December 24, 2025 • 19 mins
(December 24, 2025)
A 70-year Christmas tradition started with a kid, a wrong number and Col. Harry Shoup. What ‘giving up’ on home ownership REALLY means, because an entire generation is resigning to that fate. Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about the ‘Christmas Coronary,’ when to utilize urgent care or the ER, and HHS announcing an overhaul of the child vaccine schedule.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're list Saints KFI AM six forty the bill handle
show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
KFI AM six forty bill handle.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Here on a December twenty four and it is a Wednesday.
And if you follow Norrad, of course, Norrad is the
US the radar system that anticipates Russian missiles mainly coming
in the United States. Santa Claus Santa Sleigh is being
(00:41):
followed all over the world. Now, a little bit of
history about NORAD. It's kind of a fun history. Originally
it was devised by well, the Santa Slay coming in
over the United States Territory was devised by the Russians
who were masquerading they were giving nuclear weapons to look
(01:02):
like the Santa Slay coming in. By the way, that's
absolutely not true. Here is the story, and it's about
a guy named Harry Shop. Colonel Harry Shop, an Air
Force career officer twenty eight years in the Air Force,
decorated fighter pilot who was known as a no nonsense
(01:24):
commander and a real stickler for rules. And so that
makes it kind of really interesting the story because it
was December Day right in Colorado Springs, right the day
before Christmas or a couple of days before Christmas and
the phone rings.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
On his desk. Now he had two different phones.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
One was a black phone, which was the regular phone
that was used by every office, every home in the country,
basically a black phone, and there was a red phone
on his desk. And when that phone rang, that was
a big deal. Why because it's the middle of the
(02:08):
Cold War and that red phone ringing meant really bad news.
So at that time he was commander of CONNAD or CONAD,
the Continental Air Defense Command, which was an early version
of the North American Aerospace Defense Command nor AD, and
(02:30):
it is a joint US Canadian operation still in use today.
And it was the nerve center of America's defensive shield
against an attack, a nuclear air attack, missiles coming in
mainly from Russia. It was with the fear in those days.
And so if you went there, a really interesting place.
(02:51):
You've seen this in the movies. The command center had
this huge, massive mask of all of North America on plexiglass,
and behind that were a bunch of technicians who were handwriting.
They were on scaffolds and they were literally handwriting with
these grease pencils where the radar blip was, where the
(03:18):
theoretical were the missiles that had just been that just
had been marked that they were coming in. Now they
had to write backwards. So you have a bunch of
technicians up on scaffolds behind this plexiglass and they're writing
backwards and noting exactly where a missile or an unidentified
(03:42):
flying object was coming into US airspace actually would be
Canadian airspace first.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And that red phone when it was rained, When it rained, I'll.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Tell you why it was a big deal because it
was wired directly to a four star general at the Pentagon.
And so when that phone rings, Shoote picks it up
and he says, Colonel Shop He barks silence on the
other end, and then out of that phone, that red phone,
(04:17):
comes this little small voice.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Is this Santa Claus?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And he started getting upset, I mean, he's confused, and
then he gets annoyed and he gets angry and thinks
this may be a joke, maybe not, And he begins
by screaming into the phone because at this point it
(04:43):
was not a military situation. It was just somebody going
is this Santa Claus? And he screams, what do you
think you're doing? And then Shope realizes it was a kid,
a child trying to reach Santa Claus. Now this is
(05:03):
a gruff military guy who is known as a stickler,
And he pauses for a moment, and then into the
phone he says, ho, ho, ho, of course this is
Santa Claus.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Have you been a good boy?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And he ended up talking to this kid for several minutes,
hearing the wishes for toys and treats and saying, yep,
I'm going to be there Christmas Eve. And then the
boy asked, can you bring something nice for mommy? And
he goes, I will. Matter of fact, can I speak
to your mommy? And he tried to figure out what
was happening. This came out of that day's local newspaper.
(05:42):
The phone number, it was a Sears ad with a
picture of Santa and invited the kids call me on
my private phone and I'll talk to you personally anytime
or day or night. And the number was off by
one digit calling into that red phone, which is a
(06:03):
top secret number. And then okay, by the way, he said,
you answer every phone that you get. He tells at
and t set up a new link to Washington. That's
going to be the phone number, and a few night later,
(06:25):
he goes to have his Christmas dinner with his family
with the on duty troops. He walks in the control
center and there he sees a little image of a
sleigh that had been drawn by one of the military staffers.
Because this was a huge plex glass, just this window
plex glass, massive of which the military, the folks that
(06:50):
were writing on it, walked, wrote backwards and literally pinpointed
whatever flying whatever unidentified flying object was coming into view
on the radar. And that's how it started. He ordered
someone to get the community relations officer. He's on the
(07:10):
phone call then to a local radio station. CONAD had
picked up an unidentified incoming object, distinctly.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
North polar origin, distinctly sleigh shaped.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The newspapers got involved, the network's gone involved in a
tradition was born seventy years now where Norad is publicly.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Tracking Santa sleigh.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And now you go on their app and there you
see Santa going around the world on his sleigh. And
now if you go there right now, starting December twenty four,
for twenty hours, more than fifteen hundred volunteers are tracking
the sleigh and answering phone calls from little kids who
(07:59):
want to tell Santa or talk to Santa and say
this is what I want, and they have to train
these people and conor I don't know if you have.
I don't know if you have that recording of one
of these volunteers training to be Santa and asking Santa
for for favors and telling kids, yes, I'll talk to Santa.
(08:20):
And one little boy uh saying just in addition to toys,
he goes and my mommy is very sick. She has cancer.
Can you please help her? And the staffer says, nope,
she's gonna die. Now that person didn't last very long.
I must tell you I don't have that one. Yeah,
that is my favorite training audio that exists. Any case,
(08:45):
you can track Santa and you will be Uh'll, It'll
be on every news outlet tonight, you bet you as
Christmas Eve comes in. That's the story of Norad and
Santa coming in all over the world and you can
actually follow him. The problem is is what do you
do when you're in the country next to Santa Because
there's only one sleigh and it's going around the world.
(09:08):
Of course it goes across North America, but does it
go across Mexico? Probably not. Anyway, great, great story. I've
always enjoyed that. Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for
it Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Also,
as I have told you for twenty five, for twenty
eight or thirty years, Board certified er, doctor Jim, last
(09:30):
of the year, we get together, good morning, good morning. Right,
We've got a lot going on out there. And here
is something and I didn't even know this, but it
makes a lot of sense. And the Christmas Corner Coronary,
what is that about?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Is it a gift to get people?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:54):
No, the Christmas Coronary is a real thing. I mean
every single Christmas inherencated part and we have multiple heart
attacks and things like that. It's it happens, I think
because you're combining all the risk factors kind of all
at one time.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
There's there's too much salt in your food, there's a
lot of stress, there's too much alcohol, you haven't had
a lot of sleep, it's colder than normal. Some people
have ongoing infections too, like a little flu or cold.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Or something like that.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
It all adds up to you know, that person who
was on the edge of having a heart attack, anyway.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So right, this doesn't isn't the cause of a heart attack.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It's just you're stacking up all these triggers all in
one time period, all right, So.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I it's I mean, is this discernible. You're there, You
are in the R R.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Room er department, which of course you've done for so
many years and isn't anticipated if you're on call or
if you're working. Get ready for a real uptick in
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, I mean, definitely a real uptake.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
There's a at least in Sweden anyway, there's a study
of show fifteen percent higher heart attack risk during the
Christmas period. And you know, it's just it's real.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
We definitely see it.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
So you know, and Granny who hasn't you know, she's
been on her good diet, hasn't eaten any you know,
high fat, high salt foods for a long time. All
of a sudden it's down in a whole Christmas meal
and now all that you know, you know, when people
have a heart attack and or when they're dying, especially
when we're doing CPR, they usually puke.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Up everything in their spect.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So we get to see the entire Christmas meal.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Oh that sounds wonderful what happens in the ar Christmas Eve?
I mean, you've done your fair share. Is it any different? No,
Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
People end up dying on you. I mean you look
at them any differently at all.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
It's it's a weird night in the er because you've
got all this kind of serious illness coming in of
heart attacks and strokes and people dying. You have serious
mental illness coming in more.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Than the usual.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
So all your rooms, you know, a lot of your
rooms are filled with people waiting to talk to a
counselor of some kind or possibly thinking about suicide, you know,
And I'm glad they're there and not out somewhere else
at that point. And then it's not quite as busy
often as other times. Now, there's busy times in the
day right like that, usually right before the dinner crowd.
(12:26):
Everybody wants to get in there and hey, I got
family coming over and get fixed. People have injury themselves
while cooking because they don't cook as much as anymore,
and so suddenly they're in the kitchen doing things they're
not familiar with, and there's cuts and burns and everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
This you know, I'm thinking that it's as you were
saying that people aren't going to go to the emergency room,
especially Christmas Eve as just for something as relatively minor.
And we've talked about that, and people look at the
emergency room as their primary physician.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So if I get this right, you are this is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
When the emergency room really shines because you're dealing with
some and a lot of them real emergencies.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it's like I said, it's
it's similar to almost any other day in the er
in some ways and other ways.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
It's just kind of it's got.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
An odd feeling. There's something just weird about Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day because it's not as it's not as busy.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
In some respects and other respects.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
You get very busy all of a sudden with a
bunch of critically ill people.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So do you guys saying Christmas music to each other
Christmas songs as you're cracking chests?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah? We do, Yeah, we do, We absolutely do.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
We have Christmas music playing all shift long, and you know,
people are wearing hats and and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So it's seriously yeah, of course, Okay, all.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, Yeah, that's like Halloween, everybody comes in and you
dress up. That's kind of you in there wearing funny
hats and Christmas and ho ho ho. And by the way,
you're dying of a heart attack right now. Okay, so
let me do this one. I'm sick, I don't feel good.
Urgent care or er. Which one do you choose?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So, yeah, definitely this has got to be You got
to make the right choice here because there it's crazy
how people will bypass three or four urgent cares when
they have just like a tiny cut on their finger
or an injury to a you know, an extremity bone
that just they want to get X rayed. Those are
things that could quickly and easily be done in urgent care.
(14:38):
Or you feel like you need a prescription because you
have a sore throat or you have an earache, those
type of things are great for urgent cares. So you
can wait, you know, two to three hours in an er,
or you can walk into an urgent care. Now, urgent
cares don't take all comers, is the problem. So if
you don't have insurance, you end up in the emergency
department because we do take everyone. So you know, you
(14:58):
have to either have a credit card or insurance when
you're walking into an urgent care.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
But the things you don't.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Want to go to an urgent care for are things
like chest pain where you're worried you're having a heart attack.
That's not the right place. They don't have the equipment
to deal with that. Abdominal pain. If it's severe abdominal
pain and enough to bring you to the emergency room,
you should go to the emergency room because in the
urgent care they can't do things like cat scans, they
can't get the blood tests back immediately. You know, there
(15:26):
are some that may change in the future. There's some
urgent cares that are partnering with with different hospitals or
other places where they have X ray right next door,
lab right next door. But as of right now, just
your standard run of the mill urgent care, you don't
go there for possible strokes, possible heart attacks, or severe
abdominal pain.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So you walk into an urgent care and you don't
have insurance and your credit card is maxed out, do
they throw you out?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yes, they do, one hundred percent. Will say, look, you know,
we don't we take care of people at a cost,
And so this is like any other service, just like
a restaurant. You walk into a restaurant, you don't have
money to pay, they say, sorry, we don't do this
for free.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And one last one, if we knew it fairly quickly,
AHHS announces the overhaul of the child vaccine schedule.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I mean, this has to be this whole.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Litany of reductions and retractions and just the limits that
HHS wants doctors or wants people they have in terms
of vaccinations have to be scaring on medical science, have
to be scaring those of you that are real doctors.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Sure, it's thrown us into you know, now we have
to make recommendations from the hospital to our pediatricians because
they're asking us what, you know, what are we going
to do? What are we going to tell parents? And
so we have to get through that, and really it's
it's creating a lot of work. And if it's creating
that much anxiety with pediatricians, you can only imagine with
new parents what it's doing. And then them choosing Denmark.
(16:53):
It's it's crazy, right, So number one, Denmark is one
of the lower vaccinating countries in the world. They didn't
pick a centrist country. Almost every other country vaccinates.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The same as US or more.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
The UK actually vaccinates more diseases than we do.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And when you.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Look at Denmark, it's such a unique little country, right,
It's it doesn't have the influx, there's not immigration there,
they don't have rampant disease. The population is very stable.
They have a very tightly integrated health care system that
takes you from birth to death with very good medical records,
(17:31):
good prenatal care, everything else. And so they have almost
a model you know, health care system as far as
getting people well cared for.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right, which.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
The argument is comparing. Yeah, look at Denmark. They don't
vaccinate and look how well they do. It's yeah, kind
of nuts. Jim, you have a good one. It's going
to be uh looking forward to another miserable year next
year with medical care.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
No, I'm looking for it too, you know. You know me,
I'm a problem solver. I'm looking for it to lots
of problems and coming up with solutions.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And this is where Jim and I. He's the optimist,
I'm the pessimist. All right, Jim, you have a good one.
Say hello to everybody. Take care all right, guys, We're done.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I come back January fifth, where we all come back
and start all over again with the normal crew.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
In the meantime tomorrow morning, it's Jesus.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Jesus is doing the show, insisted on doing it, and
how do you argue with Jesus?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
You can't. And then we've got I don't know am
I going to do? I? Am I gonna be back for
handling the law on Saturday? Yeah? I might, I don't
know yet. In the meantime day off, I'll let you
have the day off.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well thanks?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You know what sometimes I mean, you know, I hate
everybody I'm with anyway. Yeah, so, and I yell at everybody,
So why not yell at people on the radio, because
that's even more fun.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
All right, So I haven't decided, but thanks Heather. That's it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Guy, Gary and Shannon up next. Have a happy, happy,
not really on holiday. This is KF I am sixty.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're list Saints KFI AM six forty the bill handle
show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
KFI AM six forty bill handle.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Here on a December twenty four and it is a Wednesday.
And if you follow Norrad, of course, Norrad is the
US the radar system that anticipates Russian missiles mainly coming
in the United States. Santa Claus Santa Sleigh is being
(00:41):
followed all over the world. Now, a little bit of
history about NORAD. It's kind of a fun history. Originally
it was devised by well, the Santa Slay coming in
over the United States Territory was devised by the Russians
who were masquerading they were giving nuclear weapons to look
(01:02):
like the Santa Slay coming in. By the way, that's
absolutely not true. Here is the story, and it's about
a guy named Harry Shop. Colonel Harry Shop, an Air
Force career officer twenty eight years in the Air Force,
decorated fighter pilot who was known as a no nonsense
(01:24):
commander and a real stickler for rules. And so that
makes it kind of really interesting the story because it
was December Day right in Colorado Springs, right the day
before Christmas or a couple of days before Christmas and
the phone rings.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
On his desk. Now he had two different phones.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
One was a black phone, which was the regular phone
that was used by every office, every home in the country,
basically a black phone, and there was a red phone
on his desk. And when that phone rang, that was
a big deal. Why because it's the middle of the
(02:08):
Cold War and that red phone ringing meant really bad news.
So at that time he was commander of CONNAD or CONAD,
the Continental Air Defense Command, which was an early version
of the North American Aerospace Defense Command nor AD, and
(02:30):
it is a joint US Canadian operation still in use today.
And it was the nerve center of America's defensive shield
against an attack, a nuclear air attack, missiles coming in
mainly from Russia. It was with the fear in those days.
And so if you went there, a really interesting place.
(02:51):
You've seen this in the movies. The command center had
this huge, massive mask of all of North America on plexiglass,
and behind that were a bunch of technicians who were handwriting.
They were on scaffolds and they were literally handwriting with
these grease pencils where the radar blip was, where the
(03:18):
theoretical were the missiles that had just been that just
had been marked that they were coming in. Now they
had to write backwards. So you have a bunch of
technicians up on scaffolds behind this plexiglass and they're writing
backwards and noting exactly where a missile or an unidentified
(03:42):
flying object was coming into US airspace actually would be
Canadian airspace first.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And that red phone when it was rained, When it rained, I'll.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Tell you why it was a big deal because it
was wired directly to a four star general at the Pentagon.
And so when that phone rings, Shoote picks it up
and he says, Colonel Shop He barks silence on the
other end, and then out of that phone, that red phone,
(04:17):
comes this little small voice.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Is this Santa Claus?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And he started getting upset, I mean, he's confused, and
then he gets annoyed and he gets angry and thinks
this may be a joke, maybe not, And he begins
by screaming into the phone because at this point it
(04:43):
was not a military situation. It was just somebody going
is this Santa Claus? And he screams, what do you
think you're doing? And then Shope realizes it was a kid,
a child trying to reach Santa Claus. Now this is
(05:03):
a gruff military guy who is known as a stickler,
And he pauses for a moment, and then into the
phone he says, ho, ho, ho, of course this is
Santa Claus.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Have you been a good boy?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And he ended up talking to this kid for several minutes,
hearing the wishes for toys and treats and saying, yep,
I'm going to be there Christmas Eve. And then the
boy asked, can you bring something nice for mommy? And
he goes, I will. Matter of fact, can I speak
to your mommy? And he tried to figure out what
was happening. This came out of that day's local newspaper.
(05:42):
The phone number, it was a Sears ad with a
picture of Santa and invited the kids call me on
my private phone and I'll talk to you personally anytime
or day or night. And the number was off by
one digit calling into that red phone, which is a
(06:03):
top secret number. And then okay, by the way, he said,
you answer every phone that you get. He tells at
and t set up a new link to Washington. That's
going to be the phone number, and a few night later,
(06:25):
he goes to have his Christmas dinner with his family
with the on duty troops. He walks in the control
center and there he sees a little image of a
sleigh that had been drawn by one of the military staffers.
Because this was a huge plex glass, just this window
plex glass, massive of which the military, the folks that
(06:50):
were writing on it, walked, wrote backwards and literally pinpointed
whatever flying whatever unidentified flying object was coming into view
on the radar. And that's how it started. He ordered
someone to get the community relations officer. He's on the
(07:10):
phone call then to a local radio station. CONAD had
picked up an unidentified incoming object, distinctly.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
North polar origin, distinctly sleigh shaped.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The newspapers got involved, the network's gone involved in a
tradition was born seventy years now where Norad is publicly.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Tracking Santa sleigh.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And now you go on their app and there you
see Santa going around the world on his sleigh. And
now if you go there right now, starting December twenty four,
for twenty hours, more than fifteen hundred volunteers are tracking
the sleigh and answering phone calls from little kids who
(07:59):
want to tell Santa or talk to Santa and say
this is what I want, and they have to train
these people and conor I don't know if you have.
I don't know if you have that recording of one
of these volunteers training to be Santa and asking Santa
for for favors and telling kids, yes, I'll talk to Santa.
(08:20):
And one little boy uh saying just in addition to toys,
he goes and my mommy is very sick. She has cancer.
Can you please help her? And the staffer says, nope,
she's gonna die. Now that person didn't last very long.
I must tell you I don't have that one. Yeah,
that is my favorite training audio that exists. Any case,
(08:45):
you can track Santa and you will be Uh'll, It'll
be on every news outlet tonight, you bet you as
Christmas Eve comes in. That's the story of Norad and
Santa coming in all over the world and you can
actually follow him. The problem is is what do you
do when you're in the country next to Santa Because
there's only one sleigh and it's going around the world.
(09:08):
Of course it goes across North America, but does it
go across Mexico? Probably not. Anyway, great, great story. I've
always enjoyed that. Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for
it Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Also,
as I have told you for twenty five, for twenty
eight or thirty years, Board certified er, doctor Jim, last
(09:30):
of the year, we get together, good morning, good morning. Right,
We've got a lot going on out there. And here
is something and I didn't even know this, but it
makes a lot of sense. And the Christmas Corner Coronary,
what is that about?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Is it a gift to get people?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:54):
No, the Christmas Coronary is a real thing. I mean
every single Christmas inherencated part and we have multiple heart
attacks and things like that. It's it happens, I think
because you're combining all the risk factors kind of all
at one time.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
There's there's too much salt in your food, there's a
lot of stress, there's too much alcohol, you haven't had
a lot of sleep, it's colder than normal. Some people
have ongoing infections too, like a little flu or cold.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Or something like that.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
It all adds up to you know, that person who
was on the edge of having a heart attack, anyway.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So right, this doesn't isn't the cause of a heart attack.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It's just you're stacking up all these triggers all in
one time period, all right, So.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I it's I mean, is this discernible. You're there, You
are in the R R.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Room er department, which of course you've done for so
many years and isn't anticipated if you're on call or
if you're working. Get ready for a real uptick in
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, I mean, definitely a real uptake.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
There's a at least in Sweden anyway, there's a study
of show fifteen percent higher heart attack risk during the
Christmas period. And you know, it's just it's real.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
We definitely see it.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
So you know, and Granny who hasn't you know, she's
been on her good diet, hasn't eaten any you know,
high fat, high salt foods for a long time. All
of a sudden it's down in a whole Christmas meal
and now all that you know, you know, when people
have a heart attack and or when they're dying, especially
when we're doing CPR, they usually puke.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Up everything in their spect.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So we get to see the entire Christmas meal.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Oh that sounds wonderful what happens in the ar Christmas Eve?
I mean, you've done your fair share. Is it any different? No,
Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
People end up dying on you. I mean you look
at them any differently at all.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
It's it's a weird night in the er because you've
got all this kind of serious illness coming in of
heart attacks and strokes and people dying. You have serious
mental illness coming in more.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Than the usual.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
So all your rooms, you know, a lot of your
rooms are filled with people waiting to talk to a
counselor of some kind or possibly thinking about suicide, you know,
And I'm glad they're there and not out somewhere else
at that point. And then it's not quite as busy
often as other times. Now, there's busy times in the
day right like that, usually right before the dinner crowd.
(12:26):
Everybody wants to get in there and hey, I got
family coming over and get fixed. People have injury themselves
while cooking because they don't cook as much as anymore,
and so suddenly they're in the kitchen doing things they're
not familiar with, and there's cuts and burns and everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
This you know, I'm thinking that it's as you were
saying that people aren't going to go to the emergency room,
especially Christmas Eve as just for something as relatively minor.
And we've talked about that, and people look at the
emergency room as their primary physician.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So if I get this right, you are this is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
When the emergency room really shines because you're dealing with
some and a lot of them real emergencies.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it's like I said, it's
it's similar to almost any other day in the er
in some ways and other ways.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
It's just kind of it's got.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
An odd feeling. There's something just weird about Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day because it's not as it's not as busy.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
In some respects and other respects.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
You get very busy all of a sudden with a
bunch of critically ill people.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So do you guys saying Christmas music to each other
Christmas songs as you're cracking chests?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah? We do, Yeah, we do, We absolutely do.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
We have Christmas music playing all shift long, and you know,
people are wearing hats and and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So it's seriously yeah, of course, Okay, all.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, Yeah, that's like Halloween, everybody comes in and you
dress up. That's kind of you in there wearing funny
hats and Christmas and ho ho ho. And by the way,
you're dying of a heart attack right now. Okay, so
let me do this one. I'm sick, I don't feel good.
Urgent care or er. Which one do you choose?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So, yeah, definitely this has got to be You got
to make the right choice here because there it's crazy
how people will bypass three or four urgent cares when
they have just like a tiny cut on their finger
or an injury to a you know, an extremity bone
that just they want to get X rayed. Those are
things that could quickly and easily be done in urgent care.
(14:38):
Or you feel like you need a prescription because you
have a sore throat or you have an earache, those
type of things are great for urgent cares. So you
can wait, you know, two to three hours in an er,
or you can walk into an urgent care. Now, urgent
cares don't take all comers, is the problem. So if
you don't have insurance, you end up in the emergency
department because we do take everyone. So you know, you
(14:58):
have to either have a credit card or insurance when
you're walking into an urgent care.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
But the things you don't.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Want to go to an urgent care for are things
like chest pain where you're worried you're having a heart attack.
That's not the right place. They don't have the equipment
to deal with that. Abdominal pain. If it's severe abdominal
pain and enough to bring you to the emergency room,
you should go to the emergency room because in the
urgent care they can't do things like cat scans, they
can't get the blood tests back immediately. You know, there
(15:26):
are some that may change in the future. There's some
urgent cares that are partnering with with different hospitals or
other places where they have X ray right next door,
lab right next door. But as of right now, just
your standard run of the mill urgent care, you don't
go there for possible strokes, possible heart attacks, or severe
abdominal pain.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So you walk into an urgent care and you don't
have insurance and your credit card is maxed out, do
they throw you out?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yes, they do, one hundred percent. Will say, look, you know,
we don't we take care of people at a cost,
And so this is like any other service, just like
a restaurant. You walk into a restaurant, you don't have
money to pay, they say, sorry, we don't do this
for free.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And one last one, if we knew it fairly quickly,
AHHS announces the overhaul of the child vaccine schedule.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I mean, this has to be this whole.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Litany of reductions and retractions and just the limits that
HHS wants doctors or wants people they have in terms
of vaccinations have to be scaring on medical science, have
to be scaring those of you that are real doctors.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Sure, it's thrown us into you know, now we have
to make recommendations from the hospital to our pediatricians because
they're asking us what, you know, what are we going
to do? What are we going to tell parents? And
so we have to get through that, and really it's
it's creating a lot of work. And if it's creating
that much anxiety with pediatricians, you can only imagine with
new parents what it's doing. And then them choosing Denmark.
(16:53):
It's it's crazy, right, So number one, Denmark is one
of the lower vaccinating countries in the world. They didn't
pick a centrist country. Almost every other country vaccinates.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The same as US or more.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
The UK actually vaccinates more diseases than we do.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And when you.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Look at Denmark, it's such a unique little country, right,
It's it doesn't have the influx, there's not immigration there,
they don't have rampant disease. The population is very stable.
They have a very tightly integrated health care system that
takes you from birth to death with very good medical records,
(17:31):
good prenatal care, everything else. And so they have almost
a model you know, health care system as far as
getting people well cared for.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right, which.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
The argument is comparing. Yeah, look at Denmark. They don't
vaccinate and look how well they do. It's yeah, kind
of nuts. Jim, you have a good one. It's going
to be uh looking forward to another miserable year next
year with medical care.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
No, I'm looking for it too, you know. You know me,
I'm a problem solver. I'm looking for it to lots
of problems and coming up with solutions.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And this is where Jim and I. He's the optimist,
I'm the pessimist. All right, Jim, you have a good one.
Say hello to everybody. Take care all right, guys, We're done.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I come back January fifth, where we all come back
and start all over again with the normal crew.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
In the meantime tomorrow morning, it's Jesus.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Jesus is doing the show, insisted on doing it, and
how do you argue with Jesus?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
You can't. And then we've got I don't know am
I going to do? I? Am I gonna be back for
handling the law on Saturday? Yeah? I might, I don't
know yet. In the meantime day off, I'll let you
have the day off.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well thanks?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You know what sometimes I mean, you know, I hate
everybody I'm with anyway. Yeah, so, and I yell at everybody,
So why not yell at people on the radio, because
that's even more fun.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
All right, So I haven't decided, but thanks Heather. That's it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Guy, Gary and Shannon up next. Have a happy, happy,
not really on holiday. This is KF I am sixty.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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