Saturday, January 7, 2017

Painkillers and other ‘problems’


I have a problem (and,) my problem is pain.  What do you suppose I should do about it?  Well, the obvious answer, to me at least, is I should take my problem to my doctor and see what he might be able to do about it:  And therein lies the rub:  My doctor does not want to prescribe pain killers.  So--why is this?

It seems pain killers are now a popular issue of choice for our lawmakers.  All of them (the lawmakers, not the pain killers) are jumping on this bandwagon lest they be seen as promoting the use of these addictive substances, mostly the oxycodons, or hydrocodons (each has various commercial names) and the problems (addiction, overdose, death) that may accompany their misuse.  And, while our legislators’ injecting their (questionable) opinions, bills, and votes into this issue may make them seem responsive and give them an issue that may increase their popularity in some quarters, it does nothing for the person who may benefit from using the medications in question—the person in pain.

Our legislators need to examine problems and issues that relate to the public.  Our doctors need to deal with problems and issues that relate to the needs of each individual patient.  While some time the twain will meet, when the legislators interject themselves between the doctors and their patients, they are making public decisions on issues that should be kept between two individuals—the doctor and his patient.  Public solutions are not solutions that may be tailored to the needs of individuals, as the decisions of doctors for and with their patients must of necessity be tailored to each individual situation. 

If our legislators insist on inserting themselves between us and our doctors, I think we need to insert ourselves between our legislators and their jobs. 

Correcting my pain is not a public matter.  My legislator needs to remove himself from interfering with my relationship with my doctor.

My pain is not a public problem.  

Monday, January 2, 2017

What, or where, is Ninety Six?

Watching CBS this morning, January 2, 2017, I found Conor Knighton’s clip on “Visiting all of the National Parks” interesting.  (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/on-the-trail-years-end/  If you choose to call up this address, sorry about the leading commercial—guess CBS has to pay their bills some way.)  In any case, Ric Nipper, a friend of mine from Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and I have been taking annual trips to various Georgia and South Carolina sites for several years.  This year, we ended up in Ninety Six.

I had a dear French teacher in High School, who told her students she had grown up in Ninety Six.  Now, I have had occasion, over the past quite a few years, to drive down one or more of our state roads near Ninety Six, and I had noticed highway signs pointing “To Ninety Six,” but, until Ric and I set out on our annual pilgrimage to wherever, I had never even given consideration to visiting Mme. Butler’s home town.  Nor did Ric, or I, give any consideration to going there when we left Aiken this year just before Thanksgiving.   Guess we just gravitated in that direction.  So, you say, why bring this up now?  Well, it seems this year, we inadvertently went to a South Carolina National Park Service site—the one in Ninety Six.

And, should you need a reason to try this site, maybe the fact that it is one National Park site you might be able to visit and see in just one day might provide that reason: https://www.nps.gov/nisi/index.htm.  Now, before I go any further, let me quibble just a bit.  The National Park Service calls the Ninety Six site a “National Historic Site,” making it one of nine sites in the state on its list of places you might like to visit:  (https://www.nps.gov/state/sc/index.htm) .   In any case, if you are anywhere near it (it is close to Greenwood, SC,) I recommend it to you, whether or not it qualifies as a “National Park,” proper.


I would also recommend the other eight sites on the NPS’s above list (most of which I have had the pleasure to visit in the past) as being worth your time.  Maybe, next Thanksgiving, I might be able to convince my friend Ric to come a day or so early so we can show our wives this little bit of history, just down the road from Aiken, in Ninety Six, South Carolina.  As road trips go, this is a “good 'un.”