A stranger said six words that saved my husband’s life

My takeaway from this article was the importance of taking charge of your own (or your husband’s) medical treatment.

Joel elected to have a hip replacement. He counted on it to improve his quality of life.

Instead, a nick from the retractor caused a life-threatening bleed that set off a cascade of catastrophes. Within a few hours, he went from a healthy, active, 63-year-old to an unconscious, life-support-dependent ICU patient. Kidney failure followed, plus an obstructed colon and compartment syndrome — all complications of what should have been a routine procedure.

To make matters worse, the doctor who fucked up his hip replacement was in charge of fixing the mistake. Joel instead embarked on a months-long hospitalization with no guaranteed survival….

Just minutes before, a nurse had told me one doctor advocated amputating Joel’s leg; the other disagreed. The argument continued.

Why only two doctors instead of a larger team? I wondered. Why did they not ask my opinion? Who would make the ultimate decision?

That’s when a rabbi came to see me. “You can request a different hospital,” she told me calmly. “You could have your husband transferred.”

Those six words seemed so obvious…

Now, before every doctor appointment, I compose a list of questions, complaints and possible treatments. When a doctor pooh-poohs a test, I challenge their opinion. When a nurse minimizes a symptom, I repeat my concern. When a result goes unnoticed, I call attention to it. And my advocacy goes beyond medicine. When I appeared in court on a probate issue, I wrote a script for my lawyer with points to make to the judge.

1,300 words: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/botched-hip-replacement-doctors-hospital-transfer-patient-advocacy_n_6977b017e4b01cc3c1ad5e0a.

And good news from Fix the News:

Child mortality down 60% in two generations, as low-cost tools save millions. Since 1990, global under-five deaths have fallen from 13 million to 4.9 million a year, one of the largest public health gains in human history. Vaccines, oral rehydration, bed nets and safer births have been at the heart of this, with deaths from diarrhoea down 75% and malaria by 63%. Although progress has slowed in the last decade, the tools to prevent most remaining deaths exist. The gap is now political will rather than innovation. UNICEF

And an image from my collection:

Word Crimes

A song by Weird Al Yankovic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc. 3 minutes 45 seconds; a parody of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. Lyrics and detailed explanation: https://genius.com/Weird-al-yankovic-word-crimes-lyrics.

One thing I ask of you (Okay)
Time to learn your homophones is past due (Woo)
Learn to diagram a sentence, too
Always say “to whom”, don’t ever say “to who” (Woo)
And listen up when I tell you this
I hope you never use quotation marks for emphasis (Woo)

Also see https://laughlearnlinks.home.blog/2025/05/15/white-and-nerdy/.

And good news from Fix the News:

Adult smoking in the United States has dropped below 10% for the first time. New analysis of national survey data found that cigarette use fell from 10.8% of adults in 2023 to 9.9% in 2024 (about 25 million people) down from 42% in 1964. The shift has helped drive a long fall in cancer mortality, with the American Cancer Society estimating reduced smoking prevented nearly four million lung cancer deaths between 1970 and 2022. Gizmodo

Plus an image from my collection, in honor of (recently) St. Patrick’s Day:

Big Bang prediction confirmed

Here’s the story of how the Big Bang’s fifth and final great prediction was confirmed.

…As time went forward ((from the instant of the Big Bang)), the Universe would cool, expand, and gravitate all together. First atomic nuclei would form from protons and neutrons, then neutral atoms would form, and then gravitation would lead to stars, galaxies, and the grand structures of the cosmic web. These leftover relics — the light elements formed in the Big Bang, the relic photons from the primordial plasma, and the large-scale structure of the Universe — would, along with the cosmic expansion of the Universe, form the four modern cornerstones of the Big Bang.

But remaining from an even earlier epoch, a fifth cornerstone should exist as well. There would be an early signal left over from when the Universe was just one second old: a bath of neutrinos and antineutrinos. Known as the cosmic neutrino background (CNB), it was theorized generations ago but was dismissed throughout the 20th century as being fundamentally undetectable.

That’s no longer the case.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/big-bangs-final-prediction. 3,600 words, dense but worth it: it’s how all of the Universe started!

And good news from Fix the News:

River otters have staged a remarkable comeback across North America’s Great Lakes after disappearing from many waterways by the 1970s. Reintroductions beginning in the 1980s, combined with wetland restoration and pollution controls under the 1972 US–Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, have allowed breeding populations to recover across Ohio, New York, Ontario and beyond. As apex predators, their return signals cleaner water and healthier ecosystems. Rewilding Magazine

And an image from my collection:

Fifty shirts of “Hey—”

Amusing, weird, clever… and several are NSFW. Here ya go: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/50-absolutely-hilarious-t-shirts.

One example:

Good news from Fix the News:

Sweden cuts shootings by 63% after policing overhaul. Gun violence in Sweden has dropped sharply since peaking in 2022, with shooting incidents falling to 147 in 2025, down from the 390 recorded three years earlier. Authorities attribute the shift to expanded surveillance powers, tougher sentencing and new police tactics targeting criminal networks, which have also improved asset seizures and disruption of gang operations. Reuters

If it’s possible in Sweden (in just three years), maybe it’s possible here…

And an image from my collection. People’s profile pictures on dating sites often include other people; for privacy, many people will “scratch out” the faces of the others: