OCD for profit?

Pharmaceutical companies have perfected the American dream. They have created a market and are now capitalizing on it. They work hard to get people obsessed about a 'disease' and then they charge them for the cure. And now they've either run out of new medicines  to invent to treat new diseases they've invented (or legitimized - see ED and fibromyalgia ) or they're just getting greedy (or have they always been and I'm just now noticing!) or maybe they are smelling the fires of 'the barbarians at the gate' - a la government-sponsored healthcare. In any instance, they certainly are capitalizing on 'unintended positive consequences', aka side effects that can be marketed. Used to be Viagra, by another name, was a drug to help with pulmonary hypertension. A disease, for sure, but not one with enough victims to really make a buck. But guess what happened on the way to improving the circulation in your lungs? Voila! Viagra. The rest is history - they've already done the research and development and proven that it's at least safe enough to try, if not use regularly, on humans. So now it's all about marketing. And you think I use reverse psychology? When did we get so gullible that a warning of a four hour erection is used to sell something? How hard was that? No pun intended.

There are others - recently the drug for hair loss, Propecia, was mentioned as a prevention for prostate cancer, sort of a reverse of the Viagra story, going from cosmetic to internal medicine. Now there is a glaucoma treatment with a curious side effect - it makes eyelashes grow thick and dark. Which is reminiscent of the first marketable side effect of which I was aware - Minoxidil, a blood pressure drug, had the nasty side effect of making patients grow hair in places both good and bad. But applied topically to specific areas it caused hair growth in just that area. And what do you get? Rogaine.

OK - so they have created markets from discontent, usually over appearance or performance. Is that really bad? Doesn't everyone have the right to be pain-free, have a full head of hair, an erection and great lashes? This is America, after all.

what if...?

the new stephen king book is a collection of short stories. i'm a bigtime stephen king fan, so of course i got it as soon as it came out, then i kept it as a carrot in front of me while i finished a couple of other books that weren't so exciting. now i'm halfway through, but one of the stories, 'stationary bike', hit a nerve. the protagonist finds out that his cholesterol is high and his health is in danger and he sets out on a stationary bike to fix the problem, but in the process he makes enemies of his own 'lipid company', 4 guys who he has ?dreamed up/created with the help of his doctor's explanation of his problem, because by losing weight and eating right and exercising he has put these guys out of work. and they have houses and families and mortgages and lives. 

so i got to thinking about my life and the impact i've had on certain economies and people by my lifestyle choices and changes. like what's the bartender at interurban going to do with all that smithwick's he ordered special for me? what about the carhops at sonic? do they miss me? are they mad? have they had a surplus of iced tea and route 44 cups and straws?

once, on the way to a mission trip, i was waxing philosophical to the person next to me about how all of us americans were living in luxury and we were wasteful and gluttonous and we should stay home and eat in more often, be happy with our houses and cars and forget 'keeping up with the joneses' because even the joneses were reining in their spending. who needs a lexus or a mercedes? who needs a 3 million dollar house? a $100,000 pool? why do people keep buying these stupid clothes and toys for their kids? why do they insist on making a trip to disneyworld a lifelong goal? 

then i realized i was talking to a bartender at a restaurant in bricktown whose living depended on people who lived the lives i had just railed against.

yes, we're gluttons and we're spoiled. but does the world not count on us to be this way? are we not pretty much singlehandedly supporting economies in countries where hopefully at least some people aren't being abused and exploited?

one more random thought: why, in tough economic times do we cut back on stuff? on people? were these things or services or people superfluous to the business or the community? were they just extras, like whipped cream and nuts on a sundae or creamer in coffee? like onions and pickles on a burger? why do we start getting things or getting used to things that we can apparently do without? and how many of us are expendable if the economy gets 'tougher'? 

the mirror

i saw somebody this week that i haven't seen in a while. i try to avoid him if i can, when i hear him coming, i go the other way. i don't like this guy. not even a little bit. he is very selfish. he is very prideful, feels like everything should go his way, and watch out if his car doesn't start or his alarm doesn't wake him up or his schedule's too full or too empty or he's wrong about something or his pants are too long or too short or his shirts aren't clean or his laundry's not ready or his eggs don't cook right or his kids don't call or they call while he's busy...pretty much his outward persona is a house of cards. he is so blessed and he takes the credit as if he had something to do with it. he lets people continue in their positive misconceptions of him and does nothing to disabuse them of their erroneous notions. he is kind when it suits him and mean when it doesn't. he can say nice things and his tongue can slice with sarcasm in the same moment, even in the same sentence. you can see why i don't like him. there's only one problem: he's the man in the mirror. sometimes you believe your own press clippings. sometimes i get a sore arm patting myself on the back. 

i'm happy to do stuff for others if...everything goes right for me.

i saw myself this week and i didn't like what i saw.

and i'm definitely getting old. watching the grammys tonight, i'm feeling very old. but old is good in my book if it means that you're not excited about a lesbian celebratory song followed by unintelligible (c)rap by 4 guys with more hyphens than vowels and consonants in their names while a hugely pregnant ?singer prances gravidly around on the stage making a fool of herself. i'll take old any day.

even more

when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses (or, common things occur commonly)(this is a standard medical saying). meaning: if you didn't already figure it out, it's ain't some weird thing usually. it's more common for common illnesses to present in a weird way than for a weird illness to present at all (or to mimic a common illness). reader's digest is not a medical textbook, nor is the internet - but wikipedia has most medical textbooks on it!

the shortest route is not always the best route, because it can bypass some of the most precious lessons in life. (ravi zacharias)

some people seem to need to define their lives by their hardships, whether they be illnesses or other types, death in the family, financial hardship. look in the bible at aaron and nadab and abihu. sometimes you need to work through things, not live for them.

the lessons learned the hard way, the long way, are often the best, but man, that's not how they feel when you're going through them. think of this for your kids.

when my children get the 'i wants' and 'i needs' it's time for them (and me) to 'serve, serve, serve'(my lovely bride)

God gives where He finds empty hands - (St. Augustine)

sometimes you are the answer to the prayer you pray. (steve brown)

we think that helplessness is a liability - and it may be if you're a soldier or a policeman or a teacher - but in spiritual matters, just the opposite is true. (steve brown)

ok, i know these were random. each could have had a whole blog to itself, and who knows? maybe they will someday, but right now, hopefully this will do.

more radical thoughts

well, not necessarily more radical, but more thoughts. some are mine, some belong to others. i'll try to differentiate if you can't tell.

Nothing good happens after 10 pm. (many people, me, my wife, my parents, your parents...) well, it's true to this day. 

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (again, many people, including all of the above) if people took this to heart life would be less hectic and more peaceful. especially after 10 pm.

God makes complex things simple and man turns around and makes simple things complex.  ok, this one's on me. as i'm continually faced with our tendency to make things harder and more complicated than they need to be. my friend Greg says "Christians shouldn't be into the details, because the devil is in the details."

First come up with a drug, and if necessary, we'll invent a disease.  ok, this is me again, but i had help. all the big pharmaceutical companies are doing this, whether they admit it or not. there are many 'diseases' and 'disorders' out there today that didn't exist before. a variation on this would be 'come up with a test and we'll come up with something to call the results if they're positive'.

35 miles or $35 will weed out most unnecessary doctor visits. ok, this is mine, too. not that i mind seeing lots of kids who aren't too sick, just that availability has become almost detrimental to some people. for instance: we are closed today due to weather, and this is a lose-lose situation - if open, we would have had people risk their lives on bad roads to bring in kids who don't need to be seen, and since we're closed we aren't serving our patients well.

It is easier to die for Jesus than to live for Him. a paraphrase of Oswald Chambers.

It is what it is...unless it isn't. Greg Poland. this can serve for many things and situations. when people want a definitive answer on some medical question that has not definitive answer, this works well.

Don't do the test if the result isn't going to change what you would do. me again. the healthcare consumer wants tests. they want them because they think the result is the answer to their problem, and some even think the test is the answer to their problem. i can't tell you how many times i've heard people say 'after that cat scan, i haven't had any more headaches' or variations on that theme. suggests a psychosomatic etiology to me, but hey...

It's amazing how many people survived before there were all these medicines and tests! me again. just in 25 years of finishing med school, the increase in the amount of knowledge and the numbers of tests and treatments is phenomenal. but simple things are still simple and common things still happen commonly. 

i'll come up with some more later. i just hadn't posted in a while.

new analogy

for those of you who know me, you know i think in metaphor. analogies are a way of life for me. so this morning i thought of another one.

i refresh my podcasts daily, it's a ritual. then i sync my phone and my ipod to update them. if any new software is available i find out. if there is a problem, i find that out, too.

if i 'sync' with God on a daily,  allow Him to refresh my spirit, hopefully even minute to minute, but at least regularly at least daily, i stay in touch with Him and what He wants me to do and He reminds me through His word how He wants me to act and what His nature is, so He pretty much 'updates' me and notifies me of problems, etc. 

by studying the bible, reading devotionals, meditating (or is that snoozing?), praying, all these are ways to 'sync' with God. somehow it takes on a different tone than the sanctimonious 'i have my quiet time' or 'i read my bible every morning' that i hear in christian circles so often and brings it down to reality and really more what it is - a relationship. i cannot 'sync' my ipod and iphone with my computer if they are not connected, nor can i sync with God if i'm not connected, or in a relationship, with Him.

just a thought, one of the random ones that roll around in my head!

it's all about me

it really is all about me. no matter how i act or seem, how good or bad, how selfish or selfless, it's still all about me. maybe this is the 'sinful nature' we are born with that is so much a subject of the bible and its writings, the 'old man', the 'flesh'. it makes sense, since that is a broad enough definition to include all the things the new testament writers include as manifestations of this 'old self', all the way from seemingly (now) trivial things like gossip and not respecting parents to murder and really bad stuff everybody knows are wrong to do.

in les miserables, jean valjean, aka monsieur madeleine at this point, faces this issue after javert discovers who he really is. victor hugo's description of valjean's thoughts and torment at this juncture are an excellent description of what happens when one is 'good', at least outwardly and perhaps inwardly as well, but that the 'good' he is and does is really just trying to make up for the bad he was before, to hide who he really is in his heart. when faced with the dilemma, valjean at first considers doing the 'right thing', the selfless thing. that is his first instinct, which i think tells of who he really is, not who he thinks he is, but who he has become. but self preservation takes over and he doesn't do exactly what he first thought to do. he looks for a way to get what we would call a 'win-win' outcome. why? because it really wasn't all about him anymore, not in his heart. his good actions were not just window dressing. sometimes we tell ourselves or other people to 'fake it til you make it', and that's what jean valjean had been doing. and at least for a moment, he had 'made it'. 

it may be like learning a new language. i could speak a little spanish, but i could never 'think' in spanish. apparently, immersion in the language and culture helps this process, and i'm sure the longer you soak the better. so he was soaking in goodness and selflessness long enough for at least his first short slight inclination was to do the unselfish thing. so all those years of soaking produced what? a momentary glimpse of what he 'should' do or be? then conflict between the angel on one shoulder and devil on the other? well, pretty much. 

we tend to idolize heroes who do the right thing the right way the first time, reflexly it seems, so that there is no time between action and reaction, and their reaction is always right. the 'tortured soul' who is left with a choice between doing what is best for him and what is best for his family or his town or his country or his world or whatever is the stuff of many movies, though, and these appeal at a different level. the heroes who are so decisive and always right are usually icons, cutouts in cardboard and characters in comic books, like superman. funny how right now superman has taken a back seat to the more contemplative batman and spiderman whose angst is so palpable and they struggle with the real questions of life in their superhero ways. this is just real life blown up really big so we can look at it closely, dressed up enough to make it fantasy.

i was reminded that it's all about me once again when i had managed to make a decision that i wanted to make despite the objections of others. by gosh, i wanted to do it, it was of no real consequence (it wasn't, at least the act wasn't) and i could do it if i wanted! how very much like a two year old that sounds! maybe we're all just big two year olds with a thin veneer of humanity covering a selfish core? is that it? ouch!

so what's the answer? the current worldview would tell you that this is just the way you are and you should just do what you want and it's ok unless someone else is hurt, and you can't help it and if you want to change you should go to a counselor and maybe get some medicine that will help you live with the two, the angel and the devil, so that you're always so conflicted that you can't carry on a normal life, and if you do enough good stuff a la jean valjean, that the good will outweigh the bad so if there really is a God and a heaven and hell then you're covered and your account will have a positive balance, because the positive balance is what counts and we all know that with enough drugs and the right diet we could be good for long enough to overcome any of the bad stuff we did before and balance out any current bad stuff we're doing and what we're thinking doesn't count because we didn't do it so we can go about doing nice things with selfish motive and look good and people will be impressed and blessed when in reality, deep down, we know we're doing it all because we know it's all about us but we're too proud to realize that our balance is and will be positive only if we let go and let Jesus' balance replace ours but that would mean it's not all about us but it's about Him and then where would we be but in a better place to treat others the way we want to be treated and to be more likely to be forgiving and merciful when people mess up and to look on people as Jesus did, with God's perspective and to realize that just like us, everybody's living life the same way except it's about them and not us in their worlds so it looks different to me but when i look at it that way it really helps get a perspective on things. deep breath.

this idea started with someone very close to me telling me 'you always have to be right' or 'you always have to do what you want' or something to that effect. that person was really teasing, but as my father always said, 'many a truth is said in jest'. there was a backhanded compliment at the end of the 'you're selfish and you think the world revolves around you' slam, when the person said 'but you hide it better than some people'. at least i took it as a compliment! 

how's this for reverse psychology? the only way to be in control is to give up control of yourself to God, so as you 'soak' in Him you become more like Him, as kids become more like their parents over time, and to increase true self esteem you realize how really selfish and sinful you are and that there is nothing you, by yourself, can do to fix that, so you trust Christ to give you His goodness so you can relax, and that's the bottom line for me - to relax in Christ, letting Him fly the plane, knowing that He lived a perfect life and so i don't have to be perfect (i couldn't even if i wanted) and when i get to that point i can much more easily look at other people, acting as selfishly as we all do, and understand with empathy that they are living the same life i am except that unless they have relinquished control and perfection to Christ, their world has a very different look from mine because now mine at least some of the time has Christ as the Center and me sort of revolving around Him instead of me as the center or them at the center and God sort of a cosmic slot machine or magic 8 ball to pull out and see what we can get when we feel like it and i can understand better their anxiety and stress and anger and impatience (and my own, this ain't a 'done deal', this sanctification thing, it's a process, not a magic wand and poof you're now holy and can leave behind selfishness and forget about it and now you're speaking spanish and thinking spanish and your old ways/language never come back under duress or any other situation) because i can remember when i felt the same way (earlier today?!) and how it felt so like in hebrews the writer (don't you like that, we don't know who wrote one of the books of the bible? what's up with that?) says we have a high priest who lived a life like ours with all the temptation yet was perfect - He saw things through our eyes and He knows what we're going through which makes it so cool, well we can be like that (except the perfect part) and see things through His eyes and the eyes of the person freaking out in front of us or on the phone with us because their kid is sick and it's christmas and how could this happen and we're flying tomorrow or there's a wedding/play/test/initiation/class/family reunion/tryout and instead of saying 'relax, you're way too anxious and you need to calm down' we can take the hit, empathize, help in whatever way we can while looking through God's eyes and not necessarily our own and not necessarily enable or be amateur providence or rescue them (one of my favorite sayings is 'a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part' - until i realize i'm the other end of that phrase sometimes when it's about me so i try to be kind!) but listen and let them talk it through and not be another problem in their world at that moment, doing our best to get along with all persons to the extent that it's up to us (heb 12:14, 2tim 2:23+, titus 2:8, 1peter 2:11) and live and act as if we're on the other end of the line or our mom or kid is on the other end of the line and how would we want to be treated in that situation and to know that we act right not just because we're told to but because it's becoming part of our nature to act right and be kind and that with time and prayer and 'soaking' in God we find it an unconscious 'reflex' in us and that at least sometimes, when the veneer is not getting too thin, we resemble our Father. there's no better compliment for me than to be told that i'm at all like my earthly father except if it's that i'm at all like my heavenly Father. and as my kids grow and leave and live their own lives, my hope is that someday they will be proud to hear that they are like their father, because he is like his Father. see, i told you, it's all about me!