Flu, Earthquakes, and taking care of each other

Last week was Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, organized by the folks who started the Flu Wiki, which is an international collaborative project aimed at collecting useful information and guidelines to share with communities and individuals for planning and preparing in the event of an influenza pandemic. There is excellent information there on influenza history, epidemiology, immunology, etc., as well as suggestions for public health considerations and areas communities and individuals would do well to consider beforehand.

There was indeed much more information in the news about pandemic flu preparedness (or, in most cases, pointing at the lack of preparedness so far) than there had been before the collective mind had been put on alert by Hurricane Katrina. King County executive Ron Sims convened a Business Forum on Pandemic Flu in the Seattle area, telling the 75 attendees, “This is the one that keeps me up at night,” and "spoke of 'devastating consequences' and 'extraordinary measures' that will follow when – not if – the avian flu virus mutates to allow human-to-human contact and attacks the globe." There was discussion of, and lots of commentary on, the federal government's preparedness plan (still in draft form, not publically released yet) in newspapers and in blogs.

DemFromCT at The Next Hurrah suggests that "We don't all need to turn survivalist today, but educating ourselves about the potential risks and keeping up with the news is a prudent thing to do. Some preparation efforts will serve you in a hurricane, a blizzard, a blackout or an earthquake. The difference with pandemic flu is that everyone is affected, and that's another thing to keep in mind (you can't expect huge amounts of help from a neighbor state)."

and at The Daily Kos says, " So what's a reasoned approach? In a nutshell, plan for the worst and hope for the best. All this discussion, this hype, if you will, is designed to teach people that the reality of a pandemic is real and that planning is worthwhile and can save lives. it also should teach everyone in Congress and the WH that having an intact public health apparatus (as my Flu Wiki colleagues the reveres at Effect Measure put it) that it's core public health functions (surveillance, vital records, maternal and child health, substance abuse, communicable disease, immunization, etc., etc.) that have been shafted and need to be built up. First responders are part of that. We should have learned that from 9/11, another teachable moment, but instead funds to support them have continued to be cut."

Such an important part of an "intact public health apparatus" is the strength of community relationships and networks. Remembering that "primary care" and "first response" begin with taking care of ourselves and our friends and relations, at the same time or before we turn to "experts" and "authorities". Knowing our neighbors and neighborhood resources, knowing who might need what kind of support if all the schools and stores and pharmacies are closed for a while.

Also see The Emergency Toolshed at global villages for some good ideas (thank you to Lucas Gonzalez, an Open Space friend and a physician in the Canary Islands, for a lot of this information).

Medicare's 40th Anniversary

"When Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law on July 30, 1965, former President Harry Truman received the first Medicare card. He would be shocked that 40 years later, more than 45 million Americans have no health coverage, half of all personal bankruptcies are health-related, and lack of universal insurance is increasingly hurting our economy as well as our health.

Truman proposed national health insurance for all Americans in 1945. He said, "By preventing illness, by assuring access to needed community and personal health services...and by protecting our people against the loss caused by sickness, we shall strengthen our national health, our national defense and our productivity."

If Americans without health insurance were a nation, the population would be bigger than Canada -- plus Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire and Vermont."

See the Common Dreams Newscenter for the rest of this article by Holly Sklar, and thanks to the Population Health Forum for the link.

Uncovering Some Kind of Sanity

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week
from the works of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

NOT STUCK WITH SICKNESS

"When patients come into a treatment situation, they may have a sense of anxiety, a sense of hope, or a sense of complete negativity. It is a very sensitive matter to bring them into the right situation and work with them. The main point is that they are not stuck with their sickness. If a person regards sickness as an enemy, then his body has no working basis to be well. He thinks his body is invaded by enemies, and he goes to the doctor to get rid of these foreigners occupying his castle. And once that's taken care of, it's all over. So no relationship is established. There is another problem which goes back even further -- the concept of death as the archenemy, where we try to avoid death every minute, every second. There has to be more emphasis on creating an atmosphere of help. Sickness is a message, and it can be cured if the right situation is created....Mind reflects body, and body is affected by the atmosphere. The idea is recovering rather than being cured of a particular disease. This approach could also be used with older people who are dying. In the process of dying, they are uncovering some kind of sanity. So they approach their death peacefully."

From "Intrinsic Health," in THE SANITY WE ARE BORN WITH: A BUDDHIST APPROACH TO PSYCHOLOGY, pages 163- 164.

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources. Subscribe here.

Relational Medicine I

Relationship-Centered Care (RCC) was an area of exploration cultivated by the Fetzer Institute a few years ago (they also sponsored the seeds for the Collective Wisdom Initiative, and currently are devoted to "fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness"). The specific kinds of relationships mentioned were those between patient & practitioner, practitioner & practitioner, practitioner & community, and self-awareness.

Lately at our office we've been considering another aspect: the relationship between patient and medical office staff. Because we are unexpectedly short-staffed at the moment, Gail, one of our practitioners, has been alternating between being reception staff and doctoring. So far it's been eye-opening and appalling, what our long-suffering staff people have been putting up with uncomplainingly. Some of our patients, even some of those who have very warm and mutually respectful relationships with their practitioners, can be rude, and even mean, to our receptionists, billing staff, and medical assistants. How come? I'm reminded of the years I spent waiting tables while in college...sometimes we treat those who are working in service positions less like fellow human beings and more like vehicles to get what we want or need.

Our goal and intention is to cultivate an atmosphere and a culture where our support staffers feel themselves supported too, and where mutual respect is part of every relationship. Our current staff people deeply understand that their interactions with patients are opportunities, often the first opportunity our group has, to offer compassion, care and healing.

Phoenix Medicine

One Sky Medicine has "gone out of business" and closed its doors for the last time. Many of the practitioners and staff members are choosing to walk through the embers of dissolution and rebirth as a group, unwilling to give up on our collaborative and family-like relationships. We're re-grouping, re-naming, and re-membering our original medicine in a new honey & teal-colored home set within the big welcoming community of the Seattle Healing Arts Center.

Fernando tells us how glad he is that we're going on together.

By the Jewish calendar, we're are currently in the period called "the counting of the omer," marking the 49 days between fleeing slavery in Egypt, entering the wilderness, and receiving/accepting the teachings of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. At one of the levels of traditional interpretation, "Egypt" stands for the narrow spaces in our lives, the ways we enslave ourselves to attitudes, beliefs, self-imposed limitations. "Sinai" stands for the revelation of the on-going possibility of conscious awakening. My hunch is that the "going on together" is an essential characteristic of the wilderness itself, and of the process of consciousness awakening, and of eventually entering that "land of milk and honey"--learning to be together well is wild work, and the most necessary.