Key
to the Highway PLEASE READ; no shows ‘til September
Since
your health is more important than my trivial little show, I am starting with
something I heard about recently in hopes you will all read it. I very much trust the CBS news and they had a
New Hampshire ER doctor who had just served with the New York hospitals and
came back with a conclusion I had not thought of. By the time anyone admitted themselves to the
hospital in a condition serious enough to be put on a ventilator, their blood
oxygen content was already down to 50% (normal being 94-100%), a level
comparable to being on top of Mount Everest.
It was only then that they had started to feel difficulty in breathing
and, had they known their O2 level was declining below the normal level, they
might have been able to act more quickly.
There is an inexpensive tool (about $50) that will easily inform you: a
pulse oximeter, so named because it registers both your pulse rate and oxygen
level.
If
you have ever spent any time in the hospital, you likely had a device clamped
onto one of your finger ends (they open the jaws and close it on the last
knuckle or two) and that is the oximeter, a simple and totally painless
procedure. I believe it works through
infrared readings and definitely does not penetrate the skin so it is good for
your entire household. At the end of the
doctor’s approximately five minute dissertation, the news anchor said they were
available at your drugstore but that is in error. I went to Walgreen’s and they were out and
the clerk told me customers had said they had been to several other drug stores
with the same result.
I
had already been online but figured Walgreens would carry a quality product as
opposed to choosing from several brands offered on Amazon, but after calling
back the next day I was informed they had been out for more than a month. I immediately went back to Amazon and ordered
one for myself and one for my son’s household, even paying an extra $40 to
expedite shipment to about one month’s delivery time as opposed to about two
months otherwise; still, it only came to $111 total, about what two would cost
at a drug store. I will continue to call
Walgreens every Wednesday and Friday around noon (their delivery days) until
mine come in order to get it as early as possible.
I
am not paranoid about the Coronavirus but am prepared to take prudent steps to
avoid or diminish it. This is certainly
not as good as actually getting tested but it might at least set your mind at
rest to a degree. Knowledge is
power! Hopefully you guys are already
aware of all this but I strongly recommend you at least consider purchasing one
as quickly as possible. After all, as I’ve
said recently, I can’t afford to lose any of my listeners.
And
regarding my show, I doubt that KSCU will open its studio before the Summer
semester and, since it closes on Sundays at 7PM those months, unless I do a
fill in to help the Blues department I
will not be back on the air until September, hopefully between 7PM and midnight
two Sundays a month. Stay safe and
please make the best of your situation.
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