Sunday morning round-up

[rolanni]

All righty, then!

First up, a reminder:  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller will be reading from and signing copies of the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Agent of Change at Children’s Book Cellar, 52 Main Street, Waterville, Maine 04901, on Friday, November 2, from 7:30-9 pm.  Looking forward to seeing you — yes, you! — there.

If you are unable to attend the November 2 event, and you want a signed copy of the anniversary Agent of Change, with the awesome Sam Kennedy cover, you may send an email before November 2 to Ellen Richmond at kidsbookscellarATmyfairpointDOTnet, with “Lee and Miller” in the subject line. In the body of the letter let Ellen know how many books you want, your snail address, and any personalization request you may have. She will contact you for further necessary information.

So, we attended the Community Health Needs Assessment as our Floating Day Off, on Thursday.  It was interesting, and even informative.  I had been under the impression that the event was hosted by one of the area hospitals; in fact it is an on-going collaborative effort of about eight different hospitals, clinics and health associations.  The meant that there were a lot of professionals present, which was fine; one of the problems identified by our table (all civilians, saving the facilitator and the note-taker) was a lack of access to care, including a lack of doctors, a lack of transportation to get to doctors, and a lack of those activities supportive of good health.

Unfortunately, the lack of access which was so obvious to the public eye was invisible to the professional eye, as we found when it came time to rank the most pressing needs in our community.  The vote went along, dare I say, party lines, with the professionals pushing for programmatic solutions to things like the opoid crisis and self-harm.  That was a little disappointing.  Our facilitator thanked our table for our real-world perspective, but I'm not completely certain that she has any high-level ears available to her.

One of the things that seems obvious to me (warning) is that, if this is about COMMUNITY Health Needs, then the COMMUNITY needs to get involved.  The city needs to get on-board with providing, say, a real bus service, so people can get to their appointments on time.  The clinics need to coordinate; health and exercise classes in the city need to be expanded, supported, and advertised.

The whole community aspect was pointed up when the meeting was breaking up and one of our table's participants handed the facilitator a card.  She shook her head, and said, "The hospital does all its printing in house."  "That's right," came the answer, "and they put the guy who used to do their printing out of business."

If we're all in this together, we can't solve our problems by working separately.

So, that.

We haven't quite settled on the upcoming week's Floating Day Off; much depends on the outcome of phone calls that need to be made tomorrow.  For today, I need to vacuum the house, and then get to work.

Oh!  I keep meaning to show y'all this. . .The Carousel Corner in my bookshelf.

Comments

[hairmonger]

The puzzle Pegasus is just delightful.

I've been to community meetings like that, where there were good ideas, but the people to implement them were not present. At least they were there, even if they weren't listening.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

rides to appointments

[ireneha]

Something I wish that my local clinics would provide is something my sister's MD did.
OK - her surgeon is in The Bronx, New York, an urban area.
By NY law, you need to be accompanied to any appointment that requires anesthesia. This MD included a limo/van service that picked the patient (and a companion) from anyplace within a certain distance, and returned them after surgery.
My sister's van trip included two patients and myself.

I would love something similar for after Out-patient processes. Then if my driver had a last minute conflict, I wouldn't need to impose on people for a new driver.


I hope your area of Maine creates a 'clinic' or 'medical' van service for the county.

Re: rides to appointments

[rolanni]

Oh, that's a terrific idea. *makes note*

[mirlacca]

I quoted a bit of your post in a Tweet I just posted. Everyone seems to be so damn excited about "the opioid crisis," but no one is connecting it to the factors that you raise here. It's no wonder, for example, that it's so bad in WV, which has horrible access to healthcare. Instead, they tell people who have legitimate prescriptions for chronic pain that now they have to come in every three months to see their doctors and get random drug tests--to see if we're using ILLEGAL drugs. They're testing people who are using opioids LEGALLY for illegal drugs. Is this rational?

Rational Yes

[ireneha]

I have been on a maintenance pain med for (oh gosh) 15 years.
At first I needed to renew my prescription every 3 months, then 6 months, and now 1 year. I did get random drug tested, and my only complaint is that it took an extra half hour.
Please note the legal meds, that chronic pain users take, often aren't enough, and the users move to self medicate. This is known and proven.

My suggestion is to, if possible, switch to an MD closer to where you live, and who has a Doctor's Assistant or Nurse Practitioner. i.e. go with the flow, and remember not to eat poppy seed bagels.

Re: Rational Yes

[mirlacca]

I've been on pain meds for eight years now, and my experience has been exactly the opposite of yours--I used to be able to renew my prescription, then it took a phone call each time, now I have to sign a contract not to get my prescriptions from any other doctor (to prevent me from getting multiple prescriptions), and go into the office every three months.

I don't understand why someone would self medicate when they can just ask their doctor about adjusting the medication, but that's obviously my blind spot. Finding a new doctor would not make any difference, because the three-month thing is apparently state law.