Posted by realityrounds on May 9, 2009
Karen is your mother, daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, grandmother. She is a woman you know or will know in your lifetime. Karen has breast cancer.
After an eight hour surgery to remove her breasts, Karen is sent home after 23 hours post surgery. This magical, cost saving 23 hours, includes the eight hours of surgery that included significant blood loss, manipulation of tissue, muscle, and nerves to remove the cancerous breasts that threaten to steal her life. Groggy from anesthesia, and in intense pain, Karen struggles to get dressed to leave the hospital. Karen is your mother, daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, grandmother. Karen is you.
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Dealing with the devastating diagnosis of breast cancer is bad enough. But being kicked out of the hospital after a mere 23 hours, and sent home with dressing changes and drainage tubes hanging from your chest is ludicrous. Karen is actually lucky. Insurance companies are lobbying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure. This reminds me of when insurance companies refused to let women stay more than 24 hours in the hospital after a vaginal birth. It took infant deaths, and consumer outrage to change this practice.
Where’s the outrage now? Women need to support each other, and support the bipartisan Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act in Congress. Some will argue that mandating a longer stay for women post-mastectomy is more unneeded governmental involvement in health care. It will only increase health care costs that are already sky rocketing. If these critics are serious about saving health care dollars, especially as it relates to women’s health, maybe they should be actively trying to reduce the rate of C-Sections in this country. Or, they could be promoting breast feeding as a cost savings for both women, children and society.
Sending women home after an emotional and painful surgery as an outpatient shows a lot about where are priorities are as a society. These Drive-Through mastectomies are shameful. Show some outrage and click on the link below:
Stop Drive-By Mastectomies
RR
Posted in health, healthcare reform, women's health | Tagged: breast cancer, drive-through mastectomies, legislation, women's health | 2 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on May 9, 2009
Tool de France winner Lance Armstrong is coming out with his shockingly original autobiography entitled…wait for it…..”Lance.” In this masterpiece he explains the pressure of a woman’s biological clock, specifically the clock of his former love and fiance, Sheryl Crow, who was 43 at the time of their breakup:
“She wanted marriage, she wanted children; and not that I didn’t want that, but I didn’t want that at that time because I had just gotten out of a marriage, I’d just had kids [Luke, Grace and Bella],” Armstrong, 37, reveals in the book. “Yet we’re up against her biological clock — that pressure is what cracked it.” Can you imagine having that bit of news about yourself published for the whole world to see? “Up against her biological clock.” I wonder how Lance would feel if one of his girlfriends published that they broke up with him because he had only one testicle, and that pressure was too much to bear.
“Because if somebody wants a child — man, that’s the greatest gift you can give to a woman — so who are you to stand there and say I don’t want one. So we were at different points in our lives. We were not compatible on that issue.” Yes Lance, your semen is nectar from the God’s. It is a gift from heaven. I understand a couple can have disagreements over having children or not. My advice for women is, if you want kids, and your significant other does not, dump his ass early. You do not want to wait around until it is too late. Not having children for the sake of a relationship is too big a price to pay. You may regret it for the rest of your life.
The irony of all this is now Lance has impregnated his current, very much younger, unmarried girlfriend. So it looks like Lance and his amazing wonder ball will ride again.
RR
Posted in celebrity, health | Tagged: babies, biological clock, celebrities, health, lance armstrong | 2 Comments »
