Sometimes doctors fix ya and sometimes they don't

It was some seventeen years ago when I had a caesarian section. At the time I was under the impression that they were done rarely and only in cases of absolute need. At the time I thought mine was one of those. Since then I’ve learned how pitocin (given to induce labor) actually induces stress in the fetus creating a need for C-sections. (Google Pit to Distress). If mine had been an actual emergency, my C-section would have happened as soon as they discovered the stress in my baby, not three hours later, after office hours, when it was more convenient for my OB.

As a result of my unnecessarian, the muscles cut in my midsections are weaker than they should be, an imbalance that’s caused seventeen years of lifting, standing, running and walking incorrectly. Not totally responsible but certainly contributing to the arthritis I’m now sporting in my lower back.

As a result of my arthritis, I went to another kind of doctor, a rheumatologist who assured me that certain pain meds were safe if taken with food and bla, bla, bla . . . etc. etc. etc . . .  all advice I followed to the letter. “If they stop working,” he advised, “we’ll find something else for you.”

Well, they never stopped working, they kept me happy, pain free, and functioning normally. Until the day I wound up unconscious on the floor and had to be hauled away in an ambulance. Turns out I had three bleeding ulcers and had lost two pints of blood. Turns out NSAIDs are actually responsible for some 16,000 deaths a year. (see previous post about that.) 

  

While I was in the hospital getting my bloody stomach fixed, I was assigned a GI doctor who I like immensely (in spite of the places he’s been). He helped heal up the holes in my stomach and then kept seeing me for regular check-ups. Every time we talked he asked if anything else was going on. So I eventually got over my embarrassment and told him about a certain “other” chronic problem I was having (and I’ll spare the details here).

I told him how doctor number one (the OB) had suggested that this "other problem" is caused by a tilt in my uterus and the sure-fire fix would be to take the thing out . . . said I’d be fine without it since my baby making days were over and I didn't need the thing anyway. He said artificial hormones would compensate for what I’d lose and they’d be safe as long as I took them according to directions. And bla, bla, bla, . . . etc, etc, etc . . . 

Gee, where had I heard that before?

In the long run, my GI doctor (did I mention how much I adore him?) has suggested certain dietetic changes and other sundry, natural stuff that has everything working as it should. No surgery, no drugs. Just me, my weakened ab muscles, my arthritic back, my compromised stomach, and my diet.

So yeah, I have some back pain. I have some issues with my posture. I have a few regrets—okay, maybe lots of them. But I also have a big strapping seventeen year old boy. And what could be wrong with that!?

And I have a much more cautionary relationship with our "healthcare" system.

Those !@*& Worthless Piss Ants

Today’s blog is brought to you by the Pharaoh Ant, aka the sugar ant—or piss ants as my uncle used to call them. Specifically the ones roaming my kitchen cabinets this morning. I can't help but remember my uncle's joke where the kid is sitting on the sidewalk, using the lord’s name in vain and swearing at the uselessness of piss ants as he methodically squishes them one by one under his thumb. Along comes a priest (of course) and lectures the boy on how nothing in God’s good earth is useless. The kid’s answer is far from politically correct so I won’t share it here. Suffice to say that it’s that punch line that filters through my head whenever I get pharaoh ants in my house. This morning’s object of their teensy, little affection was the honey I keep tucked up in my spice cabinet, delicious on my morning oatmeal.

Now, I love our multi-legged friends as much as the next person. I even saved a cockroach the other day. Saved a cockroach! ME! I kid you not! He was outside scurrying along the sidewalk on some mission of utmost cockroach importance. My husband went to step on it but I stopped him . . . I mean -- what’s one more cockroach in a city where they outnumber us a gazillion to one? The key, though, is that the cockroach was outside, right where it belonged. Unlike those piss ants, crawling in and out of my spice cabinet, lusting after my honey. MY honey! I got stingy with those ants, thinking hey . . . get your own honey, this is mine! But then I realized . . . that’s sort of what they were doing.

Anyway, here’s my breakfast . . . the same one I have most mornings. Some fruit and steel-cut oatmeal drizzled in honey. And sometimes seasoned with teensy little piss ant bodies.