More doctors, more scared

Doctor's appointment today.  Orthopedic surgeon a couple towns over.  On the bright side, the traffic was greatly reduced, thanks to the wingnut teabaggers shutting down the government.  On the not so bright side?

Doctor said just what I feared he would--that my PCP screwed up, that she should have ordered an MRI the instant the ultrasound came back showing nothing.  In other words, I should have had an MRI over a year ago.  Instead, this thing, whatever it is, has had an extra 16 months to slowly gain ground.

Thanks, Dr. White.  In case you've ever wondered why I abruptly stopped seeing you?  It's because you always left me feeling I was getting the least you had to offer.

MRI scheduled for next Monday.  Then I'll be seeing the Ortho guy again.  He was good--better than the online review sites led me to think he would be (no, I don't make decisions based upon those, but it's nice to see how folks feel they were treated).  He even refrained from pulling a "nameless female PAC from Ogden Clinic who has a boy's name" act and rolling his eyes and telling me that he didn't have time to read the paperwork I'd brought in.  In fact, he read what I brought in (labs and a previous radiology report), then asked if it was okay to make copies for my file.  It was nice, not being treated like a dull-wit who doesn't have the vaguest clue.

One small complaint--the Ortho guy's receptionist was a rude hag.  Impatient, imperious, clearly irritated by my existence.  I can understand that at the end of the day, but when the office has just opened for the morning?  Paste a smile on, sweetheart.  I may have cancer, and I put one on for you.

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My boy had an appointment today, too.  With my old urologist.  As feared, rather than addressing the actual problem (which is not even vaguely foreskin related), he began squealing about circumcising my son.  Because slashing off a perfectly normal, functioning, highly innervated part of the penis is, of course, what American doctors do when faced with the fearful foreskin.  Never mind that the rest of the western world is overwhelmingly intact.  Never mind that nearly 65% of American newborn boys are spared genital modification.  We still have a generation of circumcised doctors who still turn a profit from performing unnecessary surgery on boys.  So we're left scrambling, trying to find a less barbaric doctor who knows more about the foreskin and is capable of addressing the actual issue rather than focusing on my son's foreskin.  I swear, is everyone's life like this? Because it really doesn't seem that way.  It doesn't seem MY life used to be this riddled with disasters and stress.  Is it a "getting old" thing, or is it just ME?

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Watching Boehner flip-flop on the debt ceiling, the ACA, and pretty much everything else. Watched an interview with him, and the blustering defensiveness leaves me wondering just how scared he is?  These past few weeks have given me much deeper insight into just how the "Tea Party Patriots" work.  I always knew they were never a "grass roots" organization--they were put together by the Koch brothers to stir up the stupid with jingoistic slogans, whipping them into a frenzy of flag waving and immigrant/poor/women-hating.  But what I didn't get was this--how were they winning these elections when so many Americans don't agree with them?

I've figured it out.

They're active at the primary level.  They get out there EARLY, before any of us sane folks, and they ramrod through whatever extremist freak they're rooting for.  Because the rest of us are fast asleep in our beds on  Primary day, they get to choose who WE get to choose between, come the general election.  So we're left feeling we have a choice when, in fact, our options have been viciously limited through Tea Party manipulation of the primaries.  Yes, there are other issues, like gerrymandering/redistricting and voter fraud and widespread disenfranchisement, but the primaries--that's where it starts.  THAT'S where we can make a difference.  

I remember when I first heard about "Teapublicans" registering as Democrats so they could intentionally ram through the least viable democratic candidate.  Because the average person doesn't vote in primaries, this wasn't hard for them to do.  So, come general election time, folks had a choice to make--the clearly nutty teabagger OR the clearly unqualified democrat.  Republicans who always vote red voted for their nutty teabagger regardless of how they felt about him, democrats didn't vote at all because they weren't enthused by the democratic candidate.  And there you go--bagger wins, even though he doesn't actually have the hearts and minds of most people.  I heard about this, and I was horrified.

How to fix it?

Start voting in the primaries.  Specifically, in the REPUBLICAN primaries.  No, not like the wingnuts do, not trying to ramrod through the least competent republican (they're already doing that--doesn't matter, red votes red regardless in most cases, it seems), but rather trying to bring the sanest republican through the primary so that, even if our guy LOSES, the guy who WINS isn't crazy.

I don't see another way.

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Speaking of misinformation and Tea Party hyperbole, this nastiness came across my wall the other day:

And here's the point-by-point debunking of this willfully misleading, politically charged garbage spray..  Thanks to ILLINOIS HEALTH MATTERS for the well-reasoned rebuttal.  

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And that's about all.  I napped hard this evening and feel more tired for the sleep.  I think that, emotionally, I may be all used up.  So here, have this--makes me happy, and happy is good: