Where not to go when you need medical attention?
Finding the best medical staff to cure your ills can be a daunting task.
Since getting hurt while competing in a fighting sport is inevitable, it’s become more and more important for present day fighters to know where they can go to receive the best medical attention. Which is the best hospital? Which of the many physicians can you trust to give you optimum care? If you’ve been lucky enough to find a good physician, then why not pass his name along to your mates.
Throughout the ages doctors have been considered sacrosanct
The medical profession has built a reputation of helping people. When someone was sick or in need of emergency medical care, they were always putting their lives on hold. We consider these individuals to be the most caring and compassionate people on earth, society’s greatest humanitarians.
Along the way, some doctors have given the profession a black eye. We’ve heard the tales of double dipping, tax fraud, and the malpractice suits which exposed the horrific, botched plastic surgeries. We hoped beyond hope that the doctors were wrongly accused. We can no longer trust them in totality. With the freewheeling dispensing of drugs, some doctors have ruined people’s lives, while others actually murdered their patients. As of late, we see so many being the pawns of the pharmaceutical companies. It’s like they’ve all become members of this super sales force.
Less we forget, history has seen a number of doctors who have played God. Here are just a few examples.
In 1896, at the age of 34, Dr. Holmes died in Philadelphia after being hung by the neck. Over a span of six years, they say he killed up to 200.
Dr. Henry Holmes would first kill you, then collect on your insurance
Born Herman Mudgett, Holmes went to the University of Michigan Medical School to become a doctor. During this period, he’d often steal bodies and disfigure them, then claim the people had been killed accidentally. Through this procedure, he was able to collect money from insurance policies that he took out on each person.
After graduating, he moved to Chicago, where he convinced a local pharmacy worker to allow him to take over ownership of a hotel. At this hotel he’d experiment with bodies, often letting the women he chose suffocate to death. The bodies were often dissected, stripped of their flesh and made into skeleton models which he then sold to medical schools.
Dr. Conrad Murray is shown just before being remanded into custody after the jury returned the guilty verdict in his involuntary manslaughter trial on November 7, 2011 in Los Angeles. Photo: Pool/Getty Images
Dr. Murray’s prescription – get plenty of rest.
On November 7, 2011, Dr. Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of singer Michael Jackson. The prosecutors in the case told jurors: “misplaced trust in the hands of Murray cost Jackson his life.”
Murray’s defense counsel claimed Jackson, who was tired and under pressure from rehearsing, took eight tablets of lorazepam (Ativan), a sedative, then when Dr. Murray left the room, he self-administered a dose of propofol (Diprivan) that, with the lorazepam, created a perfect storm in his body to kill him instantly.
Brooklyn-born cardiologist Dr. Daniel Wohlgelernter claimed, “Jackson had a healthy heart and no problems with high blood pressure or high cholesterol — so a cardiologist like Murray didn’t make sense as his dedicated physician on the ill-fated “This Is It” concert series. An interventional cardiologist not trained in substance abuse, addiction medicine or sleep disturbance would not be the appropriate candidate to be the physician for Jackson.”
After reviewing Murray’s tour contract, Wohlgelernter said he was surprised Murray had agreed to close his practice and become “entirely dependent” on one patient. If Jackson couldn’t perform and the series was canceled or postponed, the promoter could bail out on Murray’s $150,000-per-month job with little warning.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian at one of his many speaking engagements.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the promoter of euthanasia
On the November 22, 1998 broadcast of CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Kevorkian allowed the airing of a videotape he made on September 17, 1998, which depicted the voluntary euthanasia of Thomas Youk, 52, who was in the final stages of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After Youk provided his full informed consent, Kevorkian himself administered Youk a lethal injection. This was highly significant, as all of his earlier clients had reportedly completed the process themselves. During the videotape, Kevorkian dared the authorities to try to convict him or stop him from carrying out mercy killings.
Fighters have to be wary of the unscrupulous promoter of their show and make certain they have a competent physician at ringside. In the past, some promoters were known to sidestep this requirement and have an unqualified person pose as a licensed physician.
When they scrimp on the necessities, they place the fighters’ well being in jeopardy, especially when they have a packed fight card of between 20 to 30 fighters. Odds favor someone getting hurt, someone who will need their eyes checked, an arm put in a sling or a face being stitched up. With the number of shows expanding, the necessity for having the right physician present becomes increasingly more difficult.
As a check and balance, the same way the fighters go through the California State Athletic Commission pre-fight testing, we should have a competency test for our fight doctors. The test below was designed to do just that. Prior to the next show, we’d should have them all take this test. All they need to do is put a circle around the correct answer or answers that describe the following medical terms:
Artery
a) Is it a large road, river or railroad line?
b) Is it an elastic blood vessel that transports blood away from the heart?
c) Or is it the study of paintings?
Bacteria
a) Is it the plural of bacterium.
b) Is it the back door to the cafeteria?
c) It can make us sick and also keep us alive.
d) It can be found in extreme environments such as hot boiling water.
Benign
a) Is it someone who has a kindly disposition
b) Is it what you be, after you be eight
c) Is it a non-cancerous tumor.
Cauterize
a) Means the sealing of a wound by freezing
b) A hot chick that just looked your way
c) The burning of something with heat in order to destroy the infected tissue, usually with a hot iron, electricity, or chemicals.
Coma
a) Easy peasy, it’s a punctuation mark
b) It’s a state of unconsciousness lasting more than six hours in which a person may or may not awake.
Enema
a) Not your friend
b) A procedure that helps clean out that stubborn stool
c) Not all that great of a Christmas gift
Fester
a) Is someone who is quicker than you
b) Twin brother of Marshal Dillon’s sidekick Chester
c) Choose your poison, some people call them boils, a pock, a hickey, a pimple, a pustule or a zit.
Tumor
a) One, plus one more
b) When it comes to brain tumors, there are over 120 different types.
c) An abnormal growth of tissue resulting from uncontrolled, progressive multiplication of cells
Impotent
a) A distinguished person, well known
b) Fruitless
c) An unproductive partner
Urine
a) It’s the opposite of you’re out
b) This typically sterile liquid, by-product of the body, is 95% water and secreted by the kidneys
*If you’re like boxer Juan Manuel Marquez and you believe in the strategy of drinking your own urine, here is the breakdown or average quantity of the substances in a 100 milliliter vile of urine: 682 milligrams of Urea nitrogen, 1,459 milligrams of Urea, 36 milligrams of Creatinin nitrogen, 97.20 milligrams of Creatinin, 12.30 milligrams of Uric acid nitrogen, 36.9 milligrams of Uric acid, 9.7 milligrams of Amino nitrogen, 57 milligrams of Ammonia nitrogen, 212 of Sodium, 137 milligrams of Potassium, 19.5 milligrams of Calcium, 11.3 milligrams of Magnesium, 314 milligrams of Chloride, 91 milligrams of sulphate, 83 milligrams of Inorganic sulphate, 127 milligrams of Inorganic phosphate and finally 27.8 milligrams of N/10 acid.
Yummy!
