Health

Ellen Datlow Update

~ Cheryl

I just spoke to Ellen on the phone. The “surgery” is basically to clean out the wound because they think there’s some muck in there that is stopping it healing properly. I’ll call back this afternoon to see how it went. Pat may have updates on Facebook before then.

By the way, Ellen says please stop emailing her with good wishes – she can’t get online and her in box is filling up. If it reaches the limit something important might get bounced. Maybe stick a comment on her LiveJournal or something instead.

Further Ellen Update

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Pat Cadigan just posted to Facebook that Ellen has to have some surgery tomorrow. I don’t think this can be very serious as it is just a hole in her leg she’s got, but I’ll call again in the morning and get some more news. Pat says she’ll be spending the day at the hospital, so Ellen will have company.

Ellen Datlow Update

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

As some of you may know (because it was in Ansible), Ellen Datlow is in hospital in London. It is nothing serious, just an injury to her leg that got infected and wasn’t healing up. But it did need treatment, so Ellen is enjoying the hospitality of the NHS. I’ve just been speaking to her on the phone, and she’s in pretty good spirits all things considered. The cellulitis is now fixed, and the doctors are just making sure that the wound is healing properly before letting her out. Hopefully she’ll be back on her feet in a day or two. I’ll let you know if I get any further update.

The NHS Makes An Effort

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

From Religion or Belief: a practical guide for the NHS, published earlier this month:

Any NHS employer faced with an employee who by virtue of religion or belief refuses to work with or treat a lesbian, gay or bisexual person, or who makes homophobic comments or preaches against being lesbian, gay or bisexual, should refer to its anti-discrimination and bullying and harassment policies and procedures, which should already be in place. Whilst everyone is entitled to their personal beliefs, colleagues and patients should be treated with respect at all times, and should not be subjected to discrimination or harassment on any grounds whatsoever. It should be made clear that such behaviour is unlawful and could result in legal proceedings being brought.

And later, under a section headed “Trans People”:

Discriminatory behaviour towards LGBT people (or indeed against anyone for whatever reason) should never be tolerated under any circumstances.

Of course having rules is one thing: enforcing them is quite another. Given that many NHS Trusts have for years been operating access to treatment policies that are openly discriminatory and blatantly illegal, you have to wonder how much good such a document can do.

Celiac in the News

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Things may be looking up for people with Celiac problems in the US, or at least in California. Yesterday I heard Narsai David, the KCBS Food & Wine Editor, talking about it on the radio. Today I found Jerry Pournelle talking about it on his blog. Jerry says:

Despite Celiac’s prevalence in up to 1% of the population, a lot of doctors have no experience in diagnosing it.

Hopefully a little publicity will help change that.

All Our Fault – Sorry Vatican

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

According to the British Medical Journal, there is a very strong correlation between the success of the Welsh rugby team and the death of popes. Doubtless this is something to do with Wales being a hotbed of ranting dissenters and the like. I am looking forward to a congratulatory post from PZ Myers.

The good news for the current incumbent is that he only has a couple of weeks to survive in order to beat the curse.

By the way, the current issue of the BMJ is full of fun articles, including one on the health risks of headbanging and a bit of seasonal mythbusting. It is all online.

Getting Old

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the lead news stories in the UK today is a report from the Office for National Statistics which highlights the degree to which the population is growing older. Based on current trends, a quarter of the UK’s population will be over 65 by 2032. The fastest growing age group is people over 85.

There are many consequences of this. A fairly obvious one is that the proportion of the population that is in work is falling. Retired people may still be acquiring wealth through investments, but someone still has to do the work on which those investments are based. Perhaps more seriously, while people may be living longer, they are not necessarily able to look after themselves. Dementia, as Terry Pratchett has highlighted, is a very serious problem.

On Sunday I was listening to a podcast that touched on health issues in the UK. Because the company that runs India’s railways is being broken up, the NHS is now probably the largest employer in the world. And health care workers are amongst the poorest paid people in the UK. This sounds very much like a train wreck we are heading into.

More on this story from The Guardian and the BBC. I was particularly struck by the BBC’s map which shows that old people are concentrated in rural areas where, of course, they are harder to look after.

Weak and Emotional

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Modern research is turning up all sorts of gender-related differences in reactions to health care. For example, having been told by my doctor that I needed to be on cholesterol-reducing medication for the rest of my life (and then not being monitored at all because I’m now “cured”), I was somewhat surprised to discover that the evidence for the health benefits of this in women (as opposed to men) is still in dispute (see here, for example). But some of the differences are even more stark, and are a result how how doctors perceive their patients.

This study, for example, looked at what diagnosis a doctor would give to a patient who came in complaining of chest pains and other symptoms of heart disease. If the patients simply mentioned those symptoms then men and women were equally likely to be diagnosed with heart problems and referred to specialists. However, if the patients also complained of suffering from stress then the men were 2-3 times more likely to be diagnosed as ill whereas the women were much more likely to be told to stop being so neurotic and go away.

So ladies, remember this: if you have to go to a doctor (especially, I suspect, a male doctor), try to remain calm. Because if you get emotional the doctor is likely to assume that your symptoms are “psychogenic”.

Emotibomb Test Redux

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The original test of the Lush emotibomb fizzled rather because it Kevin developed his eye problem, which kind of put a dampner on the whole “sex in the shower” thing. However, yesterday we found the local Lush shop, and this morning we tested the “up you gets” emotibomb. Despite our having spent a very busy weekend in New Orleans, it managed to revive us. So we went back and bought several more. I figure we’ll need one tomorrow after the flight home.

Not As Planned

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The weekend didn’t go entirely as planned. I’d forgotten that we had the baseball tickets, so that was one day less to do stuff. And, as readers of his LJ will know, Kevin has been unwell. Dealing with that took up a fair amount of time yesterday.

Despite the concerns of commenters, I was never particularly worried about his having had a stroke. The symptoms didn’t really match. I’m also very relived that there are no headaches involved. But it is still worrying, and he’s not really safe to drive. As I’m not very safe to drive even when I’m fully fit, this is likely to restrict our activities for a while.

One thing that did interest me is that, despite all of the talk that goes on about how awful the US health system is, a whole bunch of Kevin’s American friends were urging him to go and see a doctor. It is great to know that people care that much, but it was very strange to me because I’m pretty sure that if I had turned up to see a doctor in the UK with the same symptoms he had I’d have been torn off a strip for wasting NHS time and money. One of the drawbacks of having your health care paid for by the government out of a limited budget, as opposed to paid for by the patients as and when they need it, is that there is an expectation (especially if you have been brought up by Welsh Methodists) that you have a duty to only use the health system when you really need it. If people are wondering why I wasn’t rushing Kevin off to hospital at the first sign of trouble, that’s probably a large part of it.

Mind Over Matter

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog is a favorite of mine as it is very good at debunking nonsense, but today he has a post that claims that magic works:

Alia Crum and Ellen Langer from Harvard psychology department took 84 female hotel attendants in 7 hotels. They were cleaning an average of 15 rooms a day, each requiring half an hour of walking, bending, pushing, lifting, and carrying. These women were clearly getting a lot of good exercise, but they didn’t believe it: 66.6% of them reported not exercising regularly, and 36.8% said they didn’t get any exercise at all.

Their health, measured by things like weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure, was related to their perceived amount of exercise, rather than the actual amount of exercise they got

And it gets better. The researchers then divided the subjects into two groups. One of them got a series of lectures explaining to them how healthy their lifestyles were, and the other group did not. After four weeks the group that had received the lectures showed a marked increase in health.

I’m sold from now on I am having Kevin tell me three times a day* how healthy my lifestyle is.

(* As every good magician knows, you have to tell people things three times before they become true.)

Judging People By Appearances

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today I got directed at this LiveJournal post by a Disabled person pointing out that just because you happen to have one disability that doesn’t mean that you are totally helpless and of no use to your fellow humans. He also tries to draw a distinction between the medical issues that he has and his identity as a person. It is a useful distinction to make. If someone has ‘flu we don’t regard them as a “‘flu person” and make all of our judgments about them on that basis, but if some has a more serious (and generally that means incurable) condition then they become a “sick person”, with all of the negative connotations that carries.

When the email with that link came in I happened to be reading this superb post on Daily Kos about the currently ongoing employment case of Diane Schroer. Colonel Schroer is a former US Special Forces officer with a wealth of experience in both battle zones and security. The case is about her being denied a job at the Library of Congress because she is transgender. The Washington Post coverage of the case notes that Schroer was denied the job because Charlotte Preece, a manager at the Library, was:

concerned that Schroer “might be unable to maintain high-level contacts in the military intelligence community” and “might not be viewed as credible” by members of Congress

Unfortunately for the Library’s case, Colonel Schroer is so well regarded in military intelligence that she has had no trouble setting up her own business and winning contracts. The Library, however, preferred to judge her on appearances, and even more so on the fact that it assumed other people would do so as well. The Daily Kos post has this to say about the case:

In the America of the past, we’d likely have said that Charlotte Preece’s assumptions were enough to justify taking away the job. In the past, failing to live up to society’s expectations about who men are and who women are, would surely have been taken as a sign of instability. But in the America we aspire to be, we won’t be willing to accept stereotypes as shorthand for capacity. Knowing how wrong that kind of shorthand has been, and how much people have been hurt by it, we’ll insist on keeping our eyes on what really counts: ability.

And that, I think, applies equally to people who have many useful skills but also happen to have a specific disability that sometimes means they can’t do everything that “able bodied” people can do.

GATTACA?

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One rather less encouraging piece of news from California is that the state’s health regulators have sent notices to 13 genetic testing services asking them to halt sales until they have proved that they comply with the necessary requirements. In particular California state law requires that genetic screening can only be done at the request of a doctor, yet these companies appear to advertise on the Internet to ordinary people, offering screening services (see here, for example). Goodness only knows what people buying these services will make of the results.

The one company I checked out appears to be concentrating on telling the individual what health risks he or she might face because of their genetic make-up. But presumably genetic screening of potential mates, and of actual embryos, won’t be far behind. It is an interesting world we are moving into.

UK Alzheimer’s Petition

~ Cheryl

Via the Match It for Pratchett campaign I learn about a e-petition that has been put on the UK government web site calling for an increase in funding for research into dementia (which is currently less than 5% of the funding for research into cancer). Given that more and more people are surviving into old age, I suspect this will become a major issue is years to come. It also links in with something that Professor Wakeham was saying at the reception last night about the UK government apparently wanting to concentrate medical research on high profile spectacular cures rather than on general wellness. If you are a UK citizen you can go here to sign the petition.