Want to share medical information with past sexual someones, but just can’t find the words to say? Say it in an e-card! Internet Sexuality Information Services has developed inSPOT— short for “Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks”—to help bring pesky STD chats into the realm of belated birthdays and “just because” dancing GIFs. InSPOT provides a variety of virtual cards (Slate’s got screenshots of the e-offerings) complete with cute little phrases like “I got screwed while screwing, you might have too,” “Sometimes there are strings attached,” and “Got laid. Was happy. Got tested. Wasn’t healthy.”

As you might imagine, there are right ways and wrong ways to send an STD notification e-card. According to InSPOT, “If you decide to compose a personal message, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Think about how you were told—what you liked and what you didn’t—and put the best of it into words.” Furthermore, “You can send postcards anonymously or from your email address. Historically, when you tell a sex partner(s) yourself, it’s more likely s.he will ‘hear’ the message and get tested.”

I’m all for making STD notification easier, and if this e-card system helps people take the initiative to get tested, I think that’s great. Still, please do not send me one of these e-cards. First of all, as the e-card subject line reads “e-card from a concerned friend re: your health — via inSPOT,” it’s probably heading straight to my Spam folder, along with p3n1s enlargement notes and overseas investment opportunities. Second, I fear that the “anonymous” feature may encourage the grade school community to abuse the inSPOT system for its own amusement. Finally, while I accept the witless drivel of the e-card on throwaway holidays, I’d really prefer it not be used to impart important information concerning my reproductive system.

Take one inSPOT e-card for example (perfect for the journalist!). It reads: “Who? What? When? Where? It doesn’t matter. I got an STD; you might have it too. Please get checked out.” Actually, it does matter. And these oversized emoticons aren’t helping.

Tomorrow’s the monthly D.C. Council legislative meeting. This morning, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray held his usual preview press conference. Here’s the rundown:

• Vince Gray Punctuality Watch: The presser kicked off at 9:42 a.m.—12 minutes late. Getting better, Mr. Chairman!
• Things kicked off with a presentation from At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania on his “Healthy DC” universal-health-care plan. The meat of the policy proposal is to provide an affordable health insurance option for a relatively small part of the city populace: the approximately 25,000 uninsured folks who make too much to be eligible for Medicaid or the D.C. Healthcare Alliance program. Will spare the details, but the costs are intended to be no more than 3 percent of annual income for participants, with a District subsidy covering the rest.

  Along with the bridge insurance program comes a requirement that all District residents over 18 years of age be continuously insured. Anyone filing a D.C. tax return will be required to check a box attesting they’re insured. Enforcement is still vague; Catania said liars could be prosecuted for tax fraud—another option, he says, would be to cross-reference all emergency-room visitors with their tax returns.

  How is it being paid for? Under Catania’s proposal, the individuals are expected to bear a little more than half of the cost through monthly premiums. As for the remainder, a new 2 percent premium tax on HMOs raises a chunk, and taxes paid by CareFirst, the local Blue Cross licensee, takes care of most of the rest. Also kicking in, but not directly: A doubling of the District’s excise tax on cigarettes, from $1 to $2.

  The plan is scheduled to kick in on July 1, 2009; Gray said he hopes to hold a hearing on the plan before the end of the budget season.

• Looks like Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry’s plan to rename the Southeast-Southwest Freeway and part of Maine Avenue SW after Martin Luther King isn’t going anywhere fast. Said Gray: “I have a number of concerns about that…as well as a number of my colleagues….I think this is one of those where I think I will have a hearing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

These days, everyone is a fucking doctor. People get an upset stomach and they blame it on food poisoning from “that nasty Chinese place.” Like, how do you know? Did you analyze your own stool sample? I don’t think so. But when four of us got sick—in unmentionable, horrible ways—after eating some delicious raw oysters, shucked straight from the bucket by firelight, well, I was pretty sure what had happened. The only confusing thing was that we didn’t get sick for about two days after consuming the briny little treats.

So I turned to the real expert: the Internet! Well, turns out Norovirus—which causes most of the food poisoning cases in the U.S. and is found in raw oysters—takes one to two days to incubate. And, horror of horrors, I am still contagious. If I don’t wash my hands compulsively, I could infect someone else. Which means I could quickly bring the City Paper to a halt. I am going home.

Yesterday, I received this e-mail in my inbox announcing something called Shecky’s Girls Night Out. You’re invited … if you can get your priorities straight in time:

I do not envy the woman forced to choose between these two lists. True, as a sassy, independent woman, I find alcohol and frivolous purchases irresistible. But as a batshit crazy woman, I need to maintain my ongoing surveillance of my ex-boyfriend’s online photosets, and consider not drinking a latte “doing” something. Now I know what Sophie felt like.

Washingtoniennes have until April 15th to decide.

Over the past two weeks, I heard this joke three times:

Q: What do you call a sword swallower with health insurance?
A: A Canadian!

Ba-dump-ching!

In this week’s Show and Tell, I spoke with two American sword-swallowing couples about their experiences with horrific, uninsured throat injuries! Palace of Wonders employees and traveling side-show act Tyler Fyre and Thrill Kill Jill (above) and Centreville, Va. performers Charon Henning and Alex Kensington were kind enough to share their incredible injury stories (and their lame industry jokes).

Says Palace of Wonders museum director James Taylor,

Self-deprecation is a necessary element to the side-show business. Performers use massive amounts of double entendree, because that’s the way to make most of these acts palpatable to the audience: They make it seem funny so that the crowds can get past the hairs standing on the backs of their necks.

Neck hairs, step right up: Click here for a sword swallowing, fire breathing audio slideshow with Tyler and Jill.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

How’s this name for a city department head? Dr. Pierre Vigilance will take over the health department, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced today.

Vigilance comes from the Baltimore County, Maryland, heath department, where he’s been director since 2005. He holds an M.D. and master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins, and he has D.C. ties, too, having gone to college at GW and his medical residency at Howard.

The man still has to be approved by the D.C. Council, but in a good sign, At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania—the health committee chair and de facto D.C. health czar—just issued a press release saying he’s “encouraged” by the nomination.

From the release: “The Mayor and his team deserve a lot of credit for the manner in which they conducted this search,” said Catania. “The process was deliberate but quick, which was necessary given the importance of the position to the city’s healthcare system.”

At a press conference this morning, Fenty namechecked all the issues Vigilance is to tackle—childhood obesity, lead poisoning, infant mortality, et al.

On the obesity issue, Vigilance says he speaks from experience: Looking svelte in a tailored suit, he recounted how he weighed as much as 250 pounds during his residency at Howard: “How can you be speaking about health and health issues if you aren’t willing to make some of these own changes?”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

In re my fucked-up leg:

Professional Diagnosis: egg-sized hematoma

Suggested Treatment: elevate leg, stay off leg, hot compress four times daily

(Treatment Already Underway Before Doc Visit: elevate leg, stay off leg, occasional hot compress)

Cost: $40 ($20 for doc visit; $20 for just-in-case X-ray)

I’m never consulting you people about my health again!

So I had a bike accident last Thursday—guy did a U-turn in front of me going westbound on the 1400 block of U Street NW. Cost me a $120 wheel, a sprained wrist, and a giant cool-ass bruise.

Well, it used to be a cool-ass bruise; now it’s getting a little annoying. There’s clearly a sac of blood and pus under there and it doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. I’m thinking I should go get this thing drained. Then again, that’s a co-pay I’d just as well avoid. I throw my health upon the wisdom of the crowd!

You Decide: To drain or not to drain!

Last December, we wrote about Doctor Manoocher Pooya, who got in trouble with the DC Board of Medicine for sexually abusing a patient. While Pooya lost his license in the District, at the time, he was still licensed to practice in Maryland. Since the story ran, he’s lost his license there as well. Pooya is 71 years old, which makes you wonder if he did any nasty deeds before he got caught. Prosecutors tracked down two patients who tried to report Pooya before he finally got in trouble; one was turned away, by police. We’ll probably never know if there were more. Unlike lawyers, whose complaint files with local bar associations are relatively easy to access, doctor’s can rest easy knowing that complaints filed against them aren’t made public unless disciplinary action is taken.

Safeway, 18th St. & Columbia Rd.

DCist checks in with the struggling clinic’s budget woes. Possibly 25 percent of its staff is slated to be cut. Not unlike a newspaper! This could mean more tragic stats in the way of new HIV infections in a city already struggling with the epidemic.

From the Post:

“We plan a return to aggressive grass-roots outreach in high-risk communities,” executive director Donald Blanchon said. “We want to be on the right street corners with the right information addressing people who are truly at risk.”

Whitman-Walker is remaking itself and hoping to draw more patients while recovering from a budget crisis that forced deep cuts and layoffs in 2005. The clinic ended last year about $300,000 in the red, a fraction of the $950,000 deficit it ran two years ago but not enough progress for Blanchon to call the $22 million operation financially viable.

It’s the end of the year, so these commercials are showing up a lot more often:

Like a lot of ex-smokers, I tried a lot of different methods of quitting smoking before something finally took about four years ago. Patches never did much for me, though I do fondly remember the pleasantly woozy buzz you can get from smoking on the patch, something I did numerous times and has probably in itself shaved more years off my life than my decade-long pack-a-day habit. (What finally worked for me? I bought a house. There’s nothing like assuming boatloads of debt to put all the crap you waste money on into clear focus.)

All of which is to say I’m not a particularly good source for advice on how to quit smoking, but local artist Jackie Hoysted has a helpful list of tips today on her Ashes to Ashes blog. Hoysted, the subject of an August City Paper story, has been quit since July, documenting her withdrawal on the blog and in her artwork; you can see her coffin-nail-inspired pieces here.

At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania has done plenty over the past few years to piss off the pharmaceutical industry. He’s essentially declared war on high drug prices and fought for legislation to make drugs more affordable in the District. And more recently, the D.C. Council on Tuesday voted to proceed with his legislation that would tightly regulate drug sales representatives in the District.

Now Big Pharma is fighting back. Online and anonymously, anyway.

A Web site recently posted at bigpharmarealpeople.org names Catania “Big Pharma Enemy #1″ and attributes to him the following:

• “I want to ’shake the pharmaceutical industry to its core.’”
• “I am a Washington Lawyer whose sole purpose is to invent solutions to problems that don’t exist.”
• “If I am successful, hundreds of DC area residents will loose [sic] their jobs.”
• “I am an enemy to Big Pharma, big business and capitalism.”

Who’s behind the site? Good question: The site’s domain name was registered by a proxy service, making it impossible to trace who runs the site. The “Big Pharma Team” is listed as Managing Editor John Galt, Associate Editor Dagney Taggart, Editor Hugh Akston, and Editor Hank Reardon.

Those names should be familiar to anyone who went through an adolescent Ayn Rand phase: Those are the names of characters from that author’s Atlas Shrugged. (Note, however, that they misspelled “Dagny Taggart” and “Hank Rearden.”) E-mails to members of the “Big Pharma Team” were not immediately returned.

“It’s par for the course,” Catania says. “It’s the way the pharmaceutical industry, much like the the tobacco industry, chooses to engage in the arena of ideas. It’s name-calling.”

The site’s tagline is “Big Pharma is Real People, Saving Lives Is Our Business,” and it features sympathetic profiles of several drug company employees, none identified by their full name. A passage on the site says its purpose is to “point out how the news media, movie and entertainment industries lie and distort the facts when it comes to Big Pharma,” to “fight ridiculous Government rules and regulation that hamper Big Pharma from acting in the best interest of customers, patients and pharmacies,” and to “point out that corporations are not faceless, evil giants that take advantage of the individual.”

Have to say, guys—this anonymous Web site isn’t doing much to combat that whole “faceless” thing.

Catania does offer his kudos to the site’s creators in one respect: their taste in photography. The Web page features a photo of the councilmember dating back at least five years. “I’m flattered that they chose to use a picture that makes me look younger and more handsome,” he says.

According to the Washington Post, the civic watchdog group DC Appleseed finds that Fenty and Co. are failing to provide adequate HIV-AIDS education let alone settle on a curriculum.

This is important news considering the latest stats on infection rates. I know Fenty claims to be willing to tackle this issue. But so far I don’t see it. It better be a lot more extensive then Metro billboards, press conferences, and ribbons. To read Appleseed’s full report go here.

Another important issue–DC Appleseed needs to update its blog. It’s so old its last item references Clifford Janey.

Ok. I admit it. I like the elliptical trainer. It’s easy, efficient, and doesn’t hurt nearly as much as running. But last night, ovalizing myself toward nowhere, with nothing on TV and too much mopey indie rock on my iPod, I finally got bored. I started missing group sports. Unfortunately, my only real experiences have been with ballet (I was the short, roundish girl in a room full of spindly 6-year-olds) and karate at a smelly South Philly dojo. By then I was 25, not as round and scared to death of the killing machines in my class.

So I’m still not entirely sold on martial arts, but this looks mesmerizing … and fun. And you can do it with a friend or an enemy.