The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    OK, Boomer, draft your back story NOW!

    By jollyroger on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 3:25pm |

     

    The whispering around the enunciation of a triage  protocol to inform the provision to COVID19 patients of aggressive life support (ventilators to the right...)vs. "comfort care" (sedation to the left) makes timely a consideration of the hazards attendant upon the provision  at the threshold of intervention of an accurate personal and medical history.

     

    Medical leaders in Washington State, which has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the country, have begun preparing a bleak triage strategy to determine which patients may have to be denied complete medical care in the event that the health system becomes overwhelmed in the coming weeks.

    Fearing the shortages, state officials and hospital leaders held a conference call on Wednesday night to discuss the plans, according to several people involved in the talks. The triage document, still under consideration, will assess factors such as age, health and likelihood of survival in determining who will get access to full care and who will merely be provided comfort care, with the expectation that they will die.

     

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/world/coronavirus-news.html?action=cl...

    Hence, these hints, which only seem frivolous:

     

    1. Dye your hair--when they roll you into the ER your saggy and wizened flesh will be covered in a blanket, but your hair will stand out.  This will be an important first impression militating towards hooking up a ventilator as opposed to shooting you up with fentynal.

     

    2. Invent a back story. And burn your drivers license.  The intake clerk at the ER doesn't know who you are and your history will be recorded at face value.  Tell them you are 30 years younger than true, and invent two children in first and second grade.

     

    3. Absolutely, positively, do not disclose ANY of your numerous current medical afflictions.  Each one will end up carrying points weighing towards "comfort care" (spoiler, the comfort is temporary.)

     

    If you think this through, you will see the virtue of this approach.  

     

    Anonymity, conveniently available at any ER where they don't know you, is your friend.

     

    A little advance planning will prepare you to fool that harried intake clerk.

    Comments

    Oh, and, by the way.  Every time I hear someone complain that notwithstanding their 103 fever and hacking cough, they couldn't get tested cuz they didn't have contact with an infected person I want to slap them silly.

     

    How  could they have forgotten that the guy next to them at work was hospitalized for Coronavirus yesterday?

     

    Like the ER Nurse is going to check to see if it's true??


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 3:34pm

    Looking too late for this plan if you are in L.A., it's prolly L.A. boomers with other afflictions filling up all the ICU's there already:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 9:12pm

    Ah, yes.  The alternative strategy--deliberately contract the virus, claim your ventilator now, avoid the April rush.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 9:14pm

    Rog at his best laugh


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 9:21pm

    Rog at his best laugh

    So good, I posted the kudos twice@


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 9:22pm

    <openmodestblush>blush<closemodestblush>


    by jollyroger on Sat, 03/21/2020 - 1:20am

    Times a wastin'!


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 10:20pm

    #MAGA!!! America #1!!! The best & biggest numbers!!!
    This is as big as that come-from-behind 1980 Olympic hockey win!!!


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 10:41pm


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/20/2020 - 11:47pm

    you're a seer:


    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 9:43pm

    In NY it appears we are doing the "call in the newbies" thing already. Should you have the unfortunate circumstance to require inpatient care, if assigned to one of them, I can envision you wrapping  them around your little finger:

    NY is following all the steps of the Spain playbook, just a week later. https://t.co/gscht5JOfU

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) March 25, 2020

     


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 12:28am

    yikes, NYPD being hit (is CNN reporter so little doubt it's accurate):


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 12:44am

    What did they expect?


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 12:52am

    I have been immersed of late in a variety of studies at Columbia and Langone run by a bevy (can I say bevy?  Is that sexism per se?) of cute residents, so I' m stoked! 

    Of course, downside, all the studies are now on hold or moving to the web.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 12:51am

    LOL!


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 12:48am

    Had a followup appt. 5 days ago with a specialist at Mt. Sinai outpatient building, the one on 103rd which is like a quarter of a block from the E.R. They called and cancelled the day before and rescheduled for April 13. I had to wait months for it and was really looking forward to see her again be able to work on my diagnosis and schedule more tests and the like. I'm very glad now that it was cancelled:

    Is like the Gloria Gaynor tune. Illness, quality of life, all relative...


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 10:30pm

    Terence McNally....RIP

     

    Terrence McNally, one of America's great playwrights, has died at 81 of complications from coronavirus https://t.co/9nq9MjaKrU pic.twitter.com/90v3zioH8E


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 11:29pm

    Precious Blood of the Sweet Baby Jesus, someone snatch Noam Chomsky and keep him safe!


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/25/2020 - 11:33pm

    Gurdjieff Enneagram typing - know your cuts of meat

    https://www.al.com/opinion/2020/03/coronavirus-and-the-enneagram.html


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 1:06pm

    They wouldn't know an enneagram in Alabama if it got shoved up their ass (those pointy parts....ouch...)


    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 2:02pm

    Exhihibit A:

     

    Talan

    @TalanTweets

     

    Jared said the governors didn’t need that many ventilators. My uncle died last night alone, he caught the virus in the hospital due to a fall. He wasn’t given a ventilator because he was 75 and they are saving them for younger people.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 2:09pm

    Cheer up, Talan...only one in five comes off the ventilator alive, anyway....


    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 2:10pm

    Of course, being one of the lucky 20%  is no walk in the park...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/opinion/coronavirus-ventilators.html?...

    The amount of sedation needed for Covid 19 patients can cause profound complications, damaging muscles and nerves, making it hard for those who survive to walk, move or even think as well as they did before they became ill. Many spend most of their recovery time in a rehabilitation center, and older patients often never go home. They live out their days bed bound, at higher risk of recurrent infections, bed sores and trips back to the hospital.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 2:59pm

    So now that you have a variant of your dream of NHS or the VA installed and operating in your very own state, what do you think of their rationing choices so far?

    two things come to mind for me

    • a variant of Churchill quote that it's worst system except for all the others
    • it sucks to be old without lots of money to bribe out of a system (one general guiding principle I have noted in the past: preemies, they are worth spending a billion on them if necessary, the younger you are, the more you get.  Old people what are you complaining about? Go away, you're bothering me with your quality of life issues--you're lucky to still be alive...)

    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 10:08pm

    I have some bona fides here, cuz when I broke my neck, before they rolld iein for the opertion the nurse asked if I wanted to be resuscitated and I said "No fuckin' way".

     

    If you peruse the article about what expected weeks on a vent leave you as, it sounds like a "no fuckin' way" option raight from jump (hence, stay home, asshole...)

     

    On the larger issue, I have alwys been bemused at the idea that an additional possible 6 months of torment purchased by Medicare (I guess) at a million bucks or more ,while cancer eats you up from inside , was a bad deal both for the "beneficiary" and for the purchaser.

     

    I don't think death panels are the worst idea in the world.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 11:08pm

    me too, especially as I've seen the death-by-expensive-medical-torture thing up close and personal quite a few times.

    I once thought highly of hospice, however that has changed due to recent family experience as well. Since lawmakers decided to have Medicare Part A cover hospice service 100% no deductible, no copay (wisely, to inspire that choice), a lot of pennypinchers and incompetents have gotten involving in offering it, to much detriment of what it used to be. At home was an awful experience (provided a subsidiary of that state's biggest non-profit hospital system, a huge bureaucracy), with terrible support and unfeeling reaction to complaints, the main caretaker brother is still very angry months later about agreeing to a sow's ear sold as a silk purse. You have to be "wise informed consumer" even at your death.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/04/2020 - 11:26pm

    Here's a reminder of the alternative:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/05/2020 - 12:01am