SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Modern medicine and the cowboy

By Julie Carter

I told you no one would believe it, many didn't and wrote to tell me about it.

In response to my story about the blind yearling calf loading up in the trailer on his own, one doubter wrote that he suspected the influence of Crown Royal or at the very minimum, an anesthesia overdose not-yet-worn-off the cowboy sporting the $27,000 shoulder surgery.

He called that the second lie. "Greg wouldn't spend $27,000 on shoulder surgery," he said. "He won't spend that on a truck. If you don't believe me, ask him about "old red."

I responded by explaining to him that I trusted his assessment of his close friends but that the Crown Royal was very likely only available for medicinal purposes for those with refined taste preferring it over pain meds.

I also explained to this occasional ranch visitor that cowboys are sometimes the biggest babies-too tough to take the doc's advice or medication but world class at moaning and groaning for the 90-mile-drive back to the ranch. It's not unusual for the Mrs. to grab the pain pill bottle saying "Give me those blasted pills! One of us needs to feel better."

As for the $27,000 shoulder, most cowboys will sell their soul to get a body part fixed so they can go back out and do whatever it was they did to hurt it in the first place.

Another cowboy, on the wise-side of his fifth decade, had a stout three-year old colt buck him off resulting in an emergency room visit. This was followed by time spent with triage nurses, doctors, radiology technicians, family practice physicians, orthopedic specialists and bona fide physical therapist.

His wife carried a dictionary around to translate their diagnosis, prognosis, treatment protocols, medication and device advice. This was followed by a barrage of bills in the mail box that took a fair amount of accounting expertise to decipher.

The real problem at hand was getting to the cure. His actual diagnosis was Type 2 acromioclavicular separation, as in "hurt shoulder." That made logical sense as that is where he landed. If he had just had the foresight to find a soft spot to land all this could have, in theory, been avoided.

Each of the specialists, with a serious direct eye-to-eye gaze, told him to wear the immobilization device. We call that a splint. They advised he not lift anything including his arm and it would be six weeks before he move anything except his lips to moan.

Next came the electric stimulation to the muscles to facilitate healing and a very dedicated physical therapist determined to bring healing no matter the pain level. In a moment's time the cowboy was promoted from complete immobility to lifting weights over his head.

A series of repetitive moves with pulleys, weights and other devices ensued, moving the cowboy into a realm of exercises he couldn't have done before the accident, let alone while on injured reserve.

The cowboy declared there was nothing about roping that was as physically hard as what the therapist had him doing. So he went home from therapy, saddled his good horse and roped a pen of steers just because he could.

"Hee Haw's" multi-talented Archie Campbell played many rolls on the 60s-70s variety program, one of which was the leering doctor giving sage advice to his patients. "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that."

The jist of all the medical advice given to the cowboy is exactly what Dr. Archie was saying. If it hurts, don't do it. If the cowboy had just remembered Hee Haw, he could have saved a lot of money.

© Julie Carter 2006


The Dead Zone

by Larry Gabriel

If you have not heard of it, you will. The mass media is blaming "agriculture" for a predicted increase in the size of the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Dave Whitehall recently issued a press release predicting that the anaerobic (oxygen depleted) area in the Gulf of Mexico known as "the dead zone" will grow by 40 percent this year due primarily to agricultural nutrient runoff into the Mississippi River.

Congress has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the theory that agricultural practices are primarily responsible for the dead zone. Congress apparently does not know that "agricultural nonpoint source" means everything except point sources, big city runoff and natural sources.

NOAA shut down testing the dead zone shortly after hurricane Katrina. The fishing in that zone boomed to abundance after the hurricane, indicating the anaerobic conditions lifted even though millions of tons of waste washed into the area from cities along the coast.

NOAA and EPA continue to blame "agriculture" and its use of fertilizer as the primary cause of the dead zone, but never point out that the lawns, football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields and golf courses of every town smaller than 50,000 people are deemed an "agricultural non-point source" of water pollution and fertilizer use for which "farmers" take the blame.

Why is that? Maybe it is because farmers are only a tiny percentage of the population and an easy political target, while sports fans, small towns and homeowners are not.

Here is a recent example of the results of the overbroad definition of agricultural sources: Subsidies wreak havoc on the ecosystem. One small example: There's a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, larger than Connecticut. It's so depleted of oxygen because of algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff that shrimp and crabs at the Louisiana shore literally try to leap from the water to breathe. This is endangering the profitable Gulf fishing industry. Most of the fertilizer comes from a few Midwestern counties that receive billions in subsidies (more than $30 billion from 1997 to 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group), so says columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angles Times newspaper on August 3, 2006, in an article entitle "Welfare Queens on Tractors".

This is portrayed as a national effort to save commercial fishing in the Gulf. A public radio story said, Agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River that flows into the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating sea life and threatening a once-thriving Louisiana industry…Spring runoff from the Mississippi is loaded with nitrogen-based fertilizers from farms. The fertilizer has the same effect in the Gulf as it does on the Midwest fields it came from. But instead of giving corn a growth spurt, the nitrogen fuels massive algae blooms that then die and suck all of the oxygen out of the water as they decompose.

How many millions of acres of heavily fertilized and irrigated lawn-type grass are in the "agricultural nonpoint source" in North America?

Maybe the real "dead zone" threat is simply an area where truth is not welcome.

Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture