Allina health mychart

"A couple very good guys wrote an article today, the tobacco king, you the tobacco king..." - Disgraced former president Donald Trump doing some classic word salad during his Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity

Law And Border

Some variation on “CHAOS AT THE BORDER” is a staple phrase in the Fox News chyron. But the source of that chaos is not who they want you to think it is.

• The Trump-era policy known as Title 42—which allowed American border agents to rapidly expel many migrants to Mexico or other countries to request asylum—expired in May, and conservative media whipped its viewership into a frenzy anticipating a huge increase in illegal crossings at the Southern border. That hasn’t happened. What has happened is a crisis of a different kind.
  
• An internal Border Patrol investigation found that medical staff “declined” (refused) to review the file of an eight-year-old girl with a chronic heart condition and a rare blood disorder before she had a fatal seizure on her ninth day in custody. Her parents had shared her medical history with authorities the second day the family was in custody. Anadith Alvarez was the daughter of Honduran immigrants, born with a congenital heart defect that required surgery three years ago. The day before she died, the girl had a fever of almost 105 degrees.
  
• The video surveillance system where the girl’s family was detained in Harlingen, TX, had been out of service for over one month, a violation of federal law that prevented authorities from collecting evidence, but interviews with Border Patrol agents and medical personnel there raised enough troubling questions to trigger an investigation into the girl’s nine days in custody. The agency’s own limit to detain migrants is 72 hours. The Office of Professional Responsibility (which is like Border Patrol’s office of internal affairs) reported that despite the girl’s rapidly deteriorating condition, her mothers concerns, “and the series of treatments required to manage her condition, contracted medical personnel did not transfer her to a hospital for higher-level care.”
  

This is far from the first report of this kind detailing inhumane treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Adding to the unstable conditions at the border, the head of the U.S. Border Patrol, Chief Raul Ortiz, announced his retirement Tuesday night, which will take effect on June 30. It is unclear who will replace him. Ortiz oversaw Border Patrol’s nearly 20,000 agents during the pandemic and through the implementation of Title 42 after beginning his tenure in August 2021 following the ouster of MAGA-head Rodney Scott, who fully embraced Trump’s policies including #BuildTheWall. But the malpractice plainly did not end with Scott’s removal.
  
• During the Biden administration, agents have continued to engage in “unnecessary use of force” against non-threatening Haitian migrants. Biden’s own DOJ defended the continuation of Trump’s family-separation policy in court, despite his past criticisms of the policy as “criminal.” Since taking office, Biden has tightened standards for asylum seekers at the border to the degree that some argue he has all but eliminated the right to seek asylum on American soil. Seeking asylum is an internationally protected right, so it doesn’t feel particularly radical to criticize the policy choices that led to this.
  

President Biden, like President Obama before him, made a wager: that tough border policies and deportations will buy good will from conservatives or neutralize their bad-faith attacks. Except, it didn’t, and it won’t. Conservative media and GOP lawmakers will always portray Democratic presidents, falsely, as open-borders fanatics, no matter how strict their actual immigration policies are. Multiple GOP governors thousands of miles from the border have deployed national guardsmen to Texas, absent a big uptick in crossings, as a propaganda feint, to create the false perception of disorder. Democrats can’t beat that approach by meeting it in the ever-shifting middle, and they shouldn’t try.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

It’s Pride month, and the Crooked Store has a whole collection of merch to help you celebrate and fight back against the total freaks obsessed with what we wear and where we put it. The collection has everything from tees to bags, so you can stock up. I’m not going to tell you how to celebrate Pride, but I will say that if you don’t ruin at least one article of clothing this month, you could be doing more. So grab an extra tee.
Plus, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Crooked’s Fuck Bans fund, which supports organizations working to protect vulnerable people on the ground in states that are banning care and targeting trans youth. You get the thrill of supporting organizers combined with the thrill of buying something online. It’s a win-win.
Head to https://crooked.com/store to check out the whole Pride collection.

Under The Radar

A series of investigations found that Allina Health System, a “nonprofit” that runs more than 100 hospitals and clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin has repeatedly withheld care from patients who have unpaid medical bills as a draconian bill-collecting tactic. The network rakes in over $4 billion in annual revenue. In the for-profit American healthcare system, many hospitals are known to take aggressive measures to collect medical debt, including taking patients to court, garnishing their wages, or even seizing their tax refunds. Allina Health System, on the other hand, has an explicit policy to completely shut off non-emergency health services for patients with at least $4,500 in unpaid medical debt, and not allow them to resume receiving treatment until it’s paid off in full. At point, the electronic health-records system locks so that staff cannot schedule future appointments for those patients, even ones with chronic conditions requiring regular attention like diabetes and cancer. That confronts those patients with a choice between getting a loan approved through the hospital or filing for bankruptcy. Anyone in this country who has ever been on the wrong side of a health-insurance dispute knows how easy it is to rack up $4,500 in medical debt. Almost one-in-three Americans have medical debt, which accounts for about half of all outstanding debt in this country. Because Allina Health System is a “nonprofit” it was able to avoid $266 million in state, local, and federal taxes in 2020 alone. Another perfect day in the American health-care industrial complex!

What Else?

The Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report showed the 29th straight month of strong job growth, with employers adding 339,000 jobs in May.
The U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan ransom note to suspend the debt limit, averting what would have been the nation’s first-ever default. The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk for signature.
The Senate voted to rescind President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness program, a measure the president is (obviously) expected to veto.
YouTube will reverse its election-integrity policy, and allow election-denial videos on the platform. Great! I love when corporations sacrifice democracy to extract just a little bit more profit.
Disgraced former president Donald Trump’s lawyers have informed the DOJ that they can’t find the classified document about military operations in Iran that Trump was recorded referencing. Very likely story!
The Justice Department will not seek charges against former Vice President Mike Pence for his possession of potentially classified government documents, and the investigation has been closed.
The Fulton County, GA, District Attorney’s investigation of disgraced former president Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election has expanded to include activities in Washington, DC, and several other states.
More than 800 million trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just the past six years to meet global beef demand.
Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) accused the National Rifle Association of seeking to use involuntary commitment laws “to round up mentally ill people and deprive them of other liberties,” a rare criticism of the NRA from a Republican.
An investigation into child sexual-abuse claims in Spain’s Catholic Church found 728 abusers among members of the clergy and non-clerical staff and 927 victims since the 1940’s.
A 19-year-old in the United Kingdom who converted to extremist Islam during the pandemic and planned to carry out a terrorist attack was given six years in prison.
The Canadian province of Nova Scotia is experiencing its worst-ever wildfire season, with more than 200 so far this year.

Be Smarter

The Discord disclosures of highly classified national security documents by former Massacheusetts Air National Guardsman/racist freak Jack Teixeira contain one particularly startling revelation: Iran, according to U.S. intelligence, plan to enlist militants in Syria to step up roadside attacks against U.S. military personnel, including through the use of armor-piercing munitions. The escalation is reportedly part of a broader strategic effort between Iran and Russia to drive the U.S. from the region (don’t threaten us with a good time!) but could also lead to escalating hostilities between the U.S. and Iran—and just in time for the Republican presidential primary, which will be chockablock with bloodthirsty war hawks who would happily exploit carnage in the region to revamp the GOP push for war.

What A Sponsor

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Light At The End Of The Email

A Baltimore couple, both nurses, saved a fellow passenger’s life on their flight back from a Florida vacation.
Fort Bragg, the major military base in North Carolina named after General Braxton Bragg—a Confederate general who owned slaves—was renamed Fort Liberty. Not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to name a base after a guy who lost so many battles and is “widely regarded among historians as a poor leader who did not have the respect of his troops” in the first place!
Roberto Minuta, a member of the far-right Oath Keepers who was part of the security detail for longtime Trump adviseThe Riddler Roger Stone, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for seditious conspiracy related to his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.

Enjoy

paige on Twitter: "My 11 month-old son saw the pride merchandise in our local Target- immediately said “mama, I am woke and gay now” and then he did the worm"

https://strib.gift/x21gikii9
TL: Allina Health System in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin cutting off indebted patients if medical debt greater than $4,500. Not allowing patient to schedule appointments or see specialists. EMTALA intact. It seems these are even patients that have insurance. Patients need to find care in another system. Particularly different if your hospital/clinic is in a rural area
Approx 20% of hospitals systems do this nation wide according to the article
Allina spends less than one half of 1% on charity care. Below the 2% national average for non-profit hospitals

This Nonprofit Health System Cuts Off Patients With Medical Debt https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/business/allina-health-hospital-debt.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

I had a blood test back in December to check my T levels and liver before I upped my dose. Just this month I finally tried to setup a MyChart account after procrastinating since that checkup just to see my levels out of curiosity (they already gave me the go-ahead to up my dose after checking my levels so it really is only for my curiosity) but I can't find it on the website now. I found my liver... enzymes? (proteins? lipids? whatever they are) under the health chart section and I know those are one part of the blood testing they do but for the life of me I can't find the page for hormone levels. Nothing comes up on the test results page. Did it time out or something? or did they just not put my levels on my profile? Not a huge deal but it would've been nice to see 🤷

As magnesium L-threonate is the form of magnesium that can best elevate magnesium levels in the brain I am hoping this particular form will have a great impact on the akathisia. It gets delivered tomorrow and I'm sort of hanging on to this hope that it can cure me. Would love to hear anyone else who's tried it?
Just some background on my current akathisia issue... I went to the ER Monday May 22nd for severe stomach pain. I get stomach strictures and severe pain a few times a year thanks to a stomach surgery in 2017. This wasn't my usual local hospital as we were out of town but I gave them my background and list of meds. Doctor told me he was giving me something for the stomach pain as he started to push the medicine into my IV. He didn't tell me the name or even what type of med it was. I assumed it was Dicyclomine which is a muscle relaxer that works well on stomach issues and is usually what they give me in the ER.
Turns out he gave me 2.5mg of Droperidol. Which is confusing on many levels. I wasn't complaining of any nausea or vomiting. That dose is on the higher end. I've learned that a starting dose would generally be 0.625mg and it's usually given in a drip not a push. Droperidol is also not supposed to be given unless other meds were unsuccessful. He was monitoring my heart rate at least.
As soon as it went in the IV my stomach pain stopped but the worst feeling I've ever had in my life came over. I wanted to rip the IV out and leave the hospital immediately. I couldn't get comfortable. I couldn't stop moving my legs. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. No one asked me about any of these symptoms or mentioned akathisia. I still didn't even know the name of what they gave me.
They finally released me and an awful night began. Finally I managed to drive myself to a motel, rent a room, take some of my rx Ambien that I thankfully had with me, and get some sleep. The worst came the next morning. I needed to get up and get a shower and leave since the motel had an 11am checkout. I couldn't do it. I had no idea what was wrong. I just stayed in bed wrapped in blankets, shaking, crying, moving my legs restless. I forced myself into the shower thinking it may help but ended up jumping out halfway through with soap still all over me and practically throwing myself back into the bed crying the whole time. I thought I was losing my mind.
I finally called the front desk and asked if I could extend my stay another night and thank God they were able to charge my card on file without me coming in. My husband was expecting me and I had to call him next and tell him, "I'm so sorry, I know you need me there, I don't know what's wrong with me I think I'm having a nervous break down I can't get out of bed." thank God as well that he was so understanding and took care of everything then showed up with some benadryl and magnesium.
We still did not know it was akathisia but benadryl and magnesium are good for anxiety so that's what we tried. He logged on to the mychart app to see what they had given me then looked droperidol up and saw all the info about akathisia. That's when we finally figured it out. He called my psychiatrist (thank God I see her every month anyway for adhd) and she was able to do a telehealth visit and see what bad shape I was in. She called in Ativan 3x a day for 2 weeks and I see her for another appointment when they run out.
I luckily had a lot of "experimental" type meds because I've been trying to biohack some other health related issues and I think they came in handy. One is an injection combo I get from Unchained Sarms called sweet dreams that has 100mg GABA, 50MG Theanine, 100mg Taurine, and 100mg magnesium per ML. It never did help me sleep enough for me to stop taking the ambien so it was just sitting around mostly unused in what I (jokingly) call my pulp fiction kit but I believe it came in really handy for the akathisia. 1ml of that pinned in my thigh and my legs calmed down immediately. I also had some BPC157 intranasal and some nad+ intranasal and I think they helped a little as well.
The thing is... It's been a week today and while I'm not as bad as I was I'm still a long way from my normal self. Really hoping the delivery of magnesium threonate is the cure I need. If it's helped anyone else let me know.

So, this is an update. Not many people read my last post but I sincerely appreciate the sympathy and advice I received.
The TL:DR for that is: I followed the long process for our insurance to see someone when I hit a low point after the birth of my daughter. I’ve always struggled but I was absolutely broken at that point. It took a lot of time (and some inane conversation with an under trained social worker) but I finally saw a psychiatrist and he sent me for psychiatric testing, stating: I don’t doubt you have ADHD, but I’m not sure that’s all you have. The day after completing the first session of testing (1/3) I found out my partner’s new job didn’t offer our current insurance in our state. We started our new insurance and I was back to square one and feeling pretty defeated.
So, it’s been a bit, but I started jumping through the hoops with the new insurance, found a new GP who seems really nice. Met the social worker for mental health intake. She was nice, seemed to understand/not mind me. Next step was meeting with an extremely overworked Registered Psychiatric Nurse via video call who introduced herself as Doctor [her name]. She spent the first ten minutes of our appointment (after being 15 minutes late) reading the social worker’s notes but not the continuation of care from the psychiatrist.
Right off the bat I got “ADHD is so overdiagnosed” vibes from her but I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. We ran out of time before she could finish her evaluation. We scheduled another appointment for a week later (today) and in the mean time I was able to see her notes in mychart. (Sigh)
I tried to be open to today going well but she was very… “hostile” is too strong a word but when I asked her to correct her notes she was a bit defensive, even though the things she had gotten from what I said were the opposite of what I was saying in a couple places. I get that I communicate poorly, but if she has the workload she seems to, I didn’t want her referencing those notes and reinforcing her assumptions about who and how I am. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask her to note down that the inaccuracies are inaccurate.
At the end of the appointment she said she thought I wasn’t definitively ADHD and was probably hypomanic. She then described hypomania in such a way that anyone would say “yeah, I’m like that sometimes” and asked if I could relate to that. I told her “yes” because of course I relate to being impulsive sometimes but told her her big example of an impulsive thing I’d done was actually an instance where I missed important details because I had failed to prioritize something and then rushed to get it done. (Sigh again)
Now, I thought she was the gatekeeper to advanced diagnostic resources. Nope! This half-assed video call was the diagnostic evaluation.
She wants to put me on mood stabilizers before doing anything else. She told me which one she wants me to take (I tried to make mental note of it, but it’s nothing I’ve heard of before so it slipped through my brain sieve). She told me she’s willing to try bupropion, but not until we get me on the other drug because they should be used together. At this point she was moving fast because she has been late to my appointment and was now late for her next appointment. I’m honestly willing to try anything. Maybe the bipolar meds will help where the anxiety and depression meds did nothing? Who knows? I just want things to keep moving forward until I find something that actually helps, which I told her. She scheduled our follow up in a month and hung up on me.
I just feel at this point like I should have paid out of pocket to finish the testing. Would it have been insanely expensive? Absolutely. Could we have comfortably afforded it? No. But I wouldn’t feel like I was judged immediately by someone on a video who came in with preconceptions and was already thinking about getting to their next patient when they were telling me they think the psychiatrist was wrong.
I’m tempted to talk to my GP and see if there are any other options for someone I could go to. Has anyone done this? How do I talk to the GP without sounding like I’m disgruntled about the “diagnosis” I was given? She didn’t even look at the continuation of care notes, I’m really sad.

I have personally experienced a range of metabolic health issues, including low testosterone, hypothyroidism, poor liver and kidney function, and other objective poor health markers as well. These conditions caused various symptoms such as low energy, low motivation, depression, low libido, major skin issues, digestive problems, poor body composition (least of the issues) and overall severely diminished quality of life. Instead of relying on medications prescribed by doctors, I embarked on an extensive research journey, investing over 10,000 hours in studying and then experimenting with different strategies on myself. After 2.5 years of personal suffering, I successfully resolved all my health problems within a 10-month timeframe using natural inputs such as diet, lifestyle changes, supplements, and healthy habits. After targeting leaky gut, it only took about 3 months to fix 95% of it but it took me those 30 months to figure out what works and doesn’t work. Not only did I have life-changing results but I have also helped multiple friends and family members (both male and female between ages 20-57) achieve optimal health and bloodwork even if they didn’t have as poor a starting point as me. They all have convinced me to start offering advice and guidance to others facing similar health challenges. I have shared my bloodwork results to demonstrate what improvements are possible. If you are interested in (paid) consulting, please feel free to direct message me, and together we can work towards reclaiming your life, just as I have done for myself and others.
Note about lab results: I organized them into an excel file for my own convenience but I attached a few screenshots from MyChart and a LabCorp partner I have gotten testing done through.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IcpJ43QOoKckPiCJdAlhBjp_Os05TFe7gZxjHoMu3Nw/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P_vkP4gNgXRiyp6GzZ6XkJ1giQwINIrdm3RlXzO-mJc/edit?usp=sharing