5 Minute Freewrite - Prompt: medicine man

in Freewriters4 years ago

Abandon the western medical system. It is ineffective and corrupt.


Put that in your pipe and smoke it, my dad would say.

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Day 1023: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: medicine man

Abandon the western medical system - Words of Wisdom from... no, not a medicine man. From a woman, #naturalmedicine hive member @owasco, a raiser of chickens, a poet, musician, actress, freewriter, professional chef, cat savior (Freddy!!!), mother, anti-vaxxer, #UnmaskedHero, a brave, strong woman, impassioned, ever an inspiration to me.

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One five-minute freewrite is not enough time for me to talk about Owasco.

She knows herbal remedies, of course, and shares her recipes (bone broth for one), shares her poems and even video clips of her acting and singing. I love her reading of the poem she wrote in tribute to her dying husband. I hate hearing how their son is an invalid (apparently as a result of "vaccine injury," one of many terms new to me but all too familiar to Owasco.)

The world is disassembling but she remains a voice of hope and reason. E.g., here's a post from two days ago (oops, I didn't see it until today!):

Let us all come together joyfully, singing for love, instead of staying at home alone, fearful of an invisible enemy.

Duly note: this one has successfully hyperlinked


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Her home is under fire (to speak)

due to legal issues, and she wants to buy her family's estate on a lake (how much ya wanna bet the lake is named Owasco?), and she's living near what is left of New York, the city, the great, great, teeming mass of humanity immortalized by the Statue of Liberty raising her beacon: Give your tired, your hungry, your poor... give me your artists, musicians, poets, free spirits... New York was home to the biggest melting pot, the most diverse peoples of our nation, but along came COVID-19, and live music was banned. Businesses closed. Doors slammed shut, people were locked up in quarantine, and when they did venture out, they were masked.

Um, why am I writing this in past tense? THIS IS STILL GOING ON.

It blows my mind.

#MindBlown

What really blows my mind is the medical system in the U.S., the ways it has gone downhill when it was never really Top of the Hill care to begin with. I mean, since 1985, I've seen specialists. Vestibular migraine may be the diagnosis nobody ever gave me, no matter how time and money they wasted, no matter how many MRI, CT, pills, or procedures they put me through.

Long, long, long story made short, I made the long drive to Omaha to see a specialist Monday, and at the eleventh hour, he CANCELED my appointment. Apparently he thought I was seeking a SECOND OPINION (I was prepared to squander up to a thousand dollars on this ENT and more, if he agreed with Quack #1 that my sphenoid sinus needs to be surgically drained), but he threw me aside.


I know when I've been insulted! I know when I've been insulted!

Which raises a question:

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"Yes, a doctor may refuse to examine you for

or give you a second opinion: you may have a right to seek one, but that does not require any particular or individual doctor to see you. You need to find a doctor who will willingly do this; doctors are allowed to decide who to see, and who not to see, as patients."
The syntax sucks, but ok, yeah, a lawyer wrote this.

Hello: I wanted more than an opinion; I was going to let this doctor perform surgery on my head... cut into my skull... because he was so highly recommended by a trusted friend.

THIS IS REALLY ANNOYING.

A four-hour drive to a CANCELED appointment.

Wow. My reputation precedes me? I'm a patient nobody wants? I am the Patient from Hell! Bwa ha ha!

I am not alone.

As Owasco wrote eleven days ago (and yes, ahem, I'm only today finding this post),

I spend hours and hours gathering videos, studies, essays, articles etc regarding corona virus and posting them on FB. I have my loyal followers there to be sure, but most of my real life friends have unfriended me or even gone so far as to block me. You see, I am a liberal, a 47 year registered Democrat, who does not hate Donald Trump with an irrational passion, and who knows we are in the midst of the greatest crime against mankind in history. Please watch that video, which is both hilarious and painfully all too true. "It's hard to take Macron seriously when he is wearing half a bra on his face."
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Not even gonna mention the storm

back home, the (dechero)[https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12369987/derecho-storm-gales-midwest-chicago-michigan-illinois/], the fallen trees, the husband home alone with no power.

Oh what the hell, I hafta at least hint at what I missed out (and will continue to miss) as long as I remain in Omaha.

[‘Derecho’ storm brings 100mph gales ripping through riot-hit Chicago leaving ‘50 injured’ and a million without power]
(https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12369987/derecho-storm-gales-midwest-chicago-michigan-illinois/)

Oh hell no, more hyperlinking glitches! Eeep!!!
[‘Derecho’ storm brings 100mph gales ripping through riot-hit Chicago leaving ‘50 injured’ and a million without power]
(https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12369987/derecho-storm-gales-midwest-chicago-michigan-illinois/)

A RARE ‘derecho’ storm with 100mph winds tore through the Midwest, leaving more than 1.1million still without power on Tuesday morning and at least 50 people hospitalized with injuries.

That's it!

I'm done with modern medicine, western medicine, the news, the weather, the power grid, the powers that be, the people who ignore me or blow me off. From here on out, I"m....

Feeling saucy, I am,

Like the furball in this drawing by our middle child, Claire, when she was in middle school.

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At Facebook and among family, I've been feeling largely ignored by most of the people I have taken interest in, followed, friended, read, blogged about (thank you Harvey, Bill, John, Heidi, Stacey, Ken, John McC, and other author friends for hanging with me), but - but - but - so help me God, I am feeling fine as me.

Knowing I should "put up and shut up" , one of my dad's best phrases, along with

"Things is rough all over."


Also knowing I will never shut up because I keep insisting that whatever captures my imagination and holds my attention should appeal to others, so I'll keep flooding Facebook as if it were my own personal journal (which essentially it is) and not caring if anyone else sees or likes or mad-faces me.

I'm ok.

I laughed at the Wayne Dwyer books (I'm ok, you're ok) but in the end, I just gotta be me 'cause there ain't nothing else I can be (without a lobotomy or some such).

Feelin' Fine!

Laughter is the Best Medicine, so I'm watching the chicken yodeler on You-Tube, and reading about derechos and Quaking Aspens (to replace our fallen pines).

Oh come on, you know you want to know all about Quaking Aspen monocultures:

A stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. Before a single aspen trunk appears above the surface, the root system may lie dormant for many years until the conditions are just right, including sufficient sunlight. In a single stand, each tree is a genetic replicate of the other, hence the name a “clone” of aspens used to describe a stand.

Older than the massive Sequoias or the biblical Bristlecone Pines, the oldest known aspen clone has lived more than 80,000 years on Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Not only is the clone the oldest living organism, weighing in at an estimated 6,600 tons, it is also the heaviest. Even if the trees of a stand are wiped out, it is very difficult to permanently extinguish an aspen’s root system due to the .....


Where did everyone go?

Sort:  

I'm still here. We are the warriors woman, the warriors. Thanks for the kind words!! Watch this, and you'll never go to a western doctor again. Have you tried mugwort tea?

Mugwort! Tea! nope, but I have soapwort, mother wort, and every other kind of wort in my garden. Spiderwort is cute. Today my vertigo is worse. I don't know why. Drain the sphenoid sinus of alleged "allergic fungal sinusitis," the local ENT proposed, and the Omaha ENT canceled my appointment, and I am trying to contain this rage, and OMG, OMG, it occurs to me that yesterday morning the dechero was unleashed about the same time the ENT was canceling on me. It was me. It was my fault. OMG I have proof at last!!!!!!

OK now you ARE starting to sound crazy lol.

I know what you are going through and I know it sucks.And I know you are not crazy. But yes,

Spiderwort is cute.

When in doubt, try mugwort (I just made that up). It has headache relieving properties. It might help, and I'm sure you have some out there somewhere.

Girl you must have the fastest computer in the midwest.

You would have to eat a whole field of it to get a toxic dose.

Oh Ms. @carolkean, you are really something else, you know that? I love your energy and wit and creativity and F--- it all attitude. That will probably do more for you health and well-being than chasing flighty doctors all over heck and yon. I'm really sorry that happened, by the way. It really makes no sense. What risk was there in him going ahead and meeting with you to see if he could help solve your mystery? Too macho, maybe? Afraid he would fail? Hang in there, my dear. For the most bizarre and difficult to treat conditions, I do think natural medicine is a safer bet!

Thank you Jayna!!!
The older women get, the more we learn to embrace the idea that one only has so many F^cks to give (there's a book with that title, and I never remember it offhand). Crabby old ladies learn that doctors waste our time and money, and old home remedies (natural medicine) can be safer than those pills and procedures the medical industry imposes on us (and on senior citizens in particular). Today, something crazier than the doctor happened. It concerns my sister's cold case, and the other local girls killed and discarded like roadside trash, and I'm feeling like someone has me under surveillance and leaks information to whoever. It's weird. I always fight conspiracy theory paranoia and trust that all is well, and all shall be well. But it all is not well, or, "Something is rotten in the State of Denmark," and I am going to bed now to sleep of this crazy day, this mind-blowing week. I wanna go home. I'm still four hours away and husband is still manning the fort with two dogs and a wicked cat (Bobi the Bad), no power, no shower, no WiFi, no phone. THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD. But I also just read new stories on female genital mutilation and how only 39 of our 50 states have banned it. And other people have suffered horribly with COVID, and the derecho, and human trafficking, and....
Good night everyone.
Thanks again, Jayna and Marianne, for your comments today!

Oh my gosh, my hair just lit on fire! You do have plenty of fodder for a gothic novel, don’t you? Well, do take care of yourself. You’ve got me worried!

And when you think of the F***s book send me the title. ❤️

Book Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F^ck by Mark Manson

  • You are going to die someday. Everyone you know is going to die soon. And in your short life you only have a certain amount of fucks to give.
  • Subtlety #1: Not giving a f^ck is not about being indifferent. It just means you’re comfortable with being different. Don’t say f^ck it to everything in life, just to the unimportant things.
  • Don't hope for a life without problems. Hope for a life with good problems.
    Problems never stop. They merely get exchanged or upgraded.
    Happiness is found in solving problems, not avoiding them.
    True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Happiness is wanting the problems you have and wanting to solve them.

Ha ha, I'm seeing it on Facebook now:

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I don't feel ignored on Facebook because I never go there lol
Please, please, please, never shut up!!
Be you!!
And we all go on being us - because that is all we can do!!
Poor yourself out here - or wherever you feel like it.
And the storms suck, Corona sucks, and world politics suck.
Personally, I don't mind wearing a mask and don't really understand why people are all in arms about it. Most everyone I know wears pants/skirt and a shirt. Businesses can ask for shoes being worn in their establishment. It is just something to wear... we are the ones that are making it a symbol - or not...

Thank you Marianne!!
Tonight, the mask was especially hard to wear. High heat and humidity. There's a Migraine group on Facebook and a lot of vestibular-challenged people get headaches or get short of breath or dizzy not long after putting on a mask, so it's a thing, not a manufactured idea... I'm not at all confident the masks help if the virus is in the air, ready to infect someone. But what do I know. I wear the mask, but I grumble a lot!

Sounds like you might need a better fitted one. There is definitely science behind that the mask do help - hence doctors and dentists and others have been wearing them for a long time.
I have experimented with different kinds now and there are some I can't stand at all - and now I have some I have done long walks in pretty high heat in and they have been fine. The cut allows the fabric to be away from my nose and breathing is easy - but it still sits firm on my face and doesn't allow anything out...
And they are not fastened to my ears - that can put a lot of pressure on the face as well...
You sew, right? Just try all kinds of patterns until you find one that works for you...

Aha. Yes, I've seen a pattern for a cotton mask that doesn't fasten to the ears. Hand-tied is supposed to better. My neighbor sewed the mask I wear and donates masks to the hospital, made from the same pattern. I've tried two fabric masks from stores. All fasten to the ears. All of them are miserable. My glasses steam over. I'll keep looking for one that works. Thanks Marianne. (And I used to sew but I don't have a machine that works anymore.)

I will ask my daughter in law for her pattern. I made some that were basically rectangles, then 3 pleads folded. I sewed shoestrings in the corners to tie them and did a little pocket on top to insert pipe cleaners that can be formed to the nose and keep the mask tight. That way, your glasses sit over the mask and won't fog up.
There is also some spray you can put on glasses that keeps them from fogging up - my son uses that at work since they wear safety goggles all day long.
I find with the mask my daughter in law made me, if I put it high enough and my glasses are over the fabric, I am doing fine.
I walked/ran 5 miles with the mask on in pretty hot weather and was good...
It really is in the design and there are a lot of bad ones out there right now...