Our health care system is ill...

Medicine is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s a great thing – and also a scary thing. Mistakes are being made and sometimes they are not even being caught.
Cases in point –
A girl friend of mine was hospitalized last week for a suspected cardiac problem. The first evening, her doctor [not her regular family physician] ordered a blood sugar level. They came to draw it while she was having dinner. A few hours later, the doctor came by and told her she was diabetic because her blood sugar was elevated. No kidding, Sherlock! She tried to get him to understand that she was not diabetic, had never been diagnosed as a diabetic, and had no symptoms of diabetes [she’s also a nurse]. He wouldn’t listen to her.
The next day, when he was discharging her, this same doctor wrote her a prescription for Glucophage, blood sugar lowering medication. My friend threw the prescription away. But what if she hadn’t? What if she had taken it and her blood sugar plummeted? She lives alone. Her Rottweiler doesn’t know how to dial 911.
Another case –
Another friend was hospitalized last week for day surgery. She is allergic to Codeine. It was listed on her chart. What did they send her home with as a pain killer? Percocet! It contains a drug similar to Codeine. Did she take it? Yes. Did she know the potential problem? No. Did she have a reaction? Yes, and had to be rushed back to the ER with a drug reaction.
The morale of this story – question everything. Don’t be afraid to be labelled a pain. It’s your life or that of your loved one. Get a second opinion. Look things up yourself. There are great resources on the Web now. Don’t take any medication that you don’t know the ingredients of. Yes, health care is becoming better but it's also getting less and less personal. You have to be an advocate for yourself and those you love.

"The Savages"

I came across an ad for a new movie that was just released called The Savages. It isn't playing locally heremin Phoenix and I'm sorry to see that. With only a limited engagement it's not going to reach a wide audience and it seems like a film that needs to be seen. It's about two adult children facing their father's poor health and having to place him in a nursing home.
This is something that my generation is going to be facing over and over and over again.
In fact, I'm giving a talk about this next month. My current book Second Chance [www.secondchancenovel.com] has this topic as its subplot and my new book [still under construction] is partly about that, too.
Calling us the sandwich generation is trite because the phrase has been used so much but it's true. We're being squeezed from both sides and it's tough.
We have no point of reference. We've never encountered these issues before. And, let's face it, seeing our parents grow old and feeble makes us face something we have never, ever wanted to acknowledge before - we are getting older.

Must be present to win

Don't ask me why but this phrase popped into my head this morning at 4 AM as I was rolling over and trying to go back to sleep. Must have been part of a forgotten dream but for some reason the phrase stuck with me.
How many times have we heard that phrase when entering a contest? I know for me it was always a turnoff. I have to be there? Shoot! Can't they just mail me my prize? Why must I sit through something I wouldn't have just to win something? None times out of ten, I wouldn't enter then. Too much work.
"Must be present to win"... sounds like a great title for a book [and I am hereby officially calling dibs on this one. It's mine.]. But I think it's also a great metaphor for life.
Call it Zen, call it practical but it hit home for me. We can't go through life just going through the motions and expect anything great to happen. You really have to be "present" in order to do anything that's going to be worthwhile.
In the vernacular of my youth - "Far out!"
I have been putting in more effort lately to make some life-long dreams a reality and it's working. I had done this "half-assed" in the past and didn't get very far. I see now that I needed to be "present" and make a concerted effort if I wanted to see the best outcome, not just an okay outcome.
Far out, indeed!

Giving

I just finished Pres Bill Clinton's new book Giving. Fantastic book!
Years ago, in her book Passages Gail Sheehy talked about the decades of the 50's and 60's of a person's life as being the ones where we would reflect and give back. Now the Boomers have arrived and are doing exactly that.
Pres Clinton's book gives some very good ideas and suggestions. How wonderful this planet would be if we all did even just a little bit of what he suggests.

The heat has broken and the nights are definitely cooler. Fall is here. While it's not quite like the Falls we had back East, it's beautiful nonetheless.
We're looking forward to sitting on the deck at night with a log in the chiminea and looking at the stars.

Well, we Arizonans deserve a medal. We have broken the record for the most days over 110 degrees in one summer.
We're happy. We're proud.
We're hot and ready to pass the honor to someone else.

Jerry

I sit here with tears in my eyes as I write about the passing of my friend's husband. I didn't know Jerry well but the short time that I knew him told me what a compassionate, sincere person he was.
My heart goes out to his wife and family. He fought a brave fight against cancer and his spirit will live on in his writing, the love he gave, the memories of him.
I can't imagine the feelings of loss his family is feeling now. I pray God's love helps them through this hard time.

My TV isn't as loud as it used to be.....

I sure hope it's about to break. Otherwise, the only other possible reason for the volume to be so low is that my hearing isn't what it used to be. And I know that can't be right.
My hearing is as acute as it was twenty - no, thirty - years ago. Ok, I've said it. It must be so.
All kidding aside, my health is great and I find it hard to believe I am the actual age that I am. But part of that is because I take responsibility for my health. I read, I research, I question.
One thing I don't do is sue my neighbor.
Huh? What does suing have to do with my health?
Maybe nothing, it's just my circular way of finding a way to gripe about the people who have decided to sue the young man with TB who flew across the Atlantic on a commercial jet a few months ago. Today I read that several of his co-passengers have filed suit for damages. PULEESE! Can we not find better things to do? In fact, taking this idiocy further, the room-Mate of one of the passeengers is also suing. He wasn't even on the plane.
Mind you, none of these people have come down with TB yet. Even if they test positive now, who's to say that they contracted it on that plane from that person?
I grant you, that was not the best thing that man could have done. I would probably be pretty steamed at him, too, if I found out I had sat next to him for those many hours. But his disease is now treatable since they have decided he didn't have the really bad strain, after all. I worked on a TB floor as a nursing student. My TB test went from negative to positive while I was a student. I was treated as a precaution but never came down with TB and my test is in fact negative now.
Did I sue the hospital? No, and I worked on that floor for days on end, several weeks in a row. It was just part of my training. My risk was far higher than a casual seatmate.
You just have to shake your head.

Mr. Wizard died.

It was with great sadness that I learned that Don Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard, died this week.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i25/8525news9.html
I remember watching him on Saturday mornings and marveling at everything he did. He inspired an interest in everything that had to do with science and learning in me that has never left me. I wonder how many lives he touched, how many young men and women he inspired to go on to make a difference.
His show was simple, the knowledge he passed on, priceless.
Rest in peace.

What retirement?

According to a report yesterday, Boomers are not set up to retire because we haven't saved enough. Well, we already knew that. Besides, we have no intention of retiring. Maybe changing course. Shifting gears. Doing something different. But retire? I can't see it. I started my own business four years ago and I'm lucky enough to work from home now. That's kind of like retiring, as far as I'm concerned. I can see me doing this for the next few years. After that, I don't know but I'm sure something will show itself. My husband feels the same way. Our generation would go nuts sitting around all day.

It's a situation that faces Boomers every day.
Parents getting old, frail, needing more and more care.
My husband's father fell this past week and broke his rib. Luckily, he is still able to live at home and be cared for by his wife, my husband's mother. But how long can that last? He's fallen three times in the past couple of months, this last time was the worst one. We worry about them every day. The hard part is that they live in Texas, hundreds of miles away.
I'm lucky that my parents are both alive and well, too. But they live in Florida. Even further.
As Boomers and their parents get older, the worries are going to get worse, not better.
I don't know the answer.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19096633

We've been labled the "sandwich generation" - caught between kids and parents and caring for both. My husband and I don't have children together but all four of our parents are still alive and getting older. Their health is obviously not what it used to be and a cause for concern.
So maybe we're an open faced sandwich? Only have worries on one side of us?
No matter, watching parents become frail and dependent is hard no matter how old you are.

I love it here!

I am a Baby Boomer woman and proud of it!
I belong to a generation of 76 million strong individuals. From our birth, we have changed everything in our path. In our younger years, whole industries were formed around our need for diapers, shoes and baby food. When it was time for us to go to school, the education system changed to meet our needs. More grammar schools were built in 1957 than in any year before or since. More high schools were built in 1967 than were before or since. There was a boom in teachers' colleges and the need for textbooks.
The toy industry catered to us with skateboards, Hula Hoops, and slinkies. Television responded to our child centered society with offerings of "The Mickey Mouse Club", "Captain Kangaroo", “My Three Sons", and "Father Knows Best".
When we hit our teenage years, our appetite for fast food made millionaires of the founders of McDonald's and friends. Unprecedented amounts of soft drinks were consumed, movie ticket sales skyrocketed when we dated, and acne products were suddenly in high demand.
And everyone knows what we did to music! From Buddy Holly to Elvis to The Beatles --- we invented rock and roll and the world danced the way it had never danced before.
We turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.
We burned our bras and our draft cards.
We demonstrated, we marched, we rebelled, and we were shot down ---in Viet Nam and Kent State.
As we entered our years as young adults with the responsibilities of families, personal growth and careers became a focus. Day care centers and family leave were suddenly a political issue. Wall Street boomed as our generation became interested in business and the future.
We had something to say and we made the world listen.
At each stage of our life, we have profoundly and irrevocably changed our world. And it's happening again. As with everything else our generation has done, our entrance into "mid-life" has caused quite a stir. Now we face the challenge of aging ---our parents' and our own. How we ultimately meet this new challenge remains to be seen. But one thing is certain. The rules have changed. What worked for our parents will not work for us. We grew up differently. We will grow old differently.
We will not go gently into that good night. All 76 million of us will go kicking and screaming and changing everything as we do.
I think this is a thrilling time and I’m excited to be a part of it.