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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Cancer? Not so much…

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Yesterday my son took off work to schlep out to the Mayo with me and hold my  hand as I entered the Land of Sickness. We were to meet with a high-powered surgeon to whom I was referred by my long-time doc and old friend, Tim Daley. After a brief wait, we were ushered into the catacombs.

You would not believe the difference between the way you’re dealt with at St. Joe’s and at the Mayo. First off, we were met by a nurse practitioner who handed me a whole book on breast cancer and a notebook filled with business cards & phone numbers of people to call at the Mayo, with all sorts of information, with what to expect, and on and on. She asked a bunch of questions, filled in forms, and moved on. Then a PA came in, did an exam and asked more questions.

And finally Her Royal Majesty arrived. And what an incredible lady that one is!!!

She also examined me, and she’d already read the pathologist’s reports and studied the mammogram. She was annoyed that St. Joe’s hadn’t done another mammogram after the biopsy to confirm that they’d placed the marker tags correctly, and said now that has to be done. Then she said the following:

At this point she believes these are ductal carcinomas in situ (DCIS). They are not exactly cancers; they are pre-cancers. She assessed them as “Stage 0,” about as close to harmless as they can get without being nonexistent.

Not all DCIS lesions develop into cancer, and if they do, they develop very slowly. They could turn into cancer in a year, two years, ten years, twenty…or maybe never. However, the problem is that ALL breast cancers start as DCIS. Because there’s no way (yet) for doctors to know which DCISes will become invasive cancers, which ones will just sit there, and which may even fade away, the wisest course of action is to have them removed by way of surgery. But that’s all that is necessary. And there’s no hurry.

The current standards for lumpectomy no longer require such a wide margin of healthy tissue to be removed around a DCIS, and so the procedure is relatively minor compared to what one would have expected in the past. Once removed, the things have to be examined by a pathologist, but if they are what she believes them to be, there will be no need for any other treatment. No radiation. No hormone treatments. No chemotherapy.

She thinks these critters have been in there for years — she explained in detail why she thinks so, based on the known growth rate of papillary carcinomas — and were simply not seen on earlier mammograms when my lush besoom was denser and the machinery was less sensitive.

She explained that radiation therapy is an option, but that it would reduce the already extremely low probability of a recurrence by about one or two percentage points. I asked her whether, if she were in this position, she would opt for radiation.

“No,” she said, “I wouldn’t have radiation. But then…that’s just me.”

Looked at her and thought, Lady, you are one hell of a lot smarter than me and you are staggeringly expert on this subject. If you’re not havin’ it, neither am I.

So I scheduled a lumpectomy for August 7. She said one should be up and about in a day or two and back in the swimming pool after two weeks.

How amazing is that?

And, we might add, how effin’ outrageous…

The radiologist at St Joe’s said to me, in reporting on the biopsy results over the telephone, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s cancer.” Period. Evidently that was a slight exaggeration…

This was after I had been told, by another radiologist there, that there was a 50% chance those little lumps were cancer. So they had me prepped to believe I already have cancer, and then they delivered exactly that news.

In fact, they’re not benign…but neither are they actually cancer. Not yet, anyway. Nor are they going to become cancer in the very near future.

My friend KJG, on hearing this, remarked on the difference between the medical treatment you get in hospitals in affluent vs. not-so-affluent neighborhoods. Ain’t it the truth, apparently: few places get more affluent than northeast Scottsdale. And another friend remarked, after admitting to a skeptical turn of mind, on how much St. Joe’s stood to gain by corralling me into six or eight weeks of daily unnecessary radiation treatment.

Un-freaking-believable.

So it looks like a confluence of lucky events rescued me from a great deal of painful, pointless, and dangerous trauma:

  • Old Doc Daley moved from his mid-town practice to the Mayo shortly after the clinic opened in Scottsdale, all those years ago.
  • I managed to keep myself on the Mayo’s rolls after hitting Medicare age by sticking with him.
  • St. Joe’s ER damn near killed me with the crassest kind of neglect when I had appendicitis some years ago, and so I wouldn’t have surgery done at that hospital, not on a bet.
  • And past experience has convinced me that you should ALWAYS GET A SECOND OPINION before letting anybody do any kind of procedure on you or put you on some drug.

Always. Get. A. Second. Opinion.

Day from Hell? Or Day from Monty Python’s Flying Circus?

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I have exceeded my capacity to write much further about yesterday’s little drama, so feel free to go to the my corgi blog and read all about it. [?? I do not know why this link isn’t working. Enter this URL instead: mycorgi.com/profiles/blogs/parvo-really]

Not for an instant do I believe Ruby has parvo (forgodsake!). For the past hour she’s been flinging herself around pestering Cassie, barking at the neighbors, racing up and down the hall squeaking a toy, stealing a sandal and banging it on the wall, climbing on top of me, grabbing Cassie’s ball, and (let us never forget) chasing cockroaches around the backyard. This is not the behavior of a dog that is trying to slip past Cerberus and sneak into Hades.

What I do believe is that last night I encountered an unethical veterinarian who took one look at an old lady with a puppy of an expensive breed and heard the cash register ring.

The pet industry in this country (and make no mistake: that is what it is officially called — even vets will tell you they’re part of the pet industry) is a vast cash cow. There is so much money to be made in fleecing people who are besotted by their animals, it cannot even be estimated.

I should have known when I drove up there and saw signs in the parking lot reading “Reserved for Pet Parents.”

Pet parents! SNORT!!!

That is a trope whose purpose is to encourage people to conflate their animals with their children. Once they have you thinking about your dog or your cat as though it were your child, it’s easy to play on your emotions and get you to fork over any amount of money the various merchandisers in the pet industry choose for whatever service, medication, food, tool, doodad, or piece of kitsch they can come up with.

Parvo, indeed. I’m still so mad, just thinking about it, I could throw this computer across the room!

Annals of the Floored and Flabbergasted: Gun owners should have to pass an IQ test…

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Winchester_1897Long-time readers here know that Funny is a left-wing crazy who happens to stand up for the Second Amendment and is prepared to defend herself inside her own shack. Uhm. Castle. While I do think that certifiably sane, nonfelonious American citizens have a right to own a gun, the fact is that gun ownership bears with it the same burden as car ownership. A certain degree of responsibility is required. And as we know every time we have to share the streets with our fellow homicidal drivers, whether your weapon weighs 12 ounces or two tons, a healthy number of IQ points should be required of operators.

Did you read the story from Montana about the moron homeowner who shot the moron kid for poking around in an open garage? Here is a case in point — no, make that “in spades!” — about the IQ points. One early report said the homeowners left their garage door open because they wanted to be able to pop out for a smoke. Right there, we have an IQ issue: it being well-nigh impossible to dwell in ignorance of what tobacco does to your body, you’d have to be a mite on the stupid side to be smoking at all. Then we were told they had a baby-room video monitor set up in the garage, because there had been a few burglaries in the neighborhood. Knock off a few more IQ points…you leave your garage door hanging open when you know prowlers are roaming the ’hood stealing stuff? Right. Then — oh, yes, it gets better! — the chucklehead blasts the kid not once, not twice, not three times, but four times with a shotgun.

Stupidity on that order should be a capital offense. You shouldn’t even have to kill someone to be convicted of capital stupidity.

More recent reports say the door was hanging open because the chucklehead and his airhead wife had deliberately set a trap for the supposed perps. One wonders exactly what they were smoking.

But let’s be fair and share the stupidity points.

We have the kid. What is he doing? Sneaking into an open garage, after dark, using his cell phone as a flashlight. At least you can’t shoot someone with a cell. Good thing the Germans are into disarmament; otherwise we would have had two fools dead on the concrete floor. And we are told, ostensibly by his pal, an Ecuadorian exchange student who has fled back home, that the young men were “garage-hopping” at the time they got themselves into this mess.

“Garage-hopping”? Would that be a euphemism for “burgling”?

Stupid layered atop stupid.

Welp, I have this to say about that:

The guy who owned the gun is the guy who should have been tested for IQ points. He was the adult, and he was the fellow with the deadly weapon. Given the idiocy of the circumstances and the fact that the kid did not represent a serious threat to life or limb, the gun owner bears the greater responsibility for the outcome.

One question for the gun owner’s IQ test:

What is the most effective way to deter burglars?

a. Shoot them on sight.
b. Engage them in friendly conversation and offer them oatmeal cookies.
c. Bribe them to move on to the neighbor’s house.
d. Close and lock the door.

Image: Winchester Model 1897 Pump-Action Shotgun. Asams10 at en.wikipedia. Released into the public domain (by the author).

The Gruesome Execution Jive: Am I altogether too savage?

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Is it just me? Or are you, too, getting tired of listening to the moaning, groaning, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the grimly botched execution of an animal named Clayton Lockwood, down in Oklahoma? It’s all over the front page again, with a jump to a page  filled with sidebars on the subject.

How rarely in all this tearing of hair and rending of clothes do we hear any empathy for the young woman this creep raped and murdered, in front of a man, a nine-month-old infant, and another woman (whom he also raped), by filling her with shotgun pellets and burying her alive?

Nor do we seem to be hearing much about his colleague, one Charles Warner. That would be the guy who raped an 11-month-old infant and then beat the child to death.

Maybe I’m not a nice lady, but this strikes me as a kind of karma: what goes around comes around.

No. I don’t think craven murderers should be tortured to death. But — here’s the personal finance angle, at last — neither do I care, as a taxpayer, to support monsters like these two in prison for the rest of their natural lives.

These are men who should be removed from this world. Now, not later.

If we want to remove them quickly and with relatively little suffering, we should quit messing around with pharmaceuticals and do what the Chinese do: take the creep out and apply the business end of a pistol to the side of his head.

 

McCutcheon: Funny Takes Out a Loan

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The Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission has engendered another of Funny’s inspired entrepreneurial schemes. By golly, this may be my best idea yet! But first I’ll need a little seed money. Hence, it was off to the credit union for a loan.

FUNNY: I’d like to borrow ten million dollars, please, to support my new business enterprise. Here’s the business plan. [FUNNY hands a sheaf of paper to LOAN OFFICER.] You’ll see the profit this will turn within the next four years.

LOAN OFFICER: Ten million? That’s quite a lot for a start-up. Would you mind summarizing this 150-page document and telling me exactly what the ten mill will be used for?

FUNNY: I wish to purchase a United States senator.

L.O.: Ah! Well, that’s a very fine idea. But you’re not the first to apply for a loan for this purpose. Which of our Congressional delegation do you propose to buy?

FUNNY: Actually, none of them. I wouldn’t have any of those dunderheads. My plan is to run a candidate that has a brain.

L.O.: Now there’s a unique idea.

FUNNY: Yes. I thought so, too.

L.O.: What do you propose to put up for collateral?

FUNNY: The proceeds from five defense contracts should cover it, wouldn’t you think?

L.O.: Oh, I should say so. Do you suppose you could throw in a little easing of the new mortgage regulations?

FUNNY: We’ll definitely look into that.

L.O.: [Studies gigantic sheaf of paper presented by FUNNY] Hm. This is very interesting. But…

FUNNY: “But…”???

L.O.: Well, I wonder if maybe you’re not thinking big enough.

FUNNY: How much bigger can you think? We’re talking about a Senator of the United States of America, the vastest hegemony in the history of the entire human race!

L.O.: What if you were to purchase a United States President? We would consider fronting you about 8 billion dollars for that purpose.

FUNNY: My goodness. I’m not sure I could afford a loan of that size. What would the interest be?

L.O.: 4.325 percent.

FUNNY: Four percent on 8 billion dollars? The credit union will be rolling in ill-gotten gains. How about 3 percent?

L.O.: Okay, okay: 3.586 percent. That’s our best offer.

FUNNY: What kind of collateral can we come up with for an 8 billion-dollar loan?

L.O.: Fifteen defense contracts, the new president’s first-born son, and your eternal soul.

FUNNY: Excellent! Done! We’re in business.

L.O.: Sign here, please.

 

Huge Rip-off Narrowly Averted

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Review freshly posted, by me, of Leslie’s Swimming Pool Service, on Angie’s List:

My pool pump stopped working about a week ago. It’s one of the old single-cycle pumps, and I’ve expected it to go out  sooner or later, but this could NOT have happened at a worse time: one  unexpected expense after another, starting in early January, has drained my emergency savings and then some.

I tried to reach my go-to service, Swimming Pool Service and Repair, but when I called the number I have — and that’s still posted on the Web — I got a “no longer in service” message. So fell back on Leslie’s.

On Saturday they sent a guy over. He took one look at the thing, listened to the “hummmmm” it made when power was turned on, and announced I needed to buy a new pump…to the tune of $1500!!!!!

This is $1500 I don’t happen to have. I explained that I’m trying to live on Social Security and that I’ve had a series of burdensome unexpected expenses. I asked if he was sure  he couldn’t fix it. He said no, it couldn’t be fixed. I said I’d seen a pump like it at Leslie’s website for $625, so why can’t I have that? He said our lovely legislators had passed a law stating that only the new power-saving multicycle pumps can be installed. That sounded a little fishy — you can say many things about Arizona’s elected representatives, but “environmentally sensitive” is not one of them.

As it developed, the soonest the new pump would be in was today, Tuesday, but this particular service dude was going to be off work today. So, he said, they’d send another guy.

Thank heaven for small favors!

This morning, a young man named Chris shows up.

In the course of conversation, I happen to mention that $1500 is a hit I can’t afford. He says, “Well, do you mean you don’t want the pump?” I say, “Well, I’ve gotta keep the pool running — it would cost more than fifteen hundred bucks to fill it in.” He says, “I think all it needs is a capacitor.”

Say what?

I say, the guy who was here last week said it couldn’t be fixed. He says, I’m sure I can fix it. I say, will you get in trouble? He says his boss will be mad. I say, I don’t want you to get canned. He says, no problem. He goes off to acquire the part.

Not counting the junket to get the part, it took Chris all of about 10 minutes to replace the thing and get the pump running happily. Total cost: $141.97.

The part itself cost $32.29. Leslie’s gouged me $85 for the “service call” (what d’you bet Chris never sees much of that?) and $22 for the “trip charge”: that would be $107 just to drive over to my house.

Chris obviously is worth a great deal more than that, since an honest man seems to be hard to come by these days.

I’m hugely relieved to save $1400 that was needed to cover food bills. But on the other hand, I’m not pleased that at the outset Leslie’s sent a guy who obviously tried to cheat me. I don’t think I would do business with Leslie’s again: evidently their business model is such that their workers are treated in a way that tempts them to rip off customers. Next time I’ll come back to Angie’s List and look for some other provider.

Does that take the cake, or does that take the cake?