Columbia Anniversary

The fact that the two Shuttle tragedies happened so close to each other on the calendar never really sunk in before.

It's interesting that the Columbia tragedy didn't affect me the same way as the Challenger. Was it the sad fact that it wasn't new, that it had happened before? Perhaps because I was older and busier with less time to dwell on the sad event.

I do remember the day vividly of course. We were busy getting ready for Jack's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. At the party the three year-olds were blissfully ignorant of the tragic happenings but the parents murmered "sad," "terrible," and "again."

Five years later missions continue but those we lost are not forgotten. It is our prayer that we never have a third Shuttle disaster.

Challenger Anniversary

Twenty-two years ago today the nation suffered a tragic loss. One of those moments that sticks in the collective memory of a generation. Millions watched live on that bright blue January day to see a school teacher, Christa McAuliffe, journey into space on the Space Shuttle Challenger.

I was a junior in high school then. I didn't see it live. I was attending the funeral for a teammates' father. I suppose it made it more surreal to come out of a funeral to immediately hear on the radio of the Challenger disaster.

But the nation healed, persevered and forged ahead like it had before, like it has since and like it will again.

The video is of President Reagan's address to the nation that night.

Uh-oh.

Baxter recalls 9 lots of heparin sodium injection.

I note this as significant for the bleeding disorders community because heparin sodium is used to flush IV or port lines or to prevent unwanted clots in those same line.

We used a low-dose heparin sodium solution (just enough to fill the port reservoir and catheter) as part of our port infusion routine in the year and a half Jack had a port.

A list of the batches and lots are here.

Focus on Health Insurance Lifetime Caps

This Washington Post article does a nice job putting some flesh on the lifetime cap issue. Some key graphs:

Statistics on how many people exceed the lifetime caps are hard to come by, but advocates note that the amount of many caps hasn't changed in decades, or at least has not kept up with health-care inflation and the sky-high cost of lifesaving new therapies, making it more likely that people will reach the limit.

and,

Three of Kerry and Chuck Fatula's four boys have hemophilia, a rare inherited bleeding disorder that prevents their blood from clotting normally. All three punched through the $1 million lifetime cap in the Pittsburgh area family's private insurance policy within a few months of one another in 2004, their mother said.

The clotting factor they take to prevent and control bleeding costs about $150,000 a month, and at various times each has been hospitalized for internal bleeding or to treat infections of the ports that allow them to take medication intravenously, Kerry Fatula said. For now, Medicaid pays medical bills for all three. But the eldest, Paul, a senior in high school who physically can do "90 percent" of what his healthy peers can, recently turned 18 and must qualify as a disabled adult to retain federal assistance, she said.

I had some personal reflections on the lifetime cap issue in a previous post here.