Great!

This is even worse than having the Chicago River flow into Lake Michigan! Well, at least we can thank the Engineering powers that be for the lock across the river, it will keep the oil out. Hopefully.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30michigan.html?_r=1&ref=science

It's time to move. No?

When 'Healthy' Isn't Fun

Today I walked into the hospital to buy myself lunch.

But first, time for a quick background check here: I tried to eat lunch in the hospital for a few months after I started working here at the not-that-new-anymore lab. It was convenient, and they were one of the few places that definitely had a vegetarian entree every day. After a few months of an east-west expansion and the development of a double chin, I started to re-evaluate what and how I'd been eating, and realized that pretty much everything veggie on the hospital's menu was made palatable with cheese, cream and other greasy foods. Okay, so that's when I changed course entirely, and most of you have seen me after that, so you know the (ongoing) "end" of that experiment. Now back to today.

Things have been going very quickly in the lab lately; I spend at least three late nights every week in the lab, aside from the usual weekend scan-fest. (Well, it's been either that or Boston on the weekend, so I'm not home anyway.) I haven't had the time to cook this week, and every time this happens, I find myself mentally running around for vegetarian fare. Today, accidentally, the hospital had tofu in a cacciatore sauce: onions, bell peppers, mushrooms in tomato gravy. Sounded better than the usual cheese infestation, so I decided to risk it. I chose two sides with my entree (to make it a meal; I usually reserve the second side for an early-evening snack) and brought them to the cashier. She charged me more than the price of the meal, so I questioned her. Her response? Classic Stupidity, so I'm going to give it a paragraph of its own:

"Well, you didn't get the drink, so it's not a meal. I had to charge you for each item separately."

How would your mind work on this? I was still trying to process the incredible stupidity of it all, along with its implications, so I just paid up silently. I didn't even think to dispute her, but my mind went, "Huh?? Let's get this straight. You're charging me EXTRA for NOT including a drink with my meal? You're a HOSPITAL cafeteria. You're charging me EXTRA for trying to make sure I eat healthy, for cutting out the unnecessary sugars from my diet, for not using any more of your (food) resources than the ones my body really needs. You're charging me EXTRA for keeping healthy???"

Quite aside from the financial aspect of the matter (at my end, that is), how the heck does a STATE HOSPITAL intend to encourage healthy eating habits by charging low-income workers (who make up a good 40% of the patient population) EXTRA MONEY TO GO WITHOUT A DRINK???!!!!??!!?! We watch in disgusted fascination as websites advertising morbidly obese models receive widespread coverage, we cringe when they send in a guy with a little headache for a full-scale MRI without any preliminary direction, we yell at them when insurance companies give us a hard time. And then we complain that our health care system is trash, we complain that a third of Americans suffer from obesity and the nation is losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually due to the bells-and-whistles attending obesity (a lot of which are also psychological, so let's include the mental health care system in here as well), we complain that OUR tax dollars go to pay the price of someone else's excesses and lack of discipline. Why complain, when we've created the monster ourselves??!! Oh God, shame on us!

By the way, I paid the extra cost of my meal. I could so easily have paid less and bought the drink, then poisoned myself with it, or given it to someone else, or better still, chucked it into the nearest manicured flower-bed. (Oh, not that, just think of those poor flowers.) But I paid up, because I saw the need to use this incident as an example to highlight the deficiencies of our system. I'm now looking for resources (the cafeteria complaints/comments cell, or more likely the campus or local newspaper) to report this in writing. I know it is a small thing, but I've often asked for vegan/vegetarian fare in the hospital (of all places I think they should oblige) and all I see is deep-fried chicken and super-creamy soups in beef broth. I wonder if others feel as I do. How about the medical resident standing in the cashier's line behind me: does he see the "extra" drink as a scourge on our collective health, or as a part of his soon-to-be-expanding wallet? For that matter, is this whole thing a conspiracy? Does the hospital encourage me to get a drink so that, sooner or later, I'm a source of their income??

Any thoughts? Any ideas? How can I move forward with this?

Almost the first on the roster of "experiences" for July 2010 was a little conversation I overheard while on my way to the lab this afternoon. A young woman and her daughter were walking right in front of me. The child looked little but she seemed to be of the age when most children have enough vocabulary skills for everyday communication (well, this one certainly did); and their favorite word is 'Why?'. She had just picked up a small plastic knick-knack from the sidewalk, and her mother was telling her to put it back down.

"But, mummy, I want to put in in the trash can."

"If there is a trash can nearby, you can. Otherwise you don't pick it up."

"Unless I have gloves on?"

"Yes, not unless you have gloves on."

"Or a spacesuit?"

"Or a spacesuit. In fact, a spacesuit is the best thing!"

"Okay."

When was the last time you got spacesuits into a conversation in such a matter-of-fact manner? And, having gotten hold of that topic, did you then dispose of it in the same matter-of-fact tone? I imagine not. It almost makes me believe that child-rearing may be a little more fun than I'm imagining it to be. (Just so you know, I haven't yet gotten over the notion that there is such a thing as having too much fun for one's good ... especially in this case.)