I'm an idealist.
I don't know where I'm going
but I'm on my way.

Robert Frost

Photography by
 MJA Chancy

          CAVEAT SURGEON
or how a new tool can help you select
the surgeon for your elective surgery

In preparing for elective surgery, the selection of a surgeon
ranks probably as the patient's most important consideration,
often decided on the basis of recommendations from friends,
relatives, or doctors we consult.

But now patients have at their disposal a useful new resource:
a free, online database that provides a key piece of information
on surgeons in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The surgeon scorecard developed by ProPublica, a non-profit
news organization, lets you check the risk-adjusted complication
rate of doctors and compare how they rate against each other.
This is important information because elective surgery on a
healthy patient should not, generally speaking, result in any
complication though they do occur in which case the blame
will fall on either some unexpected cause or, alas, the surgeon.
Such complications -- like infection, blood clots or sepsis -- can
land you right back in a hospital bed.

The scorecard covers nearly 17,000 individual surgeons at more
than 3,500 hospitals. The complication rates were adjusted
based on different factors: patient age and health, luck and
each hospital's overall performance. Surgeons who performed
fewer than 20 surgeries of a certain type were not rated.

Adjusted complication rates were categorized as low, medium
and high. Users of the website can search by location, by surgeon or
by hospital.

The elective surgeries examined included: knee replacement; hip
replacement; gallbladder removal; two types of spinal fusions in
the lower back; prostate resection; prostate removal; cervical (neck)
spinal fusion. These are procedures that are routinely carried out
in hospitals across the U.S. on a non-emergency basis.

To create the scorecard, ProPublica analyzed Medicare records
for 2.3 million surgeries carried out between 2009 to 2013. According
to the news organization, in those five years there were 66,000 cases
of complications that led to hospitalizations at a cost of $645 million
to taxpayers.

To access the database go to

projects.propublica.org/surgeons/



COMPOST IN A TEABAG

Cement blocks offer
an easy way to create
a small vegetable garden.

A GARDEN by any other name is just as wonderful…but
it needs love and care and, occasionally, some fertilizer
to supply nutrients essential to plants.

A recent visit to The Grommet, a website that helps "launch
undiscovered products,"  uncovered an unusual kind of
fertilizer: cow manure tea bags.

"These tea bags are made by hand with five-generations of
farming know-how, a decades-long commitment to sustainable
agriculture, and non synthetic ingredients.  Use the 'tea' to
condition any kind of soil, and waters plants and flowers for
stronger roots, greener leaves, bolder flowers…naturally."

Sold under the Authentic Haven Brand, the manure comes in
two sets of 3 bags each (for a total of six teabags). The cost
is $20.

According to the testimonials, the cow manure does wonders
for the plants. The product is also a great conversation piece.

Made in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

www.thegrommet.com

What was sleep?
 A blessing,
a respite from life,
an echo of death,
a demanding nuisance.

Colleen McCullough

"The Thorn Birds"

© 2015 by Lorraine Blasor all rights reserved