Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m Changing My Name

Posted on by ninjanurse

to ‘A Cast of Thousands’. Or maybe ‘Adored Supermodel Genius Green’. Reinventing oneself is a fine way of defining oneself to the world. It worked for Laurence Tureaud, When he changed his name to Mr.T…

I think about my father being called ‘boy’, my uncle being called ‘boy’, my brother, coming back from Vietnam and being called ‘boy’. So I questioned myself: ‘What does a black man have to do before he’s given the respect as a man?’ So when I was 18 years old, when I was old enough to fight and die for my country, old enough to drink, old enough to vote, I said I was old enough to be called a man. I self-ordained myself Mr. T so the first word out of everybody’s mouth is ‘Mr.’ That’s a sign of respect that my father didn’t get, that my brother didn’t get, that my mother didn’t get.

That’s kind of sublime. So let’s move on to the ridiculous.

One Million Moms are ganging up on Ellen DeGeneres. They are an online organization. Their website lacks piquancy or finesse. Maybe those qualities are too gay. If you follow that link, you will see that the first thing the Moms want to clarify is that they have nothing to do with the Million Mom March. For sure. That event, May 14, 2000, drew an estimated 750,000 to the White House–I mean physically riding buses to get there. I was in that crowd, and it was vast.

Maybe there really are One Million Moms ready to click a mouse to stop the threat of Ellen DeGeneres making gay look nice (because she is gay and she is nice).

And then again, maybe it’s the American Family Association, a handful of women, and a lot of spambots. How would we know? Ellen doesn’t seem too worried.

J.C.Penney doesn’t seem worried, either. I think they are showing class and confidence, but they probably also ran the numbers and concluded they were not going to lose a million customers for not throwing Ellen under the bus.

In related news, ‘Joe’ the ‘plumber’ is back in politics. God Bless America, land of opportunity.

Bursting With Food Energy

Posted on by ninjanurse

That’s the kind of copy advertising agents would put on a box of candy-coated cereal before they realized that even the American public knows ‘food energy’ is another word for ‘calories’.

‘Extreme’– a manly word, still works. MacDonald’s sold a lot of ‘Double Down’ sandwiches by appealing to our inner ‘bad boy’. The Jack in the Box Bacon Milkshake sounds like an idea whose time has come.

The bacon shake is made with no actual bacon, just real vanilla ice cream, bacon-flavored syrup, whipped topping and a maraschino cherry, according to the website. We were thinking this had to be the most trayf food known to mankind before we saw the ingredient list. We’ll get to the nutritional info in a minute.

If you guessed a thousand calories, you’re guessing low. I love it that most of the ingredients are not found in nature. ‘Whipped topping’?

I start the ‘ShapeUpRI’ weight loss study on Monday. I went to a meeting last night and there– placed on each chair– were the dreaded books. Like in the TRIM study, we’re going to record every calorie we eat. With a bacon shake and a bunch of celery, I’ll be good for a week.

Gain a Child, Lose a Tooth

Posted on by ninjanurse

Pregnancy and childbirth are profound events in the life of women and families, no less physically than spiritually.

‘Gain a child, lose a tooth’, even in 2007, the New York Times Science section concludes that there’s some truth to this old saying.

A recent poll shows that a majority of Catholics support including birth control in health insurance coverage.

I suspect that many Catholics have some firsthand knowledge of the toll repeated pregnancies can take on a woman who is beyond her best physical health or a family that is stretched beyond its means.

Do we really want to limit birth control? To put an extra financial burden on the poorest women? Would it be a better world if women had ‘as many children as God gives them’? Was it a better world for women and children when choices were few and contraception unreliable?

All decisions have consequences. The decision to limit childbearing affects women, families and society. Can we trust those women and families to make that decision? If not, who should we trust?

Edge of Glory

Posted on by ninjanurse

I’m trying to relax at home, my husband is watching TV but mutes most of the commercials because they get on my nerves. I hear subliminal messages in them and fear being turned into the Manchurian Shopper.

But now I have a new fear (bummer after a stressful enough day at work). There is a cheap, easily concealed device that can turn a simple credit card into a deadly weapon.

It’s called, Edge of Glory.

They call it a ‘knife sharpener’, but after you see the AmEx card cleaving a tomato like a samurai sword– will you ever feel secure again? Wallets full of razor-honed plastic, invisible to metal detectors. What could a terrorist do with this?

How will we feel safe in airport lines, knowing that the hair conditioner and nail file is confiscated– while the deadly weaponized driver’s license passes through undetected by the minimum-wage guys and gals we call, ‘security’?

The only safe course of action now is to print our picture ID on paper towels.

Winter Vegetable Pasta with White Wine and Parmesan

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

Reblogged from The Scrumptious Pumpkin:

Click to visit the original post

  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post

I could eat this pasta every day of the week.  It’s so simple but such a delicious combination of flavors with the sweetness of the squash, the crisp kale, the hint of thyme and white wine, and the salty, cheesy Parmesan. I try to make one meatless meal a week – eating a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables and low in processed and red meats is proven to help you maintain a healthy weight and lower your risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.  The meat industry generates vast amounts of …

Gov. Howard Dean Continues to Talk Sense

Posted on by ninjanurse

This past Saturday, February 4, former governor of Vermont and 2004 presidential candidate Dr.Howard Dean spoke at the Providence Public Library for the kickoff of ‘Shape Up RI’.

He was introduced by Brown graduate, Dr. Rajiv Kumar, founder of ‘Shape Up RI’. Dr.Kumar said, “I was a Deaniac, knocking on doors in New Hampshire for Governor Dean’s presidential campaign. Howard Dean had a commitment to health care for all Americans as a human right, and we are the only industrialized nation not providing that care.”

Howard Dean, author of ‘Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer’ was a passionate advocate for health care reform during his tenure as governor of Vermont, and left the state with near-universal health care coverage for pregnant women and children under 18, a model for the country. Vermont is also a model for affordable health insurance for adults.

Howard Dean started with thanks to the bipartisan effort to engage Rhode Islanders in taking charge of our health. He was realistic about the challenges, “it’s incredibly hard from a medical perspective to lose weight.’ but optimistic about our capacity to improve our health “we have an empowered generation on the internet.”

He was critical of the present state of health care, “we have an illness-based system, not a wellness-based system. If you want to focus on preventive care in the present economy, “you are swimming upstream against your wallet. Instead of fee-for-service we have to have a different way of doing this–an incentive to create wellness. Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) vertically integrate care. Financial incentives are beginning to align with wellness.”

Howard Dean took a heavy political hit for his plain-spoken advocacy for universal access to health care. He was at times critical of the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (known by its opponents as Obamacare) for not going far enough, particularly in failing to provide a public option as an alternative to private insurance companies. At Providence Public, he defended the Act as a move in the right direction toward universal health care. He noted that the Affordable Care Act is modeled on MassHealth, which covers 98% of Massachusetts citizens.

Dr.Dean spoke about end of life care and advance directives, and addressed the ‘death panel’ slur that clouded the debate. “Seniors fear loss of control of their dying process. Most will want to die at home.” He said that the seniors who want ‘everything done’ can have their wishes respected, that we have the means to provide that care for those who choose it. I have worked in geriatric care for about 30 years and the vast majority of patients I’ve talked to want to maintain the power to tell their doctors when to stop. The current system will ‘do everything’ unless there is a document or responsible person to say otherwise. That is the reason for an advance directive. “The answer is not rationing–it is to change the incentive to reward wellness. It is to return power to patients at really important parts of their lives.”

Dr.Dean continues to bring common sense and decency to a debate too often muddied by partisan politics.

If our wealth is our people, we cannot continue to waste health and lives by denying health care, especially preventive care, to those who need it the most.

About a hundred people came to hear Dr.Dean speak on Saturday, we’ll continue to hear his message, because this is the future of health care.

Talking Dirty to Ron Paul

Posted on by ninjanurse

Remember Dan Quayle? He was the vice-president for George Bush I who was cruelly and sometimes unfairly mocked in the press for being really dumb.

He did say things that were ignorant, and callous, too. Here is what he had to say about abortion in the case of rape…

“My position is that I understand from a medical situation, immediately after a rape is reported, that a woman normally, in fact, can go to the hospital and have a D and C. At that time… that is before the forming of a life. That is not anything to do with abortion.”

Vice President Dan Quayle explaining that Dilatation and Curettage, a form of abortion which occurs after fertilization, is not really abortion.
Reported in the Washington post, 11/03/88

Medically this is insane. A woman who has suffered a rape, possibly an exposure to a disease, will not stroll into the hospital to have her womb scraped out–(presumably to remove all the microscopic sperm that are striving to create the miracle of life.) In 1988 that woman would be lucky if she were even able to get competent and compassionate medical care at any random ER. The practice of the forensic exam for rape and medical treatment of victims is a recent development in women’s care.

You might not expect a politician whose greatest talent was looking good in a suit to be well-informed about these things, or especially concerned for victims of crime. But it really is frightening that Quayle’s statement was in the context of stating his opposition to legal abortion in all cases, and knowing that he had considerable power to influence policy that affects women’s lives. And knowing that he was so callously disinterested in those women that he never even bothered to find out what happens to a rape victim who seeks emergency help.

Legal abortion remains controversial. There are a range of opinions on when, or whether, it might be necessary for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. Surely an obstetrician, a man who puts his experience as a doctor front and forward as a reason to trust his judgement on matters related to the practice of health care in America– surely that man should speak with knowledge and compassion. Surely his experience in caring for thousands of women would put a face on the reality of sexual assault. Sadly, this crime is so common that anyone who is dedicated to women’s health has heard survivor stories.

Instead, Dr. Ron Paul shows his disinterest in the reality of women’s lives, in current practice for care of crime victims, his judgementalness and lack of curiosity or willingness to look beyond the rigid thinking he has shown on this issue.

In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Ron Paul echoes Dan Quayle.

He says that ‘if it’s honest rape’ a woman should go ‘immediately to the ER to get a shot of estrogen. An hour or a day after, you have no medical or legal problem.’ When Piers Morgan asks Ron Paul what happens if the victim is ashamed or unable to get help and shows up days or weeks later, Paul dodges the question and goes into a rant about women demanding abortions of late-term pregnancies.

I will post a transcript when one becomes available.

Just for the record, ‘a shot of estrogen’ is not the current standard of care for a rape victim. The infamous ‘morning after’ pill is what is given. The rape exam can be done up to 4 days after the assault, though the chance of getting DNA evidence decreases with time. Medical care for a woman who has been injured, fears a sexually transmitted disease, or an unwanted pregnancy can be done later.

Ron Paul seems to be saying that if you can’t prove sperm met egg, it’s okay. He also says, ‘if it’s honest rape’. Who will be the judge of that? Anyone who has worked with victims of crime– any crime, knows that the story can be confused, contradictory and sordid. Should the rape exam include an inquisition as to whether the victim has a right to treatment at all?

We’re almost thirty years on, and still a man presumes to make policy for women’s lives– displaying a mistrust of women’s honesty, and a disinterest in the dirty details of what happens in the real world.

Follow this link for the standard of care for sexual assault survivors.

Follow this link for information about Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) , a nursing specialty instituted because doctors were unable to provide the sensitive, meticulous and time-consuming care needed by victims who come to the ER.

Any time a rapist is brought to justice by DNA evidence we should thank the SANE nurses who give respectful care to all victims. We should thank the women, physicians and nurses, who created this nursing specialty to help women to find care and healing.

Lost More Than Money

Posted on by ninjanurse

The LA Times brings up an aspect of the Susan G. Komen Foundation decision that has an impact beyond money…

The Komen decision will probably prompt more attacks on Planned Parenthood, which has long provided low-cost medical care to women in need.

SGK is demonstrating their conclusion that Planned Parenthood is unreliable and unworthy of support from a well-respected organization. This would be a severe blow to the reputation and fundraising efforts of PP if the decision were not so widely seen as political.

Nancy Brinker may say that the criticism she’s facing is ‘hurtful’, but she offers no recognition of the fact that Planned Parenthood has provided women’s health care in the face of extreme and vicious language and physical violence.

Pink Politics and Planned Parenthood

Posted on by ninjanurse

Planned Parenthood, an organization that has faced decades of opposition ranging from incendiary language to incendiary bombs and bullets, has been disowned by one of its former allies in women’s health, the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Founder Nancy Brinker seems to think that it’s out of bounds to question the role of politics in this decision…

Planned Parenthood had received about $700,000 annually from Komen to provide poor women with breast cancer screening, education and access to affordable mammograms…

“The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful to so many of us,” said Brinker, who founded the group following her sister’s death in 1980 of breast cancer. “More importantly, they are a dangerous distraction from the work that still remains to be done in ridding the world of breast cancer.”

But philanthropy experts said it will be difficult for Komen to convince people it wasn’t playing politics.

Wow. Try going to work with a police escort and a safety plan for bomb threats if you want hurtful. Try hearing in the press that your organization is dumped because of a trumped-up investigation if you want scurrilous. Komen’s bad publicity is self-inflicted. Planned Parenthood didn’t ask to be publicly disowned as untrustworthy by an organization that till now has been second only to ‘Jerry’s Kids’ in tugging America’s heartstrings.

A Mother Jones article lists the exceptions Susan G. Komen Foundation makes to its new rule against funding organizations under investigation. Apparently the Foundation is using selective enforcement.
Jen, a commenter on the article, posted this link to a blogger, dinoiafamily, who describes her own recent battle with breast cancer and the humiliation of being pink-washed…

I spent a good portion of the last year mortified about the type of cancer I had. I received a pink basket in the hospital (for my original surgery) filled with pink, plastic items that included a poem and a “tiddy” bear. I was supposed to be cheered up by the poem, as it was about another woman and how she received a fabulous new set of breasts. I was also supposed to be thrilled by the junk in the basket. Instead I was mortified. A gift basket of organic fruit would be one thing (and, yes, we did receive those and loved them), but this was just beyond painful. Rubbing the pink-washing in my face once again. The basket just reminded me that because I had this recent blip, I was supposed to become a member of another club. Well, no, thank you.

Please understand that not everything pink disturbs me and I know that many pink ribbons are truly meant as a sign of support. However, Komen is not supportive. Coloring buckets of fried chicken pink is not supportive. Putting pink ribbons on products that we don’t need or want is not supportive. In fact, for many of us, it’s a reminder of times we’d rather forget. If anything, Komen was extremely unsupportive when I was diagnosed.

Did they come to my house and cook me meals when I was sick? No, but my friends ensured we were had groceries and dinners for months. Did they visit me in the hospital or take care of my kids? No, but my friends and family made sure that happened. Well, what did they do?

They stepped up their efforts to get money from me. It was almost as if my name was on a new high priority list. As though because I had been diagnosed, I suddenly had the ability and desire to give to an organization that, in my opinion, has done little towards their supposed goal. It took three letters from me and three phone calls from Peter to have my name removed from their mailing list.

Dinoiafamily examines the marketing, message and high administrative costs that make Susan G. Komen a questionable cause to donate to. Read the rest of her excellent post here.

I’m not especially fond of pink anyway, and in years of nursing I’ve seen way too many slick campaigns for pharmaceutical companies and charities. If you had just arrived from Mars you would think that Cancer or AIDS or Diabetes makes people attractive and full of confidence, as they spend their days strolling beaches and frolicking with grandchildren. Guys, being sick sucks. Put that on a bumper sticker.

Planned Parenthood is accessible health care for young and uninsured women. They were my only health care when I was young, as for many of us. The young woman with a breast lump is a statistical outsider, but she is also the one whose life is saved by early detection. She is the woman who can find help at Planned Parenthood. When I needed birth control, Planned Parenthood was there, and they gave me screening, education and prevention information as well.

A few years ago I was invited to go on a Walk for the Cure. I will never forget the huge number of people who turned out. Some in teams. Some wearing shirts with a picture of a mother or a sister or a friend. I never had realized just how many people are affected by breast cancer. Now at an age where family and friends are survivors, I understand what it is to dread a disease.

Pink ribbons and a positive attitude won’t stop cancer. Detection, prevention and research will. I’m sorry that Susan G. Komen chose to put politics over women’s lives. Twenty percent of American women have visited a Planned Parenthood clinic at least once. That’s a constituency. Donations have been pouring in. It may be that the Komen Foundation has mis-judged the real situation of the women they exist to serve.

UPDATE: A third high-ranking member of the Komen Foundation is ready to resign over the decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood…

Dr. Kathy Plesser, a Manhattan radiologist on the medical advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s New York chapter, said she plans to resign from her position unless Komen reverses its decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood.

“I’m a physician and my interest is women’s health, and I am disturbed by Komen’s decision because I am a very strong advocate for serving under-served women,” Plesser told The Huffington Post. “Eliminating this funding will mean there’s no place for these women to go. Where are these women to go to have a mammography? Do they not deserve to have mammography?”

With her decision, Plesser joins Komen’s top public health official, Mollie Williams, and the executive director of Komen’s Los Angeles County chapter, Deb Anthony, both of whom also resigned in protest.

MORE: Dave Von Ebbers links to this law journal article about how much donor money the Komen Foundation spends suing other breast cancer charities for using words like ‘for a cure’.

Over the past fifteen years, the Foundation has reviewed eighty-three different groups who have attempted to use the phrase “for the cure” or “for a cure” and pursued legal action against half. Anne Thompson, “Trademark protection by Susan G. Komen organization.” NBC Nightly News Transcripts, Jan. 24, 2011. For example, the Foundation contacted the organization entitled “Kites for a Cure,” which is a kite-flier group dedicated to raising money to cure lung-cancer. The group refused to bow-out quickly, upset over what it believed to be a misdirection of both organizations’ efforts against one another rather than on their common goal.

A PAINFUL BETRAYAL is the title of an editorial in the New York Times. There is definitely a good girl/bad girl dynamic here, and a class aspect as well. Rich girls don’t have to spend much time in clinics. There are times when our common humanity outweighs our differences, life-threatening illness is one of them. It is truly painful to see an organization that exists for women’s health undermine one of the major providers.

Happy Imbolc

Posted on by ninjanurse

Wheel of the Year

Or Candlemas, or Groundhog Day. We’re at the midpoint of winter, and if you have been going into work in the dark and coming out in the dark you notice the sky is a little lighter.

I think there’s a holiday or two around this date that I’ve overlooked, please let me know.

We now have ten hours of sunlight, and gaining fast. Spring is six weeks away.