Day: 01/18/2015

Brainy quotes on Luck

“Everything in life is luck.”  Donald Trump

“I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.”  Orson Welles

“I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.” Steven Wright

“Luck is everything… My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I’m fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn’t make a good suspense film.”  Alfred Hitchcock

“Luck is believing you’re lucky.”  Tennessee Williams

“Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.”  Larry King

“Good night, and good luck.”  Edward R. Murrow

Funny, I couldn’t find any quotes from women (about luck) that didn’t mention love (although there was an actress who mentioned shopping carts).

Brainy quotes on Procrastination

“It’s not considered procrastination if you know you’re doing it.”  Me

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”  Don Marquis

“There’s nothing wrong with procrastination. Or is there? I’ll leave it to you to decide, but only if you have the time.”  Craig Brown

“I swing between procrastination and being really thorough so either way things aren’t getting done quickly.”  Freema Agyeman

“Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing.”  James Altucher

1/15/2015, Belly up, baby! New Hampshire considers alcohol label change

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/16/belly_up_baby_new_hampshire_considers_alcohol_label_change/

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Babies and bottles normally get along just fine, unless a picture of that baby happens to be plastered to the front of a bottle of beer being sold in New Hampshire.

Currently, that bottle of Breakfast Stout crafted by Founders Brewery Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is contraband in New Hampshire.

But legislation proposed this year would permit brewers to peddle their ales, stouts, porters and lagers even if the label shows images of minors.

State Rep. Keith Murphy of Bedford is sponsoring the measure to allow images of kids on alcoholic beverage packaging as long as the state’s Liquor Commission determines the picture isn’t meant to entice minors to drink.

The current law says advertising of liquor or beverages shall not contain “any reference” to minors.

I don’t care if beer labels have pictures of babies on them, but it is rather tacky.  It’s just so hypocritical — what the alcohol industry gets away with, compared to all the rules and regulations for cannabis edibles and extracts.

How liberal is New Mexico?

Immigration?  Could be better, could be worse

Reproductive rights?  Check

Gun rights?  Check (and double check)

Access to alcohol?  Check

Options for addiction treatment?  Check

Medical marijuana?  Check (with a C grade)  (Yes, the city of Weed is in New Mexico.)

Drug laws?  Could be better, could be worse

Environment?  Not really

Opioids?  No

1/16/2015, The coming revolution in much cheaper life-saving drugs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/16/the-coming-revolution-in-much-cheaper-life-saving-drugs/?hpid=z14

Americans have had broad access to generic versions of traditional drugs for more than 30 years now, thanks to the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act. That landmark law established a scheme for regulating the generic drug market, which has now grown to about 85 percent of all prescriptions dispensed in the United States. Generics, on average, are discounted about 75 percent from the price of the brand-name drug…

The United States spent a combined $271.1 billion on prescriptions drugs in 2013, which comes to almost $1 for every $10 the country spends on health care…

Express Scripts, the nation’s largest manager of pharmacy benefits, has been advocating for policies that would speed biosimilar entry into the United States. The company projects that biosimilar competition for the 11 most-popular biologics would save the United States $250 billion on health care over a decade.  Others have offered more tempered estimates. The Rand Corporation says biosimilars will likely mean the U.S. spends $44.2 billion less on drugs through 2024…

The biologic manufacturers Amgen and Genentech for the past couple of years had staged a flurry of lobbying activity at the state level that generic manufacturers claimed would have limited pharmacists’ ability to substitute biosimilars for the original product…

Subject to differing state laws, pharmacists would be able to automatically swap out the brand-name biologic for the interchangeable drug, similar to the way traditional generics are substituted today…

First, we were forced to buy substitutions for brand name drugs, which turned out to not really be substitutions after all.  Now, interchangeables and biosimilars?  Paint me skeptical.

More than a Meme: What It Means to Be the Father of a Disabled Child

http://goodmenproject.com/families/tmb-more-than-a-meme-what-it-means-to-be-the-father-of-a-child-with-a-disability-in-todays-world/

Disability is a part of life. We would all be better served to understand that. I was at a seminar once, and the leader asked, “Raise your hand if you have a disabled child. Now raise your hand if you have a disabled parent. Now raise your hand if someone in your extended family has a disability. Now raise your hand if you have a close friend that is disabled. Now, raise your hand if you think you could be disabled in some way before you die.” The point was clear. Eventually, we all will deal with some form of disability someday, in some way.

Fathers’ roles are changing. So why is it still a big deal that a father chooses to stay at home to raise a disabled child while the mother works outside of the home? Why do fathers bringing their children to the hospital for appointments still get treated as the “second tier” parent? Roles are changing faster than laws, the courts, the medical system, and our employers are. Faster than some segments of society can react to. Could we dads of disability and our families help affect change that will benefit not just us, but every family?

4/12/2013, 23 Tips For Men on Supporting a Partner with Chronic Pain

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/marriage-20-tips-for-men-on-supporting-a-partner-with-chronic-pain/

1. I think that it is important to think of pain as your common enemy, not as a part of your wife or baggage that comes with her…

Perhaps the words that doctors use (like pain as the “enemy”) should depend on whether their patient is a woman or a man…  (See “Medicine’s military metaphors are counterproductive.”)

4. To avoid a pain-storm, be on the look-out for non-verbal clues of increased pain…

What a great term:  pain storm.  I love it.

8. One of my early ways of dealing with my wife’s chronic pain was to encourage my wife not to do things that caused her pain. Then I realized that if she avoided all activities that caused her pain, she would never do anything…

So true.

10. The key thing to remember is that pain builds even while you are managing to ignore it. The longer your wife is in pain, the more of it she experiences and the less she can block it out…

Man, this guy really knows his wife — and how to deal with her chronic pain.  It’s so sweet 🙂

7. Doctors are not prescribing real pain medication that much anymore, so you may be tempted to skip doses during the early days if she is feeling better. I do not encourage this. It takes twice as [much] pain medication to get a person out of a pain storm as it does to prevent the storm from happening.

9. I hope that you do not reach a place of un-managed pain, but if you do, here are some tricks that I have learned for helping a person get through the worst part of a pain storm. What you want to do is temporarily flood her nerves with other novel sensations that make it harder for her brain to record all of the pain signals. You have to change the sensation at least every twenty seconds for it to have any impact.

Is this guy a neurologist (or a saint)? Impressive.

About Pete Beisner:  Pete Beisner is a father, husband and veteran who works in the field of information technology. He has a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees and hates writing.

Chronic Pain Induced ADD

Has living with constant pain given me Attention Deficit Disorder?

Since I’ve been in pain for such a long time, I don’t remember if I had a hard time concentrating before the pain started.  All I know, now, is that pain invades every waking moment of my day, distracting me from… living.

So, I’ve created a new medical condition:  Chronic Pain Induced ADD, or CPIADD for short. 😀

Warning:  I am not a doctor.  (But my online medical diploma is in the mail.) Nothing on my website should be construed as providing medical advice. (Listen, don’t sue me, okay?)