Just Ask Oldguy

I am biased in this question, since I live in Canada. Let me tell you my story… which I’m afraid certain Republicans won’t like.

In late October 2008, I went to the doctor and he ordered a complete physical — lots of blood work, stool samples, the whole enchilada. A week later I went back for the results (now early November) and he went through them. Everything was fine, except my TSH levels were <0.01. This meant that my pituitary gland basically wasn’t making any TSH (a hormone). The doctor said that I needed to go to a specialist and asked me if I wanted him to contact one for me; he did say that it would probably take 4-5 weeks but since I probably had this condition a year or two, likely I could wait that long.

The next EVENING, after dinner, I get a call from the specialist. She says that she’s completely booked, but if I come in at 9:30 she will squeeze me in before her regular day started. So I went in for my appointment. Total time to see the specialist: under 2 days.

She looks at the chart and says: okay, so the way this works is your Pituitary gland makes TSH to tell your Thyroid to produce some hormones (T4 and T3, mostly). So if the Pituitary gland is making zero TSH, what’s happening is it’s essentially taking its foot “off the accelerator” and your Thyroid should slow down. Mostly likely, what’s happening is that your Thyroid is making a whole bunch of T4 without instruction from the Pituitary gland. Of course, it may also be that your Pituitary gland is out of whack, but that’s even more rare. Therefore, she ordered more tests (for T4 and T3) and told me to come back in 3 days (it might have been 2 days).

I went to the government funded clinic. There was no wait. No wait as in I didn’t even sit down. Fifteen minutes after my appointment with the specialist ended, my blood test was complete.

Two days later, I see the specialist again. She says “okay, it’s clear that you have hyperthyroidism, which is an overactive thyroid. I need to see just how overactive it is, so I need to send you to a hospital to take a thyroid test. What you need to do is not eat <list of foods> for 3 days once the hospital calls you. They’re pretty busy, so it might take 4 weeks or so. Do you want me to phone around and see who’s available first, or do you have a preference in hospitals?”. I chose for her to phone.

Two days later, I get a call from the hospital asking me if I can come in the next day. I say “sure”, but asked if there was any food or drink I need to avoid first (in the past, I’ve done tests where you can’t do things like drink anything for 24 hours first or whatever). They say “oh, yeah, we thought the doctor told you this already. It turned out I had to wait another day or two because that very night I just happened to have had sushi for dinner (the seaweed is high in iodine). Not their fault…

Anyway, 5 or 6 days after meeting the specialist I went in to drink some radioactive iodine at the appointed time and to then get scanned. I got to the hospital an hour early (and paid for 3 hours of parking at $3 per hour). I go to the front desk of the Nuclear Medicine department and they say: “Oh, you’re early. Come on in.”. Total wait time is, uh, negative one hour.

I’m out of there within half an hour or so. But I’ve paid for 3 hours of parking. I’m beginning to see how the medical system in Canada is funded. They get you to buy more hours of parking than you need. I drop off $10 with the ladies auxiliary in spite of this.

The doctor sees me a day or two later. We decide to try to slow down my thyroid using Tapazol, which is the European solution to the problem. Every week or so for the 6 or 8 weeks, I see the specialist and have a blood test. EVERY SINGLE APPOINTMENT has a wait under 15 minutes and EVERY SINGLE visit to the biomedical lab for the blood test has NO WAIT AT ALL. Well, there was one where I waited 5 minutes. But all the others were zero wait.

Twice, I get phone calls the day after my blood work, from the doctor herself, at home at about 9:30 pm for an adjustment to my medication.

The Tapazol isn’t working fast enough for her and my thyroid is actually producing MORE T4 than ever. Apparently I have a bionic thyroid, immune to the poison of Tapazol.

Think of Tapazol as being like chemotherapy… and what’s the American alternative to chemo? Right: radiation. So she decides I have to have a dose of radiation. A high enough dose that for 3 days I shouldn’t be near anybody. She sets up an appointment again with the hospital for me to have this mega dose of radioactive iodine.

I’ve had no waits so far, and decide to “test the system”. Besides, there was an article in one of the National Geographics that I wanted to read (it was about that Afghanistan girl with the incredible eyes – at my last visit I had seen this picture that referred to an even earlier National Geographic article about that girl: this article was apparently a follow up to see what had happened to her. Anyway, this time I go to the hospital well over an hour early because (a) so far I had had NO WAITING and (b) I wanted to read that article.

Just as I find the National Geographic I was looking for… I get called in. Total wait time: under 5 minutes.

You get the picture yet? No waits. No cost. A doctor phoning me at home. I could go on (and will if you like)… but how about this: It’s now March 7th and my latest blood test shows that my thyroid is STILL not slowing down very much. And I’m about to go on a 2 week cruise through the Panama Canal. So the doctor orders another blood test and simultaneously sets up an appointment for a second does of radioactive iodine at the hospital for March 10th (which just happens to be my birthday).

I have an appointment on the 9th first, though, to see how well my thyroid is absorbing iodine. This is important to do ahead of time because they need to know how much radioactive iodine to give me so that enough is absorbed by my thyroid (thereby damaging it, which will slow down it’s T4 production).

On the 10th, the specialist at the hospital says it would seem that it has to be a huge dose because there’s really not much uptake. But the note from my “normal specialist” says to wait for a call from her before proceeding. Within about 5 minutes, while they are preparing my super strong dose to kill my super duper thyroid off, the phone rings: it’s my doctor. The latest measurements say my T4 levels are now normal. The hospital specialist says “Ha! I knew I had the correct does the first time.”. I leave the hospital.

Again: no cost (other than parking). No waiting. A successful conclusion. About 3 calls at home from my doctor to modify my medication levels, my doctor calling the hospital to cancel the second dosage, going with the European method first because I’m not a fan of radiation.

Okay, then how about this: for one of my appointments, the specialist CAME TO HER OFFICE ON HER DAY OFF so that everything could be completed before my Panama cruise.

So, you see, I don’t think I can answer this question in an unbiased fashion. Our medical system may not be perfect, and for sure there are mistakes that happen. But in my personal experience it seems to work just fine. If they want to raise my taxes a bit more so that the medical system doesn’t suffer and so that the doctors and nurses (all of whom have treated me with good humor and appropriate respect for the past 53 years) are not underpaid, I’m okay with that.

But my biased answer is: A.

ROFL

No. The “global community” can agree on almost nothing, let alone what an “acceptable government” is. Ya got yer communists, yer democracies and yer dictatorships. Heck, some countries still don’t think universal health care is a good thing!

Here is my response to Disinfor… (yes, I write songs in my spare time; specialization is for insects). The numbering has to do with measures so I can coordinate the words and the music.

Oh, and as for the cheetah question: Yes. Because we’ll kill off all the living cheetahs and dead ones can’t run.

Dust to Rust

03 Dark as night,
04 so smooth, so right,
05 Thoughts drifting by,
06 of you and I
07 Neural junctions, random functions,
08 Currents in a human sea.
09 Like Hamlet said, baby
10 “To be or not to be”

11 12 13 14 (music)

15 I know you can
16 you feel it too
17 these phases that we
18 have all been through
19 The start of it all, do you recall
20 when your mind began?
21 Like Hamlet said, baby
22 “What a piece of work is a man”

23 24 25 26 (music)

chorus
27 28 Someone please tell me why I feel this way.
29 30 It’s programmed emotion, that’s the logical way.
31 32 Tell me, tell me please – do the androids play?
33 34 Just like you and me; two of them kissed today.

35 So, when I get older
36 (and fade away like a soldier),
37 having transferred my soul
38 to metal grey and cold
39 where am I then? Am I
40 Am I dead or alive?
41 Like Hamlet said, baby
42 “All that lives must die”

43 44 45 46 (music)

47 My electric clone
48 might fool even me
49 but what feeds a soul…
50 blood? or electricity?
51 currents flowi’, where it goi’?
52 our unique identity
53 Like Hamlet said, baby
54 “(Passing) through nature to eternity”

55 56 57 58 (music)

chorus
59 60 With mechanical devotion, who do androids pray to?
61 62 Here’s another question: what do androids pray for?
63 64 With mechanical devotion, do they pray all hours?
65 66 God rewards his most pious faithful followers

67 We’re really not so different;
68 (actually we’re the same).
69 An unplanned silicon challenge
70 to the evolution game
71 Transfer my soul, where do I go?
72 Both human and machine.
73 Like Hamlet said, baby,
74 “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

75 76 77 78 (music)

79 Dust to dust
80 and rust to rust
81 Programmed love
82 and human lust
83 I can see our futures
84 our futures, they are entwined
85 Like Hamlet said, “Thus bad begins…
86 and worse remains behind.”

87 88 89 89 (music)

chorus
90 91 Someone please tell me why I feel this way.
92 93 It’s programmed emotion, that’s the logical way.
94 95 With mechanical devotion, who do androids pray to?
96 97 Here’s another question: what do androids pray for?
98 99 With mechanical devotion, do they pray all hours?
100 101 God rewards his most pious faithful followers…

Great Question!

I do note with interest that in another forum topic, vajeans comments that he’s zoophobic. Therefore he thinks maybe fish or ants are the best pets. Having just removed a 25-year-old retaining wall that was riddled with ants, I’m not much of an ant fan… but I presume vajeans was talking about an ant farm, which keeps them safely behind glass just like fish in an aquarium.

And all of the above reminds me of a true story about when Kate was very, very young. She asked her mother if she would be allowed to have a pet. Her mother asked “what kind of pet do you want?” Kate’s answer was: “One that doesn’t go to the bathroom.”

So there you have it: vajeans and Kate have one important criterion for petdom that they share: the pet should not go to the bathroom (or, if it does, it should be trained to use a toilet (including wiping and flushing)). I must say that I concur… Kate eventually got a dog which used our entire back yard has his personal latrine; we didn’t get to use it. Except that twice I year I would go out there with a weed-whacker to keep the weeds at least somewhat short. Do you know what’s even worse than hitting a slug with a weed-whacker? You’ve probably guessed: dog excrement. I often just threw my weed-whacking clothing away at the end of the session. Of course, it also got on my face and in my hair, so I would be forced to use the Canadian Cold water from a garden hose to clean myself.

Some people believe that the reason I’ve still got lots of hair despite being well over 50 has to do with the potent fertilization qualities of dog excrement, dispersed in a fine mist via a good weed-whacker…

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that somebody will be able to genetically engineer a dog that doesn’t eat just about anything and thereby produces excrement of widely varying composition.

BUT IF THEY DID: I’d be all over it. Imagine a dog that had a few genes from a Kangaroo Rat. The Kangaroo Rat has evolved special kidneys that extract most of the water from their urine and special nasal cavities that extract water from their breath. As a result, they produce only a few drops of (very concentrated) urine per day and their feces is highly concentrated hard pellets.

AND: if they could have them collect those hard pellets and drop them in a toilet (where those few drops of urine would also be dropped), you might have the makings of a good pet.

Morality… Ethics… Religion… here’s the thing about that: the person generally considered to be the “Father of Genetics” is Gregor Mendel. He was German, and it would be all too easy to suggest that Hitler and Company came by their interest in “Aryan genetic superiority” honestly by virtue of genetics being something that Germans seem to have a gene for. So I won’t. But I WILL point out that Gregor attended the Augustine Abby of St. Thomas in Brno starting in 1843. Here’s a link to the abby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Thomas%27s_Abbey,_Brno Anyway, see the connection? The theory of genetics came out of a religious institution in the first place! It was a religious group that let the genie out of the bottle! So I suppose we can blame them for all the bad things that come from playing around with genes and chromosomes ever since.

Okay, seriously, here are my opinions on the matter of genetically engineered pets in point form:

- we have lots of dog breeds because people genetically select dogs and breed pairs with similar characteristics to strengthen that characteristic. That’s genetic modification. We do the same with cats, horses, cattle, etc. Is that evil? It is in that we don’t seem to let those dogs just naturally fall in love: they’re paired off like in an arranged marriage (which apparently have a higher probability of success than a marriage of the heart… but I digress).

- therefore: genetically engineering animals “the natural way” seems to be well accepted by society and has been for a very long time, even before Monks in the Abby started playing with peas to see how genetics might really work.

- HOWEVER: manipulating genes and chromosomes at that atomic level is kind of dangerous. Sure, I’d like a dog that could speak and understand, used the toilet and didn’t smell bad. If it glowed in the dark as well, that would be kind of cool. But there might be some unintended side-effects of humans playing with genes at that level. Perhaps dogs would hatch a play to take over our world (much like Dogbert… who you must admit is highly intelligent…)

There is a particularly good site where discussions of the ethics and morality of genetic manipulation take place. I refer you to: http://emonk.org

Personally, I think humans are just a step in evolution and that evolution is about to change from purely biological entities to cyborgs. But that just may be me…