Who is your daddy and what does he do?

Not a bad day's work considering he'll be 82 this year! :)

That's awesome. I sure hope my dad is around that long. He just turned 51 this year.

Well MY daddy was into international espionage, but he couldn't tell me anything about it coz he would have had to kill me :(

Shouldn't be a problem for your dad at all. People are living much longer this day and age.

I'm with my folks right now — to help them renovate their rental apartment. Last week, my dad and I went over for a 'look see'. The unit was on the 8th floor. The elevator was taking its time — so my dad just walked up the stairs! Didn't break a sweat at all, didn't even slow down. :)

Hello all

I am a High School teacher. I teach Carpentry.My father died in 2000. But here is one of his sayings. There are three stages in a mans life. First:My daddy can beat your daddy. Second: My dad doesn't know S**t Third:Like my father used to say. I am in the third stage. My teenage son is in the second;)

Thanks Jim

Some of us don't have Dad's anymore but we do have a Sugar Daddy.

;-P

Sugar daddy is good too. Mooching is mooching. :)

Splenda daddy?

"I would trade less pay for more vacation anytime.

That is exactly what I did. I traded less pay for more vacation time and overall quality of life. The trade-off is that I may never be able to afford to retire. Oh well, as long as I can hike until I drop dead AND continue to still enjoy my work, I'll be a happy camper.

"Sugar daddy is good too. Mooching is mooching. :)"

You're just jealous Ben :-)

Oh no, Lynn, not jealous at all. I'm great with mooching too. :)

Proper mooching is an art form ;-) I respect it when done well…lol!

I am a sales and purchasing manager for a small family-owned lumber company in Louisiana, owned by a famous (in football circles)retired NFL quarterback. (He says you have to have been a history major to know who he was.) He is a terrific boss and friend.

But in such a small company during tough economic times, it is hard to take much time off. My boss and I have often said that we should take an extended sabbatical while our health is still good and work when we are old….pulling it off is another matter. There are only two of us in sales so it is a burden when the other is away and with forty employees, that means forty families who are dependent upon us. My wife, an attorney in a very small firm, also finds it challenging to take time off. Most years we manage to take three weeks off for vacations, not all of it for hiking.

At age 52, I have managed my finances so that I am now mortgage and debt-free, and am putting a major portion of my earnings away for retirement. Backpacking is my only real "vice", er, hobby. My wife calls me a gear nerd and admittedly I love my backpacking toys but I am to the point that my backpacking expenditures are minimal. I get out five or six times a year, mostly on weekends. The nearest trails are three to four hours away. I have done two Philmont treks with my boy scout troop but nothing longer yet. I look forward to doing a month or two on the trail but am not sure I am up for one of the big three.

I've been with a small healthcare consulting firm for 15 years. Started as the first employee and now I own a large portion. As we've gotten larger, my free time has gotten smaller… the usual trend. I have a fair amount of time off, but find it very difficult to break away for full weeks (two trips a year, the rest in a couple days here and there). I have rediscovered backpacking over the past 3 years with my kids. We did three trips last summer, and will try to get three more in next summer including our first full week trip.

Those of you that are young and single and really getting out there on the trail frequently, enjoy it! It becomes more difficult for a variety of life reasons as time goes on!

@Dave- Fort Carson, Colorado. Score!

@Sarah- Yep, the malpractice thing is nice. It makes up ever-so-slightly for the lousy pay. I'd love to retire for real after getting out of the Army (since I probably am a lifer) but I suspect that my wife is going to win THAT argument. One possible compromise might just be to do locum work or something. But that's all still about 8 years in the future.

@Mary- Coincidentally, my last post was Landstuhl. It is much different than when your grandson was treated there, I'd wager. It is now a huge clearinghouse for war casualties:

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/200806/landstuhl-germany-hospital-american-soldier-treated

I know essentially everyone mentioned in the article. The infamous Dr Sigmond was one of my partners- he got in a bit of hot water for the Blarney Stone incident. I'm not sure what he was thinking, going drinking with a REPORTER. Duh! Luckily (?) I was in Afghanistan when that all went down…

@Benjamin- You hear bad things about military hospitals because they are federal entities, and thus fall under FOIA. So, when a reporter has a slow month and wants to stir things up he can easily pull out some scary-looking statistics. But generally nothing bad happens at military hospitals that doesn't happen at civilian hospitals. Honest. (An imperfect exception follows, below.) I'm NOT saying that we don't have issues, but nothing worse than any other hospital, possibly excepting oddities produced by the exigencies of military service. Also, because medical treatment is a part of the compensation for military members any little thing that goes wrong tends to enrage everybody and make the evening news, etc.

Anyway, the truly horrendous stuff that you hear about has nothing to do with the medical department, per se. Problems like the 2007 Walter Reed scandal are generally caused by processes outside of AMEDD. For instance, every AMEDD insider with whom I have ever spoken acknowledges that Weightman (commander of WRAMC at the time) was the LAST guy who should have been fired. Evidently he was constantly trying to tell his superiors and any others who had their hands on the purse-strings that something needed to be done, but was always rebuffed. He had only been on the job six months, righteously making a pest of himself the whole time, when the scandal hit and SecArmy Harvey – a politician- fired him. The only justice is that Harvey was then in turn forced to resign by Gates. All this political crap generally infuriates soldiers- what Bush did to Shinseki is an excellent example.

Anyway, once the politicians were in the hotseat, voila!- funding. They covered their own @$$es diligently. Same thing with the PTSD issue, physical therapy and rehab issue, etc., etc. That's exactly why we need a free press. There is no other way to keep the parasites honest. (And the root of my unease regarding a federally-run single-payer system for the U.S. I have no objections to one in principle, but I'm not sure if I trust the parasites…)

The military does do some underhanded stuff to soldiers- issues with med boards come to mind, and denying that certain preventive medicine problems even exist, etc., but again that's not really driven by AMEDD. So it isn't Army HOSPITALS that are the problem.

For a change, I'm not just playing Devil's Advocate on this issue as I do so often in healthcare discussions here on BPL. The whole "Army doctors are butchers" meme honestly annoys me, in addition to being patently untrue. (My patients generally love me. I was in the 98th percentile for patient satisfaction when I left Landstuhl.) The real issue is the budget- controlled by politicians both civilian and military. If one really wants to treat soldiers and veterans to the incredibly high standard demanded by the American public then, logically, one must fund it accordingly.

Here's a blog by one of my USUHS medical school classmates, who has some incredibly unkind (but not wholly unjustified) things to say about some of these issues:

http://web.me.com/remington.nevin/Remington_Nevin/Blog/Blog.html

Remington is a truly interesting individual, and is exactly the man that you would expect someone named "Remington" to be. I think he has also reached the point of incredible frustration when dealing with these issues. (He's a preventive medicine specialist.)

Of course, another of my medical school classmates was Nidal Hasan. Quiet guy, kept to himself… all the usual tropes apply.

I am a hospice RN. We have four children but all are grown and supporting themselves. My wife and I each work 4 days/week. We live an inexpensive life, so we travel a few times/year. We live right next to Camden Hills State Park in Maine which has a lot of good hiking, so I go at least once a week year around. Gearing up to do the Colorado Trail late this summer. I'll have to take a few weeks leave, but that's fine. I've hiked in the San Juan's the last three Septembers, so I'm really looking forward to this!

Karl,
I lived in Maine for nine years and loved hiking around Acadia National Park. My oldest brother, retiring in June, is planning to do the Colorado Trail this summer. If you are interested in connecting with him, PM me and I will give you his email.
Gerry

"Of course, another of my medical school classmates was Nidal Hasan. Quiet guy, kept to himself… all the usual tropes apply."

Wow – that is a bit crazy. Would love to hear more over a beer one day. Impossible to identify the 'cracks in the foundation' I suspect.

Yeah, crazy is the term, I think. From what I know about him I'm not convinced that his actions really qualify as terrorism. I think he snapped, like any other whacko who walks into his place of work and starts killing people. Certainly the lens through which his breakdown was focused was his religion, but I don't think he was motivated by jihad, per se. I think that was merely how he sought to justify it to himself. Though the radical imam he had contact with undoubtedly did influence his beliefs, I severely doubt that Nidal had any direct contact with or support from jihadist elements. FWIW.

And, actually, "jihad" is a poor term for me to use. All muslims, radical or not, consider jihad to be a GOOD thing as it is merely the defense of islam. (As I said, we misuse the term.) But I'm hard pressed to come up with a better term that isn't horribly cumbersome. Even calling someone a "radical" or "fanatical" islamist isn't a good solution, as many radical and fanatical islamists aren't violent- seeking to restore the caliphate by peaceful means.

Not sure about the "cracks in the foundation" being hard to spot. I think someone could have recognized the danger sooner, as I suppose is the case with almost any such tragedy. I certainly agree that there is a rampant inquisition-level political correctness in the higher echelons of the US military concerning some issues, among them religion, which may have contributed to fears in some people about adressing Nidal's erratic behavior. (Which cuts both ways- the current crop of higher leaders have an unusually high incidence of Christian fundamentalism, most strikingly in the Air Force, and it definitely does affect their worldview and decision-making. I can reference a paper written as a War College thesis, if you like.)

And, I have yet to meet a totally normal psychiatrist- which makes picking out the truly odd ones a little more difficult. They are ALL eccentric to some degree.

"They are ALL eccentric to some degree.

That's all of us here. Spending $100+ to shave two ounces not eccentric? :)

Word.

Dean,
As an LCSW working at Ft. Knox behavioral health, I agree with what you have said. We sometimes forget to take the time to check on colleges when our case loads are triple + what they should be.
You have to be a little crazy to want to work in this field(besides it helps you relate to your patients).The day after this happened; I went to all of our psychiatrists and jokingly asked then if they were feeling homicidal today. The most predominate answer was "not today…!'

Dean: "It is much different than when your grandson was treated there, I'd wager."

I'm sure! His big surgery (taking part of his pelvis as a bone graft to replace the missing palate) was in February 2001. I'm sure the nurses couldn't be spending the time with him now that they did then! My son and his wife were extremely happy with all the medical staff there, though, and especially the surgery results. I tried to follow what was going on at Landstuhl in the early days of the Iraq war. I especially remember the time a national news correspondent was going on and on about the wounded were being treated at Rhein/Main while standing in front of Landstuhl Medical Center (sign plainly visible!). (Typical, IMHO)

My grandson was also given his final plastic surgery (removing scars, straightening nose) at Wright-Patterson AFB about a year and a half ago. He looks awesome! That was, Lord willing, his final surgery. One of the reasons my son served so long is that a lot of private health insurance doesn't cover birth defects. The military does–which, per my son and his wife, made it worth the years of low income.

thread drift…

"thread drift…"

Maybe, but you read the posts. You could have stopped.

;)

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