Tag Archives: medical professionals

medical news

Needing to keep emotions in check

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A big day awaits my bride and me. It’s coming on Monday, which is when she checks out of the Medical City/McKinney (Texas) rehab unit and returns home.

Many of you know the story by now. She had a cancerous tumor removed from her brain two days after Christmas. She has been in rehab for several days regaining her strength, her balance, her dexterity in her left hand.

Now I must prepare to say so long to some folks who have become almost like family to us. I refer to the rehab medical staff at Medical City.

I have told many of them already to their smiling faces how much we appreciate the care she has received. I am ratcheting it up a bit farther with this blog post.

To be brutally candid, at this moment I am not sure how I am going to hold my emotions in check when she leaves the rehab center.

Now, spare me the lecture about how they’re just doing their jobs; that they are trained to do the things we have asked of them; that they hear high praise all the time and they likely might not even remember us once we walk out the door.

I don’t care about any of that. I feel the overwhelming need to praise them for their kindness, their caring, their compassion, their senses of humor and their patience with doting family members who ask them zillions of questions each day.

So, I am offering them praise here. Hey, it’s my blog and I intend to use it as a source of encouragement for them as they prepare to do the very same thing for future patients who will entrust themselves to their care.

These medical professionals all have brought a measure of joy to us on this latest lap on our life journey. More challenges lie ahead but we are keeping the faith that a positive outcome awaits.

I am just want to keep the blubbering to a minimum when we leave the hospital and head for the house.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

They’re all heroes

I have been receiving a real-time lesson in how heroes do their jobs and how they continue to perform at the highest levels while maintaining smiles on their faces and kindness in their hearts.

These are the medical professionals who have been tending to my bride since the day after Christmas when she reported to the emergency room to determine the cause of her loss of balance. The initial news was stunning: a tumor was pressuring her brain. Most of the tumor is gone.

We took her to the Medical City/McKinney hospital about 15 or so minutes away from our home in Princeton.

And for the past several days we have borne witness to some of the most astonishing displays of compassion and alertness I only have been able to imagine … until now.

I told a young nurse, Bradley, that “I could not possibly do your job.” He laughed and described himself as a classic “type A” individual who, I should add, is married to a woman who he described as being an equally type A person, which he acknowledges brings some interesting conflicts in their home. “But, hey, all marriages have ’em, right?” he said.

These heroes occasionally get the recognition they deserve. The 9/11 catastrophe told the world of their heroism. Time and again through one disaster after another, these men and women deliver service to the public that only a select few of us can replicate. I am not one of them.

Thus, I stand in awe as I watch these individuals at Medical City/McKinney take meticulous care of my dear bride as she begins her fight to recover fully.

I just feel the need to thank them publicly. Their kindness will stay with me forever … and beyond

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, State news

'Gay conversion therapy' going strong in Texas

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Texas politicians seem to think they’re the only correct thinkers in a nation that seems to be going in the opposite direction.

An example? Gay conversion therapy, which is drawing opposition from medical professionals and politicians throughout the land, appears to be showing no signs of slowing down in Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/04/18/opposition-gay-conversion-therapy-grows/

Have mercy on us all.

Gay conversion therapy seeks to persuade people that they aren’t actually gay. Never mind scientific evidence that someone’s sexual orientation is built into their DNA the same way, say, their hair and eye colors are built in.

That hasn’t stopped politicians from suggesting that a healthy dose of religious teaching, which the critics contend is occurring, will get rid of someone’s homosexual urges. As the Tribune reports, “The American Psychiatric Association has condemned it, and experts say it can cause mental harm to individuals.”

Hey, what does a group of trained medical professionals know?

The Tribune reports further: “David Pickup, who practices reparative therapy in California and Texas, said he was upset by the president’s words last week and feels reparative therapy has been mischaracterized.

“’Words hurt sometimes, and some of our clients have been upset about his public condemnation of these things — it has really hurt their feelings,’ Pickup said. ‘Reparative therapy is there for people who believe that for them, homosexual impulses arise not because of something genetic but because of emotional and sexual abuse.’”

State Rep. Celia Israel, D-Austin, has been trying to get a hearing before the House State Affairs Committee. She’s been stonewalled so far. Israel is hoping at least to get the subject on the table for some open debate.

Something tells me that with conservatives owning a supermajority in the House of Representatives and a strong majority in the Senate, the chances of at least a hearing are somewhere between slim and none.

Meanwhile, Texas will stand increasingly alone in standing by the notion that you can convert gay people into something they are not.

 

International news

Ebola fighters get too much credit

I’m not prone to critiquing Time magazine’s annual Person of the Year selection.

The choices don’t usually get me too worked up — either positively or negatively. This year’s choice is a bit different.

Time chose to honor the Ebola fighters, the medical professionals who went to West Africa to battle the killer disease.

Of all the choices Time could have made, the editors could have chosen someone with more, um, immediate and palpable impact.

As my pal Tom Taschinger wrote in the Beaumont Enterprise, “Granted, these men and women are doing noble deeds. But Ebola has faded from the epidemic that will end Life As We Know It to an overhyped cable-TV story.”

Indeed, this story was overplayed from the beginning, particularly the “outbreak” in the United States that never occurred.

Here’s one of the posts I published on my blog about the coverage:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/10/16/shep-gets-it-exactly-right-on-ebola/

One man flew to Dallas from Liberia; he was carrying the virus with him. He got sick, checked into a first-rate hospital in the Dallas area, but then died. Another man died in Nebraska. A nurse got infected in Dallas, went to Atlanta, and was declared Ebola free.

That’s it.

The disease has receded from the headlines and from CNN, MSNBC and Fox news coverage.

As Taschinger noted in his excellent column, occasionally Time picks a notorious figure as its Person of the Year — such as Ayatollah Khomeini or Timothy McVeigh. It has leaned more in recent years to feel-good selections. I agree that they’re important, too. But let’s get real here. Is Ebola really a worldwide threat?

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/columns/article/THOMAS-TASCHINGER-The-Person-of-the-Year-is-a-5969800.php

The magazine can do better next year.