It’s a medical life, I remember yesterday

While making the coffee-pastry rounds in Newport-Mesa, the one

nagging complaint I hear all the time is: “Dr. Mike, what do we do

with all the new pills the drug companies throw at us hourly on TV --

while simultaneously trying to deal with the medical profession’s

constantly juggling and lowering the lab values for normal?”

Actually, I ponder the same questions. Here is my lament.

“Yesterday. I remember yesterday. All my troubles seemed so far

away. I remember yesterday.”

Yesterday, I was healthy. Then they went and changed all the

laboratory values for normal. Now overnight, I am really sick.

My blood pressure is now abnormally high (just above the now

normal 120/80). So is my cholesterol (just above 200). And this week

my prostatic antigen (PSA) is suddenly considered elevated by a lead

original scientific article.

The New England Journal of Medicine, the self-proclaimed Medical

New York Times and journal of record, writes that yesterday’s normal

PSA of 4ng./ml. may be too high. You see the PSA ain’t all that

accurate, as they once told us. There are some prostate cancers in

the previous normal PSA range.

To make it just a little more confusing, annoying and

uncomfortable -- the worst kind of cancers don’t produce high levels

of PSA. Perhaps all men with a PSA of 2.5 or over should have their

prostates biopsied. Yikes. Just the thought of all us older men with

a value over 2.5 getting biopsies will get us depressed.

To look younger and feel better about myself I can take Propecia

and maybe get a thick, full head of hair. Or I can dye my hair, but

that can lead to bladder cancer or multiple myeloma. I can shampoo

the color out in a few months, but just last week I learned that

ingredients in shampoo like formaldehyde can cause cancer in animals.

Shampoo may contain sodium laurel sulphates and propylene glycol,

which are harmful to health. Sodium laurel sulphate foams readily,

making the shampoo or gel thicker and therefore seem richer. Sodium

laureth sulphate is a less harmful form, but both damage hair

follicles and cause hair loss. I guess clean really isn’t all that

religious after all.

I can increase my memory a little with the proper chemical, but I

forgot to take the tiny little pill last week and now can’t remember

its generic name to reorder it.

Now the one drug many would like for their senior severe arthritic

years -- pain medications -- we can’t get because the government has

decided to put physicians in jail for legally prescribing them.

So now, I am medically sick by computer algorithm. They want us

all to live and die in perfect electrolyte, laboratory and chemical

balance. It doesn’t matter that half my friends and their wives walk

around like zombies half-asleep. Calculate the permutations and

calculations of side effects for a dozen medications and you’ll

figure out why.

Of course, all this runs counter-current to rising medical costs,

the number of uninsured at 42 to 46 million, and a rising and older

sicker population. The politicians will go crazy -- but we don’t need

to talk about that now. The medical profession, drug companies and

advertisers need to get a hold of themselves. Some perspective,

please! In medicine these days, as in politics, their false utopia

beats my reality any day.

In response to all this, I may need to start anti-depressive

therapy that will increase my chances of happiness but with the side

effects of somnolence or suicide. Why can’t we in medicine just: “Let

it be, let it be. Shine on till tomorrow. Let it be, let it be.”

All this stuff will be rewritten in seven years anyway. So find a

well-trained family physician or internist you trust, and talk it

over and reach some type of reality-based approach.

Till then, good night moon. I remember yesterday -- but not so

well.

MICHAEL ARNOLD GLUECK

Newport Beach

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Michael Arnold Glueck is a medical doctor and

writer who frequently writes on medical-legal issues locally and

nationally.