Archive for the ‘Humor / Quote’ Category
A Reminder . . .
. . . to y’all.
Bookmark this:
maturelifefeatures.com
and give it a quick check every morning.
I’ll try to keep posting reminders and updates
along with some other copy that might entertain.
It’ll take just a minute.
If you have a comment or observation,
send it to me at
cecilscag@gmail.com
= = = = =
I learned a quick lesson
after I questioned
some of my wife’s choices
and she pointed out
I was one of them.
= = = = =
Like Apple a Day,
Telemedicine Keeps Doctor Away
Your best health tool may be your cell phone.
Call it telemedicine or telehealth, it’s the future of doctor-patient relationships and it’s already arrived.
Telehealth exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns and there no longer is any question within and without the medical community that telemedicine is here to stay.
While face-to-face visits with primary-care physicians and specialists are expected to continue for critical cases, chronic-care no longer will call for a patient to get a ride to the doctor’s office. It can be handled by phone or computer.
Which could also be part of a growing problem because it’s difficult to reach a real person by phone anymore, even to make appointments.
After an annual visit to a specialist monitoring his liver condition, a relative was told to make appointments for an ultrasound reading and a blood test. The blood-test appointment had to be made online and it took several sessions with a computerized voice to get called by a person to make the ultrasound appointment.
A computerized phone call notified him the results of the test were posted on the patient portal in his computer. He had to read — and translate — the results himself. He assumed everything was routine because the doctor, or his assistant, would call if there were any problems or peril.
= = = = =
I’ve Never Told . . .
. . .this to anyone before but,
when I found out
what electricity could do,
I was shocked.
= = = = =
Mature Motorists Slowing Down
The “get ’em off the road” gang is after aging drivers again. This happens every time a silver-haired motor-vehicle operator gets into an accident.
Take away their license. Test them every year. Let them walk. They bring out the statistics that senior drivers are the second-most accident-prone segment of American’s motoring public. However, the single-most road-risky group are teen-aged drivers. But no one suggests taking away their licenses.
Detractors of senior drivers suggest taking driving licenses away at a certain age. How about holding back drivers’ licenses to young people until they reach a certain age? Neither of these suggestions make sense.
Age is not the problem. The problem is common sense and competence behind the wheel.
It is estimated that one out of every five of the nation’s drivers will be older than 65 by 2030. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study indicates that most older drivers limit or stop driving on their own as they perceive their capabilities diminishing.
About 70 percent of more than 3,800 drivers 50-years-and-older queried said they restricted their driving under a variety of conditions. These included bad weather, heavy traffic, rush hour, night time, long distances, and freeways.
Older drivers apparently develop strategies to compensate for failing vision, slower reflexes, stiffer joints, and medication, according to researchers. They can help their cause by supporting physical improvements such as signs that are larger and less complex, improved lighting and enhanced visibility at intersections, and remedial-driving programs.
= = = = =
It’s Party Time!!!
But you folks at Verena
can squeeze in your 1:30 p.m. writing class
before the festivities begin at 3 p.m.
= = = = =
I can’t even count the times
I failed math at school.
= = = = =
If It’s Autoimmune,
It Can Be Anything
A visit by the blahs, flu, endless fatigue, chills, sweats, and whatever is a reminder me of what has become one of medicine’s major mysteries – autoimmune disorders.
More than 100 conditions have joined the list since they were first labeled a little more than three decades ago. Among the most common are rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis. What links these is their root cause: your immune system is battling part of you – your skin, blood vessels, joints, nerves or organs.
In my case, it’s autoimmune hepatitis and my liver is the enemy.
It all began to surface a dozen years ago while on a trip to Italy. I began feeling tired and just couldn’t shake loose of that feeling. When we got home, it took half a year of tests, MRIs, X-rays and biopsies to unearth the cause.
I learned my liver has four major stages: good, not too bad, fatty and it-has-to-be-replaced. Mine was on the cusp of fatty and the final stage. And being autoimmune hepatitis means the doctors have no idea what caused it.
Steroids were prescribed immediately. The first one had to be discarded when they conflicted with the bladder-cancer pills prescribed a couple of years later. And I’ve been told I should avoid getting sick.
I did fall victim to COVID-19 a couple of years ago but got through my quarantine suffering mostly from boredom. Not too long ago, I woke up sweating and with the chills. I felt fatigued, unsteady on my feet and had a cough that was persistent in spells. Was this COVID-19 again, or the flu, or something else?
I felt like I felt in Italy several years ago so I did what a doctor’s assistant suggested back then. I took a bottle of water out of the fridge, sipped some, turned on the television set, curled up in my big chair, and fell asleep.
“Just baby yourself and wait things out,” she said. And that worked.
I don’t know how I got sick so we’ll just have to call it the autoimmune under-the-weather syndrome.
= = = = =
Get Your Arms In Shape . . .
. . . for Bocce ball
Friday 11 a.m. poolside.
= = = =
What . . .
. . .do vegetarians count
to go to sleep?
Heads of lettuce?
Cucumbers?
Pumpkins?
= = = =
Only Your Computer Knows Virtual Money
It’s a tenet of investing: if you don’t understand the company or product and what it does, drop it and move on to something else. Which makes the Bitcoin story bizarre. Not only is it understood by a select group of financial high flyers, no one is really sure who started it.
Since the Bitcoin’s birth a dozen years ago, it’s travelled a bumpy road the stretches from a price of $400 five years ago to more than $60,000 about a year ago. Along the way it dropped to $4,000 in 2019 from $19,000 two years earlier.
The value of Bitcoin rises only if there’s a demand for it. If no one wants it, the value drops dramatically.
If Bitcoin sounds a bit scary, there are more than 6,500 other cryptocurrencies on the market.
If Bitcoin doesn’t catch our fancy, you can purchase Ethereum, Litecoin, Stellar, Polkadot or Cardano among the thousands of other options.
None of these currencies involve printing presses. They exist only in computers – cyberspace.
There is a growing industry servicing the spending of Bitcoins after you buy them. They’re readily available at thousands of automated teller machines around the country.
And there’s a whole new language involved.
For example, Ethereum claims to be “a decentralized software platform that enables smart contracts and decentralized applications (dapps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control, or interference from a third party.
“The goal behind Ethereum is to create a decentralized suite of financial products that anyone in the world can freely access, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or faith.”
Did you get all that?
Transactions are conducted through a digital ledger called a blockchain. This involves a worldwide computer network that stores the virtual money in a digital wallet.
= = = =
A Neighbor . . .
. . . thanked me
for defining “myriad” for them.
They said it meant a lot.
= = = =
From poker to pinochle,
it’s just another day
at Verena of Gilbert.
= = = =
Sleep Right, Sleep Tight
Your mother’s nagging to make your bed turns out to be healthy advice.
A National Sleep Foundation survey reveals that folks who make their bed daily are more likely to get a good night’s sleep than people who don’t make their beds. And change your sheets weekly.
Allergens that disrupt sleep can build up in your sheets. They also can build in your pillow so you should change it every couple of years. Or use two pillows and alternate them every month or so.
Have You Ever Wondered . . .
. . .where Noah
kept the termites
on the Ark?
= = = =
= = = =
Worried About Warts?
It’s always best to get medical treatment for anything that attacks your body, including warts that seem to be appear and disappear willy-nilly on various parts of your body. A common remedy is to have them frozen so they fall off or they can be cut out by a doctor.
There are several around-the-house remedies that have been successful in some cases.
For one, you can cut a small potato in half and rub the cut side of the potato on the wart twice a day until it disappears. Or you can rub the wart daily with a piece of pineapple or the inside of a banana peel.
Some folks report daily application of the gel from the aloe vera plant works. A garlic clove crushed and mixed with water, applied to the wart daily, and covered with a bandage reportedly works in three to four weeks. Another solution to try is two parts apple cider vinegar to one part water. Soak a cotton ball in the mixture and wrap it over the wart for three or four hours every day.
Be A Good Scout …
= = = = = =
People have quit asking me
to drive them someplace
since I’ve told them I will
if they let me know when I’m snoring.
= = = = =
Friends Help When Friends Pass Away
Having a coffee or chat with a friend will help assuage your grief when another friend dies. Reviewing old times with someone will help soften the blow after a pal has passed away.
Grief counselors suggest you concentrate on the good times you had with the deceased to lighten the load of grieving. It also helps to write down some of those memories and send them to members of the dead person’s family along with your expressions of sympathy.
There are a couple of don’ts. Don’t try to forget them and don’t feel guilty. Thinking of how you might have visited more often or made a few more phone calls or sent a couple more emails only fuels your grief. So does trying to shut out the times you spent together
Meet Verena Salon Operators
hair-stylist Irene and manicurist Dawn
to get your questions answered about
services, operating times and other matters.
10 a.m. 2nd floor theater
And then . . .
It’s taken a long time
for us old farts
to realize that there’s no sense
to eating right and exercising regularly to stay fit
because we’re still going to die anyway.
Whatever Happened . . .
. . . to Albert Einstein’s brother
Frank?
Get your free blood-pressure check
in the lobby
every Wednesday at 10 a.m.
provided by BAYADA
then
Check your hearing & hearing-aids
at 3 p.m.
in the 2nd floor multipurpose room
with Preferred Hearing Care
Got To Thinking . . .
. . .t’other day that
it’s OK for a gal
to wear her guy’s T-shirts, dress shirts, sweaters and such
but should he wear on of her dresses
it’s “we gotta talk” time.
Future of Telemedicine is Now
Telemedicine – the practice of getting diagnosis and treatment via your laptop or cell phone – has been gaining traction. Accelerating this drive is the unavailability of health care in rural (and some urban) areas because of the diminishing number of doctors as the over-65 crowd grows at the rate of 10,000 people a day.
One out of five residents live in areas identified as being short of health professionals. The advantage of being able to contact a doctor remotely became evident during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were confined to quarters.
Telemedicine opens the door to specialists as well as second medical opinions without taking up too much consulting time by the health experts contacted. It also reduces the stress on the patient as well as eliminating the need to travel to an appointment, which requires the patient to find a driver in many cases. Seniors fretting about their lack of computer equipment or skills find a telephone conversation may work as well.
Medicare has expanded its coverage of medical treatment by phone or computer. While not all health-insurance companies are following suit, several recognize telemedicine helps reduce the cost of health care. For example, it allows primary care physicians to schedule appointments at any time and not just the traditional “office hours” and reduces unnecessary office and emergency-room visits. It also lowers the cost of patient no-shows.
A barrier in the way of expanding telemedicine are reimbursement rules that require treatment to be conducted in specific sites, such as the doctor’s office or a health center. Government licensing laws also get in the way. Federal law requires telemedicine health-care providers to be fully licensed to practice medicine in the state where the patient is physically located. Health-care systems that have locations in more than one state may need to obtain multiple licenses.
Mature Life Features 