Are Tighter Butt Cheeks or Bigger Breasts Worth Dying For?

I am extremely saddened to see that a beautiful woman just died needlessly in search of something unobtainable - physical perfection in the face of aging. A woman named Solange Magnano - a model and former Miss Argentina - died from complications of cosmetic surgery. She was undergoing buttock surgery - yes, she was having surgery at age 38 to give herself either firmer or perkier or whatever buttocks. Having seen photos of the woman, I cannot imagine why she would have felt the need to do anything to alter her appearance - she was gorgeous. However, she felt that her life was worth so little that she was willing to risk it all for tighter butt cheeks. I doubt that she consciously thought about it in those terms, but the truth is that every person (and it's mostly women) who undergoes any type of cosmetic surgery is risking their life in order to alter their appearance. Not to cure a disease, or make them happier, or healthier, but to make them look different.

Every time a person has anesthesia (and I'm talking both general anesthesia where you are put into a drug-induced coma and no longer breathe on your own, and regional anesthesia where you might have a spinal block but are still awake) there is a risk of death. The risk of death I am referring to is the risk that comes just because you are undergoing anesthesia. I am not including the risk that something goes horribly wrong during the surgery and you bleed to death, or you get an infection after and die from that, or you develop a blood clot that goes to your lungs and kills you in the days to weeks after the surgery. I am talking about the risk of death that happens if you just have anesthesia, and don't even have a surgery done (if that were a possibility). And the risk of death isn't miniscule. We aren't talking about a one in a million chance of dying here. In looking at all the current data available now, including reviews of anesthesia deaths found in the literature and hospital reporting in the past decade (and this is really tough stuff to weed through) most educated and reasonable guesses put the risk of death at one in 10,000 conservatively.

So of all the people that undergo any surgery that requires anesthesia, about one person out of every 10,000 will die just because they had anesthesia. Remember, this does NOT include deaths related to the surgery itself like bleeding or infection or blood clots. Now, most studies suggest that people who are unhealthy, or need emergency surgery, are more likely to die from anesthesia. That would make sense. And the very young (i.e., infants) or the very old are also higher risk. But that's not the whole story - remember, the one in 10,000 deaths refer only to those people who died from the actual anesthesia.

In a recent review of mortality from cosmetic surgeries in the U.S. the author (himself an cosmetic or plastic surgeon) concluded that the death rate from breast implant surgery in Los Angeles in the past decade was at least one in 6,000, and possibly as frequent as one in 3,000. He also noted that at least one woman in six has a significant complication from her surgery, like infection, abnormal scarring (like the kind that gives the woman rock hard breasts) or blood clots in the breast tissue.

I don't know about most people, but when it's laid out in those terms (a one in 6,000 chance of dying just to get bigger boobs for your guy (or girl) to be proud of, or in the vain hope that altering your outward physical appearance will in any way make you happier) those sound like really shitty odds. It's about the same chance that you will die in a car accident in the next year. Your odds of dying during a one hour plane flight are less than 1 in 1,000,000. And your odds of winning the state lottery? 1 in 18,000,000 at best. It seems to me that you would be much better off spending your money (because those new breasts or buttocks aren't covered by insurance) on a great therapist who can help you work through why you hate your body so much that you are willing to risk death to change it.

Woods Is Just Another Privileged Rich Guy

I have been following the Tiger Woods single car motor vehicle accident with a sort of morbid fascination. Not so much that I can't wait to find out if his wife was actually using a golf club to rescue him (who breaks out the rear window of a SUV to rescue a driver in the front seat?) but instead to see if, yet again, a super wealthy celebrity gets the kind of preferential treatment that the rest of us could only fantasize about. And today, my suspicions were again confirmed. Tiger Woods doesn't think he needs to follow the same laws or procedures as the rest of us. And apparently the cops where he lives think the same thing.

First of all, anyone who is involved in a single vehicle accident in the middle of the night, then is incoherent and taken to the hospital for treatment, is presumed to be intoxicated. Ok, maybe he was texting, and then had a significant head injury to cause the altered consciousness, but it is most likely that a car accident in the wee hours of the morning is related to alcohol use. Had I been the ER doctor, I would have drawn blood for alcohol and other drugs, even if the driver denied any use. Why? Because he might be confused or amnestic and not remember using or drinking. And knowing if someone is intoxicated helps a lot in evaluating and treating them. And on the law enforcement side, any cop on the scene wants to find out if the person was driving while intoxicated. Because that's illegal. And even if the driver just hits a fire hydrant and a neighbor's tree, he could have hit a person standing next to the tree, or someone out taking a nighttime stroll. However, I have the sneaking suspicion that we will find out over the next few days that there was no blood drawn for an alcohol level. Call me paranoid, but I'm pretty sure I will be proved right.

And secondly, who on earth gets to tell the cops that questioning just isn't convenient for them right now, and gets away with that not once, not twice, but three times? Any other person involved in an accident that looked alcohol related would have had their ass hauled down to the police station for questioning immediately after they were released from the hospital. And if answering questions wasn't convenient right then, the police would have been fine waiting - while the driver sat in jail until he felt "ready".

The fact that Mr. Woods is allowed to schedule his questioning for a time that is convenient to him, or more likely to postpone that questioning indefinitely, just shows that Mr. Woods is rich enough to buy himself privileges that the rest of us can't afford. The police involved are making a mockery of our "justice is blind" legal system by allowing the rich guy to get away with behavior that would have earned the rest of us time in jail. I always thought that Tiger Woods was an honest and fair man who prioritized good sportsmanship and led by his example of good-natured competitiveness. What a disappointment to learn that he has more in common with Paris Hilton than someone like Muhammad Ali.

Roland Burris is a Megalomaniac

Well, it's a shame that I didn't blog about Roland Burris back in December and January. Because I knew that there would be something fishy about his appointment. No matter how squeaky clean the guy has been in his career, I was certain that he would do anything to gain that Senate seat. Why? Because the dude already has constructed a monument to himself detailing his triumphs to date. Seriously.

Now, I am all for pride in one's own accomplishments. But how many of us, including those of us who are admittedly a little egotistical, have already constructed a monument (and not a small one) to ourselves? That tells me that Mr. Burris has some pathology that makes him think that he is truly a gift to the people of this country. He is, indeed, a legend in his own mind.

What I really want to know now is whether or not his monument has changed since his seating in the Senate. If he is the kind of man I think he is (concerned far too much about his own greatness to be bothered by pesky things like ethics), I wouldn't be surprised if his monument already lists his Senate term.

What's next, Mr. Burris? God?