Subaqua Sternal Rubs

Some pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.

Read more at: Boston.com

I am sorry but if you are unable or unwilling to carry out the job functions (and all of the job functions), then you should be replaced with someone who will. Would it be acceptable for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense coumadin, albuterol, or any other medication? Would it be acceptable for me to refuse to do any lifting of patients in my job as an EMT/ED Tech? Of course not. These are requirements, and they exist for a reason. If we allow pharmacists to pick and choose which medications they wish to dispense, then we allow them to ignore the rule of law. I hate to use the slippery slope argument, but what next? Refusing care to patients is what is morally wrong.

I thought the Schiavo case had been settled, but I guess not:

Appeals court to consider Schiavo request:
In a rare legal victory for Terri Schiavo's parents, a federal appeals court has agreed to consider their request for a new hearing on whether to reconnect their severely brain-damaged daughter's feeding tube.

"Severely brain-damaged" is putting it lightly. How about devoid of all cortical function? Basically anything that makes a human unique (i.e. memory, emotion, intellect, and all other higher functions) are gone, with no hope of regaining them. This 2002 CT scan shows massive atrophy (shrinking) of the brain, that even I, as a medical student with 1 neuroimaging lecture under my belt can diagnose it.

Media Credit

The individual Terri Schaivo actually died many, many years ago with the death of her cerebral cortex. All that is left is a shell of automatic reflexes…

In other news, Vermont is looking more and more attractive, so the same thing doesn't happen to me.

So this morning I noticed that the medial aspect of my right ankle was slightly painful. Upon further inspection, I saw:

Now I haven't had any alcohol, or any other mind-altering substances (unless you count nitrogen narcosis), so you would think I would remember doing that. But nope, no recollection. Maybe I did do it on the reef, since I am now using closed heel fins, so no exposure protection from booties.

So anyone in Grenada remember me doing this? Any clues would be appreciated.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, this "vacation" I also manged to update my Scuba Diving page. It now includes a dynamically generated summary of all my dives, as well as featuring a complete dive log of every dive I've ever done. The dive log itself has info on dates, places, etc right now, and will include pictures of various underwater species that I have seen on each dive as I get more time to update it. (Probably not for a while.)

My nice 4-day vacation is finally coming to a close. I actually did some work tonight and submitted a bonus assignment, as well a prepared for lectures/small groups tomorrow. It was about time I did some work, as I spent all of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon scuba diving… (I swear I am not going for a while again! Well, at least 6 days… ) Today we traveled up the west coast of the island, which was thankfully much less choppy than the Atlantic side was yesterday. The planned Isle de Rhonde trip didn't happen, but we went to two new dive sites further up than the dive operator typically ventures. The new sites included:

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Sorry I haven't been posting much, but I've been scuba diving

Friday, I went on a relatively shallow dive to Flamingo Bay with a buddy that needed to refresh (hadn't been diving in 10 years.) Lots of nice coral, some of the most abundant reef fish life that I've seen here yet, as well as no less than 5 moray eels, and 20 lobsters.

Saturday I went on a night dive to the Shakem, which is a 150ft long cargo vessel carrying concrete that sank in 100ft of water. Unlike most wrecks, this has some nice coral beds surrounding it. Definitely eerie diving such a large wreck at night, but cool at the same time Circled the bottom checking the reef then proceeded to explore the wreck, including diving through the wheelhouse, various passageways, etc. Lots of small things, but nothing big and exciting seen.

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My air-conditioner is broken… The fan still works, so I get a nice breeze, but no actual cooling, so the thermostat reads a nice 80 degrees in my room. Upside? Well, I must have left the freezer cracked open, because when I just opened it there was wonderful "champagne" snow covering everything. Warm, high humidity air + freezing cold air = snow, got it. Snowball fight!

After another hard day of lectures and small group workshops, I treated myself to a night dive. The site was Dr. Grooms, where I just was a couple of days ago. That's ok though, I could finally see something, as I had my corrective-lenses-equipped mask with me. Saw a green moray sitting in a barrel sponge, some large lobster, and the smallest crab (around a couple of cm) sitting on a Gorgonian fan.

Overall the dive went better logistically than the last night dive, since there were fewer divers on the boat. Though I almost did manage to get myself lost… I was diving with my buddy in one direction, but I guess I didn't notice the absence of his light for a while. When I finally did, I could only see a bunch of hazy dots around 75 feet away. I managed to rejoin the group without incident.

And then later in the dive, I start feeling my balance/buoyancy going out of whack. I reach around to my back, and my scuba tank is not where it is supposed to be, rather it is floating vertically toward the surface, held in place only by hoses. So I grabbed the tank and held it in place manually, and I was prepared to do so for the rest of the dive (we were planning on surfacing in a few minutes anyways), but the dive instructor was kind enough to re-secure the tank underwater so that I didn't have to hold it. This hasn't happened to me in a number of years but my dive buddy told me that it was bad karma, because I made fun of him for pre-wetting his straps before securing his tank.

Karma sucks.

On that note, you need to call me on my land line for now, since I also seem to have managed to loose my cell phone on the dive boat. Hopefully, I'll get it back tomorrow when the dive shop re-opens…

Having just finished midterms, thus having nothing to study, I spent the day scuba diving. And I mean the day - I ended up doing three dives, and I was at the dive shop from around 9 AM to about 4:00 PM. Today's dives included:

• The Bianca C - I think this is my 4th time doing this dive, but it was better than where the other boat was going. See the ship's history here.
• Shark Reef - Another much frequented dive site, but I didn't mind. It's actually one of the better shallow sites. No sharks spotted this time, but we did see many large lobsters and huge king crabs. Unfortunately, it is illegal for any non-native to catch any fish/shellfish using scuba equipment.


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PINELLAS PARK, Florida (CNN) — The feeding tube for the brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of a bitter moral and legal tug of war was disconnected Friday afternoon, and her husband's lawyer pleaded, "She has a right to die in peace."

The tube was disconnected about 1:45 p.m., George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, told reporters. Friday's medical procedure was the third time the tube had been disconnected from the 41-year-old woman.

The disconnecting of the feeding tube was the latest step in a contentious family saga that began 15 years ago, when Terri Schiavo collapsed from heart failure that resulted in severe brain damage. Lower courts have ruled that she is in a "persistent vegetative state."

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