Then there are the individuals that are "depressed" or suffering from SLS so they of course as medicated as stated. I don't really believe in depression aside from certain cases. Usually the depression is just a symptom of an underlying problem but it's easier for the doc to diagnose and write out a prescription for. So there are many cases of uneeded medicating in average situations as well as the very questionable "diseases" mentioned.

How does this affect me? Well, little did I know but there's a severe history of anxiety in my family. I had a normal childhood, hit puberty, and suddenly I couldn't hold up a paper without my hands shaking like crazy, couldn't stand up in front of the class without my whole body shaking like a leaf. Kids were mean at the time but they rarely did anything to make me feel uncomfortable by Junior High. Still, I continued to get much worse when it came to anything social. By Junior year of HS I had quit everything I was involved in and would rarely even go out with friends if it was a big group. I'd sit in class grasping the desk and proppinng my head up with the other hand to keep my head from shaking too much just praying the teacher wouldn't call on me. Finally I went to my family and let them know something might be wrong so they took me to a psychiatrist and he did diagnose me as having a "social phobia" but he was no fool and ran a full batch of blood tests which revealed I had Lyme Disease. I likely had it for over a year before that.

I don't know what your position on it is, but thirteen years later and I'm still fighting the effects of multiple recurrences and multiple treatments which have decimated the better part of my life because the insurance companies had the doctors in a tight spot and I wasn't properly treated. I consider it a very real disease as do the people I know that also have it chronically.

That's where the people that abuse the system come in. Insurance companies are taking the opportunity to review and cut out coverage for anything they can these days because people have been abusing it. My last treatment was probably the first proper one with what's been discovered the past few years yet it was also the one my insurance company decided to deny. After a lot of jumping through hoops during the appeals process they finally had a podiatrist send my Lyme specialist doctor a letter citing references from over a decade ago. My family spent 20k out of pocket to get me treated since my health was deteriorating too fast to wait any longer. It's well over a year later and I'm still in appeals.

I HATE medications but the neuro-psychological stuff has gotten so bad over the years I can't function day to day without it. I have no memory of the past few years as a nice convenient side effect, heh, but everything's a trade off I guess.

I totally agree also that wellness takes a lot more than medication. I've been through it all and learned you have to look at the whole picture and treat the real ailments instead of just putting bandaids over the wounds as they appear here and there.

I've found certain things to be very helpful to me like neurofeedback and cognitive behavioural therapy (turns out my real anxiety problem was likely ocd which has been very much exacerbated by the lyme) as well as nutrition and exercise obviously. Unfortunately, that sort of stuff isn't covered either and can be incredibly expensive.

I've looked into Zen meditation as an alternative to the neurofeedback which I've stopped due to the expenses, but I have yet to be able to really get into it let alone benefit from it.

Getting off track here. So, the insurance companies are using the overprescribed stuff as an excuse to cut things across the board including people who need treatment such as myself. They're still leaning on doctors so they're either going out of network or risking their license by diagnosing and treating Lyme. It's unbelievable. Plus there are doctors that will say that it plain doesn't exist.

In the mean time, theoretically I believe we're a stone's throw away from what could be a cure but the pharmaceutical industry doesn't fund studies for cures... it wouldn't be good for business. They rather find us pills to sell us for the rest of our tortured lives. Now does that sound like a conspiracy theory? Fairly Accurate? Or both?

I also believe, and this may sound even more far out there to you, that all these big problems and mystery illnesses and diseases are cropping up and on the rise simply because their are too many of us. We've overpopulated a lot of areas and nature is just trying to restore a balance. It makes sense to me. But then, I have a fake disease with false ocd and uneeded medication so I don't know how much I should be trusted. ;)

Did I mention that I've also completely lost my information filter and ability to be a concise writer? Haha.

Apologies for that,

Ja

ps. I absolutely love the header on the site, I was looking for something of that nature for mine but had to settle on what I could find and legally use.

pps. your dypm seems to be on the fritz, it didn't believe me when I said 1 0 = 1, haha.

Interesting acronyms; I thought I was going out on a limb with "jerk". If you ever feel you need to retract something posted here least the public get the impression we are not a caring profession, do let me know...

While I'd heard of "git" (that is, it may have been applied to me) I had to look up ululating: it's my new favourite word.

Understandable is a different word to justafiable [sic] which does not exist as a real word (try justifiable, take it as a light hearted jibe and don't take the piss out of my spelling please).

Disease is one of those words which says what it means i.e. a lack of ease, and as such covers social (and antisocial) conditions, covers politics, housing and even social services, it covers all causes of lack of ease whether self-induced or not.

Looking at medicine, all the definitions that I could find in Websters actually refer to disease and the business of dealing with disease as a fundamental part of what medicine is!

However sanity is around the corner because doctor has its roots in latin docere, to teach. So even though there are some crap medicines for crap diseases, our job is to teach e.g. you get fat from eating too much of the wrong stuff and not excercising, losing your temper has consequences that are nasty, not just for the person you are angry at but for you, viruses do not respond to antibiotics, etc

IED: alternative of "Jerk" is OK but does not enter into the spirit of crap diseases. How about:

R.A.G.E: Really Annoying Gittish Effluent

or S.C.U.M: Sociopathic Cowardly Ululating Moron

In case you want to look up Gittish it is a neologism created by myself applicable to yobs in the World Cup season defined as "a British person wearing the George's Cross drinking lager and (here's that word again) ululating ENGERLANNND"

See you next week

Brendan