Recent research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics has confirmed a longstanding trend — namely that whites live longer than blacks pretty much consistently, and have for a long time. People have attributed this to the increased difficulty of containing blood pressure in black people — probably a genetic difficulty– which leads to increased rates of both stroke and of heart disease. Both have long been established as being deadly. Plenty of well meaning people have at least tried to deal with this. One of the well-meaning people is me. Many times I have seen people of color for other reasons, checked their blood pressure, been concerned, and referred them to appropriate blood pressure followup by general medical personnel. Of course, I have no way of knowing how many (if any) went where I told them, but I tried.
I mean, I would tell them, “If there is something extra that can be done to make sure you are around for a few more years, to see the grandchildren grow a bit or whatever is precious, then it should be done.” I usually have no problem getting the person to agree, at least in my presence. Menthol cigarettes are a different kind of issue, and therefore a little tougher to be unequivocal about. Read more on Ban Menthols? Our Government To The Rescue!…
Filed under Addictions, Diagnosis, Disease, Government by on Mar 21st, 2011. Comment. 
She said she was depressed and anxious. She was 38, large, and animated, with almost glazed over excited eyes, and talking a mile a minute.
Every person who tells me he or she is depressed gets asked the necessary questions to determine if he or she has manic-depressive illness, otherwise known as bipolar illness. The only way to determine this that I know about is by asking. Nobody who is depressed and comes in for treatment of same is going to spontaneously volunteer the info I need to make the diagnosis. Read more on Bipolar Could Be Misdiagnosed As Depression…
Filed under depression, Diagnosis, Disease by on Nov 5th, 2010. Comment.
Some of the most vivid and memorable lectures I sat through in medical school were about bacteriology. Our professor was a woman who was a consultant to the World Health Organization and who returned from assignments with dramatic first person stories about how she had collected trachoma samples from children in darkest Africa, and would thus help prevent their blindness.
She told us about Cholera, a horrible disease that killed quickly by diarrhea and subsequent dehydration. A disease of poor hygiene that was found where people lived in congested settings and hygiene was tough to maintain. Did not even need antibiotics to save most of the lives; just hydration and electrolytes. An illness apparently easy to prevent; there were pills to sterilize the water, simple public health interventions. But none of us were likely to ever see it. We would all practice in civilized countries, like France. Vive la France. Read more on How Cholera Showed Up In Haiti…
Filed under Disease, politics, Public Health System by on Nov 4th, 2010. Comment.
I first found out about this list of so-called “Influential Doctors“ in the USA Today newspaper and did not finish the article before I became aware of two powerful realities: 1. This list does not sound like it will help people who need a doctor, but more likely it will benefit someone else in the health care industry. 2. Nobody compiling a list of influential doctors is going to add me because I’m a professional pain in the rear-end of the other doctors on the list.
It sounds like one of those times when somebody is making money from patients pockets by marketing drugs or services, via insurance companies or drug companies.
Hello “parasite!” Hello person-making-money-from-sick-people without adding “value” to healing them. Read more on Turning The Brain Back Ten Years And Slowing The Decline…
Filed under Alzheimer's Disease, Brain, Disease by on Aug 24th, 2010. Comment.
He was 35 and tall and thin, with beige hair and a rare grin he claimed only I could elicit. He enjoyed seeing me. He always came with a knapsack, because he didn’t really trust the other people in the residence where he lived. He probably had reason to feel that way, for things had been stolen from him before. Things like medications. He reported these things to the pharmacy involved. Both they and I believed him. After all, these things happen. He had not abused anything known to us. Besides, medications are frequently stolen.
The diagnosis was schizophrenia, that too-often debilitating disease that hits at least about 1% of the population and that is still generally considered manageable but incurable. He was actually doing pretty well, living in a residence and “stable” after countless hospitalizations. I asked him about his plans for the future. He told me he had been attending information sessions about an interesting course at a local college. Now I knew that local colleges, this one in particular, were famous for providing “practical” education. I had even heard of a bachelor’s degree in auto body work. He told me he wanted to learn to make guns. I tried not to appear nervous here, but I was impressed that he could read my emotions well enough to tell I was worried.
“Don’t worry, Dr. G. I am not going to hurt anybody and I don’t want to kill myself. You must worry a lot about that because you ask me every time.” Good — he was smart about that. But what could happen if his medicines were stolen before I could replace them? In his distant past, he had some real troubles with “false beliefs,” worrying that criminals were out to get him. What if he believed that, and tried to shoot someone? I could not ask him that, I knew he would tell me it would never happen – but I knew it could. “I really like hunting animals. Little ones, not bears or anything. Squirrels, but that was a long time ago. There are lots of squirrels and things like that around here.” He went on. He was exhibiting more insight and understanding than I had ever heard from him.
“I like the insides of the gun and how it works and I want to learn how to make them. I did like the feeling of shooting a little animal, because it meant I was smarter than he was.”
Filed under Disease by on May 10th, 2010. Comment.
I remember when I was very tiny, getting a TB (tuberculosis) skin test as part of some public school campaign. It was negative. My parents were pleased with me, but they never had any doubts that I would be “clean.” They said something about poor people with poor hygiene being at risk, but not nice middle class folks like us. No problem.
Fast forward to a far more vivid memory. I had to get another TB test in France when I attended medical school there. It was a hassle, as I had to get someone to take class notes for me while I went to a cavernous and overwhelming public health office.
I was in line with all the rest of the “aliens” as the laws required me to be. There were people who looked more terrified than I — young mothers from North Africa with four or five young children orbiting around them like out-of-control satellites. Unlike this frightened young lady, at least I knew what they were going to do to me — even though I was only a first year med student. They called it a “scarification.”
There was a very petite nurse who had to reach up to give me some scratched parallel lines on my left shoulder. It was the BCG, the “Bacille de Calmette et Guerin.” They told me that it was a strain of tuberculosis that had been developed in Lille, a few miles to the north of Amiens where I was, and that it was a gift to the world. It was a benign form of tuberculosis that would give me immunity. Read more on Antibiotic Abuse — We Are Creating Monster Epidemics…
Filed under Disease by on Mar 11th, 2010. Comment.