(no subject)

Geri posted yesterday about a fannish campaign to match Terry Pratchett's donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust in the UK with another half a million pounds to make an even 1 million.

Can you spare a pound? Right now that's about 2 bucks US$. Tell them it's in honour of Terry Pratchett.

Alternatively, you can buy a shirt, with all the proceeds going to Alzheimer's research. Some fans in the US are also donating to the Alzheimer's Association, where your contribution will be tax-deductable and in US $.

Pratchett is quoted as saying,

Personally, I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.

I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the cure comes along.

Say it will be soon - there's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with dementia will double within a generation.

In most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much.

It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer's research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.

Pass it on.

(no subject)

I have lots of things on my list of things to do today. But it pretty much all adds up to:

Clean the House! Clean The House! Clean The House!

Is Ann Arbor experiencing a shortage of physicians?

So, I am slowly getting around to picking a primary care physician for my HMO. I'm looking for a new place partly because it seems to be getting harder and harder to get in to see my regular doctor at the old place... I tend to get shunted, on the phone or in person, to a nurse practitioner. Now, maybe nurse practitioners are just as experienced and trained as doctors and I'm thinking about this wrong, but I miss when I got to see my doctor more easily when I was sick, a few years ago.

So I called a new office yesterday which my chiropractor directed me to, and the doctors they had there who were accepting new patients were scheduling into either April or July for appointments for new patients. July! But I could get in earlier if my health insurance would let me see a nurse practitioner instead...

Is the health care industry restructuring, or what?