Category Archives: Sociology of Medicine

Time for Change: A Few Exciting Announcements

Posted on January 26, 2012 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

{Note: I have made this post “sticky”, due to its level of importance as an announcement, both to my readers, and for family and friends that check up on me here at POM.  In other words, this post will appear first on the “index page” (http://www.practiceofmadness.com), though I will continue publishing new articles.  New articles will appear below this post, in chronological order as usual.  So, if you’ve already read this, scroll down to the next post to read my most recent articles.  Cheers!  scars :kisss }

I was sitting on my bathroom floor the other night.  A couple of “friends” had left some syringes in my kitchen “junk drawer” about a month ago, and I had taken them out – not for the purpose of injecting drugs, but for the purpose of self-harm.

I was injecting myself with peroxide and bleach, in very small amounts, and digging through my hands and feet with the needles, tracing my veins with little holes, tiny puncture wounds, until I had created a map, and until my hands had swollen up with balloons.

What the #&^% was I doing?!?

It took a break from reality to figure it out, as it often does for this young (and quickly growing older) woman.  What was I doing, back on the bathroom floor that I spent so many high school days sitting on, breathing in noxious chemicals (“crystal meth”  ) ?  As I was dissecting my own body, I ended up dissecting my life, my psyche, and the map on my hands became a map back to myself.

My visit “back home” for Christmas was devastating. I do not know what was more Hurtful and harmful: A Hate Crime, during which this White Woman With Blonde locks was raped by a first nations man three times her size for two hours, or the revelation – upon her departure ten minutes after my arrival at the family home, and her arrival ten minutes before I was due back at the airport for the sole purpose of screaming at me and making me feel, just as she had last year, like a complete “failure at life”.  I would venture to say the latter, as during the sexual attack, I waited for it to be over, and eventually, it did end.  My sister’s decision to pick a few times out of a 20 year-relationship – the few times that i was at my weakest, and did not show her the pure, unconditional love and generosity that has absolutely characterized my relationship with her since she was born – has threatened to tear my life apart. I wait for her to reevaluate our relationship, and I’ve been waiting for over three years now.  Yes, this is what truly derailed me.

So, for lack of a better way of putting it, I was acting out a bit of an “I am whatever you say I am”, bit.  I was responding to my family’s persistent decision to view me as an out of control drug addict (a quick anecdote: after my best friend in Winnipeg, Sam, who has known me since I was fifteen, drove me to the Emergency Room after my attack, I had to fill a $400 prescription, that I will soon be reimbursed for by the B.C. Government, and thus be able to pay my dad back, who “fronted” the money.  I walked into my dad’s house, apparently without being heard, coming “home” after the grueling and rather gruesome experience of a going through a post-rape examination and rape-kit at the ER, and filling this prescription for anti-HIV medication, to find my dad screaming at his wife in the kitchen about how he wanted to know about what this $400 prescription was that “Sam and I were snorting or smoking, or whatever, at his place”…I walked into the kitchen and slammed the bottle of pills down on the table – I had been trying to save my family the stress of having to know about what I had been through the previous night.  And when I told them, there were no “I’m so happy that you are still alives”, no “you poor things”, not even any “you did the right thing by going to the emergency rooms”.  There was only concern about the pricetag of this prescription, that may well prevent me from getting HIV or another horrible virus from the horrible monster that raped me) …so, back to a few nights ago.  I did purchase some drugs, though they all ended up lost or down the toilet – I had no idea what I was doing with these substances, I find them boring now, I was done with them a long, long time ago, but my family’s insistence that my experimentation with drugs almost a decade ago, makes me wonder if I “am, whatever they say I am”.  The needles, instruments of death, are not me either.  And I was not trying to “get high”, I was trying to make this woman, who my sister seems to think is deserving of great pain, feel that pain, to an extreme.  When my hands grew numb and I realized that I could be doing permanent damage that would prevent me from doing the one thing that I truly love doing, indeed, my very life-blood: writing – I knew that I had to stop.

But I had not yet figured out why I had been doing this, or what was to come next.  Luckily, I caught one of my best friends online as I tried making a few phone calls at 1:00 am, proclaiming that I had lost touch with reality and was hurting my body.  Everyone else was sleeping.  Everyone else “has to go to work” (I think small retail chains can suffer a little when saving one of your so-called best friend’s life is the issue at hand, but I also know that I was let go from a job for trying to save someone, so though firm in my opinion, I understand the employee’s dilemma).  I talked out my immediate circumstances with my dear friend, and only then did I come to the epiphany that I was trying to be the despicable person that my family (very falsely) thinks I am, and that I was trying to make the person that my sister, the sister that I raised after my mom died when she was six, and I thirteen, feel the pain that she deserved.  I was being the person, and playing the roles, assigned to me by the people that are supposed to know me better than anyone else in the world, but do not, are incredibly far from knowing me even close to as well as how well my friends know me, because they have never given me the chance to show them who I really am.  For some reason, the labels they have chosen for me provide them with comfort.

It is for this reason, that I am “cutting the cord” for some time.  After my ICBC settlement cheque arrives, and I settle my recent bills with my father, I am going to do some travelling, and I am going to write a book, and I am going to enroll, not in law school*, but in a one-year journalism program, and perhaps a photography program afterwards, as these are my dreams, and law school is someone else’s dream.

*The reason why I had decided to return to the academy to obtain a degree in law, was that I saw it as the only way that I could compete with my very perfect sister, who has done everything that my dad wanted his children to do (live at home until they had earned medical or law degrees – she’s chosen medicine, so I chose what was left).  I thought that if I did this, maybe, just maybe, the father that I love so dearly would, for once, be as proud of me as he is as my sister – more importantly, that he would show me the respect that he shows my sister.  However, on that fateful night (I believe it was Monday, perhaps Tuesday) I realized that I was, once again, choosing a very demanding career in order to please other people.  We all know how well that went last time!!  (if you are not familiar with the story, I suggest you scroll all the way to the bottom of the “Academia is Nuts” gallery that I created a link to in that last statement, and then click on older posts, once again scrolling to the bottom, to get a clear picture of how I discovered that the “academy” and I just do not mix.  Oil and water.  And I, I am blood.  Dragon’s blood, and salty sea water, with a sprinkling of rue and lavender. :Yb

Part two: I have decided that it is time for me to write a book.  In preparation to do so, I need to take a trip, all by myself.  I have been wanting to travel to SouthEast Asia for over a decade, and this is my opportunity.  Thus, I am going to ask you, dear readers, a couple of questions. (And of course, I will continue writing for this website, every day or every other day when time allows.  It is the one thing in the world that I am most proud of, prouder of than my thesis, or any number of theses and academic papers I could ever, ever write):

 

(polls)
 

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Posted in Academia is Nuts!, Poetry, Prose, Personal, Sociology of Medicine, Transcend

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Things are Not that Black and White!: Racialization of Female Bodies and the Controversy Over the White and Black Pristiq Dolls

Posted on June 1, 2011 by scarsarestories| 2 Comments

Back in September of last year, I posted this when I was shocked to see that to market their “new” antidepressant Pristiq (after all it is only an isomer of Effexor – Effexor’s chemical name is venlafaxine, Pristiq’s is desvenlafaxine).  The original Pristiq television commercial showed a white doll – as we’re all probably familiar with – having to “wind herself up again and again and again, just to feel normal!”  I got some flack for my beliefs about that commercial as well as the second one, which you can both watch below, namely my claims that they demonstrate an outdated picture of hegemonic femininity, and essentialize “difference” through the racialization of female bodies.  I stand by my belief that the TV advertisement shows the doll working the “doubleday” or “double shift” – that is, a job typically filled only by women, where one works an eight hour paid shift at the office, and then arrives home to work yet another unpaid shift – cooking dinner for her family, perhaps doing a little cleaning and laundry, helping children with their homework and playing with them, and eventually putting them to bed – all while the man in her life, hardly deserving of the name “partner”, (if there is a man present) puts his feet up in front of the television and enjoys that wonderful meal she cooked with a couple of beers, unwinding after what is assumed to have been a much more stressful day at work than that while working any woman’s job.  I am definitely not saying that this is the way things actually are in current society – things have changed rapidly with my generation, I know many stay-at-home dads, and I don’t know any women – at least none that are admitting it – that cook all meals alone while their partner does nothing.  If this did occur, the women I know would have such a man out of his comfortable chair in front of a plasma screen and free to enjoy the comfort of the sidewalk, faster than she could hit the off button on the remote control – at least I hope so! However, this is not the presentation of womanly life that the Pristiq dolls and commercials present – they appeal to the “cult of domesticity“, and an antiquated version of life at home.  For anyone who begs to differ, I beg to ask – are there any male Pristiq dolls haunting our television sets and pictured in print ads in men’s magazines? Ads showing the same doll pictured in the television spot below are commonplace in among women’s titles, such as Good Housekeeping and Vogue.


Now, here’s the original ad, featuring the white doll, followed by the second ad, featuring the black doll:

Now, my educated guess, being more of an expert than I wish I was on Big Pharma (the pharmaceutical industry), is that antidepressant sales were not as high among African-American women, so Pfizer decided to run a second television spot with a black woman speaking while a black doll was being wound up, as she tried and tried to get through the day!  The second ad seems like it was slapped together much more quickly than the first, as the first features the real woman shown performing a number of daily activities, while the second simply shows a split screen – on one side a real woman speaks, and on the second side a doll is wound up, again and again.  Much to my chagrin, when I checked out the official website for Pristiq this morning in preparation to write this article, there was the black doll, in a video that begins immediately after you arrive at the site, and which ends with an image of a black woman with a younger black individual whose sex is undiscernable, assumedly her child or student, and she is speaking with a white man!  It seems I was more than right in thinking that this new drug is being targeted at the market population of African-American women.  What does the presence of the white man indicate?  It would be pleasant to think that his appearance is not symbolic and does not have any hidden message beneath, but unfortunately, this is simply not true of psychiatric advertising.  Everything present is there for a reason.  Does Pfizer wish to portray that black women will have an easier time getting along with white men if they take the drug?  I shudder at the absolute disgustingness of this speculation.  If you have any doubts about just how much thought by teams of psychologists, sociologists, antropologists, and other experts on the personal and the social realms of being that go into producing psychiatric advertisements, and even details like the colour of the pills, themselves, I highly recommend reading:

I think that the commercials are a demonstration of the racialization of female bodies within American society.  The teams of psychologists and other “experts” that are responsible for making these commercials seem to believe that a black woman cannot relate to a commercial that shows only a white woman – and I agree that showing only a white woman is a little ethocentric, but my interests obviously do not lie in the area of marketing of antidepressants! – and that a different one needed to be made in order to show women of African descent that the drug was an option for them, too, not just for white women.

To extrapolate, I think that these commercials show a horrendous problem within American society.  Since I live in Canada, I do not know the extent of the feeling many white women in the United States have: that they absolutely cannot relate to black women, or women of other different ethnic groups, and vice-versa.  However, the media perpetuates the stereotype that these women do not share as many commonalities, as they have differences.  I do not watch very much television, but from what I have seen, formulaic portrayals of the “black or white” women are very much alive and well on TV shows as well.  On Grey’s Anatomy, the only female, black doctor on the program, Dr. Baillie, has a rock hard, tough persona, as well as a curvier figure (as does Latina character, Callie, who is also depicted as an Amazon compared with the other characters) – she could take any of the other white, stick-figured female doctors down in a psychological or physical fight faster than a gurney on its way, lightning speed, into the OR.  I like to check out the current line-up on HBO and Shotime, as I find series on these cable networks that you have to pay a pretty penny for to be much more realistic, socially progressive, artistic and multifaceted.  Yet the black/white divide still exists.  On both the popular Showtime dramedy Shameless, and HBO’s cunning, metaphoric parody of the teenage “vampire genre” phenomenon, True Blood, black and white women are friends, but difference is always the subject to contend with. Although many of the stereotypes of black women are positive, for example, the token black female characters in both Shameless and True Blood have street smarts and the ability to “make lemons into lemonade”, so to speak.  When negative situations or objects are thrown in their direction, they find a way to make the situation work for them, or turn trash into something useful.  Even though these are positive depictions, they reflect terrible historical realities for African immigrant women, who, during slavery, had to survive by cooking scraps of food that their white masters did not want to eat, turning them into something edible to feed their families – the foundation of what is now called “soul food”.  Later, when towering social housing projects that could provide residences – albeit tiny, substandard ones – for tens of thousands of people in most

Built in 1939, the Queensbridge housing projects in Queens, NY, is the largest project in existence, with 3149 apartments and the so-called ability to house over 10,000 people.

large American cities, particularly those on the East Coast where industrial labour jobs drew many young black men who were willing to work in poor conditions for little pay, these mass dwelling spaces quickly and inevitably became ridden with the crime that comes with poverty, and women had to have a special skill set to survive the streets, the will-power not to get dragged into the drug culture when crack invaded the neighbourhoods and became an epidemic, and countless single mothers had to learn to live on little money in the huge metropolises of New York City and Chicago, for example, and attempt to successfully raise children that did not get tempted by the financial gain that entering a criminal lifestyle would yield, advertised to young teens by older dealers, hustlers and pimps.  I cannot even begin to imagine the plight of a single African-American mother living in the projects, yet the “know-how” that comes with being one – or rather is necessary to survive if you are one 0 is romanticized in television programs and movies.

Like the advertisements for Pristiq, the programs on television, shown in between (or, no, that’s supposed to be the other way around… :gila: )  that I speak of essentialize, or make seem natural, the differences between black and white women.  Now, I am all for celebrating difference, but I do not think that is the intention of these programs, nor do I think American society would be ready to pick up on such a theme if it did exist at this moment in time.  The vast majority of television viewers are young children and adolescents, and I fear that they are learning that black women and white women, as well as black and white men, are fundamentally somehow different from one another.  They speak differently, they have different sets of skills, and they belong to different socioeconomic classes.  The utter untruth of these statements, especially the latter, is incredibly detrimental to both black and white workers, as by pitting them against one another, organization for higher wages, better working conditions, health benefits, and other improvements that used to be the job of unions, which in more and more cases no longer exist and are not allowed to exist (ex/ Wal-Mart), does not happen, and blacks and whites suffer equally.

And that is why I find the Pristiq ad racist – because Pfizer felt the need to produce it, despite the fact that just like in financial crises, people of all colours experience the suffering that comes with depression the same way.  The responses I have received telling me that it is not racist make me very afraid about how deep beliefs about the difference between while and black women are – so deep, that they are not even noticed anymore, and I may be considered racist for pointing this out.  After all, “racism ended” upon the elsection of half-black preseident, Barack Obama, right?

Wrong.  We still have a long, long way to go.

And that’s something to be damn depressed about, and something that no pill will cure.

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Posted in Ads and Commercials, Feminism and Madness, Mad Society, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Other Survivors, Sociology of Medicine

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Post-Surgical Opiate Withdrawal Diaries: The Sociology of Shakes, Sweats, and…

Posted on May 22, 2011 by scarsarestories| 1 Comment

…”number twos”.

Last Wednesday afternoon, as I sat in the waiting room at the methadone clinic – I had once before accidentally walked into thinking it was an ordinary walk-in medical clinic -  after being sent there by my GP who told me that it was now my only option aside from inpatient detox (an option I was not interested in as all of the people that I’ve met who have been only left detox with new connections to users and dealers of other drugs, and most often, a new addiction, switching from heroin to cocaine or vice-versa) if I wanted to get off Dilaudid (hydromorphone), the energy the space was friendly and boisterous, smiles and kinship all around, and I listened to a man describing some kind of new pill that was soon going to be available for those wanting to get off opiates of any kind.  I was told on the phone before my arrival that the clinic – the Royal Oak on East Broadway at Commercial, just a few blocks from home – dealt almost exclusively with heroin addiction and may not be able to help me, but other conversations I overheard suggested I was not the only one there post-surgery for help getting off prescription synthetic opiate painkillers, a huge relief, as I listened to the man describe how this magical pill eliminated the excruciating withdrawal that I am now all too familiar with.

“She said it was great – no shakes, no sweats, no shits.”

“That is great!  Wow,” the woman he was frenetically talking to, obviously a stranger, was being overly polite.  I’m overly polite in exactly the same way.  Am I that much of a caricature, interested in conversations with strangers, but so eager to prove that I am that I end up sounding like an overzealous nurse – no, an overzealous therapist.  Jesus, what could be further from the truth.  Who am I?  Who…

Whoever I am, whoever I’ve become, I know these three basic “s”s of opiate withdrawal, heroin or not, as well as I know the birthmark on the right side of my chest, trying unsuccessfully to hide under my breast.  Hydromorphone, a synthetic morphine derivative more often called by its brand name – Dilaudid – is said to be three times stronger than heroin.  Whatever that means.

I suppose it means, one morning back at the beginning of April, I had to change my pants three times because I ran out of Dilaudid too early.  Though I had brand new prescriptions in my wallet, they were post-dated for the day that I was supposed to run out and could not be filled until then or else my docter could lose her medical licence for even giving me the pieces of paper early .  So I went through three days of pure hell: a short preview of what was to come after surgery, though I did not know it at the time.  When it came time to hand over those prescription slips for pills – triplicate slips, as all narcotic painkillers, even codeine are ridiculously tightly controlled in this drug-addled province (ridiculous because, as you will read later, the system still doesn’t work) – I was so anxious with anticipation, and so suddenly no longer constipated, as opiates are incredibly constipating – that I lost all control of my bowels and disgusting liquid came pouring out of me in unison with the blood that refused to stop flowing out of my uterus before it was removed, this being the reason why I had taken extra painkillers.  Yes, I filled up two pairs of pants and three toilet bowls before I left the house and still had to run home from the pharmacy before the brown could start running down my skinny legs, as I had changed into a skirt, hoping that I would have more luck in looser clothing.  My little experiment was a failure.

 

It's a Pill Rainbow!: My psych meds plus extended release Dilaudid (green and pink) and Nabilone (THC for nausea, red and white)

Take one six milligram gelcap with one three milligram gelcap to add up to nine milligrams of extended release hydromorphone once in the morning and once at bedtime. It sounds incredibly simple, much more so than constantly popping immediate release pills as a previous prescription had me doing – three four milligram doses, at “breakfast, noon, and bedtime” and one three milligram dose at “supper” – as they had prescribed when I left the psych ward.  In truth, it was very complicated; any way of dosing Dilaudid was complicated.  But here is the real kicker: before the psych ward I was not addicted to Dilaudid.  I only took it during menstruation, and even though while in Winnipeg I had a period that lasted 18 days, and each day I took Dilaudid, I did not as much as a hint of illness when my uterus finally shut the tap off and I was able to stop taking the painkillers.  I had not been in constant pain around the month since before my first laparoscopy and DNC (the same procedure used to perform an abortion was used to get rid of endometriosis inside my uterus, and the scope took care of anything that had travelled beyond my uterus, into my abdominal cavity).  However, when I entered St. Paul’s hospital, known for having the best pain assessment team in the city (oh, then I had been lucky, or so I was told by every doctor I saw from that point forward, “incredibly lucky”, as there is a year-long waiting list to see a doctor that specializes in controlling pain at their special pain clinic), I just happened to be on day one of my period, one of the most painful days.  Unluckily, I was also force-fed a strong antipsychotic I had never taken before – Loxapine – upon my admission, literally rendering me dumb and mute for the first several days of my stay.

After one dose of Loxapine, I was able to show the doctors how much pain I was in, crying and curled up in the fetal position, but I was not able to tell them that the pain would end with my period - nor do I remember them asking me if the pain was an everyday event. I guess they assumed it was, as I was given liquid hydromorphone for the rest of my month-long stay: seventeen milligrams per day.  True, I did not refuse it, as I kind of just assumed that I was in pain everyday again, that these magic pain specialists had properly assessed me even though they never conversed with me.

I left the hospital completely physically dependent on Dilaudid.

A week later I switched from the immediate release form of the drug to the extended release gelcaps, as trying to snap a tiny two milligram tablet into half proved to be impossible.

But the next time I started menstruating again, I was still in pain despite being on the equivalent of nine milligrams of hydromorphone at all times, so I was given additional immediate release Dilaudid to take for “breakthrough pain” – up to four milligrams every four hours, totalling a potential 38 milligrams of Dilaudid per day.  40 milligrams is considered the level at which anyone is in danger of becoming very addicted to the drug.  As addiction is defined as not only a dependency on a drug, but also an increasing level of tolerance, I found myself needing to take more and more to kill the pain that radiated from my pelvic region down to the tips of my toes, and now I was in pain all month long.  This is a typical reaction to ’round the clock opiate painkiller usage, as the body’s natural means of combating pain shut off, being told by the opiates that their jobs have been outsourced.

Soon I was taking the pills faster than I was getting prescriptions.  However, I did not have to go through physical withdrawal, because in Vancouver, if you’re willing to pay for pain pills rather than, or on top of, taking the ones prescribed to you in your name and thus paid for (at least in part, depending on your income) by provincial “fair pharmacare”, there is a place anyone can go and make such a transaction in a matter of seconds.  Indeed, despite the annoyingly tight control of prescription distribution for the consumers, a huge black market for prescription pills of all sorts still exists.  Examples of annoyances include the fact that due to the triplicate pads used to write these ‘scripts, you must pick up a new one in person – not much fun for someone immobilized by pain – because they cannot be faxed to a pharmacy or called in, but must bear original signitures on the first sheet of the three; as well, doctors are not allowed to give refills on narcotic medications, so you must visit your doctor each time you need more, and you must go often, as they are not allowed to distribute more than about a two week supply at a time.

Actually, it is hardly a “black market” in the traditional, underground sense.  At the Carnegie Community Centre in the heart of the notorious Downtown Eastside, located at Main Street and East Hastings Street, there is a very large open-air pharmacy run by civilians.  At almost all times, at

The open-air "pharmacy" where you can buy and sell pills, undisturbed by police, at Main and East Hastings

least thirty or so people are outside, earning a living – or supplementing social assistance payments of $520 per month, a joke of a cheque that is purported to cover all living expenses in the most unaffordable city in North America, due to housing costs thrust up by the mass investment of wealthy people from Hong Kong in real estate, beginning in the early nineties when fear that they would loose their fortunes upon returning from British colonial to Chinese communist government caused them to hurriedly put it somewhere else, overseas, but in the nearest and most pleasing housing market, that of Vancouver.  My bachelor suite in East Vancouver is a “bargain” at $800/month, not including utilities.  Many people my age, including my roommate from first year university, who insist on living downtown for the “view” of the skyline, Ocean, or mountains, go without furniture because their monthly rent is over double what I pay.

At the steps of the community centre, someone will approach you and ask what you’re looking to purchase (“Dillies?”, I asked for on a couple of desperate occasions, the street name for Dilaudid), and then direct you towards individuals with huge bottles of your pill of choice in their pockets that they were prescribed themselves.  The motivation to sell one’s prescription is high, as one eight milligram pill of Dilaudid costs ten dollars.  One twenty milligram pill of Oxycontin goes for twenty. Street drugs like crack cocaine and heroin are also available, but buying these off street dealers comes with an additional cost – twenty people died this year when a “bad batch” of heroin was sold on those steps.

At the end of the day, it ends up being easier to purchase a few extra pills at the “pharmacy” in front of the Carnegie than trying to get a legitimate prescription from a doctor.  Thus, it is more likely than not that someone on a high dose of an opiate like Dilaudid taken for chronic pain will end up there during the course of their treatment at least once or twice, now diving into dosages that are above those prescribed and known about by one’s doctor.  It is basically impossible to be honest about things, as if a patient so much as mentions the open-air, civilian-run pharmacy, s/he will be confronted with the strong possibility of being immediately cut off all pain medication – a pain patient’s worst fear, as not only will s/he face the notion of being in crippling pain once again, but also in crippling withdrawal – a state that is characterized by many “s” words:

  • Shakes
  • Shivers
  • Sweats, as one constantly shifts from being too hot to too cold, until one’s skin is covered in a film of sticky, smelly filth
  • Sleeplessness, characterized by feeling exahausted all of the time, but also as if someone stapled your eyes open
  • Spasms – both muscle twitches all over the body, and shooting pains in one’s bowels, as extreme constipation gives way to extreme diarrhea, or
  • Sphincter, that is, the loss of control of it :tai: :rolleyes:
  • Stomach upset, nausea and vomiting
  • Sensitivity to sound, light
  • Spitting, as one’s saliva tastes toxic
  • Swallowing, which becomes almost impossible as your throat seems to seal shut, so you get obsessed with trying.  And, last, but certainly not least…
  • Shits, The – the worst you’ve ever had – e.coli poisoning in Peru seemed like a cakewalk compared with this

After my surgery, the pelvic pain I had experienced beforehand immediately went away, giving me a new lease on life.  However, I faced a brand new demon.

My wonderful surgeon had always admitted that she did not know much about pain control, aside from finding Dilaudid most useful in her experience.  Evidently, she does not know much about how to taper off painkillers either.  Added to the fact that I was, at times, taking more Dilaudid than she was prescribing, things became very messy.  After the successful surgery, she immediately took me off the nine milligrams per day of extended release hydromorphone, and prescribed a bottle of 60, 40 mg immediate release tablets.  She told me just to take them at further and further intervals apart as the post-surgical pain went away and I no longer needed the use of their painkilling effect, and to come back and see her in two weeks if I happened to still be in pain.  The bottle lasted me one week – I was taking approximately 38 mg per day, just to avoid withdrawal.  Each morning that week, I would wake up to the sound of construction going on at a building across the back lane, feeling like someone was sawing through my head, which was covered in that awful, sticky film of sweat that is specific only to this kind of withdrawal, my temples and forehead already being pierced by the light coming through my windows.  Then came the stabbing, shooting pains in my butt, and the feeling of needing to vomit, though I never could – it is very hard for me to throw up, even when I’m really sick I have to help myself along by fingering my gag reflex.  Never mind the pain around the places inside my body where incisions had been made – next to both ovaries and at the top of my vagina – everything was painful.  The bottoms of my feet hurt when I walked.

So I went to see my GP, explaining that I was desperate, and desperately wanted to get off the Dilaudid.  She put me back up to the nine milligrams of the extended release version of the drug – telling me we would “go slow, and taper down by a milligram or two every few weeks” -to be picked up daily from the pharmacy: six, three milligram tablets – three to take when I woke up, and three to take before going to sleep at night.  However, I took the three and waited an hour, an hour and a half – and nothing, no relief, I still felt like death, so I would take the other three.  This kept me out of withdrawal during the day, and my regular sleeping pill regimen – 15 mg of Imovane (zopiclone) before bed – allowed me to sleep at night.  The next morning it would all begin again, only by the fifth day, the eightteen milligrams were no longer eliminating the symptoms of withdrawal, and I felt like the pain from the latter, largest incision, was getting worse.

I went back to see her, worried that I had pushed myself too hard and done some kind of damage – I started walking to the grocery store and running other errands a few days before the pamphlet I had, labelled “Vaginal Hysterectomy: What to Expect”, said that I should, because I had become so restless, lying around the house and watching television – this is not how I usually spend my time, and coupled with withdrawal, time seemed to have slowed down exponentially.

The good news was that I had not – one reason why I hadn’t been worried in the first place about going out was doctors have told me before (especiallly when I mangled my arms) that I am a fast healer.  The bad news was that my addiction to Dilaudid was severe, and beyond her expertise.  And so I sat in the waiting room of the Royal Oak Clinic, praying that a doctor there would help me save my life, as I could not go through this – I would start buying pills off the street – the urge was involuntary, and much bigger than me.  I sat and listened to people of all ages, sexes, and colours, some of them sweating profusely, talking about the exact same way I had been feeling for the better part of a week.

When I was called in to see the doctor, a young woman whose angel wings were almost visible to the naked eye, it was an immense relief to be able to be completely and brutally honest about the past several months, as I have been here – about the “career” of my addiction.  I left with a prescription for 30 mg of methadone, to be taken daily at the pharmacy.  The angel explained to me that methadone is essentially heroin, but in pure form.  About half an hour after taking my first dose, I felt true, absolute relief for the first time, as the withdrawal was not only calmed, but so were my worries about my finances, as there was no longer a possibility that I would have to spend money just to feel human.

My joints are still achey though, yet another joy of withdrawal, and I still experience some hot flashes.  My wonderful pharmacist, Maggie, told me that I will probably need to increase my dosage by ten milligrams.  Thus, I will return to the clinic tomorrow, when my new doctor (yet another new doctor!  ) is scheduled to be on shift again.

(to be continued…  )

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Posted in "Health Care", East Van, Laughter = Survival, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Sociology of Medicine, The Psych Ward

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Post-surgical Opiate Withdrawal Diaries: Introduction

Posted on May 19, 2011 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

First, I would like to send out a great big thanks to those that voted in the poll, where I asked whether or not you, my readers, wanted to hear about this topic or not.  Waking up – at 4 am , as indeed, my pre-solstice “hypomanic” period is definitely in full swing, and I rise and set with the sun – I discovered that in combining the facebook poll with the one on here, I already had an 8:1 majority who wanted to hear my voice on the topic.  Looking at the I.P. logs for this site, it also appears that the “1″ outlier vote belongs to a regular troll.  So, I’ll take it to be unanimous. ;)   As always, the fact that you are interested in reading my words means more to me than my words can express.  So, without further ado, I’m going to get right into the dirt.

Before I had a hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy: in laymans terms, removal of the fallopian tubes – an option I chose because though I wanted desperately to keep my ovaries if no pathology was found, as not to go into menopause at age 26, many if not most ovarian cancers start in a woman’s tubes – I had been taking the opiate painkiller Dilaudid (hydromorphone) on and off for a year and a half, and consistently (daily) for at least 6 months.  Drastically decreasing my chances of developing a “female cancer”, as uterine/cervical/ovarian/breast/etc. cancers are called within the medical industry/profession – in addition to relieving the terrible pain suffered due to endometriosis and a botched abortion, during which it was not discovered that my 10-12 week pregnancy was ectopic until the procedure had already been started and I was screaming, due to a misunderstanding about whether or not I had an ultrasound pre-procedure to locate the pregnancy – was very important to me since my mom died of breast cancer.  (I thus would like to once more remind other women how important this is, to make sure you have an ultrasound before you have an abortion – when I had my first abortion at the Morgentaler Clinic in Montreal at age 17, you were automatically given an ultrasound before any procedure was performed.  However, there I also had to pay $400 cash [in 2002], while here in British Columbia abortions are covered by our provincial health plan.  I have no idea how commonplace it is for women to receive an ultrasound in abortion clinics, but make sure that you have one before your procedure.  I was, and still am, shocked that this error was allowed to take place, yet it is just another example of us patients having to take our health into our own hands, often doing things that seem like they should be taken care of by a doctor.) I could go on about women’s health and safety forever, but it is high time to discuss a particular aspect of one woman’s health – particularly and respectively, the struggle with Dilaudid that belongs to me.

***

Though I used a fair bit of speed to get through grade twelve, and was known as quite the partier until about age 21, it was only in grade twelve – nearly a decade ago now – that I worried I had a problem with addictions.  Aside from that one wayward year, I have almost always been able to take or leave drugs, including alcohol under this heading (as it should be included!  ).  I enjoyed getting quite wasted – either on booze or ecstasy/MDMA, and dancing until six am at my favourite clubs, especially at age 18 when I lived in Montreal and the best D.J.s in the world performed regularly at after-hours clubs that I attended with my roomies.  However, I also enjoyed staying in, and didn’t “party” nearly as much as one of the gals, known to pull out a bottle of red wine and a bag of cocaine to celebrate a pre-exam Wednesday night, so I never thought much about addiction.  The only drug I took that year that made me consider institutionalizing myself was…Paxil. After taking one 20 milligram dosage of the popular SSRI antidepressant, I experienced my first full-blown manic episode.  Though I had always had trouble with insomnia, and heard voices telling me to do things when I was a young child that went away as I grew up, this was unlike anything I had ever gone through before – I could not sleep, eat, or calm my paranoia enough to exit my tiny, locked bedroom (think single bed leaving only a tiny walkway for me to reach the desk at the end of it – in fact, the aforementioned roommate who partied much harder than I used to show how unbelievably tiny it was to laughing guests all the time, much to my ire), I was having visual and auditory hallucinations that only seemed to get worse when I took over-the-counter sleeping medication, I believed I could see what was going on in the rest of our shared apartment without viewing it with my eyes, and my pupils were so huge that it looked like I was wearing those freaky black contact lenses like the guy in Fred Durst’s band, the one that came out with that “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, whaaaa!” song – ah, yes, “Limp Biscuit” :gila: .  In sum, I have never considered myself a “dual-diagnosis” mental patient, defined as one with a mood disorder combined with a substance abuse problem.  Yes, I used substances, and at times, quite avidly, but I could almost always take or leave them, especially once I had reached age 22.  When I was incredibly dedicated to finishing my B.A.(hons) in sociology and getting into graduate school, I was even completely clean and sober (that’s right – I didn’t have a single drink or smoke a single puff of MJ) for about two years.

Obviously, I never in my wildest imagination entertained the thought that in the latter half of my 26th year, I would be walking into a methadone clinic, begging them to save my life.  That was yesterday…

(to be continued, as it is time for my 6:30 am nap)

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Posted in "Health Care", Meds, Meds, Meds!, Sociology of Medicine

Tales of a Lost Girl – A New Battle, Against Prescription Opiate Painkillers

Posted on May 18, 2011 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

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This website, and especially the main bit – the blogging (i.e. writing) – has become such a reflection of my self and my life that when I feel there is an incongruincy between the two, I feel I’m being dishonest – I feel like I’m cheating on myself, my true self, with another iddy-biddy piece of myself, a dark piece that may be small, but right now feels much more mountain-like than molehill-like, as it has taken over all the good stuff underneath.  Yes, my heart and soul feel like an untapped goldmine, trapped beneath millenia of hard, unforgiving rock, prone to avalanches, its slopes incredibly slippery.

However, I’m not sure if you, my devoted readers, who have literally made my childhood dreams come true by taking interest in my writing, have any interest in hearing about this one – and I do not blame you if this is the case.

Thus, I have an incredibly important question to ask: Do you want to hear the story of my withdrawal from opiates, the story of this struggle that seems never-ending, a battle that begins the second I wake up every morning, and only lets me be at peace when I am able to sleep at night, though the sticky sweat that covers me when I do begin to open my eyes seems to tell a much, much different story yet?

I’ve created a poll on the facebook Practice of Madness fan page (where you may post anything you like, and I’m delighted that many already have :D   ) and I’m creating another one here (below).  Please answer honestly, and only if you are serious.  You may only answer once (software I’ve installed regulates this).  All my love, scars XO

Do you want to hear the story of my struggle with post-surgical opiate painkiller withdrawal?

  • Yes, please share. (75%, 3 Votes)
  • No, keep it between you, your doctor, and your hard drive. (25%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 4

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Posted in "Health Care", Meds, Meds, Meds!, Poetry, Prose, Personal, Sociology of Medicine

“A life without pap smears!” …and a life without…

Posted on May 11, 2011 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

"Watercolour Sunset"

…penises?  Methinky.  I just broke up with the last man/boy I believe I will ever break up with.  Why?  I, scars, a.k.a. ___ _____, hereby solemnly swear…

TO EMBRACE MY QUEERNESS FROM NOW ON, AND TO STOP BEING SCARED, BECAUSE THE ONLY TRUE ROMANCE I EVER HAD WAS WITH A WOMAN, AND I’M ONLY PHYSICALLY ATTRACTED TO OTHER WOMEN, AND I’M SO EFFING SICK OF PENISES, AND “PENIS MENTALITY” – NOT MEN, NOT EVEN HEGEMONIC MASCULINE PERSONALITIES (THOUGH THE TWO SEEM TO GO HAND IN HAND…;), BUT THOSE WHO ONLY THINK WITH ONE ORGAN, AND IT CERTAINLY AIN’T IN NO HEAD…AND I AIN’T GIVIN’ ANYMORE HEAD – I PREFER THE SALAD BAR, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A SALAD BAR GAL, EVER SINCE I WAS A GIRL, WITH MY BABY CORNS AND MY BEETS.  I’VE EVEN TOLD MY FATHER…THE ONE THING (ASIDE FROM ASKING OUT A LADY) I’VE ALWAYS BEEN SCARED OF –

“Dad, honestly, honestly – I’m done with men in a romantic context now.  I’m interested in women!”

He can’t help the slight look of alarm that crosses his face, it marks the gap between our generations, but that only means change has taken place since he grew up, so that look of alarm should be celebrated in a way – he understands where I’m coming from.  Because he isn’t a “penis thinker”, but guys like him seem fewer and farer between, especially in my generation.  Because he shares something with me that he never realized he did before – well, he had his hunches…there were several questionable sleepovers I held at his home – We both love women.  And I see how this doesn’t have to be a problem, how we can bond over this.  I can see his happy expression, whether it’s ten years away or two, when I bring my girlfriend back to the prairies to meet him.

Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of realizing.

I called my GP the other day to book an appointment to seek aid in a new battle – a battle against hydromorphone.  I never thought the substance was benign, but I did not know it would be this bad, or rather that I would feel this bad and “it” (not taking these pills anymore after surgery) would be so hard.  I was also, evidently, not expecting the receptionist to ask, “Is this to book a pap smear?  You’re due for a pap smear.”, to which I responded, in gleeful, glorious, realization -

“Wait, I don’t have a uterus anymore!  Nor a cervix…a life without pap smears!!“, I cried, dissolving into laughter like I’d just won 50.9% of the “popular” vote, shouting it to all of East Vancouver like the madwoman that I am.

The voice on the other line could not help but agree – this was a definite bonus of my early hysterectomy.  Early, as it would have come sooner or later, and who the hell’s to say later’s any better, because there is only now, and now I’m not in pain anymore!

I’m just slightly addicted to painkillers, and my GP will help.  It’s the first script for hydromorphone she’s ever written for me, dooming me to suffer through periods with only a handful of codeine pills because I was a patient with “mental health issues” and thereby “at risk” for developing fast addictions to pills of all sorts, apparently… funny, I thought that all opiate painkillers were, essentially, addictive drugs.  Addiction, of course, defined in concordance with the DSM - as tolerance and dependency. These drugs have this effect, of creating tolerance and dependency, in all people, as well as small rodents (I have a feeling cats are above it all, but maybe – maybe even cats).

It’s the first time I ever walked into her office demanding that I get off opiate painkillers.  She’s never treated me so gently before.  I hope I did something, thereby, not only for myself, but for the record – to set it straight, as I’ll be doing with records of various sorts over the next several months.  (I was first prescribed this at 15, with no intention of using it as anything but medicine.)

Doing so is even more overdue than my library books…. :shutup:

Sometimes you can’t get whole until you take the pieces apart, remove those that aren’t required, and put the puzzle of your body and mind back together, finding you’re a little closer, or maybe a lot, to a perfect fit.

more soon….scars XO

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Posted in East Van, Feminism and Madness, Laughter = Survival, Mad Society, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Sociology of Medicine, Transcend

Oh God, Delilah.

Posted on April 28, 2011 by scarsarestories| 2 Comments

Vaginal hysterectomy and bilateral-salpingectomy Monday morning.

Oh God, Delilah.

More soon.  For now, enjoy the additions to the soundtrack, soon available for download.  I feel a new chapter coming on.

scars XO

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Posted in Mad Music, Poetry, Prose, Personal, Sociology of Medicine

Commemorating my Mom’s Life on Her Birthday

Posted on March 3, 2011 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

Dear mommy,

Happy 61st birthday – the day of your birth on this planet called Earth – as I know you are in a much “saner” place right now, to call it something other than “beautiful” or “better” for a change, where these numbers are meaningless, where your sweet energy has found its perfect place, and where you’ve learned what life on and off this planet really means.  I know this because I’ve felt your strong presence guiding me through the darkest of times – you have been the light at the end of my tunnel so many times.  When I’ve been ill, you beckoned me back to health, and at my sickest, back to Earth.  It’s not my time yet.  Five years ago on New Year’s Eve when I attacked my arms with a razor blade, you showed me back to bed, bed – you didn’t need to speak – “We’ll be together in a moment, but this is not your time.”  A year earlier you helped bring me back from brain damage that doctors said I would likely never recover from – yes, mommy, I know you were with me there on the bathroom floor of the ICU, as I retaught myself how to make connections between people and objects, because the first thing I relearned was the relationship between mother and child.  I learned about how this relationship is made of unbreakable gold thread that crosses great distances.  Then, I saw how they crossed land and sea on this Earth – I went to the Pacific in my mind and knelt before you, both knowing and not knowing it was you – I was younger then and my spirituality was in its baby years.  Now I see how this thread crosses the boundaries of time and space, and I found our gold thread – that that floats invisibly, holding us close through memories and dimensions, and in Earthly form lay all those sordid teenage years in my drawer of horrors.  I was not ready to see it until this past Christmas, and it kept me alive, as despite the much different and quite horrifying situation I found when I arrived at a “home”, one that was never ours, though you danced in front of it that first night and it was wonderful in its time, I found the spool and I could see all of your almost unfathomably generous gifts, wrapped perfectly under a tree that was bountiful, not sparce and forced like the one that has found its way into that home lately.  It is not mine either, not anymore.  Mom, you taught me the generousity I carry out through my own life – this life that goes on, within us and without us – and it is one of the traits I am most proud of, as are so many that came directly from your teachings, mostly by silent and stoic example: to respect and to command respect (you know I’ve struggled with the latter part of this, but I take faith and hold pride in knowing that you know how far I have come, and how much greater things will be from this point forward), to be honest no matter how much it hurts – it is worth it and it allows us to be light enough to float the way you did, and last but not least, humour of a dark, unique, and witty breed.  How I wish I could laugh with you today, in the flesh, in your arms.  But, I am warmed by the wishes that I now have for my future.  Mommy, I am as excited for my future now as I was when I was a young child, daydreaming in class :wink: or nightdreaming, of what my adulthood would look like: my career, my family.  I haven’t had this since y:u left, but that is not your fault.  I had to find my way in this world that can be so cruel – you know that side, too, and in a way that neither Dad nor the sister I drew crayon angels for can, for we are both women that have seen the darkness that grown men can bring who falsely claim the name Joseph and try to make us into mangers.  I do not wish this upon anyone, especially not the little sister.  I ask, tearfully, how can she not remember how I took care of her for two summers?  But I know that you know, and must leave that frustration behind.  When she speaks of remembering “aunties”, but not me, I want to wail, I want to scream – and screaming helps, but not at one another, you said.  There are fewer and fewer places to scream aloud and alone, it seems, but I can and must accept that she may never remember, but that you were watching the whole time, and that this is enough.  It is enough that there are some things only you and I know and understand, even though your body and your words are not here, your spirit and your voice are.

I know now, mommy, how hard you struggled with the women and men who carry the title, “doctor”.  Sitting by your side through the blood tests, through the cycle of sickness and health and back, getting conflicting diagnoses, seeing you in curtained-off rooms with needles and machines that made scary noises prepared me for my own struggles with my body.  I remember so well – I understood then, and I’m not sure if you knew it, and I understand so much more today – when you told me how you felt trapped in your body, and how it felt unfair that although we all hated the growths under your soft skin that shouldn’t have been there, you were the only one who could not get away from them.  Your wise words help me every single day, not to be scared of what others know about but do not carry in their bodies and minds, things that should not be there, things that cause pain, things that do not threaten my life, but have caused me to become a chart, a binder, all “abnormalities” noted.  I remember how angry you were when a nurse flippantly told you, “…and if all goes well, maybe you’ll even be around for your daughters’ weddings!”  These women speak out of turn, reciting lines from a textbook rather than providing true empathy, and it is not their place.  Yet I still do not wish my plight upon them – yes, you taught me this.  You also taught me to speak back to words said out of turn, out of line, out of order.  You taught me how to say, “Excuse Me”, and have its various meanings firmly understood.  I am frightened about my upcoming surgery, two months less one day from now, but I know you will be holding my hand and you will let me squeeze as hard as I need to, like you used to when I had to have a dentist fill cavities in my teeth, gagging on a dental dam and feeling helpless when the sound of a drill began.  I want to visit you, I want to talk, then I realize we do so all of the time – it’s just the language that is different, and the lack of your warm body to hug (“ugg” – mommy, they named a pair of ridiculously expensive snowboots after the way I pronounced “hug” as a little girl – I smile, knowing you are laughing just as hard as me).  Oh, mommy, you have saved me so many times, and brought me so much comfort.  I do not even remember the five days I spent on blood dialysis – I know that is because you took that pain from me.  I know I took some of yours away, but I wish it could have been more.  I hear your voice as I write these words, though, telling me to save my wishes for myself and my future.  Don’t worry – I have all of the wishes I need for myself now, shiny and countless, like the ones we threw into the fish pond at the Conservatory or the Paddlewheel.

I feel like when you were taken back to the Earth, to the Sky, I was just beginning to know you, but then realize that there is a knowing that goes beyond telling stories of a marriage gone wrong and a man carving your name into his arm with a knife, of how you were too scared to experiment with drugs and perhaps regretted this, of how you were able to levitate to the ceiling and watch yourself washing hardwood apartment floors.  I am made of you, and knowing myself is knowing you, so I get to know you better each day.  More than that, in each gesture you showed to me as a child you showed me your soul.  Even if Dad never tells me another story about your lives together, we were the two people who knew you best.  We were.  We are.  For this, we are so blessed.  Mommy, my Demeter, knowing you was the biggest, best, most amazing gift you ever gave me, and continue to give me.  Thank-you doesn’t seem sufficient – words are limiting – but thank-you for holding my hand.

Catching tadpoles at Bird’s Hill Park Beach.  Lilacs at the legislature – snip, snip – Snapdragons in the summer.  Wild roses by the train tracks.  Treehouse hotdogs.  Jello and Kool-Aid.  Cold washcloths over fevers.  Pastellia (she is free in my mind, though he thinks it’s funny to put her in a cage – he is a fool, she is free no matter where she is – mine and only mine) and Bearnut.  Playing pots and pans.  Hairbrushes, kitchen chairs, braids, lemon juice.  Ripping towelbars off walls.  Bees climbing inside the Snapdragons and terrifying spiders on the blue spruce tree behind.  Blades of grass with red eyes.  Staying up forever, into the night – to make me feel safe or to talk or to laugh.  Grandma’s vinegar.  White whine in ginger ale.  Ice cold water from the hose in the backyard.  Boiling water on the stove.  Yellow knee-highs.  White overalls.  A purple blouse.  An empty bird cage.  Always cats.  Chlorine hair.  Sunstreaked hair.  Pierced ears.  Opals.  Mr. Enns.  Mrs. Hansen.  Backwards letter “k”s.  Tse and chi.  Prank phone call catch.  Minnesota.  Montana.  Wyoming.  Bleeding and bleeding and preparing to bleed.  Strep throat.  Pink popsicles.  One last round of antibiotics.  The woman holding balloons.  Wool toques.  Where did you think he put it?  Squirrels and acorns.  Last gift: Luggage.  Emergency.  ER.  Stoked foreheads.  Icing.  Icicles.  Flying.

I finally know, mommy, that you’ll always love me, just as I’ll always love you.

The footprints in my sand are not Jesus’s.  They’re yours.  A perfect size 7.

Special wishes today, and on so many days.

Your daughter for eternity.

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Treated like a Criminal for Being in Pain? Got Mental Illness, too?: Psychiatry’s Fetish With “Dual Diagnosis”

Posted on December 15, 2010 by scarsarestories| 5 Comments

I’ve been bleeding for eleven days now.

I am sick and tired.  My endometriosis is getting worse just as it did last winter.  Each period is more painful, and I’m driven a little batty this time, by my family’s reaction to the fact that I control the pain with hydromorphone (Dilaudid).  She’s bipolar and she’s taking potentially addictive medication.

Though I determined last week that there was no way that the year was going to end with me playing Tori’s “”Pretty Good Year”, as the last one did, this week, I though had a pretty good period, as day four of twenty-eight turned to day five of twenty-eight and the pain I experience during my ” :moon:  :clock: ” – compared with that of childbirth by many, due to endometriosis, and now, my doctor believes, perhaps other abnormalities in my blood – was ceasing already!  Usually it lasts for eight or nine days.  Day nine was the day of my stepgrandmother’s funeral, and in the middle of the service, I felt the thunder after the bolt of blood that had strangely come out earlier in the morning.

I had been pretty wrong.  Evidently, things were only just getting started!

I am also sick and tired of being treated like a criminal for being in excruciating pain.  It’s such an excellent time, too, to be treated as such.  By your family.  By a walk-in clinic doctor, by a receptionist.  You can hardly walk as you grasp your lower abdomen.  Tears eventually come, the shakes, pain radiates and numbs our legs.  Should I stretch out or go for the fetal posion, that is the question?  The only question, as the pain is all you can think about.  As you can tell, I like to ask a lot of questions, and ones that are much more complicated than about how to position my body!

I panicked.  What if more blood came, what if it came in ceaseless waves, down the elavator shaft,

The Shining,

Twin girls bleeding, my self, split into two.

My uterus is a giant appendix.  I am highly evolved.  The world is overpopulated.  30,000 children starve to death each week.  Some equilibrium must be established.  What if it ruptures?  Pow!

K. and I departed the bible town of Steinbach, where the funeral for the devoutly Evangenllical woman was held (no, my family is very much agnostic, and even daddy started laughing when the name “Jesus” was mentioned about 10 times in one sentence to head back for Winnipeg.  Destination 1: Four Rivers Medical Clinic.  Here, as I describe my “reason for visiting” to the receptionist at the desk.  Waiting to have a hysterectomy at age 26.  A sudden event.  Fear.  The Loathing is obvious and mentioning it would be overkill.  She looks earnestly concerned and I actually expect the doctor I will see, at this same place where I was diagnosed with bronchitis simply by answering “green”, when asked what colour my spit-up was.

A young woman doctor enters the room, she seems swift, I cannot forgive myself for having hope, nor can I rid myself of it.  I repeat my symptomatology.

“Okay, take off your bottom parts and cover yourself with the sheet and I’ll be right back.”

I’m all too familiar with this rigamarole, with fact that this paper sheet serves absolutely no purpose, but to allow the doctor to go see another patient and turn them back out so that the assembly line may function properly.  Patient in, (character?) judgment made, prescription written or not written, patient out.  When she returns, I am instructed to “assume the position” for a gyno exam.  She uses a light to look for signs of an infection, even though I told her I was not sexually active.  I don’t blame her, I couldn’t possibly be telling the truth about any of this.  Patients are guilty until proven innocent when they claim to be in pain.  Never mind the fact that she asked me if I was on any medication, and, as I am honest, I named an antidepressant, mood-stabilizer and anti-anxiety medication, indicating that I was most definitely diagnosed with BIPOLAR DISORDER. She then presses down on the left side of my lower abdomen and I let out a yelp.  This is the end of the exam.  Something makes me think she was a little more dilligent during exams while in medical school.  And the Four Rivers Medical Clinic in Winnipeg, MB, officially gets a failing grade in the books of Scars.

“You might have a cyst.  You can go to the emergency room if you want to get an ultrasound, but you’ll have to wait for a long time.  They won’t give you anything for the pain, neither will I.  I can give you some naproxen…”

She is so dismissive I have trouble seeing her as a fellow human being.  I am struggling to get off the table without moving muscles that will cause more pain, and she’s offering me Aleve?  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she adds, to boost my confidence that nothing is seriously wrong one last time.  Such a statement coming from a doctor is always oh so reassuring.

Why don’t you tell me the goddamn truth; “You’re 26, it looks like something is growing on your left ovary for the third time, you were born with a reproductive system doomed not to function, but to cause you immense pain.  I’m not going to do anything for you because it doesn’t effect me.  What effects me is the possibility of getting in trouble for prescribing painkillers to a diagnosed bipolar person who will likely eat them all at once to get high or try to kill themselves, or for sending you to have an expensive test done upstairs when I don’t really remember what a cyst feels like.  No one else will either because we just want to see as many people as we can in order to get paid ”

I stop her before she walks out, “So this isn’t something to really, really worry about today?:

“Probably not.”  She looks terribly ambivalent.

This is not acceptable.  I don’t feel a miniscule bit more confident that I am going to be just dandy despite unusual symptoms I have never experienced before.  Thus, I call my own doctor’s office, and request that I come in for an emergency appointment.  The receptionist says that she will call me back “once she has talked to her”.  I decide direct action is in order, and go immediately to her office.

“May I help you?”

The same nasal voice that answered my phone call is before me and her matching face is pissed off.

“Dr. Whittaker does not work that way!  You cannot just walk in!”

“My sister offered to drive me.  I have nowhere else to go and I’m desperate.  I need to know what is going on with my body.  I shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

“Well there’s no guarantee that you’ll get to see her!”

“What should I do then?”

“Well whatever, you can sit there and wait, b          ut she probably won’t get to your file.  She’s already late.  Do whatever you want!” She glares at me as if I just insulted her mother or something.

“I’ll wait.”

She rolls her eyes.  It is 3:00 pm.  She tries to get me out four more times using various tactics, but I don’t budge.

“Dr. Whittaker has an apointment of her own and she’s alreadu running behind.”

“You have to book an appointment.”

“You might just be sitting there for nothing!”

Finally, she brings out the big guns.

“You’re not legally allowed any more medication!  There are laws about how much a doctor can dispense!  No, no, look at this chart!  You should have only taken 39 pills out of fifty, or 37!  45! 41…”

“That’s not what this is about, but that is absolutely untrue.  I started bleeding on Saturday.  Seven times eight is fifty-six.”

Thinking back, I have no idea why this mathematical operation spoke to my case.  I knew I could have had a refill by a week ago, but didn’t reqire one.

4:30.  “Okay, you have one minute!”

At this point, I’ve been crying about what a sham our health care system is, aside from my pain, and about the lack of humanity that characterizes so many of my everyday experiences.  I’m caught off guard.

“Um, should I follow you?”

“YES!  C’mon, c’mon…k, there you go.”

As anticipated, things are quickly resolved with my doctor.  She explains that I might have another cyst, but that it would not explain the bleeding, and that she would need the results of the very specialized blood tests she ordered to be able to determine that – if it had something to do with the strange antibody that caused my mom to have eight miscarriages, or if endometriosis was not alone as a festering mess in my abdominal cavity.  Maybe something else triggered it, maybe it triggered something else – I’ve learned that medicine is a crapshoot a lot of the time, that correlations are often proven spurious, and then proven correct, and then proven spurious again, before any kind of theory that seems sound is established.

She hands me a prescription for an extended release version of hydromorphone and I’ll see her on December 22nd.  One week.  One appointment.

I am feeling dejected and furious on top of the pain.  The pharmacist’s assistant who takes the prescription is the only person today who asks:

“Are you okay?”

I give a slight rant, that can be summarized in the statement, “Why would I be having a hysterctomy at age 26 if I wanted to chow down on painkillers all the time?”

She was a Goddess, horrified at the way I had been treated all day after leaving a funeral early and told me she would bump me up if she could, as the expected wait was forty-five minutes.  <ouuuuuuuuuch>  I paced the aisles of Shopper’s Drug Mart pointlessly, knowing their entire inventory off by heart by now, kneeling to look at products for no reason but the fact that this position provided some relief.  I was very surprised when but ten minutes later I felt a tap on my shoulder – the curly-haired Goddess that had taken my prescription reappeared before me with my painkillers.

I thanked her profusely, as if it were not for rare gems like her that show a little humanity, a little kinship in the sisterhood, a little sympathy for someone in obvious pain – even though she stood in front of a screen listing a hell of a lot of psychiatric medications, perhaps even all thirty or so that I’ve been on at some point in the past! – I may not get out of bed in the mornings.  It is people like her, and like you who understand, who empathize with your fellow man and woman, that are the basis for any hope for our world to get better.  In my tiny little journey around town, the discrimination and stigma that so many of us deal with daily, took place.  We must stick together, sisters and brothers, and show each other love, like the dear reader who sent me the reply below in purple sent to me last time I wrote of my sheer exasperation with people, including friends, treating me like a “drug-seeker” when I had a problem getting a old of my pain medication at “that time of the month” (during my damn period!  While menstruating!  What’s the big deal about that, too?  Why should it be embarrassing?).

Before her letter, I must tell you of an advertisement for the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) website I found in last week’s McLean’s Magazine, the Canadian equivalent of Time or Newsweek that showed the root of the bias that is demonstrated against people diagnosed as “mentally ill”  when they complain of pain.  I ripped it out and intended to take a photograph of it, but instead threw it in the lanudry (in a sweater pocket, I’m not that crazy! :hammers ), thus I must describe it.  It showed a picture of an empty bed adorned with some very expensive looking sheets and stated something along the lines of:  ‘You have a meeting scheduled for eight am and it is three am.  But you pick up the phone and listen anyway, because he is your brother.  Jim has bipolar disorder and is addicted to the painkiller Oxycontin.  …There is help available…’ (emphasis in original!)

Spend $30,000 and there won’t be any more phone calls, from this annoying “bipolar addict” that you must answer because he is your blood brother.  A litany of things about the advert pissed me off, but as I ended up in a situation that embodied many of those things, let me just say one thing:

The way the ad is worded makes in sound like “Jim” was addicted to Oxycontin because of his pre-existing bipolar disorder.  Most individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder are not addicted to Oxycontin or any other narcotic, but ads like this one propogate the myth that the “mentally ill” are involved in some kind of illegal activity.  It is this falsehood, that results in people not getting the resources they need, whether they be painkillers to treat real pain, or a place to live, as grant upon grant to open a group home in a certain area is shot down due to neighbours who believe that it would bring drugs and perverts and even homicidal schizophrenic maniacs into the house next to where innocent little Mindy and Matthew live.  I don’t know about you, but all the “crazy” people I know are a lot less frightening than the so-called “sane”.  In truth, it would liven up the neighbourhood, and probably teach those kids a little something about community, understanding, and demonstrate that we’re not actually so different after all – that it’s true, all madness takes is a little stumble, a little fall… but that with a little help from another human being one can get back up again quite easily, but without that small lift, that tiny bit of compassion shown, your sisters and brothers, for we are all sisters and brothers, may decide that it just isn’t worth it…are you okay with letting them die?  Is your answer to that question sane?

I know that if it were not for the hands that have reached out to me when I’ve been down, because of this recent pain condition, or any of the many past and current troubles in my life, I would not still be here.  I started to go mad in Vancouver when my roommates just would not talk to me at the end of the day.  There is something greatly unnatural about not talking with the people you live with at the end of the day.  Perhaps not every day – but for weeks at a time?  Silence?  I take great joy in smiling at strangers, having a chat with someone at the busstop, or talking to the fellow who everyone else standing in line to pay thinks is out of his mind, and should therefore be ignored.  I do not do it because I think it might save someone’s life, I do it because it is fun, it makes my world more colourful, my experience of it more rich, my perception more deep.  The truth is, a tiny act of kindness like that which the pharmacy Goddess showed me could stop someone from jumping off of a bridge.

Hell, maybe such little things stop me from deciding to become “addicted to hydromorphone”!

And not because I’m “bipolar”, but because I’m human, and humans are by nature social beings.

Because my family often fails to see the human in me.  I guess they must learn, though my father does not show much interest in learning, or rather unlearning, and thus changing.  If my sister, never diagnosed as a madwoman, had endometriosis and was taking hydromorphone, the wish would be for her to be freed of her disease.  Instead I am the physically ill one right now, and my dad does not tell me, “it will sure be a relief when you can get around to doing _____ when you’re not in so much pain”, he tells me, “it will sure be a relief when you can get around to doing ______ when you’re not on those painkillers.”  My every move is judged.  Hydromorphone causes certain side-effects in anyone who takes it.  Dizziness.  Lightheadedness.  Fatigue.  However, when I stumble or my eyes cloud over for a minute my father, my little sister, and my stepmom,  automatically think that I’ve popped extra pills, to get “high”, I suppose.

No.  I do not like feeling tired.  Don’t you know me at all??  I like to go and go and go.  I like to walk like I’m on a mission, because I am, not limp and stumble over things.  But that’s how powerful such messages in the media are – that they cause family members to see their own fellow family members, who are not only in pain, but also “bipolar” – and thus “unstable”, “impulsive”, “careless”, etc. – as pill-poppers rather than just people in pain.

So I’m incredibly lucky to have made connections here with women and men like Hilary Hebert, who are freethinkers!  Full of love!  And take time out of their day to make sure we’re all okay. :kisss

Speaking as a woman who knows the monthly pain from hell: A week of pain killers a month doesn’t qualify you as a junkie. Though it is very difficult, try to ignore the ignorance of others. I always found the comments of women who have “normal” periods to piss me off. I have given birth twice. The pain I experienced for days on end every month was more intense than squeezing a human out of my vagina. Most women opt for some sort of drug while in labor. If you experience pain that is equal to labor every month for days, why wouldn’t you take something to dull what you feel? People who have never dealt with the pain of a very grumpy (to say the least) uterus have no right to add their thoughts to the matter. I had surgery 3 years ago to “fix” my problem uterus. It was a HUGE fight here in the states to have it done because I was only 26. The procedure I went for was less invasive than removing organs, but effective. I will never be able to have another child, but it’s all good. I still have a period about every other month. However, I guess it is a period that is experienced by the keepers of a “normal” uterus. It only lasts 5-7 days instead of 12-14 days and I have cramps instead debilitating pain. I’m sending you good thoughts. That will definitely not help with the pain you feel, but know that there women in this world who know what you are experiencing, and do not judge your choice in pain management during the time you need it. Love, love!

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Posted in "Health Care", Ads and Commercials, Bipolar, Feminism and Madness, Mad Society, Sociology of Medicine

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SNDRI (Serotonin, Norepinephrine, Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor Antidepressants!) – The Next Revolution in Mental Health Treatment: An Acronym

Posted on December 2, 2010 by scarsarestories| 15 Comments

To your neighbourhood pharmacy!

K.’s biopsychology professor mentioned Effexor in class today.  I had told her before how in high dosa, like the massive 450 mg I take each morning, it actes on three different neurotransmitters – serotonin, norepineprhrine, and dopamine – unlike SSRIs that only act on one.  However, it is classified as an “SNRI” – a serotonin, norepinephrine inhibitor – no mention of dopamine.  Thus, her prof did not mention dopamine, and  K. wanted to know who was right about its effect on the consumer: the woman taking the drug, or the man and professor who was speaking about it.  The effect on dopamine bit did ot make sene to her.

We did a little research, and found that I was correct, but also that it is, indeed, quite accidenta lthat dopamine is affected – “sometimes” (yes, to quote, and to use the “thought to work” language so typuical of literature on psych meds, particularly antidepressants) norepinephrine ends up carrying dopamine proteins back into reuptake “as well”.  This led us to a “wiki” page on the development of a new class of antidepressants not yet approved for consumer use, but in the process of clinical trials (so they should be released in eight weeks or so :wink: ) called…

SNDRIs!!!

…no, this isn’t a joke.  How I wish it was, as being a victim/survivor of taking an off-label-high (375 mg is supposed to be the daily maximum) dosage of Effexor (an SNRI that becomes an SNDRI “sometimes”;), and dealing with both the side-effects of the drug, that have me up to 8 mg clonazepam per day now, to steady my hands and calm the scary thoughts that otherwise enter my mind all day, as well as the withdrawal syndrome when trying to get off the stuff -  what doc’s call “vivid dreams” unimaginable night terrors, brainzaps, and basic incoherence – I find this development disgusting.  As you can see here on the page I speak of, two have already been named – Bicafidene, and Tesofensine.  As well, you get a rather rare look at the patenting of different chemicals by pharmaceutical giants before they are put to any use, if you follow the links (well, and one compound still in its original experimental stages of development is outright named “Lilly LR-5182 WF-23″. The importance of developing new antidepressants is justified by the W.H.O. (World Health Organization) by the “fact” that by the year 2020, “depression” will be just as common “disease” as cancers and heart disease. :najiss  I guess they anticipate the world to be an even more depressing place to live by then.

Wait, scratch that – I forgot, depression is a disease like cancer, it doesn’t have anything to do with being sad about one’s environment or the state of the world.  Silly me, always making these spurious connections between quality of life and “mental health”, blaming society rather than individual “abnormality”, particularly “chemical imbalances” in the brain!  Tje W.H.O. goes on to say that SNDRIs are oh so great because they will not only be able to treat depression, but also alcohol and cocaine addiction.  Call me crazy and slap me silly, but this seems a little bizarre to me, as in our research, K. and I also found that there is one other SNDRI that has been around for a long time – since Freud’s days, in fact!  Take a gander at what it might be…




COCAINE!!!

although, unlike other SNDRIs, cocaine doesn’t have a half life over much more than half an hour.  People tend to use it in a “binge-type fashion”, that is, over the course of an evening, or perhaps even a couple of days.  Not everyday.  That’s when the intervention team gets called in.  That’s when someone is called an “addict” by their family an friends.

Luckily, antidepressants aren’t addictive!  You just have to take them everyday.

Get ready for the SNDRI revolution!

Speaking of “street drugs”, the spectacular writing that can be found on the hate blog dedicated to me (I couldn’t help but take a peek for the first time in a couple of months after exhausting all other websites I could think of during my insomniatic sprees  lately, never mind the fact that Law and Order: Criminal Intent is becoming awfully repetitive), put together by two of my three exes of long-time relationships, who connected despite never meeting in person, living 2000 miles apart, and not knowing each other’s full names (you may want to read this post if you’re new to this site) is quite focused on that topic right now, meaning ex #2 (the drug-addled one, not the one that was charged with domestic abuse with a weapon and who is using a photograph I took as his image ["gravatar"] – is that theft of intellectual property, or just really moronic?) must be doing most of the writing.  Actually, the quality of the site has increased quite a bit since it’s no longer strictly dedicated to taking shots at me (I’m not an I.V. drug user, as the individual described in this particular piece is!…or a “female sociopath” as originally reported by the fellas, who I’m sure would be much more intriguing if you’re into the Aileen  ), and seems to actually have become a compilation of creative writing.  I cringe at explicit instructions on how to use a syringe, though…I wonder what the hell he’s up to.  Playing with syringes, I suppose…  :amazed:

Q: Where was my mind?

A: In SNDRILand, I suppose…

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Posted in Effexor is Evil, Mad Society, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Sociology of Medicine

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Dilaudid, Lady Di, and a “Royal Engagement”?

Posted on November 17, 2010 by scarsarestories| 2 Comments

Some may find this post very offensive, so you may want to skip it if you:

  • Are a fan of the British “monarchy”
  • Think very highly of the English “Royal Family”
  • Think Princess “Lady Di” Diana was a saint
  • Have a huge crush on her son, Prince William
  • You are offended by the fact that I choose to take opioid painkillers  :exclamati for a week each month for to manage my menstrual pain multiplied exponentially compared to what most women experience during their periods because I have a disease called “endometriosis“, and think this qualifies me as a drug addict :rolleyes:, or, the more colloquial term that is thrown my way very, very often because of my choice to use both homeopathic remedies and hydromorphone – “junkie”.  I have tried, literally, everything else that has been suggested to me by friends, doctors, the “Internets”, books, and any other source of information to resolve the pain, from hormone replacement therapy to some free reiki at a folk fest.  Unfortunately, if I do not add the evidently blasphemous “narcotic painkiller”, I have to spend five to eight days out of every twenty-eight curled up in the fetal position, crying more often than not.  I do not think I should have to suffer such miserable paralysis for such a significant block of time out of each moon cycle feeling like someone is tearing my guts out when there is a way to dull the feeling.  However, I do not like being drowsy and foggy in the head either, so I am planning on getting a hysterectomy when I move back to my chosen home (at age 26 or 27).  I guess I’m a pretty big fan of choice. WWJD?!!!!! (what would junkie do – choose to become voluntarily infertile well before her thirties, or keep the prescription for pills supposedly “3 limes stronger than heroin”, whatever that means :confused: , and a “junkie” – an offensive word to begin with in my mind) probably would.  Furthermore, I broke up with a partner that I loved and still love, though always more as a dear friend, because I could not stand to watch him self-destruct with the aid of massive quantities of drugs, including opiates of all sorts.  I just do not enjoy synthetic opiates.  As a teenager, I enjoyed stimulants.  Perhaps I’m, once again, plagued for being honest about this, even though I’m honing in on 30 years-old…

<Alright!  I’ve officially paid for my blasphemous thought re: the Princess!  I am relieved of any cognitive dissonance as I would be if I confessed to a Priest or psychiatrist!  The stark immaturity and nastiness of other women never ceases to amaze me.  What this time?  My dad’s first look at me on day one of my period (groggy yet still in a great deal of pain ad nearly immovable, clumsy as all hell, incredibly light-sensitive) while not on antipsychotics, that shut down my reproductive system by reducing dopamine – and no, your doc/psydoc will not tell you about this consequence – in at least seven years happens to coincide with an e-mail cc’d to him from my last former roommate, a secret neo-con dressed up as a hippie, dreadlocks full of dandruff down to the waist and all, stating that she had a great time throwing out all items I forgot as I packed up two years of life in eight hours after making the split-second decision to stay with my dad in Winnipeg, Manitoba, while applying to law schools to save some dough, claiming that she found “CRACK COCAINE” (capitalization in original) in my old bedroom. :lol:   This utter impossibility, I’m guessing, were mistaken remnants of either some actual rocks – the kind that come from the Earth – that I spilled from a lucky bamboo plant, or bits of drywall that are scattered about this apartment because each time her live-in boyfriend goes on his weekly whisky-binge (alcohol of course not being a drug because of its legality) he punches a few new holes in the drywall of the place, after which she subsequently leaves giant gashes on his face with her nails.  She goes on :lol: to state that she kicked out not only me, but my “issues”!  This hipster really had me fooled.  Her dad grows pot for the government and her boyfriend spends his days bumming around local parks selling pot – other pot, as to make as little profit possible.  She’s an “artist” – I should have been tipped off when she bought a piano, just assuming she would be able to play anything she pleased though she had never tinkled the ivories before in her life.  These are the particular baby demons I spoke of recently.  I guess the saturation of the port-city with crack and heroin makes this a popular one among catty women.  Dad, you can be assured that I am not on crack.  Remember the time I had been “manic” for two weeks and finally decided to overdose on Lithium after the boy I was living with at the time arrived home to show me the gorgeous crackpipe he had bought, this being my last sraw with “eality”?  Yeah.Ironically, she had his e-mail address in the first place due to communication required because of my endometriosis “issue” – ladies – what the eff happened to the sisterhood?!  “CRACK COCAINE”…

Realization: This second woman to show no compassion for my womanly problems shares a great deal with the other.  Both are spoiled only children who had incredibly idyllic childhoods that involved travelling the world.  Both have been lucky enough never to have any real tragedy enter their lives…yet.  Both have wardrobes that fill multiple closts.  Both have claimed at times that I am their “best friends”, but have also made me cry blows by saying some of the nastiest things to me I’ve ever been told.

Note to Self: Red flags when meeting new people – be very weary of women in their early twenties with dreads but suspiciously expensive looking clothing.  Perhaps also ask how many times they’ve been to Coachella and if they fell in love with “OK Computer” when they were sixteen or just started listening to this really crazy but great singer named Thom Yorke.   :think: :think: :think: :think: :think: :think: :think: :think: …oh dear.

The Original Point of this Post?

Today I found out that a “street name” for Dilaudid is “Lady Di”.  The street names for drugs never fail to amuse me.  The ecstasy pills imprinted with jumbo jets that were called “airplanes” before 9/11 and then suddenly rose in price and became “Bin Ladens” post “terrorist attack” still take the cake.

Then I remembered the announcement of this Prince William/Kate Middleton engagement this morning and my giggles felt very guilty.

I feel I had a lot more to say about that, but am now.

I am in the latter half of my twenties and the other little girls are still trying to get me in trouble with daddy by making up stories?

How long until I get accused of stuffing my bra with luncheon meat (no word of a lie) like I was by a “BFF” or whatever the equivalent slang nonsense was in the early ’90s?  Wait, I don’t wear bras any more.  Undershirts all the way, baby.

I would have to be using duct tape.

Man, forget the man-children.  They were just coddled and now they are lazy.  It’s the women-children that are ruthless.

…if the girls can’t be women, how the hell are they going to learn to be men?!?

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Posted in Feminism and Madness, Laughter = Survival, Sociology of Medicine

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What is PMS (Pre-menstrual Syndrome)?

Posted on November 13, 2010 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

Shocking new evidence reveals, despite popular belief, and the following offensive images…

(If I saw a guy wearing this shirt any day of the month, I would kick him in the balls. Hard. And probably more than once. Just to let ya know! ;)

…it does not exist!

It began as a joke, then became quite serious, then was realized to be 99.9999….% accurate, in the 99.9999% of women of child-bearing age who experience menstruation to some degree.  This shocking new finding was discovered by scarsarestories last night, November 12, 2010:

12/11/10!!!!

Indeed, this was no accident.  She was not in the laboratory, nor menstruating, but feeling slightly weepy.  She went outside to smoke a cigarette and looked at the moon.  Yes, her “moon time” was only a day or two away – she was prone to start bleeding anytime within the next 24-48 hours.  “Oh, PMS…” she thought.

Then, the revelation jumped suddenly into her mind.  Whether or not Diana, Sarasvati, or any other bloody wise Goddesses were also in the room cannot be determined.  In fact, as her findings are based on the simplest of logic, and she had just begun to look at materials to study for the LSAT, her astonishing discovery may ironically have been caused in part by a standardized test that looms from patriarchical rule.

Her logic, and now Our logic draw from the following simple deductions:

  • (As stated) 99.999% of the population of women of child-bearing age menstruate.
  • Our linear perception of time and space necessitates that there will be a “period before her period” :lol: – that is to say, there must be a state of “pre”, before there can be a state of “menstrual”.  Every woman that bleeds doesn’t before she does.  Further, the day or two before she bleeds, have been labeled as “pre”-blood (although the entire month could be considered “pre-menstrual”, that opens a whole other can of worms and historical discourse, so let’s not let our minds wander now).
  • A “syndrome” is defined as a negative abnormality of some sort – certainly one that occurs in less than 50% of the general population.  For example, “Down’s Syndrome”.  At my current age, there is about a 0.12% chance that if I were to give birth, the baby would be born with this condition, impairing “normal” development.
  • However, all women that menstruate go through a period (no pun intended, really) of “pre-menstruation”! In preparation to shed her womb, certain hormonal changes take place during this time that may or may not cause varied degrees of increased emotionality and abdominal cramping, among other things.  This is a natural and necessary bodily phenomenon that happens to all of us women – 51% of the world population!
  • Something that happens to all members of a certain population cannot be called a “syndrome”!  A “syndrome” describes “abnormality”!  “Pre-menstruation” is the normalist of all normalities in a normal, normal world!
  • Thus…take off that “S”.  There is no such thing as “PMS”, only “PM”.  There is no such thing as “PMS-ing”!!! It could be argued that the term “PM-ing” could be substituted by the men who use this popular term to describe a woman in a bad mood, a woman who doesn’t agree with a statement he just made, a woman who doesn’t feel like licking his balls, etc.

…Liberate yourselves, ladies, and take that damn “S” off of “PMS”!

And this chick …full of s**t (speaking not only of her t**s)! Women didn’t make it up, men did!!!! (considering the vast number of female physicians practicing in 1923, this can also be taken as Truth, based on simple logic…Cheers!      )

:cystg


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Posted in Feminism and Madness, Laughter = Survival, Sociology of Medicine

New Benefits for the Disabled Under Stephen Harper’s “Canada Action Plan”: Massive Cutbacks Disguised as Bonuses

Posted on November 12, 2010 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

“Oh, no, you’re much too ‘high functioning’.  So, what else was that you needed from me?”

This was the answer my doctor in Vancouver (General Practitioner/”Mental Health”… Enthusiast/Poor Mathematician – that one) gave me when I asked her about renewing my papers for the Canada Disability Tax Credit/Benefit.  I knew there was more to the story because the phrase “high functioning” was stated.  There’s always more to the story when a doctor utters this excuse for not signing some kind of government or other document.  I did not press her – she has certainly never been unfair about signing off on a well-deserved absence from work or school, whether due to “physical illness”, “mental illness”, or a combination thereof (the latter generally being the rule – often but not always caused by the medication that I take or have taken for “mental illness” :doctor: ).  I was calm, as I also knew the answer awaited me in my hometown, in the office of a psychiatrist with some anarchist tendencies.  (Scroll down to the red points at the end if you aren’t interested in the rest of this article to find out why you are no longer going to receive your tax credit).

You see, when “our” Prime Minister Stephen Harper released a list of new “benefits” under the incredibly original title for the equivalent of a “stimulus package” (Canada Action Plan) – I acted like a good little patriot should and scoured the website version of the documentation for any action that might stimulate me :twisted: .  In other words, I found my convoluted way to the pages that purported to list any new benefits for “individuals” and “students”, as I was both an individual and a student at the time.  The fifty-plus-page document that appeared before me was certainly not as deceptively accessible as the button with the smiling faces of “individuals, including students” that I finally located was, but Firefox could take care of that for me.  I began typing search terms into the “find” box (activated by choosing “find” under the edit menu on the toolbar) that applied to me.  Some words and disappointments in, I typed in “disability”, recalling that I had been receiving this tax-deduction (passed along to my father most years as I did not make enough money to be asked to pay tax by Harper, myself – this is an option with a lot of tax credits up here in the land of igloo-dwellers) from 2005-2009.

Success!  “An extra $453 (dollars) to be designated for each individual receiving the disability tax benefit”.  Four hundred fifty-three dollars sounded, frankly, awesome, to my broke ass – bedridden in the middle of my second disastrous semester at Simon Fraser University, my teaching position having been taken away once my boss discovered I was a mental patient, and not only that, but was involved with other mental patients! – tax return season was fast approaching and I had actually made money the previous year.  I immediately let the fellow who does my taxes know, and he thanked me for the important bulletin.  Thus, I was rather annoyed when a tax specialist or whatever you call a retired fellow who actually seems to enjoy doing others’ taxes for incredibly little payback, left messages asking me to find this clause in the aforementioned document again.  I told a middleman to pass along the message that such things were his job to take care of.  I was very busy trying to finish a 133% courseload in spite of the fact that I could hardly get out of bed (pre-emergency surgery), and already very embittered as no professor in sight had any sympathy for my plight.  Instead, I was made a pariah of, being told, “never in my 26 years of teaching have I seen a student so ill attempt to finish a semester and not go on medical leave!” by my theory professor, who also happened to be my (now former) co-supervisor.  I was befuddled enough by this financial proposal – going on “medical leave” would have meant losing the grant I was surviving off of.  I suppose all students during his prior 26 years of teaching had very large trust funds.  If this is the case, he must be a sheltered man, and Burnaby Mountain an even more sheltered “Hill” than I previously thought.

Surely the tax-man could find the word “disability” by searching the “Action Plan” (I always want to put several exclamation marks after that phrase/slogan/propaganda-nonsense-title, but will refrain).  Not so.  I was not pleased, but sometime between my somewhat infamous presentation for the final theory class and coming out of anaesthesia in the post-op room at Vancouver’s sickeningly disorganized and unsanitary General Hospital (I found sharing a room with a male geriatric patient who coughed his lungs out in between snores all night rather inappropriate, being a young woman gynaecological patient and all…and then there was the staph infection that burst up from a tiny papercut on my thumb when I had visited someone there the previous fall – please forgive any bias :doctor: :doctor: :doctor: ) I forgot about the whole thing.

Skip forward to the present.  November.  April is tax season.  Any documents describing extenuating circumstances that warrant further benefits/tax credits must be handed in within the next few days if you want them to be considered for the 2010-2014 tax period.  Well, not really, but “EXPECT DELAYS” if you do not do so.  I arrived in Winnipeg with high hopes to have my papers signed, but was instead told the sad story behind why tax-man knew nothing of this “$453 bonus”, and Vancouver doc had spat out “high-functioning” before jumping into a new sentence so fast that I couldn’t even smirk.

As not to break broken doctor-patient confidentiality :takuts – well, no names are ever mentioned, so, not really… – I cannot give any specific examples of cases shot down under Harper’s reformulated “tax credit program for the physically or mentally disabled” but I can describe the hoax – it’s an oldie but a goodie!

It was a fluke I ever read that document.  It was only up for a couple of weeks, and Harper knows nothing about us “diligent and ‘disabled’”, so the poor moron didn’t even realize he was providing false hope to a large group.  Here’s how his little “Action Scam” works, anyhow:

  1. Paperwork for doctors re: “disability tax credit” appears to be identical to the documentation available during previous years.
  2. Unfortunately, once submitted, said doctor receives the real thing by mail a couple of weeks later – a set of questions so loaded and specific that approximately 50% of their patients who previously qualified to receive the tax credit no longer will. For example, rather than “does this individual have difficulty managing finances due to their disability?”, the follow-up documentation demands that the physician state a response to a question such as, “can this individual, under no circumstances, manage their own money?”.

Now, if I’ve ever seen “action” to benefit the people of “Canada”, this sounds like a “plan”!  The “people” of course being those in the “business” sector whose pockets are now filling with money formerly forwarded to some of this country’s most hard-working folks – those who choose to work despite the fact that they could survive off the “assistance” mentioned in my last post for their entire lives if they chose to.

So, scoundrel Stephen Harper and his squad of Conservative goons have pulled off a truly classy move – they’ve built up yet another fence covered in “Canada Action Plan” signage (these have gone up about one per every twenty city blocks to give a low estimate – it seems that no infrastructure improvement project doesn’t have a big “Wave and Say ‘Thank-You Mr. Harper!’” sign around its fence-off since the “Plan!!!!!!!!!!!” [couldn't hold back that time, I apologize] was instated).  This particular fence doesn’t appear scheduled to be taken down.


I haven’t seen many disabled people tearing down fences with their bare hands lately.  Have you?



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Posted in "Health Care", Mad Society, Sociology of Medicine

Getting on “Disability Assistance” in Manitoba – Demoralizing, Discriminatory, Disgusting…

Posted on November 11, 2010 by scarsarestories| 2 Comments

I am always searching for another source of “income”, or money… – right now I have a sheet of bus tickets, a sheet of stamps, a bowl with $9 and change in it, a defaulted credit line, and a maxed out MasterCard to my name (well, and an iPhone, but such things generally aren’t counted as assets/liabilities!  I suppose bus tickets and stamps aren’t either, but they were in my immediate line of vision – and I’m crazy, remember? :gila: ).

Obviously Insane

However, this shall improve, as I must not forget an appointment next week to begin again the demoralizing process of getting on “disability social assistance” in my temporary province of residency, Manitoba.  No matter how sick you are, you may not pass go and collect a measly $400 – $600/month, depending on needs – even more bizarre than when I had to go on “assistance” seven years ago, for example, “special note from doctor required if you require an allowance for a telephone connection to get in touch with said doctor” (would this not apply across the board…such questions are futile, i.e. QUESTION ANY STATEMENTS SUCH AS THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK) – without attending the notorious Orientation in Room A, at the “assistance” office on Rorie St., the architecture designed to resemble a traditional First Nations lodge of sorts, a touch that I cannot find words to express my disgust for.

The “orientation” involves being shown charts of how much more you could be making at a minimum wage job, and the horrendous effect you are having on all proper citizens - i.e. workers and taxpayers. Expect the latter word to be mentioned at least 100 times during the grueling forty-five minute “orientation” (orientation to what?  Feeling like crap about oneself? What if that’s already the reason you’re sitting in this room, room A… :capedes ).  In sum, the requirement to attend this meeting if you’re seeking a little government handout due to unexpected physical or mental illness – which I’m sure you’ve already paid for in spades via “Employment Insurance” contributions if you’ve ever held a job, however since “Employment Insurance” is so tightly wrapped in red tape and is nearly impossible to obtain – is absolutely unavoidable.

In my case specifically, since Simon Fraser University considers all teaching and research positions held by lowly students as “financial aid”, this institution insures that none of its student-employees are eligible for “E.I.” in case of illness, injury on the job, family emergencies, etc.  You’re on your own, kids!!!

Obviously, that’s far beside the point :) .  Back when I was nineteen, both much quieter and louder than I am now, only in different ways – I suppose I’ve learned a few things – I dared raise my hand during the “orientation”.  I asked if my presence was required, as I was currently not able to work, and thus minimum wage jobs were not of any relevance to me.  Nurse Ratchet, who just happened to be giving this little seminar of sorts, came very close and started menacing me. I feared that the throwing of chalk or an icepick lobotomy was inevitable, perhaps both, and if so, in what order?  Luckily, there was only shouting:

“If you don’t want to be here, get out now!  Make another interruption and I’ll kick you out myself!… and you will get nothing!!!“

At no point during the “orientation” are you told anything about how you will collect your funds, what information you are going to have to provide once the cell door is released and you are herded back out into the main room, in all its pine-carved glory, where you wait for an “Intake Appointment”.  Before I went through this whole experience the first time, I thought that appointments were generally scheduled around a certain point in time.  I was shockingly wrong.  There is no seeming order to when one’s appointment will be – indeed, if the term “Kafkaesque” ever deserved usage, it would be here.  You sit on an uncomfortable bench in this general area, not only built such that discrimination is implied by one’s presence, but such that the volume of individuals speaking in the room is combined to a level that would give an amoeba a migraine.

Indeed, you sit.  If you manage to approach an employee to inquire about your expected waiting time, you will be quoted a line directly out of The Trial – for example, “it will be soon”, “it is not time yet”, or “you cannot ask a question like that here :evil: ”.  So, don’t bother.  Bring ibuprofen or your headache kill-pill of choice (booze also seems to be common, and I understand why) and get ready for a sore back, a sore butt, and prepare yourself for the fact that you may sit all day without being called for an “appointment”.  No, you may be commanded to return at 9:00 am the following morning to wait some more.  I have not heard of anyone being called back for a third day of the addition of injury (back and butt) to injury (cause for needing a handout from the taxpayers) but don’t quote me on this – as I said, it has been a while.

So, sit down, shut up, and be made to feel like a criminal for being ill.

See you next Wednesday in Room A!

Bonus Tip: It is nearly impossible to get through to the office at (204) 948-4000, such that your name may be recorded for the “orientation”.  The hopeful message that your application will be considered without having to attend the “orientation”, as the line asks you to “press one” to be connected directly to an assistance office in your area if you have been on disability in Manitoba previously, is sadly only that – hopeful.  To qualify under this clause and be stepped up in line you must have been on disability in Manitoba within the past 45 days. So, you “press two”.  A busy signal – and a voice telling you to hang up, rendering it impossible to auto-redial this awesome bureaucracy.  I recommend calling five minutes before closing (this is how I got through) or immediately when the line opens in the morning to avoid the exasperation of being told to hang the eff up, over and above the rest of this mess.

Tomorrow’s Topic: Harper’s Lies to the Disabled – Massive Cutbacks Beneath Shiny Exterior of “Action Plan” Promises (or what my shrink in Winnipeg is willing to tell me because he’s just as much of an anarchist as I am :Yb )

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Posted in "Health Care", Mad Society, Sociology of Medicine

I want to make a mistake, I want to do it on purpose, I want to waste my time.

Posted on October 3, 2010 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

-F.A. -(from Apocalypse Effexor: Redux Diary page…therefore unedited! :malu: )…not usually.  But Effexor-wise, this is kind of how I feel about my week without Effexor, and its end in a plant-derived, dopamine raising substance that wasn’t paid for by the government, as the Effexor tablets, that would cost about $400 a month are.  I made a “mistake”, more an accident, by destroying my supply of Effexor for the week.  Then I tried something I basically knew would be impossible – of course with some hope in mind that this would magically be the end of popping three very large red gelcaps every morning to keep my head together, just as I have that spark of hope each time I walk into the office of a new psychopharmacologist (let’s call them what they are) that usually leads me on for a few hour-long appointment, about helping me get off this drug, but soon grows annoyed at talking about life and tries to convince me that I can achieve this goal by taking a new handful of gelcaps or packed pills or the ones you can peel a layer off of…just like Anne says – blue, yellow, green; “I’ve become quite the addict” – to to learn how much of an addict they made me, to learn how deep Effexor is in control of my brain.  I sure got my answer.  I was expecting it would be sickening, and expected the second after second after half-second brainzaps and light-sensitivity and walking into doorways I got this morning, when I finally got off the couch, the brown couch :) , wanting desperately to get something done – Indian Summer, the smell of sweet decay in the air and smoke lingering from bonfires from the night before, all the while feeling heat on your October-skin.  Zap zap zapzapzap zap zapzap zap, as I sat on the toilet, light on like nails on a chalkboard in my brain.  MUST.  DO.  SOMETHING. I cannot lie on that couch, nor can I vacuum and hide pills for some night-terror induced reason involving relatives I haven’t seen since I was a small child (indeed, red alert, in the Ashcroft-model sense), for a sixth day.  Well, the first two were not so bad, although I do have a very difficult time remembering them, interacting with people?  It doesn’t seem reasonable after the past days of constant nausea and terror/sleep.  The horror of Apocalypse Effexor is making it difficult to enjoy any kind of “relief”, whether it be from zaps (other symptoms still present – read the pamphlet, I’m in Effexorlessness) or lack of energy.  Well, that’s not really true – I remembered and discovered some really interesting things about brains on music and my own – playing all evening would have been wonderful but I have to keep in mind the possibility that figuring out how to access that skill I was starting to master might not always be pretty and enjoyed by my roommates, who have put up with my couch-ridden delirium for the past three days.  I didn’t want to have to inflict myself upon others 24/7 again in my short life, but that was, financially-speaking, a complete pipe-dream, at age almost-26, living in Vancouver, where rent in the “ghetto” is now almost as high as rent in the West End.  The odd much bigger pipe loft thrown in there, millions upon millions, the rest of us.  Who do not perform “perfectly”, who show emotion, who have vices, who feel really damn lazy sometimes, who feel the pleasure and the deep pain of being strapped to this body.  So, an experiment, and the results yielded were interesting.  They bring tears of terror to think about, but they were very interesting and revealing of what I am facing here.  There has to be a doctor out there willing to help people get off this poison without the pain that we, uneducated consumers socializaed from birth, very literally – is it not a doctor we look in the eyes before those of our mothers’, no? – to take his (for those of us that were searching for “father figures”, men and women/and her orders and prescriptions strictly – finish all of these antibiotics, take two pills every six hours, one in the morning and one and a half at night.  Are these to be our fathers?  Washed down at the demanded time.  Mornings are long.  Hours are longer.  Tears without water, cutting scenes out of paper for dear life, running around the building and collecting power cords from the old apartment now – I am thankful to be freed of our – it was mine the whole time, my little mess, intentions good, nature uncontrollable, the pain of now not being sure if he thought I was malingering around his only intellectual equal on the planet!’s survey contemporary theory class.  No, life has been painful, I would not seek (the tears have turned towards a belly full of silent laughter) to pretend to make it more so, so much that doctors had to dig through my guts.  Heads need shaking.  Some stream of consiousness, good girl, mention Ophelia, gossamer in water, I picture green with pink embroidery, personally.  Mistakes paid forward.  All meant in ‘good faith’.  This is my body and my mind and I shall do with it what I wish and I’m sorry if you have a problem with that but your status does not trump my right to stop taking my Flinstone’s Vitamins for a short while to see if I can live without hoping I’ll get a red one.  Red mistake.  I will dust myself off good and proper on Monday, I will be over homesickness for a place I hoped would exist before I got here but never did, after an hour or so the tears will never be wet and I can not sleep through an appointment – why is there always an appointment – some obligatory time sacfricied for “the man” – more tears turn to belly laughs, no sounds of sobbing from my eyes or my guts – literally – reading over your credit card bill twice and figuring a way to pay it and the psychological aftermath of economic instability – the fallout.  I don’t think I’ll open my Simon Fraser University inbox ever again, and I should have done so a month ago.  I do not care.  I do not care if a professor is going to take the words of a white, blue-eyed, Texan businessman who employs underage women and exploits the sacred tradition of Shamanism and sells it as drug-induced psychotherapy to wealthy westerners, charging them a fortune that seems like a good deal to North Americans and Australians, white haired, blue-eyed, to look into the beautiful dark eyes filled with anxiety at fetching you the right drink even though she has no clue what you are saying, whose pubescent buttocks are seen for a few seconds as she hurriedly goes inside to the bar to decipher these foreign requests for ice and liquor and coca leaves – something with coca leaves because they’re not legal in the ex-pat’s home and native land – over the word of a young, feminist scholar who is known for radically exposing the truth, no matter how sick it is, and in addition, never done a qualitative project where such raw research, if it must be ethnographic, gets the “publishable” stamp without a chart of outdated subculture theory and consists mainly on argot and hierarchies – so it’s okay to talk about “tramp stamps” in L.A. – if one of the participants in that project contacted the professor of the same class she was subject to participating in a qualitative study – M.A., maybe Ph.D., lumped together, same thing, different stage of cash grab – a young woman and gang member who called out the researcher for calling her a “hood rat” because her stamp was not on her lower back but across her neck – falsified data, the need for another member of this category later to be charted, made public, created…social change?? :confused:  – In this scenario, which could have happened – who would be believed?  The woman with “publishable” data that is already out there but used different terminology, and comes to class, every class, on time and wearing much perfectly applied make-up – no dark circles – asks questions that threw us off, and my temperature rose as I left the “hot seat” and realized she had mixed me up with big words but I had a perfect defense…but I was not fast enough and she looked so utterly “professional” in a suit at times, something I will never adorn…, or the straggler who unearthed an illegal business that is likely common to certain cities/towns in the Amazon where “culture” can be experienced by the slightly off the traveled off-road, maybe adorning dreads or a dirty pair of runners and muddy socks – corruption of the highest degree in the name of tourism – government grants, I bet, for Americans to bring a taste of cannibalism to a new place, wow, true Freudian slip, I meant to write capitalism and am actually quite shaken.  Whoa.  Tourism in Peru, G.D.P, money, hands.  Academic dishonesty!  Holy crap what has it come to…

SSHRC out of undergrad drop-out.  Statistical anomaly as usual.  Graduate student taking electives and classes in different departments and making the bureaucracy difficult to navigate – I guess this was easier for students when you were in my shoes?  Do you not know that you have to do your job without picking a young woman to act as a scapegoat, drawing attention away from the internal discord, the external review, students like me who paid attention and agreed and spoke out about it.  Made it loudly known that even when quiet, our peer-group is completely in agreement and feels like they were ripped off.  Well, if it weren’t for one’s fabulous scholar of a supervisor, providing that they do not retire and move four hours away from campus halfway through your degree, which you have been progressing on more than most students, collecting material for over a year while they have yet to start – not because you want a good grade or a publication but because you care and want to help people, want to practice sociology in its context of revealing social insanity and exposing it – and in addition, choosing to attend Simon Fraser because this would-have-been supervisor, who will always remain a soft of mystery, her softspoken voice supposedly that of a former “hell-cat”, though I noticed no difference between her expression when I arrived, all decorated in gold and promise, bells coming later to make noise, and her expression when I left in tears that were obviously attached to suppressed sobs, after reading the e-mail where I explained the incredibly difficult reasons why Simon Fraser University had violated my rights as a student five times over, added stress to my life that had a great impact on my health, and I had to leave this place she had promised me to be right, just for me!, it is pretty in the summer, because I would be ashamed to give them any more money in tuition and fees, never mind hold a degree from the place, not caring whether or not it would be “tarnished” by the good ol’ boys team – stir up some media attention on their sparkling “ethics” abilities to spot a young woman criminally revealing possibly “made-up” information about the exploitation of Peruvian women for an expendable methods class – what, the fourth advanced methods class I’ve taken?  I think I understand now, sir!

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Posted in Academia is Nuts!, Effexor is Evil, Feminism and Madness, Mad Society, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Poetry, Prose, Personal, Sociology of Medicine

Vancouver Detox Cordova House’s Guinea Pig Experiment: Drug/Alcohol Withdrawal via SEROQUEL?

Posted on September 9, 2010 by scarsarestories| 4 Comments

I will be writing a full letter of complaint to the Vancouver‘s “detox centre” on Main at Cordova, Harbourlight Cordova House, across the street from the cop shop on the DTES, very soon.  For now, I wanted to let you know about thie horrifying phenomenon that this is taking place at this self-purported medical detox centre, under the supervision of a young psychiatrist.  He seems to be carrying out a guinea pig experiment on human beings, without their permission, and at the same time, making dishonesty mandatory if one is to avoid being a rat in a cage.

“You must go through extreme pain to get over your addiction,” this doctor claims.

This statement alone makes no sense, as negative punishment is the least effective strategy when attempting to change someone’s behaviour.

Now here’s the part that makes no sense whatsoever, and the reason why all three people I’ve known who have stayed at Cordova House (one for alcohol, two for heroin – myself not included, think what you like, although I have been drugged with Seroquel at mental hospitals – an extremely unpleasant, “zombifying”, mind-blankening experience for lack of better terms) have escaped and resumed using their substance of choice, and one was successful at a different medical detox centre where proper methods, explained below these definitions, were used. Unfortunately, last I heard, the others continue to use their substance of choice, or have added others to a new cocktail.

Drugs: (including alcohol even though it is “legal”…it does kill brain cells while marijuana does not…look it up if you don’t believe me) get you high by increasing dopamine (feel-good stimulating) levels in the brain.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter – one that many “antidepressants” try to heighten.  This simple diagram demonstrates how dopamine is “thought to work” in the brain.  Dopamine (represented by cats) is passed to the next neuron (represented by the pacman) via neurotransmission.  I don’t mean to be a condescending idiot, I just grew up in the 80s and really love pacman.  Drugs that produce a “high”, as well as many antidepressants, work by causing more dopamine to be fed to the pacmen, or to hang around in the space between the pacmen and cats for a longer period.

Addiction: Is characterized by 1) tolerance (one needs more to experience the same effect), and 2) physical additction (much different than “psychological addiction” – but rather a serious illness [PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE, not addiction itself - I reject the "disease model" of addiction, as long-time blog readers probably know!] that could even result in death if not properly treated [ex/ a daily high-dose heroin user may have a seizure if s/he stops using altogether, at once - what has been called the "cold turkey" method]

Seroquel: An atypical antipsychotic that immediately reduces dopamine levels in the brain when ingested. As stated elsewhere on this blog, atypical antipsychotics were first used (or rather “tested) on communist dissidents under the Stalinist regime of the USSR, to “suppress critical and lofty thought(s)”. Below is a diagram showing how dopamine is blocked or inhibited:


Now medical detox centres are not exactly the Ritz either, although some conservative politicians may disagree (have they ever stayed there, after a serious heroin addiction for say, 3 years?), but one receives legitimate medical treatment. Rather than being put on “maintenance methadone treatment”, simply substituting a heroin addictionfor a methadone addiction, patients are quickly weaned off opiates by drinking a 5 mL less of a dose of methadone per day, to dim constant nausea, insomnia, muscle pain, shaking, sweats, etc.  Such a fast withdrawal does not eliminate these symptoms, but makes them more bearable.  Just as I believe I do not deserve to suffer when I am in severe pain due to my chronic reproductive illness, endometriosis, I, do not believe those dependent on drugs, like the friends I have mentioned, deserve to suffer more than necessary; in their shoes I would also choose the option of medical detox via methadone, about a 10 day process.

At “Harbourlight”, the methadone method is only used if users claim they have been shooting grams of heroin each day – as they learn the first stay around, that this is the only way to avoid being forced to take Seroquel, and denied any methadone.  If there is one person you should not be lying to when detoxing, I would think it would be one’s doctor.

Why on earth is Seroquel being used?!?  To torture “addicts” by suddenly shocking their systems, which are used to increased dopamine rather than decreased dopamine?  I simply do not understand.  If a doctor out there reads this and would like to attempt to give me an explanation of how this is in any way therapeutic, I would love to hear it.  In the meantime, a formal letter of complaint on how this method is destroying the lives of many, including two friends, is in the works.  As are my attempts to capture the attention of local media.

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Posted in "Health Care", East Van, Meds, Meds, Meds!, Sociology of Medicine

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Where is a woman’s clitoris located?

Posted on September 4, 2010 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

<”Dr.” Phil says, “you may want to have small children leave the room now.” :hammer: >

Actually, you may not. The fact that, in my experience, men over forty still have trouble finding a woman’s clitoris, and the fact that one less recent ex of mine wrote a short story about an advventure we went on and described the “incredibly difficult task of getting a woman off” and his very noteworthy accomplishment (by hand, on a Greyhound bus, and no, I got myself off by grinding the seat!), scares me.  He never brought me to orgasm once, but one of his favourite claims regarding our sex life was that, “God, himself was masturbating when we had sex”.  Is there that little emphasis on a woman’s experience of pleasure during sex in our culture that young through middle-aged men haven’t, and thus, may likely die not ever having, found a clitoris on a living woman?  I don’t know about you, but I find this scary.  So is having something in that general area rubbed so hard it feels like your partner is trying to push it back into your body – especailly, when magically, the very sensitive target has been hit by fluke.

Now, I have no “mainstream” political/feminist values about pornography.  Actually, as soon as I discovered it as a young teenager, I started watching.  However I absolutely detest porn when it is obvious that the pleasure is one-sided (i.e. only the man in the video is experiencing pleasure).  I really don’t understand how fast and hard anal sex, as pictured in porn films, could ever be pleasurable for a woman.  It’s very easy for me to tell if a woman is enjoying herself, and the same is true of some men, but a rare few.  I am a picky porn-watcher, usually watching lesbian stuff because watching the “parts” I have being satisfied is much more enjoyable to me than watching a penis being pleasured, since I have no idea what it feels like and imagine it is somewhat different.  I really despise watching a woman give a man a blowjob.  They call it a “job” for good reason.

In a sociology of sexuality class one day (an exceptionally poor class comprised solely of activities like the one I will describe…;), the “professor” (I have no idea how she obtained this title) had us sit in groups of four and name as many terms we could for male so masturbation.  As it took us far less than the given twenty minutes to come up with a list – goddess knows what the instructor had left to do, not being a smoker – and all group member stared at one another awkwardly, I tried to strike up some conversation on topic =.  I asked the two men in the group if they thought that most men learned how to have sex through watching pornography.  They were eager and adamant about saying, “yes!!”  Yikes.  And end of conversation – I suppose I should have asked a more “open-ended question”!  Not much clitoral stimulus going on in mainstream porn, as opposed to the stuff I watch.  This is definitely part of the problem.  When the professor came back, each group was to write the names they had come up with on the board.  Duplicates were erased, and we were to write them down.

“Okay, good work guys!  See you next class.”

What the eff?  It actually would have been somewhat interesting to examine the names – the violence behind terms like “whacking off” and “choking the chicken”, the mundane and very unsexy nature of “jacking off” or “rubing one out”, and the hilarity of “spanking the monkey” or “stroking the weasel”.  Never mind the lack of terminology for female masturbation, consisting primarily of clitoral stimulation.  Perhaps there was a connection of some sort…  I was the only person who offered a colloquialism for the practice – “jilling off”.  The prof laughed, along with a couple of other women in the class.  A depressingly small number of women in the class.

Women that don’t even know the location?  Okay, come on now.  Why do North Americans have such a problem with “getting to know” their own bodies, and worshiping them, enjoying all the pleasure they can provide?  Mommy and daddy aren’t going to scold you for touching yourself anymore, and probably are nowhere nearby.

I must now give a huge shout out to my private girl’s school in Winnipeg, where in grade nine or ten – nine, I think – we were hoarded into the gym and given the best “sex-ed” type presentation ever.  There was a board with about 50 different colours and sizes of condoms, a lot of dildos of a lot of sizes, and even a “Venus Butterfly”!  It prompted a girl in the back to whisper a question about its use, and the absolutely sexy and confident woman presenting (yes, a little jealous and a little crush and a little “I want to be her”, so, now, a little smile – a big one, actually.  Yes.) to ask, “you girls do know where your clits are, right?”  The silence was absolute, until I let out a snicker.  The broken silence I guess caused one of the “popular with boyfriend-status girls” to ask, “how will we know when we’ve found it?”, which was answered with, “Oh, you will know it!” Brilliant.

Now, the clitoris is not that damn hard to find – nothing like the elusive G-Spot.  Perhaps the best way to describe it to men is to relate it to their bodies.  “It’s like a tiny little penis with foreskin, close to the urethra, really, nothing more than a mini-version of your “hot beef” (and yes, it’s “injection”, absolutely hilarious and sexier than anything I’ve ever heard in the English language, no doubt!  Please, take me now!  :norose: )

In the back of the auditorium, as the lovely “psychologist” gave this lecture on safe sex and female masturbation, the majority of the teachers (almost all women) seated behind us looked rather uncomfortable., like they had just swallowed something disgusting and were trying desperately not to puke before they made it to the washroom.  Her presentation was truly awesome though – I’ll always wonder how many of my peers went home to “find it” that night (I think that night I got off as a wondered, that night…;).  Then I wonder how many of them told their boyfriends, instructed them on how to do it just right, etc.  I’m guessing not as many.  It is our fault too, in part – by “faking it”, men will never learn how to pleasure a woman properly.  However, women who “know how they like it” are branded as sluts – we’re not supposed to know these secrets, as how on Earth could we unless we had been with a bunch of other men who demonstrated the mysteries of the female body!?!? :fuck3:

My main question though, is why wasn’t the same presentation given at the local boys’ schools equivalent to my girls’ school?  Why were boys and girls split up into two different groups when given “sex talks” at certain grades?  Wouldn’t it have been a lot better if we had learned together?

Or, at our non-co-ed schools, boys could maybe be taught where the clitoris is located?  Would that be insane?  Lead to unprotected sex among minors?  Well, no one would want to start a “new” trend!

And so, I have had a rather disappointing sex life so far as I reach 26.  Out of about ten men (a high estimate re: men) I’ve been with – not doing the one-night stand thing much – only one has successfully brought me to climax.  This said, I am an incredibly sexual person – I had my first orgasm at 11 and probably “rubbed one out” almost as often as my teenage boy counterparts for a good chunk of my adolescence.  But hell, I have faked it – I’m incredibly adept at doing so – I can even make myself get a lot wetter, make my vagina contract, etc.  C’mon guys, do you think it’s difficult to make those sounds?  The main reason I’ve put on this act, is because a lot of these men “don’t want to come before you”, but they’re so clueless that this proposition is scary.  It is scary because a lot of the positions that men beg for, ones that they usually admit to have “come up with” by watching porn – and from experience they are seemingly a man’s best friend, second only to anal sex – but they hurt. Most other thousands of creative possibilities do not, so why should we have act out the role of Jenna Jameson – isn’t it enough just to pleasure one another, to be us?  And you might be very proud of your large penis – cool, it’s very pretty, but I don’t know why you’re showing off to me – it a sex marathon is decidedly going to be for dessert, it gets really sore to “make love”/”have sex”/”fuck” more than once per night a lot of the time, and depending on length per session, twice, in one night.  I suppose that’s the price you (should) pay for being with the studliest stud in the men’s locker room?  Damn, suddenly it sounds like we’re back in high school, but, no, guys, you can’t have your cake and eat it too!  Your massive member means less sex.  (I know, that idiom makes no sense, but it fits!)

If a woman is to be pleasured, the majority cannot reach orgasm, or even come close, with mere penetration.  Thus you’ve just gotta know where her clit is.  I wish mom’s would teacher their boys, but I suppose this would be a little weird, so look at some pictures of female anatomy!  Like these:

1 Clitoris
2 Clitoral Hood (prepuce)
3 Labia Majora (outer lips)
4 Labia Minora (inner lips)
5 Urethral opening
6 Vaginal opening
7 Hymen

or the other million available on the web, like this 3-D one! Then, ask questions – “does this feel good, baby?”  And don’t be afraid to hear, “no.”  It’s not an insult, it’s just going to make you a much better lover in turn.  Now, women – it is our responsibility to tell a man when he is not doing it right and you are either extremely bored and awaiting this interruption to your day to be over, or are in pain.  Men are not psychic like we are. :nohope: . But we are alike in the fact that we should both be having an equal amount of fun in the bedroom, and pleasure should be completely reciprocal.  If it is not, what is the point?  Yes, it might be frightening to tell a guy he’s not making you feel a thing, but if his reaction is frightening, then you’ve saved yourself a few dates with an asshole, haven’t you?

I think you will find that talking about these things is not at all embarassing as you may expect, but a pretty great turn-on.  If there’s one thing better than sex (in the whole bodily realm of being), it is talking about sex.

That’s true for me, anyhow, so don’t feel too crazy if you don’t share this opinion!  :siul:

I was getting there with the last one…the next one is going to have some work out for him if he, too, is in his thirties, and still doesn’t now how to make me ***! :gila:

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Posted in Feminism and Madness, Laughter = Survival, Mad Society, Sociology of Medicine

Toviaz – controls bladder, causes constipation!

Posted on July 19, 2010 by scarsarestories| Leave a comment

Hello readers!

I am very busy dealing with the previously mentioned “criminal justice” situation right now. :(

However, as laughter is survival, I thought I would share this hilarious commericial with you!  I could only find it in a “block of ads”, so the ad I’m speaking about begins at approx. the 1:32 mark in the video below.

Control your “overactive bladder”, but lose control over your bowels.  Way to go, big pharma!  What a miracle cure!

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Posted in Laughter = Survival, Sociology of Medicine

Vaccination Debate: An example of intelligent conversation, finally!

Posted on June 26, 2010 by scarsarestories| 4 Comments

“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.”
Thomas Szasz

Finally, I have initiated some well-researched, intelligent debate on the hot topic of vaccination – i.e. folks who don’t hold “medical expertise” to their hearts so dear that any critical comment causes them to lash out unreasonably, have started discussing this here. :)   I know it is on the topic of the “sociology of medicine” much more so than the “sociology of psychiatry”, but it is a beautiful demonstration of the conversation that can be generated when a community of critical thinkers is formed on the Internet – different perspectives can be discussed openly, without anyone shouting words that hint at frightening dogmatism that deny the central premises of “science”.  Here is part of that conversation – a huge thank-you to all who participated!

Comment 1: I would be interested to hear your take on the epidemic in California surrounding Pertussis or Whooping Cough. Many doctors and nurses that I’ve talked to, informally, seem to blame it on parents not getting vaccinations. An ER nurse told me that she in the past would see 1-2 cases a month. She saw 16 this week. What are your thoughts? Thanks!

Scars’ Reply:

Wow! I hadn’t heard about this. Pertussis is one of the vaccines I believe children should get – the vaccine has been around for well over 30 years, does not contain the additives that “new” vaccines do, and has shown itself not to manifest in any longitudinal medical problems among the general population. However, I am also interested in the fact that since these vaccines have been around for so long, children aren’t building up natural immunities, and just like the overuse of antibiotics caused “superbugs”, over-vaccination may cause “super-viruses”, so to speak.

Has this taken place in a particular community in California, where us west coasters :wink: would be prone not to vaccinating their children? Some kind of survey would have to be conducted to find out if not vaccinating children could be the root cause, and even then a direct correlation would not be able to be made – I suppose if doctors and nurses are saying that they’ve struggled with parents over this issue, it is fairly common, but still – by nature of their jobs they come from a slightly biased stance (ex/ the socialization that they undergo during med school, which promotes all things pharma, especially NEW things pharma, and belittles other approaches to an amazing degree – I’ve heard this from several med students, and seen it reflected in the behaviour of younger doctors).

Here in Vancouver, there have been several recent cases of measles, actually. The unfortunate thing about how dogmatic people on both the “pro” and “anti” vaccination sides of the debate are, is that it doesn’t lend the situation to being properly researched – the information available, in the format of reasonable points from each side – aside from that Frontline documentary – resembles the nonsense of an episode of Bill O’Reilly! However, through conversations like these we can explore this issue deeper, and with open minds. :)

I am trying to get a copy of my own immunization record (I was born in the early 80s) to compare it to the charts/pamphlets of “recommended” vaccines for all children today. What worries me most are influenza vaccines – it is recommended that children get their first at 2 months now. This does not make sense to me. I had a few incredibly horrible flues as a child, but got through them, and had developed immunities against them by the time I was a teenager (i.e. I haven’t had a flu with a fever and puking since then). I will write a post as soon as I obtain this info – as I do believe that measles/mumps/rubella/pertussis/tetanus and a few other shots should be given to kids, for common sense reasons. The number of “boosters” required seems to have increased quite suspiciously though…

Let’s keep this conversation going – exactly what I was hoping to get out of this post.
Cheers!
scars

Comment 2:

As far as I know there has yet to be a study as to why this is happening. All the doctors and nurses made that clear but seemed convinced it was because parents weren’t vaccinating.

Thanks for writing about your opinion of which vaccines are safe. We are getting our daughter fully vaccinated, but she recently contracted pertussis. I guess I worry that parents are simply hearing “vaccinations are bad so I won’t get any” without doing any research of their own. Does that make sense?

I haven’t seen specific communities but the nurse I talked with is located in Orange County.

Comment 3:

I always find it interesting that so called “evidence-based medicine” believers jump immediately to conclusions based on no evidence at all, simply to confirm their own belief systems (and, being just as human as everyone else, what else could one expect?).

If one is going to say not getting vaccinated has caused some epidemic, then one might as well say not having a dog causes pet over-population. It doesn’t follow — no matter how “scientific” the language used, or how forceful the “logic”.

It’s precisely because no one is allowed to really delve into questions about how well medical products REALLY work (without being burned as a heretic, or cast as standing in the shadows of some form of insanity), that these things become unsafe. Then, when they become more and more unsafe, and people start to avoid them as worse than the thing they are supposed to “cure” or “protect” against, then more “witch-burning” starts (and how quickly are witch-burners and the like to accuse others of baby-killing and the like?)

Has anyone checked out the living and other health conditions these children are living in (including what kinds of toxic medical products they’ve been introduced to)?

Has anyone considered that diseases — like every other population of anything on the planet — do and will simply ebb and flow, depending on circumstances we sometimes have no control over?

Has anyone really looked at whether the whooping vaccine actually works, and is not simply presumed to work because of something else ignored?

There’s a lot more going on here than simply not getting a jab of medical product.

Scars’ Reply:

You’re absolutely correct and make a very important point. As a medical researcher – albeit a qualitative, not a quantitative one (as if the latter is any less valid than the former :razz: ) – I cringe every time a ridiculously spurious correlation is made, yet again! :lol: Damn, one of the first things I remember learning in first year university was that “CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION”. It is like saying that a “large crane population” in a particular area, and a “sudden surge of pregnant women” is connected.

I can’t say enough about toxic products myself – you might be interested in reading “Flora”’s message on the commentroll from last weekend and my response. She doesn’t use ultra-lysol-magic-erasers and the like (now, with Febreze!) and most of her son’s friends – who seem unusually “clean” – have huge problems with allergies, and a lack of natural immunity to a whole lot of what goes around.

Again like you say, though, burn the witches! In my undergrad thesis – in the academic work section if you ever feel like a long, somewhat dry read hehe – I compare the labeling of women with disorders like “Borderline Personality Disorder” to the witch trials. I.e. You do not fit into the mainstream, your behaviour is for some reason against the grain, thus, you shall be punished, via psychiatrization, or in this case, certain parents being blamed for an “epidemic”.

…and how exactly are we defining “epidemic” now? Are a few, or even several, cases of a disease that hasn’t been seen in the general populace for some time now considered to be an “epidemic”? If that is so, the definition of “epidemic” has changed since I learned about epidemics – ya know, like the black plague and the flu of 1917 and what not…outbreaks that killed millions of people…

Keep up the conversation, all – I’ve been waiting to hear some real debate about this for a long, long time!

Cheers!
scars

Scars’ Reply:

Yes, that makes perfect sense – parents saying, “vaccinations are bad” just because they heard it on TV or from a friend, are not doing their “argument”, or society any favour, nor are they presenting a valid challenge to the hegemonic industry of medicine. Hearsay is to research as cats are to airplanes. :???:

My absolute firmest advice on this topic is do your own research! If one is truly concerned about their child’s safety, one can take the time to do some real research on vaccines – not so hard with the Internet! One can check out various medical journals online, weary of propagandistic material coming from either side of the debate. One can get the opinion of a few different doctors – my GP here in Vancouver is very against over-vaccination and the overuse of antibiotics, and has great evidence to back up her perspectives. However, like me, she does think some vaccines are good and necessary. She discouraged me from getting Hepatitis vaccines before traveling to South America, due to the fact that I reacted badly to one in the past, and that she didn’t think it was necessary, based on “risk” of contracting Hepatitis south of the equator. My former doctor at my university campus came from a different perspective – she was a strong advocate for the H1N1 vaccine. She drove me home once and I asked her to explain her opinion, and it just didn’t make sense to me, but these are very personal decisions.

Actually, I would really like to hear my current GP’s perspective on the pertussis situation in Orange County – I will ask her about it next time I see her! Won’t be until July, but I will definitely discuss it with her!

Best Wishes,
scars

Comment 5:

Two other things never (allowed to be truly) considered by the mainstream medical model:

First, not everyone is going to react the same to everything. Some people are going to be more sensitive to some things, and some people not. That’s not hocus pocus – it’s evolutionary understanding. Modern science recognizes it in germs – 1st semester microbiology makes sure we understand that when confronted with a new toxin, some germs die and others live. But when it comes to people, the modern medical model doesn’t want to hear it. And that’s another reason it’s become so dangerous and causes so much damage. Just because one person is susceptible to whooping cough doesn’t mean everyone will be, and just because one person doesn’t have (or visibly SHOW) bad reactions to vaccine medical products doesn’t mean everyone is safe with them.

Second, research time and time again shows that children/teens and the elderly are absolutely more sensitive to all sorts of things – including toxins as are put into modern vaccines, and including drugs (including psych drugs). Yet what little research is done is usually done on healthy adults, while most medical toxins in vaccines and drugs are given to children/teens and old people.

More reasons modern M.D. medicine (and all the “alternative” medicines that so quickly seek to become “healthier” versions of M.D. medicine) have become so unsafe. Does M.D. medicine HAVE to be unsafe? Absolutely not. But today, where money and power and control are more important to providers and manufacturers than (truly) healthy patients, that’s what we’ve gotten.

Have any of you read “Death by Medicine”. It can be found all over the web – here’s the first PDF version Google found: http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf

If you haven’t read it, you should!

Scars’ Reply:

Again, PRECISELY. Would you mind if I post this comment on the main page? Or would you like to post it yourself as a “guest post”?

A HUGE problem in the fields of both medicine and psychology/psychiatry, is that they have absolutely no knowledge of the history of their disciplines. All that is taught is the last 5 – 10 (if one is lucky!) years of “progress”. Thus, those lessons taught in undergrad biology classes are fast forgotten. My own undergrad bio classes were held in a special department called “biology and human concerns” – so I suppose I’m especially sensitive when people start ranting at me about the usefulness of “SHELL VIRUSES!” in vaccines. Yeah, uh-huh, I’m well aware of how vaccines function. But I’m also aware of vaccines are manufactured, and how they are tested!

I am reminded of my critical studies on the use of the fMRI to diagnose “mental illness” – my research deals particular with infants/children, but there is a wonderful book called Picturing Personhood that describes how clinical trials are conducted, re: fMRI, but others as well – solely on ADULT, WHITE MALES. How any researcher of “sound mind”, or possessing any sense of ethics whatsoever, can call this a representative, generalizable, valid study is beyond me, and incredibly frightening.

I have not read that book, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my partner has a copy on the shelf. :wink: Otherwise, I’ll check it out online right away, and likely post it on the blog. :) I also highly recommend Selling Sickness. In fact, I think I will add it to the “recommended readings” list right now.

Cheers!

Comment 6:

First, feel free to post as you with. I’m not copyrighted ;)

Second, the “Death by Medicine” is actually just a short data study – not a book. Several NDs and (I think?) 1 MD took a real look at AMA data and discovered that doctors/MD medicine actually causes more harm today than heart disease and cancer. Fascinating.

Scars’ Reply:

I’ve heard this, too! Medical negligence causes far more deaths. Recently, when I had surgery on my left ovary, it made me feel really “safe” when the nurse made a huge sharpie-marker cross on my left abdomen, indicating “this one!” Not to mention infections in hospitals – when my partner, Alarryk was in the hospital here for two weeks in November, he caught a “super” staph infection that has left huge scars all over his left leg, which he could hardly move for some time.

I’m getting excited about the news out of Toronto about the G-20 protests right now, but I shall be posting our discussion shortly. :)

*HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF*

So, there are many reasonable folks out there willing to discuss this topic without sending personal insults my way.

Now, let’s get the conversation

on the topic of psychiatry going!

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Posted in "Health Care", Sociology of Medicine

Tagged , , , ,

Vaccine Safety: Out of the Mouth of the FDA

Posted on June 12, 2010 by scarsarestories| 12 Comments

It continues to upset me that I lost two friendships by making unbotrusive comments on facebook about the safety of vaccines, especially the new ones that are being churned out on a monthly basis – I have now gotten rid of crackbook/spybook/evilbook/____book.  The remarks I made were so benign – why did they strike such a nerve with people?  Were these individuals, who vaccinated themselves, in one case, and themselves and their children in another, already a little unsure about what they had just put into their bodies?  I am reminded again and again of the religious dogmatism that seems to surround this topic.  This blog got more traffic on the day of this post, and the comments that followed, than any other day so far.  Apparently, folks like a little drama! :lol:

Anyhow, here are some links from the FDA about all of the recent safety recalls of vaccines.  Are you going to call the FDA an organization of conspiracy?

June 1, Claris: “Contaminated” Vaccine

June 2, Sagent Pharms.: “Foreign Substance” in Vaccine

June 3, Pfizer: Injection Bags – Non-Sterility

June 3, West-Ward Pharms.: “Possible Health Risk”

That’s just for this June…so far…we’re not even half-way through the month.

I am not a “crazy conspiracy theorist $^%&#”.  I am a medical researcher.  Just because I do not have a degree in medicine doesn’t mean I cannot be an “expert” in my own right about medical topics.  I happen to study the effects that medicine (particularly psychiatry, but other areas as well) has on society, rather than administering medicines.  Please tell me, how on earth does this make me any less knowledgable than the doctor or nurse holding that syringe in their latex-glove covered hand?  Do we fetishize medical doctors that much?  Still?

I came quite close to withdrawing one of the comments to avoid losing a friend, but I refuse to not practice what I preach, even when it hurts, even when it hurts like hell.  I might as well throw in the towel if I’m going to do that.

I’m not going to throw in the towel.

Of course, the people I care about are going to be first to hear about some new knowledge I acquire if it affects them directly.  I wonder if this will continue to cause broken friendships.  I did not realize this would be a facet of my career.

Has anyone out there had a similar experience?  In any field, not necessarily medicine?

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Posted in Sociology of Medicine

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