Yay! Macbook back!

One complaint: it seems to insist that it can't find any batteries, yet it seems to run just fine while not plugged in. Perhaps they've stumbled onto a solution for the energy crisis...

Tomorrow, movie

Forbidden Kingdom @ South Edmonton Commons, 9:40 PM show.

That's numberwang! Now it's time for wang-o-num...

If you name your daughter "Elektra", do you suppose by the time she gets to school-age people will have forgotten how bad the movie was?

Numberwang:

I love that germs are from Germany.

Also, that bit with the professor is very science-y and yet, horribly not. I'll be sure to check out the rest. (Also, it seems Edgar Wright is in it.)

Speaking of satire, this was rather enjoyable for me, maybe because I keep watching that trailer again and again:

Hey Par, (and everyone else for that matter)

Have you seen the British show "Look Around You"? It's the best thing I've seen in a long time. Here's something from the first season. Seasons 1 and 2 are both incredible.

sweet... that is some good information to know. This is the kind of stuff more people should know about as it is likely that it may affect them at some point in their lives. I will certainly be opting for the spinal should the need arise.

If the choice is between a spinal anaesthetic and the general, and the patient isn't too apprehensive about the idea of a needle in their back, for the most part the spinal leads to better outcomes.

There are certain risks with a general anaesthetic (it's not quite as benign as "going to sleep") that one avoids with the spinal. There's far less concern about managing cardiovascular effects and lung function (smokers are a classic example; the complexity of administering general anaesthesia to a smoker jumps dramatically when compared to a non-smoker.)

Additionally there's the concern with the airway in general. For the most part, patients under general are intubated (sometimes, under circumstances I don't yet quite understand myself, you can just put a laryngeal mask airway in, but it's still relatively intrusive.) That's not a process without effects, and the depth of anaesthesia needs to be increased as a result (you can imagine having a tube in your trachea can be a rather noxious stimulus, and keeping you from reacting to that requires some more careful management.)

There are also added benefits in recovery. The spinal will provide better pain control than just intravenous analgesia, and controlling pain before it starts, even intraoperatively, seems to have a benefit in post-op recovery. For abdominal surgery (hernia repairs, etc.) return of GI function happens sooner with regional anaesthesia than general. As a whole, the process simply takes less out of you than "being put to sleep."

And, for the non-scientific appraisal, patients seem to come out of the OR in better shape with just a spinal. The whole process is far less stressful for everyone involved.