It’s about time someone thought of this!
Medical Provider Adds Virtual House Calls To Its Services (image from CarenaMD.com)
Breastfeeding is a partisan issue??
Image from babynursingblog.com
Really?? A “leftist agenda” of a “nanny state”? I especially love the bashing of Michelle Obama’s breastfeeding advocacy after Palin’s own breastfeeding initiative in 2007.
Why people choose leaders with nothing constructive to add to the dialogue except to auto-bash the other party’s efforts is beyond me. Great quote from one of the commenters to the above blog post:
“Empty vessels make the loudest sound, they have the least wit and are the greatest blabbers” Plato
And a shame that people blindly follow.
Living in Phnom Penh, Having a baby in Bangkok
Photo by Keith A Kelly
CHOOSING THE HOSPITAL
We work and live in Phnom Penh, and wouldn’t feel comfortable with the specialists / facilities here in case of complications during delivery. The nearest city with internationally accredited care is Bangkok, so there we went at 35 weeks 6 days gestation, the latest we’re allowed to board a Thai Airways flight (with a fit-to-fly certificate from the doc).
Most of Bangkok’s well-known private facilities have high quality patient-oriented care and great customer service. They have translators, can take care of extending visas, take the baby’s passport photo (this isn’t easy so do get this done at the hospital!), get the birth certificate officially translated and documented at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and liaise on documentations necessary to register the birth at your particular embassy etc. Many people go to Bumrungrad Hospital; read this post and follow the link to her birth story at Bumrungrad here. This hospital is located in the neighborhood of Sukhumvit where many Arab nationals live, so the third spoken language is Arabic.
The delivery packages she quoted for Bumrungrad are comparable to those at Samitivej:
- Natural birth/Water birth (3 days admission) 55,000Baht / US$1800 on exchange rate 30Baht=US$1
- Natural birth with Epidural (3days admission) 68,000 Baht / US$2267
- C-section (4days admission) 78,000Baht / US$2600
So I’d heard there is a ~90% c-section rate in private hospitals in Bangkok..? At any rate it’s high, but that’s due to a lot of other factors (including the Asian quest for luck, leading parents to schedule c-sections on the most propitious time and date for birth). [Read more…] about Living in Phnom Penh, Having a baby in Bangkok
Mom I Am
I love it! Poem is from the Mom’s Online Breastfeeding Board:
Little ones can squirm and pout,
make a fuss and scream and shout.
When hunger hits without a doubt,
Sit right down and whip it out.
I would nurse her if she cried,
I could nurse her far and wide,
Here and there or anywhere,
Up or down or on a chair.
I could nurse a teddy bear,
For this fine milk is very rare!!!
Would you nurse him on a train?
Would you nurse him on a plane?
Would you nurse him in a car?
Would you nurse him in a bar?
Yes, on a train, yes on a plane.
Yes, in a car, yes in a bar.
I would nurse him here or there.
I would nurse him anywhere!
I would nurse him in a booth,
On the stairs or near the roof.
Anywhere my boy cries out,
I pop the nummies in his mouth.
I can serve it by the ounce,
I can serve it while I bounce.
In a bottle or in a jar,
I can serve from near or far.
Twelfth Night – It’s CARNIVAL time!!
Thanks to @yatpundit for the reminder, since I miss it every year if I’m not in New Orleans!
Bangkok’s malls are taking down their Christmas shopping scenes to put up the next shopping holiday marketing props [Valentine’s Day – sticks finger down throat]]. But the holiday festivities are just shifting – Mardi Gras season begins today! Man I miss King Cake – we’ll have to get ourselves over to Bourbon St off Sukhumvit Soi 22 and see if they have some!
Happy Carnival! Here’s a little background from NOLA History: Reveling on Twelfth Night:
Christians all over the world celebrate on the Sixth of January. While some parts of the Christian world may differ on dates, January 6th is usually recognized as the Feast of the Epiphany, the day that the Magi, or Three Wise Men, visited the Christ Child. In most of Christendom, Epiphany marks the end of the holiday season. The Christmas tree is taken down, the decorations stored away for another year, and life goes on.
Except in New Orleans.
Epiphany celebrations are also known as “Twelfth Night” celebrations because January 6th is the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.” There is some confusion over whether Christmas Day is the “first day of Christmas” or Boxing Day (December 26th) is the “first day.” Another variation in the celebrations is whether or not Twelfth Night happens on the night of January 5th or 6th. This confusion results from the date convention of Medieval Europe where a “day” begins on the night before.
As the sun sets on January 6th and the rest of the world formally gets back to normal life, New Orleanians merely shift the focus of our celebrating. The Christmas season is over, and the Carnival season begins.
A bit of explanation is in order here: One has to keep in mind that there was hardly any celebrating done before Christmas before our now-very-secular society. The four weeks prior to Christmas are the liturgical season of Advent, a time of fasting and penance to prepare for Christ’s birth. With the season of Advent largely ignored in modern society, pre-Christmas celebrations lead to post-Christmas and New Year’s parties, and that turns into Carnival time.
Is your physician accepting “gifts” from pharma?
Lots of blog coverage in recent months on one of the more pro-consumer aspects of the health care legislation, in which drug companies in the $200 billion-plus pharmaceutical industry will be required to publicly disclose gifts and payments to physicians. Has your doctor received drug company money?
Get updates on both the companies and physicians from Dollars for Docs at ProPublica.org. InsideCounsel.com explains:
Employers in all industries face the challenge of implementing changes in their employee benefit plans as a result of the sweeping health care reform program that became law in March (see “Examining the New Health Care Law”). But health care providers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers face even more change as a result of “sunshine” and “integrity” provisions of the new law.
Included in the massive legislation is the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which requires drug and device manufacturers to make annual federal disclosures of their financial relationships with, and in-kind contributions to, physicians and teaching hospitals. The reports will be available to the public via an online database. While some states already require such disclosures, the new law is the first federal transparency requirement for the health care industry.
“The sunshine provisions for the first time on a broad-based national basis would require the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and devices to report payments that they make to physicians,” says Laura Keidan Martin, a partner in the health care practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman. “It requires disclosure of every transfer of cash, in-kind consideration or stock. Every dinner a sales rep has with a doctor now will have to be reported. It’s very controversial because physicians feel it is an invasion of privacy, but the point is the public should know the relationships that their physicians have.”
And here’s one physician’s take on drug reps and the practice of pharma’s direct-to-consumer marketing, on Medicine in Plain Words:
Make no mistake, some patients are quite sick and need to take medicine, some need to take a lot of medicine in order to function at a level meaningful to them. But we all need to remember that TV commercials are not there to educate us, they are there to sell a product. In the case of this product (pills), the company needs a middle man (your doctor) to close the sale. Taking a daily pill is a big commitment and should not be taken lightly.