Jessica, it's unlikely that the hospital would give the information out over the phone. You'd either have to go in to sign the waiver in person. Your better bet might be to call the OB's office and see if they need any permission from you to access the record.

Well, I found out what that email was about. A few days ago, my landlord, a retired professor, asked me what my teaching schedule was like. I said something like, "Not great -- I've got courses spread out all over the day, so I have to be there from 8 until 5:30 four days a week." And he took it upon himself to tell someone he knew who knows the head of the math department.

Oh good lord.

Ah ... small towns. Where if someone overhears you fart, your doctor calls you ten minutes later to make sure your digestion is working ok.

Josh Lyman absolutely does not swear enough. I'm just saying. Sometimes I've bought people food when I really thought they wanted booze, but those people who are all "drug test food stamp recipients" make me want to use words that even David Milch from Deadwood would turn from as too harsh. Because that shit is not an exercise to me and because nobody "hands me" shit. Getting free money can feel like a full-time job sometimes and I didn't realize getting a brain injury required me to hand over my Constitutional protections against self-incimination, and not because my urine has seeds and stems...I've only used pot, like, twice, and I've been on benefits fifteen years. Dang, I'm heading for a full-on Comment here...call them a fatuous idiot for me. You know you want to. On a lighter note, that relates to SportsNight because Keith does that thing Casey does of breaking conversations into parts a-g.

And he took it upon himself to tell someone he knew who knows the head of the math department.

I guess that's what your department head meant by channels in small towns.

I haven't posted a Max update in quite a while. I'll remedy that now.

He's been through radiation, and he saw the specialist yesterday to see if he can come off some of the meds he was on to fight the lung infection.

Short answer: She was pleased. And she isn't a vet who's default state is "displeased." She cut the antibiotic out completely and started weaning him off the steroid. I think she'd have cut down further, but she said she tries to keep it down to two major changes per visit.

He's still too thin, but at least he's gaining weight (up three ounces since his last visit to the oncologist last Friday!). The big issue is that his liver enzymes have gone through the roof. But the antibiotic, and to a lesser extent the steroid, can cause liver enzyme problems. So he gets blood work in two weeks to see if taking him off those meds help.

But he's down to one capsule in the morning and one capsule in the evening. Plus the sub-Q injection twice a week, but that doesn't seem to bother him much.

Yay, Max! Keep fighting, little dude!

This is what makes me *boggle* about the right in the US at the moment, too.

Fox news and talk radio have created an alternate reality for the right. Suddenly, letting the tax rates for the top brackets revert to 3% higher is a Fascist-Communist (not an oxymoron in the right-wing media) plot to nationalize the private sector.

Fox news and talk radio have created an alternate reality for the right.

Yep. I just happened to be reading this post on Sullivan's blog of a reader's email:

In Defense of Talk Radio Listeners, Ctd

I share Conor's belief that by having civil, reasonable dialogs, we can try to resolve or at least clarify our disagreements. My main beef with Talk Radio is that its stars pointedly do not share this belief. They thrive on endless conflict and illusions of persecution. It is more entertaining for them to pretend that the Left is not motivated by a desire to make the country better, but a desire to destroy it and enslave much of the population, so that's what they say. I listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin regularly, and all three promote some version of this canard, Levin being by far the worst offender.

Beyond refusing to seriously consider the other side's concerns and proposals, these stars also never have guests who disagree with them or challenge their assertions. They almost never have guests who are not reliable, mainstream conservatives. All that we get are occasional liberal callers. For whatever reason, these people tend to be more stupid and ill-informed than most liberals I know, so the stars usually trounce them in debate. Limbaugh can be persuasive when engaging in this ritual, but Hannity simply cuts people off if they turn out to be smart and have some point he cannot counter, and Levin dispatches liberal callers with a storm of invective.

The upshot is that their listeners don't have an accurate picture of their opponents, and don't know what the Left actually thinks and stands for. It's in this atmosphere that we get a bunch of talk about "socialism" and "government takeover," and demands to cut taxes without specifics on what spending to cut.