Happy Kwanzaa?

Kwanzaa

Before you go wishing anyone a “Happy Kwanzaa” this week, allow me to let you all in on a little history lesson. Kwanzaa is a completely fake holiday invented by a violent felon named Ron Everett in the 1960s. He grew up on a poultry farm in Maryland and eventually changed his name to Ron Karenga. He was once charged with torturing members of his own cult. He eventually declared himself a “cultural nationalist” and began to teach others about the ancient African tradition of Kwanzaa which was completely made up out of his own crazy head. Kwanzaa is as much of a national holiday as “Festivus” from the old Seinfeld episode. So remember, if you wish someone a “Happy Kwanzaa”… the joke is on you.

Deep Freeze

boat frozen

A group of scientists who were out on an expedition to study the effects of global warming are currently trapped in a block of ice near Antarctica. It turns out that their research is going to focus on the deleterious effects of irony on nerds.

Fighting Words

Our society is establishing a disturbing trend in which we try to silence the arguments that we do not agree with. Being exposed to various points of view can serve as a useful tool to either modify or solidify the views that we already hold. Without exposure to counterarguments, there is no personal growth. Our society yells at each other too much and doesn’t listen enough. We are too often spoon fed what we are supposed to think by others and many of us have lost the ability to even defend our own points of view. We have become intellectually lazy. It has become much easier in our technological age to simply turn someone “off” rather than refute opposing points on their merit alone.

My Interesting Life

I have had an interesting life…

– I have held a 10-year-old child’s beating heart in my hand.

– I have built a robot that could dance and pick up trash off the floor.

– I have jumped out of a third story hotel window into a palm tree.

– I have hiked to the top of volcano.

– I have performed CPR on a woman at the bottom of a waterfall.

– I have delivered a baby on a helicopter.

– I have greeted the victims of Hurricane Katrina with food and medicine.

– I have been escorted out of an Eric Clapton concert by four police officers.

– I have been on the set during the filming of an episode of Adam-12.

– I have cut off a man’s leg.

– I have woken up underneath an automobile at a Motel 6.

– I have walked through the ruins of Pompeii, Italy.

– I have presented my research regarding the isomerization of isoxazolidinylmethyl tosylates to the American Chemical Society.

– I have knocked a guy’s teeth out with one punch.

– I have won an election as State Land Commissioner at Arkansas Boys State.

– I have created my own iPhone app.

– I have dressed up and sung a song as Mighty Mouse in front of hundreds of my peers.

– I have cracked the chest of a golden retriever.

– I have written an entire functional computer program using only assembly language.

– I have been “that guy” when a stewardess requested a doctor on an airplane in mid-flight.

– I have gotten my ear pierced in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

– I have assisted with an autopsy for a homicide at a U.S. Air Force base.

– I have stood next to my fiancée’s ex-husband as we witnessed the birth of my future stepson.

– I have been in a submarine off the coast of Hawaii.

– I have gone for a ride on the back of a fire engine wearing only my underpants.

– I have achieved the Field Marshal battle rank with my druid in World of Warcraft.

– I have acted as pediatrician while my wife performed a caesarean section.

– I have finished a complete marathon.

– I have vomited repeatedly while packed into a full stadium at a football game.

– I have journeyed to the top of a glacier in Alaska.

– I have cut a dead person completely in half through the midline using only a hand saw.

– I have assisted in brain surgery.

– I have been just a few feet away from a cluster of humpback whales that were bubble feeding.

– I have had my birthplace converted into a tourist attraction and museum.

– I have sat across the dinner table from Bill and Hillary Clinton as we all ate raccoons.

– I have placed an endotracheal tube in a person’s airway while my pants were around my ankles.

How many people can say they did all of that?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Code Blue

I have had many funny things happen to me in my life. The general consensus among most of my friends is that one particular story stands out as the single most absurdly funny thing to ever happen to me. The incident occurred in the first year of my medical residency and against my better judgment I have decided to share this story with the rest of the world.

The evening began innocently enough. Little did I know that by the end of this evening, I would be setting a state record that would still stand to this day. I was a 26-year-old medical intern on call at the hospital on Thanksgiving night. One of the other resident’s wives was nice enough to bring me a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner because she knew I was stuck in the hospital for the night. Unfortunately, this delicious meal had a little “extra something” that in retrospect was probably Salmonella. Within a few hours, I began vomiting uncontrollably. I was up in the call room, actively vomiting when I suddenly discovered that my intestines had another surprise for me. I started shooting from both ends like a water sprinkler and both my underwear and the lower half of my scrubs ended up in the trash.

This is where the real fun begins. Standing in the call room completely naked from the waist down, I realized that I had no other change of clothes available. I was working that night with a very nice young female resident as my supervisor. She was a tiny doctor who weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet. I called her for emergency back-up. “Hey, I need you to come up to the call room and bring me some scrubs…” I could tell that she was sitting one floor down in the Labor and Delivery area among a room full of nurses. “Why?” she asked. I hesitantly told her that I had become sick and had to throw my pants in the garbage. “YOU POOPED IN YOUR PANTS?” she asked loudly. “Damn it, you don’t have to advertise it, just bring me some clothes”, I barked.

I was in the call room bed under the sheets when there was a knock on my door. I told my upper level to come in and she barely stuck her head through the small space in the door frame. “Did you poop in your bed?” she inquired. “No, I did NOT poop in the bed. Do you have my scrubs?” I replied. She handed me the pair of scrub bottoms and exited the room. I realized quickly that I did not give my friend enough information. She had brought me a very petite sized pair of scrubs that she would probably wear for herself. I could not even pull these up over my knees. I immediately got her back on the phone, “These scrubs are too small”, I grumbled. “What size do you need?” she asked. “I don’t care. Just something bigger than these”, I answered quickly not knowing at the time that this simple statement would end up being the biggest mistake of the evening and perhaps even my life.

My upper level resident arrived back in the call room a few minutes later. As the intern, I had been holding the code pager and was responsible for any Code Blue emergency calls that evening. I had decided that I was in no condition to run a code and asked her if she would take the code pager for me. It apparently had been quite a while since she had actually run a code on her own and she looked at me as if I had handed her a dried up dog turd. “I guess so…” she said reluctantly while taking the pager. She left me alone once again to try on my new pants.

What I had been brought could not really be described as “pants”. They appeared to be something made by Omar the Tentmaker. I usually wore size 30 pants at that time and these were easily over the size of 50. Given that it was already 3:00 AM and I had gotten rid of the code pager, I decided that I did not care that I was wearing clown pants and decided to finally go to bed and try to get a few hours of sleep.

“CODE BLUE!” shouted a frightened voice on the other end of the phone about thirty minutes into my sleep. It was my upper level resident on the other end of the line. “Your code pager went off. Room 513! You have to go!”. “Damn it”, I thought to myself, “That is not what I meant when I asked you to take the code pager…” I bunched my giant scrub bottoms in both hands and began running across the hospital to meet with the code team.

As I entered the patient room to assess the situation, I kept my hands clutched firmly on my pants as I remembered that I was going “full commando”. The nursing supervisor maintained her professionalism as she described the patient’s sudden respiratory arrest. Many of the other fifteen people in the room must have noticed my grotesquely oversized scrub bottoms but said nothing. I quickly determined that this unconscious and critically ill patient was going to have to be intubated as soon as possible and placed on a ventilator.

As I positioned myself at the head of the patient’s bed, I realized that I was in a situation best described as a conundrum. I was the only person in the room that was qualified to perform the endotracheal intubation which is a two-handed procedure: One hand uses a tongue blade to lift the soft tissue structures and visualize the vocal cords while the other hand gently guides the ventilation tube into the trachea. Unfortunately, my pants required at least one hand to hold them up at all times. Time was of the essence and I had very little time to work out my strategy.

I quickly decided that if I spread my legs as far apart as humanly possible instead of stooping over, this would allow my pants to stay up long enough to perform the procedure. I spread my legs as far apart as they would go and picked up both instruments to perform the procedure. My scrub bottoms immediately fell to my ankles.

I was standing in a room full of women whose ages ranged from about 25 to around 65. There was a brief second of silence followed by an audible gasp. A young woman working as a respiratory therapist was stooped over right next to me while manually bagging the patient’s lungs. She looked up to discover that she was just a couple of feet from my manhood. I thought to myself briefly, “We are all medical professionals here. I can just quickly intubate this patient and then pull my pants back up”. I made a move towards the patient and the respiratory therapist’s eyes said it all, “Oh hell no, I am not working with that thing so close to my face…” She looked me directly in the eyes in order to avoid looking anywhere else. She gently shook her head and mouthed the word “no”. I placed the endotracheal tube back on the bed and pulled my giant pants back up to my waist. I leaned back toward this young woman and whispered, “Could you, maybe” I hesitated, “Could you hold my pants up for me?” She answered under her breath with a quick but decisive “No”. Her parents must have raised her to hold herself to a very high standard and I am sure they would have been proud of her. This was obviously never part of her job description.

Usually when running a code, the doctor will often ask the nurses to move the patient bed farther away from the wall to allow for more room. The nurses appeared to look confused as I asked them to move the bed towards the wall pinning me against it. I pushed my backside as hard as I could up against the wall in an attempt to hold my pants up. I once again picked up my instruments and moved towards the patient. As I lifted the patient’s head with the tongue blade, I could feel my pants fall to my ankles once again. I thought to myself “Screw it! I am finishing this right NOW!” I visualized the vocal cords and successfully placed the endotracheal tube in the patient’s airway in under three seconds, all while completely naked from the waist down.

The patient was eventually stabilized and was transferred to the ICU. He went on to make a full recovery.  Word quickly spread about the fastest pantless endotracheal intubation ever performed in the state.  The respiratory therapist and I both mutually decided that it would be in our best interest if we never spoke to or looked directly at each other ever again.

French Toast

The French Revolution in the late 1700s had multiple causes: A widening gap between the richest and poorest classes… a significant increase in food prices… political gridlock leading to soaring budget deficits… an economic crisis exacerbated by two prolonged wars that were not paid for… and an ineffective and feckless leader that ascended to power in the middle of the country’s financial downturn. I’m sure glad that we don’t have to worry about that kind of crap happening over here.

The Cowardly Act Of Deficit Spending

Prolonged deficit spending by a nation is not only a terrible solution to facing one’s problems but it is completely immoral. Saving our current crop of citizens by spending money that we don’t have comes at a steep cost. This is a price that must eventually be paid by the very young and unborn. This is like storming the beaches of Normandy holding up babies as human shields. It is comparable to adults throwing toddlers out of a lifeboat to make room for themselves. Generational deficit spending is a despicable act and is an embarrassment to our nation’s history. Survival for survival’s sake at the expense of the innocent is a cowardly act. As a people, we should all be better than this.

What Would Obamacare Look Like As Homeowner’s Insurance?

homeowner's insurance

 

1) No one can be denied homeowner’s insurance for any reason, even if their home has already been burned down or has been demolished by a tornado.

2) Everyone has to buy homeowner’s insurance for a ten bedroom mansion even if they live in an apartment or they are currently homeless. This will help offset the cost of people getting homeowner’s insurance AFTER their houses have already been destroyed.

3) The Federal Reserve would start printing an extra 80 billion dollars per month and loaning this to the federal government in order to provide subsidies for people who cannot afford to insure a mansion that they do not actually own.

4) People who already have homeowner’s insurance would be allowed to keep their current policy as long as the value of their home has not changed by more than five dollars.

5) We can spend 600 million dollars on a website with insurance exchanges available to help any people who might lose their old homeowner’s insurance. This website will crash every 20 seconds and will not retain any data.

I Told You So: The Obamacare Remix

I have had a difficult time expressing in words regarding exactly how I feel about this current Obamacare rollout.  I have decided that my feelings would be best expressed in song.  The result:  “I Told You So: The Obamacare Remix”.  I hope you all enjoy it.

Health Insurance 101

Hello, boys and girls! It’s time for another lesson in Economics 101. Today, we are going to be talking about how insurance works.

Insurance companies actually operate on very low profit margins. They are not like oil companies that make astronomical profits. What insurance companies do in general is take all of their estimated expenditures and subtract this from the total sum of all of their premiums leaving them with usually around 4 to 6 percent profit.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed a few years ago, the law made it perfectly clear that the estimated expenditures for insurance companies would increase significantly by removing previous restrictions on who qualified for insurance. The plan to offset this was going to force the young, healthy and uninsured people into the marketplace which would then increase the sum of the premium revenue. By adding 7 million previously uninsured patients, this would allow insurance companies to maintain their narrow profit margin.

If you look at the rate of individuals signing up so far, it would appear that this will extrapolate to well under 7 million people signing up for these health care exchanges. This will immediately put the squeeze on insurance companies. If the situation does not change, insurance companies will be forced to operate at a loss or drastically increase premiums to make up a difference.

I suspect that some politicians were aware that this would happen, and had a plan to eventually restrict insurance companies by law to keep them from raising premiums. This would eventually lead to the collapse of private insurance companies and set up the government as the single payer of last resort. However, things changed drastically in 2010 when the Republican Party gained control of the House. No such restrictions are likely to be placed on insurance companies for the near future.

If the President does not do something soon to get millions of healthy people into the system, the premiums on everyone’s insurance will start to dramatically increase. Insurance companies will have no choice in the matter. They will either have to increase premiums or stop making profit. The President will likely start accusing the insurance companies of being greedy because of this rise in premiums, but make no mistake about it… the Affordable Care Act will be the direct cause of everyone’s premiums going up.

The “Affordable Care Act” is not only a misnomer but it’s a ticking time bomb… and it is about to go “boom”.