The Republic of T.

Does anyone else grind their teeth at night? How about during the day?

It started sometime last year, around the end of the summer, but I didn’t notice it until September. I’d started waking up with inexplicable headaches that didn’t dissipate during the day. I’d take pain medications, sinus medications, thinking one or the other would fix it.

Then I realized that not only did I have a headache, but my face hurt too, especially my cheeks and my jaw muscles. I realized I was probably clenching or grinding my teeth at night, something called bruxism.

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There are natural disasters and man-made disasters. There are those who look upon the aftermath of disaster and see things as they should be. We call them conservatives.

As I write this, the seeds of disaster and an aftermath of Katrina-like proportions have been and are being sown in the shadow of the nation’s capitol, by a conservative philosophy that—as a matter of principle and policy—neither prepares for or prevents disaster, nor provides relief in its aftermath And when disaster befalls those most vulnerable to its ravages, conservative philosophy declares disaster the fault of and its consequences deserved by those least able to defend themselves against either.

When disaster strikes Washington, D.C.—whether in the form of a disease outbreak, a dirty bomb, or another terrorist attack—it will be the fault of those who cannot get themselves out of harm’s way, and not the fault of conservative philosophy that makes disaster all but inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has heard at least one “health care nightmare” story, like the death of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian hours after her insurance company approved coverage a liver transplant, following repeated denials. Before that, it was the death of Diamonte Driver, for want of an $80 dental procedure. These stories naturally provoke outrage. What happened to an anonymous 68-year-old man, however, is categorized as weird news, even though it’s as much about our failed health care system as the familiar “nightmare” stories.

The abstract of the article published in Journal of Emergency Medicine, in December 2007, is about as dry as you might expect a medical journal to be.
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I’ve been meaning to post some kind of follow-up after my last three posts on mental illness and mental health care (or the lack thereof). After going off about the lack of mental health services, or lack of access to treatment, can lead to problems for the mentally ill, their families, and the rest of society, it was encouraging to read about states increasing funding for mental health services. But it raises some interesting questions about how to achieve a balance that also protects the rights of the mentally ill.

I thought about it a couple of weeks ago, when I read about Kaine’s plan to boost mental health funding, in the wake of the VA Tech shootings. But that funding comes with a reform that—though apparently intended to address situations in which people, like VA Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho, don’t get court ordered treatment—raises questions about the effectiveness of basically coercing the mentally ill into getting treatment.
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Mental illness isn’t a crime, but the way we treat — or don’t treat — the mentally ill is. Or should be. I wrote earlier that the Hillary’s hostage taker was ordered to undergo evaluation, which led me to make the following joke.

In fact, if you need — really need — inpatient mental health care, you’re unlikely to be able to get it, or at least get enough of it, because whatever can’t be treated in 10 days or so, isn’t going to be treated period. Not unless you kill someone, or at least take a few hostages.

But it turns out that committing a crime isn’t necessarily a ticket to getting mental health care. In fact, if you’re incarcerated — probably as a result of untreated mental illness — it can be a virtual guarantee that you won’t get the mental health care that you desperately need. In some cases, it can even be a death sentence.

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No sooner did I post about the Clinton hostage crisis than the Omaha mall shooting happened, and right away there were questions about the mental health of the gunman.

“As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” A sign bearing these severe but hopeful words marks the entrance to Cooper Village, a residential treatment facility for teenagers along the rural northern edge of Omaha.

…Robert A. Hawkins, as a ward of the State of Nebraska, received extensive care at Cooper — private psychotherapy, family therapy, drug counseling — from 2003 to 2005.

It was his longest stop in a five-year journey through a maze of juvenile-services programs that began when he was 13 and was charged with making homicidal threats toward his stepmother.

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I actually went all day without hearing about the hostage situation at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters. By the time I got the full story, it was all over but the post-hostage-crisis analysis, which basically boiled down to this: the guy was crazy. His lawyer said he heard voices telling him to “sacrifice himself” to bring awareness to mental health issues. Maybe the voices were on to something, because he appears to have done just what they said.

As I listened to the reports, I couldn’t help shaking my head and asking “What was a guy with obvious problems like this just roaming around? Why wasn’t he somewhere getting help?” Of course I knew the answer. In a way, the hostage situation in Hillary’s office is just like any number of other events, like the disastrous non-response to Katrina, or the tidal wave of toxic toys and poisonous food that’s washed up on U.S. shores. It’s the result of a very simple political philosophy, one that’s often mistakenly paraphrased as “government doesn’t work, when a more accurate description would be “government shouldn’t work, mustn’t work, and if it is working it must be stopped.”

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I don’t even know what to say when I hear news like this. What’s there to say when a body basically gays gays are lower than dogs by offering health benefits to pets but not domestic partners?

When trustees of Palm Beach Community College reached a tie vote in August on a proposal to offer health insurance for the domestic partners of employees, the measure failed and advocates for gay professors and other employees were disappointed. Because the college only pays for employees’ benefits, the proposal wouldn’t have cost the college a penny, but would have opened up quality insurance at a lower cost for the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Now — in a move that is seen as adding salt to those wounds — the college has added a new health insurance benefit for some (unmarried) household members of employees: pet health insurance. All employees were told that they would get a 5 percent discount and group rates on a health insurance plans for their pets. A range of plans are offered, covering wellness care, vaccinations, X-rays, surgery and hospitalization (although pre-existing conditions may not be covered).

“Your pet is a member of your family — his quality of life is important to you,” says the promotional material from the veterinary insurance company.

Your pet is a member of your family, but your partner is not? Basically, yes.

current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, health care, marriage, politics, same-sex marriage

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Normally, I’d stick this in asides, but I just upgraded Wordpress and my asides are not working. It looks like more meat-eaters are ordering Tofurky this year.

Tofurky hit store shelves in 1995, and the meatless dish has become a cultural phenomenon, even showing up on the TV shows ” Jeopardy” and “The O.C.” Tibbott’s company, Turtle Island Foods of Hood, Ore., has annual revenue of $11 million. Tofurky sales have grown 37 percent this year from 2006. He expects to sell 270,000 Tofurkys by the end of the holiday season, which translates to 438,000 pounds of tofu, wheat protein, canola oil and spices.
The concept was born of Tibbott’s vegetarian frustrations. After attending Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, he left for college in Ohio in 1969 and returned home having sworn off meat. Thanksgiving was particularly tough, he said, recalling a nasty bout with a stuffed pumpkin and a rock-hard gluten roast.

“We were looking for something for an answer and we figured there’s probably other people out there,” he said.

A 2006 poll conducted by Harris Interactive for the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group found that about 2 percent of adults are vegetarian, meaning they do not eat meat, poultry or seafood. The total was up from about 1 percent from a similar study the group conducted in 1994. The percentage of adults who do not eat poultry in particular grew to 6 percent from 3 percent.

The market, meanwhile, has been helped by omnivores who seek alternatives to meat for health reasons. They helped turn vegetarian foods into a $1.2 billion industry last year, up 44 percent from 2001, the consumer research firm Mintel said. The report found that 23 percent of non-vegetarians eat meat alternatives, though consumers still say the products cannot match the real thing.

Well, there might be one more health-related reason to lay off the meat this year. There’s a new additive that’s apparently all the rage. Carbon monoxide.

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It depends on how you look at it. Admittedly, I was a bit over-stimulated by being in the media room during this weeks presidential forum (even though I was immediately reminded that I was not media, “new media” status notwithstanding). And I had just written that homophobia probably wouldn’t be addressed, even though the forum kicked off with a kind of circle-jerk discussion about racism and racial discrimination. So I was stunned when Barrack Obama actually spoke the word “homophobia” while answering a question about the AIDS epidemic.

Tavis Smiley: Senator Obama?

Barack Obama: I think John’s prescriptions are right. I would add the issue of prevention involves education and one of the things that we’ve got to overcome is a stigma that still exists in our communities. We don’t talk about this. We don’t talk about in the schools. Sometimes we don’t talk about it in the churches. It has been as aspect of sometimes a homophobia, that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be. I also think there’s a broader issue here. This is going to be true on all the issues we talk about.

The problems of poverty, like of health care, like of educational opportunity, are all interconnected. To some degree, the African American community is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted not just with AIDS, but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets.

So it is important for us to look at the whole body here and make absolutely certain that we are providing the kinds of economic development opportunities and jobs that will create healthy communities, that we’ve got universal health care that ensures the people can get regular treatments. Those are the kinds of strategies that, over the long term, are going to make a difference in our communities.

And while I was somewhat disappointed with how quickly he danced away from the issue, and failed to include it in his list of “social diseases” affecting African American communities (after all, homophobia is likely involved to some degree in substance abuse and violence), I was so stunned to hear the word even used at a forum focused on issues facing African Americans that I missed the significance of his next comment, in his exchange with Sen. Biden on the same question.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, elections, gay, gay rights, hiv, homophobia, obama, politics, race

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I’m overdue in posting a round-up, because so much has been going on in my offline life lately. Case in point, I’m on the road with the family today, and away from the blog and the blogosphere. So here’s some great stuff to check out in the meantime.

I haven’t had a chance to cover Obama’s remarks that the right has “hijacked” faith, but David Sirota makes a point that Obama has an opportunity to walk his talk by not appearing at a right wing think tank event.

…As I had discovered during my years in politics, one of the most aggressive extremist groups that operates at the state level is called the American Legislative Exchange Council - or ALEC for short. It’s a seemingly innocuous name, but as Progressive States detailed in one of its first reports - and as other terrific progressive organizations have detailed at length - ALEC is not an innocuous organization - it is arguably the most important legislative appendage of Big Money and right-wing interests in American politics. That’s why U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) must reject ALEC’s invitation for him to speak at its upcoming national conference.

… Obama is a former state legislator, meaning that he understands the power and destructive agenda of ALEC. If he has not accepted ALEC’s invitation, and ALEC is nonetheless using his notoriety to build an audience for its conference, Obama has a huge opportunity - a PR gift given to him by the Right. He could demand his photo be removed from ALEC’s website and marketing materials, and issue a strong statement talking about how nefarious right-wing extremist groups like ALEC really are, both tactically and public policy-wise. He would create a significant moment for public education about the real forces that drive - and distort - our politics.

Technorati Tags: blogs, civil rights, current events, gay marriage, gay rights, homophobia, politics, race, religion

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It shouldn’t be a surprise, really. I mean, we know based on the example of Harvey Fierstein in the previous post and the queens who fought at Stonewall that often times a guy can have bigger cajones than the most obstreperous, chest-pounding male loudly demonstrating or defending his masculinity at any and every opportunity. So why should anyone be shocked that the Democratic Congress, and its “Macho” “Alpha Dems” have already rolled over for Bush administration and the Republican Party.

Not once, but twice now. Once on Iraq. And now again on abstinence-only “education,” of all things. I ask you, why doesn’t the DNC just write a check to the RNC and have done with it? (Or perhaps it’s a matter of the RNC leaving a $20 on the dresser?). At least then, my tax dollars would be left out of it because I don’t have to give money to the Democrats, after all.

Technorati Tags: bush, current events, health, politics, religion

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In case it hasn’t been apparent lately, I’m running a little low on blog mojo these days. Or maybe I’m running a little low on sleep. Maybe both. Lately I find myself still up at 2:30am or even 3:00am, often catching up on blog reading or writing a post that’s been knocking around in my head for a while but that’s too long and/or too deeply linked to write between breaks at work or at home. (You’d be amazed at the number of posts that are published during daylight hours were actually written in the wee hours of the night/morning.) Thats fine, in a way. I’ve always been a night owl, staying up past everyone else’s bed time because that’s time that’s almost guaranteed to belong to me. I can indulge my own interests without worrying about stealing time from something else. At least until my body rebels and starts shutting down.

Of course, if you work and have kids, you know what I’m talking about. You clock out and go home, but you don’t really clock out until well after the kids have gone to bed and you’ve caught up with your spouse or partner (because, if you want to have a healthy relationship you kinda hafta talk to each other once in a while). So, round about 10:00 pm, in my case, is when I can really focus on some stuff I want to do.The problem is, I’m often physically and mentally exhausted. Plus the stuff that keeps my brain functioning in almost-normal mode wears off by then. So, there’s the problem of being able to focus when I finally have the time.

But I’m not getting enough sleep. (Guess where I’m stealing time from now) I end up getting 4 - 5 hours of sleep a night. Six would be optimal for me. But I can’t manage to get in everything I want to get in — read everything I want to read, write everything I want to write, etc. — and get enough sleep. So, I end up with a backlog. For example, I meant to blog about all of this when I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that there are a lot people who are sleepless in D.C.

In the Washington area, there are a lot of highly educated white-collar workers who have come from all over to get ahead.

Dr. David Gross, a pulmonologist who specializes in sleep issues, said there are three keys to good health: diet, exercise, and sleep.

“Americans are very aware of the fact that exercise is important and diet is important. They don’t do it necessarily, but they know they should do it,” Gross said. “Sleep is something special because they don’t even realize that sleep is important. And they don’t do it.”

According to Gross, lack of sleep is a problem. He said it’s a contributor to diabetes, high blood pressure, weight gain, and to depression.

Gross said not getting enough sleep can dull your performance, make you a lot less efficient and it can make you irritable.

To get enough sleep Gross said people have to change their priorities.

Dull performance? Yeah, probably. Irritable? Definitely. Change my priorities? There’s a lot more than that to change if I’m going to get more sleep.

Technorati Tags: family, health, life, movies, sleep, television

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