Author Archives: Victoria

The Ebola Outbreak of 2014, Part 2

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…and possibly the last of it.

According to the October 19 online issue of Time (“Nigeria is Ebola-Free: Here’s What They Did Right” ), Nigeria has had no cases of Ebola for 42 days. That time limit is important because 42 days is twice as long as the normal incubation period. Everyone who had contracted Ebola is either recovered, or dead. Of course, this doesn’t mean there can’t be another outbreak, as the disease is still active in neighboring places like Sierra Leone.

To put things in perspective, Nigeria has only had 20 cases of Ebola, and 8 deaths (Ibid). Contrast that with 4500 total deaths in west Africa, and it’s clear that Nigeria was able to contain and deal with the outbreak pretty quickly.

As soon as gov’t officials became aware of the outbreak in Guinea, they began training healthcare workers; declared a state of emergency, screened all travelers coming into or leaving Nigeria by land, sea, and air; had their doctors trained by Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization; and even went door-to-door to educate people about the disease.

What they didn’t do, interestingly enough, was close their borders, because, according to Dr. Faisal Shuaib of the Emergency Ebola Operation Center

“Closing borders tends to reinforce panic and the notion of helplessness. When you close the legal points of entry, then you potentially drive people to use illegal passages, thus compounding the problem.” (Ibid)

Now I am seeing a few articles online basically saying things like “Nigeria got it right, US got it wrong”, but that’s not really fair. Yes, Nigeria acted quickly, but they had a head’s-up because of the cases in nearby countries, and Nigeria is small – only twice the size of California. So when Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who landed in Lagos, collapsed in the Lagos Airport, the gov’t responded quickly and quarantined him.

His wife stated he had been caring for his sister, who later died from Ebola. He didn’t know what she was sick from at the time, according to his wife (“Ebola Fears Hit Close to Home”, CNN Online, 7/29/2014). So the Nigerians got lucky, in a way, because this man very well could have still had mild symptoms and gone on to attend a conference there. And then infected a lot of people.

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Just Bring Cups…

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Health update: My fever now is during the day and evening.  Otherwise, feeling no better or worse.

It’s rainy and grey here in Central PA today.  I have just finished filling 60 treat bags to give out on Halloween, but haven’t gotten around to decorating the porch yet.  I have a cute little ghost that appears to peek out from behind a tree/post/what-have-you, but when I got it in the mail I realized it needed screws to install – which is a huge no-no when you are renting someone’s house.   So my neighbor and I are going to have to find another way to attach it – it’s so cute!

(Here is a pic)

I don’t even have a jack-o-lantern to set out!  Though, to be honest, I kind of hate carving pumpkins, as it is so messy and for some reason causes a rash on my hands and arms.  So I am still looking for a fake jack-o-lantern that I can just stick a battery-operated candle in, set the timer and forget it.  There are a few on the net but wow so expensive!  Every year I tell myself I need to buy these things AFTER Halloween, when they are on sale, but every year I find my budget will not allow it.

Why not make some decorations?  Hey, there’s an idea and NO, it’s not a good one.

I’ve never been good at arts and crafts.  I would dread it when teachers would send home supply lists for making things in class, because I knew whatever project my teacher had in mind, I would inevitably botch it.

As I grew up and had kids, I tried to do Martha Stewart kinds of things, but could never pull it off (except for making and decorating cakes, I was pretty good at that).  I was NEVER the mom who showed everyone how to make oh, I dunno, say…hats out of bits of material scraps, buttons, and glitter – I was the mom who would do/teach puppet shows, dress up like a giant bunny and show up at my kids’ school near Easter, make balloon animals, and for awhile could actually juggle.

I was never the “room mother” – that person who the teacher designates each year to organize school parties and so on.  I was always the mom who was told to “just bring cups”.

I like to think there is a special “life review” for those mothers who essentially bullied the teacher into room mother status, and then subsequently ran around telling everyone how hard it is to be so busy (“I just CAN’T say no to Little Tiffany’s teacher – but with me teaching Sunday school,  running Boy and Girl Scout troops, heading up the Neighborhood Garden Committee, and organizing the school carnival/reading program/lunchroom aides I just don’t have time for myself!”).

I am still mad just thinking about it!!  And this was easily 25 years ago!!

This season brings to mind my foray into room mother territory, and the subsequent minor disaster that is my life.

The upshot: I got pulled aside and asked to never volunteer for the Halloween carnival again (held at my kids’ school, Farmington Elementary in Germantown, TN).  Even though I raised quite a bit of money for them.

My crime?  Not understanding what they wanted and assuming that they had a lot more tolerance than they actually had (which is to say, “none”).  They wanted people to act as “gypsy fortune-tellers”.  I swear, that’s ALL they told me.  “Just show up at the school half an hour early and we’ll show you where to set up.”

So I did – with my tarot cards.  In a long skirt with a bandana.  Ok so what if it wasn’t really a costume, but actually the way I liked to normally dress??  I looked the part, didn’t I?

The lady in charge told me I was to go into one of the classrooms with my tent and…”Oh, you don’t HAVE a tent? But I’m SURE BettyLou TOLD you to bring one…why look how she’s set up, with a tent and a candle and everything…you sure she didn’t tell you?”

BettyLou had no intention of telling me any damn thing.  Yes, elementary-school mothers really CAN be that petty.

So, having no tent or anything, I pulled a table over and sat down near the entrance to the room.  Ms. Lady-in-Charge gives me a little fish.  Yes, like this one:

 

Fortune Teller Miracle Fish

(http://www.fortunetellerfish.com/)

Now, I actually think these are really cute, and hey they would make really great Halloween treats to give out, so I have included the link.  No, I don’t work for them or anything, I just like novelties like this.

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The Ebola Outbreak of 2014, Part 1

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For those of you reading this in the future (refer to my “about” page for an explanation), there are a few key issues going on here in the US and the world. I will put these posts in a category called “2014 News”, so people can skip over it if they like. Here is the first story I will be following:

There’s an ongoing outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa, and one person in the US has died from it. According to the Guardian (UK newspaper, not the SWP paper), here’s the timeline of the outbreak:

12/2013: A 2-yr-old child and his mother, sister, and grandmother pass from Ebola in Guinea. It’s reported that funeral mourners then unknowingly carried the virus to neighboring villages.

3/2014: The gov’t. of Guinea reports 59 deaths from Ebola, confirmed. There are concerns that it could already have spread to Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, Liberia reports 2 cases of Ebola in people who have traveled to and from Guinea.

5/2014: The World Health Organization confirms Ebola has reached Sierra Leone.

7/2014: A Liberian gov’t. employee arrives in Lagos, Nigeria, from Liberia and Togo, and collapses. He passes away 5 days later from Ebola. Liberia then shuts down its border crossings. A leading Ebola doctor passes away from the virus in Sierra Leone.

8/2014: Ebola is declared an “international health emergency” (“WHO Declares Escalating Ebola Outbreak an International Emergency”, Science, 8/8/2014). The death toll surpasses 1000. A doctor in Nigeria dies from Ebola, their second death in that country. A British volunteer nurse is flown back to the UK for treatment, having contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone. He recovers. Two health care workers are flown back to Atlanta for treatment after contracting Ebola – both recover.

A different strain of Ebola is reported to the WHO by the gov’t. of Congo (“Ebola Virus Disease – Democratic Republic of Congo”, World Health Organization, 8/27/2014).

Senegal reports cases of Ebola.

People riot in Guinea in response to a rumor that health care workers are infecting people deliberately (“Riots in Guinea After Rumours of ‘Deliberate Infection’ “,ITV, 8/29/2014).

The WHO reports over 4000 cases of infection, with 2100 people dying (“Ebola Death Toll in West Africa Almost 2,100: WHO”, Press TV, 9/5/2014).

President Obama states he will send 3000 American troops to west Africa in order to build treatment centers and set up a “military coordination centre” (“Ebola Epidemic: Timeline”, Guardian newspaper online www.theguardian.com, 10/15/2014).

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A Glass Darkly

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“And as to accosting it, I dare not, I could not; when I see it, I am powerless…” – The Watcher and Other Weird Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, 1851.

I can see it out of the corner of my eye, on my right side.  Just…sitting.  Waiting.  Waiting to come alive…waiting for me to make a move.   It is dark, and scary – terrifying, even.

I can’t look upon it directly, lest my unease turn to panic.  No, just knowing it is there is more than enough to upset my calm mood and increase the dread that I first felt when it so easily invaded my bedroom.  I sometimes rue the day I so cavalierly invited it in, but I had experienced such a compulsion – maybe even an obsession – regarding it that, inevitably, my fate was securely tied to it and its mystifying aura.  A fate I encouraged to manifest, it’s true, but I was helpless.  Helpless and now too full of pride to send it back on its way.  A witch, after all, should not be so afraid of the unknown!

So it sits and waits, uncaring that I am surreptitiously watching it, and it is oblivious to my anxiety.  To say it had no feelings one way or another about my discomfort would be a vast understatement!  I think, in some impossible way, it knows I will have to address it sooner than later, but it has time…all the time in the world.

It’s true that I can have an inexplicable nervousness about me at times, and it is also true that I have had many experiences with things I do not understand but…there they are in front of me.  I can live with a certain amount of ambiguity in my life.  I can also live with rituals that have unintended outcomes, experiments that make things worse, and even the eye-rolls of certain people who think I really ought to know better.  ‘Forge on!” say I.  “Life’s full of adventures!” I exclaim.

But this…it’s almost too frightening to bear!  I didn’t think I would be so completely unprepared but it’s painfully clear just how much I had deluded myself into thinking this was something I could easily handle.  No, this will be one of the toughest and most terrifying challenges I have faced in a long time.  Does anyone blame me for putting off confronting it?

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Illiteracy or Laziness?

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Brief medical update:  I feel a bit worse – still have a nightly fever, joint/muscle pain, and all the rest of the recurrent symptoms.  Haven’t gotten a call for more tests (to follow up on the 2 that were abnormal), so I guess I will have to wait until my November appointment with the rheumatologist to find out anything more.

Ok, today’s rant is about the frustration involved when trying to communicate with people who either do not have a good understanding of English (and I am not necessarily referring to non-native speakers), or are too cognitively lazy to understand English.  In other words, I don’t have an issue with people who live in the US but do not know very much English – I happen to believe that citizens here should be able to speak any language they want, as we are (mostly) a nation full of immigrants.

No, the issue I am having is with people I have been communicating with who require several attempts on my part before they can respond in a way that makes sense.  I can tell that they actually DO know English, as their grammar and so on are correct.  But I do not understand why even the simplest of (in my case) emails is replied to with irrelevent and sometimes even angry responses that indicate to me that the person had no idea what I just wrote to them.

I will give you an example of an ongoing communication that I just recently gave up on because I was so frustrated that it wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Sometimes I participate in online surveys.  More times than I would like, something goes wrong with the survey, usually a technical problem.  I will usually note the survey number if I can find it, and then email customer service to tell them their survey isn’t working right.  Usually I am just trying to be helpful – rarely is it ever a case of, “Hey I finished this survey and then got an error page, and now I didn’t get my reward points.”

If I did this a lot, I could see why they might get all snippy with me.  But it’s usually, “Hey this survey said ‘press this button’ but there was no button, and I got stuck in a loop and had to task-manager out of it. Thought you might want to know about this.”

Sometimes the response I get is a thank you, and a note that they have taken the survey offline to fix it.  Most times, however, the exchange goes like this:

Me: I was asked to register for a (name of) community forum through your site, but when I hit “ok” I got redirected to the Google search homepage.  So I wasn’t able to even register for the forum.  I think there may be a technical problem with this particular survey.

Them: We received your email and are sorry for the inconvenience this issue may have caused, but we are unable to award you any points because we cannot verify that you finished the survey.  Please allow until the survey has closed before you contact us again.

Me: But I am not writing you about award points.  I am trying to tell you about a problem I had with the survey in case anyone else is having the same problem.

Them: We have looked into this particular survey and do not see that you have participated in it.  Please try the link again.

Me:  That’s the point – I can’t participate because it kicks me to the Google search homepage before I can even register for it.

Them: What’s the survey number?

Me:  I didn’t see one but you just got through telling me you looked it up and couldn’t see my participation in the survey, so surely you must know the survey number?

Them: We will need either a survey number or a screen shot that indicates you completed the survey before points can be awarded.

Usually at this point I would write a long, detailed email explaining things in a numbered list.  But I don’t feel well today and I sure don’t feel up to doing this just so I can help some company out.   A company who cannot even understand what it is I am writing about, so they just go with the default “customer is bitching about her points” responses.

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October Remembrances

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and a time in which some of us prepare for a remembrance ceremony to honor all who have passed on (that ritual being conducted on Samhain, pronounced “SAH-win”, or “SO-win”).  For more information on Samhain, here is just one of many links:

https://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.php/celebrating-the-seasons/celebrating-samhain

I have chosen to make this post about domestic violence.  Not to downgrade the other 2 things I just mentioned (I have a beloved sister who passed from breast cancer, and I also celebrate Samhain), but because I have a few suggestions for actions that everyone can take which could actually make a difference in the lives (or deaths) of domestic violence victims/survivors.

I will remind my readers that the main focus of this blog is to stand as a record of what my life is like in the 21st century – mostly for my relatives, descendents, and interested friends.  It is a place for me to express my opinions, not a place to provoke arguments or controversy.  I don’t think this will be much of an issue, at least not at this point, as I do not know any relatives or friends who would argue against the existence or importance of domestic violence issues.

I am also not going to quote statistics.  It is easy to see the violence that is perpetuated upon women, unfortunately, on a daily basis.  Even if you never leave your house, it’s on the news and it’s certainly on the internet.  I don’t think any reasonably sane person would argue that it doesn’t exist.

But what I am here to write about is what you, as just an ordinary person, can do to help eliminate this problem.  It doesn’t have to cost money, and it doesn’t even have to take up much time.  But you can make a difference to some woman, somewhere, and I am going to tell you how.

For the edification of people who do not know me well, especially for those born in 2000 and later (i.e., grandchildren, grand-nieces/nephews, descendants, etc), I have just a brief explanation of how this issue came to affect me.

I am a survivor of domestic violence.

Not just once, but a few times, beginning with the very first household where I grew up.  I witnessed it, and I was a target of it.

The reason I go all the way back to my childhood is two-fold: first, to illustrate that violence against females has never really been taken seriously until recently.  Second, it is to show that the effects of domestic abuse can have far-reaching consequences, even for intelligent women with advanced degrees in psychology (I once had a policeman in Memphis ask me, when called to my apt while an ex was destroying it, “Don’t you know any better? You’re a psychologist!”).

There were no shelters, really, back in the day.  I am talking late 1950s up until around 2000.  Growing up in a pre-feminist era, just in time to see the growth of that movement, it’s hard for me to explain what it was like back then.  ALL abuse – child, spousal, and to a certain extent animal, was pretty much blamed on the object of the violence, not the perpetrator.

People did not want to “cause trouble” by raising these issues – though thank goodness people did, or we would still be living in a world where certain members of the populace are blamed for acts of violence they neither started, perpetuated, nor deserved (as if anyone deserves to be assaulted!).

Women covered up bruises and other evidence of violence – and we still do that today.  People saw the evidence but didn’t ask what happened, as it made them uncomfortable (“What if her husband hit her? What if he didn’t? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?”).  The police were not often called, and if they were, it was usually the man’s version of events that was believed (“She fell, she attacked me, she’s making a big deal out of nothing”, etc).

Imagine just for a second that the household was headed by a policeman, as was the situation in my case growing up, and you can possibly understand what a hopeless situation that would have been.  It’s quite different today, thankfully.

I am not going to chronicle in detail the events that led up to me fleeing for my life to a domestic violence shelter in Altoona 4 years ago, because I am acutely aware of how very uncomfortable that makes people.  I was subjected to emotional, spiritual, economic, and physical abuse (thankfully not sexual abuse, not this time anyway – that was an issue growing up, involving a trusted family friend who lived next door).

4 years ago, I was slapped, punched, kicked, tied to a chair, hit with various objects, strangled, smothered, had my hair pulled, spit on, pinched, bit (yes, really), screamed at, had my money/keys taken away, isolated from most everyone, had my spiritual beliefs mocked, had my pets and kids threatened (no, my kids were not living there, thank Goddess), stalked at work, and had my car sabotaged so I couldn’t leave. I was humiliated in public several times.

The long-term effects of this are PTSD, dental issues from having things thrown at my mouth, and probably a lifetime of second-guessing any future romantic involvements I might ever have.   Amongst other things.  I am recovering from it.  This blog helps.

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Blood, Meds, and Tears

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Today’s post is a mixture of my continuing medical saga, and a rant about drug laws.

Follow-up on doctor stuff:  I saw my primary care doctor on Friday 9/26.  He listened to my symptoms, wrote a lot of stuff down, joked a bit (one reason why I like him), poked and prodded and did all those doctory things, and sent me on my way with a paper to take to the local lab.   So, on Tuesday 9/30 (yesterday) I went to the lab and they filled up a lot of tubes with my blood and had me pee in a cup.  I don’t have a problem with tests – gotta have them to see what’s going on.

Later that day I got an email with my test results!  Wow is that quick or what?  Turns out nearly everything is normal except for 2 tests that came back indicating inflammation.  That could mean anything so no big deal; after all, I have had a fever for a very long time and lots of achiness and so on, so inflammation was kind of a no-brainer.

There are still 2 tests out, an ANA and a double-strand DNA, which look for autoimmune disorders specifically.  So hopefully someone can see what’s causing the inflammation.

Edit (10/4): Got the labs back for the antibody tests…and they were all negative. Still, at the bottom of the report, it said

“The possibility of autoimmune disease remains.”

Your guess is as good as mine why this was included.  I guess more testing is needed, though no one has called me to schedule any.

I have an appointment in November with a rheumatologist who, from what I could find out on the internet, is one very smart woman who studied at Stanford and Johns Hopkins (#1 place for rheumatology and autoimmune disorders), and wrote an impressive research paper on inflammation and cell function in autoimmune disorders.  I didn’t understand most of it.  Anyway, here’s hoping Dr. Okoye can get to the bottom of everything.

Original post: So I am not worried today.  I am a bit concerned the other tests won’t show anything, as last time I was diagnosed with lupus they had to draw blood every week for months just to catch it when it appeared (that was 20+ years ago, though).  It’s somewhat common for people to test negative, and it is also common for people to be told to forget about it when they do.

Since autoimmune symptoms are so weird and varied, there is always the risk of sounding like a hypochondriac – though at least my doctor could actually SEE the dry eyes and dry mouth (and fussed at me about not carrying around water at all times), validating the Sjogren’s diagnosis (which is an autoimmune disorder).

Of course he didn’t see the Raynaud’s (fingertips changing color in response to cold) as it wasn’t happening that day, but he felt my hands and said he could feel inflammation (how, I don’t know but his intern could too) and told me “the good news” was that I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis.

Edit (10/4): See?  I could sort of see that coming!

Worrying doesn’t affect anything in the material world, so it doesn’t help for me to do it. I still feel crappy but at least I know it’s not as crappy as it could be.   Oh and gross!  He also scheduled me for a colonoscopy ewwwwww.   I will get that at the end of this month but I won’t be happy about it!  (Don’t worry, I am NOT going to blog about it!)

Tell you what, though, I am going to have it done without anesthesia, as I am afraid it won’t play nice with the pain meds I already take on a daily basis (if anyone would like to share if anesthesia is really warranted for this procedure, feel free)….which brings me to my main topic for today…

…pain medication and the controversies surrounding opiates and pain management.  Medscape reports that a doctor (yes, just one) has come out with a statement on opiates for patients suffering from non-cancer pain (“New AAN Position Statement on Opioids for Noncancer Pain”, Medscape, 9/29/2014). Oddly, this is taken to be a policy statement from the entire American Academy of Neurology, even though there are no other authors or even other doctors who signed it in agreement.

This doctor, Gary Franklin, in my opinion, hasn’t seemed to have thought this out well enough, as he cites some statistics but comes up with some pretty weird (to me) interpretations of them.  He starts out by saying (about the use of opiates for pain):

“The evidence of harm is high, and the effectiveness is low,” Franklin told MedPage Today, calling attention to a graphic in the statement that shows the imbalance. “That is the whole story.”

Is it really the whole story?  As a former alcohol and drug counselor, I think it’s a bit more complex than that.  Let’s take Pennsylvania as an example.  According to The Philadelphia Inquirer (“Drug Overdose Deaths Up 7%, Far More in PA and NJ”, 8/20/2014) , we have moved from #14 in the USA for prescription overdose deaths to #7, in just a year.  Yikes!

And if you look at the details more closely, you see that 55% of the people who died or had a problem with opiates got the pills “from a friend or family member” ( “Results from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: volume 1: summary of national findings”. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies; 2011).  Yikes, again!

People are having their scripts filled and then handing them over to their friends or families?  Um, I don’t believe so and I will tell you why in a minute.

But first I want to comment on these statistics: As you can see, the article about where people get their pain pills from is from 2010, and it is cited in a CDC report from 2011 (“Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses”).  At the top of this article it states that

“This web page is provided for reference purposes only. It was current when produced, but the most current data can be found on the Drug Overdose Fact Sheet.”

It should be noted, however, that even this information is not current.  If you follow the links, you find that, ultimately, this too is from 2011 (“Prescription Drug Overdose in the United States: Fact Sheet“) – oh, the article itself is dated July 2014, but the statistics cited/linked to are from 2011.

I don’t know what to make of it.  I can understand the spin that anti-pain medication folks want to put on the (non)issue, but I have always had the utmost confidence in the CDC to get their facts straight.  And they did, they are just not current.  I can only imagine that this is due to bureaucracy.

So suddenly there is this big brouhaha about an epidemic of painkiller abuse and overdose deaths.  As I continue my search for what’s behind this, I will get back to you on what’s driving this glut of “scare porn”.

But one thing that struck me is that NO ONE who quoted these stats in the various articles I read in order for me to cite them (thanks to a friend/mentor who suggested I do so) made any mention of what year the stats were from that they were quoting.  That would cut down on the hysteria, I suppose.

Then there is the attempt to link this to heroin overdoses because, as quoted in a Medscape article dated 10/3/2014 (“Opioid, Heroin Deaths Continue to Climb, CDC Says” ), Leonard Paulozzi, MD, MPH, a physician and researcher with the CDC in Atlanta, said

“…about 75% of heroin users say they started out by using prescription opioids.”

Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of the arguments against legalizing marijuana here?  “Heroin users say” is about the most preposterous start to a debate about prescription opiates I have ever heard.

I take back what I wrote earlier about the CDC – my confidence in them is getting lower by the minute.  How many heroin users smoke weed?  Anecdotally, I can tell you that at every place I worked at as a d&a counselor, most – if not all – addicts routinely “tested hot” (tested positive) for that.

So would’ve the counselors, by the way, had the company tested them too!

There is no relationship between pot use and heroin use, any more than there is, say, between eating potato chips (which most of us do) and heroin use.

Between eating potato chips and pot? Well of course, but it’s the pot causing the munchies, not the munchies causing the pot smoking. See how stats can be twisted to say anything you want?

How many users take benzodiazepines and muscle relaxers?  I will counter that with another question: how many people are familiar with the expression “holy trinity” as regards to addiction?  Holy trinity: opiate pain meds, benzodiazepines, and muscle relaxers.  Get you high as a kite and then often kill you.  I guess those drugs are next in the line of fire.

Are we going to make those difficult to get, too?

Oh! How many heroin users smoked cigarettes before they tried heroin?  Smoking is way down in PA (“Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults – United States, 2005-2012″ by the CDC ) but, according to sources already cited here, heroin use is not, so…

And what about beer?  Come on, people, let’s use some common sense here.  Many (most, in my opinion just from work/life experience) people who use benzodiazepines, muscle relaxers, smoke cigarettes, drink beer, smoke pot, do NOT then go on to use heroin.

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Health and Beauty 101

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Ok…so…this entry is about time management (lack of), vanity (lots of), and healthcare (too little of). Meaning that I do not have a set topic today, mostly due to those three aforementioned things. I got up yesterday with the intent to do a bit of necessary online shopping, then write my blog for the week. I wasn’t too concerned that I had no topic in mind, as that is often the case, and I figured something would pop up and present itself as a blog-worthy entry.

A note here: I can’t just get in my car and run to the store because I don’t have a car, so I often shop on the internet, especially when there are heavy items I need.

Anyway, as I was ordering on Amazon, I thought about the weather and that soon the leaves would be turning wonderful colors, especially “up the mountain”.

Big ol’ digression here: In central PA, “up the mountain” basically refers to anyplace that is located on a higher elevation than where you are at any given moment – there is no particular mountain that everyone is referring to. In fact, I once casually asked a native Altoonian what the range of mountains was that surrounds this area, and, sadly, she didn’t know. To her, it was all “up the mountain.”

Of course, the mountains are the Allegheny Mountains, and they are beautiful!

PS: Don’t ask anyone what a “Nittany” is (a lot of things here are named “Nittany” this and that, i.e. the Nittany Lions at Penn State), because if you do you will get a lot of blank stares. That actually IS a mountain in Centre County – Mount Nittany – which is kind of a misnomer because “nittany” supposedly is an Algonquin word meaning “single mountain”. Occasionally someone will respond with a story about an “Indian maiden” (rolls eyes) who did something or other and formed a mountain (much like the story about Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California), but…oh don’t get me started on that, please!

Ok, so I was ordering on Amazon and thinking about how beautiful the leaves would soon be, and angrily cursing myself for not taking my digital camera out of the “house from hell” in Altoona from which I fled 4 years ago. Because now I have to buy something else to take pictures. And I really do want to take some pics and post them here, not only of the leaves but also of the Halloween Parade Hollidaysburg has every year (you can imagine I love that!), and probably a selfie.

So I searched Amazon for a digital camera I could afford, going back and forth between that site and camera review sites, and then I realized…after passing a mirror…ugh I have to do something with how I look. Most people who know me know I HATE having my picture taken, as I am not very photogenic and am usually squinting or scowling when the picture is snapped. I think the last time I had my pic taken was maybe 10 years ago? Not counting the DMV (yuck).

But some people I know are asking for a picture, since they have not seen me in many years (some, not since high school), so I grudgingly have decided to provide one.

In order to do that (in my mind, anyway), I have got to pull myself somewhat together or it won’t even get to the picture-taking stage (“Vanity, thy name is woman”). That means a haircut/style (which I was meaning to have done anyway), and my version of a makeover.

Those who know me, know that I don’t even own makeup, let alone wear it. But a few things have happened in the past year that have changed my looks slightly (doubt anyone would notice, really) and I would feel more comfortable if I did something about it. I will be addressing it with my doctor on Friday (my looks changing, not makeup – unless he wears it on his days off or something and can give me fashion tips), because it is symptomatic of scleroderma, which I really hope I don’t have.

(Don’t go looking up pics on Google images, they will scare you and they are not indicative of what I mean except in the broadest sense – those pics are always extreme and really not helpful if one is looking for subtle changes in looks)

To continue…I started looking up makeup on Amazon. Then the wheels in my head got to turning, and I thought, “Wait a minute, I need to see which of these companies test on animals so I don’t spend my money with them”.

So I turned to Google, and a couple of sites: one is called Leaping Bunny, and they have super-strict guidelines about which companies they “certify” (not sure how that works, do they send inspectors in or…?), and another is a beauty blog called My Beauty Bunny (ok so sue me, I like names with “bunny” in them), which is a site devoted to showcasing good beauty products that are cruelty-free. They both have lists of companies that don’t test on animals.

URL alert: Leaping Bunny http://www.leapingbunny.org/ and My Beauty Bunny http://www.mybeautybunny.com/

One place I did not go is the website run by that well-known group of “animal rights activists” (I know one of you is disappointed but really, do some critical thinking please), because they are hysterical, often wrong, and guilty of some pretty horrendous things regarding animals themselves. I think they trapped themself in an ideological box that they cannnot gracefully get out of, so they continue doing some pretty awful things to avoid being called hypocritical by other groups (though that is exactly what other people are calling them, oh the irony).

So anyway, this was a huge task, finding: the right company, the right product, the right color of product, and the right price (i.e., very inexpensive), in that order. Before I knew it, the one task I started with at 9 am was not accomplished until 6 pm! I am not kidding, it took me that long to pick out 3 items of makeup! And I’m not even done because foundation, eyebrow color, and a kabuki brush are just the beginning of what I need.

If I had the money, I would just catch a ride to Macy’s and have them do a makeover, but their stuff is expensive and right now I don’t have any Macy’s gift cards (I use gift cards a lot, as they really help with the budget). I do, however, have a JC Penney gift card, and that is what I am going to use to get my hair cut (next month, in case I need actual money to supplement the bill). So that’s the first set of tasks before I can take a selfie (yuck, what a stupid name).

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The Empowerment of Cyberchondriacs by Health Forums

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This is one of my latest pet peeves: pulling up a health forum to look for information about a condition, local groups or clinics, or tips on lifestyle changes that can improve someone’s health (a good example of this would be losing weight to help control blood pressure) – only to find page after page of angry, hysterical, write-in-all-caps posts that don’t do anything but get the OP (original poster) a lot of attention and sympathy.

In looking at the other posts an OP has written – and there are usually a whole lot of them, each one posted on several different places on the forum – it becomes evident that most likely there is nothing at all wrong with them.

Welcome to the world of cyberchondriacs!

Cyberchondriacs are folks who spend hours on the internet looking up symptoms and
convincing themselves they have one or more diseases. Once they have decided on an illness, they haunt the various online forums to: whine about how ill they feel, bitch about the (many)
doctors they have seen who insist there is nothing wrong with them, yell (in caps) about family and friends who have been mean to them by not listening to them or ‘being there’ for them when they are in the throes of (pick a disease), or ask for health advice.

I should qualify that – ask for ‘alternative health advice’, because “the medical profession wants people to stay sick” and the only people who listen to the cyberchondriacs (and gladly take their money) are the many hucksters selling cures online.

It’s often easy to spot the cyberchondriacs if you peruse the post titles (“Help! Someone please help me!” – I promise you that is a direct quote), but oftentimes they will hijack a perfectly good thread in order to get the attention they so desperately seek. There is one forum I have found that is so rife with garbage like that, that if I were a member of the foundation that runs the forum I would be really embarrassed.

It’s not a surprise to me that hypochondriacs (or as it is now politically correct to say, “those with illness anxiety disorder”) have flooded the internet with wild abandon. After all, they have a built-in audience of possibly millions of people who can meet their need for attention, 24 hours a day. The reason I don’t think “illness anxiety disorder” is a correct name for this is that it leaves out the manipulative aspect of this behavior.

Hospital employees are all too familiar with “frequent flyers”, particularly those who routinely check themselves into psych wards, and I haven’t met anyone who works in this field who hasn’t faced the wrath of a hypochondriac when challenged. And by “challenged”, I mean everything from gently suggesting their doctor might be right to outright getting them discharged when it is clear they have no intention of complying with the rules (such as taking their meds). And by “wrath”, I mean everything from writing grievances to contacting CEOs to demand the healthcare worker be fired.

These people WILL get their attention OR ELSE! How much easier, though, to just log in and get your needs met whenever you feel like it?

It doesn’t matter if the illness is physical or mental, check any forum and you will usually find at least one small group of cyberchondriacs. They tend to bond quickly with others of their ilk, and routinely defend each other and make attempts to run people off who tell them to stick to the issues and/or go to the doctor.

They wear their ‘illness’ like a badge – that is, if they even are ill, which I suspect many are not – and complain frequently and loudly that no one understands them but the people on the forum.

Who does that, actually WANT to have a chronic illness? That’s a rhetorical question, of course.

It has been suggested that we really ought to feel sorry for people like that, but I disagree. They usually have personality disorders and are often out for blood – Goddess help you if you are their target! I don’t feel sorry for people who knowingly inject themselves into someone else’s life (or a forum), mess it all up, and then leave a trail of damage behind them.

They know what they’re doing, or they wouldn’t be so good at it.

And to do that on a forum where the majority of people are already suffering and do not need that kind of stress (because it can aggravate the condition) is….is…..well, it’s just evil and there is no excuse for it.

You guys who know me are thinking, “Oh, I bet she shot her mouth off about something and got a group of people upset!” and you would be right. I had the audacity to write something in a journal (not in the open forum, mind you, because I do not impose my uhem strong opinions on others) on the forum I mentioned previously that has a glut of cyberchondriacs.

I had been watching as member after member was attacked and run off because they wouldn’t play the sympathy game. All I did was appeal to people to stop being cliquish and stop insulting others, and for the most part I got a good reaction to it. I won’t post it here because it is very long.

But I also had 2 people respond with such vitriol it was almost shocking – and I deleted both their posts. I added a note asking again that people keep their nasty comments to themselves or publish those on their own journal. I reiterated that I wrote this on my own journal and not in the forum so that if people found it upsetting – for whatever reason – they didn’t have to read it.

Why was it necessary for me to write that upsetting people by name-calling and passive-aggressive behavior aggravates the very condition people are there to get support for? That is, of course, also rhetorical, because it’s obvious these folks couldn’t care less about what effect their behavior has on others.

The experience didn’t run me off – y’all know me better than that – nor did it cause a major flare-up, tears, or yelling. Hey, that’s why I write rants like this, to get it off my chest in a healthy way. I did, however, set the privacy settings for that particular entry to “friends only”, because I just can’t be arsed checking my journal every day in order to delete stuff.

So…what’s the most annoying/oddest/head-scratchiing forum you’ve read lately?

This is the 2nd weird news item of the day, because I wrote 2 posts today, and it comes from the Pennlive website  http://www.pennlive.com/

It’s a story about 2 Huntingdon County women (that’s not too far from Hollidaysburg) who got into a fight and started attacking each other with deer heads! Of course, the deer heads were mounted and not attached to deer bodies (wouldn’t that have been something if they had been though!), and both were arrested. One sustained a slight injury from an antler heh.

This kind of thing is why I will always refer to Central PA as “Mayberry on acid.”
Here’s the link:
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/08/women_attacked_each_other_with.html

2nd movie recommendation of the week: If you like psychological thrillers that do NOT contain the usual gore and hackneyed plots, check out a film called “Knife Edge” (2009) starring Hugh Bonneville and Natalie Pressman. It’s a good story with some twists, and it will keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s available on Amazon and Hulu.

Introduction and Some Boundaries

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My very first blog post! It took a lot of time and a lot of dithering to get to this point, because I am by nature a somewhat private person, and the thought of something I’ve written being
available to anyone with a computer had me stalled for awhile – until I realized that I have
already written things online (comments on forums and other people’s blogs, Facebook,
chatrooms) so it really isn’t a big deal.

I am careful, however, to not mention other people unless they want me to, as I am very aware that being mentioned online without permission can be upsetting to some. Also, I value my family’s privacy and it is solely up to them to put things out there on the internet if they so choose. So this blog will be limited to my opinions and thoughts, and your comments about what you think.

Regarding comments, I doubt there will be a huge influx of people flocking to read my blog, but even if I don’t know you, you are of course welcome to comment. I consider it my right to delete said comment if I find it is offensive, contains personal attacks (not just towards me, but
towards anyone who comments here), or is about “job opportunities” (“You can make a million dollars just like I did, click on this!”). That goes for “psychic sites” (“Sister Mathilda brought my husband back to me!”), any kind of product endorsement, or a brief comment with a plug that is intended only to plug your own blog/website (“Great blog! Go to lovemyblog.com”).

Additionally, if you want to include a personal anecdote in your comment, that’s all well and good, but try to keep it at a reasonable length and also keep in mind that, though I may address things like mental and physical health issues, I am not here to do therapy and I am certainly not qualified to give medical advice.

I will update the blog each week, barring something unforeseen, and will also include a “weird news” item at the end of each entry – just because I find anything Fortean to be entertaining – and maybe a book or movie recommendation. I have recently “cut the cord” and have turned to Hulu for my main source of video entertainment, and it’s also given me more time to read.

So, now that all that is out of the way, here is your weirdness for this week:

Someone is/was selling a “haunted mirror” on Ebay for $7,500.00 or best offer.  Sorry I do not have the link, as I think the auction has ended or he took it off the site. The seller claims the mirror is a portal to the spirit world, and he has blurry pictures to prove it!

He was/is selling “haunted bricks”, but what those are, I am not really sure – bricks to throw and break out windows of haunted houses? Bricks that mysteriously build a barbecue in your backyard while you’re sleeping? Apparently these bricks are shown behind the haunted mirror, aka “a wall”. Does he give refunds if the brick de-materializes and travels back to take its former place in the wall?

I have a ‘different’ belief system but even I have to draw the line somewhere – this is way too much ‘woo’ for me!

Movie recommendation (almost 20 years too late):
“Dance Me Outside”, a Canadian film about, and featuring, First Nation people in a film that is often funny, sometimes tragic, and thankfully lacking obnoxious racist stereotyping. I saw it, of course, on Hulu. You can probably find it on DVD somewhere. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Be aware, be awake, be mindful, and be kind!