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Dr. John Hong
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Hearing Loss | What?

Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher talked like this, “Wah waah wah waah.” Maybe I have a hearing problem, but I don’t think The Peanuts adults articulate well. Snoopy talks better than they do.
If you talk to someone who can’t hear well, they will often blame you. One hard-of-hearing person used to say to us, “You [...]

Fox29 | Weight Loss Pill, Cell Phone and Brain Cancer, Alzheimer’s Early Detection

Fox29 | Weight Loss Pill, Cell Phone and Brain Cancer, Alzheimer’s Early Detection

Vertebral Fractures | The Back Crack From Hades

“Step on a crack, Break your mother’s back.” You know, just because something rhymes doesn’t mean it makes sense. I’ll tell you what will break your mother’s back: moving back into her house– when you’re 40 years old! Okay, more likely osteoporosis will break your mother’s (or father’s) back, but what is the deal [...]

Advanced Directives | It Doesn’t Mean “Pull The Plug On Grandma”

“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is an interesting song. Maybe opponents of End of Life (EOL) counseling should use that melody for “Pull the plug on my dear old grandma.” Hmm, something tells me no one will be singing that song during Christmas.
And I don’t think Rudolph would intentionally run over [...]

Medicare Part D Video | What a Donut HOLE

Medicare D is a prescription program for those with Medicare B or who are eligible for Medicare A. Most of my patients who have Medicare D are dissatisfied. And in 2008 they introduced the stupid Donut Hole. Ugh. Medicare Part D 2007:
Some senior citizens suffer. My parents are in their [...]

Falls | As in a person falls, not a waterfall.

Falling and tripping make a lot of people laugh– until it happens to them.
I don’t know why people laugh when they see others get hurt, like on that show America’s Funniest Home Videos. I refuse to watch it because I don’t understand what’s so funny about seeing someone hit the ground. As a [...]

Menopause Video | End and Beginning of an Era

Menopause is a subject of interest to many women.Menopause means no more menstrual periods.Average age is 51 for menopause.5% menopause between 40-45 & 5% after 55

“I’m a girl and by me that’s only great. I enjoy being a girl!” Go, Flower Drum Song! In that Rogers & Hammerstein song, Nancy Kwan sings about [...]

Plastic Surgery | Is It Really That Uplifting?

Joan Rivers says she’s had so much plastic surgery that when she dies, she’ll donate her body to Tupperware. You can laugh at her, as well as at her book, Men Are Stupid…And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery.
However, she has a point: people are cruel when it [...]

Menopause – End of an Era

“I’m a girl and by me that’s only great. I enjoy being a girl!” Go, Flower Drum Song! In that Rogers & Hammerstein song, Nancy Kwan sings about all the great things women get to do that are fun and sassy. I tell you, the ladies have all the fun: hair, makeup, shoes, clothes-and [...]

Medicare Cuts – Give me a break!

Do rich people rely on Medicare? It seems to me the way the US government keeps trying to cut Medicare, the answer is, “Of course not, Buffy and Skippy!” Chortle, chortle, nasal honk. “Now where did I put my yacht?”
Senior citizens tend to have the most need for healthcare, and the demand on Medicare [...]

We Are(n’t) Family – Everybody NOT Sing

“We Are Family, I got all my sisters with me. Get up everybody and sing!” Go, Sister Sledge!! (Where are they now?)
Family is something so powerful, so encompassing, so-ah, complicated. The Partridge Family never had major conflict even though the show started on the premise of the death of Mr. Partridge. Wait a [...]

Fecal Incontinence

“Let Go and Let God” is an expression I’ve heard for a couple of decades. I still haven’t mastered it. Actually, I can’t really say I’m trying to master it. Well, really… oh, never mind. The point is that some things are just out of our control, like the weather, traffic, and Lindsay Lohan. [...]

End of Life Issues – Advanced Directives

Dying is so dreaded by most people that I wonder why we have so many expressions for it, like “I’m dying for a cold drink,” or “I’d rather die than wear black shoes with a white belt!”
With all the talk about dying, you might think it would be easy to discuss it with [...]

Parkinson’s Disease : More than a shaky matter

Michael J. Fox and I have some similarities! Okay, besides the fact that we are both short, we were both born in Canada! Yes, I was practically born in a little igloo in Canada before we moved to the US.
Let’s face it, we all love Canadians. As far as I know, there [...]

Alone Alone All All Alone: Tough times for some elderly

“We Are Family, I got all my sisters with me. Get up everybody and sing!”
Go, Sister Sledge! (But where are they now?)
Family is something so powerful, so encompassing, so– ah, complicated. The Partridge Family never had major conflict even though the show started with the death of Mr. Partridge. Wait a minute, even [...]

Medicare Part D 2007: Prices go up at the pump and your insurance

Some senior citizens suffer. My parents are in their 70s. My mother still can’t use a VCR– not that it matters, because now they have a DVD player– which she can’t figure out either. They have cell phones– but for emergency use only– and they can’t figure out how to set up their voice mail.
I [...]

Shingles Vaccine: Zostavax is available

Steve Carell has a hard life. I’m sure he got seasick on the Ark while filming Evan Almighty in Crozet. In his NBC show The Office, he’s as clueless as Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. In Anchorman, he had only three– at best four– brain cells.
But in reality he’s very well educated. He went to [...]

Growth Hormone Deficiency: Is there a fountain of youth for some?

I’ve always been the shortest guy– in school, among my friends, among my colleagues. In my medical school class picture, I’m standing in the front. No one wants to play volleyball with me because I can’t spike the ball. I have to have all my pants altered because no one makes 29/29 pants. Everything in [...]

Glucosamine & Chondroitin: Arthritis pill not that great for knees

Pain is something that’s awful, prevalent, and hard to describe to someone else. Some people experience pain, others share the pain (and yet still others just cause pain).
I was shopping at the local ABC store. (Mary Poppins sang, “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down,” but did not include “A small [...]

Flu Shots: A Minor Ouch!

Some people beg for the flu shot each October. Others are petrified of getting one. “Last time I got a flu shot, I was sick as a dog. I almost died!” they say. (I always wondered why we say “sick as a dog” because my dogs have always been healthy.)
I try to convince my [...]

Tai Chi: good for the bones, good for the body

We were the only Asian people in the small town in Ohio where I grew up. In fact, many of the people thought we were Mexican because they weren’t used to seeing Asian people. Ole!
So when my classmates learned I ate exotic foods like sushi, seaweed, and squid (aka calamari, which I think [...]

Elder Abuse

Who loves Jane Fonda? Who hates Jane Fonda? Regardless of her politics, she did win an Oscar for Klute, married Ted Turner, and starred with her father (who won an Oscar for On Golden Pond just a few weeks before he died).
Katherine Hepburn won her fourth Oscar in that movie as well, probably for [...]

Elderly Drivers: Is It Time To Give Up The Keys?

I am afraid to write this column. Very afraid. Normally in my office, I feel like a rock star! I like my patients and my patients like me.
However, there are times when I go from being Bono of U2 to Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl– times when I have to do the unthinkable: take [...]

Insomnia: Yawn, give me an Ambien Doc

When I was in college, a hypnotist came to entertain us. I was chosen to go up, and I did– unwillingly. The hypnotist had a Barry White type of voice, and he wooed me a little with his, “You are becoming sleepy. Your eyes are heavy.”
I don’t know about the other contestants on [...]