yep.

When I was single, people used to try and set me up with their friends. I guess dating the unstable doctor was on a lot of people's bucket list. Anyway, during the blind date negotiations one topic that always came up, and got danced around, was the "looks" department.

"Yeah, you should go out with her, she's smart, funny, real cute."

or

"Duuuude, she's hot, you should go out with her. Plus its the only way her friend will go out with me."

I noticed that no one ever said "yeah, she is not ugly at all."

What does this have to do with my practice members?

When you think about your health, and the health of your kids, do you strive to be as healthy as you can? Or do you just want to be "not sick". I spoke with someone this week who didn't know there was a difference. Rest assured, there is. We are taught that just being "not sick" is good enough. As long as you don't have symptoms, you're fine. This is the reason that health care (other than at our office) is so terrible. Instead of being proactive, people wait until they cannot stand their symptoms any longer before they seek health. They do this because that is what they were/are instructed to do by their health care providers, either intentionally, or by inference . Think about the difference between a heart attack and minor chest pain. How much money, pain, and suffering could be avoided if we actually taught some prevention and health in our offices. The last numbers I looked at show actual health prevention and education at something like 5% of the national budget for health care. What a joke.

The difference between being healthy and being "not-sick" is the same as the difference between being gorgeous and being "not-ugly." Think long and hard about this. Please.

Yield to me.

People ask me (since I run my mouth about it so much) what I think the answer is to fixing the health care crisis. The answer is very simple;

Come to our office, be a patient, do what we say.

Yes, I'm serious. Let me be crystal clear. I think my office is the answer to the health care crisis. Take a moment to be shocked and awed at my audacity.

2.3 billion (BILLION) in fines to Phizer last week for flat out bribing M.D.s to pimp their drugs. Was your MD involved? Don't know the answer do you? Then you have the blatantly faked studies from the professor in New Jersey regarding clinical trials of a widely-used drug. Shocker. I can't wait for the next flat-earther to tell me Chiropractic needs more research. What are we, 38th in world health? We spend how much on health-care, which is really sick care, mind you. Health care involves education and prevention. Sick care involves expensive and dangerous short-term symptom reduction.

You cannot look at how sick, fat, depressed, and addicted we are and think the system is remotely acceptable. Who has been in charge of health care (sick care) in this country for the past 50 years?

Exactly.

So, the answer to the crisis? Come to the people you pay to keep you healthy. No one works harder as a staff to maker sure you can do whatever the heck you want. That's health care baby. Get in line for the good stuff.

Is this a joke?

Yeah, life expectancies are up according to this study done by our boys down at the CDC. It's too bad we lag behind about 30 other countries.

Pretty odd that we die so young compared to countries that don't spend a quarter of what we do on drugs and surgery. I wonder why that is? I mean, shouldn't we be the healthiest and longest living country on earth, since we take so many more drugs and have such an advanced health care system?

Maybe better living through better chemistry doesn't work, as studies like this one suggest. Maybe our jobs as doctors should instead be facilitating the education of people on how to stay healthy, rather than running obsolete tests and giving drugs based on blatantly faked studies.

Nah! Not with big pharma and a mediocrity awarding health-care system pumping billions into advertising. Moar drugz plez!

Bring on your ruminants!

I've been sitting here for what feels like ages (probably 5 minutes, but I've had 3 cups of coffee) trying to figure out how to introduce this blog. I wanted to build it up, you know, a classical build-up to a story. Rising action, climax, prologue, the whole thing. Why?

Look at the picture man!

There we were. A typical St. Louis summer day at Grant's farm. It's hot, St. Louis hot. The kind of heat that starts searing you the second you open the car door. It evaporates any A/C cooled air instantly and climbs into the car to get you. You are actually sweating before you even get out of the car.

Then you walk. Oh, do you walk. Across the blacktop parking lot which is more like a tar-lot, and into the tram, packed full of smelly, sweaty, hot humans. Once the tram got moving the breeze helped. I think the tram operator knew we were all hot because he was hauling ass. No one complained though. There were about 20 people riding with their heads out the window. We musta looked like a whole kennel of dogs riding in a clown car.

So its hot right, we get to the goats part, where you can feed them from the outside of their enclosure or the inside. I'm hot, pissed, and worried about my 7 month's pregnant wife. I'm not really down with going into the enclosure, thereby adding one more thing to worry about. Superman wants to go in though, and Jamie gives me the "take him in, its his first time" look. Well, I never win against that look, I am the king of doing things with James for the first time. I'm sure that will be on my tombstone.

Anyway, we go into the enclosure with the milk to feed them and the goats start swarming. I try to push them back and set James down so he can get a bearing on whats going on. They are dodging my leg sweeps though, and he is squirming so I set him down. He immediately goes to his haunches as a goat squares up about 6 feet away.

I've got the milk and I am trying to distract all the goats away from James, but this goat doesn't want the milk. He wants my kid's clothes. He starts in on James, taking slow steps, but coming nonetheless.

At about 4 feet James swings his arm out and gives the goat a big "NO". The goat pauses, then resumes his steady approach. James repeats his warning. The goat doesn't even stop this time. I'm about to intervene when my kid, without even rising up from his haunched position, slowly brings his arms and hands out in front of him. The goat walks right into the hands and James closes them around it's throat. It was spectacular. I'm not kidding it was methodical interdiction designed to put his hands on the goats throat at the furthest possible range. The goat hits the hands and jerks to a halt. James doesn't budge.

Time stopped, seriously, I couldn't believe I was watching James take on a goat, and he was holding the goat back. It was so primal, so savage, and strangely, satisfying.

My son had encountered something he had never seen before, stood up for himself, and gone mano a mano with the unknown.

No I am not being dramatic, its a metaphor, a blueprint, for how I want to teach him to take on the world.

I can't stop smiling.

two.

Superman turns 2 on Saturday, two!!

What the hell just happened? Seems like I just got done freaking out over being a father, now I find myself almost tearing up because it is going by so fast.

Is this one of the "mellowing" effects of fatherhood I'm experiencing? It is true that I am uncharacteristically nonchalant these days (as evidenced by the lack of speeding tickets and shaking fists). Suppose he starts to potty train in the next few months. If we weren't planning on having another baby (in production now, btw) that means I would be done changing diapers by christmas.

My brain boggles just thinking about that fact. The first thing that comes to mind?

Everyone complaining about diaper changing, all you "just wait until you have to do it" or "you'll see" people are serious wimps.

I took the worst of the diapers due to our friend "morning sickness" making an encore so I know diapers. It wasn't that bad. Did you people not share a house with 1000 other students in college? Now that was bad. Smelly? Gross? Show up at the bar and help me close it after St. Patricks day, you'll never drink again.

Back to more important matters. What to get him. Stay tuned.

this

The American Alligator.

Beastly, carnivorous, the subject of wives tales and reality survival shows. Mostly recently, my sons indispensible, second-only-to-dad-in-coolness new buddy. He carries a 3 foot long alligator everywhere we go. It rides in the cart with us at Home Depot, everyone who walks by does a double take.

"Baby, Allgator."

"Yes, James, that is your Alligator."

"This, this, this, this"

"This" accompanied by pointing at the object is his was of saying, "that's right, its mine, and its bad ass."

Teddy bears, fairies, overly verbose plastic dogs?

My kids toy eats them.

I cannot get enough of it.

Stuck.

Cran-raisins. The work of the devil himself.

They are small, squishy, flesh-colored and tart-tasting. The perfect storm of things you don't want your kid putting up his or her nose. They are small enough for the child to get into the nasal cavity, but large enough that once you begin running out of space, which the upper part of the nostril is famous for, you can easily get one lodged. They are squishy, they bend and shape to the cavity as they are being pushed up, once they get stuck they have compressed and tightened to the point where they are filling, and blocking off, the whole nostril. Because of this squishy-ness they are difficult to grab with a tweezers. Made even more difficult is the fact that the damn things are the same color as the nose! What the hell! Not only is the screaming, kicking child getting apoplectic as you manhandle the delicate nasal area, you can't even see what you are doing in those brief lulls between whole body spasms.

No more fruit-veggie hybrid things that are the same color as human cavity linings. Period.

I learned one or two things from the whole episode;

1) Pediatrician over ER doc for removal, they have more experience with both children and non- traumatically lodged objects in children.

2) Hold the child facing away from you sitting on your lap, pin both arms down with your one arm, then use your other hand to hold their head. Its the safest position to restrain them in. It will also make you feel like the biggest piece of crap should you be the one doing it.

3) Remove everyone from the room who is not essential to solving the problem.

4) Keep telling yourself that hopefully this will be the worst thing to ever happen.

5) Ice cream for everyone afterwards, and lots of it.