So... How'd Your Day Go?

[Dluuni]

Tsh. I have had to get in shouting matches with redneck doctors, walk into schools for temp work looking like an "It's Pat!" character, walk into churches for unrelated reasons looking like said "It's Pat!" character with lipstick on, make a surprise trip to a grocery store at rush hour on Christmas Eve in a skirt *before* I passed, and publicly out myself as part of fighting a bathroom bill in my area... at this point, my risk tolerance for things like that is pretty jaded.

Anyways, all I would do would be to hand them a manuscript to look over. They can offend themselves just fine.

Anyways, new day. I spent an hour staring at a short piece I am jumping the queue with trying to plan out an erotic scene and figure out how it bridged to a denouement, and for that matter what I NEED for a denouement. Ugh. The main character arc more or less resolves before it, or at least the main pieces are there, but I don't know that I have really shown that it is resolved.

[Guard Dog]

Sounds like you have it under control then... Not knowing the exact situation there, and having had to deal with those sort of folks back when I wore a badge, I'd wondered if attracting their attention wouldn't lead to less-than-desirable situations 'after the fact'.

If that ship's already sailed, then there's nothing left to do but keep paddlin'.



G.D.

[TuesdayEve]

Sunday Morning laying low, no hurry, no worry,
nowhere to go. Enjoying the mellowness.
A story featured on a news show this am about two
photo journalist who lost their lives covering stories
abroad has changed my mood. A compelling story
of their dedication to the truth of their photos was
emotional for me. This is one of their photos.
The contradiction of this image as art touches me
deeply. The subject matter is disturbing, violent and
destructive with devestating effects yet the lines and
sematry of the art are appealing to the eye as is the
simultaneous fire from the gun and rocket, a moment
visually captured forever.
Life is art.

[dither]

Eve,
I loved the first two lines of that post.
Poetry .

So sad the rest.
Life is [indeed] art.

[Winston]

Wife is sick again. She gets migraines, and the doctors can't find the cause ("stress" they say). They've given her some dissolving tabs that just make her throw-up. Or, I should say, vomit worse, as the headaches already induce vomiting. But hey, they gave her anti-nausea meds too, which don't really work.
Y'all remember that Michael Douglas movie from the early '90s, "Falling Down"? I ain't to that point... yet. But I am pretty pissed. Our medical system keeps getting worse and worse.

[Guard Dog]

Wife is sick again. She gets migraines, and the doctors can't find the cause ("stress" they say). They've given her some dissolving tabs that just make her throw-up. Or, I should say, vomit worse, as the headaches already induce vomiting. But hey, they gave her anti-nausea meds too, which don't really work.
Y'all remember that Michael Douglas movie from the early '90s, "Falling Down"? I ain't to that point... yet. But I am pretty pissed. Our medical system keeps getting worse and worse.

Winston, I spent almost 2 years as a member of my doctor's 'Pill of the Month' club, trying to get rid of migraines.

Ended up with 'Idiopathic Peripheral Neuropathy' for my trouble. ( That's doctor-speak for "Us idiots don't know what causes it" )

Nothing helped, and most only made things worse.

My solution to the the migraines - what did work for me - probably won't work for your wife... Because what worked for me was to go on the warpath with all the folks who had been giving me grief, and let them know that, due to me having nothing to lose, their continued survival greatly depended on them getting the hell off my back, or avoiding me all together.

I hope your wife finds a solution, but I have to say, from personal experience, I doubt it'll come from any doctor.

By the way, I found out well after the fact that some of the meds my doctor was giving me was known to cause Neuropathy. So all he was doing, if he'd succeeded, was trading one problem for another for me.
( Neurontin is the primary culprit there. )



G.D.

[dither]

When the migraines hit here my wife spends days at a time in bed in a dark room. There are certain foods that she mustn't eat and that seems to help but it's no cure.

[Olly Buckle]

Just once I had a migraine, when I had spent nearly all day on the bottom of a swimming pool teaching different groups of people the basics of handling diving equipment, I went through about four tanks of air on the trot, retrospectively, stupid. It does mean though that I have the deepest sympathy for regular sufferers, however the fact that doctors do not have a cure does not make them stupid or charlatans, only ignorant as yet, and I bet there is more than one group investigating reasons and looking for cures. Before about 1970 people who had the immune system condition I do had a life expectancy of two to three months from diagnosis, I was diagnosed about fifteen years ago, some things are possible now, some are still under investigation, in my case it was the development of new drugs to stop the rejection of transplanted tissue, they also stop the rejection of my own tissue that my immune system will do by itself. That highlights a real problem, drugs are developed by drug companies who want to make money, so they aim for things that will get used by many over a long period, there are thousands of transplant patients who will take drugs for life, drugs for people like me with a condition that only occurs occasionally and kills quickly are not worth developing, I am lucky, I catch the spin off. Same goes for things you only take once, or for a short period, and they cure you. Very desirable if you are ill, but no money in them. There is a really good case for the nationalisation of drug research and development, imagine if the NHS had their own drugs and stopped buying from the big drug companies at inflated prices, bet there's some hard lobbying to stop that, probably dirtier than the cigarette companies.

Don't blame the doctors G D, they really do do what they can and get better all the time. the thing they do do though is pretend infallibility, because they know the value of placebo. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, I don't think it wise myself, the confidence lost probably outweighs the cures effected and confidence gained, people are always willing to listen to a bad story, and the guy who is still ill is reminded to tell his story.

[Guard Dog]

Olly, when a doctor sends you to a specialist that he says is "the guy" and knows more about the particular problem than he does... then proceeds to argue with 'the guy' when he gets the reports back that refute his own diagnosis... the fucker is stupid.

That's just one of several such incidents I've been through with the "medical Industry", and the reason I only go see 'em now to get stitched up or something of the like.

If other people's experience is different, great.

But mine has been... less than acceptable.



G.D.

P.S. If you have any problem other than a neurologically-based one, a doctor - most any doctor - can probably help to some degree. But when it comes to your brain and nervous system, you wouldn't be much worse off with a 10th century leech, given the current state of medicine in that area.

[Olly Buckle]

Argue or discuss? 'Argue' and I would tend to agree with you, though I might not use the language. If he presents the reasons for his diagnosis so that he can learn why the other guy refutes them that is fair enough, if it is a simple rejection, yeah, he was stupid sending you to someone else when he 'knows' what the matter is.


It is the more recent fields that are least understood, I reckon immune could be added to neuro. Sure their treatment works for me, but I think it is more pragmatic than theory based. Things that can be seen as mechanical systems they are not bad at, so gynaecology is usually fairly efficient, until they encounter things like repeated stillbirths that are not explained mechanically.

I recently read a book called 'This is going to hurt' about being a junior doctor, it is based in the NHS, but I reckon you would enjoy it, the author went most of the way through the system up to consultant before deciding it was not for him, and pretty much tells it how it is. I particularly liked the bit about being told off by a politically correct midwife for having a discussion about 'patients' with a colleague; 'We call them clients'. 'Oh, like prostitutes?' replied the colleague. Love it when people talking rubbish get stopped dead.