Health DG is full of bollocks

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/3/4/nation/20100304114158&sec=nation

In the above news article, the DG is said to be offering RM80/hour for private doctors to do sessional/locum at 162 clinics. The time ranges from normal office hours and extended hours.

Coincidentally, the wife was calculating how much she earns per hour yesterday, and guess what... she's only at 12.

Now, why don't she just quit her job at the government hospital and just do locums full-time. Heck, she only needs to work 9 hours a day, 3 days a week and she'll be earning more than twice what she is making now.

This is all full of bollocks.

So the wife got back at 3-ish in the evening and slept till 8.45pm.

See what I said about all the work in the world they get.

And she wants to go shopping, it's last day to spend the 70 bucks voucher. LOL.

Dinner can wait.

Sick and unable to deal with emo ppl

Down with flu, the typical runny nose and sore-throat.

Gargled with salt water and whacked anti-histamines last night but it wasn't enough, had a hard time sleeping with the nose stuffed and runny at the same time.

Woke up with slightly worsening sore-throat. Mom called early in the morning to complain again. Can't she get it that early in the morning ain't the best of times?

Felt much better after another salt water gargle and now going on my self developed strepsils therapy.

The goal : sore-free throat

The method : Keep whacking strepsils one after another until tongue is numb, drink warm water, repeat

Requirements : 2 boxes (of 24) strepsils

Average time for one strepsils : 8mins

Waiting for the wife to return at, she says 1.30pm but I'm estimating 2.10pm for lunch.

Doctors always under-estimate the amount of their work.

Yea, you still Have to wait your turn to see the doc even if you're married to one. No exceptions.

Separation Anxiety

It all started with separation anxiety. Usually that phrase is used in dogs, but in this case it is used before any dogs come in the picture.

So sometimes the wife works weekends and it is still hard to get that into your head no matter how many times it has occurred or how much you're mentally prepared yourself. It's just a weird notion to be home alone on weekends wondering what to do even though you have a pile of tasks on your todo list.

You start having separation anxiety! It does weird things to you. Restlessness, acute laziness, in a sense of lost. You cease to be functional. And so comes the idea of getting a puppy... err.. to fill in the gap.

So there I was, going around googling on the breed of puppies and breeders in the area, checking out pet shops and what not. Made a call to one of the breeders of Yorkshires and Min. Schnauzers (cute little things they are) to check out her puppies.

Got back and started doing more research when I stumbled upon this BBC documentary of pedigrees. Apparently the body that governs and publishes the breed standard in the U.K. is the Kennel Club. Now they publishes a standard that says what are the distinct features of each particular breed of dogs, basically what makes them desirable or not.

Apparently, the breeding selection criteria has somehow morphed since the 18th centuries from working function to purely aesthetics even at the expense of health.

One of the examples cited was the Rhodesian Ridgebacks, MRI shows that the ridge is actually a deformed spine. And yet, this particular genetic deformity is published as the distinctive feature of the breed. "Normal" puppies without ridges weren't desired.

Pekingese were breed for their flat faces even though it causes breathing problems.

Quote from their website:

"The programme shows a prize-winning cavalier King Charles spaniel suffering from syringomyelia, a condition which occurs when a dog's skull is too small for its brain.

People are carrying out breeding which would be first of all entirely illegal in humans and secondly is absolutely insane from the point of view of the health of the animals Professor Steve Jones University College London

It also features boxers suffering from epilepsy, pugs with breathing problems and bulldogs who are unable to mate or give birth unassisted.

It says deliberate mating of dogs which are close relatives is common practice and the Kennel Club registers dogs bred from mother-to-son and brother-to-sister matings.

HAVE YOUR SAY

There are some breeds of dogs which are "abominations"

Scientists at Imperial College, London, recently found that pugs in the UK are so inbred that although there are 10,000 of them, it is the equivalent of just 50 distinct individuals.

Unquote

The fact that a lady had to campaign for 3 years to get a meeting with all the parties, the Kennel Club, breeders, the representative from the ministry in-charge, and comes out changing no one's minds just shows that there seems to be a systematic denial.

The Kennel Club knows it exists, the breeders do but they just won't budge for the health of the animals. They rather continue breeding hereditary diseases for the sake of looks rather than base them upon the health of the dogs. It IS saddening to see that something so trivially logical can be faced with so much resistance in a country where civilization has existed for a much longer time than most.

It then got me thinking about humans. Aren't we the same? Aren't we all faced with the same kind of problems? Simple logical truths are twisted and lies thrown in to create confusion, all in a systematic denial of the facts. I am convinced that it is in the interest of whoever in power to keep people dumb and ignorant. If I were to be a leader of a country, and sitting in a conference with other world leaders, I could definitely imagine the conversation arising on how to systematically deny the people of knowledge to toe them in line for the sake of staying in power.

Aren't we all pedigrees of a consuming breed? Created merely to keep the rich richer.

So back to the dogs, the problem that has been created by humans is that it is no longer a natural selection process, breeding has created a new selection criteria for these dogs. It is no longer the survival of the fittest but the survival (or lack of) of the pretty, even when sacrificing health.

Now, aren't humans the same? Are we still living in a world where the fittest survive? In some ways, the advancement of health sciences has allowed more people to live longer and reproduce when they might not have been able to otherwise. We have altered the natural selection criteria for humans!

It is no longer the survival of the fittest, so then it got me thinking... what is our survival selection criteria? It is money. The rich can afford expensive medical treatments and medication. What then makes a person rich? It is the propensity to forgo morality for personal gain. I mean, think of it, the top 10 richest people in the world don't make it there by being healthy or are they moral saints. They make it there by their willingness to make money out of someone else.

We are in essence breeding more humans who are morally corrupt! It's the survival of the greediest.

Let's face it, there are no long standing politicians who isn't rich and who doesn't have some kind of business in related fields.

The world is so wrong, in so many ways.

Starting a new blog as part of a late night musing isn't usually the best of things

So, I've decided to start a new blog.

The old one was not too google-able... well, someone actually did find that blog but it was an intentional search for the author.

I wanted another one which can be found by keyword search instead.

First, an intro.

The wife's a doctor... and it is intriguing to find out every single day that it is so far off from the pictures that they paint you. Both the wife and I seem to discover something more and more unsettling.

Now, it will take a few more blog postings to just get out the many things in the past 2 years which is really when the reality of it sets in as we moved in together, got married and experience separation anxiety! (more on that later)

So here's my work schedule, 5-days a week, Mon~Fri, office hours.

Her schedule - average 6-days a week, sometimes weekends, and she's got 4~5 calls per month.

When she's on-call, it means she works through the night to the next day, a total of 32hours.

I get paid pretty well for the number of hours that I have to put in whereas for her, it's peanuts and she does not really get to choose her hours. It's just insane how the health system is treating doctors.

Sometimes the heavens have mercy and let her back at midnight, much to my delight.

If it still alludes you, here's putting it down up front that this blog centers around how hard it is being married to a doctor is.