The Pharmaceutical/Medical-Industrial Establishment

Last Thursday evening I got into my car and plunked down into the driver's seat just like I usually do, when I felt a sharp stabbing pain on the right side of my lower back. (I should explain that back pain for me is unusual in that I've been blessed (by whoever does the blessing) by not having the chronic back troubles and pain that seem to plague so many of my contemporaries.) It hurt, but I didn't think too much of it until I tried to sleep that night and was awoken by pain every time I rolled over. But some Ibuprofen seemed to dull the pain, and it seemed to get better until Monday when I contorted my body to get into the lazarette on my boat. This time, it felt like someone stuck a knife in my back, and I had a hard time getting out. Thinking I might have seriously injured myself somehow, or worse yet, the pain was the first symptom of a horrible cancerous tumor that was going to kill me, I made an appointment (that same afternoon!) to see a doctor at Group Health, my new HMO. Actually, it's just new to me. I've been a member ever since my UW student insurance expired last year, but I hadn't used the services yet. All-in-all, it was a good experience. The doctor (actually a physician assistant) assured me that it wasn't the sign of anything terrible, gave me a prescription for Vicodin (for pain) and Naproxen (an anti-inflammatory drug), and sent me on my way. I figured, this is good so far, but what will the pharmaceutical-industrial establishment charge me for the drugs? I was pleasantly surprised to pay only $24 for the both prescriptions! I was even more pleasantly surprised to have the pain almost disappear overnight. I've heard that Vicodin has a street value far in excess of it's prescription cost. Anyone wanna buy some drugs? I might need a few bucks to pay the medical-industrial establishment for the visit.

I finished The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright. It's a good read that I'd highly recommend for anyone interested in the history of Al-Queda from its philosophical roots in the writings of Sayyid Qutb in the 40's to the emergence of Bin Laden in the 90's and the catastrophe of 9-11.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I've got several books in my to-be-read stack, but I might bypass them in favor of something totally different. For any of you who read the on-line magazine Slate once in a while, you might have caught a series called Blogging the Bible. You can check it out here. http://www.slate.com/id/2167894/ This is a series written by a secular Jew with a superficial knowledge of the Bible who decided to read the entire Old Testament and offer his commentary on a regular basis. The result was an always entertaining and sometimes enlightening take on this most understood and misused book. I think I might take a shot at blogging the New Testament. I've read a good chunk of it in the course of my Mennonite upbringing, and read more in some of the classes I've taken over the years, but I've never read the whole thing. It might be fun.

Stay tuned.