Real doctors tell people the truth regardsless of who gets furious. pic.twitter.com/mKkmCzUJz1 — Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) May 5, 2023 I’d rewrite that headline to say Stupid People Furious! Well, that’s a little harsh. Let’s change it to Uninformed People Furious! Let me start my saying that I’ve had a couple of cancerous skin lesions removed, and because the removal was medically necessary, the cost of the removal was covered by my health insurance. I’ve also had a couple of benign lesions removed just because I thought they were unsightly. Those removals were not medically necessary so I had to pay for their removal myself. People identifying as transgender don’t want to pay for puberty blockers and hormone treatments and surgeries out of their own pocket so what we came up with is “gender dysphoria,” a mental disorder. Now everything becomes medically necessary and can be billed to health… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Cancer
Vaping-Related Deaths Are BS. You Heard it Here First.
Trump administration readies ban on flavored e-cigarettes amid outbreak of vaping-related deaths CNBC Condolences to the victims but do six deaths in a country of 320 million people really represent an “outbreak”? Also, “vaping-related deaths” is bullshit as the article itself says in the first paragraph: The Trump administration is preparing to ban flavored e-cigarettes as federal health officials call for restrictions to combat an outbreak of a mysterious lung disease . . . “Mysterious lung disease.” In the headline, vaping is flat-out killing people; in the article it’s a mystery disease. I’ve read specifically about three of the deaths. One was here in Southern California, in Los Angeles County. The deceased was described as an older adult male, at least 55 years old, with chronic health conditions. A woman who died in Kansas was older than 50 and had a history of health problems. In Minnesota, the state’s “first… Read more →
Signing Your Life Away
I had surgery last week to remove a basal cell carcinoma. It’s a common outpatient procedure but the consent form I was given to sign when I checked in listed out all the worst-case scenarios: I might be disfigured, I might bleed to death, etc. After signing it, I took the form back up to the nurse and said “This information is so alarming that I changed my mind about doing the surgery. See you later.” “Ha ha,” she chuckled. “You’re signing your life away.” “Yes . . . maybe you’re not supposed to say that.” Read more →
Alex Trebek Has Cancer
And yet Pat Sajak is in perfect health . . . this is fair?! Actually, I’ve never liked Alex Trebek. I used to watch the original version of Jeopardy!, hosted by a guy named Art Fleming, who, unlike Trebek, didn’t act like he was smarter than the contestants just because he had the answers right there in front of him . . . Read more →
Vignette
Sara, 48, suffers from breast cancer, diagnosed three times in five years. She has to stop teaching at school but engages actively in volunteer work. Her environment praises her for her courage. She helps other cancer patients in a respectful way to deal with their illness. This for her is also very rewarding. Still, from time to time, mostly when Sara does not expect it, an ocean of tears comes up . . . Read more →
Is Healthcare a Right or an Entitlement?
That’s the title of a lengthy article on LinkedIn in which the author makes the following argument: I had to spend more than $30,000 on cancer treatment. Therefore, healthcare is a right, not an entitlement. Because having a “right” to something implies that you have the right to force another person to work and pay for that thing. Someone else must exert positive effort to help you – and not because you make it worthwhile for that person to exert that effort on your behalf, but because the government will ultimately imprison him or her if he or she refuses to supply you with that to which you have a “right.” You can add a level of abstraction, i.e., “the government should pay for my healthcare” sounds more appealing than “another person should pay for my healthcare” but where do you think government gets the money to pay for things?… Read more →
Monday Night at the Chevron
I like the sodas at Chevron . . . they’re not restaurant quality, but they’re better than the flat, tasteless sodas you get at most other gas stations. On the downside, Chevron as often as not has some donate-a-buck-to-charity shakedown going on at the register. Today the place is plastered with photos of bald children with brave smiles on their faces . . . “Would you like to donate to St. Jude pediatric cancer research?” the clerk asks. “I already donated two dollars last week and they haven’t cured it yet?” Meanwhile, I notice another employee plucking all the hot dogs off the rotisserie with a pair of tongs and dropping them in a trash can . . . “You have to throw those out if they sit too long?” I ask the clerk. “Yes.” “Do you ever pluck a couple off and eat them if you’re hungry?” “No,”… Read more →
It’s Not Your Head
I’m telling my doctor about these shooting pains that I get near the back of my head, behind my left ear. Sometimes they don’t happen for months and sometimes they happen several times a day. She says it’s likely to be caused by stress and tension. “You don’t think it’s a brain tumor?” I ask. “No, because a brain tumor would hurt all the time and the pain would get worse over time.” “OK . . . that’s good to know because I didn’t want to deal with a brain tumor right now.” “I’m not worried about it. And if I’m not worried about it, you shouldn’t be worried about it.” “That’s what my wife said this morning. She said she wasn’t worried about it. I said, ‘Of course you’re not worried about it. It’s not your head.’ She said she wouldn’t worry about it even if was her head.”… Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Brain Cancer Patients
Brain cancer patients are worse than vegetarians — meddling busybodies telling everyone else how to live their lives. Ever since Brittany Maynard announced her intention to end her own life, brain cancer patients have been coming out of the woodwork to tell her that she has no right to do that (see here, here, here and here). Some people don’t want to die the kind of lingering death that exhausts the emotional and financial resources of their loved ones. In fact, I think most people don’t, but I think most people with a terminal illness imagine themselves dying a kind of radiant death like people with terminal illnesses in movies. By the time reality sets in, the dying person is past knowing or caring. Read more →
More on Stuart Scott
I am sick unto death of this guy. I just read a sentence from his speech: You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live. Ugh. Sickening. Millions of people fighting cancer and he’s the one guy who’s figured out how to fight it the right way. Like a lot of people, we have an immediate family member who had cancer, and like a lot of people, she battled it bravely, quietly, with humanity and dignity, and without any expectation of receiving an award, which she didn’t get. Unlike Stuart Scott, she never told anyone about all the unpleasant medical procedures she had to undergo and she never presented herself as a model for how life should be lived under difficult circumstances. Fuck this guy. Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Stuart Scott
I’m hearing on the radio this morning that Stuart Scott received something called the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the ESPYs last night . . . Who knew you could get an award for having cancer? I am exhausted by sports people, media people, entertainment people, sports media entertainment people sucking each other’s dicks. Stuart Scott and people like Stuart Scott have killed my enjoyment of sports with their endless self-promotional bullshit while I’m trying to watch highlights. I hate sports and it’s all because of Stuart Scott. And now he gets an award for having cancer. Everyone unfortunately has family members and/or friends who get cancer and battle it to the best of their abilities without receiving a goddamn award. It’s insulting to all of those people to give someone an award for having cancer and it’s doubly insulting to accept an award for having cancer. I have come… Read more →
It’s Not That Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Pope John Paul II is being canonized this weekend because of 667,302 prayers for divine intervention, he miraculously answered two, years after he was already dead. What sort of evidence is required to certify that an earthly phenomenon was caused by a dead person? William of Occam would have pointed out that there are simpler explanations for a sick person getting well, e.g., The disease responded to treatment. The disease went into remission. The patient was misdiagnosed and did not really have the disease in the first place. I assure you that if 667,302 people with diagnosed medical ailments prayed to my dog, in at least two of those cases (and more likely, thousands), something unusual would happen. Years ago, a lower GI series revealed that I had a golf ball-sized (4 cm) tumor in my colon. The doctor did a colonoscopy a few days later and the tumor was… Read more →
Thank You for Smoking
According to the American Cancer Society, smoking kills about 1 in 5 people in the United States. Is that bad? If so, why? You’ve got to die somehow. Would it be better if those people died from some other cause? How would you prefer to see them die? Also: Some percentage of Americans would rather be dead than alive anyway. I don’t know what that number is, but I’d bet it’s higher than 1 in 5. (If you Google “percentage of people who would rather be dead,” the top results all point to a 2008 survey in which 52 percent of respondents said they would rather be dead than disabled. If you change the search to “percentage of people who would rather be dead than alive,” you get a mishmash of links, including a few more links to the “dead vs. disabled” survey, but you still don’t get the number… Read more →
Some Links
HealthCare.gov’s Account Setup: 10 Broken Usability Guidelines McKayla Maroney Was Doing The “Not Impressed” Face At Age 8 Most Popular Paintings & Photos From Getty’s Online Art Collection The Tweeting Bra Versus Breast Cancer Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Why Your Health Insurance Premium is Going Up
Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. — Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums – NYTimes.com That headline should not read “DESPITE new health law,” it should read “BECAUSE OF new health law.” But we were going to get things for free! We were promised better things at a lower cost! In my day, most of the citizens were farmers or merchants or tradesmen. They lived by their hands and their wits. They had horse sense and they knew when they were being sold a bill of goods. Of course, that was before television. Americans today are unfortunately rather stupid. Most of them don’t know anything about economics, science, history, government… Read more →
The Chevron Guy
My boy and I are buying sodas at the Chevron station . . . I notice they’ve got the place plastered with breast cancer donation stickers . . . donate a buck to breast cancer research and you can put your name on a 3×5 sticker with a pink car and a Chevron logo and they’ll stick it up on the wall. I object to that. Let Chevron donate their own damn money instead of shaking down the customers. “Would you like to donate a dollar to breast cancer research?” the attendant asks. “No,” I reply. “Shouldn’t Chevron make their own donations? They’ve got more money than I do.” It takes the guy a few moments to pick up on my theme, but as we’re wrapping up the transaction, he grabs the ball and runs with it. “Yeah,” he says, “and the price of gas keeps going up.” “It does,… Read more →
Maurice Lucas, 1952-2010
PORTLAND, Ore. — Maurice Lucas, the fierce power forward known as “The Enforcer” who helped lead the Portland Trail Blazers to the 1977 NBA title, has died after a long fight with bladder cancer. He was 58. — ESPN I enjoyed watching this guy play. Did you know that former Blazer teammate Bill Walton named his son Luke after Lucas? Read more →
Stephen J. Cannell, 1941-2010
“Rockford Files” and “A-Team” creator Stephen J. Cannell has died of complications from melanoma. He was 69. — TheWrap.com I PITY THE FOOL WHO DON’T WEAR SUNSCREEN! Loved Rockford Files. R.I.P. Read more →
Suck it Up, Liver Cancer Patients!
When the government runs healthcare . . . Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed. Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 [$60,000] a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options. The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was “simply too high” to justify the “benefit to patients.” — Mail Online Read more →
I Don’t Feel Good
James Brown has prostate cancer — CNN.com Read more →