Pic of the Day: Fox Geography

Wonkette ran this yesterday and I can't resist a good dig at those morons on the far & stupid right.

Can anyone tell me why "Iraq" is spelled "E-G-Y-P-T" on the Fox map?

At least they got Iran in the right spot, but the Egyptians are a few boundaries to the left, southwest of Israel & Jordan.

Can't really expect better when these morons didn't even know the difference between "Yamato" and "Yamamoto" on April 7, 2009, when one of their balloon-heads announced that on This Day in History in 1945, the Japanese Battleship Yamamoto was sunk. Yamamoto was a Japanese admiral, shot down by a flight of P-38 Lightnings. The Yamato was the ship.

Possible Good News on Medicaid

A little background, first. Ever since the Grapefruit days, I've been trying to navigate my way through all the ins and outs of getting medical assistance.

The surgery to repair a simple testicular hydrocele--the "Grapefruit" (it still amuses me to call it that, but it's never been as bad as it was before I resorted to the do-it-yourself fix)--would be several thousand bucks. Something like $1500 to the doctor doing the surgery (the same guy who was going to remove my kidney a few weeks ago), a few more to the hospital, some more to the anesthesiologist, and that's all for an outpatient procedure. I'd be home the same day. Since money was an issue, the Urologist sent me to a financial counselor in-house, who pointed me to Medicaid.

I quickly found that I wasn't qualified--too young, among other things.

Then came the torn aorta, a week in the hospital, and close to $53,000 in medical bills, mostly handled by the hospital's Uncompensated Care charity system. The hospital's counselors pointed to Medicaid again, and I tried to explain that I wasn't qualified.

Then it was back to the Urologist, who was concerned about the growth on my kidney that had been found while my aorta was being inspected. He said it had to come out, and again ushered me to the financial counselor, who ran the phones, called the local Medicaid people, and was told that all I needed to do was apply online. Surgery date was set, everything was put in motion, and I went home to work on the application.

Took maybe 2 weeks for them to reply: I wasn't qualified. They didn't say why.

I drove to the local office, and only then--after all this digging--did I learn that I'd have to go through Social Security and apply for Disability. Different social worker at the hospital, more paperwork and phone calls, and now I'm looking at three different pieces of paper from the Medicaid people looking for more information about my condition and proof of citizenship.

I'm hoping their sudden attention's a good thing.

Pic of the Day: Heroes (7 different ones).

(back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik
(front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair

I wasn't around for the loss of the Apollo 1 crew, but I remember where I was the day the Challenger was lost, January 28, 1986. It was a typical, boring high school English class. The principal made the announcement that the shuttle had exploded and all aboard were killed.

For a few years, I was comforted by the thought that they were killed outright in the explosion of the External Tank. Then I learned that the real damage to the crew cabin--and the event that killed the crew--happened when it hit the Atlantic Ocean at more than 200 miles per hour. I still get chills thinking about that.

The Challenger crew are heroes for the same reason all the space-jockeys are heroes: there's something about a person who will strap himself to a highly-explosive mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen, or liquid hydrogen and oxygen, or to a pair of solid-fueled boosters that can't be stopped once they're burning. You get in the chair on something like this and willingly ride that metal bomb into space, you're a bona-fide hero, even if all you do is get space-sick. At that point, going to the moon, walking around, driving a moonbuggy, packing up and coming back this way is just gravy.

But once you do all that and come back, you're a freaking LEGEND.

If you don't make it...it's tragedy, but no less heroic, because such people know the risks and take them anyway.

Pic of the Day: Some People are IDIOTS.

No, Elton John's not an idiot in this case (though he IS an idiot for playing at Pigboy Limbaugh's wedding, money or no).

Nope, the idiot in this case is the person who took it upon themselves to make this magazine rack "safe" by turning all the mags with John, his man, and the baby around so the highly offensive covers wouldn't show.

I turned them back, then remembered that I've got a little camera for grabbing pics of stuff like this, for later mockery on the blog.

When I commented on the magazines, the clerk at the store told me about a customer who came in, shopped around, brought his stuff up to the counter, then stopped and pointed down behind the counter at the porn mags.

"I didn't know you could still legally sell those here," he said. The clerk told him that they've always been there.

"I can't shop here." Dumbass just walks out, leaving the stuff on the counter, unpaid for.

That's just stupid.

About as stupid as this religious goofball with whom I worked at a convenience store in 1993. He was so devoted to his religious stuff that he made sure everyone saw him reading his little book on breaks (i.e., when there was work to be done), he tried to hijack the store radio to some religious crap (manager told him she'd kneecap him if he touched her radio again), and wouldn't stock the cooler because his religion prohibited him from touching alcohol.

This same religidiot was arrested and dragged from the store on warrants for beating his wife and selling drugs. What a prince.

w000000t! (Knees & Kidneys...and Fort Pickens)

Rolled out of bed this morning afternoon and was able to walk around without the crutch--no foot pain, no knee pain--for the first time in almost 2 weeks.

Maybe now I can get back to getting ready for a ride down to Fort Pickens. I had it all planned out. The Tuesday before my knee went out was going to be the warmest we've seen in a few weeks, the winds calm. I haven't been to "my fort" in more than a year. I've been wanting to go somewhere--anywhere--to get out of this damn house after being stuck indoors for 6 months.

I doubt I'll be able to walk the entire thing in a single lap, but there are plenty of places in a fort to sit or lean, plenty of new details to see, or old ones to see again. The brickwork in the old fort is amazing, especially once you stop to consider that everything was done by hand--and more poignant when you realize that a black slave worked with a file to shape a specific brick to fit a specific place. When you touch one, you're touching the work of a man who didn't own his own life. It's a chilling thought, yes, but it reminds me of how far we've come since 1834, when the fort was completed. Now we have a black president. How cool is that?

My favorite thought about Pickens, though, is that it was never in Rebel hands during the Civil War. It was built to protect the channel between the Gulf of Mexico and Pensacola Bay, one of four forts guarding the channel and Pensacola Harbor and the Navy shipyard. When the Rebels turned traitor in 1861, they took the other three--Forts McRee, Barrancas, and a small work called the Advanced Redoubt. But they couldn't get to Pickens in the sort of numbers that would have let them take the fort. They lacked the ships, they lacked the troops, and because of Pickens sitting right at the entrance to the bay, they couldn't use the shipyard or harbor to support or supply their efforts elsewhere.

A few hundred men in one fort held off thousands and thwarted the Rebels. I like that.

Knees and Ankles...and kidneys

It's been about a week since I first felt the piercing pain in my knee warning me that I was about to be unable to get around for the next few days. My knees have been taking turns with this crap since the middle of 2006--fluid buildup, swelling, inflammation, can't bend it, can't put any stress on the joint, can't let my lower leg "hang" free, can't pile it up on pillows...everything makes it hurt, so about all I can do is lie there and try sleeping and wish for some serious painkillers.

Doc #1 says it's a torn meniscus--one of two cartilage pads cushioning the knee joint. Stay off it, use crutches if I have to move around. Doc #2 says it's gout--and he drew maybe 15cc's of fluid out of my knee. I think the second one's the right one, since it's caused by the accumulation of uric acid and my right kidney's on the way out with a suspected carcinoma. One thing that caught my eye on the Wikipedia "gout" entry: "Diuretics have been associated with attacks of gout."

I'm on three different diuretics as part of my blood pressure meds; knowing there's a link lets me put up a timeline: Almost 2 weeks ago, I couldn't put weight on my left foot. It was swollen, so I leaned a little harder on my right leg and took a little more of one diuretic in hopes of reducing that swelling. Two days later, my right knee got inflamed from the extra work and from the effects of the diuretic. Today--nine days later--I got some goop siphoned out of my knee through a long-ass needle poked in under my kneecap. I still can't walk as well as before: Doc #2 asked me why I was still using the crutch. My leg hasn't been bearing my weight completely for more than a week, that's why. Besides, I still have the crutch, might as well use it!

Feels much better with all that gunk out of it--much less pain, more flexible, not nearly as hot, but you can still push on the kneecap and see adjacent skin pushed up by displaced fluid. Pretty neat how a few minutes with a syringe (and a good mechanic) made such a difference. Maybe someday I'll be in a position to pay this guy and the other docs, nurses, techs, clerks, transport jockeys and such what they're worth for patching me up and keeping this decrepit body of mine limping (if not trotting yet) along.

I did finally find something that'll touch the pain: 500 milligram acetaminophen. Aspirin's out as long as I'm taking Lasix (bad, bad interaction). Ibuprofen wouldn't even touch it. I even tried some leftover Panlor SS, but that was less than useless for pain relief even if it does have codeine. About all it did was make me itch all over after 2 days. Made me miss that Dilaudid and Lortab the hospital gave me back in July.

Things To Do on my Sister's Birthday.

1) Stare at the wall on the right side of my bed until the pain forces me to roll over.

2) Roll over.

3) Star across my room at the far wall until the pain forces me to roll over.

4) Repeat as needed.

It actually started sometime Wednesday with a constant pain on the inner side of my right knee. This, after 48 hours of pain and swelling in my left foot, both caused by the same fluid buildup I'm taking diuretics to treat--part of the cocktail of blood pressure meds I've been on since July.

I was still able to move around on my own early Thursday morning, but by noon I couldn't stand or stand any movement or pressure on that knee. My world shrank to a twin bed, my TV remote, a jug of store-brand "Kool-Aid," and a bottle of Ibuprofen. A couple of those every 6 hours seems to be taking the worst of the pain, but it's still the single worst pain I've ever had, even including that aortic dissection. I've been through it before, this fluid buildup and inflammation in one knee or the other, several times a year since 2006. Got it covered: bed rest, fan, electric blanket, hunker down till it blows over. I can tell how far along it is by how hot my knee is over the inflamed spots and how long I can lie on one side or the other before having to roll.

Things were bad enough last night that I floated through an entire showing of "Scary Movie 4" on Comedy Central. I'm pretty sure that it sucked as badly as I thought it did, but several days worth of little sleep have left me pretty loopy.

Much better this morning; I was able to stand and totter around a bit for the first time in 48 hours.

[Update--what's it got to do with Big-C Cancer? I originally had this post under "Blood Pressure" thinking that it had some link to the BP troubles I've been having. It does, but only in that the BP troubles are caused by that golf-ball-sized "mass" [a freaking tumor, but the doctors don't like to call it that] in my right kidney. Now it'll be grouped where it belongs.]