So much this. My mother's brain tumors were not caught because her doctor wrote off her increased pain as drug seeking and cut back her migraine meds.

::looks around. reaches to touch every single one of you::

Nobody go anywhere, okay?

Thank you, Betsy. And yes if someone drafts ita's Law, I will sign it. I will twist the arms of strangers till they see the point and sign it.

JZ, I'd been thinking "another fucking New Year. Why couldn't this one be the cosmic joke? That guy gone for real, and we get to keep ita?"

There used to be 4 pain treatment clinics in my county. After a regulatory enforcement blowup, there was 1, the one Hubby was going to. Apparently there were legitimate problems with the way the others handled record-keeping and confirmation that patients really had been seeing hte proper doctors. At least Hubby's docs were legit. Big blond dudes have fewer issues in this regard, though.

oral chemo can't cost more than what the insurance company charges for chemo infusions.

Good God, some of Hubby's infusions were charged at $50,000 a shot or more!

And don't get me started on "This pain isn't going away, doc, do something" and not finding cancer early enough.

I jumped back into William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition because it has been the only book to ever fully capture the idea of an online message board community for me. A message board created and hosted by a regular person (A South Korean police officer) to discuss and dissect, obsessively, a series of evocative film snippets released one at a time by an unknown film maker via the internet.

It's Lev Grossman's The Magician King for me. I re-read it just a couple months ago and my heart was so full of Bronzers, Buffistas, and Bronzistas that it just about wrecked me. That amazing feeling of belonging and rightness, the miracle of meeting these friends in person finally.

I find myself frustrated that I know I'm remembering my one meeting with ita wrong. I remembered her looking differently than she did, I remember her as a giantess but then I think that maybe I'm remembering what I expected her to be and she was of such a reasonable height that I was shocked and taken aback (of course, anyone over 5'1" appears to be an Amazon to me), and I'm just so mad at myself that I don't remember that evening sharper.

I don't remember it with clarity, because I had a migraine.

Stupid stupid effing migraines.

My husband discovered that alcohol was his major migraine trigger, and that if he cut out alcohol entirely, he stopped having migraines.

And my son, as we all hoped beyond hoping for, did what some male adolescents do and mostly outgrew his migraines. He's just turned 21, and got an A in his first community college class after missing all of high school.

That's great Betsy. I have a friend who can't consume anything aged or fermented.

Pain management is ridiculous. My dad was in a lot of pain around his hip replacement and we had to fight with his doctor for adequate pain management. And that would have been more difficult if I didn't have Anita giving me correct information on drugs and their side effects, since my dad's doctor was scare mongering about opiates and their side effects.

Betsy, that is great to hear. Wonderful news.

I'm so happy for your husband and for Will, Betsy.

Betsy, I've just threadsucked straight to your post, and was so pleased to read your news regarding your husband and your son (though it's of course impossible that he's 21. He can't possibly be that age, that must have been some typo). You're daily in my prayers, so the problem was definitely on my mind frequently, and it's such a relief to read that there are steps taken in the right direction. Hopefully soon for you, personally, as well.

ita did, ironically, make that dickhead's job easier. Sometimes I still have to remind myself there was no Seamus for ita to meet, isn't that stupid?