Doctors Love To Watch You Suffer

The meaning of pain is one which many people often delegate to existentialism, and that disgraces those who suffer from it. Existentialism is, in itself, a method of blaming the victim, regardless of how it is used, either the victim is the reason for their suffering or they are wrong to ask for it to stop.

So what is the meaning of pain? You must first understand what pain actually is, and medical doctors need to learn this most of all. Pain is the body telling the brain that something is damaged, it's as simple as that.

The phantom limb syndrome is not even remotely the same thing, phantom limbs are the brain noticing the absence of stimulation for neurons it once depended on for information. If the brain does not like a certain input, it will not notice the absence.

This is why doctors claiming my request for amputation of an organ that my brain (me) clearly has no desire to keep could result in phantom limb sensations, they're clearly insane or unworthy of their medical degree.  The fact of the matter is that my brain has already rejected the input, and all nerve results are seen by the brain as incessant nagging, which manifests as severe pain.

Yes, like many aspects if nerve messaging, the brain's own opinion of that organ has a huge affect on how those messages are perceived by the intelligence contained in the neurons. To oppose my assertions here requires actual scientific understanding of neurology, biochemistry, and psychology, very few doctors are qualified or capable of knowing what is stated in this blog, and yet you pay them a fortune under the assumption that they know.

Psychiatrists will never agree on the position on this because psychiatry is not science, yet you all assume psychiatrists are correct and allow them the power to destroy people. According to psychiatry, talking to your imaginary friend is sane, as long as you assert that it created the universe and deny all evidence to the contrary.

According to doctors, you can't find facts online, even after they just used Google to diagnose your illness. The hypocrisy of medicine is now coming to light, and I suffer because of that hypocrisy, and tax payers pay a fortune to the doctors on my behalf for that same reason.

The Corruption of Welfare - Not so Corrupt

There is a hidden problem with joining the future that I rarely discuss, because it's not a problem inherent in technology. The lag of upgrades.

Technology is a sink or swim endeavor, not something that can be done willy nilly or half assed. The most important thing an organization must do is how decent IT personnel.

To better understand this I will use Washington state as an example of how to do it wrong. The specific point of interest is the Department of Social and Human Services.

This organization is notoriously a mess, the majority of workers are lazy and callous. Visiting in person was always the best method to take care of issues, however, visiting in person has an inherent issue with convenience.

The Moyer traditional method is to call by phone, which should have very few problems. This office ha's average wait times of 60 minutes, even if no one if being helped.

So it was great to hear that they finally have an online method available. That is, until you visit their website.

The Washington state DSHS website is designed as poorly as those old Altavista websites designed for people's parrots and gerbils in the 80s. The Lansing page is bland and login links are obfuscated, and none of it is mobile friendly.

When you manage to find the link to create an account they demand you choose a password based on insane criteria, like including a special symbol. This  ensures that you will forget the password in the future.

So you sludge through their poorly conceived login system, but you still have no access to what they want you to complete.

For that, there is another account system you have to find, yes, it is also obfuscated. Then you create a second passcode.

Okay, now you're ready to begin the rebel process, if you can figure out which text word you're suppose to click on. Instead of obvious menus or links, they bury the correct links in the actual text that drones on about different languages and how to get help if you can't read this page in English.

Ladies and gentlemen, the stupid of that one page alone is a threat to the sanctity of the internet. We have not  reached the end of our misadventure yet.

Once you start filling out the forms, you glance at the URL and notice, it now looks like a document on its own. The session ID is probably about 1k of data on it's own, excessive barely covers it.

Assuming your browser and connection are both perfect, in which case you don't need DSHS anyway, you get through and just wait for the letter telling you their decision.

Most browsers or connections will crash, that session ID and the fact they use JavaScript in ways the spaghetti monster never intended.

If you are a poor person who needs this service, you load the browser back up an navigate to the page again. Instead of your application, you are greeted with a warning that you have to wait 30 minutes for the other session to expire.

Yeah, they don't use cookies, and they have no way of tracking your IP address. In server scripts your IP address is very easy to check, even some of the laziest coders will connect that with the session for reconnects.

Alright, 8 hours later you manage to get this all done and now you can rest easy knowing you have renewed your much needed benefits. Then you get the letter explaining that you no longer get any benefits.

You have to call them anyway, wait more than an hour on the phone listening to the annoying voice telling you that it's better to use the system that just screwed it all up in the first place. This is not how you join the future, or save the planet, this is the result of bad hiring practices that result in nerds working positions where geeks should be.

I type this after being on the phone for 55 minutes, my second time trying to call to figure out why my medical renewal was denied in spite of no major changes. I am still waiting for an operator, and I was using my cheap $15 phone's keyboard.

Disability - The Product Of Society's Faults

The notion that a disabled person cannot contribute to society is both foolish and based on old superstitions, a product of our fear of both differences and change. The reality is simply that no one wants to pay us a liveable income for what we contribute.

The other fallacious notion common, especially among those who are paid to actually assist us, is that we don't want to work. Many people have this idiotic notion that disabled people are as lazy as they are. This is demonstrably fallacious due to the fact that most of us are disabled because we were over worked and under paid prior to the disability.

Yet when we seek to change our situation we are greeted with contempt and hatred from everyone. Well, almost everyone, oddly the scientific community is mostly generous and easily the least judgmental portion of society. It is important to note that one does not need to work in a lab to be scientific, one must only comprehend the scientific method and not be a total idiot who asks "why are there still monkeys?"

Back to the topic at hand, disability is mistakenly thought as an inability or lack of desire to work, when it is actually lacking the ability to do a specific set of tasks due to a physical or psychological difference, making the person unable to function the same as others of their species. Fore example, Stephen Hawking, a genius who is unable to utilize most of our tools, you do not expect to make him flip burgers, but someone with arthritis of the hands is often called to do just that.

The flaw in society here is the definition of contribution, most incorrectly consider a contribution to be a marketable act for profit. Most of the greatest contributions to society offered absolutely no profit to those who have made them, and quite often resulted in their ridicule, discouragement, and even murders.

Many years after society has essentially destroyed them, removing the possibility of them offering more contributions that could benefit society as a whole, do we discover that not only were they correct, they just saved the lives of billions of their own species and never asked for more than food on the table and the right to live a healthy life. This is the legacy our species gives our offspring, even today.

As a species, are are fundamentally insane, for we create demons in the darkness because we fear lighting that candle called science we created to illuminate that cavern called life that we must all walk through. Instead we cling to the blindfold called religion finding a false comfort in the lack of answers offered by following the blind leaders who are looking only where we have already stepped.

To progress as a species we must now discard our notions of the importance of profit and excess, we must understand the true value of all contributions before we lose the sources for more. Look at those who face chronic illness, pain, disabilities of any sort, look closely as what we have to say, what we build and create, and what we discover in this ever darkened cavern called life.

I promise you, the cure for cancer lies in the minds of one who suffers from arthritis, they merely need someone to listen to them.

Corrupt to the Core - Welcome to the USA

There is as much corruption in the Democrats and religious liberals as there is in the Republicans and religious conservatives. The difference is how this corruption manifests.

The Republicans are easy to see, they are willing to sacrifice their own voters' lives in order to demonstrate that they are sore losers, and their supporters are so ignorant they blame the Democrats for it. The racism, misogyny, homophobia, and even hatred of asexuality is very evident in their policies and actions.

The Democrats are more subtle, and their supporters are not as easily fooled. The problem is that with the alternative being so horrible, even those of us who see the corruption in the Democrats have no choice but to continue supporting them.

Case in point, the DSHS of Seattle, the ones responsible for making sure everyone is insurable and has food on the table, which the tax payers have voted for and even give them increases at their own expense. Conservatives do it to keep the costs low, collection fees of unpaid medical bills can cost the state more than triple the actual medical bills, delayed treatment can increase the final costs by more than ten times the original costs.

So this system was supported unilaterally by everyone, only the morons and heartless disagreed. In order for the system to work every one who is dependent on it must be treated for all ailments in a manner that allows and encourages a return to the workforce. This is not what is happening.

Instead doctors are seeing this as a blank check, one to he milked until the money is gone, and the state encourages them to do just that. Medical costs are considered for coverage based on the costs of a single visit, not over all costs. Thus means if there is a procedure that will result in a person being capable of working but is over the price of a procedure that is the bare minimum for survival, the state prefers the bare minimum.

The end result is that patients are left with chronic illness and nonthreatening injuries that prevent work, trust me, almost every disabled person would prefer and even enjoy working, going to doctor appointments is tedious and wastes a lot of time as well as costs the tax payer a fortune.

The solution is simple, easy, and cost effective. Pay for what is needed to ensure the patient is healthy and not suffering so they can repay the system in taxes by working. Democrats do not want this anymore than Republicans, both parties profit from suffering and death.

The difference is found because of the supporters, the fact that even the religious Democrats are difficult to fool now means the politicians must tread more cautiously. Neither party wants a healthy country, because in all the healthy countries the masses are not as gullible, the government does not get away with as much, and the people have more power.

This is why the Democrats are attempting to wrest control of information, passing policies under the table while touting battles against inconsequential policies like Net Neutrality. If you don't get that statement, Google SOPA and PIPA, passed without any publicity, under the table, by president Obama himself. Net neutrality as you are told it is never existed anyway.

Back to medicine. Democrats are using insurance as a cover for the real issue, doctors who are abusing the patients for their own profits. Not all doctors are like this, a few will mention that the ACA is doing nothing to help, but the private club mentality prevents many from actually voicing, or even recognizing, the true problem.

Seattle is the perfect example of how this is all failing, and I am now a case study for this. I had severe pain in my side, for those who don't know, I am an eccedentesiast. I hide pain, even from myself, and have an atypically high tolerance to it. My old doctor, who I miss a lot, has been the only person alive who could see past the smile I wear.

For more than four visits to the emergency room, each time right after eating something fatty, they did not diagnose the gallstones that were tearing my gallbladder apart. The reason, as I discovered by the only doctor honest enough to care, was because gallstones are not typical for someone who is not an obese female.

Yep, plain old discrimination caused this diagnosis to be missed, but that is only the beginning. The reason the state wound up paying tens of thousands more, and will be paying millions more now, is because the state discouraged multiple tests. They utilized only one test, the least expensive and least comprehensive one, which is unlikely to spot most ailments, all because the state would be less likely to cover the others if they did not help in diagnosis.

Thus I was forced to return many times over the years, several thousand dollars used for an ambulance each time, then hospital fees of nearly one thousand just for a failed diagnosis. When the tax payers could have instead paid about five thousand total for the initial visit if the doctors were encouraged to get an accurate diagnosis.

This us the corruption caused by the Democrats, the feel good doctors' lobby is what convinced them to enact the conservative ACA, after removing the points that addressed medical malpractice and doctor reapinsibilities.

Currently, DSHS of Seattle is just as corrupt, finding ways to take the tax payers' money and avoid using it on those who need it. They pocket most of it, offering themselves raises and paying employees who rarely do any actual work, then complaining they need more money while not paying for preventative measures.

Welcome to the USA, please deposit your brain in the wastebasket and collect your "hunting" rifle if you're white, if you are not white we have these lovely matching iron bracelets for you. Either way, the government does not want you to think about it.

The Sociopathic Doctor

The problem with the medical system is the lack of empathy that doctors believe they are required to possess. The irony us that they were correct, a long time ago.

In the past the chances of a patient surviving were very low, so doctors adopted this emotional wall between them and the patients they will likely see alive only a couple times, then attend their funeral soon after. This kept them saner, force sociopathic tendencies are inherently not sane but losing too many people you care for can cause more severe psychological problems.

The result was workable, at the time, allowing medical professionals to continue to work to the best of their ability and ultimately heal more than harm. However, times are changing, as they always do, and like many old methods this has become obsolete to the point of causing more harm than benefits.

Today it is quite common for patients and doctors to share death beds, not literally, but in the same hospital room even. This is thanks to our medical sciences advances far beyond what we had ever dreamed possible, allowing humans to live 120 years now.

However this emotional divide allows doctors to become relaxed, even clumsily so, in their treatment of patients. The forced sociopathic tendencies also result in doctors becoming actual sociopaths quite often. We see this effect in many cases, doctors misdiagnosing patients to move them through the system as quickly as possible resulting in the patients' deaths soon after or long term complications to a procedure that should have been routine.

The doctors who save the lives of patients are the ones the patients associate outside of the office more often than not. They are the doctors who are invested in caring for said patients. These are the doctors of celebrities and the super rich, but not anyone else. So why the difference?

The wealthy patients are their bread and butter, they pay the most, and medical care is all about the profit. Greed is the driving force to encourage the doctors to break down that emotional wall and draw close to their patients, for it is easier to understand someone you know as well as yourself.

The key to a successful diagnosis is just that, understanding what the patient describes. A patient with a huge cultural difference will be difficult to understand, their adjective usage will seem alien to the doctor, resulting in poor diagnosis. This also often leads to the patient being declared incompetent even if said patient understands the problems better than the doctor.

To over come cultural boundaries, and other such problems, the doctor must become friends and form an attachment to the patient, the sociopathic wall must be taken down. Once invested in the patients' well being emotionally, the doctor is able to understand complaints better and pinpoint problems that are often missed in any mechanical examination.

This attachment offers further benefits in that the doctor is also more likely to understand the emotional state of the patient and know how it plays into their complaints. Emotions play a huge role in how we perceive things, my doctor recently discovered lumps in the area of my colon and all I can think about is "what if it's cancer?"

Because of this I am likely to forget to mention many other sensations associated with this problem, resulting in a missed diagnosis. A doctor who knows me well would know how afraid of surgery I am as well as how extremely high my pain tolerance is and prod for more information, while others will assume I have offered all the pertinent information.

This could be the difference between life and death, undiagnosed problems in the colon do kill patients quite often, even though a false positive for cancer can also be beneficial. So I have to figure out, on my own, what information is valid and what belongs to the other problem that has been ignored by doctors for a long time. The result is that I am under extremely high amounts of stress now.

This is a common result as well, patients go through a lot of anxiety when faced with a stranger for a doctor, even if they have seen this face several times before. This is not without a price, doctors will have to learn to govern their emotions like everyone else, not allowing one's anger or disgust get in the way of their activities.

Doctors will have to learn to avoid becoming violent when angry, like everyone else, and how to actually cope with loss and disappointment. The costs may seem high, but the rest of us have learned to do this, we can help doctors experience emotional attachments in a healthy way as well.

Jared Leto - The Scapegoat

Recently the Advocate had a very well written article on this story, I have nothing to really add on it so here is the story:

Op-ed: What People Don't Get About Dismay Over Jared Leto

Though I have nothing to add to the article's content, or change for that matter, I want to add my voice to this chorus of disappointed cries.

Being transgender is not an illness, it is not a disability, nor is it in any way dangerous, inherently. However many people who are transgender are labeled as ill or disabled, and many are placed in harm's way by idiotic bigots who have nothing more than their own insecurities guiding their actions.

Laws are being drawn up in the USA that are being paraded from both sides as political clout, nothing more. Those supporting them are simply saving face for decades of ignoring us, and those opposing these laws are doing so with underhanded tactics that prey on the insecurities of morons who didn't learn anything after high school.

That's the problem with all this, this screaming and posturing for the political and ethical high ground, transgender people have become nothing more than a symbol to these people. When you show support by voting for a party just because they sound like they care, you are really just telling us that you don't care at all.

Many times a transgender person is belittled by both those who claim to support, and those who oppose, our equality. Bathroom laws, which were brought to the front of the media circus because of a statistic that does not really mean what they claim, are nothing more than pandering. The very fact that you need laws for this is evidence of how little you care.

The fact that you need to enforce our right to live as our "preferred gender" demonstrates that you have no clue what transgender is. The fact that you tack on labels like "dysphoria" only betray just how naive you are about the brain and biology. 

It is not "preferred," nor is it a mental illness, nor is there anything wrong with us. There is a lot wrong with you though, those who keep feigning support and those who attack us, your education is lacking to such as point as to be laughable.

Here's a small hint, a tiny little clue on what to research, to understand the message I have typed here: Gender is not as definitive to any species as we once thought.

I am not here to explain everything to you, only to point you in the right direction.

Transgendered Asexual - Contradiction or Misconception?

Often people will incorrectly assume a person who is transgendered is inherently sexual, even excessively sexual. But in reality, transgender only refers to a person's gender, not their sexuality at all. A transgendered person can be gay, straight, or even bisexual ... or asexual. The problem here lies in the fact that people still have several misconceptions, not only about transgendered people, but also asexual people.

The most common myth I hear is that people cannot be asexual. That patently false, humans cannot reproduce asexually like bacteria or viruses, but they can lack sexual desires and attractions. This results in a lack of sexual orientation, dating does not count as sex, nor is sexual attraction required to love someone else, of any gender. The entire culture of false dichotomies has produced more myths and misconceptions than one could cover in a single blog post, and here I am focusing on these two specifically.

In reality, sexuality, as I have addressed in a previous blog post, cannot be simplified into only two categories, or labels. Asexual people are the most forgotten and oppressed of all sexual types, because of the false dichotomies. Many people do not even consider bisexuals to be real, another victim of the same false dichotomy. Gender is one of the most common false dichotomies as well.

A transgendered person is not going to inherently want to be the opposite gender, there is, and has to be, a lot of gray there. Some want to be non-gendered, as in having absolutely no gender identity or even identifying traits at all, yet society will not accept these people. To make matters worse, even transgendered people will not accept the ones who are in the gray areas as well. I have been a victim of the latter. In life I am literally 100% passable, even when I attempted to be male people would often ask if I was really a female, I had no simple answer for them at the time.

I am one of those in the gray area, but when push comes to shove I enter the role of female only because society will not allow me the neutral gender, having no gender or genitals is simply not an option, according to society and medical doctors. This part is key, the medical community denies that people could want to live both sexless and genderless. Which is contrary to what science has discovered recently. Not only do people with sexless and genderless roles exist, we are abused more by medical personnel than anyone else.

I have avoided adding my voice to this, mainly because I am completely passable as a female that I have a unique opportunity to witness the hatred for transgendered people from the other side, to hear the women who, in front of one they know being transgendered will be kind to them, say vile and disgusting things about them when not in their presence. This hidden hatred has bothered me, and I have done what I can to combat it, and due to a development in my life which may mean serious problems, I have decided to finally dive into my problems.

Homosexuals have almost attained equality, the finish line is in sight and the majority are now willing to see such problems as they are instead of shying from them. Transgendered will gain this equality next, the time for them is near, however the non-gendered will still be left in the closets, along with the asexual and bisexual people. So will the other gender identities, like the cross-gendered. The answer the medical community has for all these variations is to diagnose them as psychologically unstable, then sweep the under the carpet.

I have had a run through the system, just admitting what I am to a psychiatrist gave him the sudden urge to get me locked away, of course he did not realize he was dealing with someone who was just as manipulative as he is and I was released as quickly. I have learned how to play any and all medical systems now, I am not one to take being abused without learning how to abuse them in return. I am still stuck on disability, it is difficult, if possible at all, to get a business to hire you when you are diagnosed with depression, in spite of the fact that depression is the most mild of all the disabilities and those of us with that diagnosis can, and often want to, work just as well as any other employee.

So now it is time to expose the system for how corrupt and abusive it really is. I have addressed much of the problems with psychiatrists and medical doctors in previous posts, showing how they can be just as abusive in general to everyone. Now I will explain how they are wasting billions of your tax dollars on a minority so small that a single person could actually count us. I will give you two minorities for the price of one, seeing as how I belong to the two smallest of the smallest minority groups in the world.

Yes, billions on two groups of people that account for such a small number as to be countable without the inaccuracy of statistical math, and that's putting both groups together as one. What the medical community does when you admit to being asexual is assume you are lying. They will often run you through a battery of tests, often at the expense of the taxpayers, that are completely unnecessary, which often causes them to miss any real problems that eventually grow into something worse, which the taxpayer has to pay for correcting later at an even greater expense. All this amounts to a lot of money for one patient being bled from the state and federal funds. Simply so they can deny that the person is what they admit to being.

Yes, an asexual person will not need most tests for STDs, yet I am often tested, unknowingly, for all of them. These are not cheap tests, I  am tested for them because being transgendered they assume I am lying about being asexual. When I had the gallstone attacks, the only things they tested me for were STDs and other less common ailments, gallstones are quite common in those with low testosterone, women and any transgendered women. This means they ignored one key part of my medical history, just to deny that I was what I admitted to being, there was no need to check for STDs without first eliminating the more common ailments.

The end result was a surgery that was complicated because of the delay in diagnosis, which cost the state several thousand dollars. It could have cost about $1K, maybe even less, had there been no complications, however the complications also called for a lengthy hospital stay for recovery, which included meals of course. Luckily the hospital I was at had wonderful food, but I didn't feel like eating much so I didn't jack up much of a bill there, you're welcome. This is not uncommon, not for people like me, however, since I am part of a very small minority you will not see much in the media about it, even online you'd be hard pressed to find many of us.

The other is that the state could fund for a surgery that would cost a couple thousand dollars, done by professionals who have actual training. Instead they would rather force us to get an unnecessary surgery, and instead pay for hospitalization caused by complications due to not getting the simpler version. Not only that, but the more expensive surgeons lack in training, plastic surgeons do not have the stringent requirements a urologist does, nor the specialization in that particular area, which means it's a high risk procedure on it's own. Now I do say unnecessary, for asexual transgendered people specifically. We don't want the genitals, and it's not a sexual thing, we have no interest in sex and thus the entire surgery would simply be a waste.

Now, the part you pay for, the taxpayer. Often to hide the genitalia a transgendered woman, or asexual transgendered, must use method which commonly reduce the circulation to that particular body part. Medical doctors warn against purposefully removing the circulation, it can cause blood clots, and even other dangerous conditions long after you stop. These are paid for by the taxpayers, the conditions and ailments caused by reducing circulation. Instead of offering the simple procedure, cost effective one, to us willing to accept them, they insist on forcing us to wait.

Now, if you are still reading all this, you will see that there is a suspicious pattern to all of this. My previous posts about medical practitioners should now make much more sense, and demonstrate why I have pointed out that greed drives them all. Well, greed and power, but mostly greed. I have been told, indirectly, by medical professionals that I am lying about what I am, psychiatrists often look at me with disdain, even hatred. But on realizing that my life may be cut short soon, and that I may not have any reason to be happy about dying, I will be more aggressive against these vile monsters, the medical professionals who have almost allowed me to suffer to death, and who continually ignore the fact that I may have an issue between my legs which will eventually cost taxpayers millions.

Nothing they do now will be in the dark. That includes those doctors at Virginia Mason hospital, and those at Harborview hospital that seemed to want me to die.

A Fond Farewell - The Dangers Of Smoking

At least this post could be, any of my posts could be my last, technically. That is part of what makes life both interesting, and scary, the thrill of not knowing what the future holds. However, that future becomes less and less of a mystery the more we learn about how the human body works, which tends to make life more scary and less interesting.

This is a flaw of modern medical science I had not considered, until just tonight. For the last week I have noticed symptoms that are common in throat cancer, and strep throat. Right now it is a toss up between the two, considering I live in a big city, going shopping is taking a huge risk with your health, you will come into contact with people who have all sorts of illnesses and not even know it. However, I have a very bad habit of smoking, and thus the throat cancer is also as likely as the other. This is what started me to thinking about my future, so suddenly, and what the implications of cancer would be.

It would be dishonest to say I am not genuinely scared about this, the awe and wonder, the splendor of life itself, has suddenly been overshadowed by the fear that I may have caused my life to be cut very short. Being only 39 years, I should have at least another 50 years of life, had I not been so stupid. I have mixed feelings about making this mistake, as you know I do not think we should regret anything we do in life, even our mistakes make up who we are, but this time I am beginning to feel regret about this one.

But let's look at this more in depth, to understand why I feel regret I had to think more on the decision that was such a huge mistake. What did I learn from it, oddly the addiction to nicotine is the one and only reason I did not try any really hard drugs, even so far as to avoid prescription pain medications whenever possible out of fear of becoming addicted to them. There are many pains I have never told my doctor about, because I know they will just prescribe pain medications for them anyway.

Okay, so that is one good outcome of the decision, but that can't be all, that can not in any way be the only good thing to come of it. Nicotine is suppose to have a benefit, and effect that's desirable, it's suppose to calm you, right? Well, yeah, sure, the same way sucking on a pacifier would calm you, and that's it. There is no real calming effect to smoking. The calming effect of nicotine is so mild that it is unnoticeable, the smoking itself has a much bigger calming effect, but that could be achieved by sucking on anything, really.

So then perhaps being an example of what not to do, well yeah, that's great, for the people who learn from your mistake. For you, being an example of what not to do has no benefit, none at all, because there are many more just like you, who made the same mistake as you, and none of you will stand out, or be remembered for that mistake. This is not a good outcome of your mistake, if anything it's beneficial for other people, but has no benefit to you, because the benefit to other people is when you become nothing more than another statistic.

Is smoking a part of my personality? Not really. It is one decision that would have had no impact on my personality at all. I learned little from it, had little change in influence because of it, and my social interactions would have never been impacted either way. It has the same impact on my personality as what I ate for lunch last year, during the Spring equinox did. I have found one decision, one choice, in my entire life that I can, and should, regret.

I still do not recant my assertion that you should not regret your decisions, but you should really consider why you made those decisions and consider if making a different one would impact who you are before you regret them. If the decision would not effect your personality, if you would learn nothing from it, if it would have only harmed you, then you should regret it. However, if a decision did result in something that would change your personality or teach you a valuable lesson, you should not regret it no matter how bad you think the outcome was.

I regret smoking, it would have been better and I would still be the same person if I had never started this bad habit. There is no benefit, there is nothing to learn from it, there is only danger, risk of a horrible life and death, that is all smoking has to offer. Yet, I still do not believe it should be made illegal, actually no drugs should be made illegal, because that actually does encourage people to do it more than making it readily available. We need education more than anything, I will always call education the cure-all for everything, because it really is the only thing that has demonstrated a flawless track record in decreasing problems in our species.

Doctors Who Care

Nope, the title does not describe doctors in the US, not by a long shot. Perhaps one out of every thousand doctors here does care about their patients, but that's being generous. Medical doctors in the USA probably care less about you than moth being hunted by an owl cares about the owl.

One of the key pieces of evidence is how many doctors wanted the health insurance act proposed by Obama and many other politicians, including most Republican politicians, enacted. What does this act do? It certainly does not require doctors to care for their patients, it does not force hospitals to take any urgent care patients, nor does it require that a patient's rights are honored.

All this act did was force every patient to pay for a middle man to deal with the doctors. Why would the doctors support this? Greed, plain and simple. If you have insurance, they will be paid, in full, by someone, even if you die because of their mistakes, or lack of care. A medical doctor can now get away with ignoring all your symptoms, ignoring all your ailments, and still be paid all the money they want.

The key to why this is a problem lies in the fact that you need insurance, even for basic care, regular checkups, and life saving medications. I am not for "handouts" at all, especially handouts for those who own yachts and overpriced cars. The insult to injury in all this, doctors are not basing their practices on scientific research at all.

There's why I hate doctors so much. A university physics professor once said, on a national program, that he had failed most of the medical students for his classes. This is very easy to see, when you see a doctor and happen to know a thing or two about biology or genetics, you can easily test them. Most doctors still assert that asexuality in humans is impossible, when not only is nothing impossible (according to scientific research), sexuality is a genetic trait and this means every possible behavior that we know of is possible within every organism that has a genetic system. Meaning, not only is it possible for humans to be asexual, it's one of those traits that will always be present in the population.

That is the simple test I use, being asexual I get to see their reaction when I explain to them what I am. Their expressions are often the first sign, but how their attitude changes is the most telling. Almost every time they take on the attitude that I must be ignorant or lying, not realizing that I have been studying biological sciences for the last decade, lacking anything better to do really.

So now the doctors can do whatever they want, ignore scientific research and information, even kill their patients, and still be paid a lot more than they deserve. All because of patients buying into the lie that insurance is the problem. This is often referred to as a placebo, create a solution that only appears to address some problem, then convince the people it does.

The danger of placebos is that they ignore the real problem, the root of the problem, something doctors are very skilled at doing in the US. They often claim "pain is not a symptom" to me, which I know is complete folly as pain is often the first alert, and primary, symptom of the most deadly and serious ailments. This phrase is simply a cop-out, a method of placating the patient so they can still get paid without having to do anything. Their reasons for not wanting to do anything will vary, though it takes a cold heart to not care about a patient, a very cold heart indeed.

So what is the real problem here? Greed, in the only industry that greed should not be present. I am not one to be nostalgic, I love the future, but in this instance the old way of thinking is better. Doctors use to take a "Hippocratic Oath," in which they promised to do what they could to make people healthy, even if it opposed their religious ideals. They took that oath very serious, often even giving free medical care to uphold it, and only those who did care about their patients became doctors. Then doctors started being able to charge more money, the economy improved and even the least of us lived as kings.

That was when the oath lost all meaning, the greedy people, the ones who learned they could make a fortune by duping the uneducated and naive masses, they began flooding the medical industry. Doctors today abuse patients as a means of gaining more money than they are worth, everything from hiding the true costs to dismissing important symptoms. But the one fact that bothers me is that these are almost all doctors in the US.

Doctors in various other countries are often more giving, or more understanding. Many will even take cash on delivery, some do not get paid until the patient is healthy, others will listen to patients through long distance communications without any promise of being paid for it. Doctors in Washington state are some of the most greedy though, a state I am currently stuck in through no fault of my own. I am sure others exist in other states, but as a general rule any US doctor should be suspect of being driven by only greed.

Surviving is Not Living - The Medical Nightmare

Yes, I am still surviving, surprisingly enough, in spite of the medical industry of the USA. A quaint little story of my life will illustrate what I mean by that.

I have had some medical problems, lots of them recently, and each one has always been diagnosed wrong, resulting in nearly dying. Now I live with a lot of pain, and suffer every day because of the failure of doctors to diagnose something not only preventable, but common. So I went in to a specialist one time, they told me "pain is not a symptom," flat out denied the first symptom of any ailment.

I was attempting to get something diagnosed and stopped this time, before it became worse, before it cost taxpayers more money to correct. Yes, all my medical bills are covered by the taxpayers. Anyhow, the doctor simply denied there was anything wrong without a single test, the last time this happened I was admitted to the emergency room several times and needed an expensive, life saving, operation that could have cost only a few thousand dollars, but wound up costing the taxpayers more than $30,000 .... plus the costs of all those emergency room visits.

Anyhow, the answer to my complaint about it being a real problem was them attempting to lock me up, claiming I was suicidal in spite of me actually trying to save my own life again. A few thousand more from the taxpayers and they finally let me go. This is what psychiatrists are, a scam to be used by the state as a means of justifying more tax dollars to be funneled into the medical industry, nothing more.

So now the problem is getting worse, I am sleepless most nights, the pain becoming too great at times. But here's the real problem, doctors are not interested in the patients living, they are only interested in keeping the patients breathing so they can milk the insurance companies, and states, for every penny possible. Sounds like a bit of paranoia? Well, I would have thought it was nothing but paranoia 10 years ago, but nothing beats actually going through it.

But wait, there are statistics that help my case. This is where the patients are failing, you all need to start doing some research and demanding that doctors do their jobs. A majority of gallstone cases are diagnosed as "irritable bowel syndrome," basically means they are saying it's all in your head instead of something that will eventually kill you. Yep, my biggest brush with death was gallstones that were misdiagnosed. Thinking I was a rare case I didn't think too much of it.

Then I go online, yes, the internet. While there is a lot of junk online, there is also a ton of useful information, like the fact that my case is far from rare. Turns out I knew, personally, a dozen people online who had the exact same story about the gallstones. That piqued my interest and I started searching for more. To my shock, a Google search turned up more than a few hundred stories that were exactly the same.

Here's the kicker, the surgery for removing the gallbladder, in optimal situations, is only a few thousand dollars, and minimally invasive with a high success rate. The surgery required if there are complications is extremely expensive, and can be very invasive, requiring a longer recovery and hospital stay. Not to mention, there is a high chance of developing medical issues in the future because of the complications and invasive surgery.

This is a gold mine for the medical system, not the insurance companies mind you, but the actual doctors and institutions. Insurance companies have to pay for this, and if they don't, the taxpayers will pay for it all. The medical professionals are paid, in full, for their mistakes for the rest of what they call your life. But it's not really a life, is it? You are just surviving, pain and other problems making living very difficult, if possible at all.

This is the reality of the medical system in the US, the reality that is often whitewashed by the doctors and nurses, and administration. They point the finger at the insurance companies, to make sure you ignore their mistakes. It is time the US changes for the better, instead of one step forward, two steps back. We need to force this country to leap ahead.