I cried when I had no shoes…

until I met a man who had no feet…

So…

i had a customer/friend call the other night asking if i could help him set his margins in the software he is using to write his book. no problem. we set it up for me to come to his place at 7 that evening, but when i got there he wasn’t there. seeing as i was just doors from the place i used to rent on Chartres, and still had a filing cabinet and a couple of boxes of things to get out of there, i went down there to get those loaded on the hand-cart that i had there. it was a struggle, as the filing cabinet was horrendously heavy, but i got it all loaded and headed back to my apartment about 8 blocks away.

so, off i go, dumping the load twice on the way and having to reload it and redistribute the weight. i finally get it home and lifted into the lobby. i was pretty wiped-out, so decided to leave it all for unloading the next day and headed up the stairs, when i fell and messed up my hip. i lived with it for a couple of days until Thursday night i couldn’t put weight on it at all and decided to go to university hospital’s emergency the next day. It was way out of alignment and made a crunching sound when it moved. i was certain it was broken. I went into the emergency room friday morning and 17 hours later they see me and do an x-ray. sprained, not broken. they give me some Motrin and some muscle relaxers and send me home last night.

this morning the hospital called and told me that the radiologist viewed the x-rays [apparently they be short-staffed and x-rays stack up until they can be read], and that it was dislocated, so they sent a car and i went in to have it put back in place. i just got home. needless to say, i don’t get to have jaden over this weekend, but there is no way i could deal with him at the moment.

i spoke with social services while i was there because my health problems are such that i’ve not been able to work and bring in any income. i’ve only been able to pay 500$ towards the rent since i moved in on january 20, which leaves me owing about 2800$ including april. there is no way of course, so the landlord has told me that i will have to make other arrangements as soon as possible. social services are no help at all, as about all they could do is give me a sheet of paper outlining what food banks are available – a list i already have and just this past tuesday hooked up with a food bank up on rampart to get a box of groceries once a month. it’s a help.

with the stroke last november my brain has not exactly worked right, the recent heart attack and now this latest, the doctors have told me and i pretty much determined anyhow that i am going to have to live somewhere where i have some kind of assisted living environment. so, i’ve been trying to figure out what friends i have that might be in a position to take me in for awhile. at least until i can fend for myself and make an income again. wherever i end up i will apply for food stamps and i’ll start the process of applying for ssi. so, we’ll see.

sooner or later i’m going to have to do something about this depression. it’s dogged me since The Thing, and it’s pulled me down to where i can hardly function through a day anymore.

I don’t feel great about posting this. It’s private, but i feel my friends are entitled to know what’s going on in my life.

Just who the hell does New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell think she is?

Pulled over by State Police after barreling down the shoulder of Interstate 10 at close to 100 miles per hour with a blue light flashing, New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell yelled at a state trooper: “Do you know who I am? … What the hell are you stopping me for?”

Just who the hell does she think she is?

Personally, I wouldn’t know her if she came up to me and bit me on the ass, and secondly, I could care less.

With all of the problems this city and its residents are grappling with, we have a city councilwoman who is showing us exactly what she is – a self-righteous, ignorant AND stupid BITCH, who has represented herself and our city more than badly.

This is sickening for so many reasons, not the least of which is that she feels entitled to do what she has done [and not for the first time, mind you]; that she has blue flashing lights – emergency lights which are restricted to law enforcement vehicles, on her taxpayer supplied vehicle; and that she [usually] has a law-enforcement driver to tote her to where she needs to be, among other things. This latter is an appalling reality of a waste of law-enfocement resources in a city with the nation’s highest murder rate, don’t you think?

In this case she was ‘late for a meeting’. OMG! Big deal. This does not give her the right to violate the laws and/or to put others lives in danger. If she wants to commit suicide, more power to her, but to use that multi-ton SUV as a weapon is criminal. Yet, SHE DID NOT EVEN RECEIVE A TICKET!

This disgusts us all, as it should.

Although state law prohibits anyone but law enforcement officers from speeding and using flashing lights, State Police did not issue Hedge-Morrell a citation. According to State Police, a trooper has discretion over writing tickets. On Wednesday, Morrell said she still believes troopers should not have detained her.

“I was trying to get to the meeting, and he [the state trooper] couldn’t explain to me why he was detaining me any further,” she said. “To this day, I don’t know why he gave me the warning. I was late for a meeting.”

Awww… stupid, poor little city councilwoman. Bite me… Get the hell out of our city. We don’t need you and we don’t want you.

I expect far better from our elected officials. You should, too.

Ladies…

Computer-Aided Reading of Mammograms Crashes

[The more we can get this information out, the better it will be.]

SACRAMENTO, April 4 — Computer-aided detection degrades the performance of screening mammography, reported a multicenter team.

In a study of more than 429,000 mammogram results, there was a significant drop in diagnostic specificity after computer-aided detection was introduced to various centers, reported Joshua J. Fenton, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Davis, and colleagues, in the April 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

There was a significant increase in false-positive results and unnecessary biopsies, they added.

“In our observational study of large numbers of community-based mammography facilities and patients, the use of computer-aided detection was associated with increases in potential harms of screening mammography, including higher recall and biopsy rates, and was of uncertain clinical benefit,” they wrote.

Dr. Fenton and colleagues evaluated the association between the use of computer-aided detection and the performance of screening mammography from 1998 through 2002 at 43 facilities in three states. They evaluated data on a total of 429,345 mammograms in 222,135 women, of whom 2,351 had received a diagnosis of breast cancer within a year of screening.

The authors calculated the specificity, sensitivity, and positive predictive value of screening mammography with and without computer-aided detection. They also calculated the rates of biopsy and breast-cancer detection, and at the overall accuracy of screening, which they determined by the area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve.

In all, seven of the 43 facilities started using computer-aided detection during the study period, and the remainder of facilities served as controls.

Among the computer-using centers, the diagnostic specificity of screening mammography declined significantly from 90.2% before computers, to 87.2% after. In addition, the positive predictive value decreased from 4.1% pre-computer to 3.2% with computer assistance (P=0.01).

Although computer-assisted detection increased the sensitivity of screening mammography compared with human-only review (from 80.4% before to 84.0% after), this difference was not statistically significant (P=0.32).

Adjusting for patient, facility, and radiologist characteristics also did not substantially change the outcome. Specificity and positive predictive value still significantly declined after computer aided detection was introduced, and sensitivity went up, but not significantly, the authors noted.

Biopsy rates among the seven facilities that implemented computer-aided detection went up by 20% after introduction of the technology, from 14.7 biopsies per 1,000 screening mammograms before to 17.6/1,000 after. But while there was a slight increase in the rate of cancer detection, including invasive breast cancers and ductal carcinoma in situ (from 4.15 cases per 1,000 screening mammograms before implementation, to 4.20 cases per 1,000 after), this difference was not significant (P=0.90).

“Analyses of data from all 43 facilities showed that the use of computer-aided detection was associated with significantly lower overall accuracy than was non-use (area under the ROC curve, 0.871 vs. 0.919; P=0.005),” the authors wrote.

The results add weight to the arguments in favor of a combination of different ascendant technologies: genetic risk profiling and breast MRI, suggested Ferris M. Hall, M.D., a diagnostic radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, in an accompanying editorial.

“Mammography is an inherently poor, two-dimensional projectional method being used to diagnose small, three-dimensional cancers,” he wrote. “It is least effective in the screening of dense breasts, which, as emphasized in another recent study, are a substantial risk factor for breast cancer.”

In contrast, MRI does not expose women to radiation, and it has a high sensitivity, although lower specificity than mammography for breast cancer, he noted.

“The major problems with MRI of the breast and related magnetic resonance spectroscopy are cost and interpretive expertise,” Dr. Hall wrote. “These same problems were involved with the acceptance of mammography as a screening method three decades ago. Here we go again.”

Additional Breast Cancer Coverage

The stuff we’re fed…

Eggs will raise your cholesterol, and other myths

Avoid eggs. Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Eating carbs will make you fat. Nutritional advice such as this has been touted for years — but is it accurate?

Not necessarily, according to Wendy Repovich, an exercise physiologist at Eastern Washington University in Cheyenne, Washington, who did her best to dispel several common nutrition misconceptions during an American College of Sports Medicine-sponsored health and fitness summit held recently in Dallas.”Eating eggs will raise your cholesterol.” This myth started because egg yolks have the most concentrated amount of cholesterol in any food, Repovich told Reuters Health. However, when eaten in moderation, eggs do not contain enough cholesterol to pose health risks, she said. “Most people avoid eggs and probably if they have any kind of cardiovascular risk their physicians tell them to avoid eggs,” Repovich said. “But really, there aren’t a whole lot of studies that show that one or two eggs a day really make a difference to cholesterol levels.””Eating carbohydrates makes you fat” is another myth. Cutting carbs from the diet may help a person shed pounds due to water loss from a decrease in carbohydrate stores, Repovich said, but eating carbs in moderation does not directly lead to weight gain.Here’s another myth. “Drink 8 glasses of water a day.” Repovich said people need to replace water lost through breathing, urinating, sweating each day — but that doesn’t necessarily total 64 ounces of water.”I see an awful lot of people carrying bottled water around,” Repovich said. “I think people are still under the impression that they have to drink 8 glasses of water a day, but most people don’t realize they get water from other sources in the diet.”And too much water can be harmful, Repovich warned, leading possibly to an imbalance in the body of sodium, a condition called hyponatremia. It’s also a myth, Repovich said, that everyone needs vitamin supplements, although she admits to popping a multivitamin each morning. People who eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, along with moderate amounts of a variety of low-fat dairy and protein and the right quantity of calories, probably don’t need a vitamin supplement, she said. “But for the most part, we don’t eat the way we should so probably a simple multivitamin is good for most people,” Repovich said.

The value of the microchip…

LEE’S SUMMIT, Missouri (AP) — A Boston terrier named Mickey who disappeared four years ago from his suburban Kansas City backyard was found in Montana and reunited with his owners this week.

Cher Jarosz and her daughter Kari Mitchell thought they had lost Mickey forever — until they received a call from an animal shelter last week 1,100 miles away in Billings, Montana.

A microchip on Mickey helped the Billings Animal Shelter return him.

“Some lady from the public walked in the back door,” said Kristal Ward, office manager at the shelter. “She found the dog running up the street. She tossed him to me, and that’s how it started.”

Ward said she called Avid, a company that makes microchip identification systems, and was given the name of a veterinary clinic in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

“I called that vet clinic because they were the one that should have a record of that chip,” Ward said. “I gave them the chip number, and the woman kind of started screaming.

“She goes, ‘Oh my God, is that a Boston terrier? Oh my God, it belongs to Kari Mitchell. She used to work here.”‘

Ward called Mitchell and confirmed that the dog was Mickey, she said.

After she talked to Mitchell, “Her mother called, and they were just beside themselves,” Ward said.

The family said he looks different and doesn’t remember his name. His teeth show signs of wear and tear.

Only Mickey knows how he wound up in Montana, and that’s fine by Mitchell.

“We’re happy to have him home,” she told KSHB-TV in Kansas City after Mickey caught a flight home. “I just hope whoever was taking care of him, I hope they were just glad he’s home.”

 — Now this is a story I like to read!

 

 

Coolest pics you’ll see this week…

Click on the thumbnails to see the larger images.

    

    

         

         

Click on the thumbnails to see the larger images.

These ‘animated’ images below are NOT animated images… Look closely…

    

         

 

Sometimes…

I wonder if god will ever forgive us for what we do to each other.

Then other times I take a good look around, and realize that god left this place a long time ago.

- paraphrased from Blood Diamond.

My Hero…

Knut is the polar cub that was abandoned by his mother, that animal rights activists wanted put to death because it would be ‘humiliating’ to raise him until he is capable of taking care of himself. The mother ignored Knut and his brother, who later died.

Go Knut!

 

Links…

Well, it’s been my habit to post a link whenever I refer to a story I’m commenting on. Unfortunately, most of these links are only live for a short period. If I post the whole story, I’m  guilty of republishing without permission, and it’s not realistic, time-wise, to request permission. So… I’ll just repost the damn thing and wait ’til they ask me to remove it, if they ask. Nuff said.