Monday Musings: December 27. 2010

We’re almost through another ‘holiday season, and all I really know is that the year may end, but laundry and housework go on forever. So, too the toxic parenting styles. Dealing with my 93-year-old mother this last week has been, uh … challenging. She decided not to participate on Christmas because we ‘stole’ her car out of the garage up at the retirement home. Rather than calling and telling me this, she simply decided to not answer the phone. When I got the manager to check on her, she told him that the phone could ring until hell froze over.

Ma, I’ve got a New York Strip roast in the oven and guests arriving. Take your drama elsewhere.

Actually, we’d been telling her for weeks that the car needed to be smogged and registered before the end of the year. Since she’s not driven it since her ‘accident’ a couple months ago, we took an opportunity to go get it. Shame on us. I’ve tried reasoning with her, that driving is not in the picture anymore. She couldn’t possibly get her walker in and out of the car on the best of the best of days by herself. This is where sheer fantasy meets up with that river called ‘denial’.

So, despite threats of calling RPD to report that I’ve stolen her car, I’m going to register it and then promptly sell it. That money will more than pay a months rent at the retirement home, and the savings on car insurance - which has gone stratospheric since the accident - will be substantial as well.

Whatever your familial holiday dramas, know that we all have them. It’s just something that you survive. Like laundry and housework.

Ooooh, the backyard bird feeding has produced something new! Nut Hatches, which I’ve seen often up in the Sierras, have never graced my acreage until now. A Red-breasted Nut Hatch was out working the suet feeder day before yesterday.

For about the last two months, I’ve been talking to a local breast cancer patient who reached out to me. That in itself was a damn gutsy thing to do. You’d be surprised how many can’t. The sad thing was that she was Stage IV … really serious. After long conversations on the phone, over lunch and by email, it’s become apparent that the cancer community in Reno failed her miserably.

With an oncologist who is a well-known heartless ‘prick’ with a smarmy, less than professional bedside manner and the complete lack of a coordinated effort within the cancer community, it seems that it’s all just been too little too late. I encouraged her to go to another oncology group - which she has, reporting it to be much better - and we even made plans to go to the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center for a second opinion. The appointment was made, she got donated miles on the airline, and I made reservations at the hotel I stay at as well as a non-revenue reservation for myself on Delta.

She can’t make it. It’s all too much at this point. She fell and really hurt herself, and that could point to a condition far more serious than even MD Anderson can reasonably be expected to offer a ‘good’ or hopeful outcome for.

As I’ve watched the local hospitals unfurl banners and big marketing programs touting better breast cancer programs, at the end of the day, it’s simply not working well beyond the confines of a particular ‘campus’.  No woman should have to engage in a struggle of this magnitude, not to mention alone. I’m fairly certain that I would not have survived my own Stage III breast cancer were it not for the support of my husband and our financial ability to go wherever for the best treatment. I can’t imagine how horrible it would have been were I divorced.

Here’s the problem: Unless a woman can know to pro-actively go to an accredited ‘breast center’ - such as it is in Reno, Nevada - before she’s routinely sent to the surgeon, it’s all just a thought exercise. Women are still going from their OB-GYN or primary physician to the imaging center (which might be an independent, stand alone enterprise), and with a ‘bad’ mammogram, she’s sent to a surgeon here. What do surgeons do? They cut. Call it biopsy - excisional or otherwise - it’s the same.

These women are frightened beyond belief and they want it gone now. Sometimes that is exactly the very worst thing they can do.

Recently, another acquaintance told me that his wife was getting her double mastectomy in a week. Huh? What? Oh, yes … she’d gotten a second opinion. At the hospital in Truckee. Yup. A well-known center of breast cancer excellence. There were so many things ‘wrong’ with what I later heard about the decision making process in this case, that I finally had to just stop listening/stop thinking about it or ‘lose it’ entirely.

I’ve distanced myself from the breast cancer fight here in Reno pretty much because I can’t stand hearing stories like this and not be able to really help. I’m just emotionally exhausted by it. I’ve lost too many women I cared for. This has to be a war waged pro-actively - BEFORE women get the scary mammogram. Women themselves have to be informed about what the right steps are - upon diagnosis - so their fear doesn’t get the better of them and set them on a course that allows no ‘do-overs’. It isn’t just about finding the lump. Making sub-optimal medical decisions after the lump is ‘found’ can be just as tragic as never finding the lump in time!

The medical community has to take some sort of responsibility for its own conduct, too.

Sub-prime doctors are still tolerated and given a pass. As are those who ‘don’t play well with others’, which is a death dealing downside of our vaunted ‘free market’ free-wheeling capitalism when it comes to health and well-being.

I know women are afraid to read article after article about breast cancer, and what to do if they ever get that diagnosis. I know I didn’t want to read that stuff, and didn’t. It would’ve killed me had not educated, informed friends intervened, and we had the means to take bold action. But the alternative can kill them.

I’m always telling cancer patients that they only have one first chance to get it right in so far as their treatment. They didn’t get cancer overnight, and it won’t matter if they take a week or even a month to really understand their disease, get a second or even third opinion ( really out of the area if possible!), and devise a comprehensive treatment plan they can truly understand and believe in - and live with.

I wish I knew how to get that message across better, but I don’t.

-maven

Monday Musings: November 8, 2010

Wow! We watched ‘AstroTurf Wars’ last night. I’d ordered the DVD from their website and it was far more than I thought it would be - climate change, healthcare reform, tea parties, guerilla social media, and the influence of billionaires on our cherished electoral process.

After this horrendous mid-term election cycle and the barrage of AstroTurf/Front Group money that flooded into Nevada on the back of TeaNut Senator wannabe, Sharron Angle, this documentary was a perfect ‘after action review’ on just how insidious this stuff is. We really do need to put a stop to it. Now. Or we will lose our democracy.

That’s not an exaggeration. So, please watch it. On the low price end, it’s only gonna cost you $1.99 to watch it online - if that’s still available. Is it, Taki? If you can’t afford the DVD, then ask me. If I’m flush, I’ll call it an early holiday gift.

It’s that important.

Yesterday, I knew that I needed to get some exercise - and I needed a few items from the grocery store. So I walked the two miles from house to store, armed with warm clothing and gloves, and a messenger bag. I can carry only about half as much as I can with my bike panniers … in the rain …and wind. I can tell you that it’s a darn good workout. The legs and butt were getting a bit fatigued, carrying about 10 pounds of groceries. You also get a different view of the world on foot, plus you’re much less inclined to ‘impulse’ buy. I took time out enroute to stop and talk to the little goats on Foothill Road.

Oh, and I spotted a Mountain Jay. Whoa! Beautiful. I’ve been having a hoot, as usual, with my backyard birdfeeders and the camera.

Is this what your Monday stacked up to be like? Hectic and crowded?

Or was it calm and serene?

Anybody out there know which sub-family of leafhopper this is? This fella was out in the backyard too, just going about his business. Didn’t the macro lens do a great job?

Who else around here has AT&T Uverse and is pissed off besides me? I don’t watch much tee-vee - I’m blogging instead. But when I do watch, I want to watch what I thought I bought in the package: FoodTV, Cooking and HGTV. But noooooo. Evidently, Uverse is now in a pissing contest over the price of the shows with the supplier, Scripps, and therefore no shows. Blank. So many channels and so very little to watch.  I’ve made about three calls to AT&T, to no avail.

 

 But on the good side of the cable battles, MSNBC put Keith Olberman back on the air. He was suspended after the mothership found out he’d donated - against stated network policy - to three Democrats. He’d sent them about $2,400 each - which was a paltry sum when compared to the millions MSNBC, NBC and GE executives had funneled into their own efforts to screw the best efforts of the American voters.

Don’t you wish Olbermann would tell Phil Griffin of MSNBC to stick it, and then move to NPR/PBS?

How cool would that be?

Here’s another thing about tee-vee. The current second place team on the CBS show The Amazing Race includes one of my neighbors. Yup, right up the street. I don’t know her, they bought the house a couple years ago from some friends and we’ve never really met them. Her name is Claire Champlin. I haven’t seen matching Porsche’s being delivered, or a moving van at the door, so maybe she didn’t win. I haven’t been watching ‘The Amazing Race’ this season- although I was a big-time early fan of the show. In recent iterations, however, it’s seemed to get snarkier, bitey and ‘pretty’. More like the show I don’t like - ‘Survivor’. I probably will tune in to see what happens in this case.

Finally, on my way out of tee-vee land, we watched Mitch McConnell - is he actually alive? He tends to have that Orrin Hatch wax look these days. - on the Sunday ‘Face the Nation’ with Bob Schieffer. If you’re still not sure what to expect from the GOP, then watch this. It’s all you’ll need to know.

It’s going to be more not answering the questions. These people have taken lame talking points that have zero basis in factual reality to a new level. McConnell operates on a now familiar - Sharron Angle and TeaNut - strategy wherein you just keep ignoring the questions and nuances in favor of saying the same false stuff over and over and over again. This is called the “Say it enough times and that will make it true” strategy. The GOP is the party of ‘No’ and master of well-trod formal and informal logical fallacies.

“Raise taxes on small businesses”? Still hanging in there with that old chestnut, too. Gotta love the good lies, right?

Here are some actual ‘facts’:

Only about 6 percent of American tax filers actually have some part of their income from actually owning a small business. That means at least half your income is from that small business. Furthermore, most of these are in excess of $250,000 in AGI (adjusted gross income). Feeling really sorry for them yet?

If you really want to get down and dirty on this ‘small business’ tax thingee then go to the Tax Policy Center and take a look for yourself, and quit just accepting that the GOP Zombies tell you.

It’s very, very difficult to determine from the tax code and filings just who and how many filers are actually small business owners. Just getting a few hundred dollars from public speaking engagements or consulting do not a small business owner make. I know. I’ve been there. And, money drawn from a trust fund can apparently show up in such filings.

Small businesses generally are regarded as companies that have fewer than 500 employees, but there’s no widely accepted data that define America’s small businesses, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and The Brookings Institution, two center-left Washington research centers.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/10/100404/if-taxes-on-rich-go-up-would-small.html#ixzz14kACmdCb

So, the next time you hear the GOP use that ‘small business’ chestnut to hang their objections to ending the UNFUNDED Bush Tax Cuts, know that you are being bullshitted. And, if unfunded giveaways are such anathema to the GOP, why didn’t they get into an uproar over this in the first place? Hmmmm.

Finally, I happened across an interesting article about the distribution of healthy eating habits across the country - the percentage of adults who eat at least two servings of fruits and veg daily. I was pretty astounded by what I saw.

Click on the map to go to a more in depth look at the crazy distributions, but as you can see, some of the very most compliant folk are up there in New England. Really. Vermont and Maine! What’s that about? To balance all that healthiness, are Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. Less than ten percent eat anywhere near the recommended number of daily servings to stay healthy. Hmmmm, down there in the Bible thumping belt, amongs the GOP true believers. You have to start thinking about some interesting cause and effect possibilities here.

There, it’s done. Another Monday Musings for your edification and entertainment. Aren’t you glad you waited?

Have a dandy week ahead.

-maven

Natural world slideshow

Alert reader, Bob, sent some wonderful photos of nature, so I combined with some of my own and created the following slide show, which you can also find on YouTube:

Homemade Christmas Tip: It's for the birds!

Wandering through one of our snooty garden shops the other day, I got looking wistfully at some cute little bird houses and feeders. The prices were jaw droppers - $45 at up. Yikes. There had to be a more economical way to add to the collection I already have in my huge Sycamore tree in the backyard.

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