A few weeks ago I spent two nights in the hospital. I checked in after going into the emergency room for sever chest/stomach pain. This was the second visit to the emergency room for this. I went back at Chinese New Year in February. At that time they hooked me up to all the wires and took blood and the whole nine yards to check for heart issues. No heart issues so they called indigestion and sent me home with industrial strength antacids. I have never experienced any indigestion like this. It was just above the bottom of my sternum and was a sharp pain like someone wiggling a knife in my chest.
Cut to mid-May and I spent one night in agony again for about four hours. I racked my brains to see what I had eaten or done similar to Chinese New Year that could cause it. I couldn’t think of anything. So when it happened again the next week I went back to the emergency room.
Same procedure with the wires and blood and all but, again no signs of heart issues so they checked me in for more diagnostics.
This breaks my 41 year streak of no hospitalization. The only times I’ve spent a night in the hospital was to accompany my wife when my daughters were born.
The next morning the doctor ordered, and performed, an endoscopy. The one where they shove a video camera down your throat and into your stomach. I don’t remember much about this since they put you to sleep but I will never forget the taste of some chemical they sprayed in the back of my mouth just before knocking me out. It was, how can I put this? I can only imagine this is what it’s like to have the Terminator or C3-P0 ejaculate in your mouth. There, you will never get that image out of your head, I’ve destroyed any remaining chance of having a political career and I’ve shared my pain.
Moving on…
I got the results the next morning: Helicobacter pylori [wikipedia.org] infection. A bacteria that lives in your stomach, among all that acid. It’s a bad ass bacteria, yea me. It is also the bacteria which causes stomach ulcers and can cause cancer. On the other hand Wikipedia says 50% of the world is infected —the most common infection in the world! Apparently most people don’t develop any issues.
Anyway, I got drugs, lots of drugs. Multiple antibiotics and various other things to kill my unwanted passengers:
Fred Jablonski’s water bottle, a blue one liter Nalgene bottle, sat on his desk long after Fred Jablonski was gone. He only lasted a day. Showed up and decided that the job wasn’t for him or something, we never knew. In fact, no one ever introduced him to anyone in the the department and no one told us he was gone. But his desk was still his desk months later, the water bottle gathering dust along with the standard office supplies, pen, pencil, stapler and notebook. Fred Jablonski was The Dead Man in Yossarian’s tent. No one could be assigned to that desk the water bottle gathered dust until we moved offices seven months later. But the myth of Fred Jablonski long after the desk and dusty water bottle were left behind.
Fred Jablonski lived on because he became a kind of Spartacus for the software development department. Everyone was Fred Jablonski. See, when we changed offices we also got we one of those phone conferencing systems which asked you to record your names and then announced you when you joined the call. This annoyed everyone. So when you attended a conference call you would be met with a roll call of “Fred Jablonski”, “Freeeed Jablonski”, “Fred Jaaablonski”, “Jablonski, Fred Jablonski” every time a developer joined. The rest of the company had no idea who Fred Jablonski was which only encouraged us for a time. Eventually the company grew and many people even in the software engineering department had no idea who Fred Jablonski was. And so, eventually Fred Jablonski faded…
This is Vinicunca [wikipedia.org]. Commonly called Rainbow Mountain or The Mountain of Seven Colors. This photo was taken some 5,000 meters above sea level after a grueling climb (According to Wikipedia Vinicunca is 5,200 m.a.s.l., but that is the peak and we did not go to the highest point we stopped just above 5,000, so I’ll stick with 5,000 as my personal best). The climb itself would not be too hard, less than 500 meters vertical over a 5 kilometer trail, if it were not for the altitude. The altitude makes every step up, even a gentle grade, work is and the last 40 meters or so is a real lung burning experience. Every 10 steps I needed to rest for 2 minutes to catch my breath. But I made it up, without a horse (you can rent a horse).
For perspective: The highest point in the continental US is Mount Whitney [wikipedia.org] at 4,421 m.a.s.l. The highest point in Europe is Mount Blanc [wikipedia.org] at 4,808 m.a.s.l. (if you count the Caucus mountains on the Russia-Georga border as part of Europe then there are several taller mountains: Mount Elbrus [wikipedia.org] trumps me at 5,642 m.a.s.l. as does Dykh-Tau [wikipedia.org] at 5,205 m.a.s.l. and Shkhara [Wikipedia.org] at 5,193 m.a.s.l. — but that’s lower than the peak of Vinicunca so I’m going to stop there.) And finally, Everest South Base Camp in Nepal is 5,364 m.a.s.l. (North Base Camp is in Tibet at 5,150 m.a.s.l.).
So the Trumpcare legal drama continues? I thought the Republicans had given up on their quest to destroy Obamacare, [wikipedia.org] maybe because it’s not newsworthy enough to make the BBC World Service daily anymore… Anyway, I don’t want to talk about the attempts to repeal Obamacare or Trumpcare, I want to talk the apparent lack of healthcare among people my age even under Obamacare.
Obamacare was passed in 2010 and in the years since I have been asked, three times, to contribute to not one, not two, not three but four separate GoFundMe [gofundme.com] campaigns to cover health expenses for people I went to high school or college with. GoFundMe was, coincidentally also founded in 2010 and according to Time Magazine [time.com] one third of all campaigns are now for funding health related expenses. That’s $650 million in funding!
For me, 100% of the campaigns which people have reached out to me over were healthcare expense related. One was a Kidney transplant, one a liver transplant and one was expenses for surgery needed due to a hit and run accident and the last was living expenses to avoid foreclosure because someone had fallen into massive debt to fund their fathers cancer treatment. (aside: I don’t know a ton of people my age in the US but two of them needed organ transplants before they were 40. WTF?) All of my friends and coworkers have made it through their funding issues. That’s great but what happens next time?
Post Obamacare, shouldn’t an organ transplant, even if it was likely caused by some pre-existing condition, or back surgery needed due to a hit and run be covered by even basic insurance? These are the type of things that fall under “it’s never going to happen to me but that’s why I have insurance” right? I don’t know if my friends chose to remain uninsured post Obamacare and pay the tax penalty but I think it says a lot about the state of the US healthcare situation.
To counter this, I will give the example of the wife of a friend. She is Singaporean, he is from Sweden and the family moved to Sweden six or seven years ago. A year or two into their relocation she was diagnosed with throat cancer. Being in Sweden, even not being a citizen, she was fully covered for all expenses and her job was held for her while she took a year off (I think she went back before the year was over but she had a full year if she wanted it).
Can you spot the difference? Americans need to open their fucking eyes. America is not the be-all, end-all of how things can or should be done and this ongoing train wreck of healthcare is a prime example of the bad that needs to be fixed (and for the record; guns is in the same category). It would help if a decent amount of Americans spent some time outside of the US to have something to compare our state to or paid attention to how many measures of things-that-matter that the US is not at the top —here’s a few cherry picked examples:
Admittedly I have issues with the Singapore system…
Ranking in the top 25 of all of these reports is something of an achievement, there are 195 countries in the world after all. I’ve been in Singapore for 15 years now and I have retained my US citizenship because I do think that America is a great country but as these measures show America is not worthy of being called the greatest. People should be a bit self critical and not blindly patriotic to the point of not wanting to do better. The current situation with toxic partisan politics and citizens who’s only information is soundbites and social media memes do not inspire confidence in me that the people of America are prepared to address these issues.
With regards to healthcare; I’m all for the individualism that is a key element of the American psyche, you should work for what you want and the government should not be forcing you to do things without good reason. But the cost of no healthcare is not just paid by you and yours. It’s paid by all, often in money to treat those who can’t pay, but also in opportunity, dragging the whole society down over the long run. And here I think the government is justified in intervening and making healthcare universal. Single-payer vs. Obamacare vs. Trumpcare vs some other solution yet-to-be-designed is where congress needs to do its job.
A few years ago I was waiting for my coffee in a Starbucks and while I was standing at the pickup counter I was playing with my phone. I think at the time it was an iPhone 4 so, yea, a few years ago. Anyway, I took a photo of the lamps hanging down. The photo was awesome, these two bright lamps floating in darkness. Over the intervening years I took quite a few similar shots looking up at lamps. Some were very cool, but over all the phone camera was not up to making great photos so I never shared them. But the cameras have gotten much better and now in have Lightroom Mobile to even take “raw” photos for editing.
Armed with better camera and editing software I revisited the original Starbucks:
I have taken a lot of up-lamp shots. Looking like a fool in restaurants and bars and shops craning my neck back to look up with the phone or holding the phone out over and over to take a photo where I can’t see the screen and then checking on the alignment of the shot. Five, six, ten tries to get the shot. Here are some of my best:
