"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
Life is in transition right now, sort of literally. I’m moving in the morning.
While I realize I’ve not posted a lot recently, for reasons of school, I hope that you’ll find it in your hearts to understand my lack of interest and time to find interesting things to write about and comment on, and forgive me my continued lack of posting until I resettle across the country at the end of July.
The Seattle Times: Health: Lawsuit won over doctor’s undisclosed drug problem
A Washington hospital and a malpractice insurer have successfully sued a Louisiana hospital and two doctors who wrote glowing letters of recommendation for a colleague without disclosing his drug problem.
The jury award of more than $4 million for fraud and negligent misrepresentation marks the first time one hospital has successfully sued another for failing to disclose adverse information about a doctor being considered for privileges to practice there, liability experts said.
The case was brought by Seattle-based Western Professional Insurance and Kadlec Medical Center, the Richland hospital that later hired Dr. Robert Lee Berry, unaware of his history.
In 2002, one of Berry’s patients, Kim Jones of Richland, then a 31-year-old mother of three, sustained severe brain damage during a routine procedure. Jones is in a nursing home in Michigan unable to care for herself.
Two years later, Berry, an anesthesiologist, and Kadlec agreed to an $8.5 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by Jones’ family.
During that lawsuit, Jones’ family learned that Berry had been diverting the narcotic painkiller Demerol from his patients. They also learned he had been asked to leave the Louisiana hospital and his practice for being impaired on the job ”” a fact neither had disclosed to Kadlec.
“Had we known, we wouldn’t have hired him,” Kadlec spokesman Jim Hall said.
Ron Perey, Jones’ lawyer, said “a case like this has never been won before.” He predicted it would bring about positive changes in “honesty in the medical industry.”
Well, it’s certainly a change – here’s hoping it’s a positive one.
This is the closing section of my 390 presentation paper, finally handed in Friday afternoon. I felt like sharing, largely because there are a few interesting insights in the paper. Interesting to me, anyhow. Just as a warning: this contains thoughtson and my remembrances of Jessica’s death.
There’s always a conclusion to these reflections, although my reflection on the class as a whole has already wrapped up. But this paper became more than just those two hours. It has become two years of avoidance, and for a reason.
I got home the night of August 3rd to Jessica still missing. I had a friend who lived in the same building she did, and I convinced him to let me into the building, to knock at her door. I knocked for a while. We discussed breaking in — we knew how; he’d been locked out of his apartment often enough that we’d perfected the technique. We ended up deciding not to, that it wasn’t our place to make that decision, and besides, she was just off studying somewhere, and forgetting to check in with us.
Her body was found a day later, in the bathtub. August was hot that year, and the body was badly decomposed. When the medical examiner finally released the cause of death he was also able to give us a time of death — August 1st. I didn’t know any of that at the time, though. All I knew was several people contacting me at once, and my world crashing down around me, and reacting the only way I knew how: I shut down. Jessica, my grounding point, my sanity, my support and my rock, was gone, and suddenly I had to be to everyone what she had been to me.
Beloved was the last book we were to read for 390, and I couldn’t. There was no way. I tried, I read it, I went to class, and I had to walk out. I couldn’t handle talking about death and ghosts and memory, rememory. And within that grief and shutting down and doing my best to maintain control and composure, my papers for 390 ended up wrapped up in the emotional mess of the time.
When I convinced myself I would finish it later, and focus for the time on Jessica’s possessions and funeral, I was able to cage the grief and lock it away. But several weeks later, trying my first of many attempts to write about this presentation, the grief roared up and ate me, and I staggered away from the project. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t process the grief.
Several more times, I tried to tackle this paper, and every time it was the same. I found some way to wrap myself around the paper, some novel hook and line into it. I would talk about it as a reflection of my confidence as a PF, and the differences between PFing and presenting for a single day, and why I felt the two experiences to be so different
For the record, I think it’s a matter of support. At least for me, I received an amazing amount of support the first time I PFed. I was told what to expect, common problems that come up, given advice on how to handle an unruly class, and so on and forth. None of this was made available to be as a presenter — I really felt like I was walking into the situation blind and unknowing. More prep and support would have really benefited me; as is, I left the experience convinced I could never PF or teach, because I so badly sucked at the entire thing. . I would look at it in a collage format, piecing together one class woven with the experience of the presentation. I would find some manner to engage the text that would remove the grief. I would, except that I never did, I never managed.I discovered some time last summer that you have to deal with grief in the order you lock it into your heart. The older griefs have to be dealt with before you can deal with the younger, newer ones, and I had several things that had happened before Jessica’s death that I had to process before I could handle this. I also discovered that it seems like you have to be experiencing a new grief in order to pass through the old. Perhaps new grief gives the old perspective?
Any which way, as I experience the grief of moving and leaving, I find myself finally experiencing the pain of Jessica’s death. And as I explore and experience that grief and pain, I find myself finally able to write the paper that should have been finished several years ago.
Since first presenting in 390, I’ve had the chance to PF many times, and I’ve seen my mistakes repeated in other people. Too eager to please, too worried about what the instructor is thinking, trying too hard to involve everyone, never letting silence sit in the room as an invitation. But I stand by the belief that the presentation my partner and I chose to give was the right presentation for that time in the class. And another pattern I’ve noticed is that the 2nd to last group to present? That’s always the group that takes the chance, sticks their neck out on the line, and tries something a little different.
I haven’t posted much in the last few days because I’ve been in Victoria, British Columbia, and largely not near my computer. I’m most certainly not paying any attention to the news or the majority of my normal feeds. In fact, the only reason I’m writing this right now is because I woke up from falling asleep reading/with the light on to turn the light off, and am now having a hard time falling back asleep because there’s someone screaming threats to someone else outside.
Just like home.
So, I’m laying here in bed, the open window letting the sea-scented breeze in (and it’s cold and so brisk and wonderful on all my skin save my right hand, which I keep shoving under the quilt), the tasteful nudes that are hung on the wall barely visible ghosts in the light of the laptop screen, and I’m thinking about the internet.
Specifically, I’m thinking about the accesibility created by the internet. Things like handing in homework online, not so new or interesting to me – I’ve been doing that for, Buddha help me, 18 years. I understand it’s a novel idea for some, but it’s something I grew up with.
What I didn’t grow up with was everyone being on the internet. And I don’t mean just your teachers and parents and friends and cousins and neighborhood grocer. I mean everyone. I mean, find your favourite celebrities online and read their blog and have contact, everyone.
If you’re like me, 99% of these blogs/websites/etc that I find, I find by accident. I have a sort of weird relationship with the idea of fame – namely, I don’t much care about it. If Tom Cruise were to wake me up in the morning, my only reaction would be one of “wtf is Tom Cruise doing in here waking me up?” I’ve met enough celebs at this point in my life that I can be pretty certain of my response.
But, if that person waking me up in the morning were switched to, say, Neil Gaiman or someone from Whose Line, or Mariska Hargity or so on and forth, I’d turn into a stuttering idiot. (I know – I routinely play the stuttering idiot game when I go to Gaiman signings.) What’s the difference? A pretty simple, and ultimately, silly thing. They’re people I admire and respect.
This came up on another community I read, where I clarified that I probably wouldn’t be freeze framing a television show where, with said technology, you can apparently catch one of the characters with his “delicate bits dangling”. The link to said trivia was provided based on my commenting on a photo of the actor’s bare chest… The thing is, the reason I admire and respect and am all fannish about the actor is that I admire his wit, think he’s incredibly smart, and I would love to sit down and just have a conversation about whatever came up (well, assuming I wasn’t stuttering and trying to remember what vowels sound like). I can’t for the life of me think of someone I “follow” (ie am a squealing fangirl about) because they’re eye candy and no more.
I guess the truth of the matter is, any lust I have is for mental ability, not the body proper.
Anyhow, this all comes up because I was poking around on MySpace earlier, having gotten there through a couple of links and clicks, and suddenly I was looking at Drew Carey’s MySpace account. A few more pokes, and I’m seeing a good number of the improv comics I love and their profiles (and genuinely being them, confirmed or directly linked to by their website and so forth – I do my homework, thanks).
And this is weird to me. This open accessibility of people I genuinely admire and respect and so forth. In many cases, the accessibility is a 1/1 sort of thing, and… well, it’s weird. The only reason I know of them is their celeb status, but I could care less about the status, because they seem like people I would like even if I had just met them at the pub.
I’m tired and drifting, my thoughts scattering on the breeze like so many butterflies… I suppose my entire point is the smallness of the world made accessible by a few wires, and how it still, 18 years later, still inspires within me, awe.
New Scientist Breaking News – UK drug trial disaster — the official report
The final report into a catastrophic drug safety trial that left six men fighting for their lives in the UK in March 2006 has severely criticised Parexel, the firm that carried out the trial.
Parexel’s catalogue of errors, listed in the report issued by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, include failing to complete proper patient medical records and not providing 24-hour medical cover.
However, the report concludes that the serious adverse reactions experienced by the healthy volunteers were the result of an “unpredicted biological action of the drug in humans” — echoing an interim report issued in April 2006.
Why, for all it’s flaws, the FDA (or some sort of regulatory agency) is a good idea. Granted, it does sound like it was simply a problem with the drug itself – which is why we do clinical trials – but there were enough flaws within Parexel’s protocol that it highlights why we need oversight agencies.
This is becoming an even worse problem in the third world countries, or upcoming ones such as India, where drug companies are fleeing at alarming rates to do their trials – no FDA, no regulatory agency, no institional review boards, nothing. Just free reign and the money to buy people who’re desperate enough for the cash that they’ll do just about anything – especially with trials, where you have a chance of placebo and walking away with money and no side effects.
Of course, this British disaster shows the problem with that logic – it’s a Big Pharma version of Russian roulette.
Gabon has taken the unusual step of bringing in bioethics experts to educate their government about drug trials, and to insist that all trials done in their country follow US FDA protocols and procedures. This insures greater safety for their citizens, and Big Pharma still goes there, cuz it’s still cheaper. It’s almost a win-win situation; I wonder, and should dig, on just what FDA rules are for accepting clinical trials run outside the USA. And I think I have just the book to do it,…