Week in Review - 6/5/2020

Health: For a few days, I kept having a new "symptom" to think about each day. As of this morning...no symptoms. I lived through 'em all and I'm pretty sure they had nothing to do with COVID-19 or any other virus. I think it was a combination of age/heat/food choices/hydration. The age and heat are still with me, but I've been doing better on the food choices and hydration for the past week.

Heat: The heat has about knocked me out. After doing yard work (mostly deep watering our nine newest trees - requiring uncoiling, dragging about, and re-coiling 200' of garden hose) a couple of days ago, I was beet red. That's not unusual for me when the temperature is over 80 degrees F, let alone when it is in the upper 90s. I come inside; drink a cup of water; splash water all over myself; swab my face, arms, and legs down with alcohol; and sit under a (ceiling) fan for 20-30 minutes. * The two, new dogwood trees were looking wilt-y, so I daren't wait until morning. Otherwise, I've done yard work in the morning when it has been cooler. I still get hot, but not beet red. (I think it would be nice if I could perspire!) Hunky Husband even found it hot. He was dragging when he came in from his jogging this morning.  (Maybe he just walked this time?) HH perspires enough for the both of us.

Politics: A long-time lurker has emailed to ask, once again, why I try to refrain from political discussions on my blogs. The Dilbert cartoon (above) in this morning's Wichita Eagle (I would provide a link, but it is behind a pay wall) pretty well sums up a major reason. I'm sure that I could be the person in the red shirt or in the blue shirt, in that cartoon, depending.

As I always believed during my working days, just because something can be done doesn't mean that it should be done. Similarly, as was quoted in an article headlined Ill-considered posts lead to lost jobs amid protests, crisis in this morning's paper, "You don't need to always say something." There are times when one must speak up; but, one must address the right audience when speaking up. I choose, in my blogs, to remain silent and be thought a fool, when it comes to politics. (Apologies to the late President Abraham Lincoln.)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

* I am reminded of a time in July, 1980, during a long string of triple-digit temperature days, when I had taken a TR-182 [turbo-charged, retractable gear Skylane] prototype out for an operational test flight. It was 104 degrees F, that day. After refueling (using a step-ladder) and parking the plane, I walked into the experimental hangar and stuck my head under the circular-troughed hand washing station to cool down. The mechanics found me a sight to behold, I'm sure; but, they were kind enough not to give me a bad time. They were good people.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ADDITION OF 6/5/2020 11:30AM - More from Slashdot.org

Does this posting (below) mean that we Yanks are, in general, hypochondriacs? Perhaps I had no "symptoms" (see, above) at all? I was just fooling myself!

COVID-19 Pandemic Causes 42% Drop In ER Visits Nationwide, CDC Says (upi.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD on Friday June 05, 2020 @06:00AM from the striking-decline dept.

schwit1 shares a report from UPI: Visits to hospital U.S. emergency rooms have dropped by more than 40 percent so far in 2020, compared to the same period last year, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC researchers compared total visits so far this year to the same five-month period in 2019. The number of ER visits declined from a mean of roughly 2.1 million per week between March 31, 2019, and April 27, 2019, to a mean of 1.22 million per week during the "early pandemic" period of March 29 to April 25 of this year, according to the CDC. ER visits declined for every age group, with the largest proportional declines in children 10 years old and younger at 72 percent and children 11 to 14 years old at 71 percent, the agency said. Researchers found the largest declines in ER visits occurred in the New England states at 49 percent, as well as in the mid-Atlantic region at 48 percent. That region includes New York and New Jersey, which has been the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.

ER visits related to abdominal pain and other digestive problems fell by more than 66,000 per week from year to year, while those among patients reporting musculoskeletal pain -- excluding low-back pain -- dropped by more than 52,000 per week, according to the CDC report. Visits for "sprains and strains" declined by nearly 34,000 per week, and those related to "superficial injuries" fell by nearly 31,000 per week, the researchers said. Conversely, ER visits for "exposure, encounters, screening or contact with infectious disease" increased by nearly 19,000 per week from 2019 to 2020, the analysis found. Specifically, some 18,000 ER visits occurred per week across the country for COVID-19 symptoms through the end of May, the researchers said. The researchers say more research is needed to determine whether the decline in ER visits could be attributed to "actual reductions in injuries or illness [due] to changing activity patterns during the pandemic" lockdown, or if Americans simply delayed or declined emergency care.

Comments

[R]

Ma’am, I’m going to need you to take care of yourself.

Also, it is interesting that you post the statistical data about ER visits. While this time of year is typically slow for skilled rehabs, we have seen an up tick in admissions, especially due to deconditioning. We didn’t anticipate (stupidly now that it is in our face) what would happen to those who no longer went out and about due to COVID concerns.

[Ingineer66]

Glad you are feeling better, please hydrate and stay healthy. If you don’t want to talk politics on your blog, that is fine. There are 20 million other places to talk politics these days. Personally I kind of enjoy that about this place.

Now to respond to your ER visits post, hopefully this doesn’t cross the politics line. Yes we are partially a nation of hypochondriacs. There are plenty of people that go there that do not need to visit an ER. Some just have the flu or a cold, some take their kids there because they are worried new parents, some are seeking drugs and or attention. And due to an ER visit being “free” for a portion of the population, many just show up with a list of complaints. And more seriously during this pandemic, many truly sick folks are skipping the ER which in some cases had lead to deaths, which is very sad. Like many issues, there is not one simple answer.

[bogie]

I don't understand why someone would complain about, or at least feel the need to discuss, the lack of political ranting on your blog. One can find that pretty much anywhere and that is why I stay away from it on my blog and FB page.

I'm extremely you lived thru all your symptoms!

I wonder what the percent drop of ER visits was for work-related injuries? Most work places require you visit the ER after an incident - and the #1 incident at my workplace is trips and falls (sprains & strains). Not saying there aren't hypocondriacs, just a thought. Also, I know that in NH, there was a campaign for people NOT to avoid ER's, Dr.s visits or calling for emergency help. There was a large uptick in people dying from things like heart attacks, strokes and other serious conditions that are usually mitigated by medical intervention.

[Cop Car]

R--What a pleasant surprise to have you leave a comment! Yes, I'm old enough to know better, aren't I? I do miss going to the gym for my workouts and, of course, have not really kept my strength up as could be the case if I would break down and use Hunky Husband's weights. I don't wish to upset him by not leaving them exactly the way I found them (which way, of course, I wouldn't recall very well) and he is getting so that small things upset him more than they used to do. Thank you for dropping in.

Ingineer--Thank you for your sage advice in your comment. I tend not to think of hypochondria as a political issue - lol. I think that some people, lacking a primary care medical team of their own, don't know of better options than an emergency room visit. I'm happy to see more "urgent care" clinics opening up - a better option for many, I'm sure. Having never visited an emergency room, I'm not even sure what one would expect to find there. HH and I have primary care physicians who are not the same person but who belong to the same practice. They offer "urgent care" for limited hours, seven days per week, each physician taking a turn (by day or by week, I don't know). That's where I took HH when he broke his wrist and I've dropped in a couple of times for acute infection treatment.

Bogie--As to politics and why anyone would care, I plead guilty to entering into the occasional political discussion on a couple of other peoples' blogs. (Does that make me one who takes advantage of them? Probably.)

I take it that there is a "glad" missing from your second paragraph? There were a couple of times at Cessna when I needed to get a physician's clearance before going back to work (once a fall in the icy parking lot, the other for indigestion that they feared was a heart attack when I was 65), but neither required a trip to an emergency room - didn't even occur to me. On the fall, I saw a nurse practitioner at KU School of Medicine for my knee, and on the other I ended up enduring an EKG, treadmill test, and a thallium treadmill test - none of which showed anything wrong with my heart. If anyone cares, my legs gave out on the 2nd treadmill test before my cardio-pulmonary system cried "uncle" at 10.5 min on Bruce exercise protocol - max heart rate 166 (107% of max predicted for age), max bp 160/70 - concluded: most likely dealing with false positive EKG.

[bogie]

Yes, there should be a "glad" there :)