17 – Show Me the Money! Five Money Lessons for Life. – Nov 19, 2009 – 10:44 minutes (5.03 MB mp3)

When most of us hear the term “money lessons,” we might think they only apply to kids and teens. But, after looking at the topics we’re going to discuss today, I think listeners of any age will gain insight and information they can use in their own lives, no matter where they are in their financial journey.

During this podcast we’ll discuss:

• The difference between wants and needs
• The importance of saving
• Checking account management
• Retirement planning, and
• Smart borrowing

Here to teach us the Five Money Lessons for Life is Lois Carlock, Ent’s Education Manager.

Here was a fun ship from the Suliban race, and it was seen in Enterprise episode #26 entitled “Shock Wave”.  The Suliban were a strange race and they were to be so prominent in the new series, but by season 2 they had pretty much faded away.  Amongst all the ships that had to be drawn for the series, the Suliban were the hardest to get concepts signed off…it still brings back a lot of dizziness just thinking about all the billions of drawings it took to get just a handful of ships through those narrow approval doors.  This one was one of the last ships to be drawn and the heat and tension had let up, so it went through on a single pass!!!!  WOOO HOOO!  And it was one of my favs as far as their ships went.

In addition, there had to be a hidden base and, looking at Monument Valley in Northern Arizona for inspiration, the base became a high offensive location atop a spire of rock overlooking the vast landscape.  Eden VFX work shined brightly on this episode, and as always the work Rob and the gang put out was beyond awesome.  So with that, have a great weekend everyone, and thanks for all the comments and for putting up with the loads of pin up pictures!!!

Suliban Stealth ship

stealth ship docked at the secret base

NHS Evidence – ENT & Audiology

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Your unique gateway to the best available evidence in ENT, audiology and thyroid disorders.For each of the topics in the left hand menu, resources are categorised into:

• Guidance & pathways - for clinical and service guidelines
• Evidence - Systematic Reviews, evidence updates and other evidence-based research
• Reference - for specialist websites, organisations, news items and events
• Education/CPD - for learning materials and online courseware
• Patient Information - for patient resources and support groups.

Last week, I had a root canal. Actually, I had Part 1 of the root canal in September and Part 2 last week.  The tooth had a previous root canal and a thin metal rod held the tooth together from root to crown. An unfortunate dental student drew the lottery ticket for re-treatment of this tooth. She drilled away for a couple of hours in late September, excavating pieces of rod until she was exhausted, but she didn’t find a problem. I left with a temporary filling and an appointment to return. Through October, the tooth continued to ache. An upper molar on the right joined the chorus. And then it hit me—the problem wasn’t a tooth.

In the back of my mind, I heard a doctor asking, “How are your teeth?” He was an infectious disease specialist I was seeing about the chronic infections in my eyes.  It was August.

“Okay, I guess,” I said. “I have a couple of cavities.” I was seeing an endodontist for re-treatment of a root canal, but I didn’t think it was significant.

“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s not what I was concerned about.”

Awareness began when I saw ENT #10. Dr. D examined the surgery report I’d given him. “Normally,” he said with frustration, “with a Caldwell-Luc, you go in through the cheekbones. But that’s not what he did.” He shook his head. “He went in through the tooth roots under your lip.”

I didn’t grasp it. My cheekbones have sunk since the surgery, especially on the right, so I know that bone was removed from them. I can see the post-op collapse of my maxillary sinuses on CT scans.  I’ve read about the obsolete surgery Dr.  S performed, the Caldwell-Luc. I know that holes are drilled through the cheekbones in order to access the sinuses. Of course, that’s what he did—but wait—

Finally, in October, as I lay in bed reading to the throb-throb of my upper molars, a neural pathway formed connecting the facts. I got out the surgery report and read:  “a Caldwell-Luc approach with trocar obturator under the lip with careful preservation of tooth roots and infraorbital nerve was done.”

When I returned for the finish of the root canal, I took the surgery report. “Maybe it’s not the tooth,” I said. The dental student finished the tooth and didn’t find a problem. She filled the gigantic hole she’d made. She took an x-ray and showed me the result. “A future dentist might wonder why your tooth looks like this,” she said. It was the Guinness Book of Records root canal. Barely any tooth remained. “You know why it looks like this,” she added, referring to the excavation.

My brain was busy with a recalculation of damages.

“If the pain becomes unmanageable and it’s coming from nerves and not the teeth, we would refer you to a neurologist for pain management,” she said.

“I don’t want to be on a lot of drugs,” I said. “I had to go on Klonopin after the surgery so that I could sleep. I’m weaning myself off now.”  In fact, I had been crying every day for two weeks since cutting my pills in half. Going off a diazepene is a painful process.

Coming off this drug, I am rediscovering pain that I thought had healed such as throbbing in the bridge of my nose, which was cut and narrowed—to the mystification of every doctor I’ve seen.

I’m wondering how I stifled so much awareness. How did I keep from knowing, for two years, that my teeth were at risk? I’ve read this article many times: http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/RAD/neurocases/Neurocase238.htm . In part, it states, “The main complications associated with the Caldwell-Luc procedure include oroantral fistula (breakdown of the gum incision with communication between the mouth and sinus), rare osteomyelitis, infraorbital nerve injury with associated hypesthesia, injury to the tooth roots and tooth discoloration.”

And how did I keep from knowing that I was medicating pain with the pills I was taking for sleep?

Maybe we protect ourselves from too much awareness.

It has taken two years for the pain in my teeth to commence. I guess I can count on new dividends from these unnecessary surgeries for life. I went to an ENT with a case of tinnitus, and now I’ve got tinnitus, facial and nasal pain, nasal dryness and dysfunction, breathlessness, a deviated septum, collapsed nasal valves, rhinitis, a Klonopin addiction, tooth pain, dry eyes, cosmetic facial issues, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, and worsened sleep and fatigue. Those are some impressive returns.

Well, setting the flood of pin up shoots aside for today, here is the follow up to Vulcan architecture from Star Trek Enterprise, Episode # 74 entitled “HOME”.  This is three variations of the same location.  The hillside dwelling on the right is the exterior design for T’POL’s mother’s (played wonderfully by Joanna Cassidy) home on Vulcan, Joanna’s character was of a high ranking woman but somewhat of a rebel, so her immaculate home is rural as opposed to in the high society of downtown amongst the powerful.  In these three drawings, the tone and mainly the city scape will change drastically as the approval process for this concept goes through all the changes.

Concept #1 has an easy atmosphere and a smaller spread out cityscape.  Joanna’s house made the cut, but the sky and background didn’t.  Sketch #2 puts the atmosphere in heavy sunset mode, and the city grows in terms of  ground level structures.  The producers asked for more skyscrapers so Drawing #3 came to be, and, in the long run, the city became a combo of #2 and #3 as seen in the next two previously posted images.  This was just about the end of designing new architecture for the hot planet, but it was quite a treat to get to dive into such an awesome world of drawings and concepts.

#1

text 2

#3

#4

I keep getting ear infections. The one I am currently “blessed” with makes number 2 this year and is my 4th one in 6 months. So I finally took the advice of my primary care physician and scheduled an appointment with an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist.

The day of the appointment came around and I strolled into the office. Ahh how lovely…just like all of the other offices around where I live, stuck in the early 80’s. Paneling, threadbare carpet, uncomfortable chairs….sigh…I checked in, filled out the forms and finished my paperwork 5 minutes before my appointment. I sat down and waited….and waited….and waited…and waited.. and waited….an hour and a half.   There is getting behind and then there is ridiculous.

I am lead to the exam room or “scene of the crime” as I like to call it. I am asked to sit in the chair and wait for the violator, I mean, doctor. The doctor comes in. He seems nice. I remember his hands were soft. He had a nice voice. He checked my ears, confirmed I had an infection — duhhh.. Then said he needed to check my nose. Ok, no problem.  He left the room and came back with IT. It was a monstrosity made of flexible hose the likes of which I have never seen before. He connected IT to a machine that was in a hidden cabinet. And began to shove IT up my nose. He kept telling me to breathe normally and relax.

“Breathe normally and relax? Breathe normally and relax”? Right…there is a tube the size of a vacuum hose up my nose that he is beginning to shove down my throat — through my nose — and he wants me to relax. The only thing missing from this picture was him stroking my hair and telling me “how pretty I look.”

I’ll never be clean again.

So I realized a few minutes ago that I hadn’t blogged in over a week. You all must be dying to know what’s been happening in my life (all five of you LMAO!). Hahaha, I’m super funny. But honestly, I did miss blogging, and I’m going to give you guys a bit of an update.

As usual, work is stressing me out. But the past week and a half has been torture for me, which is why I haven’t blogged at all. I can’t go into specifics, but I really need to get away from my job and relax a bit. Luckily enough for me, starting Wednesday I’ll be off for five days. No work, no alarms to wake up, no stress. I’m going to use those five days to relax and get my head straight, so that when I go back next Monday I’ll be ready to face whatever is thrown my way. I’m hoping that things will calm down at work once the floor moves get finished, but I feel like the approaching holiday season isn’t going to help much, ya know? We’ll see.

Right before Halloween I started getting my application and information packets from AACC. I’ve decided to go there next semester since it’s closer to my parent’s house. They actually have a program that, once I finish it, I would be able to enter a four-year college as a junior in the secondary mathematics education field. I’m actually starting to get excited about going back to school. I’m not going to do a full course load next semester, but I’m still excited to get back into the swing of things. I’m hoping to meet a few new people too once I get back to school. Not saying that I don’t love everyone that I see on a regular basis, it’s just nice to see some fresh faces now and then.

And to add to all of this excitement that’s been going on, I had to go to the doctor’s last week because, yet again, I had tonsillitis. Right now I’m on a steroid pack thing that will help take down the swelling. My doctor gave me a referral to an ear nose and throat specialist, because I might need to get them removed. But I won’t be going to the ENT until after Christmas, even though mom’s not happy about it. After next week I’m not going to have the time to take off of work for an entire week to recover from surgery until at least January. But the referral is good until March, so I’ve got time to work with. I’m hoping that they can just give me some kind of antibiotic that will stop the chronic tonsillitis or that will make them fall out with surgery. But who knows with my luck?

So I’m starting to get a little tired, and I think it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m sure that I’ll be updating my blog later this week, considering that I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands.

In August 2007, I went to see an ENT about ringing in my ears.  I brought with me a ten-dollar bottle of homeopathic medicine.  I wanted to ask Dr. S.’s opinion. He was a D.O. so I thought he might be familiar with natural remedies.  D.O.’s are more likely than M.D.’s to take a holistic approach in medicine.

I couldn’t have been more wrong in my expectations of Dr. S.  He ordered scans and found sinus polyps. On October 30, 2007, he performed three unnecessary surgeries, one of them reserved for hopeless sinus cases. The surgeries were a Caldwell-Luc, a septoplasty and a turbinate reduction. This was removed from my septum and face:  “multiple pieces of flat bone and cartilage, in aggregate measuring 4.0 x 4.0 x 0.2 cm.” My nose was shortened into a pig snout and there is no material remaining with which to repair it. Repair will require a rib graft. According to my pre-surgery CT scan, “no significant septal deviation is seen.” Post-surgery, however, significant septal deviation is seen.

Dr. S. drilled tunnels in my head and removed a portion of my turbinates—the inner organ of the nose. I am left with permanent pain and dysfunction. My nose is dried up. I have breathing problems. The bridge of my nose and my cheekbones have caved in. My face and nose are now asymmetrical. My right eye droops. My face is within the range of “normal,” but I don’t look like myself. The beauty and integrity have been surgically removed.

The price tag for this destruction came to around fifty thousand dollars, including lab work, scans, appointments, anesthesia, surgery, and the bill to the surgery center partly owned by Dr. S. Fifty thousand dollars for treatment of asymptomatic sinus polyps.  The bills for the aftermath of the destruction are hundreds of thousands and counting. The destruction to my life–uncountable.

Had Dr. S. performed a simple polypectomy—which is what I was led to believe—the cost would have been a few thousand dollars, the destruction, probably none. I certainly did not require more, and the so-called “standard of care” would have called for less. According to the article below, “Before surgery on an inferior turbinate is undertaken, a trial of medical management is mandatory.”

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+turbinates+in+nasal+and+sinus+surgery%3a+a+consensus+statement.+…-a098248242

If that is the case, what is the “standard of care” for asymptomatic polyps? I can answer that: It is no treatment. Though I never mentioned it to Dr. S.—until after he told me I needed surgery—I had just begun to notice stuffiness when I cried on one side of my nose—the side that had a polyp in it. I cried rarely then so it was a non-issue. Such a non-issue that—as I stated—I had not mentioned it to the ENT. I had not mentioned it to my GP or any other doctor. Surely, I would have as I was sick from a carbon monoxide exposure and I was doing a lot of complaining. My referral slip to Dr. S. says it all: Tinnitus. It was my only ENT complaint. Those were the days…

Above I refer to the “so-called standard of care” because what I have learned is that there really isn’t any. There is a mythical “standard of care” in the health care industry, and allegedly, if a doctor violates it, he or she stands to face consequences. But in the current legal atmosphere, “standard of care” is a meaningless phrase. There is one, but there is nothing you can do if it is violated. Few lawyers are accepting medical malpractice cases anymore in Ohio. It is hard to get a case into court, and those that make it into court are being lost at a rate of eighty percent. This is due to tort reform laws passed several years ago and an advertising campaign designed to poison the minds of jurors against medical malpractice cases. Thus, lawyers are only taking the worst and the most black-and-white cases.

http://www.mcandl.com/ohio.html.

It is not much better in other parts of the country.

It’s a frightening situation. For me, well beyond frightening. I am what can happen in a legal atmosphere controlled by a rich and powerful medical lobby.

A patient of mine brought the funnies from the Oct 28, 2009 Washington Post of a cartoon by John McPherson poking fun at ENT.