Generally the best strategy is to always arrive to appointments, clinics, hospitals and medical offices by bicycle. Discovering how well prepared this country's health care system is for bicyclists is in itself an important lesson in health care in America. Two of my last three emergency room visits were by bicycle (which had nothing to do with my injuries. The third visit I walked in.) Bringing a high value bicycle to a hospital can in itself be an emergency since it often turns out that no one in the US has realized that bicycles have anything to do with healthy exercise. It's as though the health care system buys the premise, lock, stock, and barrel, that bicyclists should be subject to the hegemony of the MTC. (MTC in the San Francisco Bay Area stands for Metropolitan Transportation Commission, but for the purposes of this blog, and for all practical purposes in the Bay Area, it stands for Marginalize, Trivialize, and Criminalize bicycling. ) Be very careful not to startle nor bump into the patients who've won a free scooter from the government, thanks to the team of disability generating attorneys that the scooter companies keep on payroll. Supersized and morbidly obese scooter patients are now married to a combination of lead-acid batteries, government checks, and monthly payments. But the scooters are increasingly deluxe, there is even a model that comes with a built-in cigarette lighter and ash tray. But be careful, these vehicles tend to be supersized. It will annoy your doctor greatly when you bring your bike into the exam room and introduce it as your domestic partner, since it never occurred to your doctor that anyone would seriously use a bicycle for much of anything so daily and intimately, and there's nothing resembling secure parking for it anywhere near the medical office building. (This applies to almost every conceivable medical, dental, and lab office in the US today.) It will also tend to generate feelings of jealously in your doctor, since the doctor will likely recognize that your passion for bicycling is somehow replacing your doctor's role of primary healthcare giver. These feelings will be reinforced as your doctor's eyes bug out at your blood test results which reveal that somehow you are testing as though you are twenty years younger than you really are, and outclassing perhaps every other patient your age in their practice. This can be particularly true if you can manage to do most of your bicycling in car-restricted zones, and avoid filling your bloodstream with the tailpipe output Americans refuse to realize is stuffing them as they sit in cars. Even on busy streets, bicyclists are able to expose themselves to less than half the emissions those trapped in cars are subject to. I'm not clear how long it will take for health care providers to figure this equation out: The healthy, bicycling non-patient in their office has something to do with the bicycle waiting patiently in the lobby. It's perhaps never occurred to anyone in the health care office that a patient would or could arrive by bike, but with these scenes repeated over and over for years in my life, in many different offices, I can help readers understand my suggestion that in the US, "Catastrophic health care" refers to the state our country's transportation system is in, as well as accurately describing the state our health care system is in -- sort of like our country's foreign policy. Without beating around the Bush, I can assert succinctly that the meaning of the word Catastrophic is as broad as the butt of those seated in scooters in line at the local fast food joint. According to ABC news, the obesity epidemic has in part been fed by the federal policy that getting supersized will qualify you for disability payments. It is important to recognize too that being overweight is not necessarily a choice; the unfortunate genetic makeup of a tiny percentage of people is such that eating 50% of what a thin person eats will still result in those unfortunates becoming obese. I do not want to engage in the popular pastime of blaming a victim. But it is just very, very difficult to distinguish between bad habits and obese genetics. And obesity is certainly now the rule, not the exception in America, where the average American walks fewer than 300 yards on an average day. Yet the images of people deliberately overeating and under-exercising to qualify for benefits, which ABC nightly news aired earlier this year, were, shall I say, unappetizing. Whereas the incredulity of medical caregivers wondering how I've managed to pull off terrific test results and 50 years of safe bicycling, well, the sparkle in my eyes, and those looks of bewilderment in theirs, are vitamins for my life.
By James DMake-it-home-safe MANTRA: When dealing with traffic, it's better to be patient than to become a patient; AND - A Sailboat is to a Polluting Cruise Ship what a bicycle is to a smokin' Hummer. I know bikes are beautiful but I’M not backing off until bikes are bountiful and bikers have greater strength in numbers. CategoriesArchives
February 2016
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