September 30, 2003
Medco Health Solutions has been charged with falsifying and destroying prescription drug documents, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia.
The complaint accuses Medco of the creation of false patient records in order to meet performance goals; changing prescriptions based on false data; fabricating calls to doctors; and urging doctors to switch prescriptions to higher-cost drugs, especially those made by its former parent, Merck.
September 28, 2003
Wow, it's quiet in the house.
Dave's off to Philly for the final Phillies game ever at Veterans' Stadium (or, as it's more commonly known, The Toilet or The Concrete Monstrosity), and I'm here with the kitties, listening to the rain.
It's not that I haven't had much to say; it's more that between dragging my infinitely-larger ass to and from work every day, assembling baby furniture and gear, and moving my office downstairs so that the nursery can be, you know, the nursery, attending birthing classes and having a home breastfeeding class, I'm completely exhausted. Going to the grocery store, which I'm about to do, is about the extent of my field trip abilities these days.
I can't believe my due date is less than three and a half weeks away. The baby is doing fine, and again, I'm the most boring pregnant person alive according to my OB -- low BP, few contractions, measuring right on, and not gaining too much weight. *yawn* We finish our birthing classes this week, and then I've got about two weeks of work left, if I make it to the 15th, which is my goal.
The crib and dresser/changing table arrived yesterday, and the bedding looks beautiful. I did about five loads of baby laundry yesterday, mostly undershirts and sleepers and tiny little socks for the first few days at home. Today's plan is to finally get my hospital bag packed, just in case. Oh, and I have about a hundred thank you notes to write for shower gifts.
The name has been finalized, and no, we're not telling; we also have a backup boy name just in case, although we're still discussing the middle name for that. Dave's picking up a bassinet today from a kind and generous friend of ours, so that completes the "things we absolutely need" list, aside from actually getting the carseat base into the car -- I finally have the LATCH anchors on the correct side of the back seat of my car, after two visits to the VW dealership, so it's a matter of getting the base clipped in and then checked at our local safety center.
OK. I need to get moving before I lose my momentum, here. I'm hoping to get my new template up this week, but no promises.
September 24, 2003
The FDA began two days of hearings yesterday on new and/or revised guidelines for direct-to-consumer prescription pharmaceutical advertising.
Despite data presented by the FDA that between 70 and 75 percent of practitioners say they believe that DTC advertising "confuses relative risks and benefits" and that the ads cause patients "to think drugs work better than they really do," it is unlikely that the FDA will radically change its 1997 decision to permit prescription drug ads.
The FDA is currently developing guidelines to refine the way risk information is presented, in order to make it more consumer-friendly and easier to understand.
September 23, 2003
September 20, 2003
I completely forgot that yesterday was "National Talk Like a Pirate Day." In belated honor of the day, I present my favorite pirate song.
We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything!
We just stay home and lay around.
And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you ...
We don't do anything!
Well, I've never been Greenland and I've never been to Denver,
and I've never buried treasure in St. Louis or St. Paul,
and I've never been to Moscow and I've never been to Tampa,
and I've never been to Boston in the fall.
We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything!
We just stay home and lay around.
And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you ...
We don't do anything!
And I never hoist the mainstay and I never swab the poop deck,
and I never veer to starboard 'cuz I never sail at all,
and I've never walked the gang plank and I've never owned a parrot,
and I've never been to Boston in the fall.
We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything!
We just stay home and lay around.
And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you ...
We don't do anything!
Well, I've never plucked a rooster and I'm not too good at ping-pong,
and I've never thrown my mashed potatoes up against the wall,
and I've never kissed a chipmunk and I've never gotten head lice,
and I've never been to Boston in the fall!
And I've never licked a spark plug and I've never sniffed a stink bug,
and I've never painted daisies on a big red rubber ball,
and I've never bathed in yogurt and I don't look good in leggings ...
And we've never been to Boston in the fall!
Veggie Tales
September 19, 2003
My home state, Pennsylvania, has abolished common-law marriage. An en banc panel of the Commonwealth Court ruled in a case involving a woman who was killed in a commercial plane crash while traveling on business for her employer, PNC Bank, in 1994, after which her alleged common-law spouse filed a claim for damages. He produced a 1990 affidavit signed by the couple affirming their common-law marriage to each other and making the decedent a beneficiary to his benefits plan.
Although they had never owned any joint assets, had maintained separate bank accounts and mortgages, and had filed separate tax returns, a workers' compensation judge still found sufficient evidence that a common-law marriage had existed between the two, and that Kretz was entitled to surviving spouse's benefits. PNC appealed that decision, which was upheld by the Workers' Compensation Appeal Board, and then appealed that holding to the Commonwealth Court.
We hold that the time has come to abolish the doctrine," Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter, joined by President Judge James Gardner Colins and Judges Renee L. Cohn and Mary Hannah Leavitt, wrote in the majority's opinion, "but [we also hold] that this decision should be given purely prospective effect," meaning that the court's decision will affect not the case at hand.
In her opinion, Leadbetter cited various historical works and numerous opinions from courts around the country that argued that the practice of common-law marriage had lost its modern relevance, given the latter-day ease of obtaining a marriage license, and had instead become a source of fraudulent claims.
"The circumstances creating a need for the doctrine are not present in today's society," Leadbetter wrote. "Access to both civil and religious authorities for a ceremonial marriage is readily available in even the most rural areas of the Commonwealth. The cost is minimal, and the process simple and relatively expedient."
Well, THAT was interesting.
Yesterday, I had a departmental meeting in another part of the building that ran from about 4 p.m. to 5:15. When I got back to my desk, everyone was packing up to leave, and we were all talking about the hurricane. I expressed my two concerns about what the weather might do -- one, we have a slate roof, and every time we lose a slate, I hear the CHACHING of expensive replacement in my head, and two, we have a lot of old trees around our house.
Then, I noticed that my voicemail light was on.
Two messages from Dave. "Call me on my cell as soon as you get this." Two more of the same on my cell phone.
Uh oh.
I must be psychic, because when I called Dave back, he told me that "we had had a minor disaster" -- one of the huge oak trees in our backyard had snapped in the wind, and most of it was lying across the parking area and the back of the house.
Thankfully, it only grazed the house itself; some of the gutter was torn down, as was the phone line that runs from the decrepit garage to the back corner of our side of the house.
Super. I also, I think because of the stress, started having some contractions on the drive home, and immediately took to my bed when I got home. Luckily, they subsided fairly quickly, and I was able to plop on the couch and watch the Survivor premiere.
So today, Dave gets to wait around for the tree guys to come and cut up the pieces, for the princely sum of $800, and to wait for the Verizon people to come and repair the phone line.
Our town is a mess of downed trees and branches, but thankfully, we suffered no further damage. And the roof appears to have survived unscathed.
I'd really like a week where nothing breaks, is stolen, or falls down and ends up costing us time and money. Is that so wrong?
September 18, 2003
Governor McGreevey has declared a state of emergency for New Jersey, beginning at 4 p.m. No travel bans have been imposed.
Apparently, I am the most boring pregnant person ever, at least medically speaking. Had my 35-week appointment today, and everything is just dandy. Fudgette's head is down, BP was fine, urine was fine, and she was running away from the doppler, which was amusing. I can't believe that I start weekly appointments already. Less than five weeks to go!
Hey, how about I post something that's related to the law? There's a concept!
The dad in the infamous California "Pledge of Allegiance" case has regained partial legal custody of his daughter, which might help his chances of having the Supremes take up his challenge to the words "under God" in the Pledge.
Previously, the federal government had relied on Michael Newdow's lack of custody in order to allege that he did not have standing to bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter. Newdow, who is both a physician and an attorney, is handling this entire matter pro se.
September 17, 2003
September 15, 2003
I've had a rough few days. I started to get sick on Friday, and it got progressively worse during the weekend; we decided to go ahead with our trip to PA on Saturday, because we wanted to pick out our baby announcements. Unfortunately, while we were in the store looking at books, someone stole my wallet.
I got little sleep Saturday night, managed to go with my mom to get our stroller/travel system on Sunday, and then spent three hours getting home because of accidents and rain.
I opted not to go to work today, mostly because I'm still feeling like death on a Triscuit, but also because I wanted to go to the DMV and get my replacement driver's license. After three hours in the DMV (fuck you, Governor McGreevey), I am now the proud owner of the WORST driver's license photo in all creation -- I hate the guy who stole my wallet more for making me have a new photo taken when I'm almost 9 months pregnant -- and I still have to go the Social Security office.
Meh.
September 12, 2003
If you haven't had the opportunity to see Johnny Cash's brilliant and heartbreaking video for his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," go here. I'm still disappointed that it didn't win much at the VMAs a few weeks ago.
RIP, Johnny and John.
September 11, 2003
On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past, so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings.
New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute…
Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city's tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation -- a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless. I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit (which caused them to break away from their small town), some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution...
New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or Detroit multiplied by four. It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression...
Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers seem always to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in stalled subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit -- a sort of perpetual muddling through. Every facility is inadequate -- the hospitals and schools and playgrounds are overcrowded, the express highways are feverish, the unimproved highways and bridges are bottlenecks; there is not en ough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little. But the city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin -- the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled...
The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions. All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.
A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: 'This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.' If it were to go, all would go -- this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.
--- E.B. White, "This is New York"
God, I still love you, New York.
September 09, 2003
September 08, 2003
Jury selection has begun in a case accusing the American Automobile Association, better known as AAA, of negligence in the death of a teacher on Cape Cod in 2000. The suit alleges that Melissa Gosule's car broke down, and that a AAA tow truck driver left her in a parking lot late at night, saying that he was too busy to help. Gosule was later found dead, having been raped and stabbed by a man who had supposedly stopped to help her. The family seeks damages for loss of companionship, conscious pain and suffering and triple damages for false and misleading advertising.
Yet another reason why I think Gray Davis is a raging assmonkey.
Well, praise the Lord, it appears that I passed my fasting and two-hour postprandial glucose tests last week, and the Gestational Diabetes Saga should now be over.
*cabbage patches*
OK, I need some advice from been there, done that moms.
I need to buy a car seat/travel system for this tot. Here's the one that we were originally going to register for, and here's the one that we ended up registering for after trying them out at Babies R Us. I've also registered for a Kolcraft Snap and Go type thing, which the bucket seat snaps into.
Anyway, I read and hear pros and cons about practically every stroller out there. Any stories, recommendations, warnings? I could really use the help. Thanks!
September 07, 2003
Ah, another beautiful day here in Northern New Jersery. I was so tired after yesterday that I slept almost twelve hours, which was wonderful.
We headed down to PA yesterday with a friend in tow for my baby shower. It was a lovely day, filled with good food, good friends and relatives (I got to see my godmother, whom I NEVER see), and, of course, presents. My friend Marie did an absolutely amazing job on the entire thing, and I am immensely grateful to her and to my other friends who helped and who were incredibly generous to me, to Dave, and to Fudgette. Fudgette even got a tiny pink Mets jacket to wear to baseball games next summer.
Anyway, all of the loot is still in the car, and I'm starving, so I'll update more later. Hope you're enjoying this wonderful weather!
September 05, 2003
So my mother is finally going to meet my mother in law tomorrow. Yes, you read that right. Dave and I have been together a little over six years, and our parents have never met.
I'm more than a bit nervous.
A few of you might remember my joy late last summer (scroll down to July 23) when I got to meet one of my Broadway idols at a launch meeting for one of my company's products. Brian D'Arcy James could not have been kinder or more gracious in the presence of a nervous fangirl, and I've been watching to see what his next role will be. I found this morning that he's in talks to head the cast of Barry Manilow's new musical, which begins a pre-Broadway run in Philadelphia in late November.
I suspect that I'm going to have a hard time convincing my husband to attend a Manilow-penned musical. Maybe my mom, a professed Barry freak, will want to go with me...
September 03, 2003
Here's an artist's rendering of what Michael Jackson might look like today had he not spent zillions on plastic surgery.
I'm a little calmer now, but not much, so here's the story:
You all know about my hassles with the glucose tolerance test, and you also know that I thought that all of that crap was over with when I passed the three-hour test a couple of weeks back. If you recall, three out of four of my levels were well under the limits, and only the fourth and final reading was elevated. SLIGHTLY. Like, one point above the max on the scale. When I got my results, the nurse who called me indicated that my doctor, who also happens to be the head of the practice and the Chief of Obstetrics at the hospital where I'm delivering the baby, wanted me to go for a fasting and a two-hour postprandial test just to be on the safe side, four weeks from that time. That would take us up to next week, when I will be 34 weeks pregnant. No biggie, no worries, one more quick test.
Fast forward to yesterday. I had my standard every-two-weeks appointment with one of the other docs in the practice, and everything was fine. Gained two pounds (thank you Las Vegas!), BP was low, no sugar or protein in the urine, baby's heartrate was strong, and the baby's head appears to be down. Everything's great, come back in two weeks.
About an hour after I got home, the phone rang, and it was the head of the practice. He indicated that he had talked my results over with his partners, and they had recommended that I repeat the three-hour glucose tolerance test. Like, as soon as possible. Needless to say, I was taken aback, and extremely unhappy. He also questioned why I hadn't gone ahead and done the postprandial test that he recommended after my first three-hour test. "Because your nurse told me to do it in four weeks," I said. He said that he didn't know why they would have told me that, because he usually would have wanted to see the results in one to two weeks. HELLO? You're just figuring this out now?
Anyway, Dave put a message in to the doctor, because I don't want to take this test again. By the time I do the three days of prep, and because I have a two-day offsite meeting next week, I will be more than 34 weeks when the test is taken, and about 35 weeks when I get the results. Theoretically, I could deliver at any time after that, so what's the point of taking the test?
I'm so willing to be careful about what I eat, and I'd certainly be happy to submit to an ultrasound to make sure that the baby isn't too large, but I think that making me go through the ickiness of this test for a second time at this incredibly late stage is just too much to ask.
Maybe I'm just hormonal. We'll see what happens when my doctor calls me back, if he manages to do so.
I'm having a really bad week. Posting will be sparse. Isn't this supposed to be a really joyous time?
September 01, 2003
I'm baking. Of my own volition. The nesting phase has obviously begun.
Here's a fascinating story about a whole lot of bath toys lost at sea. If you find one, and it's authenticated by the manufacturer, you'll get a $100 savings bond!
