I recently noticed fumes coming into my car which hadn’t previously been detectable. The effects were similiar to symptoms experienced in residences which had required adjustments be made to stoves or furnaces causing measurable elevations in CO levels. These days, CO meters run on batteries and don’t have to be welded to a household surface, so I bought a Kidder (model) and checked it occasionally as I drove around the region. It has the advantage of being able to report current and peak levels at the touch of a button.

Checking the peak level reading, it indicated levels of carbon monoxide had reached 54 parts per million during this particular trip. This is in excess of levels at which harm can occur for the typical adult. While it ought to be expected that drivers will be exposed to higher CO levels than you’d expect to see in your home, such awareness is crucial in determining whether or not your exhaust system requires repairs, how long a drive you should take before those repairs are done and whether or not you drive with a toddler in the back seat.

Looking up expected levels under traffic-laden conditions, I came across this study in which levels of CO were measured in the Ted Williams Tunnel located in the Boston area. To my surprise, the levels were well within the boundaries of safe exposure as per the resources cited above. Other references demonstrated that levels in cars during operation were quite variable depending upon traffic conditions. Unfortunately, sampling data was rather small for any degree of certainty. The levels I experienced still exceeded those noted.

At home, don’t expect your average meter to tell you when harmful levels are present. The typical alarm feature requires up to an hour of exposure at two to three times the harmful level before it rings. Having a meter that allows you to read measurements anytime you wish to check is an essential feature of such appliances and well worth the cost of purchase.

Thursday was better. This post was written to inform you of the order of events required to find out if you are the ‘eighth’ woman on your block. A routine physical resulted in my physician reporting a palpable mass. She was able to ‘feel’ the lump in my right breast. Mammography was recommended to view the extent of the growth and see if any others, not yet large enough to feel, might be present. Despite the fact that several months passed before I had the opportunity to obtain the necessary imaging, there is no question that such evaluations are critical in dealing with this all-too-common disease. If you lack health care insurance, you can find low or no-cost exams through the following sources at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Cancer Institute. Your local hospital may have a women’s health service offering such exams as well.

Knowing that the majority of masses are benign kept me calm about the findings. A relative and my own gynecologist both recommended a breast cancer surgeon. The world-wide web is a goldmine of information about professionals in every area and a search of this expert’s profile was reassuring about the competency you hope to find for a serious medical event. Mammography (breast x-ray) showed two masses in the left breast and some small, calcified material in the right breast. A sonogram, the simple use of sound waves to outline bodily structures, confirmed these masses and the need for biopsies to be performed.

Don’t freak out about the biopsy process. A sample of the mass is removed via hypodermic with or without a local anesthetic. It was minimally uncomfortable and informed me that the largest of the masses was a stage 0 cancer, treatable by surgical removal. The surgery, which took place earlier this week, was preceded by further imaging and marking procedures (also under local anesthetic) so the surgeon would have no problem locating the affected portions. All of the masses were removed.

Women everywhere have felt relief about the move towards lumpectomies versus complete mastectomies in which the entire breast is removed. I felt momentary alarm when the consent forms told me I was giving permission for a partial mastectomy. They are the same thing but additional material is removed around the mass to obtain ‘clean edges’ or cancer-free tissue. An IV put me to sleep and I woke up some 90 minutes later with bandages across my chest, able to return home the same day. Hence, my cancellation of Wednesday due to exhaustion and some discomfort that was easily manageble with Tylenol and chocolate. You DID know about the narcotic effects of chocolate, didn’t you?

Today is Friday and the pathology reports came in, informing me that there was more affected tissue than expected although it is unlikely anything is beyond a very treatable stage ‘one’ condition. Unfortunately, that requires a double mastectomy and I will have to consider the ultimate form of treatment I select after my next physician appointment next week.

In the meantime, every woman needs to keep up with preventive health care given the frequency of such events among our gender.

See you later.

1/7/12 Post-script: My surgery had to be postponed due to housing problems. I’ll let you know when I next plan to alter the calendar in order to have a smoother recovery from treatment

This act doesn’t help the average citizen who is very likely to witness harmful activities in daily life at some point or other. Where is our protection against retaliation should we choose to report such observations or even simply be identified as potential witnesses to crime? Retaliation can lead to the loss of jobs, homes, friends and family members, and even lives when beleaguered individuals are bullied into committing suicide. We’ve seen such things happen to teens in recent months and lack the protections that employees can obtain if we contact law enforcement officials to intervene in such matters.

Without such protections, lax though they may be, we are never going to be a society in which neighbors can count upon one another for aid and intervention when threatened or harmed by known or unknown persons. My request to Representative Waxman asked that senior legislator to sponsor a bill offering such protections to you and I.

If you support such a concept, please add your voice to mine and write to him at his district office here. Someday, your life may depend upon it.

Anyway, this phone magically ‘synchs’ with email accounts and had so many applications that they seemed to multiply in the dark between phone uses. The numbers of applications, (and I’m still not sure what an ‘app’ is), demonstrated a growth rate which the stock market would envy. I couldn’t seem to turn the phone off and the battery would run down because some of these ‘apps’ never ceased their operations. This was especially puzzling since the internet connection had stopped working, barring me from viewing my beloved email and favorite websites.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think I operate my appliances instead of their operating independently or controlling my actions. Other than making occasional phone calls and erasing them as I went, I found few uses for this item which didn’t seem to go awry. Understanding that some assistance was going to be needed by this ‘techno-idiot’, I called the company for phone assistance. Unfortunately, my security password didn’t match the records. Unsurprised by this, given my poor retention of numerical data, I stopped using the phone and set off on a return journey across country to my place of origin, New York City.

Once I’d returned to New York, a new number with a local area code seemed to be in order and I went to a corporate store for help with this process. Their assistance was useful in obtaining my security password and a new phone number. Unfortunately, their manipulations were not successful in helping me regain access to the internet. Returning to the store a few days later to address this important problem, life suddenly became ‘surreal’.

In the corporate store, I enjoyed watching music videos while awaiting my turn at the service desk. Eventually, I was called up and the ensuing encounter was Kafka-esque in the extreme. The specialist had to once again conjure up the security code since the one I recalled from the prior visit appeared incorrect. He then expressed some confusion about the phone’s operation and disappeared into the backroom with it. Emerging a few minutes later, he conferred with other staff, expressing his amazement that not only was there no memory card, but no contacts at all remained in the phone’s memory.

I apologetically explained that the ‘apps’ on the phone were spontaneously generating so I had removed any opportunity for them to amass via expanded memory by removing the card. As it was, the remaining apps still seemed to increase in number and were a constant drain on the battery. Furthermore, I had reset the phone for privacy given the fact that these things were appearing despite the fact that I hadn’t personally conjured them up. Could the same thing happen with a call record? I had no idea!

There was also exasperation expressed by the staff that I had turned off the ‘synch’ feature so my email wasn’t automatically displayed when the darn thing was fired up. Yes, terribly old-fashioned of me but I prefer to call up personal documents myself using my own, favorite search engines. It troubled me that my phone had a more exciting life than I did, being independently active and secretly communing with unknown powers in the universe.

The staff conferred about these apparent eccentricities and consoled one another. The absence of any data in the phone appeared to be a terrible disappointment to them. I vowed to become a more knowledgeable phone user in the future. We then returned to my primary concern about not being able to connect to the internet. Interestingly, no one seemed to know how to restore the internet connection. At that juncture, I decided that having a phone so much smarter than I, was just not an intelligent choice. I requested my account be cancelled, since it was only a month to month contract anyway.

The representative reluctantly agreed to my request and spent a considerable amount of time punching instructions into the little steel rectangle. Standing there, I began to feel a painful ringing in my ears and developed a migraine. Telling the rep that I needed to leave, my intention was to cancel the contract by phone directly with the company.

Unfortunately, that call made later in the evening, didn’t produce the desired results. My security code again failed to unlock the magic of access to my account and I was directed to return to a corporate location. I decided to return to the store without the phone itself, just in case further information managed to enter it without my knowledge or consent. Interestingly, the phone met with an untimely end prior to that trip. My car ran over it after it fell to the ground in a parking lot.

Twice.

Bearing my identification card and the now-defunct phone with me, my next visit to the corporate store went much more quickly. They made a call and informed me that my account was officially canceled. I thanked the staff and left, only to realize it might be a good idea to confirm that the death certificate had actually been recorded with the company itself.

The company disavowed any knowledge of the account changes. However, this time I had the correct security password and the company canceled the account once and for all. Services were held in a tasteful, private ceremony with just myself and a dumpster in attendance.

I like my simple, “pay-as-you-go” cell phone now. It gets strong hissing sounds when I make calls but connects me with others and even lets me surf the web without incurring any degree of angst. If it does have a private life of its own, it doesn’t tell me about it.

And I now have a New York phone number.

Symptomatic of our troubles is the loss of plainly worded information amongst trusted sources of products from foods to drugs. A recent article in the New York Times, “What’s Inside the Bun?” by William Neuman informs us that the government has no requirement for actual disclosure by industry of a products’ contents. In this article, we learn that the nitrates and nitrites many attempt to avoid by purchasing ‘natural’ lunch meats or hot dogs are actually consuming those same, unhealthy preservatives. Because they come from ‘natural’ sources, rather than synthetic, such labels can be highly misleading.

The president of one company cited in the article (I happen to enjoy their natural/organic products), is quoted as saying the U.S. Department of Agriculture has rejected their suggestions as to appropriate labels for use instead of “No nitrates or nitrites added”. These products apparently contain similar concentrations of these chemicals found in more conventional brands. This is particularly disturbing to me as I chose that brand in order to avoid eating nitrates.

My question to company executive is this: Why don’t you put this information on the label yourself and inform your customers of the information they specifically need in making informed choices?

Consumer advocacy groups should consider going right to the industries themselves if labeling is insufficiently informative. We can vote with our purchasing dollars and buy products which offer full disclosure of their ingredients and inform us of any derivative chemicals we are ingesting along with the ‘natural’ ingredients we seek as health-conscious Americans. Just as the Environmental Working Group has published lists of ingredients present in personal care and household products according to their safety, consumer groups can do the same with ‘natural’ and ‘conventional’ foods for ease of decision making.

Cost is often the largest factor in making purchasing decisions when it comes to food. However, knowing the premium paid by those of us weighing future medical costs against the higher prices of natural and organic food products, we must be informed of whether or not these purchases are actually going to yield the expected benefits.

It ought to be up to us.

If you are a ‘blood’ relative of a service veteran, you may be eligible for a variety of insurance services through the federal government at attractive rates. From health to auto insurance, veterans and their families reap an important benefit for their sacrifices on behalf of the country. Please check your own eligibility through USAA.COM and compare it to policies offered by private companies.

In previous posts on this blog, care has been taken to distinguish between products and services which are primary to survival versus those which ought to be considered ‘commodities’ within a competitive, private marketplace. Health insurance is among those services that voters determined should be available to all legal residents in our last presidential election.

Check out the USAA website. There are many in need of these services who may not be aware of these offerings.

Citizens greeted that with mixed reviews and determined that a change in administration was needed to preserve ‘entitlement’ programs. We chose to add medical care to the list of essentials which should not be referred to as ‘commodities’ to be purchased by consumers. In a society able to generate the needed revenue, Americans want to consider food, clothing, shelter and medical care to be basic necessities of life and something to grant one another wherever possible. This philosophy doesn’t require the word ‘socialism’ to be slapped onto our label, describing how we operate as a nation. Capitalism is about how we treat commodities, those goods and services we opt to acquire.

Since the constitution grants us the right to ‘life’, goods and services necessary to existence would seem to lose their classification as commodities. The Clean Air Act states that breathing is also a ‘right’ and we continue to struggle with enforcing its provisions. Does anyone really wish to state that legislative accomplishment is ‘socialist’ in nature? Is ‘air’ a commodity to be bought and sold or an aspect of the environment which is essential to our survival? Somehow the marketplace seems to be a rather bizarre arena in which to discuss such an urgent issue which is really dictated by our biological characteristics. The clean-up of serious pollution from various sources requires residents to trace the sources and mandate change through the available venues.

Once upon a time, jobs came with some degree of security and upward mobility for those with sufficient privilege to obtain them. We needn’t pretend that just anyone can succeed as our history continues to struggle with the failure of women and minorities to attain equality and justice. However, the employed had some expectations of longevity in their employment and the chance to put away some of their salaries when housing costs did not take up such a huge chunk of our incomes. With constant changes in the workforce keeping people from pensions, health care benefits and living wages, we have no option but to fund such programs through the public sector to make up for it.

Debate over ‘entitlement’ programs and the addition of medical care to that list of essential services, does not automatically change society into a ‘socialist’ construct. It does alter society from the perspective of our ‘social contract’ with one another, regardless of individual political and economic viewpoints.

A case will win or lose not just on its merits but also upon the manner in which lawyers choose to navigate the legal systems operating at each stage of the litigation. That makes any case, however justified, a gamble for all parties as time marches on. Eleven years have passed since my injuries from pesticide exposures and the case hasn’t yet reached the stage of trial ‘readiness’. The world is full of contradictions and complexities affecting decisions made by legal professionals in such matters and I lacked any clear understanding of these matters as they pertained to my own case.

I felt a consumer complaint to the Attorney General’s office was indicated since a Bar Association inquiry offered no real interpretation of the actions taken (and not taken) by my lawyer. The Bar explained that it is concerned only with ‘ethics’ and not the actual contract between litigants and their lawyers. Investigations of appropriate practice issues is mainly devoted to reviews of trials which may not have reached their expected outcomes. The process is far less invested in looking at legal cases which haven’t reached the trial stage.

The AG’s office said I should find another attorney for assistance.

In my series called “The Morality of Litigation“, the mass acceptance of legal cases without intent to actually try them appears endemic in the system. This institutionalization of sealed settlements versus actual court access is the reason we really can’t expect to alter systems currently in place. Science is disregarded until its bytes of wisdom are accepted by a court of law (e.g. climate change). Being ‘right’ about the need for advance notice of pesticide applications isn’t enough until Congress passes a law making it a necessary procedure. That is unlikely to happen until a lawsuit sets such a precedent.

Mine is unlikely to be among them. My attorney has informed me that he wishes to transfer my case to new counsel for a variety of reasons. Lacking a replacement, it is unlikely I can move forward. However, the loss of this action will not have happened based upon the merits of the case, but upon procedural issues peculiar to the legal industry. They are the gatekeepers we require to gain access to the justice system. My conclusion is that we all look at the legal industry as another form of corporate entity. Ongoing evaluation of any case in the system would appear to be the best guarantee of a positive outcome, whether that means continuing the litigation or ending it before the procedure itself becomes an albatross around the necks of both lawyers and their clients.

The penalties we pay for addressing certain issues are often kept quiet in expectation of such typical responses as:

- Then don’t be an activist. Interesting, but you don’t hear those people complain about activists who died so we wouldn’t have to work in sweat shops. However, the pressures can be enormous so if you must ‘retire’ from the lists, do so with our thanks for the attempt!

-Call the police. Unfortunately, officers of the law generally review each event as a single incident and will not look at the patterns emerging from serial events. They also lack the equipment and budgets to investigate such incidents. In my own case, I have pointed out the problems inherent in using farm chemicals as ‘indoor’ or residential pesticides. I have discussed another posts how I view this as an essential form of diversification on the part of that industry.
If you find yourself frequently ill, consider this as a potential source of injury and test for the presence of such chemicals. It is important to report each event, ultimately reducing the number of incidents.

-You’re just crazy and imagining things. Several automobile body shops differ with that opinion and one of my docs got very tired of having my blood tests show positive indicators of pesticide poisonings even in winter months when none should have been in use. If you’ve read back a few posts, you will have learned that newer-use pesticides can go undetected because few labs have the capacity to handle medical patients as yet, nor are they willing to invest in the equipment. In the USA, safety of chemicals is presumed based upon manufacturer-supplied data. Only when consumers or other exposed individuals become ill, is any presumption of safety challenged. As we are the experimental animals, it is essential that we be able to identify environmental contributions to the ever-rising rates of illness. We can and should be able to demonstrate those materials which are both efficacious and least harmful. We can also modify the ways in which more toxic products are used. This information is crucial if industry is to diversify its product lines in the direction most beneficial to consumers.

The ‘crazy’ line is very useful in keeping complaints at bay but it is important to realize that line is uttered by people wishing to silence complainers. You are the one who bears the burden of such a label for your statements. If you have any concerns about possible harassment or vandalism, band with others to purchase security cameras for your residences and carry a digital camera with you. Such precautions may be an adequate deterrent.

A global community is about more than just the exchange of job opportunities.

In Libya, we are seeing the hopeful end of a despotic regime. We should hope that if the unthinkable ever happened and placed the US under such a form of governance, that other nations would come to our defense to restore our constitutional protections preventing elections from turning into military exercises. Our lesson in the revolutions currently in process is to examine our own weaknesses.

My comment on Kristof’s Libya Op-Ed was posted here:

50.
Barbara Rubin
Ca.
April 3rd, 2011
7:52 am
Dear Mr. Kristoff,

Thank you for putting President Obama’s actions into a perspective that many Americans may finally grasp amidst unconscionable arguments that saving lives from despots isn’t worth the price tag. Our own country is currently engaged in a war against trans-national corporations interfering in our governance through elections financed by these ‘paper citizens’. They ensure the election of naïve ideologues who chant slogans and consider deficit spending to be equivalent to having overdrawn, personal checking accounts.

Corporate sponsored governance has led to the suppression of many freedoms here at home, including that of free speech through bullying tactics. The rhetoric of despots is not always limited to governmental leaders.

This isn’t even about costs since the conservative community had no objections to spending millions in enforcing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ rules and now complains of the minor costs incurred in shifting social policies in the military. This action is a landmark demonstration of nations agreeing to become watchdogs over the trampling of human lives in the insane quest for power and money. It is a protest against the social engineering of world-wide efforts to treat citizens as commodities and possessions.

Just as the ‘cult of never enough’ led to financial disaster here at home, it also takes actual lives here at home through indirect methods. Violence is the result of anger-provoking rhetoric which has replaced much of the actual legislation we expect from our representatives. Citizens are brougth to the point of pressuring and bullying their neighbors into disavowing the need for healthcare or the role of unions in shaping humane working conditions and living (versus ‘dying’) wages in America. Corporations have conditioned people to attribute the withdrawal of jobs and benefits as due to ‘immigrants’ rather than greed. Despots require reigning in by a public having faith in their own governmental principles and the inherent rights of every individual to their freedom, regardless of gender, nationality and belief system.

Yes, this is frightening but may give us the courage to say ‘no’ to laws and court decisions that subject residents to a narrowly defined status prescribing uniformity in matters of work, faith and life-style. Peace comes in a remarkable variety of colors, shapes, sizes and beliefs.

Hopefully, the obvious merits for President Obama’s actions in Libya will translate into greater recognition for the value of lives here at home, above and beyond various ‘class’ distinctions.

Barbara Rubin