Well, I'm here to report that I am now full of tetanus, diptheria (still haven't figured out how to spell that one correctly) measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis B serums. Any type A+'s want a blood transfusion? I've got everything in me that you could want. I was sort of expecting to have a sore arm from the Td, but so far there is just a little of bit of pain that isn't even worth mentioning, which obviously isn't going to stop me from saying that my left biceps hurt.
On to a more serious note, I have started studying bioethics during my time off of school this summer. I recently started going to the public library again since I have some time on my hands, figuring it would be nice to do some recreational reading for a change. My exact and meticulously planned library excursions go something like "walk into the library, close my eyes and spin around 5 times, stop, extend my hand in front of me, open my eyes, walk to wherever my finger is pointing and explore that particular aisle." This method generally has interesting results as I find myself reading about things I normally don't think about and finds me leaving with a stack of titles ranging from meteorology to farming to classic literature to philosophy to motorcycles and so on. The only aisle that I laugh and walk away from is the one that has all the tax code books. Somehow I don't think my self-education will suffer extreme neglect from this.
During last week's trip, the first aisle I walked down contained a number of books on bioethics. A light bulb clicked on in my brain and I thought to myself "hey, maybe we should learn about this and develop a thought framework on it since we are going to be a nurse and work in the medical field for the rest of our life!" (in case you are wondering, I reserve the right to refer to me as a we whenever we want to).
I have extremely passionate and firm beliefs regarding the more normal (how sick is it that I can use the word "normal" here, as if they are nonchalant and run of the mill?) topics such as abortion and assisted suicide and have no problem discussing them with anyone who has a mind to. When it comes to other issues in bioethics, like cloning, genetic modifications, etc, my lack of knowledge is evident by the presence of mere shallow opinions that are all I have to offer when questioned. With this in mind, I picked a few books that looked promising and started reading them almost immediately upon arriving home. Wow. My mind is exploding over the entire arena of humanity that has been opened and explored by these authors. Let me preface my initial thoughts about this subject by saying that: I know I still have a ton to learn, I wrote this in the middle of the night, and some of my reasoning more than likely has holes in it. This is a raw and unedited viewpoint and I know there are large amounts of information that need to be filled in to complete many of the thoughts that are presented here. In other words, these are my reading notes....just a work in progress.
The current trend in the world today seems to be one that removes moral absolutes from medical decision making-absolutes which guarantee the moral value of each individual-and replaces them with a set of subjective values (which, being subjective, are obviously determined by another person).
Rabbit trailing for a moment, I've also been reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran", in which the author makes the point that works of fiction that are told from a narrator's subjective viewpoint always color the reader's opinions of the other characters in the story. The narrator's subjective opinions cause the other characters to be loved or hated by the readers; the rules and beliefs of the narrator accordingly determine the fate of the other characters.
Resuming my original train of thought now...while reading my other book, "Culture of Death",
and learning about the transformation of bioethics in the United Sates during the last 40 years, I was caught up in how similar the two books I am reading are, though they are found on opposite sides of the library. The leaders in the bioethics community, be they doctors, lawyers, college professors, or politicians, are narrating the stories in which hundreds of thousands of unborn babies, severely disabled human beings, and elderly suffering from Alzheimer's play silent roles. The subjective guidelines written by their fellow human beings, those who supposedly know what is in the best interests for the "good of the whole" are applied to these individuals who are unable to stand for themselves.
Ok, that's all I have for now. More to come soon, hopefully something that will explain the framework of ideology that the bioethics community (in general) operates from. Btw, I know I titled this post "a chance encounter", but now that I am learning about this vast subject, I know it was more than coincidence or chance or luck that I wound up on that particular part of the aisle.
Showing posts with label Vaccines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vaccines. Show all posts
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sleep is for the dead (or normal).
Insomnia is awesome. It sounds a little like salmonella, and it's probably not just a coincidence that if you have salmonella, you probably also have insomnia. For the record, I do not have salmonella, just insomnia, and even though food poisoning is a fun and colorful experience, I think I already paid my dues in that department this year.
I tried going to sleep earlier but it was one of those times where you lay down on your bed and try the old "just close your eyes" trick that your parents always pulled on you when you were little, except tonight when I closed my eyes my brain didn't get the memo, so here I am, writing run-on sentences for the benefit of the free world. It's just to bad the world isn't really free anymore. Take water, for example. I was recently at Disney World in Florida (not to be confused with the Disney World in Peoria) with a good friend of mine. I think it was about 345% humidity and around 345 degrees Kelvin most of the time we were there. (*READER WARNING: This next bit of info might be too much, so if you don't want to be grossed out, just close your eyes while reading the next few lines so you don't hear what I have to say*).
So while walking and walking and walking and walking through all of WDW's 975 separate theme parks in this heat, I might have broken a light sweat (by "light" I mean there was sweat squishing out of my shoes as I walked, leaving nice foot prints behind me even though I hadn't just walked out of a swimming pool). What can I say....I'm used to hot dry weather, but the South has a sauna-feel to it that makes me think I should see old men with towels around their waists emerging from steam clouds. Whoever said that "girls don't sweat, they shimmer" should have been there with me that day because I was shimmering so much the astronauts probably saw me from the space station.
When you're shimmering excessively, you are obviously losing a lot of water. So I was chug-a-lugging my H2O religiously, but somewhere in the Magic Kingdom or on the Safari Ride or inside the Golf Ball or while wanting to throw golf balls at the wild animals that I saw on the safari ride just to see if the lions really were real or just machines of the magical kingdom, I lost my water bottle. Then I had to buy a new one. You know how much they charged for a bottle of water?!? Three dollars!!! For 16 ounces!!!! After I found this out, I realized that Disney just built the rides so that people would be distracted long enough for secret employees to steal their water bottles, forcing them to go spend more money on more water.
And that's what the Disney empire is based on (and here you thought it was built on revenues from movies and what-not). After doing the math in my head, I figured out that my sweat was worth roughly 19 cents per ounce. Ok, for a comparison, gasoline is something like 0.9 cents per fl oz. (Don't check my math because it's 4:06 AM and I might have accidentally converted something to square acres instead of fluid ounces).
Back to my original point. The world is not free, especially the 2/3 of it that is covered by water (1/3 of which was converted to *shimmer* by yours truly). However, vaccines are free. I'm hoping they still are anyway, because I'm on my college-kid budget (also known as "Shop at Goodwill on 1/2-off everything day") and have to get measles/mumps/rubella, tetanus/diptheria, and a hepatitis series done before I am allowed to do clinicals at the hospital this fall.
I called around town and the general conspiracy plan that all of the Farmington doctors offices came up with was to charge between $300-$400 just to let people stand in the same room as the vaccines in hopes of obtaining immunity by way of diffusion. (If we were in the south, it would be by reverse osmosis). If you actually want the shot injected, you have to trade a kidney or your liver for it.
Obviously, I want to keep my bank account and my body intact at least until grad school (when I have serious expenses), so I called up to Durango and found a place that apparently received a government grant (AKA "fun money and we can always print more!") that is enabling them to give out free vaccines. I'm not really sure about the ethics behind all of it and can't help but wonder if there is secret serum in the bottles that will turn me into a liberal. If, after I receive these shots tomorrow, you hear me say "Yes we can!" or if I cut my hair like Janet Napolitano, please, do the right thing and shoot me dead right there on the spot. My family will understand (Heck, they'll probably say something like "Better shoot her again...y'know, just to be sure").
My rendevesouszzssszsouss (French for "let's get together secretly and smoke cigarettes while talking crap about other people behind their backs because we are too scared to say it to their faces) at the Durango clinic is later on today. I haven't had a shot in 21 years, so this should be interesting. Maybe if I cry, they'll give me a sedative, and hopefully, I won't have insomnia tomorrow night.
I tried going to sleep earlier but it was one of those times where you lay down on your bed and try the old "just close your eyes" trick that your parents always pulled on you when you were little, except tonight when I closed my eyes my brain didn't get the memo, so here I am, writing run-on sentences for the benefit of the free world. It's just to bad the world isn't really free anymore. Take water, for example. I was recently at Disney World in Florida (not to be confused with the Disney World in Peoria) with a good friend of mine. I think it was about 345% humidity and around 345 degrees Kelvin most of the time we were there. (*READER WARNING: This next bit of info might be too much, so if you don't want to be grossed out, just close your eyes while reading the next few lines so you don't hear what I have to say*).
So while walking and walking and walking and walking through all of WDW's 975 separate theme parks in this heat, I might have broken a light sweat (by "light" I mean there was sweat squishing out of my shoes as I walked, leaving nice foot prints behind me even though I hadn't just walked out of a swimming pool). What can I say....I'm used to hot dry weather, but the South has a sauna-feel to it that makes me think I should see old men with towels around their waists emerging from steam clouds. Whoever said that "girls don't sweat, they shimmer" should have been there with me that day because I was shimmering so much the astronauts probably saw me from the space station.
When you're shimmering excessively, you are obviously losing a lot of water. So I was chug-a-lugging my H2O religiously, but somewhere in the Magic Kingdom or on the Safari Ride or inside the Golf Ball or while wanting to throw golf balls at the wild animals that I saw on the safari ride just to see if the lions really were real or just machines of the magical kingdom, I lost my water bottle. Then I had to buy a new one. You know how much they charged for a bottle of water?!? Three dollars!!! For 16 ounces!!!! After I found this out, I realized that Disney just built the rides so that people would be distracted long enough for secret employees to steal their water bottles, forcing them to go spend more money on more water.
And that's what the Disney empire is based on (and here you thought it was built on revenues from movies and what-not). After doing the math in my head, I figured out that my sweat was worth roughly 19 cents per ounce. Ok, for a comparison, gasoline is something like 0.9 cents per fl oz. (Don't check my math because it's 4:06 AM and I might have accidentally converted something to square acres instead of fluid ounces).
Back to my original point. The world is not free, especially the 2/3 of it that is covered by water (1/3 of which was converted to *shimmer* by yours truly). However, vaccines are free. I'm hoping they still are anyway, because I'm on my college-kid budget (also known as "Shop at Goodwill on 1/2-off everything day") and have to get measles/mumps/rubella, tetanus/diptheria, and a hepatitis series done before I am allowed to do clinicals at the hospital this fall.
I called around town and the general conspiracy plan that all of the Farmington doctors offices came up with was to charge between $300-$400 just to let people stand in the same room as the vaccines in hopes of obtaining immunity by way of diffusion. (If we were in the south, it would be by reverse osmosis). If you actually want the shot injected, you have to trade a kidney or your liver for it.
Obviously, I want to keep my bank account and my body intact at least until grad school (when I have serious expenses), so I called up to Durango and found a place that apparently received a government grant (AKA "fun money and we can always print more!") that is enabling them to give out free vaccines. I'm not really sure about the ethics behind all of it and can't help but wonder if there is secret serum in the bottles that will turn me into a liberal. If, after I receive these shots tomorrow, you hear me say "Yes we can!" or if I cut my hair like Janet Napolitano, please, do the right thing and shoot me dead right there on the spot. My family will understand (Heck, they'll probably say something like "Better shoot her again...y'know, just to be sure").
My rendevesouszzssszsouss (French for "let's get together secretly and smoke cigarettes while talking crap about other people behind their backs because we are too scared to say it to their faces) at the Durango clinic is later on today. I haven't had a shot in 21 years, so this should be interesting. Maybe if I cry, they'll give me a sedative, and hopefully, I won't have insomnia tomorrow night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)