el jefe

nurse.

my point was that there is no one to blame here and certainly not the canadian health care system. an epidural bleed can kill very quickly but is also a completely inobvious injury until it is too late. using this tragic, unfortunate event as an argument against a single-payer health care system is crass, opportunistic, and in extremely poor taste.

also note the bogus argument that uses reported 8 hours to get a broken arm fixed as evidence that the canadian health care system would also be slow to properly manage a patient with a severe traumatic brain injury: this assumes that broken heads and broken arms are managed the same way. comparing apples with oranges, as they say.

do you have a source for this "20 min affair, if that" claim? can't say i've ever seen a broken arm managed that quickly in any emergency dept i've worked in. perhaps your "8 solid hours" in canada was caused by people with real emergencies (e.g., myocardial infarction, potential stroke, seizures) being treated before your friend got treated. emergency department operates according to the principle that the sickest people-- those with potentially life-threatening complaints -- get treated first, those without life-threatening problems (e.g., broken arm with pulses intact distal to the site of injury) get treated when time is available, and that's true regardless of whether health care is organized according to a single-payer or multipayer system. restaurants operate according to the "first come, first served" principle but emergency rooms don't because there is a profound difference between delivering health care and serving big macs. having to wait in the emergency room for care is usually a good thing. it means you aren't about to die or lose a limb. it means you aren't very sick or too badly hurt.

she made the wrong choice, but then there was no way for her to know that at the time. epidural hemorrhage is caused by an arterial injury so at first there is nothing wrong (hard blow to the head but patient quickly recovers as no brain damage caused by initial event), then a rapidly accumulating lesion (artery is a high pressure system) results in rapid neurological deterioration. bad luck was the culprit. any delay with this sort of injury is bad but it is also insidious injury because once it becomes apparent from clinical presentation that something is wrong, then the neurosurgeon needs to be standing right there at that moment if disaster is to be averted. single-payer health care system had nothing to do with the outcome.

billcoe's source article from the ny post is the usual highly slanted bullshit expected from that rag. joseph is one the money. the issue with an epidural is getting the patient into the hands of a neurosurgeon asap. this can happen fairly quickly in an urban, heavily populated area like portland or seattle but neurosurgeon availability in rural areas throughout the u.s. is very poor. even getting a patient with a bad head injury from mt hood to portland takes much longer than most people realize despite the fact that helicopter transport exists in this area. first of all, the helicopter isn't stationed at the ski area so there is the time it would take to get to the mountain, the time to pick up the patient, then the flight to pdx -- all assuming that the weather is clear and the chopper can actually fly all the way to the mountain. many times this isn't possible and a patient has to be shipped at least part way by ambulance, etc. add a 3 hour delay caused by patient refusal of care and the outcome is the same as for poor natasha. hers was a tragic case to be sure but hardly the result of the canadian healthcare system as the same outcome would likely have occurred in the u.s.

found this on rockclimbing.com: "We are flat, the only climbing here comes from plastic, and the occasional building. There's apparently one exposed rock in the state around Alexandria." sounds pretty grim. you'll probably be driving/flying to tennessee or arkansas for rock climbing. ice climbing is somewhat farther away.

thanks for your hard work in this regard, joseph. losing access to a climbing area is always a bad thing. hoping this turns out okay in the end.

which idiot did you have in mind? if they start banning idiots here then no one will be allowed to post.

i suspect lots of people told mama beckey she should keep those boys close to her skirts. this would have been normal at any time. that she was unable/unwilling to do so is another matter entirely. in any event, the comparison of the beckey boys going off to waddington with the question of marc and braydon going to pumori misses the point entirely. marc and braydon are ambitious, no doubt, and judging from what i've read here at cc.com (since i've never met either of them) are already on the path to becoming highly skilled all-arounders, so why this sudden desire to plunk down a boatload of cash to be guided up a big himalayan peak like newbies rather than develop the skillset necessary to undertake this sort of climb on their own? fred and helmy went out and gathered some experience in the mountains, then made the leap to a bigger mountain based on the experience they had acquired firsthand; on the other hand, marc and braydon are talking about buying someone else's experience, which is kind of like getting an honorary degree from some university because you made a big donation -- yes, you get the sheepskin, but you still don't know shit and everyone knows it. the question is: who do you want to be? do you want to be known as the kids who figured out a way to buy the summit of pumori or do you want to be climbers?

if i spent my sunday grading papers, i'd curse when i read, too.

something more than "a cursory reading", off white, would reveal jmo engaged in his usual tactic of setting up a straw man argument in order to disseminate a false interpretation of events, working under the guise of "trying to have civil political debate". his "he's no messiah" thread is another example of the same tactic. this guy deliberately misinterprets events in order to push his agenda, then pretends those who call him on his bullshit are unwilling to engage in a "civil political debate". he considers it "uncivil" to be confronted with the facts. "civil" behavior, on the other hand, is to accept his false assumption and debate an imaginary issue that misses the real point. in this case, jmo wants to "discuss" the obama administration's attempts to limit rush limbaugh's right to free speech -- how unethical for people on the government payroll" to do this! the truth, however, is that the democratic administration is promoting the idea that rush is the voice of the republican party and, as a consequence, they are actually encouraging limbaugh to exercise his right to speak his mind. certainly there isn't anything unethical about those on the govt payroll encouraging a citizen to exercise his right to free speech.

fairweather's posts are pure vogon poetry...

i've been there a couple of times but the majority of routes are over my head -- so to speak! anyway, sounds like we've done probably some of the same routes there and in a similar style: hanging on every bolt. i'm just yanking your chain, dude, so don't take it seriously. if your BAL weren't sub-therapeutic, you'd recognize this.

i'm probably not trying hard enough.

yes, but no one else has worked so hard to earn it.

"dope on a rope" would be a better title for this drivel...

nice work! way to get out after it.

the real laugh here is bedwetter presuming to speak for "thinking" people!

gravity is a relentless foe, lurking around every corner, waiting for its opportunity to pounce... good luck. broken bones take 4-8 weeks to heal in most circumstances.

the democrats aren't trying to marginalize rush limbaugh and they sure aren't attempting to silence him or in any way limit his right to free speech. instead, they are trying to place him front and center as the voice and de facto leader of the republican party; they are working to amplify his voice, not silence it. if this is bad for the republicans (and i believe it really hurts them), then the repubs need to grow some cajones and make it clear that rush doesn't speak for them. they are getting played by the democrats and i'm loving it because i believe the tables have finally been turned and the republicans are no longer in control of the terms of the debate. this is a refreshing change. nothing about this situation is in any way a threat to anyone's civil liberties. however, your desire to promote the notion that democrats in power aren't allowed to comment in this way is definitely an attempt to curtail the civil liberties of others. you want to talk like you are in favor of free speech while at the same time deciding who gets to talk and who doesn't. sounds like fascist behavior to me. you want everyone to agree with your "tsk, tsk, how unethical" crap when the tide is flowing opposite to what you want, but you stick your head in the sand and say "i wasn't on this forum" during the karl rove years, as if somehow one could only have learned about karl rove et al on cc.com! you need to grow some cajones if you are going to venture out onto the playground at lunchtime. you conservatives have become so accustomed to controlling the terms of the debate you have no idea what to do when you don't have your way, so please, go ahead and take your ball and go home. what is happening right now re: rush limbaugh and his role vis-a-vis the republifuck party is the democratic process at work. you are the one who wants to decide who gets the right to free speech and when.

i'm pretty sure that restaurant was rap-bolted, raindawg.

if the shoe fits, jmo, goose step in it. you conservatives like to pretend you believe in democracy, but the recent republifuck attempt to create a "permanent majority" was fascist to the core. wiretapping without a warrant and interring people at guantanamo without a trial/any legal proceeding whatsoever, extraordinary rendition, torturing prisoners -- that's the legacy of republifuck conservatism and it's also "forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism", so it's fascist. you guys also like to talk about "smaller government" but you don't practice it. the government is bigger and more in debt now after the past 8 years of republican domination. by the way, the soviet army also goose stepped so i could have been implying you were a commie, not a nazi.

ivan, what jmo wants is the one way street of fascism where the conservatives have free reign to behave however they want (since their agenda was sanctified by the baby jesus himself) and democrats are kept silent by some "ethical" code of conduct that amounts to simply "thou shalt not talk back." all of this justified, of course, by the fact that he wasn't he "wasn't very active on this board at the time of karl rove" (i.e., world history prior to jmo's activity on this board no longer exists and appeals thereto are essentially out of bounds). "dogging" the opposition is duty to country in a democracy. in the fascist, one-party world the right to oppose is "unethical".

i didn't accuse conservatives of being nazis, i said they were fascists. nazism was just one form of fascism. the american dictionary says fascism is "extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice." that's what i mean.