Category Archives: medical news

local news, medical news

Tech makes bigger footprint in Amarillo

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Texas Tech University officials appear intent on increasing the school’s presence in Amarillo.

It’s obvious of the school’s plan with the announcement that Texas Tech plans to build and develop a college of veterinary medicine way up yonder … in the Texas Panhandle.

We all ought to welcome the addition.

Texas Tech already runs a pharmacy school here, courtesy of a lengthy and intense local fundraising campaign in the mid-1990s; and that school came after Tech had established a medical school campus here.

When you think about, Amarillo’s higher education footprint is growing on a number of levels.

West Texas A&M University is in the process of turning a one-time downtown Amarillo office building into an urban campus, which no doubt will expand the Canyon-based university’s presence in the Panhandle’s largest city.

Let us not forget that Amarillo College’s presence here for decades has been significant. AC runs three campuses just in Amarillo. It also has branch campuses in Dumas and Hereford, making it a regional junior college.

The buzz today, though, belongs to Texas Tech University.

Tech Chancellor Bob Duncan led a large university delegation of officials today to announce plans for the veterinary school. Duncan said today the school’s aim is to ensure that students learn their profession here — and then stay here to practice it.

So, the footprint is set to expand and the community figures to reap the benefit.

 

local news, medical news

Higher ed turf fight in the offing … perhaps

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Texas Tech University has announced it is considering the development of a school of veterinary medicine.

No plans have been set. It’s just talk at the moment. The word came from Tech Chancellor Bob Duncan that the university system is scouting around for a proper location while deciding if it actually wants to go ahead with development of the program.

Amarillo is considered one of the potential favorites for the new veterinary medicine campus.

The Texas Tribune that Tech has cited increasing student interest in the veterinary medicine campus and noted that Amarillo — with its huge agricultural base nearby — might be a good fit for such a campus.

OK, but it gets even more interesting.

Texas A&M University — which already has one of the premier veterinary medicine programs in the country, if not the world — is considering expanding that part of its curriculum to other regions of the state. You have just one guess on where the A&M System might locate that new veterinary medicine campus.

If you said West Texas A&M University, you’d win an undetermined prize.

The Tribune reported: “After Tech’s announcement, A&M System Chancellor John Sharp seemed to hint in a statement that A&M was considering expanding its school to other areas in the state.  ‘As a courtesy, last weekend I informed Chancellor Robert Duncan that the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine would soon announce a presence in several Texas A&M System schools,’ Sharp said. ‘In response, Mr. Duncan comes up with this long-rejected claim we should fund a vet school at Texas Tech. The Coordinating Board has specifically rejected the notion. The Legislature has rejected this for 40 years. We will proceed with our announcement as planned.’”

Here’s the full Texas Tribune story.

So, is there a bit of jockeying taking place here? Would the Texas Panhandle be in the running for both university systems’ desire for veterinary schools? I doubt strongly we’d get both of them.

Whatever happens, we’ll just have to stay tuned to see how this plays out.

medical news, Sports news

NFL’s dirty little secret out in the open

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What once was professional football’s dirty little secret has been exposed yet again by revelations surrounding the death of a sports icon.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy afflicts an alarming number of former football players. The National Football League for years denied that it was a problem among its athletes.

Now the word is out that Frank Gifford, a Hall of Fame wide receiver for the New York Giants, suffered from CTE when he died recently of “natural causes.”

CTE has returned to the head of the line of issues that Americans are discussing. I wrote about it for Panhandle PBS.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/public-view-john-kanelis/cte-returns-to-the-headlines/

It saddens me to no end to hear former great players such as, say quarterback Brett Favre, say that he won’t allow his children to play football. Indeed, Favre had his bell rung more than once during his great career with the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. I pray that CTE won’t claim him, but he is concerned about whether his own children would be safe playing a game that brought their father so much fame and financial reward.

PBS’s acclaimed documentary series “Frontline” blew the lid off this issue with its “League of Denial” special broadcast more than two year ago.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

The NFL has to come to grips with this situation. It’s already settled a huge claim made by its players association to compensate players and their families for the damage caused by these head injuries.

However, much more needs to be done to make the game as safe as possible for the athletes who take the field.

Are you listening, NFL executives?

 

medical news, national news, political news

Fiery rhetoric produces more tragedy

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I believe it is fair to ask: Has the fiery rhetoric condemning Planned Parenthood resulted in the shooting deaths of three individuals at the hands of someone who has told police “no more baby parts”?

Three people died this week when a man opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Police arrested Robert Lewis Dear after a siege that lasted several hours. The motive was unclear immediately after Dear’s arrest. Then today he reportedly told police about the “baby parts” and how he wanted to prevent future harvesting of those organs from aborted fetuses.

Many of us have seen those videos taken at another Planned Parenthood clinic. It shows staffers discussing the harvesting of body parts. What has become known generally since then is that videos were edited heavily to portray gross indifference among the staffers.

And that — sad to say — triggered some of the rhetorical firestorm emanating from Congress and along the presidential campaign trail.

Many of the accusations leveled against Planned Parenthood were false. Federal law prohibits the selling of body parts “for profit.” Yet that’s what the accusers said Planned Parenthood was doing. There’s been no proof of profiteering, merely accusations.

Yet the rhetoric became stoked by politicians looking for sound bites, producing tremendous anger among many Americans. Sadly, much of that anger was based on false pretenses.

Now we have this. Someone has taken three lives and injured several other individuals.

I am acutely aware that the shooter will have defenders who say he is “righteous” in seeking to justice over the practice of abortion.

I have no intention of entering the abortion debate. I do intend to suggest that politicians seeking to express their own righteous indignation over medical procedures that in fact are legal need to consider the consequences of fomenting anger.

 

local news, medical news, national news

ACA adds another insurance client

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The number of Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act grew by one today, I am happy to announce.

I also am happy to disclose that the enrollment process went quite smoothly.

You’ve heard of the ACA, I’m sure. It’s the federal health insurance program also known as Obamacare. It is President Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation. His critics like calling it Obamacare, adding the appropriate derisive inflection in their voices at times whenever they want to make some kind of critical point about it.

Yes, it got off to that rocky start a couple of years ago. The healthcare.gov website broke down right out of the chute. Then the government computer geeks went to work to fix it. They did.

They rolled it out a second time it and then millions of Americans got signed up.

Oh, but congressional Republicans are still angry about the ACA. They’re trying to sue the president to get it tossed out. Indeed, a federal judge recently ruled that the GOP has legal standing to actually file suit.

Never mind that the insurance is working. Or that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance if the law gets tossed out.

Oh, but hey. It’s only us out here.

Well, today my wife got enrolled. Her previous health insurer is getting out of the health insurance business at the end of the year. So, with a good bit of help from our trusted insurance broker — with whom we’ve done business for as long as we’ve lived in Amarillo — we got my much better half signed up with a new insurance carrier.

And you know what? It’s going to cost us less than my wife’s previous policy did.

On that note, I want to offer a word of thanks to the president of the United States for pushing through the legislation that enables us to purchase health insurance at a price we can afford.

medical news

Glad to be enrolled in VA health care system

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Count me as one red-blooded American military veteran who’s glad to be enrolled in the health care system the federal government provides for us.

I had another remarkably positive experience this morning in that regard. I thought I’d share it here.

The medical staff at the Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center here in Amarillo had asked me to seek an abdominal ultrasound; the purpose is to look for any sign of an aneurysm in my gut.

So, I signed up with an insurance provider that contracts with the VA and made the appointment at Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital, one of two acute care hospitals in the city.

My appointment was set for 9:15 a.m. They told me to report to the front desk at 8:45, get registered and then wait for my turn.

I got there at 8:35, reported to the front desk. They took my info down, told me to go to a waiting room … and wait.

I waited all of about six minutes. A young woman came out, asked me for my date of birth and Social Security number and led me back to the lab area.

I waited there for, oh, maybe 10 minutes. Out came a lab tech named Chris, who took me to the treatment room.

He asked me to lie down on the table. He left the room and returned about two minutes later. He then ran the ultrasound machine over my abdomen.

Twelve minutes later? I was done.

I looked at my watch: 9:20 a.m. That’s five minutes after my visit was scheduled to begin.

I’m not yet sure what the VA had to do with the promptness and efficiency of this visit, but I’ll give the agency some measure of credit. It might be, although I likely cannot prove it, that BSA staffers give VA patients a little higher priority … maybe?

Whatever. There’s something quite positive to be said for this pre-paid health care benefit.

medical news, military news, national news, political news

VA scandal far from ‘overstated’

veterans affairs

Hillary Rodham Clinton could not be more wrong than she was the other night when she said that the Department of Veterans Affairs health care scandal was “overstated.”

You’ll recall the VA matter. Veterans seeking medical care in Phoenix were made to wait for too long for the care — and then some of the died while waiting.

Meanwhile, the VA cooked the books, so to speak, and hid that information from agency watchdogs in order to protect the medical staff at the VA medical center in Phoenix.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki had to quit and the agency went under the microscope to correct the hideous situation that resulted in the veterans’ deaths.

News flash to Hillary: None of it — zero — was “overstated.”

Veterans should be offended by what the Democrats’ leading presidential contender told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the other evening. I know I am.

Yes, Clinton is right to say that most veterans get good health care. I can attest to the quality of care I am getting in Amarillo at the Thomas Creek VA Medical Center. Then again, I enjoy good health.

My hope is that when I do need some specialized care that it will be available to me in a timely fashion. I damn sure don’t want to die waiting to receive it.

Most veterans do receive good care. The veterans who have died because of too-long wait times, though, did not.

For the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate to suggest it’s all “overstated,” overblown and overplayed is dishonest on its face.

medical news, national news, political news

Don’t mess with Planned Parenthood, GOP

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PlannedParenthoodsign

What part of “Don’t Shut Down the Government” is the Republican caucus in Congress failing to understand?

Yet here we are yet again. Congress is threatening to shut down the federal government because some of its members dislike Planned Parenthood. The GOP caucus in Congress doesn’t believe that the federal government should fund Planned Parenthood because, they say, it provides abortion services to women who want to end their pregnancy.

Well, that’s just a small part of Planned Parenthood’s mission. As for abortion funding, Congress years ago approved a law — the Hyde Amendment — that banned federal money for abortion services, so the argument that the government funding of abortion falls flat.

The rest of Planned Parenthood’s mission? Oh, things such as exams designed to guard against cancer, contraceptive services … those kinds of silly things that help keep women alive and allow them to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

What’s more, we’re possibly treading into that minefield in which the government decides to deny government services and programs across the board that have nothing at all to do with Planned Parenthood.

Do these individuals in Congress forget what happens when the legislative branch acts in this petulant and ultra-punitive fashion? Do they not know how badly the public reacts when Congress does such a thing?

The public gets quite angry. At Congress. And, yes, at the those who belong to the party that run both legislative chambers. That would be the Republican Party.

A government shutdown is a fool’s errand.

If only the fools who comprise a significant segment of the majority party in Congress would just get the message.

 

medical news, national news, political news

Carter demonstrates — again — his class and grace

**FILE**Former President Jimmy Carter takes a question during a conference at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Tuesday, June 7, 2005. An independent panel Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005 reversed a Pentagon recommendation that the New London submarine base in Connecticut, base be closed. One of the panel members even said a letter from Carter _ the only president to ever serve as a submariner _ pleading the panel to keep the base open was one of the reasons he voted against closure. (AP Photo/Ric Feld, File)

First of all, let me stipulate — as if it’s needed — that I am praying for President Jimmy Carter’s full recovery from cancer.

None of us beyond the former president and his immediate family knows what the doctors told him when they revealed that he had cancer — and that it had spread to his brain.

But to watch the 39th president tell the world about his diagnosis was to get a hint — I believe — in a prognosis that doesn’t appear very hopeful.

“It’s in God’s hands now,’’ he said. My belief is that when someone invokes God, well … you know what I mean.

His absolute devotion to his deep Christian faith brings hope that he truly is at peace with whatever awaits him. The president told us all that he is ready for whatever outcome awaits him. And watching this man for nearly 40 years from afar, but getting a feel for his deeply held religious faith, you get the sense that he really and truly is at peace.

As many have noted, Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency has been far greater than the single term he served in the White House.

Someone asked him this week in Atlanta when he made his stark announcement about any regrets he had about his presidency.

He said he wishes he’d sent “one more helicopter” into the Iranian desert in April 1980 on that tragic mission to rescue the American hostages held captive by Iranian militants. Had he done that, Carter said, the mission likely would have succeeded and he would have been re-elected to a second term.

The reporters gathered in the room to record the event laughed.

President Carter smiled that broad, toothy grin we’ve all come to know.

He remains an optimist that he’ll win this battle. I’m hoping, too, that his inner strength will carry him forward to do more good work.

Peace be with you, Mr. President.

 

medical news

Praying for a former president

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Jimmy Carter needs the nation’s prayers.

I intend to offer him mine. The 39th president of the United States today revealed that cancer has spread to his brain. He intends to undergo radiation therapy in an attempt to get rid of it.

As it is with people imbued with immense faith, President Carter said he is at peace with whatever outcome awaits him. This man teaches a Sunday school class at his Plains, Ga., church. His Christian faith is known around the world.

I strongly suspect that this good man isn’t worried about his future, regardless of what it brings.

Of course, I want him to recover from this illness and return to the good work that has been the hallmark of his lengthy post-presidential time. He has thrown himself into humanitarian causes, into ensuring free and fair elections in Third World countries and, yes, occasionally speaking out on public policy matters that concern him.

He is 90 now and continues to enjoy a fruitful and engaging life.

I hope it continues. I now intend to do my tiny part in trying to make it a reality by saying a prayer for his full recovery.