My incredible neck surgery to fix my pinched nerves

I am so very lucky when it comes to health care options. It’s distressing to think of the millions of people live (and used to live) with deep or searing chronic pain who did not have this kind of treatment available. I was lucky to have good health insurance and highly competent doctors. No one, however, should have to deal with this sort of pain without treatment and hope. For the past two years, I’ve been struggling with a pinched nerve in my neck that caused serious pain in my left arm and left side of my back. On several occasions, I referenced some of the treatment I have been receiving, including this post on acupuncture, this post on the incredible fact that there is a skeleton inside my body, and this confession that I don’t do well when it comes to getting injections. I’ve had all kinds of conservative treatment, including intensive physical therapy. None of my conservative treatments worked. The most recent symptom was numbness several in my fingers (feeling in some of my fingers came back, but not in my left index finger). It's worth taking the time to tell you what my doctor told me about numbness. If you have it, permanent nerve damage is being done. If you don’t jump on it and address it quickly (within a matter of weeks), you might lose that sensation permanently. Numbness is different than pain, then, which doesn’t usually cause permanent injury. Because I had significant numbness, I had surgery, which occurred four days ago.

Continue ReadingMy incredible neck surgery to fix my pinched nerves

Frank Schaeffer lays, and takes, the blame for murder –

I found this an interesting response to George Tiller's murder. Frank Schaeffer, a reformed evangelical, argues that the hate speech continually spewed by the religious right regarding abortion set the stage for George Tiller's murder, and other abortionists before him. He still expresses disgust at late-term abortion, and while I am more likely to agree with that, I do believe there are situations in which that choice is the only one that makes sense. Painful, horribly so, but sometimes the only choice is.

Continue ReadingFrank Schaeffer lays, and takes, the blame for murder –

Now you can pay for the convenience of water!

This is now the second time in a few months that I've gotten the following piece of junk mail: This letter is advertising a promotion in which, for thirty-two dollars a month and up, I can pay to have bottled water delivered to my door. What a brilliant idea! How could you beat that for convenience? Oh, that's right . . . Instead of paying for Poland Spring water at the rate of about $1.64 per gallon, I could get clean, fresh, drinkable water of any temperature I please straight from the tap in my kitchen. I don't know exactly how much this costs me, but I can say with complete confidence that it's a lot less than a dollar per gallon. Clearly, Poland Spring doesn't want you to think too hard about the economics of this. However, for the environmentally conscious consumer, this mailing also has a page touting their green credentials: Bottled Water Junk Mail Recycling 900,000 bottles and keeping 1.8 million pounds of plastic out of landfills is certainly very impressive. But, the skeptic in me has to ask, wouldn't it be much better for people to just use their perfectly good existing public infrastructure for drinking water, and not have to manufacture all that plastic in the first place? The bottled-water industry is one of the great triumphs of modern marketing: creating demand for a product for which there's absolutely no genuine need, selling at exorbitant cost a substance which any person in the Western world can obtain virtually for free. Even more absurd, despite its imagery of glaciers and mountain springs, most bottled water comes from municipal sources - i.e., the same water you get from your tap anyway. What bottled water really represents is almost pure profit for the beverage conglomerates that sell it, and unnecessary environmental harm caused by the expenditure of fossil fuels needed to manufacture, pack and ship it (not to mention sending out all this junk mail touting it). It's no healthier than the water that comes from the tap in your house. It doesn't even taste better. What on earth could convince a person to pay money for a scheme as ridiculous as this?

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Darfur, lest we forget –

Bob Herbert, in the NY Times, wrote this week of a new report on the continuing human catastrophe in Darfur. In describing why he reported on what, to some, is old news, he reminded us "about the dangers inherent in indifference to the suffering of others. Stories of atrocities on the scale of those coming out of Darfur cannot be told too often."

Continue ReadingDarfur, lest we forget –

Abortion Doctor George Tiller Killed at Church

George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed abortions, some of them late-term, was shot this morning as he entered his church for services. Read the story here - and then someone explain how one justifies murder again?

Continue ReadingAbortion Doctor George Tiller Killed at Church