April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

medicine

This time it’s personal

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The last few months I’ve been through numerous medical tests, and yesterday I had surgery.

I hear complaints all the time about the state of our health care system but I have to say, although I had to travel out of my community for two of the appointments, all my tests and procedures were booked and over with in record time.

In the course of about two months I had about seven different tests, four different doctors appointments and surgery.

Every effort was made to make it easy for me, including doing my pre-op over the phone. The doctors all communicated well with each other and all I needed was my health card.

One of the gentlemen in the outpatient surgery had a cataract removed. He said it was less hassle than going to the dentist and cost a lot less too.

Our system isn’t perfect of course, but it’s working pretty well despite efforts to destroy it.

Oh and if you’re interested everything went well and I should be fine.

Which is good news or bad depending on how you feel about me. 😉

Girls..is there nothing they can’t do?

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We don’t actually crack backs. It’s merely an adjustment…OK, you’re going to hear a loud cracking sound.(Dr. Steve)

“Daughters linked to prostate risk” read the headlines.

Turns out that one study has come up with stats they have no particular answer for

The Israeli team found men with three daughters and no sons were up to 60% more likely to develop prostate cancer.

But the Journal of the National Cancer Institute study suggests the cause may be the male “Y” sex chromosome, not the act of having either a son or daughter.

In fact at one point it is hypothesized that

Since prostate problems are often only detected when a man attends for routine health screening, they suggested that it was possible that having a predominantly female family might encourage a man to be more health-conscious.

Nope must be more than that

“We also need to uncover exactly what it is about the Y chromosome, which only men have, that might make men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer also more likely to have fathered girls rather than boys.

and there’s this

The Prostate Cancer Charity head of policy and research Chris Hiley said: “This is an interesting study – it certainly attracts the attention, but it doesn’t yet translate into useful advice for men until other complex genetic studies are done.

More study would seem the way to go, though ever so much more boring than making it seem like girls cause cancer. Used to only be cooties..must be the new girl technology.

And even though we just said so

“In the meantime no-one should rush off with the idea that girls give their fathers prostate cancer.”

Away in a manger

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Christmas Eve many focus on a birth of long ago, and so I give you a story of birth.

From the Independent

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem – but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. “What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured,” she says.

Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. “It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on,” she says. She was already nervous about the birth – her first, and twins – so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. “Obviously, we told them we couldn’t wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn’t understand.”

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital,” she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could “certainly” have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

I May have to scream….

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After beginning this post I realized I was just too angry to write a nice explanatory post.

I’m angry…I’m angry that some really think that a womans’ right of control of her body is something they can have high school level debates about.

I’m angry for my daughters. I’m angry because of the young woman I know who was kept away from all friends and family until it was too late to abort and then beaten so badly that she miscarried at 22 weeks.

I’m angry for the victims of rape forced to carry the evidence of the sperm of the prick they never wanted in their body.

I’m angry for the women who birthed till they died. I’m angry for the women who had to beg and be shamed by a panel of doctors who decided whether their choice to abort was frivolous or not.

I’m angry for all the women who have had to deal with some bastard thinking he had any fucking right deciding what she could or could not do.

I’m angry for the women fought and bled and died to get us as far as we’ve come only to have their victories put up as dartboards on frat boy walls.

Perhaps the white knights could climb off their high white horses for just a second or two and pay attention.

Abortion= a woman’s right to control a) her own body b) her own destiny c) her own life.

Why would you even put that up for debate? Who the fuck gave you permission to discuss what goes on in my womb?

Will we next be treated to a debate on whether or not rape is really a crime? If a woman has no say over her own body then how can rape exist?

And after all we wouldn’t want women saying no frivolously.

Reproductive rights are not up for political wankers wonkers to debate.

My body MY FUCKING CHOICE!

A woman’s right to life

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The center will appeal to the Nicaraguan human rights council and the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates a women’s right to life.

Think about that sentence for a minute…..

Has it sunk in?

A woman’s right to life

Who would ever have imagined in the year 2006 almost 2007 that we would be debating whether or not a woman’s life was worth saving.

Nicaragua has decided to enter the debate. Resolved that a fetus, even a dead one, takes precedence over a woman.

The public prosecutor for crimes against women is investigating whether doctors fearful of punishment even before the newly-passed abortion law had gone into effect stood by while Jazmina del Carmen Bojorge, 18, died from complications to her pregnancy.

Bojorge was awaiting her second child when she and her 5-month-old fetus died this month in a public hospital in Managua. Bojorge’s family says they took her to a hospital when she complained of limb pains and weakness. When her condition worsened, doctors say they determined her fetus was dead, but Bojorge went into shock before they could save her.

and

Ana Isela Vega, who was three months pregnant when she suffered a miscarriage this month, was refused the necessary procedure to evacuate her uterus in a public hospital in the city of León, said Marta María Blandón, Central America director of Ipas. According to Blandón, the doctors worried they could not operate for legal reasons. Under pressure from women’s groups who explained that the law did not forbid removing an already-deceased fetus, the doctors finally operated.

Of course we know that anti choice types only create these types of laws because of their great love of children.

Um…maybe not

Asked in an interview this month about the case of an 8-year-old Nicaraguan who was raped in 2002 and whose family fought successfully to get her a legal abortion the following year, Navarro replied, “If a 9-year-old is raped, she should have the baby, because that child has rights.”

I’m guessing he wasn’t talking about the 8 year old child.

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