Ricin Found in Vegas

Authorities suspect that ricin has been found in a hotel in Las Vegas. According to the article, the FBI doesn’t believe this to be a terrorist attack. That’s good. So, what is it?

“Ricin has no medical uses other than cancer research,” Lombardo said. “An individual citizen other than being involved in cancer research or cancer prevention would not have any legal means or proper means of having that.”

Interesting. So, either a doctor left part of his research lying around in a cheap hotel Las Vegas, someone who is battling cancer is doing research on themselves or… We have a case for “Monk“. Personally, I think it’s someone who’s trying to do someone else in. Do you think maybe Gil Grissom can find out what it was used for?

As it stands right now, I don’t believe what the FBI is dishing out. Ricin is an extremely deadly toxin and I’m sure no one just carries a box of it around for the fun of it. On the brighter side, the person who forgot it will soon be caught. Because someone who’s stupid enough to leave that stuff lying around with no real purpose surely didn’t cover their tracks.

Gil and Monk are on the case. Updates as the case unravels.

Pee Wee on the Couch

Good news. Pee Wee is home. Unfortunately she’s stuck in bed (or on the couch). She wants us to buy one of those adjustable beds for her and put it in the livingroom. Um, no. We’ve got a really nice, deep sofa and she can relax on that.

She’s taking a medication to keep her contractions from coming back. It’s called Procardia.It’s generally used in heart patients to prevent the arteries from contracting. But they’re using it to keep her uterus from contracting. She has to take it every four hours, on the dot. One of the side effects of the drug is that it can cause nausea. Anything that causes nausea in Pee Wee really just induces fits of vomiting. She’s not very good at working to keep that stuff down. So, every 4 hours, half an hour after she takes her pill, she vomits. A lot.

The doctor’s say that as long as she’s not vomiting all her food up, then she’ll be ok. They’re not very concerned that she’s vomiting not long after her pill. I assume because she’s taking the quick dissolve kind and she’s not throwing everything up. The good thing is she’s not contracting. The bad news is she’s feeling like garbage and is sick to death of the vomiting. Oh, and I get to clean the vomit bucket. That’s really bad news. (I kid!)

She’ll be taking this medicine until she hits 34 weeks. Then she stops. At that point, if labor starts again that’s ok. After 32 weeks the baby is able to survive and the risk of cerebral hemorrhage is way down. The baby will spend minimal amount of time in the NICU- if he has to go in at all. As long as she doesn’t deliver before 32 weeks.

She’s not doing well lying on the couch. Already she wants to get up and play on the computer. But she’s not supposed to spend too much time upright for fear that gravity will pull the baby down on her cervix and cause labor to start again. Getting her to understand this is really difficult. She’s only 16 and wants to get up and about. Plus she knows everything (doesn’t every teenager). I’m playing Mean Nurse and am not liking that at all.

I keep telling both of us that it’s only 7 weeks. Just 7 weeks.

Pee Wee in Hospital

I wasn’t going to blog about this for a while, but I’m a little stressed.

Pee Wee is pregnant. I’ve known for a while. It was shocking at first, caused me a lot of tears, but we worked through that. I refused to let her go through this alone, but insisted that she at least work to help pay her medical bills. She was doing well in school and everything was fine. She’s just recently started needing to wear maternity clothes and we’ve been shopping for some baby stuff.

Last Sunday she went into labor. She’s 26 weeks along- way too early for baby to come. Luckily she’s in one of the top 100 hospitals in the country, with one of the best NICUs in the country. They were able to stop her labor, but she had dilated 2 centimeters by then. So, now she’s lying in an antepartum room hooked to all kinds of monitors. She’s only allowed to walk from her bed to the bathroom and, if she gets released soon, won’t be able to return to school or work until the baby is born.

I stayed with her all of Sunday, Monday, and only came home for a little while today. I needed to get a few things done and Mags wanted to be with me for a while. Pee Wee is stressing because she’s alone now and is anxious for me to come back.

The hospital is 30 minutes away from us and I don’t drive. I’ve got to depend on my husband to get me up there as well as watch Mags. He’s stressing from that. He’s never had to take care of her 100% alone. It’s kind of funny, but it’s also grating.

At any rate, until we can get her stable, I’ll be sleeping on the pull-out couch in her room. Then she’ll come home and sleep on the couch.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the baby doesn’t come until at least mid-April.

Many workers ‘asbestos ignorant’

BBC News is reporting that just 12% of the 400 tradespeople they interviewed were aware of the dangers of asbestos dust.

Most tradespeople are unaware of the health risks linked to asbestos, a survey suggests.

The British Lung Foundation said just 12% of the 400 it questioned knew exposure could lead to them developing the incurable lung cancer mesothelioma..

Three-quarters had not had any training on dealing with asbestos and just over 25% thought some levels were safe.

The report states that deaths from mesothelioma are continuing to rise each year, with as many as 20 deaths per week in the UK. It goes on to say that most of the workers felt pressure to continue to work if they suspected asbestos was present at the work site and that many believed all asbestos had been removed from Britain.

A spokesman for the Federation of Master Builders agreed there was too little knowledge about the risks.

He said: “The problem is that there is a general misconception, particularly amongst tradesmen and home owners, that asbestos is a thing of the past so there is no need to worry about it.

“Tradesmen need to understand that this is a serious threat that could be present in any job that they go to, and that they need to understand how to identify asbestos, and what to do when they find it.”

Hopefully someone is doing a similar study in the U.S. Considering the almost certainty that tradespeople will develop lung cancer if they don’t use safety measures, I wonder how high our own numbers really are.

Our Elderly Are Left To Flounder

Steve’s grandfather died recently. Right before New Years, to be exact. His wife, who is his second, was left a good amount of money after his passing. However, because he was on medicare, she was forced to re-mortgage the house. A lot of people have this idea that older folks have some kind medicare advantage when it comes to their health insurance, but that’s not right. Grandmother had to pay back all the money used by Grandfather while he was in the nursing home. Then she had to pay back all the money he used prior to that. Luckily, he also had some sort of other insurance, which helped pay the medical bills, or Grandmother would literally be destitute right now. Her children (her “estate”) would also be paying more bills when she passes. When she dies, the bank will sell the home in which she raised all 5 of her children.

There’s a lot of talk right now about reforming the health insurance industry. One on side are the Conservatives who don’t want to give “handouts” to people with government money. On the other are the Liberals who want to make all insurance available through the government. There are problems with both sides of that argument- especially when dealing with the older generations.

For one, it wouldn’t be a “handout” to help them with their medical care in their waning years. They’ve earned their way (the majority) by working and supporting the younger generations. Someone had to be responsible for our health and well-being while we were children. That would have been the older generation. Because of that it’s important that we make sure they don’t fall between the cracks and suffer even more their last years.

On the other side of that, the government doesn’t do that good of a job now. Medicare is, unfortunately, failing many older people. Like Grandmother. It looks easy to those of us who aren’t right there counting out the pennies for the medicine or mortgaging a house that’s been paid off for 30 years. There’s the bureaucracy behind it all that can’t be ignored. The government will do what it’s doing now on a much grander scale.

Of course, one could blame the recent administration’s penchant for cutting any kind of services to the poor. But it’s more than that. Society has a responsibility to take care of their elderly. We’ll all be old some day and then what? We’ll have policies in place that will effectively put us out in the cold too. Sure we can invest and save. But there are risks there too. Many people who were getting pensions from companies that went belly up. Their pensions went belly up too. Their savings went up in smoke- almost literally. And that leaves them with nothing but people harping on them that they should have saved!

“You knew you were going to retire. Why didn’t you save?”

Except they did. And it was gone in a flash. The safety nets that we think are there for our golden years aren’t always there when the golden years arrive.

Because Grandmother was Grandfather’s second wife, she doesn’t get his death benefits. Nor does she continue to receive his pension. Her monthly income was cut by 75% when he died. Now she may face losing the home she’s lived in for over 30 years. Because neither private industry nor government bureaucracy left her any safe guards.

Think about that at the voting booth.

EC Strips “Obscene” Ads

I have been not-so secretly reading some EntreCard blogs (blogs that are listed in EC, in case you didn’t know). I don’t have this blog over there, because, well, I’ve already got one (or two) and I just don’t feel like dropping for one more blog. Recently there have been quite a few ads featuring women in fine lingerie or tacky lingerie, as the case may be. Most of these ads pointed to blogs about making money blogging. HUH? What does making money blogging at home in your dirty underwear have to do with sexy women in sexy underwear?

Well, Graham took action and banned to offending ads from EC. I think this was a wise move. It’s one thing to show a scantily clad lady on your card if your site is all about lingerie (with which I have no problem, owning a few pieces myself), but it’s quite another to try to trick some horny internet surfers to click your boring site.

At any rate, it caused a slight stir with some internet marketers. These are the ones who have no qualms about doing whatever it takes. They didn’t think that their ads should have been censored. The problem was, though, that as soon as one guy put up a sexy woman then 10 more did the same (a bunch of independent thinkers there). I imagine that they did get some clicks, but nothing that would ever cause visitors to come back.

Imagine if you’re looking for something nice to wear on Valentine’s Day and thought “Wow! That site looks like it might be the ticket!” and then you end up reading about how to optimize your page for StumbeUpon users. *Yawn* I imagine that would really increase someone’s “bounce rate” and I really can’t imagine that the visitors looking for the sexy women are going to click on the ads on the make money online blog. Really?

I think I’m becoming burnt out on surfing anyway. I spend too much time reading (and rolling my eyes) than being productive. I think I do much better without online social interaction. I get a lot more done.