Yeah, yesterday’s colonoscopy went as expected:
…and no cancer, nor even pre-cancer (final results in a couple of weeks, but the doctor was matter-of-fact about the whole thing).
Actually, the procedure wasn’t as bad as the preparation thereof:
…but on to more pleasant topics…
Today I am having a colonoscopy.
Normal service should resume tomorrow.
Update: Back home. My ass hasn’t felt this way since freshman year at boarding school.
Apparently Bernie Sanders, socialist Senator and POTUS wannabe, had a heart attack on the campaign trail but survived after some pretty nifty (and quick) medical care — after which the Commie asshole had the nerve to bellow: “Medicare For All!” (his campaign slogan).
As Dan Greenfield has pointed out:
While Bernie’s timetable of getting an angioplasty within a day might not sound that impressive to Americans, in the British NHS system, the median time from assessment to treatment is 55.3 days. Mean times for treatment have been cited as being 80 days. The maximum NHS waiting time is supposed to be 18 weeks and almost 16% of patients in the UK have to wait more than 3 months for an angioplasty.
Canada’s socialist system has angioplasty waiting times of around 11 weeks. And that’s after you get an appointment to see a specialist.
…
Bernie waited a day in Vegas to get his angioplasty. In Norway, he would have waited 39 days.
In Finland, which Bernie has also cited as an inspiration for his socialist program, he would have waited 22 days. In Sweden, another favorite of American socialists, Bernie would have waited 42 days.
Greenfield also points out (and I paraphrase) that as President Sanders, the man who would have implemented socialized medical care, Our Bernie wouldn’t ever be subject to the same kinds of waiting periods imposed on others: oh no. He’d have been whipped into Bethesda Naval Hospital within the hour, and had an angioplasty a couple hours later.
Which is always the way with Communists: the ordinary people suffer while the nomenklatura get only the best. And under socialism, ordinary individuals’ lives are irrelevant as long as the principle is upheld.
Well, I wish the evil old bastard had croaked, just on principle.
In Britishland, there’s a grocery delivery service called OCADO, and just to set this rant up, here’s a customer’s story:
Ocado, the online supermarket, had a suggestion for me recently. I’d got to the point of paying for my weekly groceries when a suggestion popped up on the website page.
‘Swap the products below and you could save 1,216 calories,’ it promised, suggesting I substitute ordinary coconut milk for a reduced-fat version.
It wasn’t the only ‘handy’ tip. I’d need to run for just over two hours, or walk for more than six hours to burn off the calories I’d be consuming should I stick to my original choice, I was reliably informed.
Of course, Ocado isn’t unique. It’s almost impossible to walk down the high street without seeing something suggesting we’re all too fat and need to eat less. Wetherspoons, Pizza Express, Nandos and Wagamama now display calorie counts on their menus.
In May, the Government announced that this scheme would be extended to smaller local restaurants and popular takeaway joints.
And the word “Government” is what triggered me.
Because I think (and I don’t think I’m being overly suspicious here) that with this kind of fucking intrusive software, it’s only a question of time before the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) incorporates snooping software into your household purchases and as with All Things Government, what starts off as a “guideline” somehow always seems to end up “compulsory”.
We all know that Corporate America is only too ready to lick the hands that enslave others, so if HHS (or the poxy CDC — talk about mission creep) decides, For Our Own Good (of course), that we should be hectored into reducing this or that in our diets; or that (even better) we should be prevented from buying doubleplusungood products (e.g. cigarettes, booze or Hostess Twinkies) — why, it would be A Good Thing.
Just not for us. But Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Shylock Inc. would be glad to oblige the Gummint, lest said Gummint do things with laws that take chunks out of the banks’ bottom line.
I’m not ready for that Big Brother shit, and I suspect I’m not alone in this.
And by the way, when I wrote Prime Target in 2012, I tried to imagine the most outrageous, far-fetched and outlandish government-run data mining scenario possible. Less than two years later it was out of date, and the federal alphabet agencies (along with their lickspittles at Google and FaceBook) were strip-mining the most intimate details of people’s lives for their own advantage.
So here’s a little warning to all of these cocksuckers: the minute I see this shit starting in my private affairs, I’ll quit using the service altogether, no matter what the inconvenience may be.
I also need to start stockpiling cash and other kinds of currency against the day. Fuckers.
Yet another horror story from Britishland’s NHS:
The absurdity is part of the recent NHS drive to limit the number of pricey, unnecessary operations.
GPs must apply to a body of health chiefs – called the Procedures of Limited Clinical Effectiveness panel, or PoLCE – before they can refer patients for certain procedures.
But what began as a sensible process to stop people getting breast enhancements and eyelifts on the NHS has snowballed into a deliberate ploy to deny genuine patients essential treatment.
It seems a the NHS is doing everything it can to stop doctors giving treatment that we know works.
Why are these opaque and unelected assholes doing this? Here’s all you need to know:
Another local authority approved just 46 of the 1,162 hernia operations requested last year, according to NHS figures.
You don’t have to be a cost accountant to see the savings involved in denying over eleven hundred surgeries per annum — and that’s just for hernias. Apply this ratio to all the other types of medical procedures, and the “savings” would add up to billions.
And screw the pain-wracked patients. They’re just an annoyance to government employees, and their problems are just a line in the budget.
Remember: whenever you’re faced with some tool who advocates “single-payer” medical care, kick them in the ass. Hard. Wear boots.
Another great moment in !Science!, announcing the obvious yet again:
Masturbation helps you sleep
Of course, I was triggered (once I’d stopped laughing) by the rest of the statement, because the followup suggestion is to use a sex toy — a solution so obviously gyno-centric that it shows once again the dangers we men face from the Matriarchal-Industrial Complex.
So to balance the thing, a little old-fashioned male-chauvinistic piggery:
(From Longtime Friend Knob.)