I’ve been absent the last couple of days, but I did want to step in and remind you all that it is the holiday season, and what better gift than a PETS OF BALLOON JUICE CALENDAR?
You have two choices:
Calendar A
Calendar B
To order look to the sidebar to the right or click here you lazy slackers.
In other news, I spent the day driving to the dentist and getting a cleaning and a filling done, and was glad I was able to squeak in this appointment before the next wave of corona comes barrelling through. I feel so lucky. I have a great dentist who I just absolutely love, and she has an amazing all female staff who are all super professional and just good, decent people, and their entire establishment is just clean and calming and there are live plants that are clearly loved and it’s just a nice experience. All of them wear masks at all times, even the receptionists, everyone in the waiting room wears masks, and it’s just a great place.
I think I mentioned this before, but for 20 years or so I have gone to only female doctors when I have a choice, and I will keep it that way. It might be sexist, but it’s been my experience that female doctors actually fucking listen to you and treat you like a person and not a fucking disease. Like they listen to what you are actually telling them and don’t just order a battery of tests and throw up their hands when nothing shows up.
I also feel super lucky that I have optional dental insurance that I pay for and can walk away from a filling, a cleaning and polishing, and only pay 100 bucks out of pocket. It’s just so vital- the health of your teeth is directly related to the health of your heart and other vital organs and is associated to a variety of other health issues, including mental health, and is just a quality of life thing that everyone should have access to.
And it is a crime people are running around with tooth pain.
hells littlest angel
And it’s a shame that Manchin evidently doesn’t know any of them.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-12-10/manchin-takes-the-teeth-out-of-democrats-plan-for-seniors-dental-care
persistentillusion
I have and yes, I love my dentist too. Not a woman, but everyone else in the practice is.
Kattails
No Cole you’re not sexist, you’re smart. And your dentist’s office sounds wonderful.
Dental insurance costs you what/year may I ask? I only got health insurance when the ACA kicked in & then Medicare, now I have supplemental as well. But the teeth are in need of a good going-over. I just paid off my car last week (!!) so that’s probably where the $$ will get diverted to. *sigh* My old dentist retired. Hope I can find someone as great as yours sounds. But after running very good COVID numbers for a long time we’re now hit, and the number of jackasses who can’t be arsed to mask up is growing.
Comrade Colette
I wasn’t aware there were any practicing male dentists. I thought the few remaining ones had been elected to Congress.
John Cole, do yourself a favor and take CaseyL and BeautifulPlumage’s advice and go read this reddit AITA about an orange cat right now. Be sure to read the update, too. You will feel even better.
The Moar You Know
The best doctor I ever had was a man, he retired New Years Eve of 2019. No, he did not have advanced warning.
His replacement, a brilliant woman, retired four months later. Early forties. Saw COVID and was done with medicine. I’m surprised more docs didn’t do that. I truly can’t blame her. I probably would have too.
Current doc is also female, early forties, not gonna quit. Oh, she is great.
dmsilev
@Comrade Colette:
From the update,
Who said HR never did anything useful to improve the workplace environment?
NotMax
Now duly mulling over what might be considered a non-lazy slacker.
:)
Comrade Colette
@dmsilev: My workplace needs a sign:
“Days since HR did something morale-busting, accidentally released confidential information, and/or gave an employee incorrect advice that cost them two years of pension accrual: 0.”
Ken
@Comrade Colette: Do we work at the same place?
(My current peeve with our HR: Changing the way we do our annual self-assessment, but not announcing the change until two weeks before it’s due.)
Mike in NC
I got a new molar several months ago. A cool $1200 out of my wallet. I hear horror stories like that all the time. I knew a guy on my destroyer many years ago who said he was going to marry a dentist. We congratulated him on a good career move.
Anoniminous
There’s a steady business of transporting people from the US to Mexico to get dental care. Dental Tourism is A thing. .
For major surgery Thailand has been the go-to location for decades.
Jager
I’ve had a woman doc for the last 12 years, she is great, she listens, explains. When I needed to lose weight, she had me send her an email with everything I ate for a week. I did, her advice: “Your diet is fine, since you have a dog, give the dog half of what’s on your plate and take him for a long walk, with a minimum of 20 minutes of ball throwing.” Like magic, I lost 20 pounds in 6 months, and the dog was as healthy as ever. She called it “The Dog Diet”.
delk
I had my teeth cleaned last week. My dentist is female although her brother has worked on me as well. They just opened their third office. You can listen to Pandora or Spotify or watch Netflix or Amazon Prime while they work on you.
I fired my female infectious disease doctor a couple months ago. She was constantly late for each appointment. Like over an hour late. Every Single Time. For three years.
Ohio Mom
@delk: I thought only oncologists ran that consistently late. An hour seems typical, and I’ve had three of them.
The first was male, I didn’t choose him, the surgeon suggested him. Met with him a few times, did not click with him at all so I asked to change to another, the woman at that office who specialized in breast cancers.
At our first meeting I explained that maybe it was sexist of me but I preferred woman doctors. She chuckled and said there was so much prejudice against women doctors, it was fine if I was balancing that out.
After a few years, she moved to a different city and I chose another woman, also chronically behind schedule.
Over time I have migrated to all women health practitioners and also agree they are better listeners.
Hungry Joe
I had a woman for my dentist for more than 20 years — walking distance from my house. When she moved her office 25 miles away I followed her, and stayed with her till she retired. The whole staff was female. She told me once that they constantly reminded each other that their procedures sometimes cause pain, that no one likes coming there, and that a big part of their job is to keep pain to a minimum and make their patients feel comfortable as possible at all times. New dentist is once again walking distance, and he’s very good, but it just ain’t the same.
Does anyone know when and why dentistry was separated from general medicine? Seems to me they should be under the same umbrella … but no. Need heart, eye, nasal, abdominal care? Got a broken ankle? Migraines? We gotcha covered. Teeth? Go find a dentist. I don’t get it.
gbear
I had a dentist appointment this afternoon for part 1 of a crown. Part 2 is on 12/29. I’m really thankful for dental insurance too. I was able to stay on the state of MN’s very good plan after I retired. I’m also very happy with my dentist although the clinic overbooks him so todays appointment took a long time to wrap up. He’s usually working on two patients at once.
gbear
@Kattails: My plan is $44/month. It’s a large plan for MN state employees so it’s probably better than most. Yearly exams/cleanings are free (twice yearly if you have diabetes). Dental work is discounted but still $$$.
NotMax
@Hungry Joe
Partially stems from (as but one example of European practice) that extracting teeth, essentially the standard treatment, fell under the purview of the Guild of Barber-Surgeons rather than the Royal College of Physicians.
CaseyL
Dental care is one BIG reason to be happy we live in the 21st Century and not, say, the 18th. The only thing they could do for bad teeth was pull them out… with pliers. And I don’t even want to think about what everyone’s breath smelled like. Ugh.
I had one dentist for 30-ish years, from college until his retirement – gosh, about 10 (?) years ago, now. He sold his practice to a woman dentist whom he’d gotten to know at conventions. I didn’t think I’d like anyone as much as I liked him, but her practice is excellent beyond words. Excellent care, friendly staff, very up-to-the-minute techniques and equipment.
Ms. Deranged in AZ
I had a root canal over 3 years ago–it took a year for the pain and sensitivity to stop. Had to pay out of pocket. Haven’t seen a dentist since then. I only got dental insurance when my employer was bought out by a larger company that had benefits, right when the pandemic started. My plan is to get a cleaning and probably two fillings done after the new year…provided we aren’t in the 6th wave from a new frigging variant. So we will see.
Steeplejack
Tom Cruise’s character has very little to do with the character in the books, but Jack Reacher is a pretty damn good movie.
sab
@Ms. Deranged in AZ: My late mother said her root canal hurt more than childbirth.
Steeplejack
I like my dentist a lot. Excellent skills, good chairside manner, office runs like clockwork. I have had some alignment issues since a badly broken jaw 15 years ago, and he has helped a lot with that. His technicians are great too. He makes the visits as pleasant as they can be.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Am currently binging on a few frothy 1930s and 40s B-level comedies as a break from trying out the TV series Das Boot.
Not close to as spare and impactful as was the film but I’ll probably stick out the remainder of the ten episodes in discrete dribs and drabs. Nazis mixed with tepid melodrama an uneasy fit.
Steeplejack
I like my dentist a lot. Excellent skills, good chairside manner, office runs like clockwork. I have had some alignment issues since a badly broken jaw 15 years ago, and he has helped a lot with that. His technicians are great too. He makes the visits as comfortable as they can be.
Steeplejack
Site is running kind of screwy right now. Interminable delay to post a comment.
NotMax
Too late for WaterGirl to be about but a 524 error just encountered on the site.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
The movie was great. Not sure I’d sign up for a series, though. Bleak.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Intermittently happening here for well over a month now, sometimes taking as much as five minutes for the page to resolve when making a new comment.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
First time I’ve encountered it in a while. I deleted the page and reopened it, which didn’t help. Problems seems to have gone away now. I wonder if it’s related to the “content management system.”
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Strictly guesswork but have noticed it as more than a passing phenomenon since the ads were discontinued. Might be a stray bit of coding related to calling the ads that escaped detection during the cleansing?
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I can definitely see it as artifact of merely “unhooking” the ads without doing any background forensic work. I also think that the screwy operation of the “recent comments” list, especially in the late-night hours, could indicate problems with the content management system or “buffer” or whatever.
VeniceRiley
Got a feeling my 99yo mom in Utah on Medicare would have had her many thousands bridges repairs this year covered if she lived in California, (the sate where her contributions were paid) and it sucked.
opiejeanne
@Comrade Colette: Thank you so much for that link to Jean and Jorts. I’m shaking with laughter, trying not to wake up mr opiejeanne.
His staff bio photo was a sweet potato!
Rusty
With my job change we moved to New Hampshire and needed all new providers. Forget getting an actual doctor for primary care, no one, literally no one is taking new patients. So our primary care is with a practice of nurse practitioners. ( There must be a doctor somewhere in the background?). My oncologist friend said this is the modern trend, most of us will not have doctors for primary care. We did find an actual pediatrician for our youngest. I now have a woman NP, my white, male opthalmologist I started with here just retired (glaucoma so a frequent flier at the eye doctor) an my new one is an Asian woman. NH is a really white state, but our family dentist is a black guy. We already like him a lot. There were already a lot of changes happening in medical care before the pandemic, it has only accelerated them. One of our daughters started med school this year, majority female, and very racially mixed. Good changes from the prior medical boys club.
ThresherK
I have had my female doc for >15 years, and I picked her almost at random for geographic reasons based on a new job and new commuting/shopping patterns.
One of the better random choices I’ve made as an adult.
Ksmiami
@hells littlest angel: I hate Manchin. Wth is wrong with him?
raven
I used to go to an MD who had been a marine infantry officer in Vietnam, (sorry Catci). I started going to him because a buddy did and I didn’t have a GP at the time. After my friend died I got sick of him ordering me around like I was a boot so I changed to a woman I knew casually from the bakery because she always asked about the dogs. I’ve been with her over a decade and I’m glad I switched. (The other Doc died too so I would have had to had changed anyway.)
HeartlandLiberal
John, in recent news about Manchin’s disdain for expanding Medicare/Medicaid, it was reported that
In other fun news, 1 out of every 100 Americans over 65 has died from COVID-19, and currently half the deaths from COVID are those UNDER age 50.
Saw an article on RawStory this morning that psychologists are now saying we have reached what Jung predicted, Mass Delusion. Re: vaccine, COVID, conspiracy theories. Unless Congress and the DOJ take action against Trump and the insurrectionists, I see a dark fascist future for America.
dimmsdale
In one of my side jobs as a standardized patient for a couple of medical schools, every spring-summer I get to see the latest swath of med students parading into my exam room and trying their med-student darndest to figure out what’s “wrong” with me. I want to say that the news here is mostly good, especially with regard to communications skills, listening skills, and basic patient respect, BUT I’m a guy, which removes me from knowledge of some of the condescension and dismissive attitude some of my female colleagues occasionally experience.
Cole reminds me of a dictum from my favorite ex-girlfriend from decades back: in the voting booth, faced with a slate of unfamiliar judge or convention delegate candidates, she’d simply say (as though it made all the sense in the world) “I just vote for all the women.” Its a precept I follow as well, and we’re usually right.
rikyrah
I understand Cole.
Completely about the choice for medical providers.
Makeitso
Yeah, by and large, male docs kind of are a pain to deal with. Female doctros actually spend time and seem interested. Male docs- not so much.
Zelma
I have a great male primary care doctor, but he’s a DO. I think DOs often have a different mindset. He takes all the time in the world, listens, and keeps up with the field. But he just turned 65 and he is moving towards retirement. He’s not taking new patients and he is cutting back on the number of patients he’ll see. He has chosen not to “staff up” since COVID.
Anyway
@dimmsdale:
You’re Kramer!