I used to occasionally have a problem with an overnight power outage killing the alarm clock and causing me to oversleep, but I've more recently realized that having a UPS or three means never having to fear that again. :-) (Fortunately, today's power outage came after we were up, not in the middle of the night, and only lasted about five minutes ( Read more... )

In the comments here we were talking about health care in the US. The current system is broken in many ways, but the "nuke it and start over with some nationalized program" proposals are scary too. What incremental improvements are possible? I have to believe that there are some ( Read more... )

The most recent gathering of the Transarc doc group ( Read more... )

An article in my local dead-tree news reported on something I'd been wondering about for a while: are allergies and asthma more prevalent than they used to be (versus just being diagnosed more), and, if so, is it because of lifestyle changes? Yes and yes, apparently; research ( Read more... )

Wednesday I caught the beginnings of the crud that's been going around and started taking Sudafed aggressively to kill it before Yom Kippur, because fasting with a cold would suck. That didn't work, alas. Thursday night/Friday morning I noticed the first of two second-order effects: near as I can tell, the Sudafed -- whose job, after all, is to " ( Read more... )

A couple days ago, while changing the needle before giving Erik his fluids, I accidentally jabbed myself with the used needle. I called my vet to ask if the kind of hepatitis that Erik (likely) has can be transmitted to humans. She said she didn't think so but I should consult my doctor. (She said that he doesn't have the human strains, like B ( Read more... )

Dear $health_insurance_provider ( Read more... )

I saw my opthamologist for my regular checkup today and was surprised to learn that medicine's understanding of glaucoma has changed since it was last explained to me. I guess I think of glaucoma as an old, well-understood disease that doesn't change much ( Read more... )

My dentist (Katsur Dental, "we cater to cowards") gets points for making things so easy:

Me: I think this 27-year-old filling is loose.
D: (poke) It's not exactly loose, but it's disintegrating in place. Would you like me to replace that for you now?
Me: Sure.
D: Novacaine?
Me: Will I regret saying no?
D: I'm the one dealing the pain. You have ( Read more... )

I'm allergic to Pennsic. (Well, to dust and grass and pollen and weeds and...) So I take Allegra for about three weeks each year to deal with that, but don't take it the rest of the year. (I don't want to develop a resistance to it like I did to all previous allergy drugs save one [1 ( Read more... )