Google side alleys and back corners

Years ago I wrote a piece about the way in which many people spell the word crawl (as in a baby learning to crawl) as crowl, which of course is my surname - it was while I was searching Google that I discovered this fairly common error. For a long time  I couldn't find that article, then it turned up on my Evernote files, and I transferred a tidier copy of it to this blog. 

My search that resulted in discovering the connections between crowl and crawl started because I was looking up my own name on Google. Self-indulgent, you might say, but I'm the sort of person who quite often sits down to check what's turns up on Google when I put my name in. I also like to check out the results when I look up my books. I'm sure there are other things to do in life, but sometimes this turns up some interesting stuff, the sorts of things you'd never otherwise discover.

For instance, I put the words Disenchanted Wizard in the search box today, because that's the name of my latest book, and I wanted to see where it was appearing on the Net. One of the things I discovered is that Kobo has a list of books with the word disenchanted in their titles, and my book is among them. Thanks, Kobo! (I've only just noticed that another book, Reviving Old Scratch, which I read last year, and which I lent to a friend just yesterday, is also on this list, because its subtitle is Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted.)

I also discovered that a writer named Keith Timson, who, coincidentally was born in the same year as me - 1945 - had written a short story called The Disenchanted Wizard that appeared in a magazine called Dark Horizons, in 1991. Nice that he chose to give my book some advertising over 25 years before it was written!

And of course I found that The Disenchanted Wizard turns up on some rather suspect sites, where they're trying to give my book away for free when they don't have any right to do so. When I clocked on on of those sites, the response was 'refusing to answer Google's inquiry.'  LOL

There's also a list of all my books on a site called Medical Books. Okay. Not sure of the connection there, although admittedly the non-fiction title, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, is somewhat medical. Each of the books, which all appear twice in this list, have blio beside them. Presumably blio.com is one of the distributors of the books. But that still doesn't explain the Medical Books aspect of things. Still it's nice to be turning up in all sorts of places!

One of Kobo's Asian sites is advertising TDW. Wow! I'm world famous!!

But perhaps the oddest search result came up as 'PDF Read [Southern Book] - Diary of a Prostate Wimp - Kitchens R Us. When I clicked on the link it said that the page wasn't found but it brought up the Kitchens R Us page anyway, on which there is nothing about either Prostate Wimp or Disenchanted Wizard, rather to my disappointment. I'd love to know how the two were connected, and why my latest book brought them together.

Review of Prostate Wimp

The following review appeared in Readers' Favourites, and is by Java Davies

Like many people, I'm sure, I thought that all prostate issues were due to cancer. Reading Diary of a Prostate Wimp by Mike Crowl showed me other types of prostate issues. Mike Crowl wasn't kidding about this being a diary. It's a combination of diary entries on his blog, entries from other men suffering from prostate issues, and letters to God, whom Mike refers to as "Dad," in the style of Jesus referring to God as Dad in Aramaic. While the title of this compilation is Diary of a Prostate Wimp, these men carried themselves with strength and humor for the most part, with some fear and doubt thrown in the mix on occasion.

At the very beginning, Mike Crowl warns people that the squeamish shouldn't attempt this book, and the warning is well advised. Mike doesn't flinch when discussing the pain of catheterization and its side effects of peeing on himself in public when the catheter dislodged, having irritation at the penis tip where the catheter can rub, discomforts along the sexual front, exhaustion, leaving home for a vacation, and even weight gain from the inability to exercise regularly. Mike also talks about different levels in the quality of medical care, and the lack of information from the doctors when you don't know what to ask. Frequent visits to doctors and clinics made me wonder what the healthcare system is like in New Zealand. According to Wikipedia, it's a combination of private and public provision, depending upon the illness or injury.

I was intrigued by the frequent references to Celia, Mrs. Crowl. She and the rest of the family seemed to be very supportive during the long months of catheterization, the prostate scraping surgery, and the slow recovery. Throughout, the author talks about the things he misses and can't wait to get back to. I was rooting for his eventual, successful recovery. If the reader, or someone the reader knows, is suffering from prostate issues, I recommend this book.

A footnote to this review: Davies is correct in that the NZ Health system is a combination of public and private. Due to increasing delays in getting treatment through the public system, many people now opt to pay for health insurance, in order to be able to be treated more speedily in the private sector. Ironically the doctors often work in both areas. Still, for all its failings, the health system in New Zealand is still better than in many places in the world. 

Diary of a Prostate Wimp

The book I've been writing on my experiences of how the medical world dealt with my prostate is now almost ready. It only lacks a cover, an ISBN and a CIP (the National Library of New Zealand's Cataloguing-in-Publication Data - each country has their own version of these). All these are all in the pipeline in various ways. So I may make my deadline of the end of April after all. 

I've had a brilliant editor who went through my 'final' draft with such a fine toothcomb that he found things I hadn't thought were even there. Though I must add that I also found a couple of tiny things he missed - but then he was working, as usual, on about six other things at the same time. Nevertheless the final text is correct in ways I wouldn't have achieved on my own. 

I've sometimes had some qualms about whether the information in the book is too personal, too in-your-face (especially if you're not a bloke), too intense, and too-a-variety-of-other-things. Time will tell. The book is partly based on a series of blog posts I wrote back at the time the events were happening, and at that time I began to read - but never finished - a book called Please Leave the Seat Up by Brian Turner. Brian was an Englishman who'd gone to the US with his wife to take over a branch of his company. It was going to be a highly successful time, and he would have done very well. Within weeks he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and all his plans fell apart. While I was putting my own book together over the last few months I actually read Brian's book. If I had qualms about anything in my book being too much in your face, then Brian's book showed me that when it comes to talking about health, almost anything is permissible! Not only is it permissible, it's essential to tell the readers the details, because the medical profession doesn't. 

This was one of the big things I learned about having something seriously wrong: the medical profession knows a lot of what can go wrong, but prefers to wait until it goes wrong before they tell you that it's not abnormal, and that thousands of other people have been in the same boat. The only thing is that few of those thousand people have written about their experiences and passed on what they've learned. 

Still, I often got more help and information from friends and colleagues who'd either had the same experience, or something similar. The doctors and nurses would be helpful if you asked (generally) but they tended not to provide information if you didn't ask. And how would you know to ask until you found something strange was happening? I'm not blaming the medical people - some of them were extraordinarily helpful and I thank God for them - but it sometimes feels they think that less information is better than more, even when that little bit more information might have allayed a lot of your concerns. 

I was fortunate to get through the experience; many, as I show in the book, have much worse times than I did. Prostate issues, and prostate cancer, are amongst the most common problems men can have in later life. Hopefully this book will help some men before they find themselves involved in such difficulties. 

By the way, it's called Diary of a Prostate Wimp. You'll have to read it to find out why!

Donated to Science

Just finished watching Paul Trotman’s Donated to Science, filmed at Otago Medical School. It’s a feature-length documentary about a bunch of medical students doing their two-year dissection course using human bodies that have been specifically donated to the School for this purpose.  

There are some familiar faces in the documentary, (one or two friends, in fact) but that wasn't what made it most interesting.  It includes sequences in which a number of the students involved talk to the camera about how they feel as the two years pass, and how they grow more or less detached, depending on who they are, in terms of the fact that these were real people they're cutting up.  At the end they 'meet' the people they've been dissecting via films that were made prior to those people's deaths.  The emotional impact on the students is wonderful, and it's great to see them so full of compassion for those whose bodies they've been working with. 

The doco's not for the squeamish: there are some close-ups of body parts being dissected, and discussed, but because there's no blood, it's often not as bad as some of the more detailed close-ups in some hospital dramas on TV.  The draining of the blood makes the bodies look shrivelled, too, which at first is a bit of a surprise.  

Excellent local production!  

Teach the Teacher

We all know that scene in the movie (any medical movie - take your pick) where the consultant sweeps in with his retinue of newbies in tow, barely nods at the bewildered patient, (who's wondering what all this attention is about), snaps his or her finger at one of the students and in a disdainful voice dares that shivering student to say what Mr Smith/Jones/Bulkoski has wrong with him, and why, and what he's going to do about it. 

It was one of the ongoing features of that long-running TV series, Scrubs, a programme we endured more often than we wished to, since our younger son seem to find it extraordinarily funny.   Screenwriters think it's something audiences can get no end of enjoyment out of.   It ain't so funny if you've actually been a patient in the real-life equivalent, of course.

Which is why there need to be courses for medical people, especially now that they're no longer automatically assumed to be God.   A teach the teacher course (also known as a train the trainer course) is a way of teaching doctors how to teach trainee doctors (it may possibly go wider than that).  

The teaching the teacher course is only one of a number of courses available to the medical profession.  You can go on a consultant interview course (for when you're planning to leave that nasty hospital where you're not appreciated by those in management, and where they blame you for everything from the superbug that's hit the wards to the dust on the tops of the pictures - those funded by the hospital Art Fund). 

It's possible, of course, that you may actually be to blame for the superbug, in which case you'd be wise to go on a medical teaching course and bring your knowledge up to date.  As for the dust on the pictures, try a medical management course where your skills at handling the Dust Management Team will be honed. 

Whatever the course you go for, it can only improve your skills in the medical field.   With the extraordinary number of complications that can arise in that area, it's wise to keep on top of things!

Dental

Being retired and living off a pension isn't too bad as long as you don't have any large bills to deal with. Last year, before I retired, both of us had dental bills that chewed up a good deal of the ready money. Since I've retired we haven't had any dental issues, but the car has done its best to bankrupt us!

Going to the dentist in NZ has always been an expensive business, and it's not surprising many people put it off as long as they can. Roll on the day when it becomes a subsidised part of the economy, as medical care is.

In the States you can get a dental plan just as you can get a medical plan. I suppose it's a better option being able to dripfeed your payments to an insurance company rather than having a horrendous bill foisted upon you, but it's still going to cost. I didn't know there were any similar dental insurance plans available in New Zealand, but apparently there are. Seemingly they're not over-popular with the dentists: it requires them to do extra paperwork and, apparently, may bring them in a lesser income. Dear me - that would be awful!

I've had some great dentists over the years, people I've been happy to pay to have work done. I've also had some not-so-great ones: my first dentist was of the old school that thought that taking teeth out was always the best option, even when you were in your teenage years! Crikey. It must have been the trend at that time. I read the sequel to Plumb recently (it's called Meg). In that there's a scene in which the husband goes out (at the suggestion of his mother) and gets all his teeth removed to save himself future dental problems. His young wife is appalled.

Fortunately that awful dentist didn't manage to remove many teeth, but by the time I got to England in the 60s I was having some real problems with my upper set of teeth, and finished up having to go to a friendly Australian dentist who sorted things out. I can't remember if he was the one who removed some of my upper front teeth, but he certainly was the one who put crowns in - at huge expense. I kid you: under the National Health system in England the whole process cost me no more then ten pounds!

Which might explain why the National Health struggles to make ends meet.

The photo of the young man with lolly teeth was taken by Broken Piggy Bank

When is a stethoscope not a stethoscope?

A stethoscope is a stethoscope is a stethoscope. Right? Apparently not. I always thought that those things doctor whip out at the drop of a hat in medical tv soaps were pretty much a standard model, used from episode to episode. Not so. When I look on the Light & Sirens Medical Supplies site, for example, I find there’s such a range of stethoscopes that it becomes very hard to choose between them. Even the Littman stethoscope is only one of nearly twenty types or brands the oddly named Light & Sirens company stocks. No wonder it takes so long to get through medical school. Half the battle must be deciding what make of stethoscope to buy!