Transplanting a Seattleite

R. and I had lunch at Giorgio's sans kids (this is very cool, but not very cheap since it involves having two sitters at once). I had one drink, a margarita which even R. acknowledged may well have been a triple between the size of the glass, that it was straight up and the potency. It was really, really good and R. got at least a third of it and I was still almost stumbling by the time lunch was over. Granted, drinks arrived first, and I don't hardly ever drink anything any more. Lunch was around 2 p.m. and I hadn't had any breakfast beforehand.

But when the one drink lists for $14, even a single drink drunk isn't particularly cheap. Geez.

It was really good tho. Fresh lime juice. Cointreau. Really nice tequila. I don't even have a headache.

If you have any sense, you're skipping these.

For those who, like me, have no sense, here's a little addendum to the griping about nagging at people to have more sex Because It's Good For Them (a bad reason to do damn near anything, if you ask me, but no one did).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/us/24sex.html

Here, we have a _pastor_ trying to muscle his congregation into having more sex. Well, the married couples within, anyway.

Words fail.

ETA: Oh, maybe they don't. The article concludes with the pastor's wife supposedly trying to get him to wake up to have sex since he skipped a day. Just before that gem was the newlywed couple having trouble with intimacy after hubby fessed to an affair 8 months into the marriage.

I mean _come on_, guys. Don't you think we need some reframing here? Telling people to suck it up and smile so they feel better is bad enough. This is just poisoning a perfectly wonderful activity by turning it into a chore.

I recognize that I spend a lot of time slamming the pharma-medico-industrial complex. I think they deserve a lot of the slamming and I'm happy to provide.

Exempt from this slamming are family practice docs in general (my brother-in-law J. in particular), midwives, some nurse practitioners, blah, blah, bleeping blah.

And high on the list (along with J.) of Doctors I Wuv (I'm serious about this), is H. Gilbert Welch (author of the excellent _Should I Be Tested for Cancer?_). He's back in the news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25breast.html

Short form: sometimes cancer goes away on its own. Sometimes invasive cancer goes away on its own. Even invasive breast cancer. So in addition to watchful waiting for the obvious case (you found something teeny tiny on a routine screening test or as a side effect of some other imaging and are not otherwise symptomatic), watchful waiting might make sense for more serious cases.

Hey! This isn't medical advice!

But it's really interesting information. We all know spontaneous remission can happen; this is an interesting sidelight into how often spontaneous remission of breast cancer might be happening in large populations of women.

ETA: More coverage at:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/BreastCancer/11898