Curious...

While perusing the woo-meister's site, I happened upon the testimonials section. I was reading these anecdotes from his "believers" and there was much eye rolling and facepalming. First and foremost, should you trust anything on a page where there has to be a disclaimer at the top of the page before you get to anything at all? (I won't say substance because it's nothing but fluffing. And I mean fluffing. In the porno sense, only with ego instead of dick.) This is the disclaimer:

Standard disclaimer: the following statements are unsolicited anecdotal comments and are not meant to make the claim that the inborn intelligence of the body can heal, or that food should be thy medicine and medicine thy food, or that drugs aren't always curative, or that the healing power of nature is primary, or that physicians should do no harm, or that people shouldn't take as many drugs as possible and consult their doctors about why, or that the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country each year should have any effect whatsoever on our health, or any other notions such as these.

So do all woo sites have this explanation as a standard disclaimer, or is this whackaloon being sarcastic in saying that he has to do this because of big PHARMA? Oh well, that's neither here nor there. What got my attention was the fact that numerous "testimonials" were from "doctors". I say it in quotes because I don't believe a damn thing this man has to say. I think all of these so-called testimonials are bullshit, sprinkled with the man's true believers. One in particular caught my attention. Here it is, cut and paste:

Simply the best and most accessible deconstruction on vaccines I’ve read, and I’ve read quite a few. You should be proud, as I am of you, your courage, and your work!
Anthony J Maniotis PhD, Dept of Pathology, University of Illinois

It caught my attention for a reason. I put the name Anthony J. Maniotis, PhD, Dept of Pathology, University of Illinois into Google and looked at the results. Every single one on the front page for that exact search term, was a word for word cut and paste of the comment on whackaloon's page, about whackaloon's book, but on other websites. If you go to the University of Illinois at Chicago's website and search for the name, there are no matches. If you look in the Department of Pathology, there is no one by that name. If you look at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there is no one by that name. That is not to say that the person does not exist. 

There does appear to be a Dr. Andrew J. Maniotis, PhD that did cancer research and is employed by the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has a blog. The last time anything was put up on his blog was a post on September 3, 2007. He also has an information page over at the World Association of Vaccine Education. It appears to be an anti-vax site. He is not listed as the Program Director in the Cell and Developmental Biology of Cancer however, regardless of what he has on the blog and that WAVE page. He is listed in UIC's phonebook as the Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Proof? Here.

Why would someone who has obviously had quite a bit of education and is a researcher, change his name slightly and leave the same comment on several pages referring to the woo-meister's book? I'm not sure. Then again, I think that the woo-meister or someone that's involved in the whole anti-vax movement put the comment there in hopes of giving some authority to the book. The more doctors that are listed, the more people will believe it. Doctors are people too however, and can fall into the same traps that others do, believing woo and nonsense. It is not ethical to lie about your nonsense to sell books. I would hope that people wouldn't blindly believe anything that they read without looking around a little and verifying the information with more than one source. I'm sure I could dig quite a bit more and find even more information. I'll add some screenshots of the website at a later time.

I have found a treasure trove of stupidity

I have found the most amazing treasure trove of stupidity. I don't even have the macro images to encompass the amount of amazing bullshit, fail, and woo all in one place. I did not start out to do a post on the complete dumbassery in this one location. Honestly I didn't. I started a post on a comment from woo-boy last night that bothered me so much that I was looking for this alleged study this morning while there was nothing going on here at work. I found more than I was looking for. This study has yet to make an appearance other than being used as an off-handed reference on anti-medicine wootastic natural cancer cure sites. Repeated over and over again, they repeat the claim that in a study, 75% of doctors would not take chemotherapy. One person that wrote an article that was cut and pasted ad nauseum all over the net where ever one can post free articles, mentions that the question referred to lung cancer only and then proceeded to call chemotherapy almost as bad as drinking the most vile poisons ever. I was going to tear that shit apart until I happened upon some major league woo. Anti-vax? You got it. Mercury causes autism? Yup. Fluoridation!!!! ARGH! Oh yeah, big time crackpottery. This is going to take ages to get through. Awesome. More to come when I dig in a little more.

Back at it

Well, I'm almost finished with my first day back at work after being off for almost two weeks. Thankfully I had the vacation time to do it and I've gotten some things around the house done. Of course this is the long weekend I come back to and I need to get a hold of the gal who works opposite me to see if we can switch days next week so I can go to chemo with RelUnrelated. It hasn't been too bad and people haven't been bombarding me with questions about him. The one person that I wouldn't expect to be nice about how things are and how he is doing was. She surprised me first thing this morning with asking me how he was doing. It was thoughtful and took me aback, because she's been pretty abusive to the staff and other residents at work lately. She's back on her meds again and realizes, at least for the time being that the medications are what helps her to be stable and enjoy life. So that was a surprise. The residents all signed a get well card for RelUnrelated that I'll give to him when I get home tonight. And then the amusement of all of them telling me how much they've been praying for him. That always makes me laugh. Prayer doesn't real. It does nothing. It really doesn't. If it did, he wouldn't have cancer. If it did, he would have never gotten sick. It's nice, but ya know, it doesn't do anything, so please don't waste your time.

There was another highlight to the day. Apparently the Alzheimer's unit has a new resident. I don't go up there often, because that floor is run by an agency and they take care of everything on that floor. Unless they need supplies. The new resident isn't human. It's a small kitten about eight weeks old named Patches. Well, everyone was saying that Patches was a female. Apparently they've never been around cats very often because Patches is definitely not a female. Patches has balls. So after he shredded my hands and beat the hell out of the string I brought him, he took a nice nap. He earned it. My hands are still sore. Kitten claws are far different than adult cat's claws. They hurt longer too. I miss having a kitten and at the same time I don't. I have three adult cats and that's just fine with me. They are hyper enough on their own.

Proof that my cats are hyper: Eris vs. Box


RelUnrelated is pretty tired most of the time. That's to be expected when going through chemo though. He's sore from getting a biopsy done on Monday. It was an iliac crest bone marrow biopsy (illustrated guide is here). Basically, the doctor makes an incision in the back and feeds a long needle through the tissue and kind of drills it into the bone. An aspirate is taken from the marrow and some of the marrow itself is bored out by the needle. They do it on both sides of the back to see if the cancer has spread into the bones. We got the results yesterday. The cancer had not gotten into the bones thankfully. We don't know the entire treatment schedule yet. They were waiting for the results of the biopsy to see. The oncologist is very good and has a sense of humor. Then again, I'd think you'd have to have one to do what she does for a living. And yet again, I just got another "we're praying for him" from one of the residents. Oh well, I guess it keeps them out of trouble.

Oh yay!

I'm going to be fucking lazy tonight and kill some time, rotting my brain on delicious toku. I watched the first episode of Garo and never did get a chance to get back and see it when I was sick the last time, because I fell asleep. I cleaned up my hard drive, which was full yet again and burned the entire series off onto a data dvd to watch later. I've just put the first 18 episodes onto my storage drive and am going to fire up the media server and PS3 and watch them. I'm pretty sure I can get through most of them in one go. Then I'll upload the second disc and watch the rest of the series and the movie. I'll probably be wanting to watch the movie that's coming out then. I'll have to be patient for the latter. It's not out yet. Hope RelUnrelated gets back soon. I've been holding off on watching last week's W. He gets sucked into watching my shows, I swear. There's going to be two episodes and 2 movies for him to watch if he doesn't get back until next week. We're going to be so lost... and I really want to watch Begin's Night and Movie Wars. Oh well, patience I guess.

Anyway, Garo!

More updates

It seems that when things start to look up, they go to shit again. Chemo started yesterday. The oncologist came in and said he would be able to come home on Friday. Sounded good to us even though I just had bought him snacks to eat if he got hungry. When he was finishing the last of the medication, he began shivering uncontrollably. He was running a fever and when we finally got a nurse in (they seem to have ignored the fact that the call button had been going off for quite some time while the machine he was hooked up to was giving off a very loud alarm) I had him already in his bed and covered up. He was ready to rest. I left with our friend who had taken me around town to run some errands. I finally ate a meal. When I got home I called him. He was sweating uncontrollably. The fever had broken but he just continued to sweat. I told him that I didn't think he should try and drive and I would get someone to come and drive him home and we could get the car home. My brother was going to come up and a friend was going to drive us to the hospital and P was going to drive us home in our car. It was all set when I finally went to bed around 3 this morning.

The phone rang this morning. I can't tell what time of day it is due to the fucking stadium floodlights around the fucking neighborhood. It looks like fucking high noon at 3 in the morning. Drives me fucking crazy. He was up most of the night. He still hadn't stopped sweating all night. They couldn't get a temperature on him. He was getting two more units of blood and not going anywhere today. I don't see him getting out on a Saturday or a Sunday either. I see him staying there all weekend and going directly from Oncology to the Cancer Center for his appointment on Monday. In a way I'm relieved. They're going to go into his hip and get a sample of bone marrow to see if it's still functioning properly. This will help determine how often he has to have chemo. So it's the waiting game still, but not nearly as nerve wracking. He's got the medicine in him that will control this and hopefully beat it into remission. That's what we hope. It's not a ridiculous hope either. Hodgkin's lymphoma has a very good survival rate. We're all optimistic.

Results

We got the results of the biopsy today. RelUnrelated has stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. This is not the news we wanted to hear, but at the same time I do not think it is as bad as it could be. It really isn't. Hodgkin's lymphoma appears to be one of the more treatable forms of cancer. The survival rate is at least 90% even in the later stages. Out of the 12 signs and symptoms that Wikipedia has listed in the article, he had 7 of these. Several of the signs were pointed out to the doctor and the doctor brushed it aside, saying it had nothing to do with his persistant illness. It must be awfully damned hard to be a doctor with people looking up information about their symptoms and giving the doctor suggestions about what it could be. I'm still very irate about the whole situation. I'm not with the care he's getting now. He's getting very good care. Every single one of the nurses and aides that have come in to take his vitals, fix his IVs and pumps have been great. They have treated him with the empathy that I HAVEN'T seen from many in the medical field in a very long time. The oncologist was very nice and pleasant the short time I met her and the social worker that came in to see if there was anything she could help us with was great. I do appreciate all the help that we WEREN'T getting months ago. Suddenly, everyone has empathy. It's really sad when things have to get to the point where they are now for it to happen. I also think it telling that the secular hospital he is in has given more care to him and consideration than the religious hospital that was running the tests. And the secular hospital has a very good cancer center. I think we chose wisely.

Updates

It's been a rush of the past few days and I finally have my house to myself again. I want to light up a cigarette so bad right now. I haven't had one since August 1, 2009. I love my family to death and my friends too, but I FUCKING NEED SOME TIME ALONE! Honestly. If you say you're going home, please do. Don't stay another night. Don't stay and then blame me for not going to bed at 10 pm. I never go to bed at 10 pm. I never go to bed at 11 pm or even 12 am. I go to bed when I'm tired and my brain is tired. I am an insomniac. I have been for as long as I remember. 1 in the morning late for you? Sorry, that's early for me. And yes, I've gotten up between 5:20 and 6:25 since Friday. And yes, I've had very little sleep. So if I want to sit in my living room and play some music and browse the chans to calm the fuck down, let me. Don't seem annoyed by my techno and loud obnoxious music. It's my house and it's how I unwind. And I haven't been able to at all really. The short moments that I've had to myself have been in the bathroom. I'm not the kind of person that wants to be around people all the time. I need to be alone for awhile. I just do. Not even doing anything necessarily, just sitting and rotting my brain. Can I not have that for just an hour or two? Nope.

But anyway. The surgery is over. He came through fine. He was given 2 units of blood on Saturday. They gave him two units of blood today. He's got pumps on his legs to prevent clotting and they've been shooting him up with heperin to also help prevent that from happening. He's been on anti-nausea medicine and it's helping some. He's still spiking fevers of 103+. His fever was breaking when his daughter and I arrived earlier. We didn't stay. He wanted to sleep and they put a new IV in him and had to put a new port in him. He was tired. I can understand. They're going to look at the surgery site tomorrow to see how it's healing. He's getting IV antibiotics every 8 hours and he's drinking like it's going out of style.

Just got off the phone with him. He was eating lunch and they're pushing him to eat more protein. They brought him ensure. At least he joked about it. I just doped myself with benadryl and cimetidine in hopes of sleeping some of this lack of sleep off. I just want some peace and quiet for awhile. Kitties and I are going to nap now.

It's like that

So it's like this: the United States does not have the best health care system in the world. Unless you're willing to fork over money, hand over fist. If you're poor, they aren't lying, get sick and die. Every lie a right winger spouts about how great our health care is just goes to show they have no clue as to what people who don't have money and live paycheck to paycheck go through.

The last several months we have been going round and round with a 'clinic' in town. It's a sliding scale clinic for people who don't have insurance or aren't made of money. Now I understand, especially right now, that there is a demand for such a service and there are so many hours in the day to help people. If they actually helped people.

At the moment, my husband is in the hospital. I made him go there at 5 AM this morning after dropping me off at work 2 hours early. Seven hours later I finally heard from him. The hemoglobin counts are very low and he needs blood. They're going to do a CAT scan on him and keep him overnight at least. I can deal with that. Unfortunately, he has my bank card and I have perhaps $7 on me. That won't get me home. That probably wouldn't get me to the hospital where he is by cab. I was going to have to walk, after three hours sleep and working a 12 hour shift. That was fine, at least something was being done at last.

I say at last because it's been over 3 weeks since he was told that he was going to get a CAT scan scheduled and an appointment to see an ENT. We have yet to hear anything about that. Not one word. Last week when his day started with an extremely high fever and vomiting that continued all day and half the night, they didn't return our calls. And there were several. There was no return call from the call he had made a day before, and a day before that, and so on. They can't even bother to return a call. Why would they actually bother to schedule an appointment for someone who is showing obvious signs of a severe illness. It only took them a little over 2 weeks to tell us that they got the results of his ultrasound. And he needed a CAT scan and to see a specialist.

The thing is, he called me back when they got him in a room. Earlier, his bloodwork indicated that it probably wasn't something like lymphoma. That was a relief. Of course, that has changed after the CAT scan. They are saying it probably is and they need to do a biopsy. He's scared, I'm scared, and I'm pretty certain his 19 year old daughter is terrified. She's on her way here. My parents are asking me if I need them to come. My house is a disaster. It's a fucking nasty wreck and I told his daughter I was going to be very embarrassed when she saw the house. She doesn't care. She's even offering to help get it cleaned. This is one of my long weeks at work and I haven't had the energy to do a damn thing. Thankfully I have a very good step-daughter. She cares about her dad. We get along well. I don't think anyone could ask for anyone better in my husband's two daughters. He doesn't say it often enough probably, but they mean the world to him. I know they do. Right now, I'm glad she's gotten the day off work at the last minute and is driving from another state. I'm glad to have her. I just don't know what else to do right now.

I cannot fully express the rage I am feeling right now.

Fuck Yeah!

FUCK YEAR! That is all.

Monday Music 3

I have so much music on my computer that it's ridiculous. I have so many soundtracks for anime, video games and movies that it's just sad. I don't keep them on there all the time, but seem to rotate the soundtracks. Some are permanent fixtures however and I wouldn't take them off because of the sheer entertainment they give me. I do have quite a few soundtracks for anime that are always on my computer. Newer anime music isn't quite like older music. That's not to say that the music is awful, it's just a sign of the times.

I love me some Gundam, and I don't mean Seed and Seed Destiny. I mean Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, and recently I had 7 Gundam soundtracks on my computer. 3 of which were 20 and 30th anniversary albums and symphonic music. I started laughing when one particular song started on the symphonic soundtrack. I knew what it was immediately and looked over at my spouse and he looked at me like I was crazy. I said, 'Listen'. He did and then picked up on my amusement. He was like 'Is that what I think it is?' I was grinning and nodding. He shook his head. When I was watching 0079 last year, he was working with one of his buddies online and I was listening to it on my headphones while they were on Skype. I didn't want to annoy them with the sounds of awesome 70's mech fightan, so I just sat back and watch some good old ass-kicking anime. But everytime a new episode would start, I would laugh. The song always makes me laugh. The joke is, the opening song for 0079 is the world's coolest song ever. So I present you with the world's coolest song ever.



Of course my husband's retort is that the opening for Star Blazers (or Space Battleship Yamato) is awfully close to being the coolest song ever. I don't buy that though. Nothing is quite as cool as Gundam. Have a taste of SBY though.



I guess you could say that my anime tastes lean toward certain types of shows. Mecha and horror mainly. I don't like harem or romance bullshit. Then again, that's how my taste in movies runs too. Many of the older anime shows didn't really use catchy tunes. Some were rather dull and boring if you ask me. Take for instance Legend of the Galactic Heroes. There is so much awesome in this show that it is barely contained. The music however is awful. Honestly. Watch the opening and tell me if you thing this show is going to kick ass or suck balls. I bet it's the latter. Only because you haven't watched the awesome of LoGH. And that is because it's not available in the US unless you get fansubs. It's entirely worth it to get the entire series. And, Bittenfeld.



Music now seems to be more pop sounding. It's happy and upbeat for some series or just disgustingly moe for others. I don't mind if it's not that annoying little girl sound or just plain shit. Gintama's original opening is an example of doing it right. While the opening might seem odd, Gintama is a parody show. They make fun of everything. Absolutely everything. The opening song is Pray by Tommy Heavenly 6.



And speaking of parody shows. Tentai Senshi Sunred is a pretty good parody of sentai type shows. The first and second opening songs were stuck in my husband's head after I watched 20 some episodes in a day. That may seem like a lot of episodes, but on average the show is about 13 minutes long. Each little part of the story is usually under 5 minutes, some even under a minute. I present to you both songs by Manzo.

Opening 1


Opening 2


I would be remiss if I did not add the two songs I really like from MS Gundam 00. Both are from the first season of course.

Daybreak's Bell by L'Arc~en~Ciel


Ash like snow by the brilliant green

A curiousity

I find it curious that people try to attribute things to deities. I am baffled that in some far removed world from our own, where these supernatural beings dwell, they decide, seemingly at random to shit on some people and rain down good things on another, in a completely arbitrary fashion. Even if said person getting dumped on is the most fervent and devoted follower ever, doing everything that the deity demands. I don't understand that. Perhaps this belief absolves people from taking responsibility for bad choices, having bad genetic make up, or just random chance. I don't know. I've never saw the value in such things.

I just witnessed some of this reasoning. There is a resident here with a history of mental illness. She has schizophrenia. She is bi-polar. She also has a history of seizures. Serious grand mal seizures. She has a cycle that she always repeats. She'll be on her meds and be completely fine. She decides that she doesn't need her medicine to be fine. She quits taking the medicine and becomes ill again. She does this at least 2 times a year. She usually hurts herself, though not intentionally, and ends up hospitalized. She gets back on her meds and eventually gets better. She's on her cycle right now where she's gotten out of the hospital after having a serious fall in the early morning about a week ago. She hadn't been taking her medicine for over a month. She had a seizure. She hit her head badly and they kept her. She doesn't remember falling. She never does when she has a seizure. And it's sad and frustrating. There's nothing you can do for these people to change their mind. They will repeat this cycle over and over unless it's broken in some way, usually by the medical profession.

I am not in the medical profession. I don't claim to be. I know this person's habits after dealing with them for so many years. She becomes paranoid, hateful and mean. She's not violent. She's never hit anyone and when she's off her meds, she's not hurting anyone but herself. But she is convinced that her family is against her and wishes her harm. This was a fact she made clear today by voicing those exact words to her guest. Who was her guest? The pastor from her church. He doesn't help when he tells her that all of her problems are a part of 'god's plan'. Actually most of her problems stem from her mental illness and have nothing to do with sky fairies. She has schizophrenia. She has had it for most of her life. It makes her paranoid. She becomes fearful that everyone is 'out to get her' and for her, it is real. Nothing will change that in her mind because it is true. Right now, she's afraid that her family is against her. Did the pastor try to reassure her? No. It was all a part of 'god's plan'. The (his exact words) 'emotional issues' that she has are a part of this plan. She needed to pray.

This makes me angry. This makes me very, very angry. You cannot pray away anything. You cannot make an illness go away by praying at it. This is nonsense. There is enough stigma attached to mental illness that saying things like that, that she will believe because the pastor told her does not help bring her back to reality. It never has and it never will. It disgusts me that people are taken advantage of in this fashion. If that pastor actually believes such a thing, I don't know who is sicker.

Two weeks

It's been two weeks now since my spouse was told that the doctor's office was going to set him up with an appointment for a CAT scan and an appointment with an ENT. He made a phone call yesterday that got him no further than voice mail. It's been a month since they said they were going to put him on an antibiotic that was never spoken of again. This would be funny if it weren't so very fucked up. This would be funny if it were due to a clerical error. It would be funny if we weren't calling them and getting no response. The mass on the side of his throat is very large and very solid. It's the size of my fist. He's running high fevers sometimes 3 times a day. He's lost a massive amount of weight. My upper arms, while I am physically strong, are now larger than his. This is fucking pathetic from the "best healthcare system in the world." If I had another option, I would have taken it by now. He has been able to work probably a whopping 20 hours in the last 6 weeks. 6 fucking weeks. I'm going to have to get another full time job just to make sure we can keep our bills up to date at this point. He's barely able to take me to work some days. I've taken a cab home others because he's feeling so lousy. I am so sick to death of this. And it's nothing he's done. There's not one thing that he's done to make it worse. He's trying. He worked an entire day today. But it's hard. I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle another job or even be able to get one. Fuck.

Monday Music 2

More music for everyone's enjoyment of a Monday isn't a bad thing. I figured I'd find some of the more comical videos that I've seen with songs that I do listen to frequently. I can't help it, I love Sendai Kamotsu. The videos kill me. They have such a good sense of humor and aren't afraid to be totally ridiculous.



An Cafe are pretty funny with their videos too, so here's on that cracks me up. Bou does a pretty good job at being a female.



Psycho le Cemu unfortunately aren't together anymore. They had some pretty funny videos and some pretty catchy songs. I don't care what anyone says though, Yura was WAY more femme than Aya ever was. I don't care how much pink you put on the man, he's still not as feminine as Yura. Yeah, Yura is the one in red dancing. This video always reminds me of Starship Troopers because of the bugs.



Two of the guys from Psycho le Cemu are in MixSpeaker's,Inc. now. Yes I spelled that right. That's how the band spells it. I'll let you try and figure out where Aya and Seek from Psycho le Cemu are for yourself. They must have fun with the crazy costumes though.



It's the mice in spaceships that makes me laugh. It really is. Dir en grey can put together some creepy, fucked up videos, but this one just makes me laugh. Damn mice.



One more Dir en grey, because Kyo is such a fucked up doctor. If my doctor looked like that, I'd run away very fast. Just sayin'.

Sometimes I'm not surprised at all

I really shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens at my job. Every time something new happens we joke that it's Chapter XX in the ongoing story of the Clusterfuck Arms. Drunks, psychos and perverts? We've had 'em. Hallucinating psychotics refusing to take their meds? More times than I have fingers and toes. Transvestites that are not doing a good job of playing the sex they'd like to be and talking about them self in the third person? Wall to wall baby. Been there, done that, got the shirt.

So today it was something rather innocuous that almost made me choke, and possibly aspirate on my lunch. What was it? A fundie came in to see one of the old guys that lives here. The guy is very lonely and this particular young man(and he is, at the most 19 years old), comes into to visit this bitter old guy. It's nice of him, but the fact of the matter is, you're telling a man who has lived much, MUCH longer than you that he needs to embrace Jebus. Now, I'm not saying the old guy is upset by this. He seems to like the company and I'm not going to throw the dude out because he's keeping the guy company for a few hours. He doesn't seems to badger him or anything, because old dude is happy to see the kid. The kid's taken him to church before and he enjoyed himself. Bully for you. Not my cup of tea, because I don't believe in sky fairies, but I'm not gonna kick the old guy. I'm not gonna kick the kid that comes and talks with him either. He doesn't normally spend the visit talking about Jebus, but they did a little today and I almost lost it.

It wasn't that anything seemed particularly odd at first. I was eating my lunch, the radio is on, the aviary is very loud right now (mating season), and I was watching some Kamen Rider on YouTube to kill time. I heard mention of Rachel and blah blah blah. I wasn't paying attention, who would? Then I heard him mention lying down with someone and then I swear he said something about bestiality. I almost sprayed miso soup all over the monitor. I looked up and over at them across the lobby. There was no indication that he was talking about screwing animals, but that's what I get for half hearing crazy Jebus drivel. Oh well, made lunch more colorful.