On My Soap Box Today

It's sometimes hard to remember to be thankful each and every day for all the wonderful blessings that come my way. I woke up at 3am in extreme pain, wondering what on earth is wrong.  While I puttered around the wheel estate moaning and groaning, it occurred to me how lucky I am!  Yes, lucky!  I woke up alive, albeit in extreme pain. Another day, another gift and I am alive to enjoy it all. 

Harley briefly slows down while romping around the beach, to let me snap this photo of his sheer enthusiasm for life. 

We could all learn a lot from dogs. 

I ponder the crazy wisdom of modern life, in that it's considered humane to put your beloved pet out of their misery through assisted death, but inhumane if you put a human down so they can stop suffering from their pain. It's mind boggling. Not that I am ready to be put down and out of my misery, but I strive through alternative treatments to live a pain-free life. This morning I am painfully reminded that isn't seemingly possible today. I must have done something wrong somewhere in my various alternative treatments. 


If I  could scrape up a small fortune (I wish!) to go meddle with the medical community again,  they will gleefully prescribe me all sorts of pain pills and other life altering pills that have devastating side effects. Mostly pain pills slowly silently destroy the kidneys and liver, while causing a host of other undesirable problems. So it's my choice to live without the dangerous drugs. This drives the doctors crazy it seems. I did seek medical care recently, as I talked, the doctor sat their scribbling, ignoring my concerns and questions. Abruptly he stood up, told me he had written me 4 prescriptions then vanished out of the room. Consultation over. Part of my explanation to him, was that I wanted to find alternative affordable ways to treat my woes. I outlined my erratic monthly income so he could understand my reality, but I don't think he heard a thing I had to say. 


An hour later at the drug store, the clerk tallied up my prescriptions then announced "That will be $460."  


"Wh-wh-what???  Are you serious?  Or is this an April Fools joke?"


She repeated "That will be $460"  loud enough for everyone in the large store to hear, as if I was deaf rather than suffering from sticker price shock. I clarified the cost was for a month, not for the whole year, then after much questioning, which she seemed reluctant about, I chose one $12 medication, that *sigh*  I more or less need for an emergency basis. The rest were so ridiculously priced, that even if they promised to send me over the moon in a rose laden sleigh made of gold, they could just keep them. She was irate at my choice. She angrily banged on the computer, completing  my transaction as if I had thrown up on her designer athletic shoes. 


As I was walking down the aisle, away from the drug counter, I overheard her say "That fruitcake doesn't want her drugs!  We have to return these to inventory!"


I'm expected to spend $460 for drugs in her store and be called a fruitcake. How comforting. 


On a side note, it appears she or someone programmed her computer to "get even" with me. Several times a day now, my phone rings from that drug store's computer reminding me to come pickup my medications. The ones I didn't want. The ones she said had to be returned to inventory because the fruitcake didn't want them. I wasted a good hour the other day, trying to figure out how to stop these computerized phone calls. I thought I had the problem solved, but today I noticed my voice mail recorded two more calls yesterday from their computer "reminding" me to come pick up my prescriptions. *sigh*


Isn't it great that modern technology can be used to harass your phone now?


The doctors can not, at least in this part of the country, prescribe an herb that has zero side effects and readily removes the pain. Yes, I am talking about marijuana. 


How many overdose deaths are recorded each year from legal medications?  Thousands!  


The FDA claims only 82,724 deaths in 2010 were from "Adverse Events Reporting System"  in other words, legal drugs that killed patients while using them. I think that number is very low and probably in reality, a great deal higher. 

Source: 

"AERS Patient Outcomes by Year," Food and Drug Administration (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, March 31, 2010).
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Surveillance/AdverseDrugEffects/ucm070461.htm


Do you know how many deaths we've had from marijuana use in the last 100 years?  


ZERO!


A big fat zero. Not one death. 


Oh but this wonderful herb is not legal to use except in certain tiny pockets of the country, where it is heavily regulated. Does this make sense to anybody because it makes no sense to me. 


It's OK by law, to prescribe patients with drugs that can kill them, but it's not OK to prescribe them an herb that won't kill them. Is that not insanity or what?  And this is supposed to be modern times yet our government has made this herb illegal. Thankfully many other herbs are legal, and do have a multitude of wonderful medicinal uses, but the one that removes pain and often as a "side effect"  makes people happy, is deemed illegal. So what's wrong with being happy?


Happy people are HARD to control. Scared or unhappy people are very easy to manipulate. It's one reason I also try to avoid the in-your-face news that seems to pervade our modern society. It appears to me to be designed to keep the readers/listeners/watchers scared and depressed and therefore EASIER TO CONTROL. 

So I smile. Sitting here by my lonesome at 3am, I plaster a big smile on my face and hold it. I feel like a grinning fool, but amazingly some of the pain pretends to go away. 


Harley is so confused. Like a good little companion doggy, he dutifully climbs out of bed to come sit next to me at the dinning booth where I am typing. But then I get up and pace up and down the aisle, so he climbs back in bed, thinking I am going to land their next. When I don't, he wonders back to sit on the settee, snuggling up to my thigh again. But I can't seem to sit still, so I pace away and confuse him further. 

Finally in disgust, he goes back to the bed in the rear, snuggling up to the afghan, since I am not there. He doesn't want to pace back and forth with me, between my spurts of writing. He has happily gone back to sleep, without me. 


Now that it is 620am, (where does the time go?)  I hear the birds singing and watch the first signs of the sun making an entrance.  I figure it's always going to be a great day anytime the sun comes up on schedule. So far it's risen like magic everyday for a zillion years. Such a miracle. 

The view from my desk of the sun rising.