I Open the Door to an Empty Room

Updates, Updates

Parnate has produced some low-grade nausea for the past couple days. This is a merely temporary side effect that I'll easily fight through. My appetite is minimal at best, and I can already clearly visualize the pounds dropping off of me. If this keeps up, I'll be thirty pounds lighter by February/March.

I appreciate your words of support, Readership. Dealing with this for years and years has made me tough, resilient, and persistent. What I'm dealing with now is hardly anything new. As a matter of fact, things have been much worse before. I'm very glad you did not know me in my late teens, which were a nightmare combination of constant bouts of hospitalization and trauma unthinkable.

I was a nervous, high-strung, fearful child. The onset of my first bouts of depression occurred when I was sixteen and I developed full-blown bipolar when I was in my early twenties.

I'm looking forward to perusing your blogs, leaving comments, and getting back to politics as usual.

Frustration

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've had to put blogging on hold to a large extent while I'm getting my health into order. Still, I did want to update you out there who read this blog on a regular basis. Once I get myself stabilized, I will take up the mantle with the eloquence I have shown in months before.

First, the news.

Due to the fact doing so would cause a medication interaction, I cannot eat pizza anymore. Nor can I eat most cheeses. For an Italian food junkie like yours truly, this is a major adjustment, but one that I am willing to make. First coffee, now cheese. *sad face*

I had a minor reaction two nights ago that I believe was due to the fact I had eaten lasagna the night before, and apparently enough undigested tyramine still lingered in my gut to cause a reaction. Six hour long headaches are not pleasant, but I had enough of a taste of what a medication interaction will be like to make me never want to have another one. It was one of those frustrating headaches that force you to constantly switch positions from lying on one's side to lying on one's back, repeat, repeat, repeat, all night long.

The other interaction of note has been with Seroquel, my sleeping medication. It has magnified the drowsiness to the point that I was sleepy most of the day. I still am.

I've been on Parnate now for three days. Tomorrow I increase the dosage to 30 mg.

I already feel the change in appetite. When enough of it is in my system, I know my appetite is going to be greatly affected. This is not a bad thing because I've gained so much weight. And, with the dietary restrictions combined with the medication itself, I'm pretty sure in a few months I'm going to lose most of the pounds I've put on in the last couple months.

Wouldn't This Be Terrible?

Wednesday Evening Laughter

Finally!

I got the proper medication. It took twelve fucking days.

Since I am starting out on the MAOI pill, dietary restrictions immediately go into place. Foods containing tyramine are strictly out.of.bounds.

These include, in particular:

• Meats and Fish
  • Liver of all kinds
  • pate
  • Pickled herring and other pickled fish
  • Game (venison, etc.)
  • Caviar
  • Snails (escargot)
  • Salted fish (lox)
  • Pastrami
  • Corned beef
  • Sausages (salami, etc)
  • Boveril
  
  
  
• Fruits and Vegetables
  • Pods of broad beans
  • English beans
  • Chinese pea pods
  • Miso and miso soup
  • Fava beans
  • Overripe fruit (especially bananas and Avocados)
  • Raisins and other dried fruits
  • Pickles of any type
  • Sauerkraut
  • Canned Figs
  
  
  
• Dairy Products
  • All cheeses (Except for cream, cottage, farmer and ricotta)
  • Frozen yogurt (Fresh yogurt is OK up to the expiration date on the container)
  • Sour cream
  
  
  
• Beverages
  • Red wine
  • Beer and ale (including alcohol-free)
  • Champagne
  • Sherry
  • Brandy
  • Liqueurs and fruit brandies
  • Cognac
  • (Truly moderate amounts of white wine, gin or vodka are OK)
  • Over four servings of caffeine-containing drinks such as coffee, cola drinks, etc.
  
  
  
• Miscellaneous
  • Soy sauce
  • Brewers yeast (Bread, cake, cookies etc. are OK as they do not contain brewers yeast)
  • Marmite
  • Licorice
  • Over one ounce of chocolate

Major side effect hooray: As tranylcypromine has a strong tendency to cause weight loss, it is not generally recommended for patients with a low BMI in an outpatient setting.

The Jackassery Continues

Medicaid, as I suspected, would not agree to cover the price of the MAOI patch. It balked at the $495 price tag. Now onto Plan B. At the moment, I am waiting for my psychiatrist to call back and prescribe the pill version, which costs $350 less.

As a cost-cutting method, Medicaid requires that I have failed (their nomenclature, not mine) two generic forms of conventional antidepressants. In times past, when I had excellent health insurance, I was prescribed brand name, top of the line medications, so as such I did not fit the criteria.

This is a pitfall we must avoid if Universal Coverage is implemented. Budget surpluses force these sort of loopholes into effect. If it is to be successful, its coffers must always be well-stocked.

Economic Woes

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

LORD POLONIUS:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

A Word of Thanks

Thanks to all of you who prayed for me. Please know you are loved.

I am a bit speechless at the moment. Whatever you said, folks, it worked. My pain did not subside altogether, but it did reach a manageable level; it subsided enough for me to get in several hours needed slumber.

Wow. I'm amazed.

________________________

My fear is that I'm going to end up like this guy.



The Culprit

A Simple Request

Readership,

Feeling that politics and other such banter are the sole domain of this blog, I deliberately try to keep my personal feelings out of this.

So pardon me this once when I break my own rule. To wit, today is day thirty-four of discontinuation. With every subsequent day, the withdrawal is more and more intense. Keeping it together has been a huge endeavor. There's little to nothing I can do about it other slog and claw and scrape and fight my way through it, which is what I have done consistently in my life. All is not doom, but I'm feeling very discouraged at the moment.

The best way I can put it to you is this: contemplate the worst bout of the flu you've ever had. Remember, if you dare, the worst day of it. Remember the sort of desperation you felt that you would never get better. Yet, all the time you told yourself that this was likely the worst day; you knew full well the next day would not nearly be as painful.

For those of you who are the praying sorts, I ask you kindly for your prayers. I need strength in times like these.

Saturday Video

Hooray for snooty French attitudes.

Astronomy Domine from (The) Pink Floyd.

A Grim Little Anniversary

In between your Turkey and Dressing, do remember this silent anniversary.



EDIT:

A few interpretations.

1. In Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated, they have a museum set up in the book depository where the supposed shot was fired from. The window where Oswald was supposed to have fired from is set up to look exactly like it did on that day. It's called the Sniper's Nest, and the museum is called the Assassination Museum.

The Sniper's Nest is a very accurate reconstruction.

One of the main reasons it is so accurate is because Oswald isn't in it.

-Bill Hicks

2. JFK's death 44 years later and the big 'what if?'

by Frank James

Today is not only Thanksgiving but also Nov. 22, 2007, the 44th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Like 9/11 or Dec. 7, today is one of those anniversaries in American history that, for those old enough to remember the tragedy itself, still delivers a certain chill and a sadness. Even for many born afterwards there is a sense of loss, like what we feel for Abraham Lincoln.

Nov. 22 is a day for private remembering. Evidently, the Kennedy family has never wanted large public remembrances of the assassination. Better to remember the president's life than the way he died.

As Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqielynn Ford noted this week, it's also a day for conspiracy theorists to again get ginned up, with something of a spectacle occurring at the site of the assassination.

But for those of old enough to remember, the Kennedy assassination marked the start of the time of tumult that the 1960s were to become. Vietnam. Riots. Anti-war and civil-rights protests. More assassinations.

It is said that America lost its innocence that day 44 years ago. In truth, America was never innocent, could never be innocent.

What America really lost was a chance to see how the Kennedy story, allowed to play out naturally, would've ended. Would he be as highly regarded a president as he is today by so many? Or would his have been another failed presidency?

What would he have done about Vietnam? Would he have done as much for civil rights as his successor, Lyndon Johnson? Would Medicare exist? With his Addison's Disease resulting from adrenal insufficiency, would he have even survived a second term?

Perhaps more than any other event in modern American history, what happened in Dallas forty-four years ago today left us with one of the greatest collective "what if" questions of our time.

The Pitfalls of Reduced Cost Health Insurance

We need to avoid pitfalls like this if we want Universal Health Care in this country.

Those of you who crave a real-life example to back up your arguments, allow me to submit myself.

To wit, I should have started the MAOI patch six days ago, but the Walgreens near my house lied to me twice.

Oh, we'll have it in tomorrow, Mr. Camp.

LIE.

Oh, we're sorry. We didn't get it in today, but we will have it in Tuesday.

LIE.

We didn't get it in, and we're not sure when it will arrive.

After being lied to twice, I took my prescription and my business to CVS.

CVS had my prescription in on time, true to their word, but I still don't have it in my hands yet. Here's why.

It's stuck in Physician Authorization (PA) status. This means that my psychiatrist's nurse will be forced to speak to my psychiatrist personally, get his okay, call the Medicaid office, give specific authorization to Medicaid by citing a precise reason WHY I need the patch and not a lower cost alternative, and then and only then will the medication be prescribed to me. Without insurance, it costs $495.

Look how poor people get screwed. Do you think most chronically ill people would have the persistence necessary to jump through all these hoops?

Here's the reason for all the fuss. Medicaid wants to save as money as it can, so by irritating doctors and forcing them to go through all this additional work, it hopes it can get them to prescribe lower cost prescriptions that won't drain Medicaid's general fund. Medicaid's general fund is always low and often it runs deficits.

One hopes that if universal health care comes to this country, it will not nearly be this complicated. I suspect, however, that it will be.

Thanks to Webtracker

I can officially say that Comrade Kevin's Chrestomathy is

LOVED IN FINLAND!

Pre-Thanksgiving Ritual

For the past several years, I make a point to watch the movie The Ice Storm at this time of year. No, it's not a particularly heartwarming film, I'll admit, but I've never wanted to celebrate most holidays in the conventional fashion.

A final note. Yes, adolescent sexual encounters are usually this awkward.

The Disquieting Reality of Money

Most people don't have a clue where money really comes from. Nor are they taught in schools the nature of simple economics. I would even go so far as to argue that not making people aware of the basic principles of economic theory is a deliberate measure to pull wool-over-the-eyes of the common citizen. More people would be up in arms if they realized the discomforting fact that money, in its current incarnation, is purely speculative; it is based on supply, demand, and imaginary concepts in much the same fashion as the value of the stock market at any point in time.

Money doesn't exist in any conventional sense. It can't be perceived with any of the five senses. A gross oversimplification would be to say that money is fake. A more accurate description would be to say that money exists in a state of perpetual ebb and flow. In mathematical terms, our fiat money system is akin to an imaginary number, merely a construct created to explain something that exists outside the realm of substantive reality.

The disinterest of most people regarding Economics is understandable, at least to these eyes. The mere mention of the word Economics brings up images of grey, leaden type, numerous esoteric bar and line graphs, and a smattering of important-sounding, intimidating ten dollar words that make the discipline seem frigid and impenetrable. No effort is made to make Economics interesting and as such only those devoted to the subject find it worth their time to wrap their brains around it. It really doesn't have to be that way. Yet, in matters such as this, it's not hard to understand why the powers that be don't want the average citizen to understand.

I am moved to point this out due to the current currency woes our country is experiencing, particularly regarding the deflation of the dollar compared to the British Pound, the Euro, and even the Canadian dollar. The United States and most industrialized nations haven't been on a gold standard for decades. This means that if, at any point in time, all of our creditors wanted hard currency in exchange for their debts, we simply couldn't provide it. We'd be forced to declare bankruptcy.

Lest I seem to pander for the good old days of the Gold Standard, let it be known that we couldn't return to such a system if we wanted to. What I do propose is a return to some sort of system whereby where our currency is backed by something finite.

Instead, we are beholden to a fiat currency system.

For seventy years, our entire economy has rested upon an elaborate scheme, created by the wealthy elite, a scheme which extracts maximum profit from minimum effort. I might go a step farther and say that it caters to human nature, particularly the regrettable tag-team of sloth combined with greed. Lest we forget, this scheme has formed the basis of the banking industry, and has repeatedly led to the same conclusion, financial collapse perpetrated by unrestrained greed.

How long can the best minds money can buy keep this house of cards piling higher before it collapses? Fiat money schemes, in previous reincarnations, have lasted less than ten years. Ours has lasted seven times longer than that, though it has had some very close calls over the years. And if it does collapse, you can be sure that the wealthy could absorb the hit much better than most of us could. The majority of us would be thrust into the sort of poverty of which only our grandparents can conceive.

El Vomito

Those of you who were alive then... were the 1960s really like this?

If so, I can see why it failed.

Methinks you were taking yourselves A LITTLE BIT too seriously.



Now we're all just tourists.

Saturday Song

$100 a Barrel

Find the cost
of freedom

buried
in the ground







mother earth
will swallow you




lay your body down.


-Stephen Stills

Too Old to Lose It, Too Young to Choose It