HealthyConcerns.com

Different women; same experience

About a decade ago I got a call that my pap smear was abnormal. The doctor who called wasn't my regular gynecologist...who was this guy's daughter, oddly enough. (Yes, I do think a father, daughter gynecologist team is kinda weird. So sue me.) Anyway, he said to pick up a prescription for something and come back in 3 weeks to take another test. That was it.

Well for three weeks I was convinced I must have cancer...I mean that's what pap smears look for right?

As it turned out when my regular doctor, the daughter, walked into the examining room to take the second test 3 weeks later she mentioned that they were actually concerned about PID, that the abnormal cells weren't carcino-somethin', so it wasn't cancer they were looking for.

Too bad Father Doctor didn't think to mention that, huh?

So, while out to dinner tonight with a bunch of women friends & colleagues it turns out another woman had almost exactly the same experience...spending 3 weeks convinced she had cancer, when she had, well, nothing, just like me.

Did either of us ask the questions that might have cleared this up from the beginning? Well no. But it wouldn't have hurt for the doctor, who after all knew a bit more than she or I did, to tell us.

Nature/Nurture continues to rear its head

Fascinating (and somewhat lengthy) piece in the Washington post about mental illness across different cultures.

Increasingly mental illness is being treated as a physiological disorder, treatable more often than not with medications. Trouble is that the studies on efficacy of those medications are done almost exclusively on Caucasian males.

This is a problem that is not exclusive to psychiatric medications, of course. And you gotta wonder...I have been hearing about this imbalance for what feels like decades. Shouldn't they have fixed it and been conducting more diverse studies by now?

The article brings up multiple examples of people who may sound crazy, but in the context of their specific cultural situation...whether they're from the West Indies or an evangelical Christian...they're within the norm of how that culture expresses itself.

And I am clearly culturally insensitive, because they still sound kinda crazy to me. OK, I get where that manifestation of thei mental illness came from...but does that make it less of a mental illness?

Don't know, but the article is definitely worth a read.

Healthy Story: More polite parental persistence

I've already told one story of polite tenacity, and here's another. My tag line about this blog is that everyone has a story about health care, and I've discovered that is not hyperbole. Whenever I tell someone about this blog, they have a story for me.

Like this weekend, we had dinner at the home of a couple we know, with three kids. Their middle child is about 2 years old, and totally adorable curly-headed little girl. Her curls are rather a new development, and no one else in their family has them. I have this habit of twirling my own curls around my finger when in deep conversation, and after a bit I noticed that CurlyGirl was imitating me...truly the cutest thing you ever saw.

Anyway, curls are not the point.

The point is that CurlyGirl's parents noticed that she doesn't really run. She hurries a long, but after a while her left knee looks like it's buckling a bit. So they started their campaign to get this taken seriously...

Someone else's Healthy Story, part deux

Joe Paduda from Managed Care Matters engaged in a health insurance conversation on a plane ride yesterday. He recounts the tale here.

It doesn't seem to have given him much hope that American voters could be trusted to vote responsibly for candidates or legislation that would help fix our system.

The Most Affordable Cities for Single People

I clearly did something terribly wrong when getting my health insurance.

Today sponsor eHealthInsurance.com released a report on cost of health care for individual adults in the 50 biggest cities in America.

I confess to complete and total shock that seven of the top 10 most affordable large cities (when it comes to health insurance for individual adults) are in California. Since when is California (big-city California anyway) the most affordable at anything?

And how did I end up paying over $200/month...apparently in San Jose you can get health care for as low as $58/month...with a lower deductible than I have now! OK, yes, I'm not 30 anymore, but still.

Anyway, read on for more results, a link to the entire report and my incredulous commentary...

Will we be mentioned in a blogging book

It's a new trend...people writing books about blogging start a blog about their process of writing the blogging book. Then they ask all their bloggy friends to pitch in and help them with comments, edits, ideas etc.

It's hard for me to devote the time to read all the material thoroughly, but occasionally I am inspired to comment...as I was when Robert Scoble and Shel Israel asked a question for their in-process blogging book: "Who shouldn't blog?"

I responded by taking about eHealthInsurance.com's experience when exploring the concept of starting a blog. (This is a topic I cover quite thoroughly in one of my earliest blog posts here, So what's this sponsored blog thing anyway?.)

So far it looks like part of my comment actually made it into their chapter. But knowing the whole editing process can be cruel I would suggest reading it and thinking "hey I read that blog!" now, because the sentence could be gone by the next draft!

The medical industry think the ill-informed are "moonbats"

Now, I like MedGadget. I really do. I refer to them somewhat regularly.

But welcome to the reason that doctors and patients don't trust each other.

A recent study shows that people are woefully mis-informed or ill-informed about the Big 'C', Cancer.

MedGagdet calls these people "moonbats"...you know crazy. I'm not saying what some people believe is rational, but it's driven by fear. Fear of the big, scary disease that has killed someone close to just about everyone there is.

Just seems a tad cavalier and crude to call them moonbats (even if 27% of them actually believe there is a cure for cancer that is being withheld from us as part of a conspiracy.)

Grand Rounds are up at Health Business Blog

Check out Grand Rounds XL!

It's the best of the medical blog community all in one place every week.

This week I submitted my 3-part opus about Dr. Warren Magnus and his move from doctor to tech to doctor to medical entrepreneur.

Or as David from from Health Business Blog describes it:

"In case you’re stuck, HealthyConcerns has a three-part series on how one doctor is trying to escape the “trap.” (He didn't have to resort to gnawing his leg off.)"

Sounds kind of gruesome that way huh?

Anyway, Enjoy.

Nurses don't like House

According to Kevin, MD.

Heh.

This is particularly funny to me because the Significant Other and I are always commenting throughout every episode of House, "What, they don't have MRI techs to do MRIs?" Or, "What, they gotta do their own urinalysis?"

We have definitely noticed that the three cute young doctors on house seem to do very little thing themselves. And that it didn't really seem all that, how shall I say, realistic.

The again, we knew we were watching TV, so we weren't exactly looking for stark realism.

More thoughts on life vs. $$

I was thinking back to Dr. Warren's statement that doctors and patients being to think that if a certain drug/treatment/test isn't covered they can't prescribe it, regardless of patient ability to pay.

So in a way, we already have decisions being made that place a monetary value on life. The question is if those decisions weren't being made in this de facto way by insurance carriers, would it force individuals into the same kind of decisions for their children or their spouses or their parents?

Is there any system out there that would realistically result in every patient being given the same chance for treatment and survival regardless of their economic status?