PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

As a follow-up to my post yesterday outlining my current health concerns, there is something else I could have included.

It is this.

As part of my doctor office visit, I was given blood tests to confirm that I did not have pneumonia. Good. Better to have bronchitis than pneumonia.

When I got the call providing the results of the tests, here is what the nurse said:

“Dave, as for your blood tests, everything is negative.”

Well, being an old person who has had a lot of medical care over my nearly 70 years, I knew what the word “negative” meant. It meant that the test did not produce any results of concern.

But, think about the word. It might have been better to say, “Dave, as for your blood tests, the results are positive.”

That would have been good, too, in every-day usage of the word “positive.” But, in medicine, positive would not have been good. Negative is good.

Such is the world of medicine these days.