Wild & Wooly

The weather here is taking a turn for the....NOTHING! This Lizard lives in the Gulf Coast, so we're starting to batten the hatches (again), clear off the back porch (again) and pull out the emergency preparations policies at work (again). I swear...it's like we just did this like 2 weeks ago. Oh wait, we did!

WebMD had this today:

Retail Clinics Catch On in U.S.: "Who Uses Retail Clinics?

Among the findings:

* Men and women seem to equally go to retail clinics.
* 18- to 44-year-olds made twice as many visits to retails clinics (43% compared with 23%) as visits to their primary care physician.
* The youngest and oldest patients are least likely to visit retail clinics and more likely to go to a doctor's office or emergency room.
* In 39% of visits, people who went to a retail clinic reported having a primary care physician. (That's compared to 80% of people nationwide who say they have a personal doctor.)
* 2.3% of visits to a retail clinic were triaged to an emergency room or a doctor's office.

'These clinics appear to attract patients who are not routine users of the current health care system,' Mehrotra says in a news release. 'For these patients, the convenience offered by retail clinics may be more important than the continuity provided by a personal physician.'"

I have 2 family members who have used this type of clinic service, and they were both extremely happy with the efficiency, speed, and demeanor of the staff there. They both had a positive experience with the prescriptions being written and available for pickup within 30 minutes. Wow! All for $59.00 (plus cost of prescription). They didn't have to wait for 2+ hrs in their doctor's office for snarky nurses to make them sit half naked on a paper-towel-draped table. Definitely something I will keep in mind next time I decide to get antibiotics or such.

Go Astros!

PharmaSELLicals

From Forbes:

Byetta came under fire of late when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that six patients who had been taking the drug had developed severe pancreatitis. The condition can also release toxins into the bloodstream and has been known to develop in patients with diabetes. Each of the six patients required hospitalization; two died. Four other fatal pancreatitis cases linked to Byetta were reported the following week.

So it costs twice as much, has a high incidence of cancer, but boy-oh-boy --- it works great! sheesh.

On the lighter side: tonight I watched a mother badger her son for 2 hours trying to show him how many ways he was doing his math homework wrong. she kept toning at him, "don't you see this!!! this is how the book does it!!!" he was getting the same answer as the book - just in a different way. Now, I know all you teachers out there are going to say that it has to be done the same way as the book...but this wasn't algebra or statistics or anything like that. It was MULTIPLICATION.....as in 8 x 8!!! poor kid. no wonder he kept telling her, "I don't like math!"

Well....

totally forgot my password for this!!!

in today's news:

New research shows that adults with type 1 diabetes who use continuous glucose monitoring devices to help manage their disease control their blood sugar better.

OK - so when are they going to create something like this for Type II?

on the commute today, there was a woman in the very front row of the bus, yes, the all-coveted front row, who had spread out all her crap on the seat next to her. we got to the 2nd stop and the bus was already fairly packed, and THE LAST woman to get on stopped beside her and asked if she could sit there. the woman hmmm'd for about 10 seconds, then started slowly packing up her stuff. I think she thought that if it took her long enough the other lady would give up. But lo-n-behold, the other lady just stood there, waiting and staring, until Spready McSpread finally cleared off the other seat. Power to the People! LOL