uuuuuhhhhhhh
Uncle B brought home a special holiday cold from London last week, and I thought just maaaaaaybe I’d avoided catching it.
Nope.
How bad is it? My skin hurts.
How bad is it? I couldn’t even be arsed to take my own picture of wadded up tissues; I pinched this one off the internet. Not that we’re posh enough to use actual tissues — it’s store brand paper towels for our plebian snouts.
Brits call paper towels “kitchen roll.” They call Nyquil “Night Nurse.” See? Even in agony, I impart unto you secret expatriate knowledge.
Also, we’ve invented a thing we call a snot log. We take the empty paper towel tube, stuff it with all the used bits and throw it on the fire. One roll’s worth per tube — the finished log weighs about two pounds and burns with a merry light.
Oof. Can y’all make your own fart jokes without me for a while? Ta.
November 28, 2012 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 30
Um, ow
Soooo…I had a mammogram today. The way they do it under the NHS, they go ahead and schedule you an appointment and send you a notice and then hope enough people turn up to make it worthwhile. See, they drive up in a 40-foot tit wagon with a receptionist in one end, changing rooms in the middle, and an X-Ray tech in the back and then just gram mammoes all day.
That poor tech must handle a whole, WHOLE lot of knockers.
My nurse friends have all had similar gigs. One spent, like, eighteen months doing nothing but pap smears in a similar mobile clinic. Goodness me. She had nightmares about fighting her way out of Carlsbad Caverns armed with nothing but a Q-tip.
Oh, and then there was the one who processed stool samples. Worst part of that one, she said — if you’re going to mail people large manilla envelopes and ask for a sample, you really really need to define what you mean by “sample.”
September 10, 2012 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 21
So, how’s your coccyx?
Uncle B bought this knobbly rubber mat thing in the market. You walk on it for five minutes and the knobbles massage your aching feet.
I started to transcribe the whole box for you, but the Chinglish wasn’t all that bad (not counting the left foot is labeled right, and vice versa). Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with Chinese traditional medicine. After all these millenia, they have found some things that work…even if I can’t get on board with why they think they work.
Anyhow, I thought it might be handy to learn some important body part names in Italian and French. Mon dieu, mes glandes genitales endoloris!
June 14, 2012 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 39
I have it on reliable authority that this is poison
I suppose Tic-Tacs are poison if you eat enough of them, but this stuff is made of cherry pits and thus has a bit of cyanide in it (as do most members of the rosaceae family — thenk yew Uncle B for this information). It’s supposed to deaden the nerves at the back of my throat and deliver me from the horrible, racking cough that’s been keeping me up nights for eight weeks now. Got it from a medical herbalist.
Yes, I did see a proper doctor first — with the diploma and the white coat and the cold listen-y tube and all. No fluid in my lungs, so she wasn’t impressed (which makes me wonder why I keep waking up making squeak-toy noises).
Eh. Sometimes, it’s just easier to buy hobbit medicine.
One of these days, I owe you a real post about the NHS. It isn’t nearly as bad as the Daily Mail tells you it is. It’s just not good enough for what it costs.
But not today. I’m still on holiday slowdown. If I don’t see you before Sunday — Happy New Year! Get really drunk and do something you regret!
December 30, 2011 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 67
DIY Death Panel
Saw the doctor today about my persistent cough. Diagnosis: somethin’ done shook my bronchial tree. She gave me an inhaler. I’ve never had an inhaler before. I feel like Nerdly von Geekburger. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to contain any form of narcotic. Or work.
I’d’ve settled for some codeine linctus.
Completely unrelated (but medical), I ran across this fascinating article at Small Dead Animals earlier. It’s about how doctors choose to die. The short answer is: as far away from a hospital as possible.
Guys who have seen it a thousand times don’t want any part of modern medicine’s lurid pull-out-all-the-stops end-of-life snuff theater. (Also, people who opt for home hospice over ICU care live longer, on average, with a much higher quality of life. Go figure).
Something the article didn’t make clear — from my experience of medical people (and I have a few in the family), if a condition is curable or even satisfactorily treatable, they’ll grab all the modern medicine they can get. They aren’t anti-medicine. They’re anti-the-horrible-things-we-do-to-the-hopeless-as-they-fade-away.
Even if the topic gives you the willies, I highly recommend you read the article. And then put some future bureaucrat out of a job by making arrangements for yourself.
December 6, 2011 — 12:04 am
Comments: 37
Oh, man, have I ever moved to the right country
Ladies and gentlemen — over the counter codeine! And it doesn’t even have that filthy Tylenol in it.
It’s behind the counter and they give you a little lecture when you ask for it, but it’s the same drill with baby aspirin (yes, really).
There’s a little opioid-shaped hole in my brain. If a medication has “euphoria” listed as a possible side effect, that’s the side effect I’m going to get good and hard.
Happiest day of my life: the day I had my wisdom teeth out. Intravenous Valium and Demerol mix. You could pour me from hand to hand like a blissed-out slinky. I wanted to go back every day for the next month and have another tooth extracted.
I don’t know where they get that “3 days use” thing, though. In my experience, it only works the first time. Then you have to wait, like, a week or ten days before it works the same again.
Dammit.
May 23, 2011 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 28
So I get to paint my whole body with myrrh, anyway
Yeah. No, really.
Remember that case of ringworm I picked up before Christmas? Yep. I’m still a crusty, boogery mess. Damn thing heals in one spot and breaks out in another.
I dropped by a walk-in clinic at Christmas, saw a doctor I didn’t know and got five tubes of ointment. I saw my own GP last month (for my annual blood pressure check), rolled down my sock and showed him my nastiest bit, got a shrug and one tube of ointment.
My medical intervention is deescalating.
I’d blame the NHS, but my doctor in Rhode Island noticed a patch of ringworm on my leg and gave me nothing. (Yes, I’ve had it before. Fungus seems to like me. I should try growing champignon mushrooms on my ass).
So, in desperation, I’ve seen a qualified herbalist. Earning qualifications here requires a pretty rigorous medical course, so it’s not like going to Sunshine McButterfly the spirit healer. I’ve got some chance of getting something that works.
Which turns out to be myrrh. And tea tree oil. She made up a bucket of “paint” and I literally take a paintbrush and slather it onto the affected areas.
What’s that like? Well, it’s kind of like AIIIIIIIIIIIIII, OHMIGOD, ITBURNS ITBURNS ITBURNSSSSSSSSSSS!
April 14, 2011 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 32
Where would I be without the easy ones?
Huh. I guess the National Enquirer thinks Obama has worms*. I’m not sure. When I click the link, I get “The content of this website is not available in your area.” That happens with Saturday Night Live skits, too.
See? England isn’t all bad.
In other wormy news, did you see the Cheezburger Network got a major capital infusion?
I love the Cheezburger folks, but I don’t know how they’re getting away with this. They pretty much admit they don’t know where most of the photos come from and that’s totally, no-doubt-about-it, not even a little bit legal. You can’t do that. You can’t nick other people’s stuff; it doesn’t matter if they’re amateur snapshots of pussycats and you supply the captions.
I assumed they got away with it because there weren’t any deep pockets involved, but $30M is a respectable pocket. Well, long may they escape the roving bands of aggressive IP lawyers that scour the internet (and ruin my fun on Zazzle).
January 19, 2011 — 10:49 pm
Comments: 16
Fucidin H? *Really*?
I’ve got a nasty rash. Have I mentioned? I really, really nasty poofy itchy bleedy thing. My arms, my legs, top of my feet, back and shoulders and…oohhhh, my sweet Aunt Fanny…on my butt.
I’ve been ignoring it for a couple of weeks now. That’s my default position on any illness: if I can probably survive the night without medical intervention, I’m willing to give it a shot.
But today Uncle B put his foot down (fair enough. Sleeping next to it might even be more disgusting than wearing it). Rather than try to get an appointment with my regular GP this close to Christmas, we opted for a walk-in clinic a couple of towns over.
The doctor there said it was likely either ringworm (which is actually a fungus) or ovoid eczema (which is bacterial, but I think he’s bullshitting me there, because “ovoid eczema” just means “round swollen bit”).
To find out which, all he’d have to do is shine an ultraviolet on it. If it’s fungal, the rash will fluoresce. If it’s bacterial, it won’t. But he couldn’t do that, because that’s technically a “test” and he’s not my GP. NHS rules say only my official GP can order a test.
So he had to give me treatment for both.
And there you have it: socialized medicine. The NHS isn’t terrible. It isn’t Soviet. If you didn’t tot up the eye-watering cost, it’s actually pretty good, at least around here. The doctors are competent, the staff is polite and professional, the facilities are clean and modern. I got to see a doctor within hours of deciding I needed one.
But always the ham fist of government making sure nobody uses common sense.
Oh, and hey — I get to rub myself down with liniment five freaking times a day.
Yay! Sandy Claus brought me ass cream for Christmas!
December 21, 2010 — 11:23 pm
Comments: 31
One opportunity missed
Talking (as we were) about capitalism expanding to fill every vacuum — and continuing our horticultural theme — it’s astonishing to me that there isn’t a significant US market in homegrown coca leaves and opium poppies.
We certainly learned to grow decent marijuana eventually. America has places that represent every sort of climate on earth, and there’s sure as shit enough money in cocaine and heroin.
I don’t know much about coca, but opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) grow readily enough in lots of places. Near as I can tell from a quick poke around the web, they are legal to grow in the US. They certainly are in the UK. Just not to harvest.
Which is also pretty easy. Shortly after the petals fall off the flowers, you make three very shallow cuts along the seed pod with a razor. A white latex sap, like unto Elmer’s glue, weeps out of the cuts. Leave it overnight, it goes brown and sticky, scrape it into a spoon — and that, ladies and gentlemen, is opium.
Going from raw opium to morphine or heroin requires chemistry and other things that baffle and confuse weasels, but I don’t think it’s rocket science.
I’ve never actually harvested opium, and I’m not just saying that because the British government is intrusive and impertinent. I really haven’t.
But I once harbored ambition to be a sort of Johnny Appleseed — or Stoaty Opiumseed, if you will — sowing somniferum up and down the land. For no good reason beyond sticking a finger in the eye of The Man and the evil bastards who live off the international drug trade.
Problem is, I suck at growing stuff.
April 28, 2010 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 31