I have often wondered how a doctor decides what new medications he or she will prescribe. Do they read what may be recommended in the JAMA? Do they just heed the claims of their drug company representative? I do know that in many cases they are constrained by their patient's insurance company and what medications they will pay for.

My stepmother has changed from cholesterol lowering Lipitor to Zetia which is not doing what it is supposed to do. She's had to have a second cholesterol lowering drug prescribed in addition to Zetia. It is not as effective without it. Why did she change? Medicare Part D leaves her with a higher copay for Lipitor than she can afford to pay. So, the change was made to one that the insurance company prefers. The fact that it isn't working as well as Lipitor does, seems to be ignored. Makes you wonder doesn't it?

I have gone back to work as a Home Health Aide as of today. The supervising nurse that misused me by not truly informing me what the condition of the client really was has left us and the company president asked me if I would consider resuming due to the need they have. I agreed as long as I don't get shoved into cases I am not experienced enough to handle. So, I started this morning with two lovely ladies and am quite happy with the way things went.

The second lady is in her 80's and is living in a huge and beautiful home. If I actually had a dream house, this would be it. Huge living room with fireplace. Lovely large diningroom with sliding glass doors which exit onto a beautiful multi level deck. Bathroom with both a tub and a glass shower enclosure which is separate from the tub. Three bedrooms, all nice sized and a finished basement. Much too large a place for one tiny lady to take care of.

When I introduced myself to her we took a few moments to get acquainted and she told me this isn't her house. Her daughter died, her grandson inherited it. He lives in Florida and wasn't interested in living in it or selling it. He asked his grandparents to move in and they did. Her husband has since died and she now lives in this home by herself. She has had both hips replaced and is still recovering from the last one, which took place between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had to keep asking her to please use her walker because she was bound and determined to walk without it and at this point she should not be. When I finished my chores, she asked me to sit and talk with her, she wanted to tell me why it was so important to her that she find just the right aide.

Her daughter had a tumor on her thyroid gland which necessitated it's removal. My lady wasn't clear as to why her daughter wasn't prescribed thyroid hormone replacement like Synthroid but she was apparently not, as she gained a serious amount of weight in the 18 months following the surgery. When she discussed weight loss options with her doctor, the new diet drug on the market was the Fen-Phen cocktail and this is what he prescribed. Sure, she had the right to refuse, but the initial reports on these drugs were favorable and would have given her no qualms about using it.

Within 6 months she had a heart attack, and open heart surgery to replace the valves in her heart. She never again could sleep in a bed, she had to sleep sitting up or she couldn't breathe. Then the news came out that Fen-Phen may have been responsible. She checked into it, furnished a lawyer with her medical records and when he could see no way for the drug manufacturer to claim prior existing condition, he contacted them. The case never went to court. The manufacturer offered a sizable settlement. Since she wasn't greedy she accepted it. She used it to buy this home outright, and to renovate it to suit herself. She got to live in it for a whole year before she died. She was 52 years old.

For two hours twice a week I will be traveling to this lovely house and helping her keep it in the condition she wants it. All the while I will know that she's not doing it because she's that proud of the house. She sees that house as a memorial of sorts to her daughter. I see that house as a testimonial to an expensive healthcare system gone horribly wrong.


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Still no access for Bella.

My telephone line is out of order. A hunk of falling ice cut the wire last night. It's our problem so we are going to have to pay to fix it. Or fix it ourselves.

From the looks of my living room this morning, I think the maid quit.

At least the coffee pot works.

Bella asked me to make sure you all understood that the problem she's having has nothing to do with Blogstream or servers of any kind. No one here can help her, it will have to be attended to by Symantec, the makers of the Norton Antivirus program. She is stuck with this program as it is mandated by her employers, otherwise she would have deleted it and downloaded something else.

She received an update to her program that has reconfigured her firewall and is denying her access to Blogstream. It has apparently placed Blogstream in the blocked sites cache or is denying her access by some other means. This would not be a problem for the rest of us, it would just be a matter of using our restore feature to take us back in time to a place before it happened. This is not an option for her because she is a medical transcriptionist with a Virtual Privacy Network or VPN installed on her computer. Using the restore feature could wipe out anything sent to her from her place of employment for transcription.

Most of the rest of us could simply disable the firewall and gain access that way. However, were she to do so she could be leaving her computer files, which include medical histories, open to malicious use. This would be a direct violation of the federal HIPPA laws. Intentional violation could result in stiff penalties including imprisonment. She has issues that the rest of us do not face when presented with this type of problem.

When I first came online, I had a brand new computer with many "free" features. Free AOL, free McAfee Security program and a few other programs that I didn't fully understand, so I never tried them. When it came time to begin paying for a security program I kept McAfee despite someone telling me that Norton was better. I was not at all sure about that.

The first weekend that I was online I had an issue which necessitated a call to AOL. When the call was answered, it was done so by an announcement that all AOL clients with Norton, who did not have internet access should notify Norton immediately. It went on to say that Norton had downloaded an update which blocked AOL users from gaining internet access.

Being the curious sort, the first thing I did was research Norton when I went online. I found that while Norton did a fine job of protecting your computer, it also did a number of other things as well. Like reconfigure your firewall and remove access to certain sites that one might be visiting regularly. I'd rather make my own choices thank you.

The other issue with Norton is that it is a huge program. It slows the operation of your computer down. Every update then slows the computer down more. My place of employment deleted Norton a few months ago when all new computers were installed and they developed speed issues. Norton was removed, McAfee was installed and there were no further problems. Every employee in that office with home computers, except me, had Norton. Once they saw for themselves how much Norton actually slowed things down, they went home and changed security systems on their home computers as well.

Should McAfee ever begin to behave as if it is a clone of Norton I will examine other options, but for the moment, I'm rather content that as a novice online, I chose a security system that has given me no problems. I guess I'm smarter than I thought I was.

Bella logged in to Blogstream once today and has been unable to get back in at all. She can't get in through the Blogstream home page, nor through any of our pages. What she is getting is a notice that the blogstream.com server is too slow to answer. She is unable to use our comments to access the log in page. I tried to help her the best I could but we couldn't figure out any way to get her access.

Her computer has been scanned for issues and she has none. She has spoken to Roadrunner tech support and they say it's a Blogstream problem. Now, I'm not locked out of the stream, but as I'm surfing around I keep getting a page that says;

Oops! We can't find the webpage you're looking for
Here are some suggestions:

Check the address for typing errors such as ww.example.com instead of www.example.com
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's internet connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that your browser is permitted to access the Web.

This is similar to what Bella is getting when she tries to get into Blogstream. I sent this off to the contact email and haven't heard anything. Bella did get an answer that more or less said she's logging in wrong. Now that would be ok if she could get to a page that she could log in on at all. The Blogstream tech support doesn't seem to understand the scope of her problem. They don't seem to get that as far as Bella is concerned, Blogstream doesn't exist. The contact at cs1.blogstream.com also said she was the only one having this problem. Well, does that mean it doesn't exist?

I can get to most all of the pages I want to read here in the stream, but sometimes I'm having to try twice. Today it's been just about every other time that I'm seeing the above notice. Is the problem with our ISP's? Is the problem with the server here in Blogstream taking a periodic nap? Who knows, but if you are having any problems accessing any pages or any part of Blogstream will you please send an email to cs1@blogstream.com so that they know Bella isn't the only one?

Time Warner cable is unable to get a ping from the Blogstream server. Which means that until they can trace the bad relay or whatever the problem is Bella will not be in Blogstream. I'm sure she will be with us as soon as she is able to be.

Another update. It turns out not to be an issue with ping, Blogstream server or anything that has been mentioned to date. Norton Antivirus downloaded an update to her computer yesterday and it has caused her firewall to block her access to Blogstream. Due to the fact that she works with her computer, there is information regarding her work that cannot be disturbed. If it were not for that she could do a systems restore to the day before yesterday and she would be ok. I guess we will just have to wait for someone to figure this all out.

Huh?. Anybody know what it says?



I hate to admit it, but I think I work here.



Now this is more like it.