Musings of a minor megalomaniac
Reports of Mediocre Disability Exams by VA Contractors Prompts Senator’s Demand for Answers. Like I said.
My disability evaluations really seemed to amount to a budget exercise for the most part, and downright government-sponsored fraud, in my view. That’s basically how the 3-round fight I ended up engaging in turned out.
4 FEB 04: New Colorado hemp law has me re-thinking the CBD situation. Somehow the fuckwits managed to outlaw mail delivery. The VA sent me enough opiates in the mail to kill several horses. I can order home delivery for the dankest mind-bender ganja from a dozen different dispensaries. But delivery may no longer be had for full-spectrum CBD gummies. I imagine some hyper-paranoid legislators floated the false notion kids musta been ordering alot of gummies thru the mail. So we’ll be starting a new regimen of cooking the Wife’s Lemonade again, trying to more carefully measure the dosage, avoiding hyperemesis. I really do hate the government almost as much as Corporate America.
Cannabis use linked to anxiety diagnoses, worsened anxiety disorders. Mmmmmmkay. What if you already had a couple, to start with?
People need to slow down. I used to be one of the worst offenders. Nowadays I just open it up a little on the way back from Ace Hardware to get the truck warmed up. Need to pay closer attention tho, because officer Fountain nabbed me Tuesday.
Hasn’t been for quite a few years. Politics has finally devolved into the familiar ‘ol good vs. evil conundrum the religious nutjobs have been purveying for centuries.
Make sure to know which side you’re on before attempting to deal with me. Mutual exclusivity exits between the atheist and devout camps – in terms of both good and evil.
I thought the care I received from the Veterans Administration right up until about two weeks after my last hip replacement was stellar. No question they seem to have a good template for large scale healthcare. It all rests on the people doing the work.
The VA takes care of about 9 million veterans at 1,255 facilities — the nation’s largest integrated health care system. Despite many widely publicized scandals, VA health care has been consistently rated as competitive with private care in dozens of peer-reviewed articles.
My first trip to Banja Luka in the UK sector was a real hoot. It was the longest drive, taking most of the day, so everybody’s already in a bad mood and behind schedule upon arrival. As usual, no pre-coordination had been done, so we waited outside the Brit’s HQ while our French Lieutenant played catch-up. We located the U.S. contingent in short order, drove over there, unloaded and started setting up in the clearing behind their area. Ten minutes later the Lieutenant returns and says to stop, they didn’t know where they wanted it. So we decided to just get some grub, find a place to crash and try again in the morning. They seemed to be in full NATO mode at this location.
By 10:00 the next morning the only thing I was worried about was driving through Bosnia in the dark on the way back to Sarajevo. HQ roof was obviously the best place it would actually work, but got kicked off there within minutes. The Lieutenant seemed to be doing his best in various animated conversations with one after another British officer, but making no progress. If something didn’t happen pretty soon we were gonna be here another day.
That’s when I got the light bulb thing again, staring at the defunct antenna tower right behind the building there. They weren’t even using it – for anything. I was about to find out why, the hard way. We didn’t have nearly enough coax to reach the hut from there, but I figured if we could just get it set up and running they would have no trouble humping the radio around until later, whenever. It was only gonna be used for 5 minutes once a week anyway.
So I got the Tacsat antenna up there and connected with a few zip ties to keep it in place when I notice Sgt Willis down at the bottom yelling for me to come down. I’m like, “just a minute, I’m almost done!!” He’s yelling frantically for some reason, and by then there’s around ten people gathered below. I was met at the bottom of the ladder by a British Colonel with a very stern look on his face. All he said was “That’s a good place for the antenna, but now’s not the time to put it there. We had sniper activity here last week.” Turned and walked away with his gaggle, including our Frenchman this time. All was right in our little world once again.
They obviously had more important things to worry about than whatever the fuck we were doing. I received another talkin’ to from the U.S. Lieutenant after we got back to Butmir. Something about language barriers and patience. I had no clue what she was talking about. Me ‘n the French Lieutenant got along great – he loved my music! 😉
Filling the Scott Adams void.
I’m done with it. Got started on the weed to soothe my arthritis back around the time I left Lockheed for greener pastures. Everybody gets it to some extent, sooner or later. For whatever reason, genetics, injuries, mine’s been extreme. I have three orthopedic surgeries to show for it so far – both hips and the right shoulder.
As things went on, the c-spine injury from 2000 deteriorated to where un-checked radiculopathy was inducing constant sleep loss and severe acute nerve flare elbow pain. It was actually kinda funny how the first resident I saw about that episode diagnosed it. She just pushed down on my head to light it up, same as I’d been doing then lately, moving or sitting in certain positions. So I had some physical therapy for the C6-7 nerves and ended up getting the shoulder repaired in the outcome of that diagnosis. a few years later in 2019 I was subjected to another nerve root damage at L4-5 pursuant to left hip malpractice. It was far worse than the c-spine I did myself moving tires, with fusion removal of the leaking disc constituting my fourth orthopedic surgery, following a year later.
I might seem to have an exceptional amount of orthopedic surgery and nerve damage experience, with needs and wants for pain medication and anti-inflammatory only growing over the years. The Veterans Administration put me through the gamut of whatever they were offering for it. Venlafaxine, Etodolac, Tramadol, Gabapentin, and lots of NSAIDs for years only seemed to make me immune to opiates. I’m pretty sure I was on a max dosage of some of that stuff for literally years. Ongoing addiction/withdrawal cycles were no fun, either. I called it quits after watching myself walking around doing the yardwork in my own little movie one day. It’s called de-personalization, and the pharmaceuticals eventually gave it to me real bad – probably close to serotonin syndrome. I understand this is a desirable psychotropic effect sought by certain drug addicts, dunno. Scared the crap outta me, and I was the biggest consumer of psychedelics in our little street gang, back in the day.
The only real reason or purpose I can imagine for the MMJ program(s) was to get a foot in the door. Tax revenue is the primary government objective. That alone makes the Colorado MMJ program an oxymoron on it’s face. It costs upwards of $300 to get the certification and commensurate tax break. Then an annual subscription fee, all of which goes to the doctors, with reduced tax revenue for the government. Being unaware of the actual demographics involved, I’m probably somewhere in the middle of the volume consumer group for example purposes, but WTF do I know?
My tax break enabled me to just about break even, cost-wise. Why spend time giving the doctors money, when it could be going to the schools? All they do is sit around taking appointments, trying to determine if the patient is telling the truth about their symptoms, with no fiduciary responsibility of any kind, handing out medcards for their tidy little profit. Oh wait, I remember now – they’re not handing out anything. The State takes care of that with their online spreadsheet containing another copy of everybody’s PII waiting to be compromised. I saw the no-brainer there right off the bat, but continued doing the MMJ thing eight years just because the queues and wait times are shorter.
The article linked below, is only a high level intro. It’s what the pharma industry needs to focus on, and what doctors need to recognize for what it is. Economic competition is the only reason it was banned in the first place, and the reason pharma and alcohol fear it now. Put it in the repertoire with everything else and be thankful we have something that actually works for some of these chronic, degenerative maladies. My closing remark on the Colorado MMJ program is: No disrespect to the overworked, underpaid IT staff, but that online spreadsheet looks like something I might have come up with twenty years ago.
Medicine is not a rote discipline, much as many in the field would like to believe.
Virtual Beers – Gotta be better than that stuff the right-wingers are peddling.
“VA Chief Acquisition Officer Michael Parrish earlier this month told lawmakers the department was negotiating the addition of new accountability and enforcement mechanisms to the $10 billion EHR software contract.”
So accountability and enforcement mechanisms sounds like an afterthought? You can be absolutely certain accountability was the main issue in my malpractice scandal. We’ll soon see how enforcement shakes out in that case…
LATE UPDATE: VA Has Skirted the Law for Too Long.
Berate people for being aware. This type misinformation gets amplified and re-hashed over the years, so you really need to go back to where and how it got started to see what actually happened before having any hope of understanding it. The first person ever using woke in the current U.S. political vernacular was referring to someone who accepted awareness of the previously unseen reality standing before their very eyes.
What can be done when the obvious reality apparent to all paints your politics in an inconvenient way? Berate them using an easy catchphrase or terminology people don’t need to think about too much. Simple notions like this readily migrate to various talking points. But be careful getting too caught up in your own deceit. Reality can be a mean bitch sometimes.
This concept parallels early childhood experiences. Inconvenient truths distill into things like “problem child,” “troublemaker,” and worse, as they grow older. Reflecting on the outcomes of challenging personal hardships finally sorted it out. I’m four years older than my only younger sibling. They tried again, but got a stillbirth. Look at that picture of us sitting on the stone wall in Rocky Mountain National park. You might need to zoom in. Tell me that’s not an autistic little boy. Just like there’s no bad dogs, there’s alot of Stuff you don’t know.
Somebody must be paying attention somewhere…
Proposal calls for VA to study effects of medical cannabis on vets with PTSD, chronic pain.
Maybe they’ll get another crack at it. This is one of those bi-partisan topics the MAGA can’t make much money with, so they’re just actively ignoring it because alot of the base likes to get high. I’ll remain cautiously optimistic.
We’ll finish out the week with something really off-the-wall and mundane at the same time. It started out as my Pandemic Thing, during the 2019-2021 period of avoiding all human contact. Then Dusty Hill died, and here we are today. ZZ Top has been one of my all-time favorite bands since I started listening to music. They were at their heyday peak on the Fandango tour when I graduated high school in 1977.
I’ve tried probably a dozen of these products in the past three years, settling on this batch for various reasons. I imagine they have somewhat different effects on beard and skin health, so using several different products is really just a diversity factor.
They scooped Francie at DIA this morning. Good thing she wasn’t trying to travel earlier in the week.
Deliberately sat on my ass most of the past few weeks blaming it on the weather, and got a good baseline. This’ll be it for health complaints on here going forward, unless I decide to get the C-spine fixed, lose a limb to a power tool or something similar.
2 DEC 22: Non-narrative, final long-term rundown.
Radiculopathy from C6-7 and L4-5 – Right thigh, lat, glute, erector and various upper-right back/shoulder muscles stiff and aching sore to the bone 24×7. Limited ambulation based mostly on back brace and cane. Limited neck rotation to the left.
Neuropathy – 1) Random muscle twitching in the right quad and glute based on activity type and level. 2) Various neuropathic itches. 3) Random arm numbing – level PT-based. 4) Calf and foot cramps. 5) Loss of sensation in hands and elsewhere. 6) Minor balance issues standing/walking.
Some of the nerve root damage symptoms listed above spread out to the left glute with activity. There’s a couple more new symptoms from the lumbar fiasco I’m saving to speak about in person with various individuals.
All the same old arthritis and bad joint Stuff I’m not too worried about anymore.
21 OCT 22: Recently moving to a strictly-dosed mostly-CBD medication regimen showed me a few things. #1: THC is the neuro-effective pain reliever. That is obvious, with the right elbow now again flirting with sleep-loss-inducing nerve flare. #2: CBD is not necessarily a sleep aid. I’ve been more alert, active and taking fewer naps, although I do seem to sleep better at night with it(?). #3: Eating vs. vaping involves some sort of catch-22. Vaping is fast and effective, never leaving me too stoned to function, but wears off after an hour or two. Edible can last all day, but can’t eat enough without getting blotto half the time, and eventually leads to hyperemesis if I’m not carefully limiting intake, resulting in sub-par symptom suppression. So the regimen now means eating small (5-10Mg) 1:20 CBD flower doses 2-3 times a day, along with a vape bowl of a 1:1 CBD strain spiked with kief. My theory is the kief adds enough additional terps and THC for good analgesic effect. Numbers on the ratio start at 8G kief/Oz. flower.
The flower I’m eating is a near-all CBD strain offered by Terrapin Care Station called Wife’s Lemonade. It’s important to note I am using no processed products of any kind, with the small exception of cold-pressed rosin, and mostly because that stuff is supposed to be naturally pure, just forced out of it’s plant host. Tight controls, few variables and it’s still just an experiment. PT is the only thing really consistent for the past few years, with only minor adjustments. Cannabis medication under most of the different applications I’ve tried is way better than pharma-induced dependency and stupor.
Nerve flare in the right elbow and knee is noticeable again now, but not too uncomfortable. I’m gonna roll with this for the rest of the year to see how it goes. If I can stay out of hyperemesis and maintain some semblance of sanity, we’ll call it good.
