Synesthesia

Are you a synesthete?  I am.  Mine is number form and/or time space synesthesia.

It was only very recently that I learned the whole of human experience does not "see" numbers, dates, time, history. Nor do they apply a three-dimensional model to all of these things. I do.  I always have. I always will and I think it's pretty cool. I was reading an article (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/04/02/the-rare-humans-who-see-time-have-amazing-memories/) when I came across this topic and to be quite honest it shocked me. Does this mean something is wrong with the way my brain is wired or does it mean I can contribute to things in a way very few others can.

I admit, I know nothing about synesthesia and am now on a quest to learn more. Not because I feel odd or special for being a synesthete but because I would love to know how the Hell people can do math, know what day it is, or recall history and events if they cannot see it in a three dimensional space with applicable color and heat. Seriously, if you can't fold numbers upon themselves to get a result or know the color to determine addition or subtraction/multiplication or division how do you come to an answer?  How do you know what the day is or where it lies in the week and how on earth can you recall history if you can't slide down a path to the exact date of the event?

The coolest part is I can draw all of this out for anyone that asks.  I just need enough room and enough colors.

I want to hear everyone's comments. How do you do math?  How do you know what day it is?  How do you when the heck "Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue" or when Cleopatra reigned supreme if you can't actually see it?

Student Loans

I was just online to make a monthly payment.  This being my 256th month.  I know what you're thinking.  Good for you Becca! Your mortgage is almost paid off!

 Sadly, no. It was a student loan payment.

But Becca, you used to have so much money, why didn't you pay it off earlier? I wanted to and I was told I would be all paid off in 10 years back when I started paying in 1992, back when I was still living in poverty.  So I just kept paying.

Ten years came and ten years went and then around 2004 the last $6k-$7k seemed to just stop getting smaller. Bankruptcy, moving, a horrible relationship that almost killed me, moving, unemployment, etc., etc., etc. and I just stopped paying attention.  Until today.  Life is good now.  I can take time to look into things and I noticed this evening that I still owe a couple of pennies under $7k.  Where has the nearly $20k of payments gone to since 2004?  Has it all been 100% profit for a bank?

Something is very wrong with my student loans and I am going to ask for an entire accounting of every account and every penny paid since 1992.  If they can't provide it I'm going to court.  Enough is Enough!

Can we please go back to the College system that Thomas Jefferson wanted for the United States and that existed, at least in California, before Ronnie Raygun became Governor.  You know the one where college was free.  The United States cannot compete as a nation if students need to first willingly enter a life of poverty just to get an education.

Do you have a student loan that you need to vent about?  Please share it here in the comments.

Right-Wing News

A recent study revealed Fox "News" viewers are less informed than people who consume no news at all.  On it's face it seems blatantly obvious, but today I saw a perfect example of the right-wing news consumer.  A woman commented on a blog about the occupy movement and she accurately made some comments about the unfortunate corporate clime.  The right-wing news consumer replied with this statement:

Obviously you missed the part of your American History class where they mention how the entire woman's suffrage movement was sponsored by Tampax.

I have a problem with this.  My problem with his statement is:

• The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920.
• Tampax was introduced in 1936

I'm thinking the Procter & Gamble did not have a time machine available to them to go back in time as part of some amazing marketing campaign to attract female consumers.

Before you say, yes but Becca Procter & Gamble has been around since 1837, let me assure you that I already know that and that causes me even more concern about the comment from this right-wing consumer of news.Has he been told by Fox "News" that Tampax funded the women's suffrage movement? Does he know that the Tampax product was not a sponsor of women's suffrage movement but that possibly Procter & Gamble was? If so was his comment intentionally misogynistic?

These people embrace their ignorance and do not hide their bigotry. The political clime in the country has gone rapidly downhill.

NASCAR 2012

I'm really excited that the "car of tomorrow" became the standard.  However, this year the cars are so slammed it's made racing totally awesome but the wrecks in this Bud Shootout have me concerned.  Do these youngsters actually know how to handle a car that feels like a car?  Given this evening's wrecks I think NASCAR 2012 is going to be very interesting.

Welcome 2012!

Dear 2011,
Good Bye.  Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

I started the year in bed recovering from knee surgery.
When I was strong enough to get up and about on a couple of crutches I found my Road Glide Custom was stolen right out of my garage.
During a big company event I damn near broke my neck thanks to the crutches and the blizzard and almost took out my boss in the process as I fell to the ground.
I then got the flu and had to endure a cross-country flight back home from the big company event.  I just wanted to die.

All of that was just in January 2011.

Things only got exponentially worse from that moment on. 2011 was, without a doubt, the worst year of my life.  However...

As this year comes to a close things are already looking up.

• My pulmonary docs know how to care for my lungs to hopefully keep me out of the hospital.
• I am mobile again and feeling strong.  I know I will drop all this added weight from the accident, and get out and do the things I love to do once again.
• I've got my amazing Dykes on Bikes family all over the world that has always been there for me.
• My NYer friends have never left my side and it's been amazing to see Coyote so many times this year.
• My beautiful niece makes my heart swell to the bursting point every time I see her cute little face or hear her beautiful little voice and giggle.
• Finally, my involvement in San Francisco politics and the San Francisco LGBT community continues to grow.  Happy New Year to all my new friends on the SFPD Chief's LGBT Community Advisory Forum.  I'm really looking forward to all the wonderful things we can do for the most beautiful city in the country.

2011 really sucked, but it feels like I hit rock bottom so hard that the bounce back up is heading straight for orbit.  The end of 2011 has been so beautiful and I can feel that momentum continuing throughout all of 2012.

Happy New Year everyone!
Love,
Becca

Sarcoidosis

Found this great letter on my Sarcoidosis support site...

Dear Patients:

 You have it very hard, much harder than most people understand. Having sat for 16 years listening to the stories, seeing the tiredness in your eyes, hearing you try to describe the indescribable, I have come to understand that I too can't understand what your lives are like. How do you answer the question, "how do you feel?" when you've forgotten what "normal" feels like? How do you deal with all of the people who think you are exaggerating your pain, your emotions, your fatigue? How do you decide when to believe them or when to trust your own body? How do you cope with living a life that won't let you forget about your frailty, your limits, your mortality?

 I can't imagine.

 But I do bring something to the table that you may not know. I do have information that you can't really understand because of your unique perspective, your battered world. There is something that you need to understand that, while it won't undo your pain, make your fatigue go away, or lift your emotions, it will help you. It's information without which you bring yourself more pain than you need suffer; it's a truth that is a key to getting the help you need much easier than you have in the past. It may not seem important, but trust me, it is.

 You scare doctors.

 No, I am not talking about the fear of disease, pain, or death. I am not talking about doctors being afraid of the limits of their knowledge. I am talking about your understanding of a fact that everyone else seems to miss, a fact that many doctors hide from: we are normal, fallible people who happen to doctor for a job. We are not special. In fact, many of us are very insecure, wanting to feel the affirmation of people who get better, hearing the praise of those we help. We want to cure disease, to save lives, to be the helping hand, the right person in the right place at the right time.

 But chronic unsolvable disease stands square in our way. You don't get better, and it makes many of us frustrated, and it makes some of us mad at you. We don't want to face things we can't fix because it shows our limits. We want the miraculous, and you deny us that chance.

 And since this is the perspective you have when you see doctors, your view of them is quite different. You see us getting frustrated. You see us when we feel like giving up. When we take care of you, we have to leave behind the illusion of control, of power over disease. We get angry, feel insecure, and want to move on to a patient who we can fix, save, or impress. You are the rock that proves how easily the ship can be sunk. So your view of doctors is quite different.

 Then there is the fact that you also possess something that is usually our domain: knowledge. You know more about your disease than many of us do - most of us do. Your MS, rheumatoid arthritis, end-stage kidney disease, Cushing's disease, bipolar disorder, chronic pain disorder, brittle diabetes, sarcoidosis or disabling psychiatric disorder - your defining pain - is something most of us don't regularly encounter. It's something most of us try to avoid. So you possess deep understanding of something that many doctors don't possess. Even doctors who specialize in your disorder don't share the kind of knowledge you can only get through living with a disease. It's like a parent's knowledge of their child versus that of a pediatrician. They may have breadth of knowledge, but you have depth of knowledge that no doctor can possess.

 So when you approach a doctor - especially one you've never met before - you come with a knowledge of your disease that they don't have, and a knowledge of the doctor's limitations that few other patients have. You see why you scare doctors? It's not your fault that you do, but ignoring this fact will limit the help you can only get from them. I know this because, just like you know your disease better than any doctor, I know what being a doctor feels like more than any patient could ever understand. You encounter doctors intermittently (more than you wish, perhaps); I live as a doctor continuously.

So let me be so bold as to give you advice on dealing with doctors. There are some things you can do to make things easier, and others that can sabotage any hope of a good relationship:

Don't come on too strong - yes, you have to advocate for yourself, but remember that doctors are used to being in control. All of the other patients come into the room with immediate respect, but your understanding has torn down the doctor-god illusion. That's a good thing in the long-run, but few doctors want to be greeted with that reality from the start. Your goal with any doctor is to build a partnership of trust that goes both ways, and coming on too strong at the start can hurt your chances of ever having that.

Show respect - I say this one carefully, because there are certainly some doctors who don't treat patients with respect - especially ones like you with chronic disease. These doctors should be avoided. But most of us are not like that; we really want to help people and try to treat them well. But we have worked very hard to earn our position; it was not bestowed by fiat or family tree. Just as you want to be listened to, so do we.

Keep your eggs in only a few baskets - find a good primary care doctor and a couple of specialists you trust. Don't expect a new doctor to figure things out quickly. It takes me years of repeated visits to really understand many of my chronic disease patients. The best care happens when a doctor understands the patient and the patient understands the doctor. This can only happen over time. Heck, I struggle even seeing the chronically sick patients for other doctors in my practice. There is something very powerful in having understanding built over time.

Use the ER only when absolutely needed - Emergency room physicians will always struggle with you. Just expect that. Their job is to decide if you need to be hospitalized, if you need emergency treatment, or if you can go home. They might not fix your pain, and certainly won't try to fully understand you. That's not their job. They went into their specialty to fix problems quickly and move on, not manage chronic disease. The same goes for any doctor you see for a short time: they will try to get done with you as quickly as possible.

Don't avoid doctors - one of the most frustrating things for me is when a complicated patient comes in after a long absence with a huge list of problems they want me to address. I can't work that way, and I don't think many doctors can. Each visit should address only a few problems at a time, otherwise things get confused and more mistakes are made. It's OK to keep a list of your own problems so things don't get left out - I actually like getting those lists, as long as people don't expect me to handle all of the problems. It helps me to prioritize with them.

Don't put up with the jerks - unless you have no choice (in the ER, for example), you should keep looking until you find the right doctor(s) for you. Some docs are not cut out for chronic disease, while some of us like the long-term relationship. Don't feel you have to put up with docs who don't listen or minimize your problems. At the minimum, you should be able to find a doctor who doesn't totally suck.

Forgive us - Sometimes I forget about important things in my patients' lives. Sometimes I don't know you've had surgery or that your sister comes to see me as well. Sometimes I avoid people because I don't want to admit my limitations. Be patient with me - I usually know when I've messed up, and if you know me well I don't mind being reminded. Well, maybe I mind it a little.

You know better than anyone that we docs are just people - with all the stupidity, inconsistency, and fallibility that goes with that - who happen to doctor for a living. I hope this helps, and I really hope you get the help you need. It does suck that you have your problem; I just hope this perhaps decreases that suckishness a little bit.

Sincerely,

 Dr. Rob 

SAM 324

Found this touching contribution to Short Final on AVWeb:

The fallen Betty Ford was returning to Grand Rapids for the last time. Her remains were abord a beautiful United States Presidential airplane painted blue and white. The airport was closed to all other traffic for 30 minutes. Airliners waited patientally on the ground and some in a hold over the GRR VOR. As Ms. Ford's plane, SAM 324, landed, they were cleared to taxi all the way to the end, in front of a thousand people. The tower frequency was absolutely silent.

One unknown airline pilot, in a low, respectful voice, said, "Rest in peace, Mrs. Ford."

After a short pause and in a slow, measured response, the Presidential plane's pilot identified himself:
 

"SAM 324."

This really choked me up and had to share.