Tag Archives: Technology

March 4, 2012 · 0:00

Hey Doc? What Would You Do?

My mother-in-law, Helen, just celebrated her 86th birthday!  She is the last of our parents, John’s and mine, and we feel lucky to have her around.  For her age she’s doing quite well.  She still lives independently and does pretty well with some help from us and even more from John’s sister who lives much closer.

As she ages, naturally she has more health issues.  But she is very independent and doesn’t want any of us along when she goes to the doctor.  It won’t be long before we start insisting though, because whenever she goes for a checkup or for a problem, we end up completely confused and can’t help because, well, she likes to keep things private.

In the last year, though, she’s had a few procedures that, while not too terribly invasive, still seemed over the top.  Unnecessary.   Expensive, but covered by Medicare and Medi-gap insurance.

Now remember, I am a bit of a cheerleader for doctors.  I have wonderful ones and they have improved my life immensely.  I work with doctors, I have friends who are doctors.  I am really familiar with the system and how things work.

So I have to say that I was taken aback when I read a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

Why Doctors Die Differently

Huh?

The article was written by Ken Murray.  DoctorKen Murray.  Naturally as an all-too frequent patient/medical geek, I was intrigued.  The gist of the article is summed up by this quote:

What’s unusual about doctors is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little.  They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently.

Oh.

No tubes.  No chemotherapy.  No machines.  Gently and serenely.  Well, whodda thunk it?

I know for a fact that doesn’t happen in the hospital.  They know for a fact that doesn’t happen in a hospital.  If it did, medical costs would not be so, well, costly.  You’ve read the stats, so I won’t go there.  You’re welcome.

My sister Beth, who was a nurse, had suffered a stroke that, among other things, led to acute kidney failure requiring years of dialysis.  Beth had been having problems for a couple of months when she suddenly took a severe turn for the worse, and she was in terrible pain.  Her sons were unable to help her and took her, against her will, to the hospital, where she lapsed into a coma.  But not before she was placed on all kinds of machines, respirators, monitors, dialysis machines, the works.  But she had really already gone.  None of that expensive equipment was really necessary.  None of it changed the outcome. Only the drugs made her more comfortable.

Selfishly, part of me is glad they put her on those machines, because it gave me enough time to get to her bedside and be there at the end.  She would have been glad to know I was there, but not glad of the expensive and hopeless treatment she received.  That is not at all what she would have wanted.  Would you?

So when I read this article I realized it was time to add an important question to the list I ask all doctors whenever I go, or whenever I go with someone I am trying to help:

“Hey, Doc?  What would you do if you were the patient?”

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January 7, 2012 · 0:00

Bees and other stings

Yesterday, I read on my office building’s  elevator computer screen that someone had smuggled bees onto an airplane. The bees escaped and stung several people before brave airline personnel managed to capture and/or kill them.

I got nervous.   After all, I was in an enclosed elevator, and people around me were carrying stuff.

“Whoa!” You say, “Your elevator has a computer screen?!”

Yes, but I can’t check my stats there.  So don’t hate me.

But the news that someone had gotten bees onboard an airplane made me look around at the folks riding up with me in the elevator with greater concern.  That man over there with the regular-sized briefcase looked “bee-free,” but what about the guy with the big square briefcase?  He could have a whole hive squirreled away in there and I wouldn’t know.

The third and last person on the elevator with me had a bag that was big enough for a bunch of bees, but I was pretty sure that it was tuna.  I don’t know if I could identify what bees smell like, but I do know tuna.

I was relieved when I got off on the 14th floor without being stung.  Relieved that I didn’t suffer from somebody else’s, ummmm, mistake.  That isn’t always the case, you know.

In addition to feeling relieved, though, I also felt stressed, and overloaded by information that I didn’t necessarily need.   Like how many times things go wrong when you least expect it.  And how frequently people don’t say anything about it.  Well, until they sue, that is.

It was later on in the afternoon that I realized that the internet is, in fact, making me crazy.  Paranoid.  Thoughtful in ways I don’t like being thoughtful.  Because I was sitting in a hospital waiting room reading an online New York Times article:

Report Finds Most Errors at Hospitals Go Unreported

Oh dear.   Now I was just there for a blood test, not brain surgery (although I DID consider a lobotomy after watching the GOP candidates preening for New Hampshire on the TV in the waiting room).  So you don’t need to worry about me.

I’m not so sure about you, though.  I mean I’m not so sure that I don’t have to worry about YOU.

Full disclosure clause:

I AM NOT A DOCTOR!

I AM NOT A LAWYER!

I AM NOT AN INDIAN CHIEF!

And I have not jumped rope to that chant in decades.   AND I am way more politically correct now than when I did.  So don’t even go there.

I AM a patient, though.  More often than I’d like.  Consider me an expert patient, in fact.  Assume  it is has happened to me.  Consider also the fact that I am married to a lawyer.

So I have some advice.  Free.  No charge.

In any medical-type situation, if something doesn’t seem right,

SAY SOMETHING!!!

Say it politely.  Say it clearly.  Keep saying it until someone looks you in the eye and answers your question, stops what they are doing and makes you comfortable that either:  they will stop, or there really is no problem and you can now relax and let them continue doing their work correctly.  Just remember that they are people too.

When your health or that of someone you love is the issue

DO NOT BE SHY

Pay attention

Ask questions

Speak up

Do your homework

Write down questions

Keep an updated list of your medications with you

And, if you frequent planes and elevators, keep something in your wallet that says whether or not you are allergic to bee stings.

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January 5, 2012 · 0:00

Smarter than me

Lori over at Sunny Side Up posted a piece this morning about parallel parking.  She can’t do it.  Me, I can do it pretty well; I just can’t spell it without spell check.

And it made me think.  Well, that and a cup of coffee.

Now, it may just be the Cheerios talking, but I am starting to be afraid of cars.  Afraid of crossing in front of them, of crossing behind them and of driving anywhere near them.

I don’t like being around inanimate objects that are smarter than I am; and when they can move without my throwing them, well, it paralyzes me.

Have you seen the gizmos they’re putting in cars nowadays?  Lori, you can get a car that can parallel park itself.  Lori, wisely keeps looking for a place.  (Me, I had a bad-boy boyfriend when I was a teenager who taught me how to do it.  But I digress.)

But based on the commercials, by the time the Ford Focus maneuvers into the spot, I would have wet my pants, because these days I parallel park only when I stop to buy coffee/use the restroom after being stuck in traffic.

These gadgets though, terrify me.  There’s one that will brake automatically if you get too close to the car ahead of you.  What if you’re in the sort of traffic we have here in Northern Virginia.  Hell, I’d have whiplash on my first commute.

Have you seen the one that keeps you from hitting the car in your blind spot?  I’m not quite sure how that one works.  It might involve wheel-destroying spikes, a la Ben Hur, or maybe flame throwers, but hey you won’t hit that car.  And you won’t even need to look over your shoulder.  Cause looking over your shoulder can be dangerous.

And then there is the one that vibrates when it thinks you’re falling asleep.  I’m sure it will know exactly when you’re going onto the other side of the road to avoid pot holes, small animals and wheel-destroying spikes coming from the cars that won’t let their drivers look over their shoulders.  I’m positive.  Because no in-car gizmo has ever, ummmm, not worked properly, right?

I am surely not alone in my fear of these gizmos.  Because anyone who has ever had a car with an electronic device in it knows that they break down all the time.

Me, I stopped trusting them about 2 months after I got my current car.  It has lots of gizmos and I trusted one of them once, while backing up.  My car has a Road Runner stuck in side of it.  It goes “beep beep” when I get too close to anything behind me.  It is supposed to “beep beep” in a progressive fashion, as I get closer to stuff.  It goes apoplectic if I reverse to within 5 feet of a wall – knowing that I won’t be able to open the back hatch sends it into a frenzy.  Especially since I only open the back on weekends and at places where there are no walls.  The car will, of course, allow the nose of my car to be in the middle of the driving lane without a peep, though.

I trusted the “beep beep” once.  I was backing up into the only spot left in a garage.  It was the only way in.  My car was filled with a bunch of kids who were being kids and making noise.  Sadly, none of them said “beep beep.”  Neither did the car.  I inched into the wall, giving my  new car a custom bumper.  It is dented in as if someone hit it with a large muffin.

I’m pretty sure that these new safety features are going to lead to some pretty interesting reality TV shows.  And I guess anything that can make those shows worth watching might be worth a shot.

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December 22, 2011 · 0:00

Public Service Reprise********** Gizmos and Gadgets

It’s not because there is so much yet to do for Christmas that I’m reposting this piece.  Nope.  The elves never arrived so I’m done with Christmas.  Whatever isn’t done, well, you know.

But I thought it really important to re-post this piece from early June (since clearly only one person read it). I believe it is my CIVIC DUTY to inform you that, when you are tearing your hair out over your new gizmos and gadgets,  you are NOT alone.  AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Whatever it is you want to celebrate!

******************************************************

GIZMOS AND GADGETS

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it — for a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I’ve just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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June 8, 2011 · 0:00

Gizmos and Gadgets

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it.  For a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I have just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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