Sigh. Hard times coming up. I have been fighting over pain meds and am waiting for the referal to USC. Having been recently laid off and now the wife (and I truly am grateful for this) is finally switching jobs...I'm gonna have a 30 day lapse on insurance. I'm looking at possibly 20 days with no pain medication.

When you see me on the 11 o'clock news and they are using words like 'hostages' and 'desperate'...please think kindly of me. And ignore anything quoted from a 'neighbor' or 'former co-worker'. I just act that way around them to throw them off.

Sorry to hear it, Po. My thoughts are with you, just do me a favor.

What ever you do, don't let Seth take your case!!!!  He's a quack!!

Just kidding Duc , I mean Doc!    

I hope that you get a tiny miracle, Po'. It sounds like you could use one. Being in constant pain is hideous.

mine are better

Oh that's no good... at all.  My pain meds aren't exactly the strongest, but I'd be 250% certifiable without them.

Always, mate, always.  It doesn't matter what they say about you on the 11 o'clock news, I know the deep seated issues that would have driven you to the point of despair.... and even if they don't believe you about the little voices in your head, urging you onwards to levels of lunacy never encountered before, I do. 

I hear those voices as well... and they're not always so well behaved.  They're often trying to incite me to do naughty things (like I need a lot of encouragement?).  Why only the other day I was traveling on an elevator in a downtown bank, with about half a dozen bankers... and this little voice in my head kept saying that I should let rip a "right royal paint peeler" just before I got off.  Deserved, perhaps, but I didn't be the one responsible for inspiring another interest rate hike.

Sooo, that bit wot Miss Honeymaker said - about you saying "NO!!!" when she bailed you up alone in the storeroom at work - that's a big fat lie, then????

Yeah, I worked with a woman like that once... took at least 35 occasions of me saying "Not a chance!" before finally she took no for an answer.

Nothing like the phony promises of HIPAA, eh? (Health Insurance PORTABILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY Act). Portability my ***.

I'm sorry for that, Po'... 20 days of hell. Great. Because morons in D.C. just can't get it right (because they're paid not to)...so they can stay in D.C. not doing it right.

I'm thinkin' we should oughta help Po` out with some pain relief.  Now if we wos t' send him around a strippergram and Mrs.Po` stomped on his toe, slapped him upside his head and elbowed him in the gullet fer lookin', he'd forget about the pain in his back for a while.

Yeah, I know...  which list I've just gotten myself on.... because Po's thinkin': "With friends like him......"

Well at least I'm thinkin' of ways.  They mightn't be on the right page, but I've at least opened the book.

These people in DC are real high up, right???  That's because people in Po's position feel like they've been shat on from a great height.

On a serious note....

It never ceases to amaze me... how politicians and bureaucrats with their every need more than adequately taken care of (by taxpayers) can cook up a few numbers in the tiny minds and decide that the nation can't afford better health care for individuals.

Ya know, a few years ago I was talking to an American guy who was here in Oz for treatment he could easily have gotten back home, but he told me that it was costing him less to have the surgery and follow up treatment done here.... that his so-called insurance provider covered only a small portion of the cost and the rest was his to bear. 

Yup, he said that after forking out for the travel for he and his wife, for accommodation and the hospital fees, etc, he was still considerably better off than having it done locally at home.... and he said that the medical care he received here was world class, easily on a par with what he could have gotten at home, so don't it make you wonder, WTF is wrong with medical care/provision over there???

Well said....thus the demand for The 28th Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States".

Real simple: The entire Healthcare Industry and the government is rotten from the top to the bottom: Money talks and the patients (who may or may not own stock in Insurance and Pharmaceutical Companies) walk. It is corrupt, and the only real access to the lawmakers is given on the principle of "What have you done for me today, and how much is my vote worth."

The influence peddlers and bribers (in truth that's all the lobbiers are) are a plague on us and so are the political parties and the current election system. The whole corrupt lot need flushing.

I'll be the one supplying that missing digit. And, you know where.

Took you long enough....I thought you had accepted it...lol!! 

You sir are a fag and deserve no sympathy...anyone who has been foolish enough to feel sorry for you has been tricked...no one need pay any attention to you or make eye contact with the Po'. Miss u all dearly, but not this place....peace, Happy 4th...Jack

Po...

Come over here - If you are working your prescription would cost £7.20 per item, if not working = free. No insurance, no means test, they wouldn't even care that you're not British (heck, we already have 20 million bloody illegal immigrants here who seem to be entitled to everything I pay for...).

We really are the land of the free (entitlement)...

I agree, Fuzzy. But Po' really needs the help.

Jack....G-d Bless, and a Happy Fourth to you and yours. Miss you, bud. Really.

Thing is, Doc, getting medical care here in oz is dependent on having money or a top of the line insurance scheme.  For example, I would never ever receive the kind of treatment which was afforded to the American chap... though I need similar   I need a hip and a knee replacement,  and I have spinal issues which are being ignored because I'm broke and have no cover... so yeah, people here in Oz are often assigned to the scrap pile if they're not loaded, a sports star, lawyer, banker, politician.

Hehe, here's one for ya!  My sister and I have the same degenerative bone disease, and she had a hip replacement at age 27, yet I am still being told at 57 that I am too young and need to wait another 10 years. I know of sports stars who are in their 20's who've had hip and knee replacement surgery, and I mention this when I'm knocked back on age, but I'm just told that it is essential for them to earn a living.   WTF????   I don't need to earn a living... I don't want some quality of life????   No, I've just been pensioned off and more or less told that I'm useless.

As for health insurance, I was told that I had several pre-existing conditions and that they wanted almost 2/3's of my pre-tax income to cover me 30 something years ago.  Like I could afford that... and now that those "pre-existing conditions" have deteriorated considerably over time, and I have some new ones to boot, I'd have to live in the damned hospital to keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach if I paid the premiums they'd want these days.

Oh yeah, and another thing, I can't get decent medication because pensioners prescriptions are dispensed cut-price under the 'National Prescription Scheme'... and I got this straight from a 'horse's mouth, I will NOT be considered for drugs considered too expensive for the public purse.  I'm not even asked if I'd like to pay for them out of my own pocket... meaning, like it or not, I'm lumbered with grossly inadequate paracetamol and the like.  And what's this crap about the public purse... I contributed to that for 30 + years via income and various taxes.   That doesn't count???  In fact, I'm still contributing... taxes on everything I buy/pay for... doesn't that count, either??

Hmmm, nothing like a good bitch n' moan to make one feel better, what??? 

'Tis almost as good as a good belly laugh (providing one doesn't possess a discount bladder). 

"The Public purse"....the same one they've been plundering for years? The one that is supposed to help you and doesn't? The one that pays those useless sods' wages but somehow always comes up short in helping you? We talking about the same one?

There's a "Public purse" for the pols and the like...the "Public's Curse".

I'm so glad you came back and stood up in your own defense here Doc.  When I saw what RND said, I was gonna come to your aid and protest... to s..sa..sa.. say tha... tha.. that you're no..no..no...NOT a quack, but then I remembered the time y-y-y-... yo..you sent me that 'burst file' containing the nude photo of yourself to cure my chronic hiccups....  

Yeah, I get it that a sudden shock/fright often cures hiccups, but n-n-n-now I g-g-g-go, go-got a st-st-stu... stu... stutter inste.. intea... instead.

Wasn't that the time you sent me the pic of you with those boy scouts? 

Yep, that's the same public purse I was 'entitled' to contribute to for 30+ years.... and the one I'm "stealing" from if I'm prescribed a decent pain killer.  And here's the one that really kicks me in the guts... I have a virtually untreated degenerative bone and joint disease, they keep making excuses to turn me away, yet I know of a woman who is getting a breast augmentation at taxpayers expense because she has image issues.

OK, then, if that's the case, I want a longjohntiddlywhacker augmentation... because with aging I'm noticing more and more that its becoming a shortjohntiddlywhacker. 

(BTW, Doc, I noticed today that I got an email from you about a new med.  Could be very interesting.  Thanks for that.  )

Get it right!  Those were girl scouts!  Yeah, a couple of them came to my room and hopped under the covers with me to get some practice pitching tents.

Oh yeah, while we're on the subject of tent pitching, has anybody else noticed during slow page reloads... that Po' has a little 'woody' action going on in the Star Trek pic????

Yeah, I was sitting here waiting to see if I got a 'boom' or successful post... and, and that was staring me in the face for a few moments before to page loaded properly. 

Shoot, I couldn't even hit the back button or shut down FF.

P'rhaps...p'rhaps not...true, the pics were a tad blurry (thank G-d).

You're welcome....for the info. Always on the lookout for me friends (a very precious few, wonderful folks).

Actually, I found an article accidentally a few weeks ago about that or a similar medication.  Apparently the powers that be haven't approved these drug for that use as yet, but I am going to speak with my doctor because it has also been used to treat some muscular issues (hardening/crystalising, etc), which I also suffer.  I'll be going through some tests later next week for fibromyalgia... if it turn out to be the diagnosis, my doctor tells me that he will be able to prescribe better pain relief, etc,... and this new wonder med without coming under too much scrutiny.

There's Lyrica (Pregalbin), Cymbalta and Savella... if it's FM.

Yep... and if it's FM I'm told I should be able to get that new wonder med because I have muscular hardening and issues with spasms...  and like WOW... those bastards really hurt like a bitch.  If that's so it'll be a bonus... cos it'll address the other issues as well.

The other thing you may be able to advise me on, Doc, is something that I can buy over the counter for motion sickness.  And I don't have to be in a vehicle for this to happen, either.  Some days I wake up with it, and just walking from one side of a room to the other gives me that nauseous sensation.   It has partly been attributed to my neck problems, and partly to an eye/inner ear problem after my right cheekbone was crushed and pinched the sinus, etc. If you could recommend something reasonably effective it'd be much appreciated.  I'll have a lot of moving around to do over the next few weeks while we're moving, so it'll be needed. 

Thanks, mate.