Pull Tight

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-possibly-fatal-mistake.html This article although mostly about the state of healthcare for the uninsured, illustrates the sometimes profound benefit of early cancer detection. Symptoms ignored and untreated because of a lack of health insurance resulted in unpaid costs of many hundreds of thousand dollars and counting.  Also a life will almost certainly be shortened significantly. We all help pay for these costs through local taxes and higher insurance premiums. The article brought to mind my own diagnosis and treatment.  http://pulltight.blogspot.com/2010/05/43-life-throws-curve.html .  Wonder what I would have done when my first symptoms appeared if I had not been insured?  Would I now be in the same shape as Scott?  As it turns out my early symptoms lead to an early diagnosis and treatment.  Probably I will live another 30 years.  But not so for Scott.

Getting ready to go out this morning, already wearing a jacket on a cool day, Nancy called to me there is a lizard in the bath room. I rushed to the rescue of the poor reptile (a ground skink) with a paper plate.  The paper plate was close at hand and it seemed better than trying to catch by hand and possibly injuring.  The lizard was very compliant and crawled on the plate, and then quickly proceeded up my sleeve. Just for the record, nothing helps you help you remove your jacket quite so fast as when it co-occupied with a slightly slimy reptile migrating toward your arm pit.