by Sandy Sand
Most grannies will do what it takes to visit the grandkids, be it hopping on a train, plane or bus, or even making a phone call, but not this kind of call: A bomb treat to the kids school.
Velma Gladys Brewster, 51, of San Antonio, Texas, was booked on charges of making a terrorist threat to Windcrest Elementary School in northeastern San Antonio. She is free on bail.
After receiving the phoned threat that was left on the school‘s voicemail, school officials evacuated the campus of more than 700 students. A thorough search of the school and it’s grounds revealed that there were no explosives, police said.
The reason given for Brewster’s ouster from the campus was because her daughter did not leave permission for her to visit her grandchildren at school, officials said.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Death of Death Panels
It’s usually hard to kill of something that doesn’t exist.
There may not be any death panels, but the rumor that there are such panels just won’t lie down and die no matter how many people from the president on down say it “just isn’t so.”
It’s like trying to stop any rumor, like Elvis lives, which then becomes urban legend, which too many people believe.
If there really were death panels, I be the first to apply for a job on one, because not allowing someone to die or to make his or her own decisions about his or her own end-of-life is as bad as forcing someone to hang on who’s in severely ill and wants to released from his or her pain and suffering.
What it really is -- and something that’s been a MediCare provision for more than 20 years -- is informing patients about their end-of-life options, Living Wills and that sort of thing, which MediCare will pay for.
What is beyond my comprehension is “paying for that service.”
Or experience with a family member who suffered a severe stroke several years ago was this:
During the six agonizing years he survived after a stroke, he must have been seen by two dozen or more different doctors.
Along every step of the way, each doctor told us what his options were after the initial prognosis of “you might want to think about pulling the plug,” because his chances of survival are slim to none.
“Slim to none” turned out to be six miserable years that involved convalescent homes, two doctors forced upon us by his insurance company that were so bad I had to get a restraining order against them to prevent them from coming anywhere near him, several surgeries, feeding tubes, diapers and all kinds of dehumanizing, humiliating experiences for him to endure.
Enduring all that was okay by him, but for a huge number of people it wouldn’t be okay.
They would choose to refuse all treatment including antibiotics that were really what was keep him alive by killing off the myriad of infections that kept attacking his withering body, and that’s where things like Living Will and specific instructions come in.
This is why it is so important for each person -- even the young, not just us old codgers and coderesses -- to plan in advance and decide how we want to exit the world.
The simple act of refusing antibiotics would have put a quick end to the whole affair, because he would have gotten pneumonia and been gone within two or three weeks.
I won’t even go into the expenses involved in keeping a “dead person lying” alive, except to say that in California when you qualify for the MediCal supplement to MediCare, the States places a lien on all property, which must eventually be sold off and the money paid to the State.
In our case, the expenses amassed are more than $5 million dollars and no one except a Got Rocks like the Wall Street thieves and their ilk can afford to stay alive to die anyway days, weeks, months or years down the road.
Six years in a convalescent home to the tune of forty grand a month…and that doesn’t count all the doctors, hospitals and other expenses along the way.
At the end when he went into an irrevocable coma and the antibiotics no longer had any effect, the attending physicians of which there were three, because none of them worked more than three days in a row, still kept informing us of our options.
Not once in that entire six years did any doctor charge us for end-of-life counseling.
So unless you make an appointment with an attorney or with a doctor to take up his office time to specifically discuss the mater, I don’t understand where these charges come from.
Yes, you have to pay for a Living Will just as you have to pay for any last will and testiment, but not for the advice about getting one.
The advice we got was FREE and usually received while we were standing in the hall outside our relative’s room.
There may not be any death panels, but the rumor that there are such panels just won’t lie down and die no matter how many people from the president on down say it “just isn’t so.”
It’s like trying to stop any rumor, like Elvis lives, which then becomes urban legend, which too many people believe.
If there really were death panels, I be the first to apply for a job on one, because not allowing someone to die or to make his or her own decisions about his or her own end-of-life is as bad as forcing someone to hang on who’s in severely ill and wants to released from his or her pain and suffering.
What it really is -- and something that’s been a MediCare provision for more than 20 years -- is informing patients about their end-of-life options, Living Wills and that sort of thing, which MediCare will pay for.
What is beyond my comprehension is “paying for that service.”
Or experience with a family member who suffered a severe stroke several years ago was this:
During the six agonizing years he survived after a stroke, he must have been seen by two dozen or more different doctors.
Along every step of the way, each doctor told us what his options were after the initial prognosis of “you might want to think about pulling the plug,” because his chances of survival are slim to none.
“Slim to none” turned out to be six miserable years that involved convalescent homes, two doctors forced upon us by his insurance company that were so bad I had to get a restraining order against them to prevent them from coming anywhere near him, several surgeries, feeding tubes, diapers and all kinds of dehumanizing, humiliating experiences for him to endure.
Enduring all that was okay by him, but for a huge number of people it wouldn’t be okay.
They would choose to refuse all treatment including antibiotics that were really what was keep him alive by killing off the myriad of infections that kept attacking his withering body, and that’s where things like Living Will and specific instructions come in.
This is why it is so important for each person -- even the young, not just us old codgers and coderesses -- to plan in advance and decide how we want to exit the world.
The simple act of refusing antibiotics would have put a quick end to the whole affair, because he would have gotten pneumonia and been gone within two or three weeks.
I won’t even go into the expenses involved in keeping a “dead person lying” alive, except to say that in California when you qualify for the MediCal supplement to MediCare, the States places a lien on all property, which must eventually be sold off and the money paid to the State.
In our case, the expenses amassed are more than $5 million dollars and no one except a Got Rocks like the Wall Street thieves and their ilk can afford to stay alive to die anyway days, weeks, months or years down the road.
Six years in a convalescent home to the tune of forty grand a month…and that doesn’t count all the doctors, hospitals and other expenses along the way.
At the end when he went into an irrevocable coma and the antibiotics no longer had any effect, the attending physicians of which there were three, because none of them worked more than three days in a row, still kept informing us of our options.
Not once in that entire six years did any doctor charge us for end-of-life counseling.
So unless you make an appointment with an attorney or with a doctor to take up his office time to specifically discuss the mater, I don’t understand where these charges come from.
Yes, you have to pay for a Living Will just as you have to pay for any last will and testiment, but not for the advice about getting one.
The advice we got was FREE and usually received while we were standing in the hall outside our relative’s room.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Italian Nobel scientist is going strong at 100
The Nobel Prize-winning Italian scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini celebrated her 100th birthday this spring.
Sandy Sand wrote a tribute article:
"At 100, Levi-Montalcini said her mind is sharper now than it was when she was 20.
Her experiments led to identification of the growth factor of neuronal cells (nerve growth factor, also known as NGF) for which she and American Stanley Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986, when Levi-Montalcini was 77."
More
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Actress Patty Duke Tells Boomers if She Can Learn to Apply for Social Security Online, So Can They
by Sandy Sand
Boomers aren’t the only ones who are terrified of these new-fangled computer contraptions.
I was nowhere near “boomerage” when I was forced to learn how to compute for my newspaper job.
I stalled kicking, screaming, wailing, moaning and flailing my arms right up to the last class my company offered and I no choice, but to attend.
Without a wink of sleep the night before, I tip-toed into the room and took a seat in the back until I was spotted by the eagle-eyed instructor, who made me the object of his tutelage.
It turned out my worrying and wailing was for naught; I caught on faster than anyone…but…the BIG BUT…
Just like typing, when I took a class just long enough to memorize how to navigate my way around the keyboard, I dropped the class. My approach to computerizing was -- and remains to this day -- the same.
I can navigate my way around the Web, but I find the entire thing totally bewitching, bothering and bewildering.
Oh, I’d like to be one with computers, but just like having a clean house, not enough to do anything about it.
I want a magic computerized pill to make me a digital age genius.
Boomers are finding that they are facing that same confusion and bafflement of computer machines, even though they are an easy means of access to applying for their Social Security benefits. Benefits they worked for all their lives to receive when they reach retirement age.
I don’t remember how my kids helped their grandfather apply for Social Security, but I think they did it the old-fashioned way by phone and Pony Express snail mail.
No matter. That was a while back.
According to the Associated Press, Social Security Administration (SSA) officials are estimating that 10,000 boomers a day will apply for benefits over the next 20 years.
Coming online, so to speak, are “80 million baby boomers,” said Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue. "We just don't have the infrastructure to handle that workload in the traditional fashion."
Instead of driving and standing in line, SSA has made if easy by instituting a new online service that gets applicants from the “here” of their homes to the “there” of receiving benefits in about 15 minutes.
This will also be of great benefit for disability applicants who find traveling difficult, as well as rural retirees, who don’t have easy access to near-by SSA field offices.
Here’s where Patty Duke enters the picture.
The Academy Award-winning actress is the spokeswoman for the Retire Online campaign, and admits that her own computer skills “are wanting.”
“I was able to do it (apply online) with my limited skills,” Duke said after her husband gave her a demonstration. “It was very user-friendly.”
When I’m ready to boom and collect, I’ll check out www.socialsecurity.gov and click on "Applying Online for Retirement Benefits.
If it proves to be as easy a go as they say it is, I’ll give it my 15 minutes, but if it’s a wonderment, I’ll bribe one of my kids to do it for me.
I’ve done it before, and it’s always worked.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11388978
Boomers aren’t the only ones who are terrified of these new-fangled computer contraptions.
I was nowhere near “boomerage” when I was forced to learn how to compute for my newspaper job.
I stalled kicking, screaming, wailing, moaning and flailing my arms right up to the last class my company offered and I no choice, but to attend.
Without a wink of sleep the night before, I tip-toed into the room and took a seat in the back until I was spotted by the eagle-eyed instructor, who made me the object of his tutelage.
It turned out my worrying and wailing was for naught; I caught on faster than anyone…but…the BIG BUT…
Just like typing, when I took a class just long enough to memorize how to navigate my way around the keyboard, I dropped the class. My approach to computerizing was -- and remains to this day -- the same.
I can navigate my way around the Web, but I find the entire thing totally bewitching, bothering and bewildering.
Oh, I’d like to be one with computers, but just like having a clean house, not enough to do anything about it.
I want a magic computerized pill to make me a digital age genius.
Boomers are finding that they are facing that same confusion and bafflement of computer machines, even though they are an easy means of access to applying for their Social Security benefits. Benefits they worked for all their lives to receive when they reach retirement age.
I don’t remember how my kids helped their grandfather apply for Social Security, but I think they did it the old-fashioned way by phone and Pony Express snail mail.
No matter. That was a while back.
According to the Associated Press, Social Security Administration (SSA) officials are estimating that 10,000 boomers a day will apply for benefits over the next 20 years.
Coming online, so to speak, are “80 million baby boomers,” said Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue. "We just don't have the infrastructure to handle that workload in the traditional fashion."
Instead of driving and standing in line, SSA has made if easy by instituting a new online service that gets applicants from the “here” of their homes to the “there” of receiving benefits in about 15 minutes.
This will also be of great benefit for disability applicants who find traveling difficult, as well as rural retirees, who don’t have easy access to near-by SSA field offices.
Here’s where Patty Duke enters the picture.
The Academy Award-winning actress is the spokeswoman for the Retire Online campaign, and admits that her own computer skills “are wanting.”
“I was able to do it (apply online) with my limited skills,” Duke said after her husband gave her a demonstration. “It was very user-friendly.”
When I’m ready to boom and collect, I’ll check out www.socialsecurity.gov and click on "Applying Online for Retirement Benefits.
If it proves to be as easy a go as they say it is, I’ll give it my 15 minutes, but if it’s a wonderment, I’ll bribe one of my kids to do it for me.
I’ve done it before, and it’s always worked.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11388978
Monday, January 5, 2009
Come One, Come All. Get Your New People Parts
by Sandy Sand
For more than forty years physicians have been replacing worn out knee and hip joints.
Internal organs are replaced even though they are riddled with rejection problems.
External flaws, the ravages of aging and excess fat have people lining up at the body sculptors’ workshops.
According to CNN
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/01/03/connery.uk.bionic.knuckles.cnn
scientists have perfected bionic knuckles made of space age materials that prevent rejection by the body to give new life to old hands that are ravaged by arthritis.
All this body part replacement needs some reconsideration.
I rather like to compare our bodies to automobiles.
Put a new engine in an old car and it puts stress on the older un-replaced parts and they conk out.
Give a person a new efficient pump and it will put stress on weak old kidneys that can’t keep up.
Therefore, once our bones have finished growing and we’re fully matured adults (yeah, like that ever happens to our brains, anyway).
Brain transplants, anyone? But then you wouldn’t be you; you’d be him or her.
We should have all our body parts replaced at the same time before they all conk out like old auto parts.
Why put up with the crummy ones nature doled out to us?
For more than forty years physicians have been replacing worn out knee and hip joints.
Internal organs are replaced even though they are riddled with rejection problems.
External flaws, the ravages of aging and excess fat have people lining up at the body sculptors’ workshops.
According to CNN
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/01/03/connery.uk.bionic.knuckles.cnn
scientists have perfected bionic knuckles made of space age materials that prevent rejection by the body to give new life to old hands that are ravaged by arthritis.
All this body part replacement needs some reconsideration.
I rather like to compare our bodies to automobiles.
Put a new engine in an old car and it puts stress on the older un-replaced parts and they conk out.
Give a person a new efficient pump and it will put stress on weak old kidneys that can’t keep up.
Therefore, once our bones have finished growing and we’re fully matured adults (yeah, like that ever happens to our brains, anyway).
Brain transplants, anyone? But then you wouldn’t be you; you’d be him or her.
We should have all our body parts replaced at the same time before they all conk out like old auto parts.
Why put up with the crummy ones nature doled out to us?
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