Well, IM very recent X the problem isn't dying while having a continuous orgy of food, drink, and whatever else turns your crank. The god-damned problem is NOT dying and then falling into the clutches of the tsk-tsk brigades.
Sounds exactly like being a summer associate at a large law firm.
So a while back someone in comments said they'd be on Jeopardy in July, and tonight someone at trivia said they'd on Jeopardy in July, which leads me to ask if they're both the same person?
Yes, that does seem to lead you to ask that.
It's amazing that he only gained one pound over the whole week.
But he was in the process of liquefying.
Some say life ends in liquefaction,
Some in calcification.
From what I've known of satisfaction
I hold with those who say liquefaction.
But I think I know enough of masturbation
That if I had to perish twice
I know that for destruction calcification
Is also titillation
And would suffice.
Wow. On Frost's behalf, I'm appalled. Your work here is clearly done.
I found the discussion of his "poo" to be a bit odd for the Times. But for Unfogged, it seemed eerily appropriate.
Also, I've never gotten used to the idea of eating tongue. The whole process seems too self-referential.
Tongue is one of the tastiest bits of the cow.
Tongue is really tough and needs special handling. If you don't have a recipe specifically for tongue, a penis recipe will usually be OK.
15: Okay. But can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with it?
Whoa:
Pressed Rouen ducklings, in which four birds killed specially for us in France are roasted and their bones and organs crushed in a solid silver duck press before our eyes, the resultant juice then reduced at the boil in a silver dish to produce a sauce for the meat which Sue called "slightly bummy duck's blood".I don't understand this at all.
You don't understand the process of cooking the sauce, or Sue's description of it?
Here's an interesting note about pressed duck, from the Larousse.
You cannot create pressed duck without a Duck Carcass Press, a steal at $2K.
That last site gives me this information about the pressed duck tradition. I guess what's so strange to me is that THIS would be the dish prepared in front of the diner.
Well why buy a shiny, expensive brass or silver press if you are not going to flaunt it a bit?
Many people have told me that Unfogged is not the authentic face of Liquefactionism. I wish I agreed with that. But, sadly, Unfogged is its very essence today.
Unfogged and Condi Rice, that is.
People are starting to do that remote brain control thing Buroughs talks about.
Supposedly only with rats.
So far.
Though some wonder about the wires coming out of Apo's head.
If today turned into Burroughs day at Unfogged, that would lift my spirits.
I Sekuin, perfected these arts along the streets of Minraud. Under sign of the Centipide. A captive head. In Minraud time. In the tattoo booths. The flesh graft parlors. Living wax works of Minraud. Saw the dummies made to impression. While you wait. From short-time. In the terminals of Minraud. Saw the white bug juice spurt from ruptured spines. In the sex rooms of Minraud. While you wait. In Minraud time. The sex devices of flesh. The centipide penis. Insect hairs thru grey-purple flesh. Of the scorpion people. The severed heads. In tanks of sewage. Eating green shit. In the aquariums of Minraud. The booths of Minraud. Under sign of the centipide. The sex rooms and flesh films of Minaraud. I Sekuin a captive head. Learned the drugs of Minraud. In flak Braille. Rot brain and spine. Leave a crab body broken on the brass and copper street. I Sekuin captive head. Carried thru the booths of Minraud. By Arms. Legs.
Please make it quick, fast and furious. Please. Fast and furious.
I'll do my part, here's some Burrows, lovable as usual.
Cool, and you can click through to a page with 4 more videos.
27: I just finished The Ticket That Exploded (I've not read the others in the trilogy, yes, probably a bad call) a few weeks ago. Are the others similar? More chaotic? Less? I told Rah when I was done that I was glad I had read it and had enjoyed it but was mostly just pleasantly surprised to learn from a little post-reading research that I had in fact been able to identify and interpret correctly the plot, such as it is.
Oh my god. Even bloodier than I imagined.
Aside from the pressed duck, I was astounded that this food critic guy had gotten to the age of 37 without having a physical checkup.
38: Why surprised? I didn't bother with one from my early twenties until my late forties. The minor stuff went away by itself and I wasn't about to go looking for the nasty stuff just on spec.
I last had a physical when I was 17 and heading off to college. I have caved to the insistence of others and will have one next month. I'm 38.
Maybe I'm biased because I'm part of a gigantic longitudinal women's health study, or perhaps because women are urged to get annual ob/gyn examinations. In general, though, I'd expect to get blood drawn and tested at least once every five years, minimum.
Late thirties, maybe early forties here too. I have fairly regular checkups now.
Guys are typically like this, JM.
I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea never to go to the doctor until you're almost 40.
I can't remember the last time I had a physical. I think you're right, JM--men don't have anything like an annual ob/gyn checkup. I suspect that's because there's really no point to them.
I'd been to the doctor plenty of times about minor ailments -- flu, bad throats, cuts and scrapes, dog bites, sports injuries, etc -- without ever getting any kind of proper medical workup done.
First time I remember my blood pressure and cholesterol levels being taken was only about 6 or 7 years ago (when I was about 27 or 28) and that was just because it was something a new doctor wanted to do when I signed up for her practice.
43: Jeebus, why?
What? I wouldn't have made it to 35 if not for going to the doctor. It's a gamble; the odds are in your favor, but the stakes are pretty high.
Because by then the doctor informs you that you have extremely elevated cholestoral and high blood pressure and incipient gout, and you have to go on expensive medication and make a giant intervention rather than learning about it earlier and making small, determinative lifestyle changes?
Y'know, a doctor wasn't going to tell me anything I didn't already know (you need to stop smoking, eat better, get more exercise, and sleep more - two down, two to go!), and wasn't going to perform CAT scans to look for tumors.
At 24, I get my BP and cholesterol results pretty frequently, because they tell you them every time you give blood.
Which, you know, you should do.
In the meantime, I had several EKGs over the years as a subject in paid drug studies, so I knew the ticker was ticking normally.
I don't think I've ever had a full physical, just the mini-ones you get when applying to college or going to the objine.
What? I wouldn't have made it to 35 if not for going to the doctor. It's a gamble; the odds are in your favor, but the stakes are pretty high.
You had predictors, though, right? Doctors don't particularly suggest men have annual physicals because the odds are heavily in our favor. I think the first thing men start needing a physical for is prostate cancer. Fifties or something is the protocol, I think.
Moreover, as a doctor told me on this same subject, more physicals mean more false positives.
giant intervention rather than learning about it earlier and making small, determinative lifestyle changes?
People mostly already know what to do to stay healthy. They don't do it. Cf. smoking. They don't do it even after a doctor has told them to cut back on the meat and eat more vegetables. All you're doing is adding the cost of the physicals and various tests to the cost of the giant intervention.
It is a good idea to know your baseline stats. E.g., blood pressure: are you going into shock if your BP is 95/60, or is that normal for you?
I give blood regularly, so I get a kind of mini checkup, with blood pressure and a few other things, every few months. My actual checkups have been unable to find anything, although I'm now on the short-cycle polyp watch.
going to the objine.
We all know what a "job" is, Cala. You can skip the igpine atinline.
The present system of employer-based managed care reduces our sense of objine-permanence.
Dead person commenting. Bah.
Doctors don't particularly suggest men have annual physicals because the odds are heavily in our favor.
Dude, there's a difference between annual physicals and not having a physical between 17 and 40.
People mostly already know what to do to stay healthy. They don't do it.
There's also a difference between sort of generally knowing that eating more vegetables is better for one's health and being told that YOU have elevated cholestoral and need to cut down on the salt, stat.
Guys should also keep an eye on their moles and have them checked out if they change or grow.
Says the girl whose 18 YO brother just had one removed that might've killed him in a year if not just removed.
In Brooklyn, they have a "take your man to the doctor" week. Part of me thinks that's a good idea because men should really see the doctor more than they do. Part of me is annoyed that women have to think for their S.O.s.
I think you people have been watching too much CSI. If there is reason to think there's a problem, go to a doctor. Otherwise, unless you have specific risk factors, don't sweat it.
Tim doesn't change the oil in his car, either.
"think for their S.O.'s" s/b "substitute her judgment for his, and then complain about it."
And then there's testicular cancer, which can hit guys in their comparative youth. Some British magasine ran a series of brawny naked pinups to promote awareness of testicular cancer. Consider me aware, hubba hubba!
Also, seriously, everyone should have gotten at least a couple of AIDS tests between 17 and 40, right?
I'm not sure, but I think the routine samples of my blood taken during donation are screened for HIV. Am I wrong about this?
Also, seriously, everyone should have gotten at least a couple of AIDS tests between 17 and 40, right?
Sure. But there's an explicit tell--you're sexually active. If you first have sex with another virgin, and never have sex with another person, feel free to not worry about AIDS.
I'm not sure, but I think the routine samples of my blood taken during donation are screened for HIV. Am I wrong about this?
I think they might be now, but I seem to recall that initially they just asked if you had a series of risk factors and then didn't let you donate.
You shouldn't use blood donation as a proxy for HIV testing. If you were recently infected, it wouldn't show up on the HIV test and that blood could go out and be used. If you aren't sure of your status, stay home.
Also, the system of STD testing in this country is messed up. When I went in for my annual exam, I said that I wanted a STD panel run and my doctor said he'd only recommend it if I'm well insured because the tests cost a lot of money. What if I didn't have insurance? Was his recommendation really that I not be tested for stuff? Sheesh.
Then again, this could just be because my gyn is on crack, as previously demonstrated.
71, 72: They're not going to, like, call you if it tests positive. They'll just throw your blood out, very carefully.
HIV testing is pretty cheap and ubiquitous, and if you only do it when you have cause to be concerned, you'll freak yourself out about it.
The risk factors they ask about are pretty obsolete. They ask if you do IV drugs or have had sex with a man who's had sex with a man since 1975. So everyone else is clean, then?
73: His recommendation was that you, like most people, should get tested, but he was warning you about the price. From an epidemiological perspective he was probably seeing you as someone who was not at high risk for things and therefore if HE was rationing out the tests you would not not be near the top of the list, but of course he left it to you to decide if you should or not.
74: No, those are still the risk factors, plus the ones relating to spending time in places where AIDS is endemic or having sex with people from said places.
Like "risk factors" in general, they work on a population level, but are often at cross purposes with what a given person should be concerned about.
71, 72: They're not going to, like, call you if it tests positive. They'll just throw your blood out, very carefully
And leave you in their system, as if that status is going to change?
Those factors are obsolete, but they are the ones you'd be most likely to know the answer to, and statistically still the most likely to infect, I'd expect. What additions would you recommend?
This conversation is surprising me, but then I have tended to date (very healthy) hypochrondriacs.
73: Probably just so you don't get surprised with a bill if you were uninsured. If you're on a budget, you might have to skip the STD panel in favor of the pap smear.
Though your gyn should have known whether you carried insurance. Probably crack. At my ob/gyn they test for some STDs (not sure which ones, it's sort of 'do you want the test?', 'well, while you're down there anyway...') as part of the annual exam.
Look, in the US, those are in fact the correct risk factors, plus a bunch of demographic things that they would get in trouble if they used to discriminate (Hispanicness, poverty, school-drop-outage). See here. The one I would add is "have you had sex recently with an asshole who probably cheated on you?"
have you had sex recently with an asshole
Indeed.
74 - They do call you if you donate blood and it tests positive. (I used to work for the Red Cross. Also, as I once blogged, they called one of my exes to inform him that he was anemic.
I can understand why he'd ask whether I had insurance but the attitude wasn't "if you don't, you should still get tested at a free clinic". It seemed like "if you don't, you shouldn't bother to get tested". And he made his recommendation without ever asking me about my sexual history. Truth be told, I am at low risk and am more being cautious than anything. But he hadn't asked me how many sexual partners I've had in the last year or whether I practice safe sex. For all he knows, I could be working my way through the entire Casual Encounters section of Craigslist.
He shouldn't have made that assumption then.
69: If you first have sex with another virgin, and never have sex with another perso
How many sexually-active people between 17 and 40 does that really describe?
I've been meaning to get another physical for about three years now. Conveniently, I've now moved back to the area where my previous doctor practices, so they have the records from that one physical instead of no records.
Part of not going is not knowing why I'm going and what I'm doing, in any broad sense. What do I call up and schedule? A checkup? A physical? A "full physical"? Some other magic phrase I don't know? Will it make a difference if I ask for one thing and they give it to me, when I should have asked for something more thorough? Etc.
And all this is even though I *should* have my moles checked out. I even got a referral for a dermatologist the last time I went (five years ago), and didn't get around to making it happen - there was a paradox of choice problem in the fact that she gave me a list of ten or so dermatologists, and I had no rational mechanism for picking one out of the list.
82: I'm impressed that they called. I guess most blood-giving situations I've been have seemed pretty casual about things.
I have despised every gyn doc I've had. They've been either rude and dismissive or incredibly invasive about things they didn't need to know. But then, I haven't had real health insurance since I was 18, so I take what I can get.
Can I just say how much I truly hate health insurance companies? I am right now on hold trying to fix a denial of coverage for some test, god knows what, related to the objine checkup I had last fall. It's a pure fuckup -- they're claiming I had two checkups in 2006 and am only covered for one, when in fact I hadn't had a prior checkup since maybe 2002 (yeah, yeah, I know).
But almost every time anyone in the family goes to the doctor, which with little kids is pretty often, they fuck something up that has to be straightened out. And I hate hate hate the process of straightening it out, mostly because no one will ever give you a straight answer; you never get a 'whoops, we'll fix that' -- the most anyone says is that they'll resubmit the claim.
Half the time I get sullen and end up ignoring bills until they're about to go into collection -- given that we have the damn coverage, I don't see why the doctors and the insurance company can't figure it all out for themselve.
Re the HIV tests: I know people with perfectly good insurance who go out of their way to only get STD tests at free/anonymous clinics (they chip in a donation). They're afraid that the very fact of having had such a test - independent of the results - will go somewhere and will be used as grounds to deny them insurance or raise their rates in the future. I wonder if the doctor here was hinting at something similar.
There's also a difference between sort of generally knowing that eating more vegetables is better for one's health and being told that YOU have elevated cholesterol and need to cut down on the salt, stat.
Nah. A very mild stroke will do it for a few weeks (starting 4/11) tho'. Until all the nagging gets to me and I lose my temper. I still contend the trade-off in perhaps living longer but having to eat nothing but Astroturf might very well not be worth it.
Everyone should have my ob-gyn. (But then I'd never get an appointment!) She's a nurse-midwife and she kicks ass, mostly just by listening.
I have despised every gyn doc I've had. They've been either rude and dismissive or incredibly invasive about things they didn't need to know.
Just out of curiosity, what's been the gender distribution? I've been under the impression the field is becoming predominantly women, and that a better likely trust/rapport was one of the reasons.
88.--Simply for choosing to get tested semi-regularly? That would be reprehensible.
The midwives I gave birth with were great, but their practice shut down last year, leaving me with a new super-efficient-to-the-point-of-hardly-speaking-to-you Objine. I got the 45-second pap-smear last fall: I don't think she was in the exam room for more than a minute.
Now, I didn't actually have any questions or complaints, but I don't know if I could have slowed her down for an answer if I had.
I agree with 85 - It's just like when I first got a car. I drove it for about a year and a half, and changed the oil a few times, and then thought "Am I supposed to go to the garage and tell them to do some sort of checkup on it regularly? What words do I use to convey the message 'Please do whatever you do to people's cars to see if everything is basically working fine'?"
It turns out that apparently when you ask for an "oil change", you are actually asking for a regular car checkup. I had no idea. This means that now I can no longer change the oil myself, because then it doesn't get the rest of the checkup.
What I imagine happening is that I go to the doctor, and fill out a form, and based on the demographic information, they check me for various things. But what if I'm standing there and the doctor says "So, what do you want to have looked at?"
I already told the story about mine.
91: I've only had women, and they were all awful, but I don't attach that to their being women.
92 - yes, it would be reprehensible, but it's exactly the kind of reprehensible that insurers seem to excel at. And since everyone I know with insurance has stories like LB's 87 or worse (I had to resubmit my claim for an eye exam twice - no reason, they just turned it down to see if I'd do anything about it), there's absolutely no ability to extend those organizations the slightest good faith.
no reason, they just turned it down to see if I'd do anything about it
Yeah, I'm completely convinced this is policy. I have an unexamined belief that ignoring bills and being slow and sullen about straightening insurance fuckups out (and complaining to customer service every time I do) makes things more expensive for them. It probably only hurts the doctors, though.
Also annoying: that in New York State they can only give you the result of STD tests in person so I have to miss work and pay for another follow up appointment. I wish there was a way to work out a code with the receptionist: "So, do I need a follow-up appointment to get my results? Or would I be perfectly healthy not hearing them? Eh? Eh?"
I know people with perfectly good insurance who go out of their way to only get STD tests at free/anonymous clinics (they chip in a donation).
I've told this story before, but a friend in grad school used to do this all the time, because he got around a lot. His favorite part of the experience was the clinicians' studied use of the vernacular, e.g., instead of "receptive anal intercourse" it's all "Does he stick his 'cock' in your 'asshole'?"
One of the weirdest "feeling old" moments of the last few years was when my urologist told me that I'm old enough that my risk of testicular cancer is on the decline. But no one gives the tender yet firm squeeze like you do, doc.
Still, prostate exams are forever.
The two male ob/gyns I've been to were extremely kind, but then they were in private practice (one German, one American), whereas the sort of mean women I've seen were part of the US student health clinics. Oh, wait, there was a mean male ob/gyn; he was in a French semi-public clinic.
Oh, and that reminds me of my first anonymous test, and how the guy who gave me the results kept thinking I was at least somewhat gay, despite my protestations. Please don't mention this to Ogged.
I'm beginning to think my giving blood is a pretty good deal from this blood-test feedback angle. I know that everybody can't do it, though. Still, you'd end up with a blood test every four months for whole blood, more like six for alexxis, which seems like plenty often, without arising suspicions. So long as they don't ask the a-hole question.
103: Maybe that's it, JM. I keep going to student clinics, where they've all been reading too many L. Sessions Stepp books about how unmarried women in college and grad school are clueless sluts who need a firm hand. Gulp.
Student clinics are all, IME, clueless and kind of hostile.
More like the private doctors know that if they're nice and non-judgmental to you, you'll recommend them to your friends and come back more regularly. There's no incentive to be nice to the endless series of college students who can't afford to go anywhere else.
Oh, yes. There's really no aspect in which insurance companies make things better instead of worse.
I'm almost paranoid about the very idea of health care, even though I and everyone I work with has the same good coverage. Let's say I have to have surgery. And it costs a large amount of money. And then I get billed for it, although I shouldn't, because it's their policy to bill a certain percentage of people inappropriately based on their demographic likeliness to be afraid to challenge the company. So then what do I do? There are so many ways that an enormous hassle can arise for no reason at all when hugely powerful companies are playing games with trillions of dollars in pointless financial transactions.
For about six months I felt pretty much hopeless in my PhD program, as if I wasn't ever going to progress and I was being cowardly for sticking around for the sake of the meager stipend instead of trying to risk getting a real job. One of the factors that kept me in was being afraid of losing health care coverage, even for a few months, even though I hardly ever need health care.
Let's say, in some hypothetical situation, someone without insurance needs to have something done at the hospital for a couple days to save their life. Whatever it is, that will cost an enormous amount of money, which for an uninsured person becomes an infinite amount of money because insurers pay a low price while individual "bargainers" pay a high price. In order to pay for it, that person uses up all of his/her money, and then goes bankrupt. Do I have the scenario right?
By "Oh, yes" I mean "We are no longer talking about this, so ignore the following paragraphs".
106: I don't much want to defend doctors, and actual experience of a specific doctor is much more likely to be revealing of the character of that doctor, but many of them are probably working off of a script that they believe or have been instructed that they should use. We've moved from Becks complaining that her doctor doesn't seem to believe she's a seekrit slüt to AWB's complaint that her doctor does.
109 - yes, pretty much. I have friends who stay at crappy jobs instead of quitting and looking for something better (in a more focused way than they could while working their current job) out of fear of that situation.
A fun variation is if you have a chronic condition that your insurance currently covers. If you lose your insurance and don't COBRA fast enough, or out of that market for too long (grad students who were covered under their school health plan can't do COBRA, for example), your continuity of coverage disappears and your next insurer can decline to cover that condition.
My first two HIV tests were as a Mormon missionary. The first was in the US, to get a visa to go to a Former Soviet Republic. The second was when I'd been in the Former Soviet Republic for a year already; the bureaucracy just wanted another test. So my companion (yes, that's what they're called) and I had to hike out to an AIDS clinic (asking directions several times, since it was hidden away somewhere), and I'm sure most people already thought the well-dressed young American men going two-by-two were gay, but this just confirmed it. (And yes, I was gay, but I don't think my companion was, and anyway, I wasn't yet gay enough to need an HIV test.)
They didn't give us the results either time, but I assume they would have told us if we'd turned up positive.
111 is correct. In every aspect of health care, everyone involved is following a flowchart of particular things to do in a particular situation. It's really well organized, almost always, although the temperament of workers, and willingness to go outside the box if they think it will be helpful, varies wildly.
I have friends who stay at crappy jobs instead of quitting and looking for something better (in a more focused way than they could while working their current job) out of fear of that situation.
The unique dynamism of the US economy at work!
someone without insurance needs to have something done at the hospital for a couple days to save their life. Whatever it is, that will cost an enormous amount of money, which for an uninsured person becomes an infinite amount of money because insurers pay a low price while individual "bargainers" pay a high price. In order to pay for it, that person uses up all of his/her money, and then goes bankrupt. Do I have the scenario right?
Yep, that exact thing happened to a good friend of mine from high school. No health insurance, and he got in a car crash which put him in the hospital for about a week. Hospitals, it turns out, are the most expensive hotels in the world. He owed over $10,000 by the end of it, and had to deal with collections agents for the next 2 years. He was lucky he didn't actually have to declare bankruptcy.
The differential pricing is really absurd. Just one more example of how it's expensive to be poor.
It's funny -- I do think that single payer universal health care is the best policy out there, for what seem to me to be good, well reasoned policy reasons. (Big Media Ezra has a nice roundup in last month's paper TAP). But I get excited about the issue partially because I hate the insurance companies for being horrible to deal with so much -- I just don't want them in my life. And I'm a healthy person who's always had good insurance.
112: This is probably the hardest thing about moving to the U.S. for shivbunny to internalize. Discussing, say, having children, and saying "best wait till we have good jobs with good health care", and his reaction is still "why?... oh.." 90% of the time.
117: I hate just about any big company for being horrible to deal with and holding 100% of the power in all my transactions with them. But with insurance companies, you know that your life is in their hands, and you know they don't care.
I like single-payer for all the usual reasons, and because it would do away with the serfdom people are complaining about here. So it might have cascading effects on workplaces if more people were empowered by freedom from healthcare worries to say "Take this job and shove it."
120: Yes, it would. Some credit the government-run health care as why Canada has all the interesting, ambitious indie rock nowadays, because it's not such a risk for the creative people to decide not to have day jobs for a little while.
120: Some politicos want to sell healtcare reform in that way: do away with job lock, let people be better suited to take risks. Those are good ways to sell it to me, anyway.
I don't know if I've seen that argument explicitly made, but it's clever -- that stagnant median wages can be partially explained by the health-insurance-related fear of employment gaps. Someone who might be willing to quit and risk an interruption in income isn't willing to quit and risk bankruptcy if an injury hits, or lifetime uninsurability, and so has much less bargaining power in the employment market.
Someone must have written this argument up somewhere.
It would have many, many positive effects on the employee's interaction with his employer. Another one: We all hear about how Starbucks has good benefits for its full-time employees. They accomplish this, of course, by seeking to have as few full-time employees as possible, and giving people more than 30 hours a week only as a last resort. If you get rid of the main form of "benefit", then all of a sudden this stress-inducing full-time/part-time dichotomy goes away, and the hourly wage goes up for the part-time people.
If I were a US corporation right now, I'd really be torn between the power that controlling my workers' health care fate gives me over them, and the disadvantage I have w.r.t. corporations in other nations where the government pays for health coverage.
Speaking of working off a script, my doctor had a piece of paper pinned to his wall that said something like:
Bloodwork for new pregancies:
3 vials red top
1 vial green top
1 vial black top
2 vials yelLow top (NOT IF JEWISH "RELIGIOUS")
123: Several people have, I'm almost certain. You saw it even at the time of HRC care. It might have been used in discussions of JPod's acknowledgment that Republican policies help serfs to stay serfs. See freedom from/freedom to discussions, as well.
Some vacuum tubes use a heparin anticoagulant made from "porcine mucosa" (which doesn't sound so good, does it?) I believe that kosher bovine heparin tubes exist.
The porcine mucosa tube is the green top, though? Any chance you switched?
Yeah, I guess I've seen it made generally, but I don't know if I've seen it in the context of stagnant wages specifically.
Emerson, you mean vacuum tubes aren't vegetarian? Oh, no!
A fun variation is if you have a chronic condition that your insurance currently covers. If you lose your insurance and don't COBRA fast enough, or out of that market for too long (grad students who were covered under their school health plan can't do COBRA, for example), your continuity of coverage disappears and your next insurer can decline to cover that condition.
IIRC group health coverage can only exclude a pre-existing condition for 18 months at most, not forever. And some states (this one; don't know if there are others) don't allow pre-existing condition exclusions at all in group policies.
But if you're trying to get individual coverage, you're just fucked in oh so many ways.
Animals are killed to keep you alive, Rob.
Xenotransplantation is also not vegan.
1. SCMT's advice is stupid; you should get regular checkups. I didn't have any risk factors, and there's all sorts of weird shit that's treatable early and deadly late.
2. While I believe insurance companies are probably evil, mine has been great. Last year I got a hospital bill for $4000 that I shouldn't have been responsible for, and the insurance company was very good about helping me get the right paperwork to the right place so that they could pay it instead of me. And yesterday I got another bill for $8000 that I shouldn't have to pay (still straightening that one out), but once again, the insurance company gave me specific instructions for how to get the paperwork submitted so that they could pay.
3. HIPAA is something you should know well.
It is if you transplant organs from trees.
Last year I got a hospital bill for $4000 that I shouldn't have been responsible for, and the insurance company was very good about helping me get the right paperwork to the right place so that they could pay it instead of me. And yesterday I got another bill for $8000 that I shouldn't have to pay (still straightening that one out), but once again, the insurance company gave me specific instructions for how to get the paperwork submitted so that they could pay.
Okay, 'great'. In how many other contexts do you routinely get bills you shouldn't be responsible for for sums of money substantial in relation to the total amount of services you receive? For me, the answer is 'none'. Now, maybe it's the insurance company's fault, maybe it's the doctors' fault, but it's distinctly fucked up that you had to straighten the bills out at all.
I agree it's fucked up, but both times it's been the hospital/doctor's fault and the insurance company has helped me straighten it out, when they could, conceivably, leave me stuck with the bill.
SCMT's advice is stupid; you should get regular checkups.
Ogged, you got regular checkups, but of you, me, and Tim, you're the only one who got cancer. Now maybe the checkups were to blame and maybe they weren't, but I'm not taking any chances.
136: It is fucked up. It is especially fucked up because they probably put the charge their intensionally knowing that a certain percentage of their customers would either not try to straighten things out at all or get frustrated halfway through the process and simply pay the charges.
NPR did a piece on similar tactics used by credit card companies.
In general, "cost reduction through inconvenience" is a well documented part of the insurance companies arsenal.
Actually, of the three of us, I'm the only one who's pretty sure he doesn't have cancer right now, apo.
In general, "cost reduction through inconvenience" is a well documented part of the insurance companies arsenal.
Yeah, I think this is right, and why, at the more general level, the companies themselves are evil. The individuals I've spoken to have been very helpful, and now I'm healthy and don't mind being on the phone for fifteen minutes to fix this shit, but last year it was a massive pain.
or from condemned churches
Wrong-o, mister -- leather bellows?
127 - I very well could have the colors mixed up. Thanks, Emerson! I figured it had something to do with the type of test, like it was for a birth defect and they'd never have an abortion anyway so why bother? Never thought it would have to do with keeping kosher.
The Hammond B-3 is completely vegan, though not organic at all.
My old band had a Hammond b2. It made this great sound if you turned it off while a note was still sounding. I guess it wasn't vegan, though.
I didn't have any risk factors
I thought that there was a family history of this stuff. And didn't you go in for a checkup because you had physical discomfort?
and there's all sorts of weird shit that's treatable early and deadly late.
"Weird" meaning "unusual" and "unlikely," right?
Like I said, you're playing the odds, and they're in your favor, but taking a couple of hours out of your year is a quite reasonable trade-off for moving the odds even more.
Maybe YOUR year. SCMT's time is money, man.
And didn't you go in for a checkup because you had physical discomfort?
I think that's different than his regular checkups, which I attribute to the hypochondriac tendencies inherent in prissiness.
143 -- and of course, ivory keys.
If you go in for a checkup, you're still playing the odds. Doctors miss things all of the time. You could, perhaps, have two physicals a year: the first, and then the second opinion.
But fine, everyone should have an annual physical. If your insurance covers it, as you say, why not? (Not snark.)
It all depends on what kind of vegetarian you are.
About family histories: look, people, I know exactly what ailments every member of my family has had going back three generations and outwards two degrees, but I still have my own environment and lifestyle, so I get checkups.
About frequency: as I said before, while health care professionals recommend annual physicals, every two-four years when you're basically healthy seems perfectly reasonable. More than six years seems negligent.
100: My sister works for the NY health department, focusing on epidemiology.
She has acquired an amusing-to-me verbal tic: when discussing, e.g., hepatitis transmission, where you or I might say "blah blah gay men blah blah", she says "blah blah (inhale) menwhohavesexwithmen blah blah". One word, maybe three and a half syllables. Menwhohavesexwithmen.
Apparently there are a lot of men in NYC who have sex with men but are very touchy about being identified as gay.
111: Or my doctor, who thinks George is a secret
slut. Yes, I'm sure he's not cheating. Yes,
I'm really, REALLY sure he's not cheating. Would
you mind addressing my symptoms now?
I really need a new objine.
Apparently there are a lot of men in NYC who have sex with men but are very touchy about being identified as gay.
No doubt, plus men who have sex with men and women, minus gay guys who are virgins.
156.--Yeah, I got that once. I had a thingumbob I freaked out about (turned out to be an ingrown hair), and my objine literally patted me on the ass and told me that nobody would cheat on somebody so beautiful.
159: Was this a male or female objine?
158: Yes, of course, I wasn't intending to be monosexualnormative. It's just interesting that she has to use this complex term of art so frequently that it becomes an atomic speech unit.
I imagine if you ask someone, in order to determine his risk for HIV or whatever, whether he's gay, you'll get a different answer than if you just ask him if he's had sex with men.
161: Naw, I get you. I just felt a compulsion to comment.
Are you a blogger?
Um, well...
Do you post to any blogs?
Yeah, I do.
Now that I think of it, House and his team are often on about what the patient's partner has been up to. I always thought that was mostly there to be salacious, but stories about these objines asking about the mister's habits make it seem more mainstream than I would have expected.
161: the acronym MSM is quite widespread in the field
I cannot believe that Giles Coren does not mention in that article the most hilarious thing about the whole series, which is that his co-presenter (an old pal of my missus) is, when not presenting shows like this one, a vegetarian.
159 seems unecessarily presidential. We won't hate you for being beautiful. (Or do you just not want the world to know you had an ingrown hair?)
169: He does, more or less: "Sue, a demi-semi-vegetarian, has not fared so well, going green halfway through her first sardine."
The whole men who have sex with men thing is a well used phrase in the epidemiological literature and in other more sociological literature around, for example, STIs. And it is because there a lot of men who self-identify as straight or as non-gay but who have sex with men. In some non-Western cultures that's pretty much the primary mode for men who aren't exclusively heterosexual.
A couple of academic papers I've read have been quite insistent that the notion of exclusive homosexuality is a particularly Western conception and that it's a mistake to read sexual behaviour in, say, Madras in terms of Western 'gay/hetero' divisions.
With all the comments from guys about them getting checkups every 37.24 years, no wonder there are so many studies showing that married men are healthier than single guys. Sheesh, do we have to do everything for you?
re: 174
In my case, I'm a whining hypochondriac*, so I go to the doctor more than average. Despite that, I'd just never been offered any kind of medical until I was nearly 30. Young men just aren't in my (UK) experience.
It's not just about whether you seek out medical assessment but about what care is offered to you.
* slight exaggeration, but there's some truth in it
MSM stands for "Men who have sex with men"?
That is so awesome. The rightwing blogosphere just turned into one big snorking gay joke.
I mean, one slightly bigger snorking gay joke.
With slightly more snorking.
171.--Well, I had some pre-partner reason to be a bit concerned, but---oh hell, who really wants to talk about sexual health concerns under their own names well-established pseudonyms?
Isn't that exactly what the pseudonyms are for?
The trouble starts when people start meeting in real life. Really, the only recipe for awesome comments is for everyone to relate as author functions.
180: No doubt, no doubt.
Greetings, program!
SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OT1S
Sifu's letters are not in order.
Pa sat. I sat 1n soot an' poo.
As I recall, Warren Zevon visited David Letterman's show shortly before his death from lung cancer and said something to the effect of, "I'm now thinking that not visiting a doctor for thirty years might have been a strategic error."
A friend of mine was part of a health study in Glasgow -- as a clerical research assistant, not a doctor -- in which he was required to collate information from the medical records of middle-aged Glasgow men.
He said that their files were depressingly similar.
Age 0 - 10 -- vaccinations, minor childhood diseases
Age 10 - 40 -- no visits to doctor
Age 40 - 45 -- present with cardiac and/or pulmonary symptoms
Age 45 - 50 -- dead (heart attack, liver disease, lung cancer)