Asskicking redux

I had my last appointment of my October Healthcare Tour today, and what a relief to be done with all of those! This one was just a cleaning at the dentist, so it was an easy one, too. I got a good check-up from the wonderful Dr. Herbster. He told me I didn’t have a lot of plaque build-up and said, “Good job!” Yay! I can’t help it...I like getting praise from my healthcare professionals. It means I’m doing something right!

As he scraped away, he chatted with me. (We went to high school together, so we have that little bond.) He said, “Hey, I got my flu shot!” He changed instruments then, so I was able to say, “Me too!” He went on to say that he went twenty years without getting a flu shot, but last year, he got nailed with the flu, and so did his wife—at the same time. He said he’s never been so miserable in his life, and he understands now why people are hospitalized with influenza and even die from it. He changed instruments again, and I said, “Exactly! That’s what I keep trying to tell people...it really can be a killer!” He agreed and said that he wasn’t taking that chance again, so he got his shot as soon as he could this year. He also said that when him and his wife were sick, his folks wanted to come over and help them, but he told them that the best thing they could do was stay away. He didn’t want them to get it. He’s exactly right. Some people are more susceptible to complications from it, and that includes the elderly.

PLEASE don’t ignore the flu shot. Influenza might not kill you if you’re very healthy, but it will definitely make you feel like shit for a good couple of weeks. And who wants to feel like shit for that long? Not me!

Speaking of healthcare, some of you may recall that I wrote a blog entry back in April titled “This needs an asskicking.” It was a response to one of those things that makes its way around the Interwebz via email and social media posts. It was about some creepy guy confronting a group of young people in a restaurant about the Affordable Care Act and schooling them about what it means to be free. The email being passed around was one of the dumbest of its type that I’ve ever read, and I had a little fun skewering it. (It really was a fun one to write!)

Well, I’ve been noticing that that entry was getting a lot of hits. Not up in the thousands or anything like that, but I’ve been getting multiple hits per day from all over the country, mainly on that entry. I was wondering what was going on, and I was finally able to track down the source, at least somewhat. Some of the visits seem to be just from people doing a search for that particular email letter. Since I copy the whole thing in my entry, it’s understandable that a search for it would give that entry as one of the results. Although I honestly do not know how anyone other than my small group of readers came across it, I found a couple of places where someone had posted it. Both were discussions of that email thing, and someone posted the link to my entry in both forums.

One was an IMDb forum. I have no idea why that was being discussed on an IMDb forum. I use IMDb occasionally to look up stuff about movies, but I don’t participate in any discussion forums, so that was weird.

Even weirder was that one of the discussions was on a Florida Sportsman forum.


I know, right? I was like, “How the heck did my blog entry end up on Florida Sportsman??” There was some back and forth discussion on the Affordable Care Act, from both supporters and haters. Someone there posted the original email letter thing, and one of the guys on the forum responded, “And an equally amusing response” and provided the link to my entry. I don’t know how he came across it, but it apparently amused him enough to post the link in a discussion forum! I'm glad you enjoyed it, Gary!

You know how we always say, “Of course, the people who need to read this never will”? Perhaps this time that didn’t hold true. At least one person said that they couldn’t get past the first paragraph or so because it was a typical liberal response, blah blah blah. But maybe one or two read it and it planted a little kernel of doubt in their minds about their hysterical response to a law designed to insure more people. Truthfully, I kind of doubt it. It still makes me happy that they saw it, though, and maybe got an eyeful of just how ridiculous those circulated things appear to some of us.