Home care: Tony Davis uses a home dialysis machine for his treatment rather than travelling to Palmerston North three times a week. Photo/file
Apostrophes
I was very pleased to read the Chronicle article "Grammar vigilante's war on signs" on April 15 about the activities of Margi Keys in Whanganui.
To hear that I have inspired someone across the other side of the world into action in support of apostrophes is very satisfying. Power to the apostrophe!
Could you please pass on my best wishes to her and to carry on her good work.
PS: Good to see that she she putting her old knickers to good use, too.
THE APOSTROPHISER
(Grammar Vigilante)
Bristol, UK
Dialysis options
So Levin got three dialysis machines from the Central Alliance. What a crying shame.
Whanganui Health Board needs to start thinking out of the box.
Dialysis machines can be bought from America for NZ$4262.06 plus freight.
Check this out. Google (ebay.com Fresenivs 2008k dialysis machine) and there you will find second-hand, refurbished machines, suitable for clinical and home use. Don't tell me you wouldn't buy second-hand.
You could compare them to a second-hand cars. A lot of people drive 15- to 20-year-old cars costing $2000 to $4000, and they take the occupants to the same destination that they choose in the same time as a $50,000 to $100,000 car would .
Another reason for no machines: no trained nurses. Well, train them. Oh my goodness, no machines to train them on.
It takes six weeks to train a nurse; [home dialysis patient] Tony Davis (Chronicle, April 1) received just four hours. Make sure you get the person who trained him to train your nurses.
Nephrologists 10 years -- after becoming a fully trained doctor. Seems a long time.
The cost of building a new clinic? There is no need for that, as there is vacant office space around to set a clinic up. Here you teach nurses and patients who want to do home dialysis, and treat the other patients that can't do home dialysis.
The ideal scenario would be to buy 15 to 20 of those 2008k dialysis machines so you have one model to hold parts for and train on. For a while you would have a spare sitting there for emergencies.
There is a full set manuals on the net. I think probably at the price of a 2008k machine, some families would sponsor one to save their relative or friend the agony of going to Palmerston three times a week. We, as individuals, cannot purchase them, as sales of these devices are by, or on the order of, a physician or licensed practitioner. I do agree with that, as it needs to be co-ordinated so the same model machines are bought. Let's make a start.
I quote here Judith MacDonald: Analysis has been done to death.
EARLE TURNER
Aramoho
Look to the stars
Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Earth is the same age as the universe, billions of years old.
Genesis 1:2. "And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep." God does not create lifeless, dead planets. The Earth had suffered cataclysmic destruction.
Genesis 1:3. "And God said Let there be light." In Genesis 1 we find God renewing the Earth and preparing it for mankind. Humanity has only been here approximately 6000 years.
Scientists have looked to the universe (through Hubble); they have seen the universal forces on display, each one more powerful and profound than the last. They acknowledge the great "laws" at play, showing a greater intelligence than mankind could ever dream, so, they are "without excuse", yet they attribute it all to nature (random, unintelligence).
The Big Bang was a controlled explosion, held within the confines of space and time, not some random, unintelligent, cosmic fart in space.
The problem with the theory of evolution is that it requires millions/billions of years to evolve.
Mankind shares 98 per cent DNA with monkeys. We inhabit the same planet, atmosphere and need for sustenance (water). But it is the 2 per cent difference that is so vast; it cannot be explained by evolution.
Mankind cannot create anything greater than himself, yet evolution would have us believe that unintelligence (pond scum) created intelligence (the human mind).
The human mind separates man from the animal kingdom. Animals are made after their own kind, but man is the image of the God-kind. Man's true potential is in the stars.
I MANTLE
Whanganui
Maui dolphins
Affluence is an amazing thing; it eliminates starvation, lifts living standards and allows nations to be clean and green while at the same time slowing the birth rate.
There is a victim in all this, it's the human brain. There is a disease that sweeps through a lot of brains. It is nicknamed "mushy brain" and is found only in affluent societies.
This disease allows people to make decisions without factoring in economic consequences.
Fishing [editorial, Maui dolphins, April 4], chook farming and dairying are suffering from the decisions of people with this disease.
Politicians handling treaty settlements are a classic example; the disease has complete control of their brains.
We have lost many advanced societies in the past. They probably fell from the effects of this disease.
When we implode it will probably be Alaskan bush people and the Siberian outposts that will start the next civilisation.
G R SCOWN
Whanganui
Mandy Brooke says she has "got so much out of" her 10 years as manager.