bitteroldhag

I'm getting tired of political arguments, especially since so many of you seem to be conservatives (!) and I'm not. But I'm going to start a thread for women, though men can join in. The subject is pap smears, uterine biopsies (without painkillers), colon checks, mammograms and hysterectomies. I think women should weigh in on the pap smear stuff. I am 59 and have had a whole lot of pap smears and they are always negative. They will always be negative. Why am I having to have pap smears? My doctor is a woman and has a cartoon of a cat that is apparently being electrocuted on the ceiling above the pap smear table that says, "Relax." It's nice to focus on the cat because she has learned a new way to do pap smears that hurt. Joy! And to think for years, male doctors didn't think the cervix has any nerves. I have news for them--it does. In a vain hope of finally getting a hysterectomy, I have had two uterine biopsies which hurt a whole lot. They do these without painkillers. As I said on another thread, the next time a doctor suggests one of these, I will tell him that I'm going home to get my pliers and when I hurt, he'll hurt a whole lot. I never have gotten a hysterectomy because unfortunately nothing is wrong with me. I think we should be able to have voluntary hysterectomies because we can get ovarian cancer and won't know until it's too late. And with ovarian cancer, too late is pretty fast. I know people will write and say hysterectomies are awful, but I figure it's six weeks off of work and I won't be able to wait on Mother. What is so bad about that? Then there are the mammograms. My female doc has a cartoon with a guy with his penis in the mammogram machine. The caption is something like, 'If men could have mammograms." It's funny. I think every woman who has had a mammogram appreciates this cartoon. The fact is that men get breast cancer. Why don't they have mammograms? It could save lives. And they could have their boobs squashed to about a centimeter thickness and see how they like it. I know it can be done because I had a friend who had fried egg breasts and she could get a mammogram though it was difficult for her to get her breast in the pinchers. In her case, I think the mammogram involved that side of her chest. They just squashed her ribs in there. Men comment that they have to have prostate (prostrate for the idiots out there) checks which involve anal penetration. Well, I have to have my colon checked which involves anal penetration. This is a new wrinkle that my doc, Donna, insists on. I had a colonoscopy that was less invasive. Poor men. I think it's time that women demanded equal time for men with embarrassing bodily examinations. I think doctors should thread something up men's urethra just for annual checkups. The docs can make money and the men can sympathize with women for a change. Of course, this would be done without any painkillers. Lord, I feel better.:biggrin1:

Carlene -- I moved a bunch of Mother's stuff down here and we have a wonderful set of dishes (occupied Japan Noritake) that mother got for $25 at a garage sale in Enid, Oklahoma. We also have some sterling silver silverware that my father and my brother bought her years ago. It's really expensive even on ebay, so I don't think we'll get much more. Mother is doing really well in the nursing home but wants to come home which she can do in about 10 days. We are figuring out how to use the cell phone. This one is a lot easier than the old one. Mother is still very alert and seems to be having a good time. She doesn't like the food or the bed, but she doesn't have to be there forever. I look forward to having her home though I've enjoyed my vacation for the last few weeks. It's amazing that one's whole life revolves around one's mother, father, etc. I used to have a life of my own, but no more. But I hope to keep mother around for a long time.

Come visit. I have 7 animals -- four obnoxious dogs and three cats who ignore me and the dogs. Come on down and I'll show you the new stuff. T The major new building is Roger's last erection which is a tribute to our former President who couldn't seem to keep his pants on.

I usually eat a couple of slices of very crispy bacon and a scrambled egg for breakfast, but I've noticed that it doesn't go down very well until after 10 a.m. So if I'm having trouble I drink a protein drink and go on. I get hungry about 3 p.m. and have to have a snack and then eat dinner at about 6-7 p.m. Scrambled eggs seem to work in the morning for me and I like to eat bacon with them, but I have to eat a bite of egg and then a bite of bacon and mix them together so it will all go down. For lunch at work, I eat a granola bar and that usually works for awhile though they are very small. Still I have bowel problems and so I've started adding an oatmeal cookie with raisins once a day and that takes care of the constipationl. I suspect I'm not eating right, but I just don't like a bunch of the stuff they tell you to eat. I have a lot of chicken and pork chops, cooked really soft and that usually works. I find that stress messes up my esophagus and I have more PBs than if I'm not stressed.

Carlene -- I see you have experience in caregiving. You are way too young for that. A friend of mine's father had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and she took care of him for several years. She had a husband to help and it just decimated them. I have no one -- zilch, zero. It's just me. Mother can no longer walk though she still uses her walker for a TV tray. Actually I do have some help. I have a housekeeper to clean the house when she shows up, and I have Home Health care for mother. I cannot say enough about Home Health. Our aide is really caring and loves mother. She has just become a member of the family and we have become members of her family. It's just wonderful. We also have a home health nurse who takes superior care of mother and our physician, Donna, is just super. She actually makes house calls! She also saw mother in the nursing home this week to check things out. All of my friends now go to Donna if their insurance lets them. I once asked Donna how long she thought Mother would live and she said she would have already been dead if I wasn't taking care of her. It's just that it gets stressful and tiring sometimes, and since I had open heart surgery 13 years ago, I'm not in the best shape myself. But, hey, it's a learning experince though one of my friends who has Hepatitis C and a retarded son says she's getting tired of all those f....g learning experiences. I can relate. The dogs are eating the carpet so I'd better give them some chews. I apologize if I irritated you.

Thanks for your understanding. I'm in the midst of caregiving and it's very stressful. I suspect that when Mother passes, I will be like Carlene and be very willing to do anything to get her back. She's have a big time at the nursing home. She got a permanent and her hair looks good. I was a beautician at one point in my spotty past but Mother couldn't stand up well enough for me to give her a permanent at home. I'm hoping the physical therapy at the nursing home helps her with that. She gets a big bang out of the old ladies at the nursing home. She thinks they are really funny, overlooking that fact that she's an old lady too. But, despite the signs of incipient Alzheimer's, mother is pretty sharp mentally. Actually I hope to have her for many more years.

BJ -- I'm glad you enjoyed your time at NSU. I have taught there fror 14 years and, while NSU is not the greatest place to work, Tahlequah is good for the soul. I understand there are Ley lines in this area and they seem to have caught a bunch of people from other places. Our professors could get better jobs elsewhere, but they stay here because they love Tahlequah. It's a sort of magical place. I was born in Tulsa. My parents are from Checotah, so eastern Oklahoma is just my place. I noticed that I would go away and then drift back to eastern Oklahoma. It would take a big bomb to blast me out of Tahlequah. I intened to live here until I die unless I move to Wyoming which is another good place. I went to grade school there and I love the town of Saratoga there. But I think I'll just stick it out in Tahlequah.:clap2:

GeezerSue -- I agree. The neo-con plan has been a disaster because they decided to turn the U.S. into a police state so they can spread American democracy to the world. Lord, how can otherwise intelligent people think like this? I'm glad that American democracy has worked so that I don't have to move to another country. I was looking around for a good place and had decided on Chile which has recently experienced fascism and has decided not to back it.

I don't think people who haven't been caregivers understand the stress at all. I have friends who have sisters or brothers doing the caregiving. I tell them that they REALLY, REALLY owe their sisters and brothers. Like war, unless you have done this, you have no idea what it is like. I have been through two strokes, a heart attack, kidney failure, low blood sugar so that she completely lost her mind, two bleeds that required many units of blood, not being able to walk so we have an electric wheelchair, constant servitude, and constant worry, not to mention the minor stuff. I think someone deserves some pay for that. I figured out that my brother owes me something like $220,000 for care and that was two years ago. I'm sorry you lost you mother, but caregiving is a whole different ballgame. I have kept Mother alive for 5 years when my doctor didn't thing she'd live a year. I'm good at this, but it's wearing. At the moment, Mother is in the nursing home for skilled nursing care after receiving 6 units of blood and IV antibiotics for a week. My doctor told me not to visit her everyday, so I'm taking two days off. This kind of stress messes up my weight loss, but I am glad to still have Mother though she's very demanding, and I get tired of being the servant all the time. I'm 59 years old. I got Mother when I was 54. I talked to my pastor about it and said that Mother had done everything for me, including changing diapers. She asked me how old my mother was when I was a baby. She was 27. It sort of changed my perspective. I don't mean to be snotty, but you have to take care of the elderly to understand what that is like. I would like a payoff for all of this, but I won't get it. I don't want to seem to be only interested in Mother's money. She doesn't have all that much. I love my mother and she knows it. She says that she knows that her kids love her. She says if she dies tomorrow, she knows her kids loved her. I don't think my brother has exactly proved that, but he's the baby and it's not his job. I'm just tired of caregiving but we can't afford the nursing home. They told me that Mother's medication alone would cost $124 a day. That's about what I gross per month. Thank God for medicare.

I am a native Okie who has lived in many other states. I love Oklahoma, expecially Tahlequah. Sand Springs is not far from us.

Probably this should be in the rant section, but I'm proud of myself in that I learned how to use a cellphone. The old ones were just too hard. But our regular phone is sort of like a cellphone and I've learned to use some of the features. So I got a cellphone because Mother is in the nursing home and they don't have phones in the rooms. I got the kind that you open up and talk and close up and hang up. Mother and I both can use this kind. I don't think we're up to text messaging. Besides, that costs more. But I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to at least make a call on a cellphone.

Since Dumbledore escaped his funeral fire as a Phoenix, I think he may turn up again. I hope so since they have a new actor to take the place of the actor who died.

I pay a hell of a lot of taxes. I figured out one time that I pay 48% of my income in various taxes. Yet I can still live a pretty good life, at least until I retire, and I appreciate things like roads and the electrical grid and indoor johns. I suspect you are really griping about all those welfare people. Well, I have met many welfare people who are going to college and they are not bad people. They fell on hard times. Some of them are "ripping off" the welfare system by living on about $500 a month, but that doesn't bother me much. I'm more worried about how much it costs us to put a prisoner to death. An attorney friend of mine figured out that it costs a state about a million dollars for every execution. I'd like to save the money and just put the people in prison for life. It costs less than a million dollars for them to be in prison for 20 years. Democrats probably won't raise taxes very much, if at all. But they want to raise the minimum wage quite a lot which worries me because small businesses may not be able to manage that much. As a Democrat, I'm very much pro small business, but they are hampered by taxes, being forced to collect state, county and city sales taxes, unemployment taxes, workmen's comp. taxes which the workmen never get, unemployment taxes, and a lot of other bureaucratic bullshit. I had a small business for a little while and learned a whole lot about the problems that small businesses face. I think we should remove these barriers and make small business a number one priority. I'm sick of big corporations avoiding taxes while small businesses pay and pay. I do hope the Democrats make the big corporations pay up, but I doubt if that will happen because people in Washington are not really in touch with things that people in rural Oklahoma worry about. But I intend to try to make them aware and I suggest you do too. I don't think people who are inheriting large sums of money should get out of the inheritance tax. They can afford it. I'm just worried about what will happen to Mother's little amount of money if she has to go into the nursing home. I suspect they will take everything and I will have taken care of Mother for over 5 years for nothing. Well, I love Mother so there's that. But I will get zero inheritance. That's why I'm for a national health plan. People who haven't taken care of a person in their 80s have no idea how much it helps to have Medicare. We would have been broke years ago without it. My aunt had Alzheimer's for 10 years and Medicaid paid her nursing home bills. I'm so grateful for that because we couldn't take care of her when she got bad. My brother, the big Republican, was bitching about welfare until I informed him that our aunt was on welfare in the nursing home. He shut up then. We have a major crisis facing us with my generation, the baby boomers, retiring. I don't have much money saved because it cost me so much to live. During my working career, inflation was about 1000% and my wages didn't keep up. That $180,000 house would have cost about $18,000 in the early 80s, but I was in school and didn't have a big income and I didn't have a husband making an income. I'm screwed, so I hope the Canadians or someone will take pity on me. I'll learn Spanish or French.

I'm a Democrat and I'm thrilled to death that we took both houses of Congress. I'm not really against Republicans, but I don't think the neo-conservatives are actually Republicans. I think they are a whole party by themselves and don't represent the Republican base. My brother is a fairly radical Republican, yet he and I, a fairly radical Democrat, agree on a lot of issues. He listens to Rush Limbaugh and I read DailyKos everyday, but we still agree on many things. So I don't think Democrats and Republicans are that far apart. I think the neo-cons have tried to drive a wedge between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats, and this election told them that the American people are on to that game. The American people are often wrong, but they usually realize it after a bit of time and rectify any mistakes. They have rectified the latest mistake. Unfortunately, it will take quite awhile to fix all of the terrible things the neo-cons have done. I don't think the Democrats will get into George Bush's face if they can help it because there is no point. He will be out of office in 2 years. The Iraq situation will take quite a long time to fix. However, the Dems will have a bunch of investigations which will undermine the neo-con stance with the public. I think when a lot of secrets come out, people will be enraged. I like regular Republicans, but I don't like extremists, and the neo-cons are extremists. Our country has managed to get along with most people in the middle of the political spectrum for over 200 years and if we play our cards right, we may make it another 200 years. But we are not going to be the lead country in the 21st century. China will take that role and we're going to have to figure out how to make a living when we are not number 1. That is a serious problem that both Democrats and Republicans need to think about. What do you all think about this?:bandit

This is appalling. I asked my doctor about liposuction for my stomach which is enormous and she said "No." She says there is a big risk of throwing clots with liposuction which go to the lungs and you die. I can't believe anyone would do liposuction on a 12 year old.

I'm sorry about Texas, but Oklahoma voted for a Democratic governor and lieutenant governor and whole bunch of othe Democrats. I'm just glad the Democrats got the House in Congress. I was going to have to give up and move to Canada or Chile. Maybe I can stay a little while now. But independents always screw up the vote though they are a lot of fun. For once, maybe Oklahoma is ahead of Texas, at least with regard to brains.

I've been interested in the comments on Gov. Perry. He's probably going to win. In contrast, our governor in Oklahoma, has raised teacher salaries (albeit to the level of poverty) and has done a good job walking the razor bridge between conservatives and liberals. He's a Democrat but is really quite middle of the road. He will win in a walk which is amazing since most of Oklahoma is heavily Republican. Of course, his opponent is Ernest Istook, possibly the stupidest person ever sent to Washington, except for our senators. He was positioning himself for a run for the presidency by running for governor, but he's losing big time. I think Brad Henry may be a good candidate for President though he hasn't made it big time in the Democratic party. Few do who aren't from the East or West coasts. I've been talking him up at DailyKos. However, one of our Democratic hopefuls should lose because he recommended students should use thick textbooks as body armor in school shootings. He even did a video on which textbooks would hold up best. Of course, the guy who was doing the shooting couldn't hit a textbook from about 8 feet. But that's what some of the Okies think is the solution to our problems. Being from Oklahoma is always good for a laugh.

I'd really love for people with no kids to get a hefty tax deduction since it costs a fortune for me to take care of my 7 animals, not to mention mother. I'm single and I really get screwed on taxes. Luckily this year I can write off lapband surgery. That should help a whole lot on the old tax returns. As is, I'm paying for other people's kids to go to public school while rich folks get a nice write-off for sending their kids to private schools. Our school taxes went up tremendously a few years ago. Yet I don't see that money in my freshmen who don't seem to know anything at all and don't read to find something out. But at least most of them CAN read and do basic math which is probably all we can ask.

In Oklahoma, we have term limits which I like a lot even though our new guys are always on the lowly committees in Washington. I like term limits because we have spawned a whole bunch of professional politicians which is not exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. On the other hand, if politicians don't get paid well, the only politicians will be rich people. It appears that many politicians ARE rich people. But we have non-rich students who intend to be career politicians. That's weird. These are people who are interested in power and power corrupts. So I support term limits. A politician can do a lot of damage in two or three terms, but at least there is an end looming. I will be very happy when our current senators reach their term limits. They are incredibly corrupt and stupid. It's embarrassing that in Oklahoma, some of the silliest people run for office and win. By the way, I agree with you on some issues and I disagree on others. I think I'm a bit more liberal than you are since I support abortion on demand and stem cell research, assuming they use the zillions of embryos already on ice. I support abortion because I don't think anyone has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. I particularly don't think a male should have the right to tell a female what to do with her body. Until men can have babies, I think these decisions should be left to the women. I note that many anti-abortion groups are headed by men. That strikes me as a throwback to the past when men controlled everything. They didn't do a very good job, so maybe it's time women controlled their own lives and stopped being treated like things rather than people.

Since I got my band filled to 4.5 cc (the Swedish band), I have had to really slow down eating. Tonight I had a pork chop, mashed potatoes and some apple sauce and it took me nearly an hour to eat it. However, it went down with no PB. I chew until the food is pretty much liquid. My problem is eating too fast if I'm hungry. So I'll work on putting the fork down. Maybe I can stop these PBs.

Well, live and learn. Our family has a tendence to have our noses run when we eat. But I didn't know about the hiccups. Unfortunately, by the time I get hiccups, it's too late and I have to throw up. I must try to pay attention to the subtle messages my stomach is sending. Thanks for bringing this up.

I am sure that was a PB. The slime comes first and then you throw up. I find that I don't have to put any real effort into throwing up, like when I really throw up and my ribs hurt from the effort. I just have a lot of slime come and then I sort of burp whatever it is up. I have esophageal spasms which are different from your PB. I get food stuck in my esophagus and then I PB. It's gross, but I'm getting used to it. I find that if I'm under stress, which is pretty common with 7 animals and my 86 year old mother driving me crazy, I tend to PB more. Welcome to the world of the PB.

One of the fun games I like to play with the freshmen is the idea of anything being a fact. I like to shatter their ideas by telling that everything is theoretical because we can only know something through our senses and everyone's senses are different. Therefore the world of "fact" is different for each person. So there are really no such things as facts, except on a personal basis. So we lives our lives based on theoretical concepts that we think are facts. To get around this problem, I like to think in terms of probabilities. If there is a 99.9% probability that the sun will come up tomorrow, I think we can treat that as a fact, but there is a .1% chance that it won't come up tomorrow. This moves us into the squishy world of Post-Modernism which is a whole lot of fun, but probably hasn't introduced any really new ideas yet except for Jacques Derrida's binary opposition ideas. He says the first term is privileged in binary oppositions, so he recommends that we turn them around to see things from a different angle. A binary opposition would be something like man/woman. If we turn it around and privilege woman, things change. Still, it irks me when my students are so sure of everything. I like to destroy that to make them think. It works. It freaks them out and they start looking at the world differently. Then I introduce critical thinking to them and they start reasoning about the world. Their reasoning is usually pretty crappy, but at least they try. At any rate, any argument can be both valid and invalid regardless of facts. A real argument can be valid or invalid based on probability and the idea of relativity. Chew on that awhile, TOM.

Carlene -- I doubt if most grown-ups want to seduce kids who live on an entirely different plane from the grown-up. However, male college professors have been seducing students for ages and getting away with it. The school year was open season for coeds and professors. Female college professors rarely seduce a student. We had a lesbian professor who did and got fired pdq. Meanwhile the male professors continue having little affairs with their students. It is true that the students are usually over 18 and are adults, but I consider this sort of seduction to be entirely unethical and immoral. Our former university president had a long-term affair with a girl who was a cheerleader when they met. He got her through graduate school and gave her a job as a dean of one of our campuses. Then his wife divorced him and there was a scandal. By this time, he and his honey had moved on to another campus. I don't see how teachers can be held to moral standards that their bosses are not held to also. But as the university president, he was privileged and got away with this affair while lowly professors get fired pronto for sexual harrassment. You Texans certainly are a cantankerous group. But the nation has been divided by political professionals who think that such divisions are useful in getting elected. I think that is a shame since, in my experience, real Republicans are mostly middle of the road, not extremists like the neo-conservatives who are currently in power. I don't consider them real Republicans since their agenda does not square with what the Republican party has stood for in the past. I made an effort to understand the neo-conservative's ideas and what I came up with is: 1) the believe that America has the moral high ground in the world 2) it is up to them to spread American morality through force if necessary 3) America is the "city on the hill" that the Puritans thought they were creating, the Promised Land 4) all countries should be like America. The sheer stupidity and arrogance of these ideas amaze me. How could otherwise intelligent people think that we should force our way of life on others? Do we have the facts to support these ideas? It's good to think that our country is a good place, but it's bad to try to force our culture on other countries. I hope that the real Republicans see this and oust the neo-conservatives whose program has not proven to be very workable. Above all, I think we need to understand that the current administration is composed of neo-conservatives, not real Republicans. By the way, I'm a Democrat, but I respect the ideals of the Republican Party. It seems that the neo-conservatives have split people on specific issues to the point that neither the Democrats or the Republicans are looking clearly at the big issues, and both have forsaken the basic beliefs that have been the mainstays of their parties. I hope we can get back to rational discussion rather than shrill bickering and name-calling so we can move our country forward.

This is exactly what Landow discusses in the book. He goes into great detail. He's a prof at Berkeley, I think, and he makes his case that they just didn't have time or the balls to save 7 people. I put this big log in the fireplace and it didn't even start burning until I wanted to go to bed. Now it's burning like crazy. I think I may be up all night. I even sprayed it with Water. It loved that and burned more. Alas!