For the last several months I have been taking a drug called paroxetine – the generic version of Paxil. Paroxetine is a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) used to treat people with depression. In my case, I’d been having difficulty focusing and getting things done, and my doctor felt that this might be due to [...]
Sun, June 6 2010 » 1, Uncategorized » 2 Comments
I have been getting a ton of spam comments lately, almost all of which have been caught by my spam filter (Akismet). The only problem is I am not able to check whether the spam filter is also catching legit comments. If you think I missed a comment, drop me an email. A few things [...]
Mon, November 9 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
This month is National Blog Writing Month, or some such, but I’m not participating. You probably already knew that, as sporadic as my posting has been. The thing about being sick is that even though it forces you to take time off to care for yourself, the stuff that you’re not doing doesn’t magically disappear. [...]
Tue, November 3 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
I write a lot of posts critical of “tort reform”, because it’s often a bad idea. In fact, it’s often the same bad idea, over and over again: damages caps, which don’t help doctors and punish patients. That said, I will be the first to admit that our approach to malpractice needs serious reform. If [...]
Fri, October 23 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
Sharon Begley in Newsweek has a mind-twistingly convoluted argument against… wait – is it rationing? or evidence-based medicine? What do you want to bet that, whatever happens to health-care reform (since the nation will continue to struggle with skyrocketing medical costs), in the current climate of rationing fears, they will be suspicious, even furious, believing [...]
Wed, September 23 2009 » Uncategorized » 5 Comments
Among the problems that arose during my appointment with Dr. Jamfingers was my lack of medical records from previous surgeons. In particular, the fact that I did not have any records of my most recent colonoscopy was a problem. He decided I had to get a whole new battery of tests, which he wrote down [...]
Tue, September 15 2009 » Uncategorized » 4 Comments
I had a dermatologist’s appointment yesterday afternoon, to get two moles removed. I left home thirty minutes before the appointment, drove to the medical center, and was in the parking garage with ten minutes to go. Then I realized: I’m at the wrong office. My dermatologist’s office was on the other side of town. Oops… [...]
Thu, September 10 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Dr. Wes is on a tear about President Obama’s speech; apparently, he didn’t spend enough time on malpractice reform. I suspect President Obama could have spent hours and hours on malpractice reform, and it would not have been enough. In any case, Dr. Wes thinks the reference to the 2006 article Obama co-authored with then-Senator [...]
Thu, September 10 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
#1 Dinosaur claims that the ‘dirty little secret’ of medicine is that patients can never be “partners” in their medical care, because they can never replicate a physician’s training and experience. This is why no amount of information — whether obtained from me, the internet, or even those really cool collections of pieces of dead [...]
Tue, September 8 2009 » Uncategorized » 3 Comments
The Washington Post ran an op-ed by Arthur M. Feldman, MD, titled “10 Things I Hate About Health Care Reform” in Sunday’s ‘Outlook’ section. As a former Post subscriber, I know their editorial board and Outlook in particular have a strong preference for contrarianism for its own sake, facts be damned. This is especially true [...]
Tue, September 8 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
A novel crime against decency by Duncan Cross
