This morning I had a doctor meeting to discuss the pros and cons of a RAK amputation, and speaking of removal of bits of the body, I mostly finished off The Cure of Folly last night… Here’s where I’m at with it right now. This was a quick painting that was a lot of fun to do and I’m pretty happy with it…
This weekend the folks from BME finally completed deleting the vast majority of my articles and interviews from the site, so I think that gives me the push I needed to get them collated into book form… Perhaps narcissistically, as the author, I think they still have some value and I’d like to see them available. So watch for those soon, although I can’t promise they’ll be ready in time for Christmas. I think I’ll just assemble it as a black and white book, so it should be inexpensive this time.
35 Comments
Good fucking god are you serious? You probably crossed the line a long time ago in reality, but for me you have officially lost your mind.
I’m not really sure if you’re talking about the amputation, but if you are, to be clear, that’s involuntary due to complications from the tumor, not a purely elective thing. Not that a big spring leg doesn’t sound fun other than the obvious hell.
If you’re talking about the painting, guilty as charged.
What was your doctors reaction, Shannon? Or was it a suggestion of his?
It’s just one of a number of suggestions/treatments on the table… A bunch of things are being run concurrently because wait lists are so crazy long. It’s pretty annoying going through an admit process and finding out you’re looking at 6-12 months for your initial appointment!
It’s also strange seeing the other people in the programs — most feel “disabled” and are there as well to get approval/backing for disability payments, and have various degrees of life/activity avoidance. I don’t feel that way at all — I live a full life (and want to), and definitely am not seeking disability…
Ridiculous about the articles, but I’d love to have ‘em in book form. Throw your experiences in there, too. Those are always fun to read (wonder if they’ve been removed, too)…
Oh, I didn’t even think of my experiences — thanks! Yeah, I’m thinking about a sort of “Essays and Interviews on Body Modification” collection. Feel free to suggest a book title that’s not terribly boring because I’m drawing a blank!
I’ve started working on it today, so the project is a go.
make sure you get 2nd,3rd and 4th opinion. Cross the border and get American opinion as well.
So that thing is back?
AMAZING!
Why are they deleting your articles to begin with?
Dunno, but it’s their site and their right to make that decision if they feel the articles are not something they want to include any more.
I love the idea of all the articles – and your paintings are amazing!
Seems rather petty and out of line to remove all your content. It certainly goes against the “get info to the people” vibe BME had. What a shame. I’m glad you’re working on still having the articles and experiences available. I hope you get the medical stuff figured out. I hate being at the mercy of an overworked health system (though it’s FAR FAR better than no health system at all, ala the US).
i have ongoing issues with an ankle injury, and have often thought that if it comes to it (although unlikely) i wouldn’t mind an amputation if it means i can make myself a skeletal prosthetic. not sure if it would be plausible – but would be awesome if it did work!
Is that waitlist because of Canadian socialized medicine? Maybe I missed the entry as to why you need surgery, and I don’t even know what a RAK amputation is (I’ll google it in a sec). As a Canadian and the doom and gloom we hear in America about the state of your “socialized” healthcare? Is it that bad? What’s the real deal? I ask out of ignorance, and the fact I don’t trust any propaganda I hear, and I don’t really have many opportunities to ask a Canadian about what they think/feel about their system.
I would personally love a book with all your articles and experiences in it!
I love our health care system, but in practice it’s not working well. There is a shortage of doctors and nurses (probably because they go to the US to make more money), which makes waiting times craazy long. My doctor is booking physicals 7 months in advance. I still prefer long waits then paying for the entire thing.
Every time you mentioned your writings being deleted from the site I feel a little sick to my stomach with sad. :(
Love to get that book your articles were always the best on Bme anyways. Yours and Lizerdmands Q and A.
+1
I’d be totally keen for a book of your BME content. Your semi paranoid musings were a big part of the reason I read BME in the first place. It seems pretty childish that that content has been removed, but I’ve given up trying to find any logic in the direction BME is headed lately.
thats pretty shitty about the doc’s dude, lets hope it dont come to that…..but if it does you gotta get your leg framed or somet.
have you thought about peg legs and becoming a pirate? you got the killer beard for it :)
Just SEMI paranoid? Hahaha… I have to admit that on some articles there’s a certain amount of face-palm thinking about republishing them!
1) Please please please include your April Fools Day articles too! There was a mini-flamefest regarding one in a Fark thread the other day and it reminded me of how some people will believe ANYthing, especially when it comes to, “Can you believe what kids are doing these days?”
2) As a Canadian in the US that has sort of okay health coverage: I MISS our healthcare system. I have back issues that I am trying to rectify, but even though the insurance company is paying for 80% of the procedures, I still can’t afford to get anything done.
It really depends on who your doctor is in Canada. When I had to get a CAT scan done at the referral of my GP it took a year. After the results came back I was sent to a neurologist who told me I needed an MRI. I got in for that within 2 weeks.
The free healthcare is one of the main reasons I want to move back home.
dresden wrote:
Is that waitlist because of Canadian socialized medicine? Maybe I missed the entry as to why you need surgery, and I don’t even know what a RAK amputation is (I’ll google it in a sec). As a Canadian and the doom and gloom we hear in America about the state of your “socialized” healthcare? Is it that bad? What’s the real deal? I ask out of ignorance, and the fact I don’t trust any propaganda I hear, and I don’t really have many opportunities to ask a Canadian about what they think/feel about their system.
https://www.leg.bc.ca/Hansard/30th4th/30p_04s_740325p.htm
However, there is never any suggestion in these appendices of what these people might be doing -people like Dr. Ransford, who was hired on, I understand, at $33,000 a year. We’ve never seen anything in the budget for that. When do we get some public disclosure about what those people have done, are doing, or will be doing, and how much money they have been getting for it?
There is a Richard Larratt in here. I understand that he was an electronics engineer, from Manitoba I am told, who has been hired by this government, also at $33,000, to amalgamate the MSA, the CUC and the B.C. Medical Plan, at least the computer sections of it, if my information is correct. But where is he now? Is he still employed and if so at how much money, and what has he been doing?
Excuse the warmup but the subject at hand is serious and I am not only Shannon’s father but I’d say well suited to ans. The question DRESDEN raises as before putting Medicare in one bag as well as integrating payments to Drs. With laboratory Automation I studied and travelled to the U.S. with special attention to the V.A. hospitals and then off to Sweden and Great Britain. The way the differing systems allocate the resource is very reflective of the cultures. In the Swedish Model which across the board delivers excellent care and results – in general a patient cannot demand at any level a particular doctor. Of course some can so if you are swedish and do – don’t bother reminding me that there is always an elite and they get the cake.
Moving directly to the 2008 Cdn. System which is in trouble the problem is misallocation of resources and resource assignment in cases considered elective. The Cdn system is after all a public system and is measured twice, once by its statistical performance and second by the re-election of politicans who determine the supply by the decisions they make in the budget
Something like Shannon’s ills not unlike Rachel’s discontents are elective. And in either of their cases but really in general – if the public system sees your case as elective – while it may be that there is a research teaching hospital in Israel or McGill Medical School that the place to go a difficult elective is the USA. But more than that – get cancer in canada and you’ll maybe get a “free” breast implant but don’t be surprised if you have a half moon scar under the breast that isn’t the case if you have had what to a public system is the same procedure but here in FL. No scar – different tools different ways of doing and seeing.
It’s just business and policy. Here in Tarpon Springs there is a St. Lukes (do a google). It’s an only in America thing. an entire hospital devoted to a few procedure on the cutting edge of the research and they have books in the lobby on creative design.
No matter the father and son and a few more do 1000s of procedures a year. They’re the best in the world in terms of results – at exactly what they do. Nearer Shannon’s issues there is another specialized Hospital near Tarpon Springs – but back pain.
None of this is meant to run down the Cdn System or laud the American. The measure of the Cdn. System is public good – the needs of the many versus the wants of the few – in the USA it is more towards the best medicine your money can buy but bring your cheque book. Of course I had my eye done at St. Lukes. Cost me about $3000.
I could have got a free eye in Cdn. But I didn’t….think I could afford free.
“But I didn’t think I could afford free”
How telling.
There are very few places where cheaper is better. My parents always look for the best doctor and then worry about whether it’s in their coverage. I’ve adopted the same attitude. I’ve only got one go around.
Just to be clear there’s no problem in the “canadian system” causing the extreme wait — it’s just the clinics like this are few and far between, here and elsewhere, and it’s just a fact of life that I have to wait a long time no matter where I am located.
Just half-remembering one of the April Fools… Wasn’t there the strange case of the twins? One wanted to amputate an arm, and the other wanted three arms, so… yes, you’ve guessed the rest.
I this a relapse of the growth you had previously on your leg?
What’s the condition called?
Tim — Yeah, that was the very first one. I just finished laying it up actually. All the April Fools articles are included.
Scienkoptic — No, it was benign. It’s just complications from the removal (the biopsy actually).
Nerve damage?
https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/phantom-pain/DS00444
One of the things that can annoy one with it (phantom pain)
Is that other people might think you are making it up – that it is only in your head
Well where else is the experience of the pain?
Of course it is in your head – and aside from drugs
You may over time teach yourself to ignore it by the realization it is bullshit.
Oh but that it were so simple. Sometime maybe a year before kathleen mother of sdl
Had had enough of my crazy – her coming home one eve3ning from teaching and the place
Is covered with blood and I am sleeping. I had cut myself across the back of
My left hand when a chain saw back snapped – to her credit she got me
To emergency in Belleville and on her own went by admitting authority (Too complex)
Can’t help you come back tomorrow – and up to OR
And found a hand doctor just coming off a two-three hour operation.
He took maybe two hours from about ten o’clock till midnite to fix and tie the
Tendons on the back of my left hand – but for that I would not have been able to
Straighten my fingers. Three fingers – the little finger was missed by the saw
I think this was in the Spring of 2000 so it is proof personal that the socialist republic
Of Ontario still had a working Medical System eight years ago
At least in that case – thank heavens there was a general hosipital in Belleville
St. Lukes would not have been able to do a damn thing for me.
And yeah – but for the lioness- this lion would have a ruined hand
And by the by much of the positive view SDL has derives from elite access
I don’t mean now and I have no interest in a general debate on what is so
Intensely personal. If an incompetent surgeon fucks you up or as in Shannon’s
Case an incompetent GP told him and kv that he did not have a problem – get different shoes
(clearly I am not blameless – the pt. Is shannon’s pain is real – and the solution is not in
generalities about different systems. If you know how to work the Cdn system it works.
My sister is a department head at the Univ. of Alberta – the doctors know
Who kills who mains and who wears the glasses and sorts the nerves a nerve at a time.
But sorry I am off topic my the rules I just stated. It is all in the last para.
Phantom pain. I get it often and not just in the hand which seems to have
Returned to full function. Why am I mentioning this. Because no one can
Be certain whether or not there will be phantom pain after a RAK amputation.
I recommend shannon keep the leg and foot – I am keeping left hand because
No matter how it hurts and sometimes it hurts bad – it is bullshit. My left hand is just fine.
From my admittedly rather limited reading on the subject, as I understand it, amputations for pain relief are pretty pointless, given the propensity for phantom limb formation.
I can’t see anything as drastic as an RAK doing much to relieve the tumour pain, more’s the pity, and you’re gonna end up with motility problems even with an expensive prosthetic.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to go through what you have to every day, though, and I understand why an amputation sounds attractive. I’d reccommend reading Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain before you decide!
If you’re lucky, though, you might end up like on of Ramachandran’s case studies, and develop the ability to have intense orgasms perceived as if they are located in the non-existent, missing limb! :)
Read a book a while back. Flights of passage by Rinker Buck. His father was plagued by phantom pains after losing a leg. I think he ended up eating a shotgun…. A customer of mine just ate his gun. Reminds me that no amount of money can guarantee happiness.
Interesting, thanks for the feedback.
fullfilling the needs of the many vs. the wants of the few
that DRESDEN is the difference between the US vs Cdn. Medical System…
Which is better – well it depends whether you are a many or a few – but not quite -
a friend of mine’s mother just got her free knee in Cdn. and she is already complaining – it hurts and she has been unable to get out of bed and walk – she won’t be the first or the last – but fewer such cases in America
the problem with free is that even if it is as good it is discounted by the recipiant as it was free –
I used to charge and be paid a thousand dollars a day for my advice regards EDP
My advice of decades ago vs. open systems, unix, etc. was taken because it wasn’t free
Shannon has my ONT. LINUX Plates – it will still be a few more years – as how good can it be if it is free
Have nothing to contribute on Canadian healthcare, but just wanted to encourage you to publish your articles as a book without editing. It may sound melodramatic, but history will be lost without them.
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