Salma passed her dissertation defense! Congratulations!

I got a little magnet in the mail from my health insurance company the other day, with a “Nurse Line” phone number on it. I’m supposed to call the Nurse Line when I’m sick to find out if I should go to the doctor. Or, as the card says, to help decide if the “doctor’s office, emergency room, or just self-care is needed.”

Suuuuure. I’ll call my insurance to ask whether I should accrue costly hospital bills for them to pay. Or not.

I’m sure it might depend on whether I had paid my full deductible yet, but I imagine . . .

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The other day I went to the doctor to get some shots for my upcoming trip to India (Pulao and I leave Xmas day for a long vacation to her parents’ homestead in Delhi). Although there’s not much risk of malaria in Delhi, my doc says its pretty standard to take some kind of malarial prophylaxis when visiting India. OK, I say.

“There’re two drugs that are good. A cheap one with side effects, and an expensive one with none.”

This sounds to me like the intro to a parable, or a joke. “What are the side effects for the . . .

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