all that.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Global cooling???

Did you see thus on CBS? ABC? MSNBC? NBC? FNC? Read about it in the Times??

No? Neither did I. Of course it doesn't fit the story.

Recently unearthed photographs taken by Danish explorers in the 1930s show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers.

The photos in question were taken by the seventh Thule Expedition to Greenland led by Dr Knud Rasmussen in 1932. The explorers were equipped with a seaplane, which they used to take aerial snaps of glaciers along the Arctic island's coasts.

After the expedition returned the photographs were used to make maps and charts of the area, then placed in archives in Denmark where they lay forgotten for decades. Then, in recent years, international researchers trying to find information on the history of the Greenland glaciers stumbled across them.

Taken together the pictures show clearly that glaciers in the region were melting even faster in the 1930s than they are today, according to Professor Jason Box, who works at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State uni.

snip

It now appears that the glaciers were retreating even faster eighty years ago: but nobody worried about it, and the ice subsequently came back again. Box theorises that this is likely to be because of sulphur pollution released into the atmosphere by humans, especially by burning coal and fuel oils. This is known to have a cooling effect.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/02/1930s_greenland_glacier_retreat/

Almost makes sense when you consider that the Global Winter that was going to be caused by Nuclear War was supposed to be caused by all the dust and particulate thrown up in the atmosphere by the explosions.

Me? I still putting my money on sun spots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1qGOUIRac0&feature=player_embedded#!

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Contraception and such

A lady asked me last weekend if I had posted anything on Ms Fluke and the contraception flap. I said that I had but on closer inspection I have not had much to say.

The person in question is your typical over achiever. She worked her way through college and now nursing school while dealing poker at one of the Tunica casinos while running a smooth fun game and dispensing such poker knowledge as this:

“The difference between a poker player and a puppy is this. The puppy will stop whining after you feed him.”

She’ll be gone before  long and the game will miss her. But our loss will be her patients’ gain.

But I digress. What I meant to write was this:

The difference between a Leftie and a normal American is that the American respects the Constitution and tries to follow it. The Leftie always has excuses to explain why he wants to do what he wants to do and to hell with that old document.

I thought I might examine some of the excuses.

First, let us state the Catholic Church’s (CC) religious doctrine regarding contraception. It’s simple. No artificial birth control is allowed.

Now, let’s see what the First Amendment has to say:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Now it seems clear to me that the second clause is clear: “….or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” And that means that if the government says that the CC must provide contraception then the government is violating the First Amendment. But life isn’t simple when the Left is involved.

The first argument is that almost all Catholics use contraception. Okay, fine.  That has nothing to do with the CC’s freedom of religion.

The second argument is that it is cheaper to provide contraception because not doing so causes women to become pregnant and pregnancy and the problems that may happen cost more than contraception. I’ve have never seen a study proving the latter and women kept from becoming pregnant years and years before the “pill.” But….Okay, fine. That has nothing to do with the CC’s freedom of religion.

The third argument is that the CC church should provide contraception drugs to females who need them as medicine. To the best of my knowledge any medication that is prescribed by a Doctor to treat a disease will be paid for by the CC’s insurance. But……Okay, fine. That has nothing to do with the CC’s freedom of religion.

The fourth argument is it is okay for “church” employees to not be covered but it is not okay for employees of catholic “organizations” to not be covered. To support this argument you have to believe that a not for profit catholic hospital was not founded by catholic’s and is not managed with catholic beliefs as guidelines. So while it is part of the church it is not the church. Kinda like “if we had some ham we’d have some ham and eggs if we had some eggs.”

And, at the same time, we have people claiming that this is all moot because the government has already ruled. I guess in their minds you must blindly accept what the government says.

But thank goodness they weren’t around when abortions were illegal and segregation legal.  Wait. Their brothers and sisters in sin were, only they were evil then…..

Time and circumstance makes hypocrites out of many.


 "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper


 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine