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The Periodic Midlife/Longlife Update E-newsletter May 2007 Part 1
is devoted to sharing information and enhancing excellence in ongoing faith and holistic formation for maturing adults from midlife through end of life.
Bill Prather, Founder and Director
of Partners In Pastoral Care
seeks to provide members with an ongoing flow of practical information that leaders/models can use directly with adults of all ages. Training is also offered through the educational arm of Partners in Pastoral Care.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author. Permission is granted to reproduce this issue in whole or in part as long as its source is identified.
13300-56 South Cleveland Avenue Suite 238 Fort Myers, FL 33907 239.466.8664 239 482 3212 fax Shepardscare@aol.com www.partnersinpastoralcare.org
In This Issue:
1. A Heads Up for Our Elder Congregants
2. Quality Medical Care for Thousands Less
3. Love That Works Book review 4. No Surprise: We’re Living Longer …But Wait! 5. Notion of ‘fat and jolly’ is folly. 6. The Sound of Silence
1. Here is a tip that may turn into a financial blessing to some in your group. Too many US elder households needlessly pay a monthly rental charge for phones. Most renters are older people who hay have had their phones since before the breakup of the bell telephone system in 1984. A phone that you can buy for just $20 may cost hundreds in rental fees over many years. In checking my mother’s phone bill, I saw “leased equipment.” In checking into what exactly that equipment word was, I was told it was her telephone. As near as I can calculate my mother has paid over $300 in the past four years, needlessly.
2. An outpouring of interest in Dave’s piece, “Hip Resurfacing,” has created some research into the whole idea of traveling out of country for medical treatment. Let there be no doubt here: The entire factor is low prices and top-quality care.
Last year, more than 55,000 Americans went abroad for necessary but non-emergency operations, such as angioplasty, knee replacement and cataract surgery. Let me say before I go further that I was not able to find any U.S. insurance companies currently paying for overseas surgery if it is not an emergency.
Less expensive labor and administrative costs make foreign treatment 50% to 75% cheaper. That can be a bargain even with the additional costs of airfare and accommodations. Costs of medical procedures vary widely, within the U.S. and internationally. For example, cataract surgery costs about $3,000 per eye in the United States while costing $1,200 in Eastern Europe.
The cost in the U.S. for a herniated disk can run anywhere between $30,000 and $90,000. In Bangkok, Thailand, it starts at $3,500.
An angioplasty in Singapore is $15,000 but averages $80,000 in the U.S.
U.S. dental surgeon’s charges for a root canal can range from $500 to $900. In Mexico, the same procedure is less than $300.
Having an operation thousands of miles from home is worth exploring if you don’t have adequate health insurance, as Dave Patterson and others I have spoken to will be quick to tell us. They would also tell you that the use of top-quality foreign hospitals and physicians is a necessity.
Like Dave did, start by asking friends and acquaintances who have had medical procedures overseas for recommendations. Also, ask doctors who specialize in the type of surgery you need. Also, do your research!
It was surprising to find Harvard Medical International, which is a self-supporting, not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard Medical School. It is affiliated with dozens of overseas medical institutions and hospitals. The telephone number is 617-535-6400 or go online at www.hmi.harvard.edu. Great organization and very helpful in answering my questions.
Another fine group that was very helpful in my research is the Joint Commission International. This is the global arm of the institute that accredits U.S. hospitals, meeting rigorous standards of patient care, medication safety and infection control. Telephone 630-792-5000 or www.jointcommission.org and link to Joint Commission International.
Dave’s doctor and staff in Belgium coordinated everything from arrival at the airport in Brussels to departure. You will want to choose a hospital or surgeon that provides an international coordinator, as well.
In my limited research, here are a few suggestions I would offer:
Ask for a full diagnosis from your personal doctor first. Develop a treatment plan you both feel comfortable with. Your doctor should be willing to forward all diagnostic information and communicate with the foreign surgeon to discuss your condition. Once you arrive, the foreign doctor also will evaluate you prior to surgery.
Dave will tell you how much Carol, his wife, meant to him and the process. So be sure to take a family member or friend. You will need someone for emotional support and also to serve as your advocate. This person should possess and have in hand your power of attorney, allowing her/him to make health decisions for you if you are unable to communicate your own wishes.
Know the costs! Most international hospitals and/or providers expect 50% of their fee when they book the surgery and the rest of the cost of treatment at the time of admission. It is important to check with your insurance company to make sure it will pay for the treatment of any complications once you arrive home.
Your medical records are vital to the process; therefore, make sure you have full access to all the information contained in those records.
Examine your bill and receive an explanation of the charges.
It is strongly suggested that you take responsibility of understanding in full your legal rights, if medical malpractice is committed overseas.
You may want to have an open invitation to your community on this subject of "overseas surgery" and invite Dave to come and share his firsthand, vast knowledge as a patient, along with a doctor who is personally involved in the process. What a creative way to reach out to your community!
Love That Works: the Art and Science of Giving by Bruce Brander, (Templeton Foundation Press, 2004) is an extraordinary book. Love, the driving force of our culture, is undergoing a definitional transformation. This transformation carries weighty implications for relationships in our later years. The divorce rate in mature marriages is rising, and remarriage in later years in growing steadily. With all this change, we do need a refreshing reminder a truer meaning of love to use as a more stable standard in these times of change.
Love That Works first offers an historical perspective on love in our culture. The author makes a strong, convincing, and well-documented point that our current conception and practice of love has been so romanticized (distorted) that we have lost the central core of love. He asserts that the notion of ‘romance as love’ first appeared in the last two centuries of the Roman Empire, and implicates this development as partial explanation for its demise.
The author contends that when romance is recognized as the primary cultural definition and practice of love, very dangerous and damaging consequences emerge in our society. This misguided conception of love breeds dissatisfaction in the institution of marriage, distorts or expectations of love, is responsible for our high divorce rate, and generally has infected our souls with the notion that infatuation is, and should be, the sustaining strength of our love.
Perhaps our definition of love isn't serving us well; perhaps we need a new, solid, fresh start so we can rediscover a truer meaning of love, and more culturally and personally beneficial perspective of love. Certainly we mean to love; yet perhaps we're not quite clear about the meaning of love. We seem befuddled about love. We've learned about love from romantic fables, we think love is a feeling, a passion, something akin to heaven on earth. If anything clear can be said about our conception and expectations of love, it’s that we're confused.
I must admit that I was captivated by the premise of the book, so much so that I can highly recommend that you read it. If you are at all interested in how our beliefs about the nature, and the role of love in our minds can shape our culture, and want to apply the author’s ideas to your marriage, or your intimate friendships, then you will find this work fascinating. You can order this book on: http://www.templetonpress.org/book.asp?book_id=70
The National Center for Health Statistics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently released its mortality figures for 2004. (I guess it takes a while to gather and sort through the figures). Their findings … Americans are living longer than ever, and the gender gap for life expectancy is decreasing. It seems that the year 2004 (most recent data) had the sharpest drop in the number of deaths in about 60 years, down about 50,000. The research team believes that the decrease is mostly due to drops in mortality due to heart disease, strokes, and cancer. Women lived an average of 80.4 years, and men, 75.2 years; the difference of 5.2 years is the smallest gender difference since 1946.
But Wait! Alzheimer’s Disease has inched up from the eight leading cause of death to seventh. Evidently, as we live longer we increase the incidence of Alzheimer’s. All other top leading causes of death in the US remained the same.
5. A recent Associated press article summarized the research findings of Dr. Gregory Simon, as reported in last July’s issue of the Archives of General psychiatry. The study of more than 9,000 adults found that mood and anxiety disorders including depression were almost 25% more common in the obese people studied than in the non-obese subjects in the study.
Dr. Simon found a strong link between obesity and depression and other mood disorders. “Whether the obesity might cause these problems or is the result of them is not certain.”
The results “suggest that the cultural stereotype of the fat jolly person is more a figment of our imagination than a reality,” said Dr. Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study.
6. I recently attended one of my granddaughters’ guitar recitals. Listening to them play brought back memories of sitting through many long piano recitals. I remembered how, as a young musician, I was prone to rush my songs. The underlying assumption was that faster is better, and in my haste I plowed through slow or meditative portions of a song, failing to give full value to the rests. I remember my piano teacher, Mrs. Allen, physically restraining my hand to keep me from hurrying ahead as she audibly counted out the full value of the notes.
It was only as I grew older that I learned not to just read the notes but to hear the music. I came to see that the rests and held notes in the music are every bit as essential to its beauty as the song's progression. What would Schumann's "Traumerei" or a Chopin nocturne be with out their pathos-laden pauses? (Not that I ever got that far in my playing!)
More so of late, I have noticed that God is not one to rush things. He isn't compelled to fill the silence for the sake of moving things along. Between the Old and New Testament, there were roughly four hundred years during which the people of Israel were without prophecy or revelation. Yet this silence, uncomfortable as it must have been for those believers who lived and died under it, only accentuated the crescendo when the Word became flesh.
Like me, perhaps you are or have gone through a period when it seems as though God has grown silent in your life. Silence after sixty three years still tries my soul. Try as I might, I cannot explicate it, and the noise of nothing threatens to drown out faith. But when reflecting for an extended time, I realize that such a noticeable silence actually testifies that God has not always been silent. The fact that I can recognize an absence in fact bears witness that there has been a Presence.
I don't know anyone who would claim that the rests are their favorite portions of a song. But those silent beats are necessary to accentuate the other notes and allow the music to tell its story. So also in our lives, I believe that we will one day be able to see the value of the silences that give shape to our stories. We can take comfort that silence is hemmed on either side by a song.
Throughout the scriptures, prophets repeatedly cry out, "He who has an ear, let him hear!" We need to learn to listen in the silences as well as in the climaxes, for the silence itself may be what God wants us to hear. The silence will not last forever, and it will make the sound that follows even more glorious.
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