The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Barry and John

6.2.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 4)

HOSPITALISM
Re: Lawrence Henry's Things They Don't Tell You:

I've worked in healthcare for many years, including three years in a dialysis clinic.

I'm surprised that you've been left so uninformed. In the hospital where I work, and in the clinic where I worked, they hire people called "hospitalists" whose specific task it is to coordinate complex healthcare plans and explain such things to patients. Maybe you need to find out if your hospital and/or dialysis clinic has such people.

And because transplants are such complicated things, and the pool of organs is small, the transplants are assigned to people with the best "risk" of succeeding (i.e., the least risk of rejection). It's an unfortunate thing, and frustrating for a repeat transplant patient like you, but them's the facts.

I wish you every success in finding out just what the deal is with your "process." If you feel that your health is not up to the "being a pain in the bottom" to your healthcare professionals to ask questions and find answers, I suggest (if you have not already done so) appointing a medical
proxy who can more aggressively pursue the information you need.
-- Anastasia Mather
Staten Island, New York

Always enjoy your stuff, and I'm keeping you and your family in prayer. I've written you once before, our tracks are pretty similar in a lot of ways -- I'm on my 25th year of what's been a great cadaver transplant, although things have been getting shaky of late.

I, too, have always been amazed by how often I have I have been misinformed and under-informed, and how often I have been told contradictory opinions about even the most basic facts of transplantation. When I first got my transplant I asked every doctor who came around for statistics on how long I could expect to keep it, and everyone had different answers -- sometimes varying wildly. I even had one doctor tell me he'd never heard of anyone keeping a cadaver kidney for more than twelve years, and he was a nephrologist. Anyway, to get to the point: I clicked on the link about the allocation scheme and saw it was a UK website. I think it's safe to assume our scheme is about as complicated as theirs, but I'm pretty sure you will have to keep looking to find out exactly what the U.S. system is.
-- Yates Glenn

MAKING IT
Re: Christopher Orlet's Creative Class Blues:

I heard the following on NPR. It is a story that I tell liberal acquaintances. I missed the details of the Author's name and the title of the book, but here is the summary of what he did.

This young man recently graduated from a university in North Carolina. He decided to move to another state and to a city that he had never been to before. He had only twenty-five dollars in his pocket, no car and no credit cards.

His goal was by the end of one year he would have a car, an apartment and money in the bank. He would neither use his degree nor, use any personal contacts with friends or family. He would achieve his goals entirely on his own.

He lived in a homeless shelter for three months. He got a job with a moving company using the following sales pitch. "I will show up to work on time, give you 8 hours of honest labor, and show up the next day and do it again. I'm the best person you could ever hire." Needless to say he got the job, and promotions.

By the end of the year he had a car, an apartment, and $5000 in the bank. He did it with discipline. He did not party; He used the library for entertainment. He ate simple home made meals and nutritious foods (inexpensive) .He walked, bicycled or used public transportation.

The moral of this story is that, "Yes You Can!" It takes discipline and no self-indulgence. (And no whining!)
-- Fred Edwards

PULPIT POUNDERS
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder's Experiencing Obama:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Transportation, Education, John McCain, Constitution, Law, NATO, Socialism, Conservatism