Here’s a new word, new to me anyway: pogonophilia (love of beards). I think someone has been making words up for the fun of it but it seems that men can get beard transplants if they are not satisfied with their facial hair. I read about it, copied the new word and then forgot about it. So I googled “beard transplant” and found this bit of information:
- Average Cost:
- $8,956
- Range:
- $3,599 - $16,000
“A beard transplant cost should cover the surgery and follow-up appointments but not antibiotic cream or any future touch-up procedures.
Health insurance won’t cover a beard transplant, since it’s considered a cosmetic procedure.”
So I don’t think you can get a beard transplant, should you want or need one, on the National Health.
On the subject of the NHS, I’ve been trying to make an appointment to see my GP, just for some ongoing stuff, nothing urgent. When I called in at the surgery last week they told me they didn’t have my doctor’s schedule for next month available yet so could I telephone (a procedure that usually involves sitting by the phone listening to an automated voice tell you “you are currently number … in the queue!) or call in another day. So on Monday, going to the surgery for a routine blood pressure check among other things, I tried again. The rest of March and all of April are fully booked. I now have an appointment for early May. It’s a good job it’s nothing urgent. As I sat waiting to see the practice nurse, I heard a surprisingly large number of people (who like me seemed to have decided it was quicker to call in at the surgery than to wait by the phone) being told “we have nothing available until the end of April / beginning of May”.
I seem to remember the Labour Party promising us more doctors, which is fine but where are those doctor’s coming from? It’s not possible just to recruit them off the streets. It takes a while to train a doctor.
Here’s another “day” I have missed: World Sleep Day. In another of those articles where a young professional woman goes on about how hard it is to be the mother of a small baby (surely by now young women would have read enough to know that babies deprive you of sleep, but each one seems surprised by it) the writer said that World Sleep Day must have been invented by a man. Suspecting that she was delusional from sleep-deprivation, I googled it and found this:
“World Sleep Day (the Friday before the northern hemisphere vernal equinox) is an annual event organised by the World Sleep Day Committee of the World Sleep Society, formerly World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM), since 2008. The goal is to celebrate the benefits of good and healthy sleep and to draw society's attention to the burden of sleep problems and their medical, educational, and social aspects, and to promote the prevention and management of sleep disorders.”
In 2019 it was estimated that sleep deprivation cost the USA over $400 billion a year, Japan $138 billion, Germany $60 billion, the UK $50 and Canada $21 billion. Either Canadians are sleep champions or else they are more stoical and sensible about sleeplessness and don’t spend as much combatting it.
The first World Sleep Day was held on 14 March 2008. Events involving discussions, presentations of educational materials and exhibitions take place around the world and online. But it seems that an article on the Guardian in 2019 criticised World Sleep Day as helping to turn sleep into a commodity and pushing the idea that everyone should aspire to a single unbroken block of sleep, an idea which historians say is a recent invention.
Anything, I suppose, can be turned into a commodity if someone is going to make money out of it.
Anyway, this year it was Friday March 14th. The slogan was “Make Sleep Health a Priority”. I missed World Sleep Day. Maybe I slept through it.
I sometimes have problems with technology. It’s not new. I used to grow very frustrated with IT training sessions when I was a teacher. I am not alone in this. People in much more important positions than I have ever held make mistakes, it seems. Rather important mistakes! Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said on Tuesday he takes “full responsibility” for the group chat of senior administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist and leaked highly sensitive information about planned airstrikes in Yemen. Oops!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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