September

Book Blogger Appreciation Week – BBAW is scheduled this year from September 13th to September 17th.  This year I’m going to keep my planned activities light since I’m not sure if my plans include gall bladder surgery or not but you’ll find an interview swap for certain.

Back to School Month – For some reason I’ve read a lot of teen/young adult fantasy in one big clump.  You’ll find a bunch of reviews and a two part community interview with Artist Arthur, the author of Manifest.

October

Lucy A. Snyder Book Giveaway – Lucy has written an urban fantasy series set in Columbus, Ohio.  The first book, Spellbent, is one of my favorite fantasy book reads this year.  The sequel, Shotgun Sorceress, will be released into the wild in late October.  I have a signed copy of Lucy’s fiction/poetry/humor collection titled Sparks and Shadows to giveaway.  During October you might find a review or two of some of her writing.

World Fantasy Convention 2010 – Why yes, I am attending the World Fantasy Convention this year.  It’s being held in Columbus.  I’ve no idea what to expect so we’ll find out together.

November

Gotcha Month – Most of the book reviews for November will be about books featuring dogs.  Why November?  We don’t know the Resident Corgi’s birthday so we celebrate his Gotcha Day instead.  Not all of the reviews are written yet but I promise you’ll find a variety of dog stories.

1. Sales in August: 0
2. Rejections in August: 1
3. Submissions sent out in August: 0
4. Total stories/poems/contests pending responses: 2

I can’t even believe how quickly August has flown by.  My husband bought me some little cans of 7 up with monster faces on them.  October is right around the corner.  Oh no!

My husband and I are eating better than we were 10 years ago so it’s no surprise I’d be interested in what the Resident Corgi puts into his digestive system.  He ate Science Diet at the humane society.  It’s what the original Resident Corgi ate but I wasn’t entirely happy with it.  So I began searching for something else for the new Corgi.  After Science Diet I fed him one of the Nutro foods and kept finding expired food at the store.  It was discovered a diet high in corn meal or corn gave him dandruff.  Back to the drawing board…

This book is a quick read that explains how to make or pick a nutritious food for your dog.  It would have been a welcome addition when I was doing my research on what to get the Resident Corgi and now it just confirms I was on the right track.  We have an organic dog bakery in town that carries dog food but  it isn’t convenient to get to with regularity.  Our neighborhood store (it has three locations in the city) offers raw food and none of the mass market food brands like Pedigree or Science Diet.

The Resident Corgi is allowed to have “junk food” as snacks once in a while but his food and a majority of his treats are all organic.  To be honest, his diet is better than ours!

Poveromo is not a dietitian and doesn’t claim to be an expert in animal nutrition.  He writes from his own experiences and some of it is common sense.  For example, when switching from one food to another, do it gradually; it’s less likely to upset your canine’s tummy.  No food is 100% perfect and it’s okay to provide supplements to boost the immune system.  Isn’t that why we take multi-vitamins ourselves? 

I probably won’t use any of the recipes in the book – I don’t even cook for two people every day of the week.  And they’d probably be more helpful if they were scaled down to what to feed 10lb dogs.  Then each ingredient could be multiplied to the weight of the dog.  I’m not good at math but I’d likely make the recipe for a 70lb dog and divide it up for 2 weeks (the Resident Corgi is about 30lbs).  I have been known to make dog treats from time to time and this book will allow me to give the ingredients a more critical eye.

What’s nice is Poveromo doesn’t recommend or push any one specific brand in his book.  It truly gives the reader informaiton to think about and consider when choosing to make their dog’s food or buying a processed food.

Allie is a teenager living with her mother in a trailer on her uncle’s property.  Her mother, Faye, is busy trying to get disability.  Allie acts more like a responsible adult than Faye.  On the evenings Faye “consults” with her lawyer, Allie stays with Kizzy, the Romany gypsy the town likes to call “the witch”.  Allie notices strange things are beginning to happen when she receives an unexpected heavenly visitor.

This is the first book of the “Unbidden Magic” series.  Other titles include Moon Rise and Moon Spun.  Allie actually seems like a teenager.  She has two good friends she sticks up for, has a crush, and even takes the school bus.  Brothers manages to make Allie ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.  Allie discovers the power in the moonstone necklace Kizzy gives her and someone wants the necklace.  Badly.

I seem to find myself reading young adult quite a bit.  This strays from the orphan who discovers supernatural powers in so many ways it stays interesting.

My best friend is a psychiatrist who works with military veterans so I was interested in reading what Dr. Calott Wang thought of the current medical system in the US.  The Kitchen Shrink is a memoir that reads like a string of stories to illustrate her points.

One example is how the family doctor who was paid upfront and treated like a family friend (or a respected community member) is now relegated to a physician number in a managed health care system designed to not pay the doctor.  I’ve seen her point firsthand.  Dr. Light delivered me when I was born and was at my oldest brother’s bar mitzvah.  If we hadn’t moved from California he probably would have been the family doctor until he retired or passed away.  Doctors I’ve had for several years (my family practitioner, ob/gyn, gastroenterologist, and opthamologist) I know well enough to ask about their families but newer doctors I would have problems recognizing them outside their office.  And I doubt they would recognize me. 

My insurance benefit form shows me the original cost of the services provided, how much was discounted, how much insurance paid and what is left for me to pay.  It’s difficult to make sense of it at times.  For example, I had blood drawn in May and June at the same facility for the same tests and yet the second blood draw was $25 less.  Who comes up with these figures?  It’s not difficult to imagine the paperwork hospitals and doctors need to fill out in order to get reimbursed for providing medical care.  Or to imagine doctors/hospitals hiring people to take care of the paperwork and deal with the insurance companies.

The flow of the book is good but I had to stop about two-thirds of the way through to give myself a break.  It was depressing.  I took two days off to read something lighter before returning to it.  Some of the changes and consequences Dr. Calott Wang describes were only visible to her in hindsight.  I think her book is a good place to start a discussion on how the medical profession became the health care business.

Author Bio
Dora Calott Wang, M.D., is a psychiatrist with degrees from the Yale School of Medicine and the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a prestigious writer’s residency from the Lannan Foundation. Dr. Wang has been in private practice and served on hospital staffs, and is currently a medical school professor. She lives in New Mexico with her family.

For more information please visit www.doracalottwang.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

A big thank you to Chick Loves Lit for hosting the August edition of In My Mailbox.  This meme is known to increase your TBR pile so beware if you take a look at what others have recieved.

This week two books arrived in my mailbox. 

The first was Fox’s Bride by Amy Ruttan.  It was a win from MayNoWriMo sponsored by Joely Sue Burkhart and has a nice personalized message from Amy.  It’s a historical romance about the Dread Pirate Captain Meg and her husband, Lord Foxton, who lives on the other side of the world.

The second was To Your Dog’s Health by Mark Poveromo.  It was sent to me for review by Lisa Roe, Online Publicist.  The book is about canine nutrition. 

What arrived in your mailbox this week?

Random.org chose #28 – Edmonton jb at Mom of Boys With Toys.  Congratulations!

1. Sales in July: 0
2. Rejections in July: 0
3. Submissions sent out in July: 1
4. Total stories/poems/contests pending responses: 3

Last year I didn’t have a good run in sending out submissions.  I think my May writing events got my behind in gear.  I’m starting to submit flash fiction pieces written this year.

Is Wall Street Making Life or Death Decisions?

By Dora Calott Wang, M.D.,
Author of The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing 
in a Changing World

Is your health insurance company traded on Wall Street?

If so, is Wall Street deciding your medical care?

It’s hard to recall that for-profit corporations were once kept out of 
health care — in fact, for most of the 20th century. During this 
time, the nation’s medical system was built largely by non-profit and 
charitable organizations, which is why so many hospitals are named for 
saints. Courts across the country ruled that for corporations to 
profit from medical care was simply “against sound public policy.” In 
the early 1980′s, however, when the financial and airline industries 
were deregulated, a similar process occurred for American medicine. 
For-profit corporations became newly encouraged to take leadership of 
health care. Deregulating health care into the free market was 
intended to drive down costs and to improve care. After all, medical 
care in 1980 consumed a whopping 9.1 percent of the nation’s GDP.

Never mind that after 30 years in the free market, health care costs 
have doubled to consume 18 percent of the GDP (with a third of these 
precious dollars wasted on bureaucracy). Never mind that health care 
has gotten increasingly inaccessible to the uninsured and even the 
insured, or that American health care has become an international 
poster child for reform.

The real issue is that modern medical care has simply, finally, gotten 
so effective. Today, even cancer and AIDs are no longer death 
sentences, and if organs fail, you try to get a new one. But prior to 
the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines in the 1930′s, leeches were 
routinely applied, and medicine was steeped in superstition. Between 
1918 and 1920, three percent of the world’s population was wiped out 
– by the flu.

The fair and effective distribution of life-sustaining resources like 
food, water and shelter, is the very story of civilization. Yet now, 
thanks to centuries upon centuries of civilization and scientific 
inquiry, we have at last, a new life-sustaining resource — modern 
medical care, which is less than 80 years old.

How should this powerful new resource be distributed? I believe that 
medical care shouldn’t be considered an ordinary product, like 
athletic shoes or flat screen TV’s. Rather, it is quickly becoming 
essential, like water. Yet there will be no easy answers when it comes 
medical care, in this brave new world in which DNA is already being 
tweaked to grow completely new organs. We are embarking on a new, 
complex and long chapter of history.

I can’t help but think that health care reform isn’t over, and wasn’t 
concluded with the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable 
Care Act in March.

I believe that health care reform will be our entire future.

In the meantime, for now, how is modern medical care, a new 
Prometheus’ fire, being distributed and decided in the United States?

Physicians and patients sit face to face and discuss medical decisions 
– about whether a life-sustaining cardiac bypass surgery is 
warranted, or whether a new liver should be gotten. But ultimately, 
the purse strings on medical care are held by health insurance 
companies.

The new health reform laws will obligate insurance companies to 
provide “coverage” even when patients become sick or if they have a 
“pre-existing condition” or what I will call “illness”. The PPACA has 
a provision on “administrative simplification” scheduled to take 
effect in 2014, which aims to streamline the process of doctors and 
health care providers asking for approvals from health insurance 
companies before treatments are rendered.

But even after the new laws are implemented, health insurance 
companies, many of them for-profit corporations traded on Wall Street, 
will continue to hold the purse strings on medical care.

Our recent health reform efforts are landmark progress in the right 
direction.

However, in the last thirty years, the values of Wall Street have so 
infiltrated the values of American society that seemingly all aspects 
of life are impacted, even medical care of the human body and mind, 
even the everyday life or death decisions that happen in doctor 
offices and hospital rooms.

© 2010 Dora Calott Wang, M.D., author of The Kitchen Shrink: A 
Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World

Author Bio
Dora Calott Wang, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the 
University of New Mexico School of Medicine. A graduate of the Yale 
School of Medicine and the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, she 
received her M.A. in English literature from the University of 
California, Berkeley, and has been the recipient of a writer’s 
residency from the Lannan Foundation. Her memoir, The Kitchen Shrink:  
A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World was 
published by Riverhead Books, The Penguin Group.

For more information please visit www.doracalottwang.com and follow 
the author on Facebook and Twitter.