Hello boys and girls, ladies, and gents as well as everyone in between,
First the good news
Little Maddox has come home. This news is a smidgen old as the newsletter I was writing has disappeared into the bowels of my computer. Maddox got to visit Cook Children’s where he got a bit of help to work on his feeding issues. His mother, Dr. Klein, says that he seems to be rocking out. I figure getting here 2 ½ months early, I will cut him a little bit of slack. I suppose that I will give him another few months before I expect him to start taking names and kicking tush. I suspect that it will be no time at all before the boys are blaming each other for whatever got broken (I might include the dad in that one).
More good news
Our nurse practitioner, Carol, is coming back to work full time as of June 29. During one of the low points of the Covid epidemic, our business had slowed so much that I had to furlough her. I absolutely hated it, but since I like to eat, I had to bite the bullet. Thankfully, things have picked up. Carol had been working in the neonatal intensive care unit but decided that getting to see kids of all ages was a whole lot more fun. Carol and I worked together extensively (don’t worry, she’s heavily medicated – like everyone that works with me) and knows what I expect with my kiddos. She will continue to do the excellent job she was doing before everything broke loose.
Not so good news
Welp, I got to visit with the neurosurgeon. We decided to go conservative at first which meant getting a steroid injection in my back. Just so you know, a week ago last Friday, in the outpatient surgery center with the down show in my backside. It was 3 PM and I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since the night before which included caffeine. To say I was in a good mood was something of a misstatement. Interestingly enough, the anesthesiologist came in and asked me if I wanted anesthesia. I had not known that was even an option. I could have had my morning iced tea, eaten and generally been something close to a human being. Of course, then I thought, “They will be sticking a large needle in my back. Maybe anesthesia would be a good thing.” So then I’m in the operating room with my tush showing up to the ceiling. They told me the medicine had already gone in. I sat there wondering “when is it gonna….” And then I was awake in the recovery room. I will say that I felt great… for one whole day.
Then things started hurting more and more. I found that I could manage to make it through morning but if I went the whole day, every muscle fed by the L5 nerve root went ballistic. This is pretty much the entire right side of my right leg. It also likes to do this at night which is limiting the sleep I am getting. On the recheck with the neurosurgeon last week, we decided that surgery was necessary. So, on July 6, I will be going under the knife again. They say that the success rate is quite good at 95%. However, the neurosurgeon did tell me that my ability to work would be extremely limited for at least eight weeks. The only problem with this is that my wife was with me. And because of this, the chance of me trying to wiggle back to work early is roughly at the success rate of a snowball in h***. I imagine that lying on my back doing nothing will be awesome for approximately two hours. Then, I will start to head toward stark raving mad – and I will take everyone with me. Unfortunately, at this point, there doesn’t seem to be much choice. I’m sorry for those of you that I will not be able to see, or I have had to cancel appointments with because I could barely move. Once (hopefully) I am back to healthy, we will work on getting everybody seen.
Movie Review Corner
This is a new thing I’ve been wanting to do. Generally, I will talk about movies that I liked that are available at home since I have no desire to go out to a movie theater. I recently sat through “The Mitchells versus the Machines”. I started to watch this a couple of weeks before, but couldn’t get into it. So one night, figuring I could torture my kids, I made them sit down and watch with me for “family time”. And I will say that I lost my mind. The story is about a family that is extremely quirky. They have different interests and can’t quite seem to connect with each other in any fashion. On the eve of the daughter heading off to art school, dad cancels the plane ticket and decides they will drive cross-country so that they can bond as a family. Unfortunately, a big tech company, which I am certain is nothing like Apple, upgraded to their newest personal assistant which is a free moving robot. The president’s personal AI takes offense at being discontinued. Hijinks ensue. A lot of pop-culture references throughout the movie with some zany video blurbs throughout. I didn’t hear any offensive language and didn’t see anything that I felt would be problematic for the kids. Don’t worry, I’m sure someone will be offended by it. I’m giving this one a big five tongue depressors up.
People with too much time on their hands
In the last newsletter, I mentioned that Dr. Klein’s baby boy Maddox had a bit of trim off the top of his business. You’ll notice I’m saying this very carefully and not using the technical term. BECAUSE somebody from an anti-remove the turtleneck group, saw the post and we were immediately inundated with all kinds of bad reviews and horrible comments. This is despite the fact that no one who posted had received that procedure from any of the physicians in our group. When I heard about this, I thought “how do these folks have so much free time that they can go on a rampage over this issue”? Moreover, we always ask for consent before this procedure. This means that is not ever done without the parents okay. Personally, it does not matter to me whether the tally-wacker is cloaked or uncloaked. I thought, “with this much time and energy, these people need to put their gifts to good use and get out to sell some Amway”. They could make a fortune (or so I’ve heard). But instead, they sit in their caves ranting about how horrible we are for doing this. I imagine that there is a bridge in a fairytale that has no one to gobble up the children the try to cross. What a loss.
Covid-19… Maybe you have heard of it.
We’ve had a lot of questions about Covid vaccines. At the moment, we are not able to even purchase the vaccines to give in our clinic so most of my comments are somewhat of a moot point. I get asked if the vaccine is safe. Unfortunately, the minute we left the womb (possibly before), safe went out the window. Everything comes down to the risk versus the benefit. The team and I have been reviewing the data and it looks pretty clean. People are worried that it was rushed to be made, however it did go through every single review process that every vaccine in recent history has had to clear. But because there was a lot more MONEY involved, things that would be a normal hold up got done more quickly. There is a slight risk of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis. However, people forget that viruses themselves are notorious for causing myocarditis. There have been over 177 million people vaccinated and there have been more than a thousand reports of heart inflammation. This puts the risk around 0.0007%. Now your odds of winning the lottery are around 0.000007% (this is an estimate from what I found on the web). The chance of being bitten by a shark is 0.00026%. The odds of being struck by lightning are 0.0002%. Your odds of dying from a car accident are just under 1%. So, the risk of heart inflammation from the Covid vaccine is better than the odds of being bitten by a shark or hit by lightning but somewhat worse than winning the lottery. Since the chance of me dying in the car accident is not keeping me from driving home, I will encourage you to make your own decisions. Currently, the Covid vaccine from Pfizer is available for people 12 years and older. The other vaccines are for 18 and over. I decided for me and my family that we would all get the vaccine. You’ll have to decide what is best for you and yours.
