Last summer was quite the time of my life and I don’t mean that in a positive aspect. I have never experienced anything like last summer. It was an emotionally and physically draining period my family and I went through and I learned not just a lot about myself but about life on a grand scale. I once told a dear friend of mine that life’s challenges were not meant to paralyze us but rather push us in the direction of discovering who we are and what we stand for.
I believe standing up for proper and efficient health care should be a top priority.
My sister is my best friend. Sometimes, we’re mistaken for twins as we find ourselves speaking at the same time and sound alike even though I am five years younger than her but am four inches taller than her; she’s a big part of who I am.
It is one of the most common disease of this century and yet most of the public are not aware of the method’s to control them and live healthy even with it.
so, i will put the talk in layman’s terms.
First let me, ask you how many of you are aware of your actual blood sugar level.?
The first thing about managing diabetes is to know about normal blood sugar level. The fasting blood glucose level should be always at or below 126mg/dl and post prantil blood sugar level should always be below 200mg/dl.
Any rise above the scale can be called as diabetes.
There are generally two type of diabetes.
The type 1 diabetes and the type2 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes
Type 1 diabetes mellitus is characterized by loss of the insulin-producing beta cels of the islet of langerhans in the pancreas leading to insulin deficiency. This type of diabetes can be further classified as immune-mediated or idiopathic. The majority of type 1 diabetes is of the immune-mediated nature, where beta cell loss is a T cell mediated autoimmune attack.There is no known preventive measure against type 1 diabetes. Most affected people are otherwise healthy and of a healthy weight when onset occurs. Sensitivity and responsiveness to insulin are usually normal, especially in the early stages. Type 1 diabetes can affect children or adults but was traditionally termed “juvenile diabetes” because it represents a majority of the diabetes cases in children.
Type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is characterized by insulin resistance which may be combined with relatively reduced insulin secretion. The defective responsiveness of body tissues to insulin is believed to involve the insulin receptor. However, the specific defects are not known. Diabetes mellitus due to a known defect are classified separately. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type.
In the early stage of type 2 diabetes, the predominant abnormality is reduced insulin sensitivity. At this stage hyperglycemia can be reversed by a variety of measures and drugs that improve insulin sensitivity or reduce glucose production by the liver. As the disease progresses, the impairment of insulin secretion occurs, and therapeutic replacement of insulin may sometimes become necessary in certain patients.
so, one of the most important thing that a person diagnosed with diabetes is that he be aware of the type of his diseases and the further complications that may follow, the details of his drugs and the most important the DO”S AND DONT IN THE DIET.
The patient prone for diabetes include,
1. Hereditary factors
2. lack of excercise
3.excessive food
4. obesity
What are the signs and symptoms of the disease?
The characteristic triad include,
polyuria(excessive passing out of urine),
polyphagia(excessive hunger) and
polydipsia (excessive thirst)
There may be apparent weight loss also in type2 diabetes
The important measures of management
1. continuous medical care and routine check up of the blood sugar level
2.Always seek the advice of your doctor before changing drugs
3. muslim patients, who take fasting during the month of ramazan, must prior to the start of fasting make sure about their sugar level and also seek expect opinion on the medicine.
4. always keep an identity card of your diabetes status with you, when you go on a journey.
5.control your diet. Do, consult a good dietician near by
Avoid fatty food components and sugar. control the consumption of meat items.
consume more vegetables, pulses and cereals.
6. control your blood pressure.
best ways include leading a stress free life, and diet regulations. a little salt less in diet may save a lot.
Do regular exercise.
7.control your blood cholesterol
check your lipid profile once in a while.
again, regular exercise helps..Run, jump or atleast clean your garden!
8. nowadays, doctors have to put it in prescription to do regular exercise, because that is how most of them obey!!
9. do you have problems because of your excessive weight and size. you are at a very risk of getting DM.
so, control your diet
10. Always keep updated with your blood sugar level.
11. Avoid stress. stress kills!!!
12.avoid alcohol and smoking.
most of the lifestyle disorders can be prevented if we control our sedentary life habits.
Service Corporation International,NYSE:SCI has had poor numbers for the last year. Blaming poor financials on down turns in the numbers of deaths is truly sad. Saying that the cause of financial trouble is the number of births between 1932 and 1939 is borders on the laughable and sad. Blaming poor numbers on medical advances is just as sad. One has to wonder if the CEO Tom Ryan, Should be taken seriously.
This executive did admit that funeral volumes and financial reports will take a hit in the next several years.
“Houston-based SCI was so puzzled by the downturn that it hired outside consultants to find out why. The research is not complete, so the company won’t release it yet, but chief executive officer Tom Ryan told a recent conference call with analysts that there appear to be two major factors: medical advances, and a dip in the number of births between 1929 and 1936, the deepest years of the Depression.
“We know those two events are going to put downward pressure on the numbers of deaths in our relevant markets,” Mr. Ryan said. “We’re operating under the assumption that we’re probably going to see down comparable [funeral] volumes generally for the next few years.””-via Globe and mail.com
Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy
A Georgia bill that would outlaw abortions based on race, color or sex is fueling arguments over whether abortion providers are targeting black women. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act would apply to abortion "the same standards of nondiscrimination" that govern employment, education, government and housing, said Georgia state Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican who introduced the bill last …
Ga. bill would outlaw abortion for race, sex (The Washington Times) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:45:24 GMT
The only thing that is more stupid than what is taking place right here is the fact that I was actually raised by the granddaughter of a family of black slaves and the black maid who raised me told me about how her grandmother as a slave on a plantation in Atlanta, Georgia was raped and murdered by white fundamentalist Christians who are Republicans. So for the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party to dare come out and scream and yell about how the people who are pro-choice are the ones who are racist. When I have more than enough, news articles showing that by their own words, the Christian conservatives, and Republican Party are declaring how racist they are and how much they hate black Americans. So is awfully hard the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party to say that they are not racist. When I have actual statements made by members of the Christian conservative movement and the Republican Party in these United States, where they are declaring how much they hate black Americans.
As I said, it’s a little hard to claim that you’re not racist. When I actually have statements that you’re groups the Christian conservatives, and Republican Party are being documented as having made publicly in the entire world of how much you hate black Americans. How does hating black Americans not make you a racist?
Georgia Myers – My Guardian Angel. And the wonderful Lady who raised me.
And as I said, this is the lady who raised me. And she is the granddaughter of a family of black slaves, who are all and by a white family and Christian conservatives in Atlanta, Georgia, who are all Republicans. And this lady’s grandmother was raped and murdered by one of those white fundamentalist Christians who was a Republican. So the next time any of these Christian conservatives Republican Party members want to say they are not racist wanted you look at this picture. And remember that the Christian conservatives Republican Party murdered her grandmother after they raped her and brutally beat her to death.
It’s really interesting how the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party always yell and scream about how is everyone else’s race. When in reality, the Christian conservatives Republican Party have been nothing but racist, ever since they formed their religious group and political party.
The Christian conservatives and the Catholics don’t ever want to be responsible for the fact that since 78% of the United States is pro-life Christian that basically means that 78% of all the women and children murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics. It also means that Christians in United States are demanding that the world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because while the Christian conservatives and Catholics are demanding that everyone understand they are pro-life. They are with their own actions, supporting a number of forms of killing, which means that they are NOT pro-life..
78% of all the women murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the children abused in the United States are abused by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the children murdered in the United States are murdered by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the murders that take place in the United States are committed by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the soldiers in the United States, who go out and kill are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of the membership of the National Rifle Association, which support GUNS THAT KILL are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
Every single white supremacist group in the history of United States has always been white fundamentalist pro-life Christian. And these white supremacist groups are dedicated to killing anyone who is not white and Christian.
The Army of God is a white fundamentalist Christian group who is dedicated to murdering and killing every single nonwhite Christian in the United States.
78% of all the people who favor and support the death penalty meaning killing people for committing crimes are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the ministers in the United States who carry firearms to church and are threatening to kill anyone who comes near the church was not white and Christian are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the crimes against gay people in the United States are done by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
Every month between one and two transgendered females are murdered and every single one of these killings is done by pro-life Christian.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who demand the right to own black Americans and to kill them whenever they wanted to during the signing of the Declaration of Independence .
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party during the battle of Washington and try to overthrow the United States government under president Hoover at the battle of Washington in 1932.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party on the evening before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War . And who then used the Republican Party to hire John Wilkes Booth to murder Pres. Abraham Lincoln .
When you have all these forms of killing being supported by pro-life Christians and Catholics it’s easy to understand that the pro-life Christians and Catholics are demanding that everyone else be responsible for their own actions. But the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics under no circumstances want to be responsible for anything they do because they are demanding that the entire world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because that’s what they support killing. That’s why that those who claim to be pro-life are now becoming known as nothing more than, “Killers For Christ”. And of course it the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics don’t like what I’m saying or want to take exception to what I’m saying they need to disprove every single item in this journal entry and my see also section below. See Also:
Jesus Christ
The Sermon On The Mount
God
The Bible
The Ten Commandments
John The Baptist
The Burning Times
The Crusades
Joan Of Arc
The Children Of Lourdes
The Children of Fatima
The Spanish Inquisition
The American Civil War
Slavery
The Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth
The Christian Conservatives
World War I
Prohibition
The Great Depression
The Battle of Washington
World War II
The Korean War
The Vietnam War
Richard Nixon
Oliver North
The Iran-Contra Affair
The Gulf War
The Savings-And-Loan Crisis
Bill Clinton
The Balanced Budget Amendment
The Iraq War
The Kondratieff Wave
Profitability Analysis
Financial Analysis
Vance Packard
Laissez-Faire
Capital Punishment
Homophobia
Xenophobia
Racism
Prejudice
Bigotry
Fascism
Eugenics
White Supremacy
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
The Ku Klux Klan
The Army of God
US Domestic Violence Statistics
US Child Abuse Statistics
US Child Mortality Statistics
US Religious Demographic Statistics
Gay-Rights
Transgenderism
Women’s Rights
Pro-Choice
NRA
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The US Constitution
The Bill Of Rights
Recording Telephone Conversations
Treason
Sedition
How The Republicans Use The Constitution To Lie (article 1, section 6, subsection b) of The US Constitution
My Biographical Profile
My Philosophy Of Life
24 Hour Suicide And Crisis Help Center
For Those Who Said I Never Knew Ronald Reagan, They Lied
My Encounter With Joan Baez
My Time Studying The Anasazi Indians
My 250 Million Variable Characteristic Hieroglyphic Language
My Tribute To Jim Varney
The Pebble And The Penguin
A Diamond On A Sea Of Glass
Regarding Me And My Journal
My Spinal Fusion And Me Doing 250 Situps
An Installment Notation of The Maschke Family History and Legacy
It’s A Crime
Hey God! You There? I’m Tired… Ok?
In The Midst Of Darkness The Smallest Spark Lights My Way…
I Wrote Something A Long Time Ago…
Kmart To Close Five More Ohio Stores
The Vanishing Of America
A Place Called Earth
How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm
Sounds
Reality …
Second Gear
My Financial Analysis Of The Global Economic System
Adventures In Technocracy
An Explanation Of Vernacular Dynamics and Sequencing Regarding Various Forms of Advocacy
Quantum Mechanics And Newtonian Metaphysics
My Global Warming Research
For the record, I am pro-life. I do not support violence against, or the killing of any human being under any circumstances! And the only way that I ever deviate from that stand is that I do not believe that God has ever given any human the right to dictate to any woman how she is to arbitrate her life with the Almighty, and/or God. Therefore, I believe that all women deserve the right to choose for themselves the fate of their own bodies, pursuant to their relationship with the Almighty, and/or God. For an expanded explanation please see my article entitled: "Second Gear"
It is astounding and depressing that Congress seems about to give up on the first major change in health care since the first Clinton Administration. The Democrats were up by 21, with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter, so what do they do? They throw an interception for a touchdown. Then they fumble the kick and give the opponents the ball on their own five-yard line for another touchdown. Finally, with 30 seconds on the clock, they fail to get a first down and give up the ball, letting the Republicans tie the score. Now the game is in overtime and the Democrats can’t seem to figure out that they have a majority and can jam health care reform down the throats of their opponents. It is time to pass health care reform.
The United States does not have a “health care system.” We have a medical service industry and a health insurance industry that rations medical services based on insured status and rakes off 15 or 20 per cent. If we really had a system, one third of the nation would not lack adequate health care.
We need a public health care system like Medicare that everyone can buy into at a reasonable price. Medicare has been a wonderful success, despite all the criticism from the political right, the American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry. There are problems, but they are manageable and susceptible to reform.
Health insurance executives are whining that they cannot compete with a public health care system. What better argument could you find in favor of establishing it? They cannot compete because a public system would be fairer, more efficient, and less expensive than the private insurance industry. These executives are like muleskinners a century ago whining that the internal combustion engine will put them out of business. True, but is that a reason to outlaw gasoline?
We need an inexpensive public alternative to private health insurance. That it will hurt the insurance industry is no excuse for leaving 100 million Americans without adequate health insurance. A fair health care system is a fundamental part of the social infrastructure. It is time to fill that void in the United States.
Tell the Democrats that it is time to move the ball down the field for the score. If health care fails again, it is time for a million uninsured people to march on Capitol Hill to demand universal health care. It is their right.
Everyone is aware of how petrol is manufactured, it is digged from soil in the form of crude oil and upon refining many products like petroleum jelly, kerosene, diesel, petrol comes up. Everyone thinks petrol is the highest purified form, but refining petrol gives us another product called as Aerosol which is used in airplanes.
In the same manner, the vegetables and other eatables we get are in crude and non eatable format, we cook them and eat them. After eating, the food is broke down into glucose, calcium,phosphorous and many other vital elements which are ready to be mixed in blood.
Hey, here the story doesn’t end. The highest form of the digested food is SEMEN, yeah you read it right. Even after blood, semen is created after multiple levels of purification, where digested food attains its highest form.
The Semen has a distinctive ability, Semen has given higher most importance in our culture.
Semen either has to be wasted to satisfy our lust, or it can be saved by not wasting it and this unused semen will be converted in to the purest form called as “OJUS”.
OJUS is the form where semen has transformed and is ready to add to our nervous system.
Ojus adds to our performance of our nervous systems. It makes us bright, it helps us in making marvelous things.
We take air for our respiratory system, food for our digestive system, blood is created through food in our circulatory system, waste is removed from our urinary system. So what are you doing to your nervous system.
Nervous system is completely neglected by everyone and everyone thinks their brain is not working properly because they are getting old. Actually poor brain is not getting its food.
How can your doggie run and jump and make you happy, if you don’t give it enough pedigree.
In the same manner brain will not function properly if you dont feed well. The food for brain is OJUS.
Dont waste your semen for simple things, use it for major things to change your life.
In the fifth week of my Internet in Medicine university credit course, the focus is on the world of e-patients when I present several real e-patients stories, examples when patients could successfully improve their health by using online pieces of information or communities. Here is a new story I will have to mention this March. Erin Turner suffered with pain in her right wrist on a daily basis, despite regular treatment from an orthopedic surgeon for years. Then she found a solution via Twitter:
First, my mother told me she saw something about wrist ligament damage in USA Today. Second, I noticed an alert on my Twitter aggregator: In coordination with the USA Today article, @MayoClinic was hosting a #wristpain Twitter chat with Dr. Richard Berger, the surgeon who discovered the UT split tear. When I read the article and the tweet, I knew I had to participate.
Less than 24 hours after my initial appointment, I not only had a new diagnosis – a UT split tear – but had surgery to correct the problem. As I write this, my right arm is in a festive green, but otherwise annoying cast. The short-term hassle, however, should be more than worth the long-term gain – the potential for a future without chronic wrist pain. A future, that without Twitter and those in the medical community willing to experiment with new communications tools, might not exist for me.
Turner summarized the story in 3 points:
Patients need to receive information through multiple channels.
Social media should be integrated with traditional media, when possible.
NaturalNews.com
Most people are familiar with traditional weapons of mass destruction such biological weapons, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. The point of all such weapons of mass destruction is to inflict a large number of casualties on civilian populations as a way to cripple a nation into political or military submission.
When it comes to actually deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against civilian populations, no country has murdered more innocent civilians than the United States of America through its bombing of two Japanese cities during World War II. (This isn’t rhetoric, it’s an historical fact.)
Atomic bombs were very visible WMDs deployed in World War II as a way to force the empire of Japan to surrender to western forces. Since that time, full-scale nuclear weapons have never again been used directly on civilian targets, meaning the United States of America maintains the distinction of being the only nation in the history of human civilization to have dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations.
It begs the question: If national leaders believe dropping atomic weapons on civilian populations is justified, what other weapons might they feel justified in unleashing upon civilian populations?
Weapons of Mass Prescription
What if a nation wanted to reduce its own civilian population but do it covertly? One way to accomplish that would be to slowly poison the civilian population through exposure to toxic chemicals, heavy metals, hormone-disrupting molecules and nerve toxins.
And as any terrorist can tell you, the most covert way to accomplish that would be to inject such chemicals into the everyday products that people routinely consume: Water, food, personal care products and medicines. I even published a cartoon with this theme a couple of years ago: http://www.naturalnews.com/021880_w…
Here’s another interesting fact: If you examine what’s in the water, food, products and medicines sold across North America, you’ll discover a dangerous assortment of chemicals that, taken together, could quite reasonably be considered weapons of mass destruction.
Interestingly, the fluoride dumped into public water supplies was originally an offshoot of the enrichment processing facilities for uranium to be used in nuclear weapons. These days, however, fluoride is usually just the toxic waste from fertilizer manufacturing factories or the waste from smokestack scrubbers of coal-fired power plants. Either way, it’s not good for your teeth: The entire fluoride agenda largely a convenient, low-cost way to dispose of industrial waste chemicals while calling it a public health program.
Antibacterial soaps derive their antibacterial properties from chemicals that are molecularly quite similar to the infamous Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. And yet these products are openly marketed for use by children.
Similarly, children and adults continue to be poisoned by heavy metals like mercury thanks to the highly toxic practices of modern dentistry — an industry which astoundingly has still failed to admit to the obvious toxicity of a heavy metal its practitioners continue to install in people’s mouths as “silver fillings” (which actually contain more mercury than silver).
There are hormone-disrupting chemicals in most of the plastics used in the processed food industry — especially canned soups which are often highly toxic for a variety of other reasons. MSG and other nervous system destroyers are used throughout the food supply in soups, snack foods, salad dressings, flavorings and dips.
These are all chemical assaults of one kind or another, but the greatest assault on the minds and bodies of western consumers comes in the form of pharmaceutical chemicals. That’s why I call them ‘Weapons of Mass Prescription.’
Destroy any nation by destroying the health of its citizens
If you want to destroy any nation, simply unleash Big Pharma into its medical system. Within just two generations, its people will suffer widespread organ damage, sharp decline in cognitive function and rampant degenerative disease brought on by the side effects of everyday pharmaceuticals.
Antidepressants, for example, cause diabetes and obesity. Cancer drugs cause neurological disorders. Some arthritis drugs actually promote arthritis! And don’t even get me started with the neurotoxicity of the chemicals used in vaccines…
Virtually all pharmaceuticals cause nutritional deficiencies. Most of them also contribute to long-term organ damage that affects the liver, heart, brain and kidneys. Pharmaceuticals are synthetic chemicals which are inherently incompatible with human biology. Whatever “therapeutic effects” appear to be present from pharmaceuticals are really just poisoning side effects that temporarily appear to be therapeutic but are actually disruptive to human biology.
Many pharmaceuticals are, in fact, blatant poisons to begin with. Popular blood-thinning drugs, which are usually just rebranded warfarin chemicals, are molecularly identical to rat poison. (Warfarin is actually used as rat poison. It’s true. This is not an urban legend.)
Chemotherapy chemicals are extremely poisonous, and cancer patients frequently die from the toxicity of these drugs. Those who don’t die often suffer from “chemo brain” — a severe loss of cognitive function routinely experienced by victims of chemotherapy.
Poisoning the environment with chemical weapons
Meanwhile, the sheer quantity of prescription medications being used on civilian populations is resulting in the mass contamination of public water supplies with HRT drugs, painkiller drugs, cholesterol medications and other Big Pharma chemicals. (http://www.naturalnews.com/025994.html) It’s so bad now that even the fish that swim near major cities are contaminated with medications. (http://www.naturalnews.com/025933_p…)
At some point, all the chemical contamination with pharmaceuticals brings the obvious question to mind: Are Big Pharma’s drugs actually Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Is the U.S. civilian population being targeted in a covert chemical war that accomplishes the same thing as dropping bombs on Hiroshima, only more slowly and quietly?
And if so, what would be the purpose of such a chemical war on the American people?
Reshaping the human gene pool — clever!
Population control is the obvious answer… not only because pharmaceuticals kill so many people but also because pharmaceuticals cause widespread infertility. By dumping so many chemicals onto civilian populations, the population can be reduced in the long term through chemically-induced infertility.
Now here’s an interesting aspect of this: If all these mainstream consumer chemicals cause infertility, they’re only causing it among those mainstream consumers who are careless enough with their own health to keep eating, drinking and swallowing all these synthetic chemicals in the first place. And that means this “population control” measure, if it actually does exist, is theoretically causing the greatest infertility in those who have the least ability to make good decisions about their own genetic health. It’s potentially a way to achieve a significant shift in the gene pool of the human race by eliminating the genetic futures of those who are stupid enough to poison their own bodies (and therefore compromise their own genetic code) through mass exposure to synthetic chemicals.
As I’ve often said, there are a huge number of people in western nations right now (such as the USA, Canada, UK, etc.) who are collectively winning the Darwin Award by removing themselves from the human gene pool. And pharmaceuticals, it turns out, are the perfect WMDs to allow those who most deserve to be removed from the human gene pool to accomplish exactly that.
The future of the human race belongs solely to those who can protect the integrity of their genetic code.
People who eat, drink and consume large quantities of synthetic chemicals and dangerous prescription medications are demonstrating that they are not qualified to participate in the gene pool of the human race.
On February 25th, 2010, President Barack Obama and the US Congress held a Health Care Summit. While I am still looking for a workable way to show the entire summit here on my site to make it easier, I found 2 links that will take you to C-SPAN to watch the entire summit, which is broken down into a morning and afternoon session.
Enjoy, but beware, each session is very long and the entire summit lasted over 6 hours!
Dany
White House Health Care Summit morning session (2 hours and 54 minutes)
White House Health Care Summit afternoon session (3 hours and 24 minutes)
Vicodin is like Heroin-Lite. The only difference is that, while everyone and anyone will tell you how dangerous and addicting and horrible heroin is, vicodin is prescribed by your doctor to help you. Here is this wonderful, caring person, who has eight years of schooling and four or more years of internships and specialized training under his or her belt, and they’re giving you this little white oval shaped pill and telling you it will take away your pain. What they’re not telling you is that it is highly addictive, and if you become addicted, you’ll go through all seven levels of hell to get off of it. So much for the hippocratic oath.
You take your medicine like a good little girl or boy and eventually you run out, or you decide to quit on your own. And then a magic surprise happens. You feel terrible. Depending on how long and how regularly you’ve been taking vicodin your terrible can range from “I feel kinda blue and tired today” to “I’m having a panic attack and my entire body is in excrutiating pain and I can’t sleep and I really just want to cry and throw up and die all at the same time!” Most people ask, since it’s so wonderful and so readily available, either by prescription or through that friend of a friend of a friend, why bother to quit at all?
We all know that vicodin causes euphoria, happiness, and just a darn good time. What most people don’t know is that it can also cause heart palpitations, nausea, altered mental status, seizures, hallucinations, severe weakness, jaundice, bleeding, bruising, stomach pain, sweating, hot flashes, itching, and, according to wikipedia, “liver damage can manifest ranging from abdominal pain to outright liver failure, and can necessitate a liver transplant to avoid death.”
Sounds like a good idea to quit right? Right. Until the withdrawls kick in. Then you’re thinking, “A liver transplant can’t be that bad, wonder if Uncle BillyBobRay or Aunt LouAnne will give me part of theirs?” As I stated before, withdrawals from opiates (including vicodin, percocet, oxycontin, etc) can range from the mild blues and slight achyness that most people who have taken it for longer than a day will experience, to total opiate withdrawal. John Lennon wasn’t lying when he wrote “Cold Turkey”.
Some of the wonderful things this author has experienced when trying to quit are: nausea, vomiting, feeling really cold all the time, headaches, pupil dilation causing light sensitivity (at one point the glow around traffic lights seemed to extend to about 10 feet around each individual light), cold sweats, severe and debilitating anxiety, restlessness, pain so severe it feels like one has been thrown out of a second story window (the worst part is the bone pain, it literally feels like breaking a bone), severe depression, shaky hands, exhaustion to the point of not being able to sit up straight, panic attacks, diarreah (too severe to describe), restless leg syndrom, insomnia, runny nose and other cold symptoms, and the inevitable random other illness that usually shows up about a week after quitting, just for funsies.
Enter stage right: Suboxone. In my next installment I will tell you, the reader, all about the “miracle” drug suboxone and how it’s used to treat opiate addiction. I will also tell you how it is working for a certain person who has found themselves addicted to prescription painkillers.
Last Saturday’s Stribe (Star Tribune) included an article called “On Paws and Needles“, which described the growing practice of pet acupuncture in the Twin Cities. I have very little faith in acupuncture for humans and about the same amount of faith in anecdotal evidence, but that’s what author Kristin Tillotson asks us to accept when she writes
“Whether or not you’re ready to embrace the concept of chi flowing through your body, it’s tough to argue with pet owners who have seen their beloveds go from listless and limping to perky and playful.”
Tillotson does let us know that there is some controversy surrounding pet acupuncture with her section entitled “Not enough proof?” (here, I fixed it for you: “Not enough proof?.), but the quote from Dr. Craig Smith is brief, and I get the impression that the author included it so she could argue that she has presented a fair and balanced look at the issue. She quotes Dr. Smith:
Most studies that have shown benefits have been for muscular-skeletal pain. But for seizures and asthma, we do not have the evidence at this time that it’s as beneficial as drugs can be.
However, she follows this logical assertion with a description of ONE CASE that begs to differ. And she also lists an extensive group of local veterinary practices where one can find pet acupuncture.
Dr. Smith reasons that there probably isn’t a push by Big (Vet?) Pharma to incorporate acupuncture sessions into mainstream veterinary practice, as needles are inexpensive. However, at $75 a session and an ability to prescribe as many sessions as an owner will let you get away with, I can see where there might be other financial incentives that could help select for an increase in the occurence of pet acupuncture.
One statement in the article that interests me is a quote by Dr. Keum Hwa Choi, a practitioner of veterinary CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) who started a Vet CAM service at the University of Minnesota eight years ago:
“Dogs don’t experience any placebo effect like humans can. Their brains don’t tell them, ‘Gee, I got these needles stuck in me so I must be better.’ They either feel better or they don’t.”
Hmmm…placebo effects in animals…??? Interesting thought exercise. Although, if not placebo effect, perhaps another variable? I imagine that an acupuncture session is fairly relaxing for the pet - the article indicates that the animal is the center of attention during these exercises – they are petted, nuzzled, spoken to in calming adult-cooing baby language, placed on warm blankets with candle light and soft music, perhaps? One woman reported that her cat’s bp dropped from 220 to 169 by the end of a 10-minute HEAT LASER treatment (apparently, cranky 17 year-old Annie isn’t having any of that sharp sh*t poked in her head, so the vet uses heat lasers rather than “dry needles” to complete the treatment. But don’t worry, I have a very strong suspicion that the two treatments do exactly the same thing…that is…nothing). Apparently, giving your pet attention – petting it, being nice to it, keeping it warm - encourages a calm and happy demeanor. Do needles or frickin’ lasers really add anything to that experience?
And just for fun, here’s a picture of a puppy with pins in his head. Poor little PinHead.source: http://www.habitatboise.com/custom_content/5558_acupuncture.html
After every exhilarating experience, is the period of being brought back down. This week has been that for me. I am working diligently to get my first class series on the way, but as many realities set in, I’m getting tired. Not tired of working on things, just tired. I am ready to start a little bit of advertising though, and that is exciting.
Otherwise, we have our 5th big snow of the last two months. I have to be honest here and say I am tired of that – beyond tired. I had to get out in it yesterday and take myself to the doctor, which required a little hike to the vehicle. Then, I had to drive 20 miles an hour, which is extremely hard for my wound up self to do. John told me about 50 times to be careful and not rush. I said that I wasn’t setting out to get myself hurt, but to go to the doctor. We laughed.
So, it was no surprise to me that by the time I reached the doctor in the next county, that my blood pressure was a bit elevated, and I had the beginnings of a headache. I have been having these headaches that radiate up the back of my head, and my neck constantly feels stiff. The cold that I have been battling for nine days now hasn’t helped. It wasn’t long before my doctor was writing a prescription for some new medicine for tension, and of course recommending more sleep. I don’t stay up late and I don’t wake up too early. I don’t know where my rest is getting off to. I looked up the medicine on Kelly Mom and it is an L3 for lactation. This means there could be some risk. Ivy didn’t nurse for a little over two days, but for the last two days she has nursed two or three times. I’m not sure if I should take the medicine, but I am looking for something to relieve this pressure in my head. I hate taking pharmaceuticals. If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way. Yeah, I know, you’re thinking – a yogini having a problem with tension, that stuff must not really work. I say, yeah, you’d think, but I’m still “practicing” and it is what relieves me most days. It’s like magic.
The girls have decided that they don’t like snow. Deladis is not happy at the large flakes falling today. She said it’s too cold and she is ready for Spring. Aren’t we all? I’m pulling all the stops to keep them going through the days without too many meltdowns, but the last few have been harrowing. Both of the girls have began their first period of tears shortly after waking the last two mornings. Typically, I don’t have to think about that until the late afternoon.
Today, I pulled the rocking horse out of their bedroom, hoping to help them release some energy.
It helped for about 10 minutes.
Honestly, I don’t think any of us has too much energy left aside from the anxious kind.
This post seems like one big long whine. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I am also very grateful. I am grateful for the ebb and flow of life, because there is no way we could last through any one period forever without becoming numb. I am grateful for my two little girls and their leaps and bounds everyday. I am grateful for a loving husband and best friend who takes taking care of us very seriously. I am grateful that Spring is on the way and soon I won’t be blowing my nose a hundred times a day. We will be planting a garden, playing on the back patio, and existing in Mother Nature beyond the 900 square feet of cabin.
Thank you to the highly organised team who coordinated the search for this beautiful yellow and gold Nobel prize winning yarn. As we read about the history of genetics, we noticed a cluster of Nobel prizes in the field between the late 1950’s and the mid 1960’s, when the genetic code was understood. Here they are:
1957 – Alexander Robertus Todd received the Nobel Prize for chemistry for synthesising chemicals leading to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
1958 – Beadle and Tatum received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology for demonstrating that one gene controls the production of one enzyme.
1959 – Arthur Kornberg received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology for demonstrating that DNA can copy itself.
1962 – Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology for their discovery of the structure of DNA.
1965 – Jacob and Monod received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology for demonstrating how genes are switched on and off.
As some of you may (not) know, I’m doing my acute medicine rotation as part of my 2-year internal medicine core training. This means the temporary shitty shifts, and the struggle for survival of 13 hour back to back on-calls for 7 days in a row. 3 days then 4 nights, a weekend off, and a string of 13 hour on-call days.
One of the lucky times we got to snooze in the Mess. So cute!
Night shifts are unpredictable, so you can have no-one to see, or all of a sudden 6 people waiting to be seen and sorted. You may have 1 really ill one, or 6 crap admissions. Or people going off everywhere. Up to you to prioritise, and young(er) docs tend to be perfectionist and want to see and sort everything before going on their breaks. Bad idea. You’ll find it’s 8am in the morning before you’ve had a pee.
*Tip: know what can wait and what can’t.
So knackered we fell asleep despite Family Guy on TV
I hate that part of the rota, but the trade-off is off-days on weekdays and 2 week holiday blocks. Woo hoo!
The other good thing about nights is not having to deal with administrative bollocks. And it being simpler to prioritise what can wait and what cannot wait based simply on the fact that your consultants are asleep, and no, you cannot do an MRI in the middle of the night, and no, there are no surgeons to deal with un-sensational abdomens. (ie. not about to rupture any minute)
You must be thinking what a nice life we have, but I don't take the camera out when we're life-saving...
Goodbye for now! Next shift after the weekend: Mon-fri 13-hour on-call days.
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Aloma Urgent Care Achieves Urgent Care Center Accreditation
Winter Park, FL – Aloma Urgent Care, an Urgent Care clinic in Winter Park, Florida has achieved Urgent Care Center Accreditation from the American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine (AAUCM). Aloma Urgent Care is a well-run Urgent Care center with the capability to treat a wide array of injuries and illnesses.
Accreditation is a voluntary process through which an Urgent Care Center is able to measure the quality of its services and performance against nationally recognized standards. The AAUCM Urgent Care Center Accreditation (UCCA) Program recognizes outstanding facilities which demonstrate the highest level of commitment to patient care and the practice of Urgent Care Medicine. This Accreditation serves as a benchmark of quality, not only to those involved in the healthcare industry, but to the general public as well. The UCCA Program accomplishes the accreditation of Urgent Care centers by setting standards, measuring performance, and providing consultation and education where needed. Accreditation is ultimately awarded to those urgent care centers that are found to be in compliance with the AAUCM standards. Urgent care organizations value accreditation as a measure of professional achievement and quality of care. This mirrors the missions and goals of the AAUCM.
The American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine (AAUCM) is a national organization which represents thousands of physicians who practice urgent care medicine in various clinical settings throughout the United States. The purpose of the AAUCM is to contribute to the field of urgent care medicine in the areas of professional growth, scientific and medical research, and medical education, all to improve the overall quality of medical care. Our mission is to advance the profession of urgent care medicine by elevating its standards through education, basic and advanced training, and to encourage physicians to seek board certification in urgent care medicine.
I can’t decide whether I love or hate nights. There’s a strange sense of calm in the hospital. There’s just a skeleton staff, the corridors are quiet, voices hushed, the doctors room deserted. And that’s what I like. Less people harrassing you, no consultants demanding instant scans, no nurses demanding instant discharges just medicine stuff. Well, I’m getting carried away. There’s always something else. The patient who intent on “GETTING OUT OF THEIR BED and CATCHING THE BUS HOME BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY’RE NOT IN A FREAKING HOSPITAL YOU FOOL.” Often alcoholics withdrawing or little old demented ladies, both of whom tend to choose the early hours of the morning to go off the wall (at times literally off the walls). But then it dies down. Wards are dark. A shaft of light from the nurses station gives a calming glow, not too hard on the eyes. But in the depth of nights decisions are hard, thoughts are often skewed and undoubtedly a sick patient always seems much worse than in the cold light of day. When I stumble around a patient’s bedside in the dark (if only the NHS provided working bulbs in bedside lights I would have noticably fewer bruises on my poor thighs) nights are frustrating, but the chance to sit doing paperwork at the computer with the radio on softly is something which can only be captured on nights and as the sun comes up, I can stand up, stretch and take a peek at the sunrise stretching over the city out to sea, the glowing reds and yellows marking the start of a new day. In an hour or so, the day staff drift in, lights are switched on, patients wake and the day’s in full swing. And then I write myhandover list, present the night’s take and breathe a deep sigh of relief as I realise bed is within reach. As everyone is starting the day…rushing to drop children at school, get to work on time, chase after the ward round (inevitably a consultants legs no matter how short they may look go at 10 times the speed of any normal human) but me, I wander home, collapse on the sofa and before I know it, it’s six in the evening and it’s my turn to start the day. That half light of dawn and dusk is difficult to beat.
I would like to ask a basic question that has domestic violence as its subject.Who teaches that domestic violence is wrong? Who teaches a father or a mother that they should not belt their kids? Who teaches a father or a mother to allay their fears, their panic, their anguish and do not reap them on their children?
Who handles the ill effects of a childhood beaten by parents?
Certainly religion is not an adequate teaching mechanism
States, governments, do not either.
We are left with a huge gap between those people in our societies who need psychological help and those that are psychiatric cases.
The problem is that we do not have enough good shrinks at hand to treat everyone. The trouble is that SOCIETY prefers not to bother with this problem that is so common.
We have not discussed the body violation of moms and dads upon their children either at this stage.
It is fortunate that people start to talk about these serious problems, instead of keeping it under the blankets and saying “that it only happens to others”
Of the thousands of people who I have known so far, I can tell you that about half of that number have a case of beatings, of domestic violence of sexual abuse, men or women combined.
I talk to people from all walks of life. What do I see?
I see so many women who send their children or their husbands to see psychologists. The problem is that going to see a shrink is still closely linked with women’s emotions: “it’s a woman’s thing”.
Most MEN have not taken control of their lives by admitting that they also need serious life reference points other than the ones that their fathers gave them that are often faulty.
Why is that?
Mothers and women are principally the educators. The fathers are often no longer existent in a household and their notions of socializing their own children is often lacking.
The American Cancer Society estimates there were a total of 254,650 new diagnoses of breast cancer in 2009 (actual records are only available until 2005; newer information has not been compiled). As a member of the female population, I am very aware of these numbers. Television commercials, full-page magazine ads, and a virtual who’s who of celebrity sponsors make it hard not to be. Everywhere I look is the ACS “pink warning,” in ribbons, scarves, posters, bumper stickers, etc., trying to “raise awareness” about breast cancer. (Personally, I’m wondering what rock a person could be living under to not be aware.) And, as usual, I felt the need to question the authorities that be and look into these numbers more closely.
First off, let’s take that number of expected new diagnoses – 254,650 – for the 2009 calendar year and compare it to the female population of 2009: 154,000,000 (roughly, estimated from Census Bureau population charts). So with no more than a pocket calculator, I can conclude that, in 2009, any given female’s chance of being found to have breast cancer was essentially 0.00165%. There are other factors, of course, especially age and family history, but this wasn’t exactly the death sentence I was expecting. From all the media hype and social awareness I had expected much higher numbers. But 0.00165%? That means you’d have to get 1,000,000 women together to find 17 with new breast cancers (and that’s rounding up). That means if the entire metropolitan area of Memphis, Tennessee, were female, less than twenty would have been diagnosed with breast cancer during the year. I’m as likely to be killed in a freak accident involving jalapeno poppers and a road grader. Okay, maybe not, but it’s still pretty remote.
Now before anyone gets their bra in a bunch, I understand that it should not be dismissed. Like any disease, I think it should be kept in the back of your mind and those more likely to be affected (women over 45, smokers, of African heritage, or with family history of breast cancer) should take whatever steps they feel are necessary to protect or treat themselves. Breast cancer contributes to some 40,000 deaths each year; that cannot be ignored. Period. But I don’t believe it’s the plague it is played up to be. For instance, according to the National Safety Council, women under age 45 are more likely to die of accidental poisoning than to develop breast cancer.
So – to continue poking around these ACS estimates – women under 45 were expected to comprise only 25,100 of the new diagnoses. Which drops the chances to a whopping 0.00027%. Did you catch that extra zero in there? Now scrounging up 27 new diagnoses would require 10,000,000 women. That’s only slighty less than the entire Paris metropolitan complex … or the populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix combined. And this is supposed to be a major concern? I’m more likely to be shot; to drown in a swimming pool; to die in a plane crash or from heatstroke; or even to suffocate in bed (according to the National Safety Council). I don’t see a lot of warnings about the dangers of bed-clothes. But maybe Martha Stewart has more up her sleeve than white sales and stock tips, eh?
The American Cancer Society’s own documents state, “95% of new cases and 97% of breast cancer deaths occurred in women aged 40 and older.” In fact, most breast cancers occur in women 70 and older, when chances of being diagnosed “skyrocket” to 0.016%. And one last percentage to throw at you … taken as a whole, over an entire lifetime, the average woman has a 0.125% chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer.
So why the media frenzy? Why the pink and celebrity sponsors and full-page ads? Why are they worrying college students and the MTV generation about something that really begins to pose a threat only at retirement age?
I don’t know, but it has provoked me to look into other concerns and do some digging. Consider this post the first of a series exploring medical concerns. And remember to take media “warnings” with a grain of salt.
When last we encountered the non-fiction feminist book on sexuality by sexologist by Dr. Leonore Tiefer, Sex is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays, we had just wrapped up reading the first section on my new-to-me (slightly used) Kindle. The book is a real challenge, heavy on academia & theory as it relates to feminism and sexuality. However I’m relieved to say that the chapters in the second section, Popular Writings on the Theme feel less academic, and so it’s a bit more accessible to the general public. Although it contains 6 sub-chapters, Popular Writings on the Theme is shorter and feels shorter than the first section – I didn’t have to use the Kindle’s built-in dictionary feature as often, and I didn’t need to re-read as many passages to absorb their messages. In these essays, Tiefer was writing for a different audience, so she decreased the frequency with which she used postmodernist language.
I also found this second section of the book funnier than the first section, but unfortunately, the humor is not because I found Tiefer’s writing in and of itself funny… No, rather, I often found it funny due to the large gulfs separating Tiefer’s reality and the one in which I live. The grins I made were due to my jaw cynically clenching, my laughter a hoarse, half-choked “Lolsob.”
The first chapter of the second section consists of a series of sexuality columns written for the New York Daily News back in 1980-1981. That’s 30 years ago, waaaay before the internet was readily accessible and long before printed media started to enter its death throes. Most of these essays would probably be helpful to someone who is brand-new to studying sexuality, or who is looking for general sex life advice. Unfortunately, as of the book’s second printing in 2004, these columns are showing their age, and provided very little new material to me. By the time I got around to reading the essays re-printed from the newspaper, I had already encountered elsewhere most of the ideas contained in Tiefer’s old columns. Yes I know sexual spontaneity can be hindrance to a fully enjoyable sexual experience, yes I know that when we (and especially the media) think of “Sex,” our definition is likely very intercourse-centric and that it’s helpful to expand the definition of sex, etc. etc. etc.
But I found myself getting hung up on some changes that have happened since the essays were first printed. For one example, (There’s several other examples I could pick out…) when Tiefer talks about the joys of petting, she states, “It’s joyless and burdensome to cuddle and embrace with someone you neither know well nor want to know better” (Location 875.) But wait, aren’t there cuddle parties nowadays where folks who have never met before can come together and learn to do exactly that? Cuddle parties are designed to be non-sexual, but they may still involve embracing, and that’s not meant to be joyless at all – quite the opposite, from what I understand.
One of the funniest newspaper essays is “Free Love and Free Enterprise,” and the humor comes from how dated the situation described now is. (This essay might be worth burning through your available Google Book preview. You need to be careful with how much you use the GB previews because eventually it will prevent you from going any further. I’ve been able to “Go-around” this limitation by using a second computer or my mobile device, but not everyone has that option…) Tiefer takes the reader through a hypothetical tour of “A sex show at the New York Coliseum“ (location 934,) with the goal of showing the reader who stands to profit from the sexual revolution and how… and that includes sex toy retailers, by taking advantage of consumers. Oh, consumers may well benefit, she concedes at the end of the essay, but only as a side-effect.
As I was reading, I thought to myself, “That hypothetical sex convention sounds awesome! How do I get in on that? How do I RSVP for the next show?” Then I remembered – we HAVE a sex & sex toy convention open 24/7 – it’s the internet! Just replace the use of the word “Booth” (used over & over again) with “website/GoodVibes/Babeland/Craigslist.”
Plus, some of the fears Tiefer expressed in this chapter didn’t come to fruition even 30 years later, while others were prescient:
“The next booth moves us into the world of stuff. Under the banner ‘Bare-handed sex is boring,’ we find equipment to enhance the senses and the imagination. Massage oils and flavored lotions lie next to vibrators and dildoes. Alarming displays of bondage equipment are shown along with phony organ enlargers. There are life-size ’sex partners’ in different colors of plastic” (location 944.) [It goes on in that manner for a few more paragraphs.]
Now, I did a Google search for the term, “Bare-handed sex is boring,” and as of today, I got nothin’. (Chances are that in a few days one result will link back to this blog entry.) Who would try to sell sex toys under this slogan? Would something so negative even move any stock out the door? I looked up this expression, because in all my sex toy shopping, I have never encountered a sentiment like that from a retailer – have you?
I’ve definitely seen retailers push G-spot toys in particular… but in terms of tactile sensations & calling outright certain sexual activities boring?
Maybe I’m not looking at the right retailers, since I prefer to patronize organizations that market themselves as woman-friendly and sex-positive.
As for the rest – I’m not understanding what message I’m supposed to take away from these passages… am I supposed to be reluctant to explore my sexuality with what’s available to me now because of the motivations behind the companies that sell sexual advice and devices? Am I still doin’ it wrong? Am I supposed to feel sexually inhibited at the conclusion of this essay?
The next few chapters touch upon the symbolism behind sex, sexual acts and sexual medicine, notably Viagra.
Ily already beat me to the chapter on the anthropological approach to kissing, which also explores symbolic kissing in art. For anyone curious as to the contents of this chapter, a slightly different version appears for free at this Kinsey Institute page, so go knock yourselves out. I don’t have much to say on this chapter.
The next chapter talks about how hard it is to have frank & open dialogs about sexuality, even in a sexual relationship. I’m certainly open to talking about how hard it is to frankly talk about sex too, but, I’m still getting tripped up on some of the finer details, particularly the passage about the asexual couple.
Tiefer then goes on to talk about Viagra a a symbol – symbolically, it’s looked at as magic pill that can fix all non-pain sexual problems (Tiefer doesn’t mention anything about sexual pain in this chapter; location 1100.) In reality, the drug isn’t perfect, and it may cause unpleasant, potentially dangerous side effects.
I have no idea what Tiefer was trying to say about Viagra when she then included a Viagra user’s own words followed by her analysis of his situation, because the following passages threw me into rage-rage-rage mode. I think she was trying to make a point about side effects or something:
I am a 37 year old man with erectile problems for 2 years. I have used 50 mg. Viagra 4 times. All of those times have resulted in a very good erection and intercourse. The side effects are headache, upset stomach, stuffy nose, and facial flushing… About 30 mins after taking Viagra I take 2 Tylenol and a Tums and start drinking water. After about 15 mins I take another Tums and use a nasal spray for my stuffiness. I will continue this combination and it will work for me.
This sounds more like a Jackie Gleason routine rather than a romantic evening, but I think it is close to the reality of what life with these drugs will be like… How does his sexual partner feel about the whole drama with the Tums and the nasal spray and the Tylenol? (Location 1109)
Woah, woah woah, waaaait a minute. Hold the phone. Jackie Glea… Jackie…. Gleason? Like, from the Honeymooners?
What the f…
Is that supposed to be a joke? Is this Tiefer’s idea of humor? This essay was given as a lecture in 1999; did Tiefer pause for applause & laughter when she finished reciting this passage?
Since when is Tiefer is the arbiter of what constitutes a romantic evening? Didn’t Tiefer state not a few chapters earlier that actively thinking about and taking steps toward making sex happen is a healthy thing? Is this the same person who said “Some people complain that all this groundwork is too mechanical and time-consuming. Working at sex, they say, defeats the whole purpose,“ (location 853,) when she debunked the myth of spontaneity? What happened to that?
You know, for someone who claims to want to expand the frank & open dialog of sexuality, Tiefer sure doesn’t make it easy to talk about physical problems and potential treatments for them… that’s a hangup I’m having with her social constructionist approach, it sacrifices biology. I still have the impression that it’s “Either/or” for Tiefer, but not both, and both is what I need.
Okay, someone needs to sit down and explain to me, in great detail, exactly how a guy who uses Viagra in order to maintain an erection for intercourse, and who has found ways to manage the side effects, is like re-enacting a Jackie Gleason comedy routine. I don’t get it.
We don’t have much else to go by as to the background of this person who left himself open & vulnerable by talking about his Viagra use. For all we know, he and his sex partner already incorporated an expanded definition of sex into their lives, and, like myself, decided that that definition was not completely incompatible with occasional intercourse. I say, using Viagra or other prescription drugs, treatments and devices is not necessarily in conflict with a healthy sex life. If using medical treatments leads to a satisfactory sex life, how is that an inherently bad thing?
And if it is an inherently bad thing, then what does that say about me? Is my sex life a big joke to Tiefer? Who am I to her – Lucille Ball? After all, when my partner and I decide we want to try PIV intercourse, I have to go through a routine involving pelvic floor stretching, lubricant and dilators. Am I supposed to feel embarrassed about doing this in front of my partner? Or about openly talking about it?
There’s not much left of the chapter after that Jackie Gleason bit. Which is good, because I remained in rage-rage-rage mode for the rest of the chapter and was unable to absorb anything more from it. Something about sexual education outside of the US, I don’t know.
The next chapter, The Opposite of Sex, is another free-to-the-public article originally published online. It consists of Moria Brennan interviewing Dr. Tiefer. It’s part PR for Sex is not a Natural Act, part feminist discussion, part sexuality discussion. The most interesting part of the discussion comes when Brennan asked, “Do you think our understanding of sex also affects our understanding of gender?”:
lt: Gender affirmation is a phenomenally important element in the current construction of sexuality–at least for heterosexuals, who have been the bulk of my clients. Reproduction used to be the essence of gender affirmation for women. And for men it was employment. Now there are fewer and fewer ways of proving gender, and yet it’s as important as it ever was. So how do you prove your gender? You’ve got to be able to have sex–not just any old sex, but coitus. Talking about this in the context of feminism is crucial. It’s men’s investment in a particular kind of masculinity that is fueling Viagra. Part of the work of feminists has been to question accepted notions about masculinity, whereas you could say Viagra is affirming them.
…
Not being able to have an orgasm is like the epitome of not being normal. It’s the epitome of not being a man or not being a woman. So I would tell them that there are ways to cope with this. Let’s be a man in other ways. No, they couldn’t accept that. To them, this was the proof. (Tiefer, online.)
This isn’t an unfounded idea – I’ve heard this sentiment elsewhere… there’s something familiar about it… I remember; it was that 20/20 segment on vulvodynia. One of the patients interviewed said something about, part of being a woman, is having female parts. Of course, it’s so much more than that. But it’s hard to get that message out, about gender, that it’s more than biology as destiny. So that’s something worth exploring.
The next chapter, the McDonalization of Sex, talks about the standardization (McDonalization – the description on this wiki page matches what’s in the book, so it’s probably a good place to start if you haven’t heard that term before) of the everyone’s sex lives. Although this chapter is not heavy on academia, I still needed to re-read it a few times before I could understand it… it’s not academic, but it’s difficult because Tiefer jumps around a lot in this chapter. It feels disorganized.
Tiefer identifies two forces behind the McDonalization of sex – mainstream media and medicine. Ever see very similiar but unrealistic sex lives depicted on TV or hear about it in song? There’s a right way & a wrong way to have sex & be sexy, and if you don’t match what’s in the media, you automatically have a dysfunction. If you’re familiar with this sort of depiction of sex in the media, then that’s an example of McDonaldization.
But in real life I’m not seeing medicine participating in this phenomenon… This is where the gulf between my reality & Tiefer’s is the most pronounced. For example, with regard to how McDonaldization comes from the medical profession, Tiefer claims that,
“There’s another source of the new standards that you may be less aware of. It’s the medical profession, with its new men’s sexual health clinics and the even newer women’s sexual health clinics. These things are popping up all over, almost as fast as new McDonald’s. And they really are fast-fod franchises that specialize in efficiency, predictability, numbers, and control. Everyone who comes in with a sexual complaint gets an expensive workup with genital measurements that seems superscientific. But nine times out of ten, the customer walks out with a prescription for Viagra, and since in the future there will be a dozen or two dozen such sex drugs – for both men and women – if the first one doesn’t work the patient – or is it now merely a customer – will be encouraged to try another and another.” (Location 1270.)
And I’m like… where do I find one of these geometrically growing sexual health clinics? Who are we talking about, what should I be looking for, and how do I get their phone number? Are any of these clinics local? If so, when is their next available appointment? How do I get in on this?
Tiefer doesn’t provide any hard examples of who she’s referring to so I’m left wondering – general OB/GYN practices? Vulvovaginal specialists? (Which, in my experience, are hard to find, especially if you’re not nearby a major metropolitan area…) Planned Parenthood? I typed “Sexual health clinic” into my Google Maps but the nearest results – which are questionable at best – would still take me close to two hours to get to at best.
I guess I’m the odd one out again, because if you consider the vulvovaginal specialist I visited to be a sexual health clinic, I never got a prescription for Viagra (I wonder how I can verify that 9 o ut of 10 statistic claim?) – but I did get a prescription for generic valium (no refills) that’s about $10 a bottle under my insurance plan, and I needed that for general anxiety anyway. At the specialist’s office, we didn’t take genital measurements… although we did use a device to figure out how much pain I was in; does that count? And a hormonal blood test revealed that the birth control pill I was on at the time certainly wasn’t doing me any favors. And I’m still wondering where my two dozen sex drugs are… right now vulvodynia patients, at least, have fairly limited options when it comes to oral medication, and at least two of those options are off-label use anyway. And I’m surprised Tiefer left out the mention of non-drug interventions that sexual health clinic doctors might suggest, including but not limited to diet & exercise, or, perhaps for a very few patients such as myself, surgery.
Indeed, the NVA lists several books of interest that do talk about expanding the definition of sex beyond biology. However the NVA is not in and of itself a sexual health clinic…
Tiefer’s solution is more comprehensive sex education.
The last chapter, Doing the Viagra Tango, is another free-and-available-to-the-public essay (I’m glad I paid only $20 for the Kindle edition of this e-Book instead of $40 for the paperback version! I’m finding several of the essays re-printed elsewhere.) The Tango in the title has two meanings – it’s referring to an old Viagra commercial featuring a couple doing a tango,and Tiefer frequently uses dance as a metaphor for sex. Here, she raises philosophical questions about Viagra – What effects will it have in many areas of life? She raises concerns about negative unintended consequences of Viagra (though I’m not fond of these passages, particularly the line that states that “In the worst-case scenario… The drug eliminates [women's] sense of desirability and sexual efficacy,” (Tiefer, online) because if someone is taking Viagra, then isn’t it just possible that in a heterosexual relationship, the woman may already be feeling like she is not as desirable, due to her partner’s difficulty in maintaining an erection? Tiefer is not interested in exploring ways in which this family of drugs may be helpful, she is mainly concerned its potential dangers.) She also explores problems in pharmecutical research, problems with insurance in general brought to light by Viagra, and even politics.
And that’s the way the second section of Sex is Not a Natural Act ends. We’re almost 40% of the way done.
At times, passages from Popular Writings on the Theme seem to contradict statements that were made earlier in the book. For example, Tiefer explicitly uses the words “Effective stimulation” in the greater context of the passage that says, regarding sexual activity, “There’s no way but trial and error to identify forms of effective stimulation” (location 907.) But wait, at locations 672 and 684, didn’t Tiefer herself question the value of the terms “Effective stimulation” when used by Masters & Johnson in their Human Sexual Response Cycle study?
One of the biggest questions I’m left with is, if the essays were written today, would they look the same?
I’ve already started chipping away at the 3rd section, which goes into detail about feminism and sexology – it’s a return to academia so I’ve got a ways to go yet before I finish slogging through.
Back on the auxiliary police beat, after a two-week break away from the uniform. Another way auxiliary policing is kind of like medicine: you risk losing the details you study so hard if you take too long a break away. Especially on those things you need to be instant recall for, like dispatch codes. The radio crackles the first call of the night, “Respond to a 911 call, neighbours reporting a 10-95 in progress at [address]” Uh… sure. What’s a 10-95 again? Oh right – domestic disturbance.
(10-codes vary from department to department, which can make that memorisation all the harder if you start getting into shows like Cops or Law and Order and they’re using different radio protocols than here. At least if you’re in medicine and a House or ER junkie, a tumour is still a tumour and leprosy is still leprosy, whether it’s in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital or County General or the Dr Everett Chalmers here in Fredericton.)
Guess I could’ve figured it out by the address – not the first time we’re heading out that way, and definitely not the first time for the same thing, a 10-95. I guess it’s a sort of reassuring welcome back after holidays – no matter what happens in the world, the N family will still be at it, tearing themselves apart. Not so much a “family”, but a “situation”, really. Things haven’t changed the past fortnight, I haven’t missed an episode.
“10-4″. We start making our way over, following the posted 50km/h limit, stopping at every light along the way. No blues and twos – it’s actually surprisingly rare how often we use the lights and sirens to respond to a call. If you saw us on the road, the only way you could tell we were actually going somewhere is that we’re not like heads bopping at a tennis game, scanning every licence plate and doorway as we drive – which is how patrol usually goes, trawling for anything suspicious.
It’s a tough spot, that N family. If they were my patients, their charts would be a textbook of socioeconomic challenges: single unemployed mum, measures her days in cigarettes and beer cans. Non-supportive estranged father – with an alleged history of abuse, his very absence is probably the most supportive thing he’s done. 10- and 11-year-old boys at home, both with extensive records of behavioural problems; both with features of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and ADHD, but neither interested in or compliant with social or medical assistance.
Neighbours report screaming; not an unusual sound to come across their paper-thin duplex walls, they’re finally moving away at the end of the month, not a moment too soon. Tonight, sounds like the 10-year-old is swinging a pair of scissors at the 11-year-old, because he didn’t share his cigarette. Or is the other way around? Last time it was the elder attacking, but using the cigarette itself and lunging at his little brother’s neck.
I like to think I’ve been in medicine long enough not to be shocked about situations like this. You see the same across the country, whether it’s on the buzzing streets of Downtown Toronto, the chilling solitude of Arctic Inuvik, or the lush greenery of west coast Masset: the vast majority of disease and illness affects the segment of society that can least afford it. So it goes with crime and violence too – part of the appeal of both medicine and policing, the opportunity to try to be there for people who need it most. To bring justice.
We pull up, slide out across the iced-over driveway, and let ourselves in through the open front door. The 10-year-old is in the backyard, visible through the back door, smoking away. The 11-year-old is sitting in the living room, watching Entertainment Tonight. He nods welcome. Where’s your mum? “I dunno, what do you want?” We heard there was fighting. He nods again. “I want to watch TV, go away.”
Mum comes down. Apparently everything is “under control”, we can leave now. The 10-year-old got his cigarette, so all is well in the world again.
And that’s pretty much that. The social workers will come and do their rounds again Monday afternoon after school. Kids look healthy, well-fed and, most importantly, unbruised and unscratched. We make sure the month’s heating assistance credit and welfare cheques are still working out. We ask if mum’s found a job yet: “no”, because then she’d lose her welfare and have to find a sitter. We ask if the kids have seen the psychiatrist they’ve been planning: “no”, because there’s no transport, and even if the doctors could do anything there’s no money for meds anyway, and even if there was, the kids wouldn’t take them.
We wish the Ns the best.
And we’ll be back again next weekend.
Add it to the list, more ways policing is just like medicine: you can engage, advise and hear out your patients as best you can; try to earn their trust through a repeated, long-term supportive relationship; elicit their Feelings, Ideas about the problem, the problem’s Functional impacts, and their Expectations from you; keep your door open to them, and be at their call when they ask; offer to tap them support, try to connect them with other resources, and show them a path forward – but actually taking those steps, it’s all up to them.
Pleasant surprises happen, sometimes, and you’re on top of the world when they do, but they’re few and far between. Now I’ve only been with the police for a few weeks now, but the general trend is looking not all that different from medicine – every time you see your “regulars”, week to week or month to month, you’re more likely to be disappointed than not.
And whether you look at it through the eyes of a doctor, or an auxiliary police constable – you lose sleep over it.
This is a little overdue so I guess I have a lot to cover.
My painting has come to a sudden halt, after the completion of three new decent sized pieces, due to financial reasons. I am broke. Poor. Starving; the horrible image artists have too much been associated with. But more importantly, I am restricting myself in terms of painting and experimenting with other mediums. What is even more important than this is that I am still a nobody and nameless beyond my town and classrooms and, if this starvation continues, will remain this way until further notice. But who cares, we shouldn’t give a fuck. At twenty years old, I am farther ahead than all the others my age I know and have a foundation to go back to when something fails. While they still try to figure out what they want to do, I am doing it little by little and having a subtle impact on those around me. But somethings are amongst this thin air, taking what little oxygen I have left to call my own and causing a recent collapse.
Besides the financial ruin, my mother (if you haven’t been keeping up) is going to jail. I have recently written a letter to somewhat lessen the punishment, but honestly don’t want to. That is besides the point. I will have to, once again, take the responsibility of guiding my sister into a decent life. But her teenage angst is rising and I don’t want a part of this anymore.
I have been working harder than ever to get out of here and transfer to another college; Ringling School of Art and Design. I have high hopes and am waiting on the letter of truth. The letter to forever change my life. I have realized the only way to get out of this life is through education. I am sick of being broke, nameless and stuck inside of a town in which nobody cares for. I need some materialism to become disgusted with. I need some experience under my belt but more importantly I need to re-visit the areas in which my childhood took place to get some motivation…to see how far I have come.
What am I doing for now?
Living. Getting by through school and poetry. Music.
I have a show, once again at Pia Sjolin Design sometime in Feb. It has escaped my head, as that is how little I am focused on it. Something is terribly wrong.
I have been doing more and more design lately and have taken an interest in trying to get the attention of more investors. Installation projects have been coming and going, but I am onto something with this one…I’ll keep you posted.
A recent discovery of a Neolithic man with an amputated forearm suggests that the medical knowledge of that period may be more advanced than previously thought:
Early Neolithic surgeons used a sharpened flint stone and rudimentary anaesthetics to amputate the elderly man’s left forearm, and treated the wound in sterile conditions, experts believe.
Evidence of the early surgery was unearthed by Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist, during work on a tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles south of Paris.
Stone Age Amputee Proves Neolithic Medics More Advanced Than Previously Thought [Telegraph]
If you’ve been running around in skeptical circles for any amount of time, then you’ve no doubt heard of the quackery called homeopathy. According to the Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on homeopathy…
Classical homeopathy originated in the 19th century with Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843) as an alternative to the standard medical practices of the day, such as phlebotomy or bloodletting. Opening veins to bleed patients, force disease out of the body, and restore the humors to a proper balance was a popular medical practice until the late19th century (Williams 2000: 265). Hahnemann rejected the notion that disease should be treated by letting out the offensive matter causing the illness. In this, he was right. On the other hand, he argued that disease should be treated by helping the vital force restore the body to harmony and balance. In this, he was wrong. He rejected other common medical practices of his day such as purgatives and emetics “with opium and mercury-based calomel” (ibid.: 145). He was right to do so. Hahnemann’s alternative medicine was more humane and less likely to cause harm than many of the conventional practices of his day. …
Homeopaths refer to “the Law of Infinitesimals” and the “Law of Similars” as grounds for using minute substances and for believing that like heals like, but these are not natural laws of science. If they are laws at all, they are metaphysical laws, i.e., beliefs about the nature of reality that would be impossible to test by empirical means. Hahnemann’s ideas did originate in experience. That he drew metaphysical conclusions from empirical events does not, however, make his ideas empirically testable. The law of infinitesimals seems to have been partly derived from his notion that any remedy would cause the patient to get worse before getting better and that one could minimize this negative effect by significantly reducing the size of the dose. Most critics of homeopathy balk at this “law” because it leads to remedies that have been so diluted as to have nary a single molecule of the substance one starts with.
And this is the real rub with a notion as loony as homeopathy. We already know from modern science-based medicine that, in the case of drugs, there must be a certain amount of active ingredient in the drug in order for it to have the desired effect. Of course, there are dangers from using medical drugs: one of the most common is that of over-dosing. If someone takes too much of a certain active ingredient, it can be harmful or – in the worst case – fatal. For example, we all know about stories of people committing suicide by over-dosing on sleeping pills.
However, with homeopathy, this is all turned completely on its head. Homeopaths, invoking their magical “law of infinitesimals”, insist that by diluting the active ingredient to the most ludicrous extreme (i.e., imagine diluting a solution so much that only one molecule of active ingredient remains in it) this will somehow transfer the healing power of the ingredient to the patient and actually make the solution more potent.
A classic example of debunking this particular woo-woo claim has been performed numerous times by James Randi as he lectures on the topic of homeopathy & other quackery. As he lectures, usually for roughly an hour, Randi will consume an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills that he’d purchased earlier from a nearby pharmacy. Needless to say, despite performing this feat numerous times, James Randi has yet to die from such an “over-dose”.
Another good example of this very exercise in skepticism of homeopathy is outlined at this Youtube video by Ziztur. I wonder what happened to her?…
In an effort to illustrate the silliness behind these nonsense homeopathy claims more broadly in the public eye, an organization calling themselves the 10:23 Campaign: Homeopathy, There’s Nothing In It has designated that they will be conducting a “mass suicide by homeopathy” on January 30th. The whole “10:23″ bit is a play off of Avogadro’s Number (6.022×10^23 particles per mole) that one learns about in basic chemistry class – the idea being that if you have an entire mole’s worth of solution (not unreasonable) that, by homeopathic standards, there is likely only one molecule of active ingredient in it.
To sum up, I shall finish with a joke:
A man is walking naked down the street when a police officer pulls him over. As the man is being placed into the back of the squad car, having been arrested for indecent exposure, he protests, saying: “But officer, you don’t understand! I’m wearing my homeopathic pants!”
One of the primary purposes behind Full-Wave Breathing as it has become to be known is Gnosis—a clear and immediate experience and intuitive realization of the pure essence, nature and energy of Divinity as it flows within oneself and all of creation. Gnosis, as it is used by International Breath Institute founder Dr. Tom Goode, places primary value on the feminine qualities of receptivity and intuition, visionary experience and the art of health. Gnosis, like the use of Full-Wave Breathing is a teaching of love, selflessness, harmony and communion. From a Gnositic viewpoint, the answers to life can only be found when one opens to the divine current and allows oneself to be penetrated by it to the point where you are full transformed and illuminated by it.
I write this year for an aspect of your personality and that, perhaps unspoken, part of you who live your “spiritual life” as an agent of caring and kindness in your world.
You are like other readers who live their lives, care for their mindbody units and those of others, and may go thru their body “things”– including maintenance, discomfort and inconvenience. There are easier ways to manage the mindbody system and I teach them to those who are interested in their own health and that of the members of their community.
My Self-appointed task is to make your life easier. Its my way of supporting you and your contribution to improving life on the planet and the human life process. I do it because it pleases me to have healthier and more joyful people around. Thus I remind you to breathe, intend health (anything else is just dis-ease) and live fully from your heart’s awareness.
My communication is for the express purpose of enhancing your well-being during 2010. And I’ll suggest exercises for mindbody health.
One of the most powerful exercises I experienced was to ask myself, “How wouId I act if everyone in the world was my child, I his or her parent.?” Practice this with the people in your life—even just a few times–and see what happens.
As you think about it, breathe that idea (of seeing everyone you encounter throughout the day as your children) and the way it feels using full-wave, nostril breathing. Relax fully on the exhale and continue with connected breathing.
Next, practice applying the perspective throughout the day. Keep breathing!
“Pharmaganda: A Study of Conflicting Interests,” by Editor-in-Chief Dr. Leonard Horowitz, and investigative journalist Sherri Kane, evidences a virtual monopoly by Reed-Elsevier over scientific publications empowered by ChoicePoint, a leading intelligence organization and census data company serving organized crime.
Vast corruption of medicine is administered by persuasion through health science publications according to the authors who indict The Lancet–an esteemed medical journal–and other Reed-Elsevier periodicals for gross conflicting interests.
The Lancet is among 2,000 science journals published by the Reed-Elsevier-ChoicePoint conglomerate. The UK-based company sells more than 250,000 articles annually. Through its vast network of publications, combined with ChoicePoint’s “intelligence services,” control over scientific knowledge and medical practices are certain and have become disastrous. Medical intelligence and health practices have been monopolized and corrupted to the detriment of world health and every doctor and patient.
Full Article from Rense.com
Comment
Just when the government is considering national health care, more and more corruption in the health care “industry” is being exposed. It is not insignificant that drug companies, most hospitals, and many physician practices are now corporations. The corporation has only one mandate – to make money! Trailer for documentary, BigBucks Big Pharma
I enjoyed myself fully last night as I entered the world of ‘Avatar’, James Cameron’s new sci-fi epic that already handily broke a 1 billion-dollar landmark record of some kind. I’d watch the show again tonight if I could. I’d probably watch it every night for a week like my high school buddies did for “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” once upon a time.
You don’t have to care – or understand – the point of the movie to completely enjoy the stunning visual spectacle presented in wide-screen, 3D wonder. In fact, I’d advise constraining yourself specifically to the visual effects and skip putting any real thought to the message of the movie. In essence, just sing along with the song, but don’t think about what the words actually mean.
The story follows an ex-Marine named Jake as he becomes part of a mission to subjugate – or at least translocate - the natives on a strange new planet (a moon actually, but does it matter?). On the n0t-so-subtly-named Pandora, the “aliens” congregate around an enormous tree set in the middle of a seemingly endless forest. They stand about 11 feet tall, with blue skin and luminous yellow eyes and they all seem to carry bow and arrows and daggers. These blue and tall but otherwise disappointingly human-shaped beings generally seem happiest when attending their frequent tribe-wide drum fests – with a terminally simplistic 2/4 beat rhythm that sounds like it might have been pounded out on cool Senegalese drums the Anglo orchestra bought in bulk.
These earthy aliens have a sacred, mystical, spiritual connection to the forest where they live; generally behaving like any nature-loving tribe the Europeans successfully decimated a little over a century ago in North America. In a complete creative hiatus, at one point nature is even called a “mother”. Why not a father, or brother, or just skip the nuclear family reference to nature entirely? The descriptor ‘Mother Earth’ is so unoriginal, it ranks up there with Bless You and Dot Com.
Although 2 hours and something like 40 minutes, you can easily sum up the movie in one phrase: “Dances With Wolves”…but with pterodactyls you can ride.
Basically – Marine makes contact with natives through project financed by aggressive and ethics-challenged Big Business company. Marine plans on helping his financiers destroy said natives. Instead, he inadvertently falls in love with natives in general, and one curvaceous native in particular. He then becomes the enemy of his former bosses, ultimately leading the meek, dumb, dark-skinned simpletons to victory over superior white man.
I haven’t decided if this REALLY tired theme of the White Male swooping down into a primitive race, seeing their genuine good, and then becoming their Great Savior is completely racist. Some are saying it absolutely is. I don’t really think that was the intent. I just think it was lazy writing by a white male who deep-down believes that white men are still the best hope for the world. That they still run it, ultimately. But it is possible that white men really don’t have much to offer the world anymore – that we’ve had our time and made our mark. Maybe it’s time for some non-white, non-men to run the countries, write the laws, own the companies and save fictional worlds. Maybe the white boy has done about all he can.
Big Business takes a major hit in this movie. It gets portrayed as the denizen of all Evil in life. That said, it’s Big Business that has paid for every iota of scientific discovery that has occurred on Pandora. The science taking place on this moon (and taking place on our earth) is an elevated form of existence, no question, but in both worlds it mostly exists because of Big Business, either directly or through taxes. Scientists – and artists – need to accept the fact that to live in that enlightened world of thought and wonder and possibility depends on their benefactor’s mundane ability to sell widgets. Big Business is rarely genuinely evil. True, figuring out when to inject some profit-endangering humanistic principles into a business plan does takes some skill and is occasionally gotten wrong. But for the most part, if business didn’t make the poet, at least it feeds him.
The actual “avatar” is a living being made to look like the aliens, but controlled by the mind of a human. The human links to the avatar neurologically, so it can only be controlled by one specific human. Thus, the human lies in a coffin-like body-pod that connects him/her to their specific avatar. Upon falling into a coma in the pod, the avatar wakes up and the mind of the comatose human controls it.
Soohh...who gets to clean this thing?
The doc in me couldn’t help but get hung up on this part of the movie. First, all humans need to sleep. But since the avatar wakes up as soon as the human “sleeps”, and since controlling the avatar is a conscious process, the human never actually does sleep. For some evolutionary reason I can’t fathom, REM sleep is the foundation of all life. This inconvenient fact defies even the mighty pen of James Cameron. By the end of the movie, after staying awake vicariously with the characters, I felt like I’d been on call in the hospital for days on end (felt like I was back in residency again).
Also, the human lays in this coffin thing for hours and hours. At the least, he’s gotta pee himself on a regular basis, to say nothing of the inevitable bowel movement here and there. Plus, the main character’s avatar hooks up with the sexy female alien. Depicted as the first consummating night of an eternal love bond – thus likely a multicoital affair – envisioning the scene (and smell) inside the pod after this particular night left me a bit squeamish.
As mentioned, the power of this movie is in the visuals. It is a “looker” many times over. But the general message is tired, probably slightly racist, and denigrates the U.S. Military (or at least leads the audience to exult in the widespread slaughter of American soldiers/mercenaries). That said, perhaps our culture really should take the main theme of the story to heart. After all, we DID decimate the Native American culture, and based on my experiences on the Crow Reservation in Montana, I’d say we continue to. We’re also strikingly obtuse in our dealings with tribal cultures in the Middle East today. Listening to people from a different culture – rather than melting them with daisycutters and circling drones – has some merit.
But I do wish the movie had added a little post-modernism into the mix and eschewed the evil-good idea altogether. It didn’t have to pit the American Axis of Evil (big business + U.S. Army) against a pristine tribal culture practically perfect in every way. Historic Native American tribes were often duplicitous, aggressive, thieving and hateful (many still are today). They rarely trusted each other from tribe to tribe and may have been just as irresponsible had one tribe attained the raw power that the U.S. Government currently has. The Arab tribes we’re tangling with recently have a litany of faults and cobwebby dark corners too. But they are also a just, priceless, sacred, honorable people. This dichotomy exists in virtually every race in our world. Americans seem to hate this complexity in our fiction – it’s easier to hate one thing and love another and then watch them duke it out.
Yeah, YEAH! Die lame-oh Americans! Wait, didn't an American make this movie?
Thus, the conflict in the movie could have been between two parties filled with faults and frailties but ultimately imbued with genuine honor, honesty and a respect for the rights of others. Standing between them is something they both deeply need and want (trees, mineral ore…whatever). In life, conflicts almost always boil down to two parties who both have blood on their hands, but both are essentially good, honorable…and in the right. e.g., Palestine wants the land, Israel wants the land, both have been evil at times, both have been angelically good at times, and each have some form of legitimate claim to the exact space of real estate. Stick that conundrum in your avatar’s virtual peace pipe and take a deep drag, nature-brother.
Depicting this nuanced world may have weakened the sense of righteous rage as the Army went Operation Flatten Everything. It may have lessened the gloating release when the Ultimate Bad Guy finally met his ignominious end. But it would have made a better movie. It would have made the written story as complex as those fantastic visuals, and created a worthy counterpart to such a sparkling, wondrous vision.
Last summer was quite the time of my life and I don’t mean that in a positive aspect. I have never experienced anything like last summer. It was an emotionally and physically draining period my family and I went through and I learned not just a lot about myself but about life on a grand scale. I once told a dear friend of mine that life’s challenges were not meant to paralyze us but rather push us in the direction of discovering who we are and what we stand for.
Service Corporation International,NYSE:SCI has had poor numbers for the last year. Blaming poor financials on down turns in the numbers of deaths is truly sad. Saying that the cause of financial trouble is the number of births between 1932 and 1939 is borders on the laughable and sad. Blaming poor numbers on medical advances is just as sad. One has to wonder if the CEO Tom Ryan, Should be taken seriously.
Georgia Myers – My Guardian Angel. And the wonderful Lady who raised me. 
Vicodin is like Heroin-Lite. The only difference is that, while everyone and anyone will tell you how dangerous and addicting and horrible heroin is, vicodin is prescribed by your doctor to help you. Here is this wonderful, caring person, who has eight years of schooling and four or more years of internships and specialized training under his or her belt, and they’re giving you this little white oval shaped pill and telling you it will take away your pain. What they’re not telling you is that it is highly addictive, and if you become addicted, you’ll go through all seven levels of hell to get off of it. So much for the hippocratic oath.
You take your medicine like a good little girl or boy and eventually you run out, or you decide to quit on your own. And then a magic surprise happens. You feel terrible. Depending on how long and how regularly you’ve been taking vicodin your terrible can range from “I feel kinda blue and tired today” to “I’m having a panic attack and my entire body is in excrutiating pain and I can’t sleep and I really just want to cry and throw up and die all at the same time!” Most people ask, since it’s so wonderful and so readily available, either by prescription or through that friend of a friend of a friend, why bother to quit at all?
We all know that vicodin causes euphoria, happiness, and just a darn good time. What most people don’t know is that it can also cause heart palpitations, nausea, altered mental status, seizures, hallucinations, severe weakness, jaundice, bleeding, bruising, stomach pain, sweating, hot flashes, itching, and, according to wikipedia, “liver damage can manifest ranging from abdominal pain to outright liver failure, and can necessitate a liver transplant to avoid death.”
Sounds like a good idea to quit right? Right. Until the withdrawls kick in. Then you’re thinking, “A liver transplant can’t be that bad, wonder if Uncle BillyBobRay or Aunt LouAnne will give me part of theirs?” As I stated before, withdrawals from opiates (including vicodin, percocet, oxycontin, etc) can range from the mild blues and slight achyness that most people who have taken it for longer than a day will experience, to total opiate withdrawal. John Lennon wasn’t lying when he wrote “Cold Turkey”.
Some of the wonderful things this author has experienced when trying to quit are: nausea, vomiting, feeling really cold all the time, headaches, pupil dilation causing light sensitivity (at one point the glow around traffic lights seemed to extend to about 10 feet around each individual light), cold sweats, severe and debilitating anxiety, restlessness, pain so severe it feels like one has been thrown out of a second story window (the worst part is the bone pain, it literally feels like breaking a bone), severe depression, shaky hands, exhaustion to the point of not being able to sit up straight, panic attacks, diarreah (too severe to describe), restless leg syndrom, insomnia, runny nose and other cold symptoms, and the inevitable random other illness that usually shows up about a week after quitting, just for funsies.
Enter stage right: Suboxone. In my next installment I will tell you, the reader, all about the “miracle” drug suboxone and how it’s used to treat opiate addiction. I will also tell you how it is working for a certain person who has found themselves addicted to prescription painkillers.
source: http://www.habitatboise.com/custom_content/5558_acupuncture.html
Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843) as an alternative to the standard medical practices of the day, such as phlebotomy or bloodletting. Opening veins to bleed patients, force disease out of the body, and restore the humors to a proper balance was a popular medical practice until the late19th century (Williams 2000: 265). Hahnemann rejected the notion that disease should be treated by letting out the offensive matter causing the illness. In this, he was right. On the other hand, he argued that disease should be treated by helping the vital force restore the body to harmony and balance. In this, he was wrong. He rejected other common medical practices of his day such as purgatives and emetics “with opium and mercury-based calomel” (ibid.: 145). He was right to do so. Hahnemann’s alternative medicine was more humane and less likely to cause harm than many of the conventional practices of his day. …
“Pharmaganda: A Study of Conflicting Interests,” by Editor-in-Chief Dr. Leonard Horowitz, and investigative journalist Sherri Kane, evidences a virtual monopoly by Reed-Elsevier over scientific publications empowered by ChoicePoint, a leading intelligence organization and census data company serving organized crime. 
I enjoyed myself fully last night as I entered the world of ‘Avatar’, James Cameron’s new sci-fi epic that already handily broke a 1 billion-dollar landmark record of some kind. I’d watch the show again tonight if I could. I’d probably watch it every night for a week like my high school buddies did for “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” once upon a time.
