Chronic pain sucks

Can’t think. Can’t read. Can’t write. My brain is focused entirely on not moving my leg, or sometimes on moving it to a more comfortable position — which doesn’t exist. My right ankle continues to swell, and my whole foot is turning pink, so everything is getting worse.

After praising the alacrity of my treatment yesterday, though, we have hit a snag. Everything has been held up because…further work has to be approved by the insurance company. I guess they have a lot of highly qualified orthopedic surgeons examining my case and going “hmmm”, and wondering whether I can handle more chronic pain before they approve treatment.

So I get to suffer for a few more days before we can take the next step.

I am not asking for sympathy, though. Don’t feel sorry for me! The health insurance demons have found me wanting and think I deserve a few more pokes from the pitchfork. Instead, I would appreciate your curses and imprecatory prayers directed at the health insurance industry and the whole damn American health care system. My situation is relatively minor compared to what others must suffer.

“severe ensethopathy”

That’s doctorese for “your bone spurs are shredding your Achilles tendon, bro!” It’s exactly what I expected, but I also got a bunch of tests to rule out blood clots and gout. Now I’m scheduled for an MRI this afternoon to get the fine details, and once we work that out, next step is probably surgery. Yay.

One nice thing about living in a small town is that I called the clinic, they got me into an appointment this morning, I gave up a quart of blood for tests, got an X-ray, and got the conclusions within an hour. There’s a bit of a wait for the MRI, but it’s still same day service.

I recall taking my son into a clinic for a clearly broken arm in Philadelphia, and sitting there for almost 6 hours before he was treated. I show up here with a complaint that I’ve got an ouchie on my ankle and they whip me through like lightning. Maybe I’m just better at whining and complaining?

Letting you all know…

I really overdid it yesterday — I took a powerful dose of ibuprofen so I could walk around in the wilderness, and it worked. I was walking around in rough terrain, rather gingerly I’ll admit, and then I got home and a little later the drugs wore off and now…holy crap, I was so stupid. I’ve spent the day doing nothing but lying back and moaning.

It’s been a day of drugs and ice. I’m hoping I’ll be able to go in to work tomorrow, but the rational side of my brain is telling me not to be stupid again, to call the doctor in the morning, and stay off my damned pathetic ankle.

This is not good, since I’m flying off to visit the family in the Pacific Northwest on Friday, and at this rate I’ll be doing it from a wheelchair.

Did I mention I was an idiot?

It’s EcoStation day!

I’m taking my students on a field trip to the UMM EcoStation this morning. It’s a relatively perfect day: temperature will be in the low 20s (C; 70s F) and a bit cloudy, so cool. Unfortunately…97% humidity? It’s perfect spider weather, anyway. We’ll just wander around a bit, see what we can see, maybe find some interesting spiders (wait, what am I saying? All spiders are interesting) and get a spot of lunch before coming home.

Achilles is feeling somewhat better this morning, though, so I’d better not push it too hard. He’s sensitive and is likely to retire to his tent in a snit, you know.

I feel like half my life is spent goggle-eyed in amazement at the stupidity of humanity

This is about right: the COVID vaccines have been proven effective and safe, are now readily available, and are cheap. But there are still people adamantly opposed to the best treatment.

xkcd: The vaccine stuff seems pretty simple. But if you take a closer look at the data, it's still simple, but bigger. And slightly blurry. Might need reading glasses.

Part of the problem is that quacks get away with it. You can disseminate criminally dangerous misinformation as an MD, you can kill patients with bad advice and ineffective, even deadly treatments, and get away with it.

A Wisconsin doctor in 2021 prescribed ivermectin, typically used to treat parasitic infections, to two covid-19 patients who later died of the disease. He was fined less than $4,000 — and was free to continue practicing.

A Massachusetts doctor has continued practicing without restriction despite being under investigation for more than a year over allegations of “disseminating misinformation” and prescribing unapproved covid treatments, including ivermectin, to a patient who died in 2022, according to medical board records.

And in Idaho, a pathologist who falsely promoted the effectiveness of ivermectin over coronavirus vaccines on social media has not been disciplined despite complaints from fellow physicians that his “dangerous and troubling” statements and actions “significantly threatened the public health.”

Across the country, doctors who jeopardized patients’ lives by pushing medical misinformation during the pandemic and its aftermath have faced few repercussions, according to a Washington Post analysis of disciplinary records from medical boards in all 50 states.

State medical boards charged with protecting the American public often failed to stop doctors who went against medical consensus and prescribed unapproved treatments for covid or misled patients about vaccines and masks, the Post investigation found.

Another part of the problem is gross politicization. It is currently the policy of the Republican party to encourage the early death of their electorate, and hopefully snipe off a few Democrats with terrible medical advice.

“State boards can only do limited things,” said Humayun Chaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards, a nonprofit that represents the licensing agencies. “The most common refrain I hear from state licensing boards is they would like to have more resources — meaning more individuals who can investigate complaints, more attorneys, more people who can process these complaints sooner — to do their job better.”

Instead, the opposite is happening: The boards face new efforts, largely by Republican state legislators and attorneys general, to rein in their authority in ways that are “potentially dangerous and harmful to patient care,” Chaudhry said.

Florida legislators passed a law in May that effectively prevents professional boards from punishing doctors accused of spreading covid misinformation online.

Six other states have limited the power of medical boards to discipline physicians for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

Yeah, Florida. It’s never good news when the words “Florida” or “Texas” are in the article.

At least now we know how humans will respond to an apocalypse: with doubt, cynicism, and lies.

My brain might need rewiring

Mary took this photo, and showed it to me. Apparently, her sister had problems seeing the prominent figure in it, so she put her phone in my face and asked if I could see it. I instantly focused on the strand of spider silk in the lower right, and was looking for the spider (what else would you take a picture of?) but couldn’t find it. Then she told me it wasn’t a spider at all.

I was so confused. No spider? What? Why?

He’s half right, you know

Mary and I saw Barbie last night. Ben Shapiro is partly right — it is the most woke movie I’ve ever seen. Although…we watched the whole thing, eagerly awaiting the gay orgy scene and the raging trans character stealing all the scenes, and were so disappointed. The closest we got to an orgy was two Kens kissing Ken on the cheek, and I guess we have to trust that there was a trans person there, but she was just playing Barbie like all the other Barbies.

It was loaded full of the Feminizms, though. And the Kens were patriarchal assholes, kinda incel-like, but the movie was also sympathetic to them and tried provide solutions to their problems. There was all this talk of autonomy and independence and freedom and positivity and kindness, though, and I can see why Shapiro would think it was garbage — he doesn’t like any of that stuff. There’s even a Shapiro joke, with one Barbie saying that she’s comfortable with both logic and emotion at the same time.

There were also some good jokes about the Snyderverse, and the last line of the movie is a killer. I felt sorry for Alan, Ken’s Buddy, and poor permanently pregnant Midge.

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie were perfectly cast. (You should google their names right now: Google will give you a pink fireworks show.) Both were energetic and entertaining.

Recommended.

I know everyone is talking about the contrast between Barbie and Oppenheimer, but unfortunately the latter movie isn’t scheduled for a showing at my local theater. Once they get done showing that lying waste of time, Sound of Freedom, next week, maybe I’ll get to see it.

Oh, and here’s a more thorough review, if you want that.

I double-dog dare you to pronounce that name

New movie marketers decided to use the Greek alphabet in their poster, and caused my brain to stutter.

There is no “C” in the Greek alphabet; they should have substituted a Κ, kappa. No “L”, but there is a lambda, Λ. We get a sigma instead of an “e”, which is pronounced like an “s”. Then an omicron, so that part is OK. P is rho, it is pronounced like an “r”. Greek has a perfectly good, familiar letter A, alpha, but they put a delta, Δ, in there. That’s a “d”. Then a tau, Τ, which is a fine “T”, and an “R” character which doesn’t exist and should be a Ρ. Then it ends with another “d”.

I think that whole gemisch is pronounced “??sordt?d,” somehow, and I now have no confidence in the historicity of whatever this movie is.

I wonder if they plan to distribute this movie in Greece with that poster?

Exploring underground

It wasn’t quite as thrilling/perilous as a D&D dungeon crawl, but we did walk through the steam tunnels beneath campus, and survived. I think we saw two living spiders, a moth, a few mud dauber nests, and some ghastly slime, but that’s about it.

It is impressive how extensive the tunnels are…and we never really notice them. Apparently we can get to every building on campus without stepping outside, except that most of the access doors are locked for safety reasons: there are asbestos covered pipes everywhere, cables snaking around the ceiling, and hot metal supports that it would be unwise to touch.

But now I know how to get into them whenever I want!

Today is Dungeon Adventure Day

As you must know, it’s legendary that universities are built on top of a network of tunnels full of steam pipes and cables and mysterious lost undergrads. My university is no different. We have one functional, accessible tunnel between the science building and the student union, but nothing else is easy to get to. We occasionally get a glimpse of more when the physical plant crew opens up a door to work on arcane things back in the mines.

Today, though, I made arrangements to get an official tour of the maze under our feet. The students and I are going to equip ourselves and enter the university’s very own dungeon. I don’t expect to find trolls or CHUDs or ancient artifacts or cunning, centuries-old traps that still work — ostensibly, we’re looking for the invertebrate inhabitants of the underworld. I know there are cockroaches down there, at least, but maybe spiders? Giant albino spiders lurking in the darkness?

One can always hope.

If I don’t make it back, all I know right now is that the access portal is somewhere on the east side of the humanities & fine arts building. I’ll expect you to organize a rescue party.