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PAGE 4A FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS-SUNDAY, JUNE 10, IWO Opinion Taxing times are ahead in more ways than one Enough is enough already. Now it is time, actually beyond the time, to get on with it. The Board of Tax Assessors have fought a long hard battle at taxpapyers' expense and it is time for them to do what they have been told and now told again. To rebill or credit taxpay ers on their 1989 tax bill accord ing to the new re-assessments. We agree this “double-billing" will be a complicated procedure that will take months to straight en out. But before blaming the Board of Equalization or the courts, one must look at the rea sons why we ended up in such a state. This dispute began four years ago when the BOE ordered the property taxes in the county be equalized. Tax Assessors fol lowed the order. However, when the action angered several hun dred taxpayers, the tax board re ON YOUR PAYROLL COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Chairman Michael Bennett, 4301 Post Road, Cumming, GA 30130 Vice Chairman Barry Hillgartner, Still Road. Cumming, GA 30130 Secretary Michael McGaughey, Nicholson Road, Cumming, GA 30130 James Harrington, Norcross Road, Cumming, GA 30130 Charles Welch. 102 Laurel Lane. Cumming, GA 30130 STATE REPRESENTATIVES Rep. Bill Barnett. District 10 P.O. Box 755, Cumming, Ga. 30130. Telephone: 887-6582. Sen. Nathan Deal, District 49 P.O. Box. 2522, Gainesville, Ga. 30503. Telephone: 1404-522-9978 Sen. Sallie Newbill, District 49 7205 Riverside Drive, Atlanta. Ga. Telephone: 1404-394-5676 Gov. Joe Frank Harris 203 State Capitol. Atlanta, Ga. 30334, Telephone: 1404-656-1776 NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES U.S. Senator Sam Nunn 303 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510. Telephone: 1- 202-224-3521. Atlanta number: 3314811 U.S. Senator Wyche Fowler 320 Hart Senate Office Building. Washington. D.C. 20510. Telephone: 1-202- 224-3643. Atlanta number:33l-0647 U.S. Rep. Ed Jenkins, 9th District 2427 Rayburn Building. Washington, D.C. 20515. Telephone: 1-202-225-5211; Gainesville number: 1404-536-2531. jWhat do YOU think? j | Do you feel It’s important to vote? Why? * Your name: j ! Your phone number: I j Write to: f ors yth County News \ i P.O. Box 210 ] ! Cumming, Ga. 30130 i Forsyth County News USPS 205-540 A New York Times Company (Established 1908) Forsyth County News 121 Dahlonega Street Cumming, Georgia 30130 Telephone - 887-3126 Published Sundays and Wednesdays by Forsyth County News Company, 121 Dahlonega St. Second class postage paid at Cumming, Ga. and additional of fices. Subscription rate for Forsyth and Dawson counties, $13.00 per year; other Georgia counties and out of state subscriptions are $40.00 per year. Advertising rates and deadlines available upon request. Postmaster: Send address changes to Forsyth County News/P.O. Box 210, Cumming, Ga. 30130. scinded the new levels and re signed. A second board was appointed and seemed to do the best thing politically adopted the old tax levels. And from that point on it has fought the BOE through the courts shouting the same slogan this is the best thing for the taxpayers. More than $30,000 of tax payers’ money have been spent doing what is best for the property owner. The revaluation is something even the Board of Tax Assessors said needed to be done but they wanted to do it at their own pace it seemed. They spent other peo ples’ money to try and do it at their pace. Was it really money well spent? In a fight for something that needed to be done in the first place. Through all the arguing no one ever said it couldn’t be done or shouldn’t be done they only said it would be very difficult to do. Now after thousands of tax payers dollars are spent the diffi culties are really only beginning. PUBLISHER-SCOTT M. BROWN MANAGING EDITOR-SALLYLYN M. HILL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR-HARRIET H. VINCENT CIRCULATION DIRECTOR-GRAHAM B. KIMBROUGH There may be 101 uses for hair spray 1 had a bug on my mirror the other day. Now i have a fuzzy spot where the bug used to be. No I didn't squish it I did the next best thing - sprayed it with hairspray. Hairspray was a wonderful invention. It has almost 101 different uses. First, like I already mentioned, it makes a handy bug spray if you don’t have a can of bug killer on hand. If it doesn’t kill the bug. it at least sticks it to one spot until you can go get a shoe and finish the job off. It also can be used on hosiery. If your ny lons run, spray the spot with hairspray. Stops it at least temporarily until you can get some fingernail polish. It makes a pretty perfume if you don’t mind smelling like your grandmother all day. You could use it to ward off an attacker. Of course it would work only if you used aero sol. I don’t think the pump or gel would have much of an affect Besides, my pump always gets clogged up anyway. Additionally a big can might be a little bulky to carry around in your purse. Unless of course you carry a fWI LIKE TO ™ Your Community Health Corner- Asthma By Steven L. Perlow, M.D. Guest Columnist Well, it looks like summer is just around the corner. 1 sure like these occasional cool dry days we’re having as spring comes to a close. There’s nothing like a sunny, dry day with an occasional cool breeze... Speaking of breezes, today we're going to talk about air way disease. Our guest in today’s health corner is Larry Kaplan, M.D. Dr. Kaplan is a specialist in pulmonary medicine. A pulmonologist is someone who diagnoses and treats diseases of the lungs such as chronic bronchitis, em physema and asthma. Today we are going to talk about asthma. Larry, what is asthma? “Asthma is an obstructive lung disease, which is reversible. By that I mean some times the airways in the lung become con stricted and at times they are not. These air ways have smooth muscles surrounding them that can contract, go into spasm and cause the airway size to decrease. In addi tion, these airways can swell with fluid or become plugged with mucous during this process. This can involve any airway in the lung. The main windpipe in our neck is called the trachea and that leads into the large bronchial tubes, which lead to smaller airways called bronchioles.” Is this a common disease? “Yes it is very common disease. Anyone can get it. Some people will have it in childhood and it can go into remission and later appear in adult hood. Others will develop it for the first time as an adult The main symptom of the dis ease is difficulty breathing with shortness of breath. The hallmark finding is the musical sound called wheeze. This is a sound that the lungs make caused by the vibration of air as it passes through the point of constriction. We hear this during expiration, or when we let air our during breathing. With more se vere attacks people can wheeze with inhala tion, when breathing in. The main problem is letting air our of the chest rather than not Memory functions on trivial pursuits By David Grimes New York Times Regional Newspapers As I get older, I find that I have more and more trouble remembering things. Not all things, just the stuff that’s occurred recently. For example, I cannot remember the title of the movie I rented yesterday. I can, however, still recite all the words to the Pepsi Cola jingle I learned in the second grade: Pepsi Cola hits the spot Five minutes later you hit the pot. Push the button and pull the chain, Away goes Pepsi down the drain. Roto-Rooter. Clearly, this is an essential memory, the kind of memory that should take precedence over such trivial things as doctor’s appoint ments. the whereabouts of the car keys, chil dren’s first names, etc. I sometimes have difficulty remembering IB purse like my mother’s handbag She doesn’t carry the kitchen sink around in it but that’s only because she’s not strong enough to carry the sink If you tease her about her purse she claims she needs everything in it Boy I’d hate to see her have to throw out one ofthose two dozen wadded up Kleenex’s to make room for anything else. But that’s a different story. I accidently used hairspray as a deodorant one sleepy morning. It didn’t work real well. Also I had a terrible time lifting up my arms all day. YOUR COMMUNITY \ \ HEALTH \ T } _ CORNER J being able to breathe in.” Does anything in particular cause an asthmatic attack. “An attack can be meditated by allergies to many substances such as pollen, infections such as bronchitis or influenza, stress and exercise in cold air.” How do we diagnose asthma? “It is usually a diagnosis we make clinically with history and physical exam. We also perform pulmo nary function tests which are breathing tests utilizing an instrument called a spirometer. It measures lung capacity and the rate of airflow out of the lungs. Because the disease is reversible one may have poor airflow one day and improved airflow on another. Proba bly the main symptom physicians look for is wheezing. Not all wheezing is due to asthma. We also see wheezing with obstructed air ways due to other things such as foreign bod ies, tumors or heart failure. Most of the time, however, wheezing is due to asthma. People can also have asthma without wheezing. We like to get a chest x-ray and pulmonary func tion tests on most all of our patients we see with respiratory difficulties.” Larry, what about treatment? “The main drugs we use for asthma are inhaled com pounds which are similar to a hormone in our body called epinephrine, which has a my phone number. I have, however, indeli bly stamped in my memory the words to the theme songs for “Green Acres,” “The Flint stones,” and, of course, the classic “Gilli gan’s Island.” One of these days I’m going to bum down the house because I can’t remember to turn off the coffee maker. That’s OK, though, be cause I retain these important memories: Brylcreem, a little dab’l do ya Use more only if you dare. But watch out, the gals will all pursue ya They’ll love to get their fingers in your hair. And: You’ll wonder where the yellow went When you brash your teeth with Pepsodent (And the parody, also memorized from sec ond grade: You’ll wonder where your teeth all went/if you brash your teeth with fresh cement) j I used hairspray on Freddie my feline once. I was trying to make his fur shiny. They should have a manufacturer’s warning against that After he clawed at me, removing half of my hair, he spent the next hour trying to lick it all off. Of course for the rest of the day he looked like the cross-eyed lion on that old television show “Doktari.” Then there’s the Spritz. You’re supposed to use it on your hair but I think it would be better used as a substitute for airplane glue. I used that on the side of my hair once and only once. It kept my hair in place for hours. The problem was the place my hair was in when I sprayed it was not the way I wanted it to stay. You see when I use hairspray. I bend over so my hair is dangling toward the floor above my head. I spray the underneath try ing to give it extra lift Well, that night I looked like the bride of Frankenstein with bad makeup. A little Dippity-Doo to make a curl and I could have been an oversized Peb bles Flintstone. I bet I gave some people some great ideas for Halloween that night dilating effect on our airways. We use terbu taline or albuteral. These compounds have less side effects and are safer than if we inhaled pure epinephrine. These drugs are inhaled through metered dose inhalers We also use a medicine called theophylline, which can have side effects of nervousness, difficulty sleeping or indigestion. This drug can be taken orally. Probably the most effec tive drugs for treatment of asthma have the most side effects. I am referring to the corti costeroids, which are antinflammatory hor mones. They decrease the inflammation in the airway as well as make the mucous much thinner. We give in inhaler form as well as be taken orally.” How serious is the disease? “It can be very' serious and life threatening. Wheezing or airway obstruction that does not clear with outpatient medicine can lead to hospitaliza tion. These patients often have some compo nent of respiratory failure and may be in severe distress with great difficulty' breath ing due to airway constriction. These pa tients will require intravenous steriods and aminophylline in the hospital, as well as mist dilators.” Larry what would you like to emphasize today? “I want people to be aware that asth ma qan be a very serious illness, but that it is also a very treatable illness. Treatment is improving and may of the treatments today have much fewer side effects than they did 10 years ago. We see our treated patients living happy, productive and comfortable lives without any complications.” Lawrence D. Kaplan, M.D. is pulmonolo gist who practices in Cumming at 103 Mt. View Dr. Dr. Kaplan is board certified in pulmonary medicine and is a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians. Steven L. Perlow, M.D. is urologist who practices in Cumming at 109 Canton Rd. Dr. Perlow is certified by the American Board of Urology. Your Community Health Corner, copy right SLP, 1990 I could go on like this for days, but I think you get the point The question is, why does this occur? Some people say that as you get older, your memory gradually fills up until there’s no room for anything new. I don’t buy this. My memory has plenty of room for new material, so long as the new material is use less, irrelevant chaff. It will join forces with the volumes of worthless junk that’s already locked in my brain, then the wad of clutter will begin to swell and grow until it’s pushed out what few useful memories I still retain. The day will finally come (probably before I turn 40) when all of my memory will consist of soda pop jingles, sitcom theme songs, car toon dialogue, Three Stooges routines and the lyrics to “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. If you see me wandering aimlessly down the street, please point me in the direction of my home. It’s the one with the smoke coming out of it