You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
(though you may be beautiful and you're probably flaky)
The tinfoil hat brigade always cracks me up.
Look, I'm not asking for your date of birth because I want to know if you're "legal". I'm not asking for your phone number so I can call you up and breathe into the phone. I'm not asking for your address so I can stalk you.
I'm about to fill your prescriptions for God's sake. You know stuff that is Private Health Information. I'm not allowed to use it for nefarious ends, no matter how much your behavior makes me wish I could. Really. I just need your date of birth because you are not a Beautiful And Unique Snowflake. We have six Brittany Smiths in the computer, and I need to differentiate between you all. Though I might like to use phrases like "Hot!!!!1" or "the blonde highlights are starting to wear in" or "It's a MAN, BABY!" — I'm just not allowed to do that. So your date of birth will have to do since it's objective and won't get me in trouble with the PC police:
Image courtesy of Despair.
What does $5,256.08 look like?
It looks a little something like this:
The NEJM reports first case of "Acute Wiiitis"
Found this thanks to Ars. (Yeah that's three "i"s in a row.)
Medical resident contracts first reported case of Acute Wiiitis.
From Ars:
The case report reads very tongue-in-cheek, containing a description of the Wii controller that can only be described as clinical, and noting that, unlike in real tennis, the resident's level of fitness did not preclude his ability to overdo it: "Unlike in the real sport, physical strength and endurance are not limiting factors."
Apparently, Acute Wiiitis is actually a variant of a disease that was first described in 1990, Nintendinitis, but the presentation is distinct enough to warrant a specific term. Those curious about these sorts of ailments may also want to check out the description of Nintendo elbow and Ulcerative Nintendinitis.
Genius!
OTP Zeitgeist for all you stats lovers
I love stats. You love stats. Everybody loves stats. So here are some stats:
ALL TIME STATS (May 9, 2006 until yesterday):
- Number of pages served: 78,958
- Bandwidth used: 18.6GB (most of it in the last two months)
- Number of posts including this one: 296
- Number of legit blog comments and trackbacks: 366
- Spam comments eaten: 117,695 (at a current moving average of ~1200/day)
SITE RECORDS
- Most pages served in a day: 1,870 (May 18, 2007)
- Most bandwidth used in a day: 1.01GB
- Most popular post: "Can you read these prescriptions (round 2)"
- Entry with the most comments: 16 — "Dapoxetine for premature ejaculation" thanks to some serious Google juice. (Comments are now closed on that entry because I didn't like where it was headed.)
SUBJECTIVE
- Most controversial post: "Pharmacists as prescribers of medication"
- Favorite posts Lots of old friends and possibilities here. I like a lot of my more recent stories much more than I enjoy my mostly drug-related archives:
- The myth of the pharmacy Batphone
- "What's the made out of? Gold?"
- My last Minute Clinic post
- My rabies vaccine story because it's one of the few times I've agonized over something after-the-fact.
- Entries with the most Google juice:
- "Do we really need Tekturna (aliskiren)?" (followup coming soon!)
- "Dapoxetine for premature ejaculation"
- "The caloric content of semen" (also a favorite of mine because the background story is 100% true)
- My three minute clinic posts.
- Most underrated posts:
- "MTM and the community pharmacist" — which should be required reading for every pharmacy student in my not so humble opinion.
- "New suggestions for the disposing of old medications"
- "A final note on MinuteClinics"
THINGS I WISH I HAD
- More science-related posts like I said I was going to. They tend to be search-engine popular, but it feels like cheating unless I commentate. Unfortunately, there's a lot of cool stuff happening in the life sciences and medicine in particular, and it's simply not possible to simultaneously drink from and commentate on the Internet firehose effectively.
- A better layout. I am strongly considering commissioning a professional design for this site. However, decent professional designs costs well over $1,000, so it's going to have to wait a few months. I'd like to add a blogroll to lend my meager Google rank to my favorite bloggers. Many of them link to me, and I'd really like to link back to them. It's my goal to have a new design by the winter holidays.
I posted this zeitgeist as much for myself as for my readers. It's interesting to look back at some of my older stuff to see where I've come from. I like most of my newer entries much more than my older ones, for sure. I've starting writing blog entries at work, and while I don't have direct Internet access, I write them in OWA, print them out, and then recreate them at home. Some of my favorite blog entries have resulted from 90 seconds of furious typing in between prescriptions which I later clean up and post here. The Batphone entry and my refill authorization posts are the most recent results of that. I wish I had thought of doing this years ago.
I enjoy writing this blog more now than I have at any other time in the past. This blog is one of the best personal and professional decisions I've ever made.
Titles of stories I hope to write soon:
- Methadone for breakthrough pain
- "Light switch" drugs and abuse
- Two faces
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, zeitgeist, Internet[/tags]
I'm sure Pfizer *wishes* their profits were 60% of their revenue!
This article thing is popular today on del.icio.us. I tend to enjoy stuff like this so I opened it. The first link I clicked was the drug company one which displays the following graphic:
What a complete and utter crock of shit. Honestly, how did this BS make it past the content editors? The fact-checkers must be asleep at the wheel.
It's funny how quickly the cost of R&D is forgotten when ranting about the high cost of drugs. (Which isn't the driving force behind higher healthcare costs anyway.)
The lesser of 2 evils
Selling syringes is a sore spot for many pharmacy personnel, both technicians and pharmacists alike. I've heard technicians say that they wish that they (the drug abusers) would "just die." I used to have moral qualms about it, too. Why sell something to drug addicts which only facilitates their habit? Why make it easier to abuse illegal substances?
I had an epiphany one day. It occurred to me that selling needles was the lesser of two evils.
Option 1: Withhold clean needles.
Outcome: Person still injects drug of choice, potentially using an unclean needle.
Option 2: Sell clean needles.
Outcome: Person still shoots up, but may avoid infecting or becoming infected with a blood-borne pathogen.
Option 2 is the better option, if for no other reason than it's more economical. By possibly reducing the spread of infectious disease, we're possibly saving taxpayer money. Drug abusers are typically uninsured, and wind up in the ER where tax money will pay for the cost of their care. It should go without saying that withholding clean needles isn't going to stop an addict from getting their fix. Of course drug abuse leads to other medical complications, so there's no guarantee that they won't end up there anyway…
Naturally, I play the "Gee I wonder if they're using it for insulin… or maybe their cat?" game all the time, even though I know it's unlikely. When they haven't showered in about a week, look as though they've been living in a box under a bridge somewhere, and complain that you're not snappy enough about selling them their $2.10 bag of syringes, it's probably a good sign that you're not using said needles for healthy reasons.
But it's a comfortable delusion nonetheless.
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, needles, syringes, drug abuse[/tags]