good medicine

I continue to be amazed that doctors can take an organ out of one body, transfer it to another, and have it work.

A woman I know (not well; I know her daughter better) had a liver transplant this weekend.

She had been sick for over a year. There were times she came perilously close to dying; at one point, her daughter said, "Ma is in the hospital again and she says she's so tired of fighting that she's ready to go, if that's what's going to happen."

But somehow, she managed to keep fighting, got better enough to withstand surgery, and this weekend a donor liver became available.

She had the operation Saturday; Sunday in church her daughter was cautiously optimistic: she said her mother had come through the operation well and "as long as she doesn't throw a clot or reject her liver, it will be a success."

Well, as of last night (the church secretary e-mails this news out to us), the woman was sitting up, eating a little, and her skin tone and the color of the whites of her eyes had returned to normal. Normal for a healthy person; not "normal" for what she had been while in liver failure. Apparently she's going to be moved out of ICU sometime today.

So as long as her body doesn't reject the liver, it looks like it worked.

(And yes, of course - many many people have been praying for the woman and her family during this time, and there were a lot of happy faces Sunday morning to learn about the operation's apparent success. We are a small group but a tight one and always rejoice when something good happens for one of our members.)

As I said, transplantation amazes me. It seems like one of those things that should not work, but it does. (And yes, I know, it doesn't work all the time. But when it does, it's amazing.)

And I have to say - this is where I part company with those Christian groups who believe that prayer can cure all diseases without medical intervention, and that medical intervention is wrong, and if the patient dies (even when there's some intervention that could save them) it was God's will.

I know there have been a couple high-profile cases of parents who basically let their children die because they could not believe that medical treatment could be OK.

And you know? I've known a number of doctors (and potential doctors) over the years who are Christians and who would be profoundly frustrated at that attitude. I've had doctors tell me they think that their skill and talent were gifts from God and that they were put here to alleviate people's suffering and help people be healthy.

There is a difference between a person close to the end of their life saying "No more heroic treatment; help me be comfortable and let me make my peace with my family" and someone refusing treatment on behalf of another person, when that person could be saved. Especially when it's a child.

Sometimes I wonder if, because we in America generally live an existence where serious disease or serious health problems are rare, we get a little complacent. I've kind of been watching the vaccine debate - while I agree it's possible for there to be rare cases of an individual having a severe reaction (like an allergic reaction) to a vaccine, and it's tragic when it happens, I remain firmly unconvinced that vaccines "cause" autism. (Which is the argument many make). What I've seen of the science and statistics on the matter shows there is, at best, a correlation - meaning, very likely, that childhood vaccines are administered and autism is typically diagnosed AT THE SAME AGE, but one does not cause the other.

(And it seems there's a genetic link for autism; there are clusters of people - Silicon Valley engineers being one - where there seem to be more autistic children. Engineer jokes aside, some have suggested that the whole autism-Aspergers-normal thing is a spectrum, and engineers tend to be farther toward the atypical end of the spectrum...and it's just sort of population genetics acting there, selecting for certain traits....)

(And I've also heard that in some cases early interaction with adults vs. being parked in front of the TV can be kind of a tipping point in some cases. That, I'm less prone to accept, because if that were the case, I'd expect to see very high rates of autism in some urban centers where the parents basically use TV as a free babysitter. Not that heavy early TV exposure doesn't have an effect on developing brains; I just remain unconvinced of the idea that it can either "cause" autism or send an at-risk child over the precipice.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, vaccines. Anyway, there are those who crusade against childhood vaccines: they're risky, they say. Unnecessary.

I think of my nearly 90 year old aunt talking about the "polio summers" when she was raising her oldest children, and I don't think vaccines are so unnecessary. And I think about what I've read about the diphtheria epidemics. And about the books I've read about people who went blind or deaf (or both) as a (rare, but still possible) sequela of having measles.

And I shudder to think what would happen if we had some kind of epidemic outbreak of a bad disease for which there was no vaccine. Would the same anti-vaccine crusaders be calling for the government to "do something" to protect them and their families?

Anyway. I am thankful for the state of medicine that we have. I am thankful that I can walk into my local Health Department in October and get stuck in the arm (even though I don't like needles) and most likely be protected from the flu as a result. I am thankful that if I get strep throat, my doctor can give me antibiotics that will kill the bacteria and allow me to recover. (That's another thing - it's kind of hair-raising to read what we regard as minor infections were like in the era before antibiotics. Supposedly the first use of commercial penicillin was on a woman who was dying of sepsis following an otherwise normal childbirth...her husband consented to the experimental treatment because he figured she'd be dead by the next day anyway...and a couple days later, she was sitting up in bed, asking for food).

And I'm thankful that surgeons know how to take a liver from a person who has died, sever all of the various ducts and blood vessels, put the liver in someone whose liver is failing, reattach all the things, and have the liver WORK. I'm grateful for it and it also amazes me.

(And yes, I have the little box checked on my driver's license, and my family knows, if something bad happens to me...I want whatever are usable of my organs to go to help someone else.)

And I fail to see how some could imagine those various treatments - vaccines to prevent horrible diseases like polio, and antibiotics, and surgery - are so removed from God that they must not use them, and pray for deliverance instead.

Because, by that extension, you should not accept food that's grown in an area where fertilizers or pesticides are used, or from animals that have been vaccinated. Or you should refuse to use electricity or other "modern" conveniences.

Granted, there are some things we "can" do that I am unsure at best we "should" do (and things like human cloning, that I think we should not do). But so many of the modern advancements that pull us out of the dark ages have done nothing but good. I'm reading a book right now on the history of plumbing and I am even more thankful for the fact that we have flush toilets and water treatment plants and that I can turn on the tap in the morning and drink the water that comes out of it without fear that I will develop dysentery or succumb to horrific heavy-metal poisoning.

I tend to think some of the greatest human advancements as far as safety and medicine are concerned are:
1. Hygiene, especially as far as water and indoor plumbing are concerned
2. Vaccination
3. Antibiotics (even though they can be overused)
4. Pasteurization
5. The germ theory of disease (though 2, 3, and 4, probably wouldn't be possible without that, so maybe that should rank higher)
6. Surgery
7. Anesthesia
8. Modern dentistry. (As much as I hate to go to the dentist. As much as I'm dreading the appointment next month to get my tooth prepared for and fitted for a crown).

There are probably others I'm forgetting - so many of the advances that would rock the world of people in the 17th century are things so common and widespread as to be almost invisible today.

OMFG

There is just about nothing worse when doing figures for a research paper, or at least nothing I can think of, than getting them exactly perfect (or as perfect as my limited graphic-design skills can make them) and then transferring them from my laptop (which has a particular analysis program on it) to my desktop, so I can e-mail them to my co-author, and finding out the desktop doesn't have the same symbol-set - so all of the nice neat squares and triangles have turned into U's and &'s.

I used a string of words I normally rarely use when I found that out.

Especially since the laptop is old, and the program is buggy, and it was sending me round the bend earlier this afternoon with nonsensical error messages that it had no right to give me.

Fortunately, I realized (as I was gearing up to spend ALL DAMN NIGHT here and redo the $#(*&%#'ing things) that I could save them as .jpeg files and send them that way.

If my co-author doesn't like the figures as .jpegs? He can suck it. Or he can suck them. Whatever. I'm done with this.

(Seriously - I think that's my new not-to-be-voiced-in-public attitude about people or things that are not grateful, don't understand the hard work I put in, want to complain about petty things when I'm the only person making an effort to do certain large things, etc., etc.)

I'm going home. It's cruel and unusual punishment to still be working past 5 pm on a Friday.

iPhone iNsanity

So, apparently Apple's decided to drop the price on the iPhone (yee gads, it was $600? Just for the phone?).

And apparently the people who went out and bought them at $600 are unhappy, and feel they are entitled to some money back.

I have but one thing to say to them:



HA-ha < /nelsonmuntz >



More seriously: Have you EVER seen a technological item that didn't become cheaper as time went on? My father talks about the first calculator he ever bought (in fact, I believe it was called a "desk calculator," rather than a "pocket calculator," because it was about a foot square). It was about $100, and as I said - about a foot square. A couple years ago, when he renewed one of the newsletters he reads, he got a "freebee" calculator with the renewal - that was more powerful than the $100 calculator from the 70s.

Okay, that's an extreme case. And I suppose the iPhone iPhreaks didn't expect the price to come down quite so fast. But as someone who knows someone who actually WAITED IN LINE to have one of these on the first day and has been subjected to "look at this! look at this! Isn't it cool! Don't you wish you had one?" (answer: no, not really), I'm not that sympathetic to claims that they're due some kind of restitution from Apple.

Back to my father. One of the most valuable pieces of advice (well, one of many) that he gave me over the years was: when you are planning to buy something, ask yourself if it is worth the price to you. If not, find a cheaper alternative or wait and see if the price comes down.

That's why I have the el-cheap-o cell phone offered by my cell-phone company for a penny with my monthly plan. It doesn't have a camera, it won't surf the web. I don't even have text messaging enabled on it - because why would I need to do that? I have a phone. If I need to get in touch with someone I will call them - or I will go to my computer and send an e-mail.

I mainly have the phone so that if my car breaks down when I'm out in the middle of nowhere, I can call someone to come help me. (Although I will admit I've used it more than once to order carry-out ahead as I'm leaving work at the end of the day).

I guess my attitude is this: either you really wanted the iPhone, and so the $600 you paid should be seen as the cost of having a really cool thing before everybody else, or it wasn't worth it to you and you didn't buy it at $600.

But don't demand money back just because "I'm a really big Apple supporter and Steve Jobs OWES it to me!" No, he doesn't. He's in it to make money. Obviously you were willing to help him do it.

This is not like some shady furniture store that sells you a couch one week for $1000 and the next week sells it for $500 without any hint that there will ever be a sale - we all know that the price of technological stuff drops over time.

And even then - if you bought a couch for $1000, it must have been worth $1000 to you at the time. It's not like there's only one couch supplier on Earth, and it's not even like the couch is necessary to the continuance of your life. (Now, if the water company started jacking up prices - without any reason why - and prevented competition, even in the form of bottled drinking water, THAT might be a problem. But we're talking about cell phones, not water.)


And even at the cheaper price, I really don't need an iPhone (nor do I really want one), so I won't be getting one. The little blue Nokia that my cell-phone company issued me is just fine.

Yes! Yes! Oh yes!

I have high-speed Internet at home now.

Here's the timeline, for those not following along:

Made an appointment to "upgrade" service (because the el-cheap-o dialup was going away). This was done on the 17th of July or so.

The appointed day came, and went. I called the company three times: first, they said, "Just be patient....they'll call 1/2 hour before they come." Then they said, "Well, it should be before 1 pm." Then they said, "Oh, my gosh- no one made it out?"

So they sent Creepy Saturday Guy. (He was one of those people who wanted to tell me his life story while he was working. I kind of sat on the sofa with a strained smile and nodded and made encouraging sounds...I didn't want Creepy Guy to stick around any longer than necessary.)

Creepy Guy left. I tried to hook up the "easy" internet hookup. Nothing. I called a tech, got insulted by him. ("Just. Click. On. The. Eeeeeee.") I pulled out my "I'm not an idiot" street cred, he was a little more polite. Had me do lots of permutations of plugging and unplugging cables. Never got the "PC active" light to light on the modem. Always got the message that the LAN cable was unplugged.

His conclusion: your computer is broken. Call me back when it's fixed.

So, at a cost of $65 to myself, I took the 'puter in for diagnostics to the best computer place in town. They assured me nothing was wrong - they hooked their cable internet up to it and it worked just fine. (I also sprang for the spywear clean and disk defrag; at that point it was only $20 more, and while I CAN do it myself, I often prefer to have someone who knows 100% of what they are doing do it).

So I brought it home and hooked it up. No go, of course.

Called the cable company (heretofore to be known as "the #(*&$#@ cable company"). They once again disavowed any knowledge of having a customer by my name (until I read off the customer number - so why ask for the name at first anyway?)

The new guy (and I knew it was someone different; this fellow had a Latin American accent) asked me to read off the MAC number of the modem (instead of immediately assuming it was my fault or my stupidity.) I did, and he said, "Oh, it's not registered to your house...it's registered to..." and he read off the address of the cable company's (sorry, the #(*&$#@ cable company's) local office.

He said: call them up (he was one of the central techs that is like in Georgia or somewhere), they need to "turn on" the service for you.

Well, derr. Wouldn't you think they'd have done that before sending the Saturday Creepy Guy out with the cable modem?

So I called. And the lady (I've learned now: never talk to the ladies at my cable company; their job is mainly to upsell people on additional services or to be a layer of obfuscation between the customer and the people who actually know something) said they'd send a tech out "first thing" today.

So, 9 am passed. 10 am passed. 11 am passed. In my universe, by the time you reach 11 am, it is no longer "first thing."

So I called again. The lady said, "Oh, someone will most likely be out between 1 and 5."

"Most likely" to me means, "If they feel like it and I remember to tell them."

So I sat tight a while longer. Revised another journal article. Watched some tv. Ate lunch.

Finally, around 2:15, I decided to take the bull by the nether-bits and I called again. Only this time, I called the customer service number, hit "0" instead of letting it go through all the various numbers I COULD punch.

Got a guy. So I started unloading. I was polite but I made it clear I wasn't happy with the service.

He said, okay, I'll walk you through some diagnostics. We'll see if we can figure this out right now, without your waiting on a tech.

So he had me check the LAN port on my machine - did I see the eight pins? Were they straight? Yes. Fine.

He had me check the powerstrip. Fine.

He then had me remove the LAN cable from the back of the modem and check the pins.

Houston, we have a problem.

Have you seen the movie "Sling Blade"? Remember what Billy Bob Thornton's character's teeth looked like? The pins in the LAN socket on the back of the modem looked WORSE than that - they were overlapping even more.

I kind of gasped when I saw it, and the tech said, "Oh...so there's something wrong with the socket. Okay, bring the modem in and we'll exchange it."

(I generally don't cuss too much here on the blog, but feel welcome to imagine a string of four-letter Anglo-Saxon words right here).

The appleknockers gave me a defective modem. They gave me a modem that someone else had, and either broke and exchanged or broke before they gave up the service. Or they broke it out of stupid maliciousness, to screw the next person to get their modem.

And the freaking Saturday Creepy Guy didn't bother to check!

So I drove in. It's a couple miles away to the office. I was shaking as I drove and it occurred to me I was just angry enough that I had to be very careful driving so I didn't get into an accident.

Got it, wound up waiting behind some guy who needed the ins and outs of his cable box explained to him very. slowly.

Which was actually good, because my anger had a chance to dissipate.

I held up the back of the modem to the guy (it was the guy I had talked to on the phone) and said, "Could that have caused my problem?"

He kind of gasped. And immediately began apologizing. And asked for Creepy Saturday Guy's name. (I only knew him as the Weekend Tech but that told them who, apparently - one of the women rolled her eyes when she heard).

And he pulled out a brand-new, better quality (Motorola rather than some Chinese off-brand) modem and handed it to me. He had me fill out some paperwork, promised he'd turn my service on THAT MOMENT with the modem.

He also said, of the old modem: "We'll take this one out back and hit it with a baseball bat." (I hope he was serious. I hope no other poor sap gets stuck with it)

I drove home, set it up, and it works. I knew that when ALL the lights came on as soon as I plugged it in, things were going to be better.

Now I just have to do the thing with the wireless router, and I'm in business, with my computer back in the office where it belongs.

And it only took 6 days, and it was a problem that could have been prevented by someone taking five minutes to inspect the danged modem. But whatever. Live and learn.