icarus | Another message from Dad. This one not such good news.

Current Mood: worried

Another message from Dad. This one not such good news.

Got an email from my Dad:

"The bones of my neck look like Sylvester Pussycat's tail after he's stuck his tongue in a light socket. X-rays don't lie, I saw it myself today.

Rheumatologist Michael Blackmkore comments, "Oh my god, look at that!" Not much of a bedside manner, but then there was no bed, just an office, a light box and the x-ray prints.

I have degenerative disc disease and some form of arthritis in my neck that makes bone spurs form all over the vertebrae, and the spaces between them shrink so the nerves don't have room to be there anymore. Nerves get nervous under these conditions and send out pain signals to the brain. You can bribe the brain with drugs not to respond, but like junkies everywhere the brain goes to the highest bidder. When the drugs wear off the nerves are right there kicking the pain gong and you're off again. It's a mess.

The x-rays are dated Jan '03 but I chose not to ask why the doctor had only just looked at them today. The important thing is I got his attention finally by sending him a well-composed letter describing life with pain and asking him what the future looked like for me. He doesn't know. He's ordering up a series of blood tests, CT scans and MRI's to determine the
exact nature of my problem and what the indicated treatment would be. If it's Osteo, that is, wear and tear, arthritis all he can do is pain management and fusion surgery to immobilize the bad joints. If it's Soriatic there are still drug treatments that may work.

The doctor points to a particularly ugly spot on the ray and I locate it with my finger on my neck. Yep, that's a painful spot, okay. And those spurs would explain that snapping sound when I move my head?

By the end of the interview, which was rushed because the doctor was running behind schedule, I felt a bit queasy. Got a feeling this is only the beginning.

Advice? If you have any inkling, the barest hint of any skeletal issue, back pain, pronnation in the arches, ...deal with it now. Don't go through this."

~*~*~

Any ideas, anyone?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

oh no! I feel horrible for your dad. I've really enjoyed the bits about his beige Saab. I have arthritis in my knees pretty bad at the ripe old age of 26, and I just can't imagine how painful that must be in the neck. Joint supplements do seem to help a bit, but arthritis is no fun :(

Yeah. He's had it in his knee for years, but this is the first I've heard about his neck. *whimper* He tends to not complain and tough it out, but, ouch.

Icarus

That's actually frightening, considering that 'snapping sound' is one I hear quite often. I'm scared now. (as if I didn't have to worry about becoming a hunchback by forty...^^;)

I hope that it's soriatic, like he said. That would be the better option in such a worst case scenario.

Go to a clinic, have it checked out. It's never too early.

Icarus

No insurance, otherwise I would. That's the main reason why I'm always screaming that I need a job. Because I do. ^^;

Besides, I've gotten used to the pain. Thankfully, there's only been one or two times where I had to be taken to the hospital for it. So there are others worse off than I. But thanks for the advice.

Oh honey, I feel your pain. No really! I do. I have degenerative disc disease as well as arthritis in my lower back, then there's this bi-lateral pars thing, too. I still don't know what it all means; just pain and I'm supposed to stop smoking (ha!) and drink lots of water. Arthritis sucks, too. Especially in your hands and knees. ::cracks knuckles to relieve pressure on joints::

But look on the bright side! Yes, pain is bad. But you can still use your hands! ::waves her hands about:: And your hands never look as interesting as they do when you're on meds.

I know, I know. This is useless dribble to make you smile. Did it work?! ::looks bright and hopeful:: Well, chicken, don't get too down in the dumps. There's always something worse . . . you could be Richard Simmons' lycra.

Kisses,
Sing

Ooh wait, you were talking about your dad. Poor guy. Forward my 'advice', then.

Actually, it's dad who has the arthritis. What do they have you on?

Icarus

Yeah, I corrected myself after I went back and re-read your journal entry. :p I'm actually not on meds or anything. I'm broke and doctors scare me. But when it gets too bad (like when my spine bows back so far from muscle contractions that I think I could go to lick my lips and wind up licking my toes) someone calls an ambulence and I go to the ER or something and they give me a shot of Demerol and Morphine to dull the pain and make my muscles relax. That lasts for a while. Generally, I just take some naproxin sodium and a hot bath. There are these belt things you can wear, too. They're body-heat activated heating pads. Pretty cool. Thermo-something.

There are these belt things you can wear, too. They're body-heat activated heating pads. Pretty cool. Thermo-something.

D'you mean ThermaCare Air-Activated HeatWraps?
[/end useless comment]

--Miranda

That so totally sucks! (And so does your doctor).

This is a message from my dad, actually.

You know, you're the second person who was confused about this. I'd better fix the message.

Icarus

I say you get as much info as possible about the effects and possible treatments. Then you go to all the doctors you know (and then some) for advice. Then, er- follow them.

*HUG*

Okay, now we have the third person who thought this was about me. The title had the "This is a message from my dad" but I forgot no one ever reads the title line. But that is good advice, and I'm going to bug my dad about it. :)

Icarus

Oh.

Er, thank god?

You know, this really has nothing to do with your entry, but I've been thinking this for a while and so I'm going to say it...

I really envy you your father. I feared and hated mine most of my conscious life. He died when I was a senior in college, exactly eighteen years ago yesterday. He was mentally ill (the scary kind and refused treatment) and diabetic as well as an alcoholic (not a pretty combination, as you might imagine.)

I really envy you. Your dad is cool. I hope they find a way to make this bearable for him.

Yeah, he would have been a great Dad. But don't be too jealous.

My Dad and I were always close (according to my Mom at least: "you're just like your father and nobody's going to like you like nobody likes him!" - post divorce quote).

I didn't get to grow up with him though. He's in advertising, which, if you know anything about that business is a workaholic world - never has enough people (the flux is too great to keep a steady staff) so you have to do everything yourself, work till 9 or 10 every night, bust your ass most weekends.

When he was home on weekends he was so exhausted there was nothing left for us (or Mom). My brother got into fishing and Dad had just about enough energy to sit in a boat and hold a fishing rod, and it rested him for the next crazy project. So my brother and Dad spent a lot of time together on those weekends he was home.

His work schedule caused the divorce when I was 9 (Mom pretended it was polite non-acrimonious divorce, but every now and then such gems such as the above would slip out). When he became a 'one weekend a month dad' we actually saw him more than just fishing with my brother. So I got to know him then. But it was still one weekend a month, one-two holidays a year.

Icarus

oh, that's terrible. (his doctor ought to be kicked.) please let us know what the scans and tests show. i'll keep your father in my prayers. he seems like a good man and is definitely a good writer.

i'll keep your father in my prayers.

Thank you.

(his doctor ought to be kicked.)

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

Icarus

That sounds really grisly and I'm so sorry that your dad (whose writings, when I get the chance to read them, make me envious and fond and hugely entertained all at once) has to endure that kind of pain.

I don't even want to think about why those x-rays are just being looked at now. I hate the medical industry, but I hope now that they've finally been encouraged to get off their asses and check into your dad's condition, tht they're able to find him something that helps.

Geez, that sounds awful! Not the least because the doctor doesn't sound particularly helpful. But then that seems pretty typical of doctors these days.

I don't have a lot of specific information to offer, but I can tell you that arthritis is an immune system disorder, so there are a lot of alternative treatments (some as simple as changing your diet) that doctors tend to ignore but other people swear by and might be worth looking into.

Also, the doctor was probably referring to Psoriatic arthritis. Just in case you or he wanted to do your own researching, those damned silent p's make it hard to find things if you don't know about them. *g*

Quite honestly? My first idea is to contact a malpractice attorney and find out who is responsible for the fact that Xrays dated January 2003 are only JUST NOW being reviewed. I am aghast that your father has to be worried about films that are over a year old - this should have been noted and taken care of IMMEDIATELY when the films were taken and it is absolutely reprehensible that it was not. Whoever was the radiologist DID NOT DO THEIR JOB. Period. And that means they may not be doing their job for other people. Who have tumors and things that kill and cause pain and so forth. So that person should be removed from duty, I say. I am really horrified by it all. Your poor dad! To have suffered (possibly unnecessarily) for the last year when it should have been looked at long ago!

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

My Dad's not in America. I've heard from other people that the univeral health care in Canada is like this.

Icarus

That's really terrible.

I am very much with

bonibaru above because it is in our patient's bill of rights that we have a right to pain management.

My mother has osteo and rheumatoid arthritis. There is so much now that can be done for arthritis that by the time I get it, I might not even have much to worry about it.

If this doctor is saying not much can be done, get a new doctor. There are a half a dozen medications that I can think of off the type of my head. They of course have to try them out on him but some of them might not work at first. Just hang in there. Get an attorney, this doctor sounds like a quack.

He's in Canada, so I understand it's a sort of different situation. I haven't heard this from him, but I've been told by others that they have universal health care that is overstretched.

Icarus

That is the problem with universal health care. Don't get me started :(

Yeah. When you have no health care (like me) it sounds like a good idea, but it lowers the standard for the people who do have access to health care in order to cover the people we just don't take care of over here. Generally what happens here is that Emergency Rooms in public hospitals absorb the difference.

Here people with no health care don't have ongoing preventative care, so they ignore serious problems until they're really bad and then go to the Emergency Room. Or they take less serious problems to the ER because they don't have anywhere else to go. If you've ever gone to the ER you know the results.

It's the most expensive way to go because the ER is emergency treatment, you have to have doctors (you can't rely on nurse practitioners) the equipment costs are emergency level (very high). And for those treated in the ER at an exhorbitant cost who can't afford to pay, which is the majority of the non-insured, the State picks up the rest of the bill. It costs states millions of dollars to have a health care system that functions like this.

Now in Washington State there's a low-cost insurance program called Community Health Plan Of Washington which helps fund a network of high quality community clinics, but its funding is being cut. It's short-sighted because the clinics are typically cheap and efficient and this will shift those people back to the ER. The health problems don't go away.

Icarus

I just got health care for me and my dad. pretty good deal too :) you live in America?

Yes, but I'm a student at the moment and haven't had health care for the last year and a 1/2 to two years.

Quite frankly when I've been able to afford a health plan (or to make regular payments on anything) I've had a job that provided it. When I needed a health plan I was either working as a temp, where I couldn't guarantee my income from one temp assignment to another, or else I was a student, in which case I was mostly living off savings.

This is from someone who in regular employment makes 36K. But secretarial work is very unstable. They are the first people who get cut in a recession.

I feel also that a lot of secretarial work will go overseas where the cheap labor is. So only the people-centric jobs will stay here: medical, food supply, education, legal, janitorial, and we're going to experience a steady decrease in the quality of living in the US because of lack of jobs, and an erosion of the middle class. This is not a new trend, it's been slowly gathering steam since 1973. Now we have a sharp spike in it because of the implosion of the Tech stocks -- in order to keep afloat, companies have been shipping whatever work they can overseas. The shipping of jobs overseas or 'offshoring' is the reason we have a 'jobless recovery.' The recovery is because of the new cheaper labor, the jobless is because the cheap labor's overseas.

The shipping of jobs overseas is a much bigger problem than people realize. Seattle is being hit hardest because the Tech jobs are the most easily transported, but the fact is anything that can be done by someone cheaper in India or China will be. They make 15 cents to every dollar employers have to pay here.

Icarus

Wow...tell me how you really feel. :)

Being an employer who will never take manufacturing overseas, I do have to empathize with some employers who do. Workers comp and unemployment is a holy bitch to pay and you have to pay it on everyone except officers. How can a business even make a profit when we have to shell out huge amounts of $$$$$. What some employees may never understand is that a business is there to make money. That is why there is no money for pay increases, bonuses and benefits. There are too many lazy asses who are set on making false claims on unemployment and worker's comp.

So you know who ends up paying? Other Americans and business owners. It is a really sad system that has massive amounts of corruption in it. It is unfortunate that we HAVE to ship jobs overseas. I doubt anyone will actually go about fixing the system.

I don't feel that crime statistics drive the capitalist system so much as profit. I've yet to hear of a business that moved its operations because of corruption, but I frequently hear of jobs shipped because of cheaper labor.

IBM, Earthlink, GE have all moved their call centers and tech support to India, and that's only the beginning. Smaller companies have done it as well with less fanfare.

Businesses have to stay competitive and when so many have cheaper labor costs overseas in the same industry, they begin to undercut those who keep their manufacturing in the US. This either forces the cost of labor down in the US -- or forces the manufacturer to ship jobs overseas.

Because of the politics involved, jobs are shipped quietly in a non-competitive manner. Most employees are not given the option to compete with these foreign employees. The American work force is better educated and better trained and could make a solid case, if there's a choice between losing your job and having to accept less. I realize this is Labor Industry sacrilege of course.

There's also the work ethic issue.

While the Korean and Japanese work ethic is something to be admired, I've lived in India, and the only jobs that I'd ship there are the ones where you want the efficiency of your employees doing as little as possible. My experience with Earthlink's new Indian call center bears this out - the Americans would put me on hold and come back with answers to my questions. The Indian call center just parrots what they read on the screen and says "I'm sorry, we can't help you." When you complain they add "We're very sorry we can't help you."

In India I saw employees just get up and leave when there was a blip in the power grid, shutting down businesses for the entire afternoon when the power was only out for an hour or so. People would work for six months, and then spend the next six months living off what they made, hanging out. They could have worked the full year, but 'why?' they say.

It's a completely different attitude. The Indian IBM employees created a different image for US firms, but that's because they were flown to the US and worked in the US first (IBM in Rockville, Maryland and elsewhere). The people you hire directly out of the Indian labor pool grow up with an Indian work ethic.

But once a company has gone through the trouble of finding an outsourcing company and working out the infrastructure, those jobs are gone.

I'm an employee and I do understand it quite well, though it's true the costs of workmans comp and health insurance are much steeper than most employees know. It's a sand-in-the-shoe issue. The make or break is when you can't compete, or when you have to keep profit margins at 12% during a recession to hold the stock price together.

Icarus

We are talking about two different types of business: Small businesses and mega corps. Apples and oranges.

It is just a real shame that they did take the jobs to India...but saving pennies now sometimes will cost you $$$$ later.

Oh, yes. I worked for a multi-national.

You're right, it's going to cost in the long run.

Call centers I think will do well in India, because the goal is to get people off the phone. But tech support is going to be a problem because no kid fresh out of college knows very much.

Anything that involves secret or secure information (such as one firm that sends our medical records and social security records over to India) well, we're in for a rude shock. When I was in India people regularly paid the police to look the other way on Americans staying with "secure" refugees, or illegally tapping into the power grid. The police just did the rounds to collect their bribes. Having social security numbers, the basis for US passports anywhere near Pakistani extremists in this stew of corruption is just too stupid for words.

There are small businesses who subcontract out certain services to India instead of having them in-house or having a US-based firm do it. For small businesses it's almost always a matter of subcontracting rather than packing up and moving, which takes a huge $$$ outlay.

I helped a friend start a small business, I worked in the production end while she did the R&D and another person did the sales. Went for four years. It's a completely different world.

Since we were technically a 501(c)3 organization that didn't have any employees yet (we had a work force but they were strictly volunteer) we weren't hampered by the workman's comp, etc. The drawback was that volunteers were unreliable in the extreme and I was constantly retraining new people. Our ability to ship suffered as a result.

We had a solid customer base and were in Sharper Image, but reliability was a problem. We needed to reduce production time to move to a paid staff, which needed new equipment. We had an expert in from GM to help us modernize, but we never had the capital to make the shift.

The business plan imploded on personality issues. Heh. Small business have personality issues where the corporations have "politics." But it's pretty much the same.

The fact that the small businesses don't plan to move gives me some hope.

Icarus

I think small businesses have often started from disgruntled workers that have lost their jobs due to lay-offs or transferring of jobs. I think the new businesses that are starting today will be the super companies of tomorrow (like maybe even my company, hopefully *cross your fingers*) because they are learning from the mistakes of the big companies today.

And I will never move my business overseas because the people who do work for me are either people who have a disability or family. And I am completely open to more people who want to come work for me. Hell, I can't keep up with what I do have currently going. I am constantly hiring but I need super responsible and dependable people. I am having a very hard time finding that.

I hope your dad feels better!
My mom lives with chronic pain (due to past injuries and migraines), and so I know how awful it is to have someone you love have to face such an ordeal.
It’s a terrible situation, and I hope that they soon find out what exactly he’s suffering from, and that his treatment is effective.
And shame on that doctor! Shame, shame, shame! #whacks him with a club. Which he will probably wait a year to treat#

Well, I’ve butted in enough. ^_^
One more thing, though:
#sends comfort#

—Miranda

It's the same all over - you will not get attention until you make a fuss, either by dropping a bucket of money or giving the doc a headache. Good whiners who don't need as much attention are seen before people who are not as good at whining. If your dad had just sat at home and self-medicated, he'd still be there today. The Xray got reviewed when they thought it needed to be. No amount of lawsuits will ever change that.
If it makes you feel better, drugs for severe chronic pain beat the hell out of sobriety. I have a family member spending over $1K/month on scrips (powerful stuff like oxycontin patches, etc.) and I'd much rather have her loopy than staring at the ceiling with the grey "just let me die" look on her face. She couldn't do anything sober and crippled with pain, but she can act alive with the meds. (Stroke induced brain damage - diet and crystals and meditation weren't going to heal a dead part of her brain faster than she was willing herself to die, but the meds make her feel better and that works for me, and her).
Last bit of advice: don't dis the nurse practitioners. Doctors don't heal you in the hospital, nurses do. And you have to participate in your own recovery, no matter which is treating you. I've got one of each in the family, and I'd sooner make a "they're useless" call based on age than degree. Not that either matters - medicine is at best an inexact science.
So be glad the Xray wasn't sent to Pune, India to be read by a radiologist there, and tell your dad to apply his advertizing skills to convincing the doc that he needs more treatment and more information on self-care and all his treatment options. (And while he's at it, he could fill you in, too).
Good luck and stay strong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Another message from Dad. This one not such good news.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

It's a squeeky wheel problem, not a healthcare problem