http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/02/harry-reid-injured_n_6406716.html
Facial pain is some of the worst…. What kind of pain medication do you get if you’re a senator? Did they drug test Mr. Reid before writing the prescription? How many pills did he get, and is he allowed a refill? Did they lecture him on diversion, and the possibility that his friends and family might steal his drugs?
Photo from Ferguson, Missouri
Museum capturing Ferguson history as it happens
https://news.yahoo.com/museum-capturing-ferguson-history-happens-174524536.html
“Health expenses tend to come up unexpectedly, or if you have a chronic condition, they come up relentlessly,” adds Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at Kaiser. “People put off care or they split their pills. They do without.”
“Health insurance doesn’t cover much of anything until you cover your deductible,” says Curry, 54. “It puts a burden on you. You’ve got to have the money to be seen.”
Experts point out that the ACA requires preventive care to be covered fully and exempt from deductibles — although surveys show many workers still forgo screenings and physicals because they’re unaware of this or know they can’t afford follow-ups if illnesses are found.
I wonder if Medicare is going to cover the doctor appointment that Unum is forcing on me… is it considered “preventative care” to have a doctor fill out insurance forms? Of course, I still have to come up with the annual deductible and then 20% of the bill. And I don’t have very long to come up with all this money…
(Yeah, just want to give a shout out to Unum on New Year’s — thanks so much for terminating my benefits while demanding I shell out money for a doctor to fill out your forms. Just for your edification, I’m sitting here wondering if I can afford chicken this month… I’m thinking, no.)
Jennifer Ross, an arthritis sufferer in Florida insured through her husband’s job, says she recently made the wrenching decision not to take a medication that might allow her to get around without her wheelchair. The $2,400-a-month medicine would cost her $600 a month out-of-pocket even with insurance, and she simply can’t swing it. To make matters worse, Ross’ 12-year-old daughter was recently diagnosed with arthritis, too.
“It’s a no-win situation,” Ross says…
When patients do get needed care, some find themselves in massive debt. Kim Brown, an administrative assistant in Louisville who was earning about $40,000 a year, owes many thousands — the bills are still coming, so she doesn’t know exactly how much — after battling thyroid cancer. She says her annual out-of-pocket costs are $7,500, and she also has to pay 15% for things like hospital stays. No longer able to work because of her illness, she reluctantly signed up for Medicaid and will likely declare bankruptcy.
http://youthofanation.com/2013/11/11/laughter-is-the-best-medicine/
Those of us who suffer from a mood disorder know that this is a serious illness… Laughter can sometimes save us in our darkest moments.
Well, I don’t think laughter is the best medicine — for someone suffering from TMJ, smiling and laughing are actually rather painful. However…
Do not let your illness, medical condition, pain… rob you of the ability to laugh. Likewise, don’t let society, the medical industry, insurance companies, and your friends and family shame you into being sad all the time…
Being happy doesn’t mean you’re not still disabled and in pain. But some patients probably think that showing happiness might give the wrong impression, and don’t want to draw the attention of people who might say something like, “Well, you don’t look like you’re in pain.”
After all, do you usually see people in pain laughing? But we’re not talking about acute pain — pain that goes away — we’re talking about chronic conditions…
There’s nothing wrong with feeling sad, but you can’t be sad all the time — that’s a recipe for disaster. Yes, the pain is awful, the pain is constant, and a lot of the time, your mood says so. But do not feel guilty for laughing or feeling happy — pain can rob you of a lot of things, but it cannot stop you from working to find the laughter…
http://sfhww.com/2015/01/02/help-us-give-back-to-bay-area-veterans/
Happy New Year Everyone! This past year I spent a lot of time with Eamon at all of the Veterans Medical Centers in the Bay Area looking for answers regarding health and wellness that didn’t involve surgery or narcotics.
The real payoff for participating hospitals is distinguishing themselves at a time when other forms of promotion are no longer as effective, said Jennifer Coleman, the senior vice president of marketing and public relations for Baylor Scott & White Health, a large hospital system in Texas. Baylor self-produced a reality series about its cancer center and paid to broadcast it on local television. “Advertising is just so saturated right now,” she said. “You put your thumb over anybody’s ad and it’s just the same. That’s what people are trying to break through.” By participating in a major network program, she added, “They get that endorsement.”
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/usps_will_begin_plant_closures_next_week_20150101
The long, slow destruction of the U.S. Postal Service is set to continue next week when 82 mail processing centers are closed and consolidated, despite calls from more than half the members of the outgoing Senate to stall the changes.
Save the freaking Post Office! Old and poor people depend on the Post Office.
Two-thirds of all cancers diagnosed in adults are caused by random mutation during the ordinary process of stem cell division, while the rest are down to genetic inheritance and lifestyle, researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found.
https://depressionless.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/about-me-wanting-to-kill-myself/
But after reading all the comments posted on my posts I can say that people do survive these mental illnesses, and there will always be people out there who care and want to help (like my friend, and like the commentators). If you reach out for help, people will try. If you need to talk to me, I will always be here for all of you. Lets take one day at a time, and today I survived. What about you?
By Maia Szalavitz
For much of the past 50 years or so, voicing any serious skepticism toward Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12-step program was sacrilege—the equivalent, in polite company, of questioning the virtue of American mothers or the patriotism of our troops. If your problem was drink, AA was the answer; if drugs, Narcotics Anonymous. And if those programs didn’t work, it was your fault: You weren’t “working the steps.” The only alternative, as the 12-step slogan has it, was “jails, institutions, or death.” By 2000, 90 percent of American addiction treatment programs employed the 12-step approach.
In any other area of medicine, if your doctor told you that the cure for your disease involved surrendering to a “higher power,” praying to have your “defects of character” lifted, and accepting your “powerlessness,” as outlined in the original 12 steps, you’d probably seek a second opinion. But, even today, if you balk at these elements of the 12-step gospel, you’ll often get accused of being “in denial.” And if you should succeed in quitting drinking without 12-step support, you might get dismissed as a “dry drunk.”
We’re all subject to this at any age, science says. But in the United States we’re breeding the disorder within the military at staggering rates. Over 70,000 veterans received PTSD disability support in 2005. One study, as the Economist reported in 2008, “estimated that 12 percent of American veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD.” Last year, The New York Times figured “well over” 300,000 troops had returned with PTSD, depression, traumatic brain injury, “or some combination of those.”
Distressed veterans and active-duty troops can take antidepressants like sertraline (Zoloft) or paroxetine (Paxil), the two FDA-approved SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) medications for adult PTSD. (Under a recent settlement between veterans and the military and stemming from a 2008 class-action lawsuit, more than a thousand Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with the disorder would be given lifetime disability retirement benefits such as military health insurance.) The FDA says these are relatively safe, but warns of unintentional side effects: “worsening depression, suicidal thinking or behavior” and “sleeplessness, agitation, or withdrawal from normal social situations.” One recent study claims those on antidepressants are “much more” prone to relapse into major depression than the non-medicated.
The military’s medical program has over the past decade developed a knack for throwing prescription drugs at the mental health problem, so much so that the Army now limits how many addictive painkillers any soldier can acquire at any one time…
Between 2006 and 2009 over a hundred military personnel have died accidentally due to toxic prescription-drug blends. Illicit self-medicating, the default for so many Vietnam-era troops, is falling out of favor among newer veterans. Now, vets are five times more likely to abuse pills and alcohol than weed or coke or heroin…
The Government Accountability Office also just concluded that the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, created in 2007 when Congress tasked the Pentagon with establishing a program for handling influxes of brain injuries and PTSD among veterans, has no idea what it’s doing…
It may be unsurprising, then, to learn that suicide rates across the Department of Defense rose by about 50 percent between 2001 and 2008. Nor is it surprising that active-duty suicides topped battlefield casualties in 2009, or that a dozen reserve soldiers killed themselves last March, or even that some experts, according to the Times story, consider exposure therapy (a form of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy) the “only proven treatment” for PTSD…
“They have irreversible bindings on some receptors in the brain,” he explained, “which can potentially result in maybe greater or longer-term side effects for an individual.” SSRIs, he claimed, are reversible.
Are they?
Of course, the effects and promise of various PTSD drugs mean nothing when many of those most in need of treatment are reluctant to seeking treatment in the first place. Writing in an editorial that ran with a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Hoge not only suggested that a whole class of antipsychotics, including Risperdal, Seroquel, Geodon, and Abilify, can’t top placebos. He points to the bigger, more pervasive problem: Half of veterans who can’t shut out the mental sirens, and who should seek care, don’t…
All Things Chronic 