Holiday Cheer

I’ll admit to being a little bit of a humbug.  It probably has something to do with being forced into Church stuff at an early age, then working in industries where Christmas is just another day.

But I’ve started to enjoy the Holidays again.  How you ask?  By indulging in the twisted representations brought forth by our media overlords.  Favorite holiday movie?  Not “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “The Santa Clause” or some similarly trite celluloid concoction.  And while I love “A Christmas Story” except when it is on for 24 hours straight, my all-time favorite Christmas movie is still “Die Hard”.  But I also found some great clips from our friends over at SNL.

So kick back, light the menorah, have some Schweddy balls and wrap your presents…enjoy!

Schweddy Balls won’t embed, here’s the link: Schweddy Balls

Happy Holidays to all!

Black Friday Shenanigans

And here it is, the “official” start of the Holiday shopping season.  It matters not that we have been deluged since Halloween with commercials, ads in the papers and every so often, Christmas music overhead.  Black Friday.  It’s when retailers supposedly go “into the black”, finally turning a profit for the year.  And do they ever suck you in.

Great deals inside! That’s what all the ads scream.  What is pretty much hidden is the “Limit 1 per customer.  Minimum 3 per store.”  I know it is the science of loss leader.  HP sells you the printer cheap to hook you for the ink cartrtidges which are more expensive than heroin (I don’t know this from personal research!).  Retailers do the same:  advertise great deals to get you in the store and when you find out the one item you really wanted is gone, you stick around and buy something else.

I’m a nightmare for this idea though.  They don’t have what I’m looking for, I’m gone.  With a few exceptions, like a fight outside of a Toys R Us, or several incidents with Wal-Marts (here and here), it was relatively calm.  Nothing says calm like hundreds of greed crazed bargain shoppers running into the stores foaming at the mouth for great deals to me though.

I chatted with my patients about the phenomenon last night at work.  They too agreed that it seemed both excessive and well, crazy.  Is it really that important to get those “doorbusters”?  I’m sitting there cleaning up poop and the the news in the background is displaying images of crowds swarming department stores at the butt-crack-of-dawn.  It just seems, yes, excessive.

But I will admit I  bought something on Black Friday:  a fifth of Jameson.  I really wanted the doorbuster 18 year old single malt, the they had already sold out of their allotment…so I settled.

UPDATE:  some awesome pics from The Frame.  Desperation, claustrophobia and exhaustion.  Like I said…excessive.

This one’s for Happy!

 

 

The dangers of smoking.  Happy was right all along!

Attack TB where it lives

UPTON, NY — Attempts to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) are stymied by the fact that the disease-causing bacteria have a sophisticated mechanism for surviving dormant in infected cells. Now, a team of scientists including researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), Weill Cornell Medical College, and The Rockefeller University has identified compounds that inhibit that mechanism — without damaging human cells. The results, described in the September 16, 2009, issue of Nature, include structural studies of how the inhibitor molecules interact with bacterial proteins, and could lead to the design of new anti-TB drugs.

via Inhibitors of Important Tuberculosis Survival Mechanism Identified.

This is just cool.  Although they will probably find out later that it causes zombie-fication…

The Work Week in Quotes

Some weeks are better than others.  But what can turn a bad week into a decent week is the things patients and your co-workers say.

“So is this one of them vibratin’ beds” asked the extremely odd dude being admitted.  “No sir, we don’t have Magic Fingers in the hospital.” replied his nurse.

“So, is he in sinus?” asked the nurse on getting report on a patient who is known to be in atrial fib after being told that the rate is in the 40’s.  “Yes,” replied the other nurse, “he’s in sinus, but it’s really irregular.”  Patient comes up in afib.

And my favorite for the week…

“Sorry, we’re all out of Dilaudid.  How about a lollipop?”  What we wished we could say to the obvisouly drug-seeking patient who thought they were staying at the Hilton and we were nothing but Pez dispensers of IV pain medication.

Deep Fried Delights

I’ve got this pain in my chest, *gasp* feels like an elephant sitting on it, *uhhhh* now it’s in my arm too, and I feel a little short of breath.  I just need another one of these:

Chicken-fried bacon
This was sold at the same stand where we found the country-fried pork chips, so we picked up a basket. Whoever named these the 2008 Best Taste Winners must have been seriously off their medication; chicken-fried bacon proved to be the very definition of too much of a good thing. The thick-sliced bacon fried in a crazy heavy country batter was so rich that one of our testers could only eat a single slice, and another managed only a single bite. At the risk of offending The A.V. Club’s bacon-is-God readership, this was where bacon jumped the shark. Grade: C- [Image via Flickr]

Job security?  Only if you live in Texas.

Read all about it at:

Texas Taste Test: Walkin’ in the deep-fried wonderland of the Texas State Fair | Features | | A.V. Austin.

True Health Care Refrom – TBATM

The Blog that Ate Manhattan: TBTAM on Healthcare Reform.

Great read.  And far too true.  While I may not totally agree with Mad as Hell Docs (not sold on single-payer), they tie in with the whole idea of cutting out lobbyists and making this a discussion between the us and our docs.  To Hell with Big Insurance, Big Pharma and the lot.  My favorite quote:

Healthcare won’t get fixed as long as the stakeholders in health care with the biggest voice in its reform are the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, medical device makers, lawyers and others whose business thrives on the increasing health care expenditures of the American public.

Asking these folks to help us reform healthcare is like asking Master Card, Walmart, Verizon and Best Buy to help figure out your monthly budget.

Damn straight.

h/t once again to Dr. Wes!

The kids are dying!…

Shortage of shots as more kids die of swine flu – Swine flu- msnbc.com

What a way to sensationalize tragedy.

Yes, it is a tragedy when kids die.

Yes, it is unfortunate that we don’t have enough vaccine available.

Yes, some people believe that vaccines are bunk, especially the flu shot.

Yes, the hysteria is starting to rise.  It’s everywhere.  Makes one want to stay isolated inside the house and never leave, open the door with a N95 and turn the foyer into a positive-pressure space.  Makes me just turn off the news and news websites and pop a Xanax.

But why focus on kids?  Easy:  kids pull at our heart strings.  Kids are the easiest way to sway the public’s opinion.  Sad but true.

And I don’t need a special graphic to tell me that H1N1 is widespread in Oregon.  I just go to work.

Zombie Manger

HA!  Take that early adopters!  Xmas isn’t until December fools!  There should NOT be Xmas stuff next to the Halloween section.

Dr. Wes: Electricity and the Heart

Dr. Wes: Electricity and the Heart.

Sometimes in my field there is a need for inducing ventricular fibrillation. Now before people think I’ve completely lost my senses, realize that cardiac electrophysiologists induce ventricular fibrillation nearly every time they implant a cardiac defibrillator (ICD) to assure the device will properly detect, charge, and restore a patient’s heart rhythm in a carefully controlled setting with the patient sedated.

Great blog post about some of the things EP docs do.  Like inducing VF.   Very cool reading.