My cardiologist is an angel (II)

This is a continuation of my earlier post . During the spring and summer of 1998, I was heavily involved in the "Math Wars." See my Wayne State web page for all the gory details. This proved to be very stressful for me. I had a pinched nerve in my neck, which caused all sorts of misery, and then, on August 31, I had my third angioplasty with stents. Two weeks later, I had another cath.

Dr. B is very adroit at mathematics, as is Dr. M1. My take on this is that a lot of future doctors and lawyers are good at math when in college, but then they decide to "get real" and go to medical school or law school, rather than pursuing a career in mathematics or related disciplines. I am reminded of the old (morbid) joke that Jews don't oppose abortion because they think that a fetus doesn't become a human being until it graduates from medical school.

In this vein (artery?), there is a small probability that something will go wrong during a cath, like a clot breaking loose, for example. At some point, I asked Dr. B. if this probability decreased for repeated caths of the same person. He said "Yes, they are not independent events." - score one for probability literacy* - and he agreed that the probability of something going wrong no doubt decreased with each subsequent cath. After what was my fifth cath, in mid-September of 1998, (three involving an angioplasty with stents, and two not), Dr. B. said there was some problem at the intersection of two coronary arteries which could be dealt with using the "roto-rooter" procedure, but that he preferred to treat it with medication. (Famous last words!) I said that I didn't mind having the procedure done, as long as the person doing it had some experience at it. His reply: "I don't think we should keep on doing this. Something might happen." So much for decreasing probabilities!

I was given two pictures from that last cath, which I posted on the door of my office at Wayne State. After a while I took them down, for fear that some student who knew how to interpret them might be shocked that I was still alive.

My latest cath was in April 2005, and there was a problem at the site of the incision, but that is the main problem I will have to worry about if I ever have another one.

(*) In probability theory, two events are “independent” if the outcome of one has no effect on the other. For example, if you toss a fair coin repeatedly, the probability of “heads” is always ½, regardless of what the outcome was in earlier tosses. By the Law of Large numbers, you “expect” that the percentage of “heads” will get close to ½ as the number of tosses increases. Repeated caths on the same person are not “independent”, because, I assume, the probability of something going wrong is based on the historical data, which is “trumped” by what happens in a particular person’s case.

Round and About in West Bloomfield

This appeared in the West Bloomfield Eccentric on 9/13

Years ago, West Bloomfield, had a farmhouse every mile, and crowned or unpaved roads. Today, we still have most of the farmhouses, most of the crowned roads and a few still unpaved ones. Except that the farms themselves have been replaced by subdivisions with fancy homes on streets with no lights or sidewalks, so we can pretend we are living in the country. To keep things quaint, West Bloomfield is still a township, not even having bothered to become a city, as have Farmington Hills, Rochester Hills, and Auburn Hills.
As for traffic control, there is almost no controlled access from businesses to the roads they abut. There are very few left-turn lanes on main roads at entrances to subdivisions. I should also mention the bottleneck on Orchard Lake Road north of Pontiac Trail, courtesy of the city of Orchard Lake Village. We also have lots of people driving SUV's and super-sized pick-up trucks, which are not that easy to control, and whose drivers often talk on their cellphones while driving, often at high speeds.
But we do have one new thing. THE ROUNDABOUT! The first one, at Maple and Drake, has already sustained its first accident - fortunately a minor one. There are two lanes, and drivers are instructed to get into the inner one if they want to make a left turn. The problem is that they have to get into the outer lane by the time they reach the road they want to exit onto. This seems like a recipe for disaster to me, but what do I know? I'm only a cranky old mathematician, not a traffic engineer. So, round and round we go, and where we get off nobody knows!

There I Go Again!

What follows is a letter I sent to The Eccentric after being surveyed about Schools of Choice in the West Bloomfield School District
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EPIC-MRA is doing a survey commissioned by the West Bloomfield School District. I know this because I just received a call and was surveyed. Some of the questions were loaded. So now, in addition to paying for "The Laker", which more aptly should be called "Pravda", and having to listen to and pay for radio commercials featuring Gary Faber, Ed.D., we now get to pay for what comes close to "push polling". Well, Big Brother knows best!
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By way of explanation, "push polling" refers to the practice of doing a poll with the intention of putting out misinformation or disinformation, rather than actually gathering information. In this case, Gary Faber Ed.D. frames the debate over the budget crunch in terms of "Schools of Choice", calling it the "Elephant in the Living Room," whereas in reality, as I have indicated before, Faber is the "Elephant in the Living Room." He is truly the Little King, and, just like an elephant, this King has no clothes.

My cardiologist is an angel (I)

My cardiologist, Dr. B., is an angel. I know this, because when I go to his group's headquarters for an office visit, and I look at a group photo with him in it, there is this glimmer in his eye that gives him away. And the head of his group, Dr. G., is the spitting image of (an Indian) St. Peter. However, these are not angels welcoming you to Heaven, rather they are trying to do everything humanly possible to keep you from going to Heaven, or wherever your final destination may be.

The cardiac ward is like the passenger lounge in an airport terminal, except that everyone there is hoping to miss their flight. Occasionally however, someone does "take off". When I had my first (and only) heart attack (although Dr. B. keeps referring to an earlier one that I have no recollection of), I was admitted to Beaumont Hospital on a Wednesday, and Dr. B. did a catheterization (hereinafter referred to as a "cath") the next day. That evening I had the unusual privilege of being able to choose between an angioplasty with stents or a coronary bypass. I believe that my primary care physician, Dr. M1., had a hand in arranging this. Being the cowardly type, I chose angioplasty. Although a bypass is more permanent, being that it is open heart surgery it is also much more invasive. I was glad I didn't choose this option when I later heard of side effects such as "pump head".

People usually don't get to choose between the two procedures. I remember during one hospital stay hearing a doctor tell the patient in the next bed, "You have three choices, bypass, bypass, or bypass!" By the way, cardiologists are not to be confused with heart surgeons, who are a different breed entirely. Bill Frist, the former Senate Majority Leader, is a heart surgeon, although I'm not sure how this qualified him to diagnose Terry Schiavo's condition by watching a videotape. Although cardiology is a specialty in internal medicine, cardiologists tend to be fairly single-minded. My (tasteless) joke is that if a cardiologist sees a person lying on the ground, and if he bends down and determines that the person has not suffered a heart attack, he will step over the body and continue on his way. (Just a joke!) During one hospital stay, I thought I might be developing cellulitis where the IV tube was inserted. I remember getting a big long lecture around midnight from a Resident, saying how it was not a good idea to prescribe antibiotics until they were sure there was an infection, due to the danger of developing a resistance to the medicine, etc. When Dr. B. arrived the next morning, I showed him the (possibly) infected area. He said, without missing a beat, "OK, I'll prescribe an antibiotic. Next?"

Anyway, getting back to the treatment of my heart attack, Dr. B's colleague, Dr. M2., did an angioplasty with stents the next day (Friday). Since Dr. B. had done the initial cath, he "owned me", so to speak. He did an angioplasty with stents a few weeks later, after which he said we were done with such procedures. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case.
(to be continued)

Do You Have a Beaumont Doctor?

In Oakland County, where I live, the dominant Hospital is William Beaumont, with their main facility being in Royal Oak. Far from being "warm and fuzzy" they are the veritable "900 pound gorilla." They just added to their empire by buying Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe. According to news accounts, "Bon Secours wanted a buyer that would continue the mission of the hospital founded by the Sisters of Bon Secours, who began providing care in the community in 1909."

Judging by Beaumont Hospital radio commercials, this will hardly be the case. Their standard commercial, "Do You Have a Beaumont Doctor?" features heart thumping music, and the story line is something to the effect that if you don't have a Beaumont Doctor in this or that field, and something bad happens to you, you will die immediately, if not sooner.(And I used to think that the Blue Cross Card commercial "Don't get sick without it." was the leader in bad taste!)

Well I have at least six Beaumont Doctors (My Primary Care Physician, Cardiologist, Psychiatrist, Otolaryngologist, Rheumatologist and motion-specialist Neurologist), so every time I hear this commercial I start to have a panic attack! Other hospitals have commercials guaranteeing that someone will see you in their emergency room within 30 minutes of your arrival. What is this? An oil change? Speaking of Emergency Rooms. they are clogged with people who don't need to be there, but who have no health insurance. Assuring that everyone had some basic level of health coverage would be a cost-effective way to deal with this. In other words, it would save taxpayers money, whatever its other virtues or drawbacks.

Dr. Faber is the "Elephant in the Living Room"

I sent this to my state legislators and the Governor a couple of months ago.
I invite you to peruse the February issue of the West Bloomfield School District’s “The Laker.” There you will find an article by the Superintendent, Dr. Gary Faber, called The Elephant in the Living Room, dealing with the current controversy over whether to expand “Schools of Choice”. It makes several nonsensical claims and is fairly long-winded. My greatest objection to the piece, however, is that the Elephant in the Living Room is not “Schools of Choice”, but rather Dr. Faber himself.
Over the years administrators have gotten their salaries increased and created all sorts of curricular and instructional reforms and studies which require additional funding. This serves to enhance their prestige, as well as the size of their empire. School Board members, rather than providing a check on all this, have often acted as enablers or even as cheerleaders.Well, now we are in a real financial crunch, and something has to give. The bottom line for Dr. Faber is not all this gobbledygook about “coming together”, it’s about ensuring that every vacant chair in every classroom be filled by an (income-generating) student.
I suggest we look elsewhere for financial savings. How about cutting all administrators’ salaries by 20%, and/or vastly curtailing the scope and mission of Intermediate School Districts, which often act as dispensers of patronage. We could tie administrators’ salaries to teachers’ salaries, so as to slow their rate of increase.
Elsewhere in “The Laker,” there is a “Special Report” on school finance, again quoting Dr. Faber, in which he says school consolidation is an option, but that the law was recently changed “to make consolidation less attractive”, and should be changed again. (I suspect that here “less attractive” means that the school districts would not get enough of the money saved.) The report urges parents (not all taxpayers!) “to contact their legislators and demand that they partake in a well-thought (sic) bipartisan , …resolution to the state’s economic problems.” So, I am hereby urging (not demanding) such action on the part of my legislators and the Governor.
To this end, in addition to my suggestions above, I support the 2% excise tax on some services that has been proposed. I also think that Governor Engler’s Proposal A should be amended so that School Districts can have elections to raise their operating millage, at prescribed times and with prescribed caps.

Schools of Choice

This letter appeared in the W.B. Eccentric 2/15/07 . The headline was theirs.

SAY NO TO CHOICE
The headline "Shadowy bloggers" in the Feb. 8 Eccentric was a bit loaded. Perhaps the people who wouldn't give their names have children in the schools and fear reprisals. That is certainly a valid concern in a school district run by Dr. Gary Faber and his sidekick Steve Wasko. Well, my two children have graduated, and I will go on the record, as I have in the past: Faber and Wasko frame the debate over Students of Choice as reality and facts vs. emotions. But it's really their version of reality and cherry-picked facts vs. parents' concerns over how money is spent and money-raising schemes that may do more harm than good. So here are some "reality checks" as to how money is being misspent and certain facts ignored or twisted.
No. 1 -- School administrators are in general overpaid. I know, a lot of them are doctors, as they possess a doctorate in education, but don't let that title intimidate you. In my opinion, based on being a math professor (with a Ph.D.) for the last 40 years, the typical D.Ed. dissertation in most areas is long on information and jargon, and short on originality or rigorous research. As for Steve Wasko, who denigrated the validity of blogs as over-the-fence gossip, I'm not sure what his credentials are for his 100K-plus salary. He came here as the PR man after working for the Detroit school board. He is an affable person, I must admit.
No. 2 -- The district has a big propaganda machine at its disposal, unlike most individuals. During school elections, (whose timing was manipulated in the Good Old Days), campaigning is sometimes done under the guise of "informing." I might add that I was an active supporter of the school board and the superintendent until recent years.
No. 3 -- "Curricular reform" costs money, but it is often unnecessary, and may sometimes actually be harmful. Witness the "math wars" of the last decade, in which the math educators recently raised the white flag. I will never forget Faber telling scientists and engineers at board meetings that he knew better than they what math courses best prepared kids for college, quoting "research" and "futurists." Such hubris! Such chutzpah!
So what can we do in our school district to save money? For a start, cut administrators' salaries, and do away with make-work studies, mindless curricular reform and other bureaucratic "black holes."What we don't need is more Students of Choice, including radio commercials featuring Dr. Faber. Choice causes more problems than it solves in a district with our demographics.

Greg Bachelis
West Bloomfield

The Elephant in the Living Room - A Fairy Tale

I wrote this satire a month or so ago. Gary Faber, the Superintendent of the West Bloomfield School District, had written an article saying that in dealing with the budget crunch, the "Elephant in the Living Room" was the "Schools of Choice" program. Steve Wasko was hired a number of years ago as the District Spokesperson. He is now also a Deputy Superintendent.
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Once upon a time in a town far away called Worst Loonfield, there lived a lot of happy families. The parents all drove Hummers and talked on their cellphones, and the children got to buy all the videogames and DVD’s they wanted. Much better than giving them candy, wouldn’t you agree? They had great schools with caring teachers who were well versed on all the latest educational enhancements and curricular improvements. There was only one problem:There was this talking elephant named Garish Faker who would go around and ask to sit in people’s living rooms. There he would tell them that, if they wanted to keep their schools the way they were, they would have to agree to let children from downtrodden places like Pinatac and Walterfudd also attend Worst Loonfield schools. This horrified the parents, who were doing their best to keep their children from associating with such riffraff.The problem had to do with money. What the parents didn’t know was that Garish Faker was not really a pachyderm – another name for elephant – but rather a pachycoin, a hybrid species that had arrived from a faraway galaxy called Fakers Educatus. This explains Garish’s last name. The pachycoins were filled with gold coins, and had to keep eating them at an ever increasing rate in order to survive. The parents did not know about Garish’s diet, nor how to retrieve the coins he and the other pachycoins had consumed.Then one day, a wise old man in the town named Groggy Bitchandtelus found out about the situation and revealed the true nature of the pachycoins to the parents. But the problem still remained as to how to wean the pachycoins from their diet and retrieve the coins they had ingested. This problem was solved by Groggy, who confronted the pachycoins’ spokespachy, Stevus Waskoinus. Groggy raised a Calculus book in the air and chanted
FEE, FIE, FO, FAN, I SMELL THE COINS OF A PR MAN
With that, Stevus, Garish and all the other pachycoins imploded and flew back to Fakers Educatus, leaving their coins behind. And the people of Worst Loonfield lived happily ever after, or at least until the next Budget Cut.
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There is an X-rated version of this which I have posted as a comment.

Tasteless Jokes and Comments about the West Bloomfield School District

Warning: If you are easily offended, or even not so easily offended, do NOT read this.
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George Fornero was principal of WB High School, 1994-2000. It is no secret that, near the end of his term, he decided he was gay. He moved on to the Ann Arbor School District, which offered a more hospitable environment, as Deputy Superintendent, and he eventually became Superintendent. The Superintendent of the WBSD since 2002 has been Gary Faber. He was Deputy Superintendent and succeeded Sy Gretchko after the latter died. (I dislike Faber intensely. One of the many reasons being that, allegedly, he makes life miserable for subordinates who show some independence, like Fornero did.)At any rate, a few years ago, I was on the dissertation committee of a student, who shall go nameless, who wanted to study problems of retention of high school teachers. I suggested he study whether there was any correlation between retention problems in a school district and the sexual orientation of the superintendent. (Faber is straight.) This was in fact A JOKE! To his credit, the student ignored this, as he did all the other suggestions I made, most of which were serious. He also caused me to realize that, throughout my 40 year teaching career, most of my students had no idea whatsoever what I was talking about!Barbara DeMarco is on the WB School Board. She is also on the Board of the ACLU. I asked her once if she saw any conflict in having these two positions. She said no. I found this curious, since the WB School District's idea of due process would make even George W. Bush blush, let alone the ACLU.Fornero was succeeded as principal by Joanne Andrees, who was fine, if a bit regal. Her successor, whose name rhymes with "Airborne" was not up to the job, as was clear from the get-go. Nevertheless, he was renewed after two years, and then, allegedly, forced out when the Board suddenly "realized" how incompetent he was. God knows how much this cost the District. One of the many ways they waste money. I don't have a tasteless joke on this, but some students on the MSU network of Facebook did a number on Andrees and Airborne. It was crude, vulgar, racist, and certainly not at all deserved, since both of them were always polite and courteous on a personal level. For all I know, it is still sitting out there in Cyberspace.

Albom the All-Seeing

I sent this letter to the Detroit Free Press in 2005. Albom had written an article one day before a sports event (to be published after it) stating that certain people had attended who in fact had not.
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The only thing that bothers me about Mitch Albom is his sense of infallibility. Once, years ago, he misused the term "Death Takes a Holiday". I was unable to get any response at all to my pointing out this fairly blatant error from either him or the Free Press. If Mitch wanted to turn a colloquial expression upside down, that was his right!Now he has added predicting the future to his repertoire, and this lands on the front page when his assertion doesn't pan out.But over what? President Bush makes up news stories to distribute, mocks the social security trust fund, and as we all know by now, cooked the books for reasons to invade Iraq. Isn't this bigger news? Is the identities of attendees at sports events such a vital issue?The Free Press has caved to the sports-mad ethos of this town. You cater to and promote mediocrity, just as President Bush does. The editors have no moral high ground from which to attack Albom or anyone else. You have squandered your legacy, and the reasons for that are what someone should be looking into.

My Bank Chase

My local bank is Chase. A lot of good, dedicated people work there. They are currently doing a promotion featuring pictures of grass growing, as in growing your money. I wrote this after realizing I was being too casual when I went there.
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When you are walking around near the office cubicles "Can I help you?" really means "What are you doing back here, you schmuck?"When you come to a bank, it's serious. It's about money. Not like a math department. Who wants to see pictures of grass growing? This is West Bloomfield! We hire illegal aliens to water our lawns. Get rid of all that warm and fuzzy crap and put up pictures of JP Morgan, Salmon Chase, and other capitalist fat cats. And you should install an electronic fence in front of the cubicles, so that any bozo who walks through there without an appointment gets zapped.I have to find another place to hang out. The library? A soup kitchen? Fidelity Investments? Stay tuned.

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About the Hooters Controversy

Some people in the Troy area are objecting to the new Hooters restaurant on Big Beaver Road, which is having trouble getting a liquor license. Presumably their objection is that a slang version of the restaurant's name is an advertisement for the waitress's breasts. It is not referring to their breast size, or it would be called "Big Hooters". Now we do have Big Boy restaurants, but the name refers to the mascot, (who seems to have lost weight over the years). So one solution would be for Hooters to adopt the Hoot Owl as a mascot. Another would be to switch to a French version of the name, Tetons. After all, Americans are proud of the Teton mountain range, whose tallest mountain is the Grand Teton, and not even John Ashcroft would have dared to cover it when he was Attorney-General, as he did a statue in his office.Part of the objection is that Big Beaver Road is the main thoroughfare in Troy, and that it should not be sullied by crude restaurant names. But what about the slang version of "Big Beaver" itself? Would we want Hooters to change its name to Beavers? So we had better think about changing the name of the road while we are at it. How about Big Boxes, referring to all the stores located on it. Certainly the objection can't be to what is going on INSIDE the restaurant. Fancy hotels are welcomed in Troy, even though they peddle pornographic movies on their guestroom televisions. And surely there would be little objection to having a Casino on Big Beaver Road, regardless of its name, and we know what the score is in there!