How Do You Spell "Hong Kong"?

I've had my tires rotated, my chassis cleaned, my oil changed and I'm ready to go.

To China, that is.

I had my annual physical today, after which the doctor suggested I call Kaiser's Travel Desk to find out if there is anything other than the routine stuff that I need to get or have with me to travel to China and Hong Kong. The operator took the information but was flummoxed when she got to Hong Kong. "That's H-A-N- ...uh... how do you spell Hong Kong?"

These are the people who are in charge of my medical health. It does not give me confidence!

But all is well in the House of Beverly, it appears (other than the obvious). My blood pressure, while slightly high, was down from last year. My weight, miraculously, is sown 25 lbs (...and I do mean "miraculously"!) I'm up to date on almost everything, though she suggested getting a whooping cough shot just to be on the safe side, so that's done.

I've gotten a refill on my diabetes meds, since I'd (a-hem) not been a compliant patient for a long time and it's time to be compliant again.

We also talked about medical directives and that's very weird. According to the nice shocking pink form they ask you to fill out and post on your refrigerator (yeah--lotsa luck finding an 8x11 clear space!), in Part 1 you decide whether, in the case that you have lost consciousness, you want them to attempt resuscitation/CPR or not.

If they attempt resuscitation/perform CPR, you are, by default, agreeing to Full Treatment. Full Treatment means medication, positioning, oxygen, suction, manual treatment of airway obstruction, antibiotics, IV fluids, mechanical ventilation, defbrillation, and transfer to hospital.

Now if, for example, your wishes are that if you are so far gone that there is no hope of regaining consciousness and all you really want is for them to see if they can revive you, you can't elect to choose anything less than the full monty.

So if you pass out and want CPR, that means you have tacitly agreed to everything in man's power to keep you alive. But if you want only minimal intervention (and, say, not being put on a ventillator), then you have to express your wish NOT to have CPR and not to have anybody attempted resuscitation.

I asked the doctor about it and she agreed that it seemed silly, but that since the form was written that way I had to either opt to be resuscitated or not resuscitated. Resuscitation comes with the possibility of being attached to a machine and unable to respond...forever ('cause we all know from watching medical shows that once you are ON a ventillator, the person who holds your medical power of attorney does not have the power to ask them to turn the ventillator off.

So let's just hope I don't pass out somewhere in China,OK?

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This evening I went back to part 2 of the Twitter class and got my questions answered. Actually it was probably a good thing because I couldn't remember my twitter password, so had to set up a new account and the new account has fewer followers and I can start with a clean slat and maybe make it work for me from the get-go. It also has the advantage of NOT rolling all of my tweets over to Facebook. Right now the main thing I have used Twitter for is to post updates to Facebook, but that doesn't mean I want EVERY tweet I write to be rolled over to Facebook.

(And apologies to those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about!)

Interestingly, at the end of the class, after everybody had left except the teacher, the DCN assistant and my friend Kari, whom I taught to use Twitter and who then surpassed me in spades, were left. Kari and I were talking about our former use of Twitter and the teacher looked up and said something like "...because you two were the big names in Twitter in Davis when I first started using it...." Now that was a huge surprise. Never dreamed I was the big name in ANYTHING involving the internet, even locally.