WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

If there are neurologic deficits, there are actually options, but they're very expensive.

Which I understand.

Oy, Pem.

As indicated on the dream thread, I seem to be turning 14.

I'm staying at my parents' house. We have more people coming tonight, so we were cleaning sheets and towels. One of the mattress covers was dirty, so I was going to wash it. My mom sprayed it with something. I went to change the load of laundry and grabbed that cover. After picking it up in my arms I smelled the bleach. Ack! I am wearing "My happy shirt", a funky, orange linen snap-up shirt. Normally she uses Shout or something color-safe.

I ask, "Mom, how strong was that bleach?"
She says, "I wouldn't put it in with clothes."
I ask, "So, will it bleach my shirt?"
She: "I wouldn't worry about it."
Me: "But, you just said not to put it in with clothes."
She: "humph"
me: "I picked it up against my shirt, do you think I need to rinse it?"
She: no answer
Me: "I am just trying to figure out from you if you think the bleach is strong enough that I have to soak my shirt."

I give up and go soak my shirt.

Dear Doctors,

I have a doctor appt in one of your Boston offices. You request I take public transit instead of driving because your parking garage is under construction. Then you ask that I wear no deodorant before my appt. It's 96 degrees.

The letters of complaint from the people of Boston will be forwarded to your offices.

Hugs,
Kris

So, I decided to clean up near the back door inside my kitchen. I find spider webs. Well, I've brushed those off before. This time I followed them. It turns out there were nests inside the bells I have hanging from the door knob. I've had bells at my back door for years, as Pacco would nose them to let me know he needed to go out, and I left them, as a kind of burglar warning. So, I bring the bells over to the sink and start to clean them. Out walks a black widow...
Criminy! I got'm, but that's unsettling.

I've had them before - in the garage I remodeled as a studio, for example. But, never in the house.

soooooo....my soul-sis undergoes surgery tomorrow - so, we're sitting contemplating our navels thismorning, as you do, over a cuppa squirly grey, and the postie delivers a letter from the doctor's surgery...

'
....We are sorry to hear you have breast cancer...blah. We would like to note that your cervical smear also came back positive and tho there is no treatment required at present, we will need to review this in 6 months and decide a course of action at that time as your risk for cervical cancer in increased....
'

idiots - could they not have waited until at least she had got past the surgery tomorrow...errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - duh - one at a time please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





talk about a ferking bedside manner - twits, idiots, tossers!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

good grief!

from the same dr's office?

good grief!

nope... from the GP's surgery who had received the letters from the oncologist to detail the biopsies and dx etc... and thought they would add that last paragraph in.... WHY?... why didn't they just wait until next week? She didn't need that today. Eejits

gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggrrrr




<it shook her so I'm feeling a little on the angry side - can you tell! > blech

Oof!

Izzie, My reaction to this is R-rated. I'll behave like a lady, however, and say, Oh, no.

I suspect that the letter was sent as an automatic kinda thing. Get the result. Send the letter.

I'm not a medical expert. However, I'm wondering why a positive result can wait.

well, that's it... there are abnormal cells and that often happens with pap smears... it's the adding of the words "we will need to review this in 6 months and decide a course of action at that time as your risk for cervical cancer in increased...." which just didn't need to be said right now - she has enough to contend with... I mean, they coulda just sent the letter next week, not to get it today fer goodness sake!

I understand your anger and outrage. Truly I do. I think I've become a bit desensitized to the insensitivity of some people in the medical profession.

I'm gonna shut up now.

The med establishment can be awful. Remembering years ago when the missus went in to get what turned out to be Raynaud's-like symptoms (highly localized vasoconstriction in the digits in response to cold and/or stress) checked out. They immediately took a bunch of blood, told her that she might have a horrifying autoimmune disesae (lupus, scleroderma, etc.). She understandably was very worried.

They then weren't heard from for a month, at which point they called back to say they needed to run more tests because -- and they didn't even lie about this -- they'd lost the first samples. Three weeks after that, they sent a letter saying nothing was wrong.

I later did a great deal of research on the Raynaud's topic a few years, writing a review for a rheumatologist that we were going to try and get published before I got sidetracked by vet school -- but the upshot and point of the article we were writing is that the vast majority (really, like over 95%, and maybe over 99%) of people with Raynaud's-like symptoms do not go on to develop any sort of disease. WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN MENTIONED AT THE TIME OF THE BLOOD TEST, RATHER THAN, "OH, YOU PROBABLY HAVE LUPUS OR YOUR TOES ARE PROBABLY GOING TO FALL OFF."

People are a problem.

I was on the lab end of all that, at first, in '65, me and my room, an early clin immuno lab, such as it was. Back then, the docs were near as scared as the patients.

Reason has intervened with time. I cringe if this is happening now.

Adds, I thought my x might have Raynaud's. His doctor still hasn't picked it up, decades later. I've been quiet all this time, and glad enough that I have been.

Well, I read pretty much all the literature available on it in English as of 2003, and it was abundantly clear that there was plenty of information that there were two very distinct forms -- one very common, idiopathic, essentially harmless, much more common, and associated with inappropriate vasoconstriction; and one much less common and associated with vascular damage due to a host of autoimmune diseases. Not a difficult piece of information to communicate to patients. (Which was to be the take-home message from the article the rheumatologist and I were working on, as it was also his feeling that his colleagues tended to be far too alarmist and alarmING when confronted with that symptomology.)

(Much like finding abnormal cells on a Pap smear...)

That makes complete sense, thanks, PD, says the early rheumo etc. tech.

Meantime I'm still reeling from the black widow climbing extremely fast up a fork in my sink, after leaving the indian bell. Gee, willikers.
They've been around since my childhood, but never so in my face, as it were.

I'm the type that blows up a 3" red welt from a common ant bite (a week ago, tortilla chips by the computer). I'd have to get to a phone fast re such a spider biting me. But most of my angst is simple primitive spider fear, for some of them.

Would that I could just let them be. But, no.

PD, a tangent, but you can relate to this, I think. The first year I worked up our clinical rheumatology lab - yes, under department guidance, but it was me with the lab, a zillion hours, probably partly from my learning time, the head guy coming by every three weeks or so.. I got an LE prep specimen marked posthuma. One thing led to another. I think I tossed the clot, g'help me.
Turned out that was the md's name. He was pretty pissed at me. Got another draw.

Just broke a damned tooth!

Oh, no........

Argh!

Which one?