Wednesday, October 29, 2014

it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.
it's just the pizza, you don't have ebola.

except that i think i have a mild fever...

did they get a vaccine done, yet?

they're testing one...

http://windsorstar.com/health/windsor-paramedics-don-protective-gear-to-treat-patient-showing-ebola-symptoms
http://woodtv.com/2014/10/29/report-8-monitored-in-mi-for-ebola-virus/

the doctor i've been dealing with in the local clinic is actually from nigeria. i have no idea if she's been back and forth recently.

(i only know she's from nigeria because she speaks yoruba, and i happen to know (i'm a geek) that this is a local nigerian language group)

the only situations i can conceive of possibly being at risk are:

(1) when i took my temperature under my tongue at the hospital, but they swore it was safe.
(2) when i stole a toke on the 18th from some hippie strangers. gee, wouldn't that be awkward.

i wasn't in close enough contact with the doctor for it to even be a paranoia issue.

and i'm not sure if my "fever" is legit or the result of the temperature in here.

i have a tendency for mild paranoia. but, dammit, i could be rationalizing myself into something nasty, here.

pizza runs don't last more than 24 hours. i'll wait until tomorrow and make a decision. but i don't see any obvious path of exposure. meaning that if i'm infected, there's a pretty serious problem here in windsor.

i'm not coughing or anything. mild stomach irritation, but that's normal, given that i'm constantly drinking coffee.

let's see how my body reacts to some antacids...

see, this happens all the time, though - i get freaked out over something quasi-rational, then i carefully (even somewhat neurotically) work through it. meaning i'm able to rationalize through whatever pathology is freaking me out. but that level of control is a mask. here's the thing: i don't know what my success rate really is. let's say it's 99% - probably higher than it truly is. what that means is i'm a ticking time bomb, and you want to keep me out of stressful environments.

but, you can't diagnose it until it's too late.

i can't think of any reason why a sane person would walk into a doctor's office and try to convince them otherwise. if i really wanted to fraud the system, i'd break my back or literally shoot myself in the foot or something. accepting and pushing for a mental diagnosis is pretty strong evidence in itself that something's not right there. you know, and you try and be responsible and get help and they don't listen...

i'm needing to sit myself down and convince myself i don't have ebola. i think i'm succeeding. but it's symptomatic of a general difficulty in interpreting reality.

and if that leads to some crazy behaviour, nobody can say i didn't try and get help for it.

i don't need drugs that are going to turn me into a zombie. i just need to avoid stress.

and i want to be clear what my diagnosis is: the reagan revolution has pushed backwards conservative ideologies about social services into the system itself, and those backwards views are blocking me from gaining access to the help that i require.

i don't feel i'm dealing with a systems breakdown, a lack of funding or a broken medical infrastructure. i feel i'm dealing with doctors that are putting their political views ahead of their medical practice.

they're not doing what's best for the patient, they're reacting to a feeling of being overtaxed and seeking to behave in a way that they feel will reduce their tax burden - whether that harms the patient in front of them or not.

if you understand reality in terms of class conflict, it puts just about any doctor in a conflict of interest when it comes to approving just about any kind of disability.

if you take that to it's logical conclusion, it's an argument for a guaranteed income (because you can't cut doctor's salaries next door to a giant, unregulated market). that would probably be sufficient in my case, and sufficient in the case of many other people in this difficult to clearly diagnose grey area.

it's abundantly clear i can't work.

it's not so clear what the reason for it is.

hopefully somebody can see through this properly.

i mean, the average salary is over 300K, but they're paying 40-50% taxes on it. on top of that, they're paying property taxes - and, of course, almost all of them actually are. they have an interest in finding ways to reduce their tax burden, which will present itself in keeping costs down. so, they're not in any way an unbiased arbiter of who ought to be receiving social services. they're just not....

in order to jump through those hoops, mentally, you have to romanticize the hippocrates oath into a noble pledge and elevate them into noble warriors for justice. a moment's reflection with anybody that's dealt with a doctor knows that's fucking bunk.

you'll find a few that are something like the tv characters, putting their own health on the line for their patients.

but, my understanding is that the psychological profile of the average doctor is actually bordering on psychopathy - and has to be, because there's much less than a 100% success rate. the only way you can do a job where you fail 30-40% of the time is if you keep a certain emotional distance.

what it means is dr. house is probably the better representative, overall.

whatever diagnosis comes out of this - schizophrenia, high level autism, bpd, manic depression - is going to require a lot of discussion to uncover, and that needs a physician that's willing to invest the time in it - and quite frankly against their own financial interests.

at the most basic crude level, you'd have to think that if somebody does crazy things over and over again, or feels crazy urges over and over again, then they must be crazy. the fact that the person has been able to mostly keep out of trouble and/or gain access to a support system that's kept them out of trouble doesn't negate all the crazy things and crazy thoughts. it does, however, mean that if you remove that support system then the up-to-now not experienced consequences will produce themselves. i guess i'm just having a really hard time grasping the need to actually flip out before i'm taken seriously, partly, i guess, because it wasn't really necessary in the past.

i guess i had a very strong support system with my father that only failed around the time he wasn't able to make his own decisions due to diagnosis of cancer (and i've long suspected he was aware of the diagnosis considerably before i found out, that the events that occurred in late 2011 were a consequence of his already understood diagnosis and that the only reason i really found out at all was because of the situation. i even suspect that the reason he pushed so hard to have me move home was because he knew he was terminal, and the reason she refused so violently is also that she knew he was terminal. that fucked my situation up profoundly because it left me homeless, but there were complex reasons underlying it.). i went pretty cleanly from that support system to the state as a support system. this is really the first time i'm facing the possibility of lacking that system of support. the reality is that i haven't been able to survive without it, and i'm not going to be able to survive without it. i just simply didn't need a diagnosis or state aid because i had a family that was taking care of me, which i don't have any more.

in hindsight, i probably should have gone through all of this ten-fifteen years ago.

all of the symptoms were there. it just wasn't necessary to do.

i mean, what happened was:

(1) i can't pay my rent
(2) he convinces me to move home
(3) i give my two months
(4) i'm told i can't move home
(5) i've already given my two months, so, i'm now homeless
(6) i flip out on him
(7) i find out he has cancer
(8) the conflict just doesn't get talked through

but i think what actually happened was:

(1) he learns he has cancer
(2) i can't pay my rent
(3) he convinces me to come home - *because* he has cancer and he wants me there. he doesn't tell her...
(4) i give my two months
(5) she refuses to let me move home - *because* she knows he's terminal, and doesn't want me there after the fact, which is why he didn't tell her.
(6) i've already given my two months, so, now i'm homeless.
(7) i flip out on him.
(8) i find out he has cancer
(9) the conflict just doesn't get talked through

in all honesty? if he had told me he had cancer, i would have never given my two months....

i mean, the idea of me sharing a house with jackie after my father's death is unthinkable - for both of us.

the point is i'm not just unable to support myself all of a sudden. i was hopeless the whole time. i just had a support system.

i mean, i don't have down syndrome, but suppose i did. that person could survive just fine through their family. but if their family all of sudden ceases to be, they now require outside assistance. i'm just exaggerating the condition to make the point.

it's the same fundamental circumstance - the difference is i never got diagnosed with what i should have been diagnosed with years and years ago.

and now it seems like there was nothing wrong, when, in truth, there was something wrong the whole time.

i mean, it goes back to my earlier argument - who wants that kind of diagnosis if they don't need it? i'm pretty high functioning in the sense that i don't need help carrying out tasks, so it's easy to delude yourself into thinking you'll be ok if you can find the right path. an autism diagnosis is kind of a dead end in a lot of ways. it's not something you want to jump at. but if i can get my school records...

actually, i wonder if i *can* get my school records. that's a huge argument in my favour right now.

i really should have been diagnosed with something in grade school.

just as a corollary of my behaviour.

the argument was always that i had really high marks, and any kind of diagnosis would just hurt my future.

in fact, i think the lack of diagnosis has hurt me much more.

i went through multiple suspensions in high school, i was nearly expelled, and before that my eighth grade teacher actually removed me from her classroom (i had to switch classes halfway through the year). if i had to guess, i'd say i probably spent more time in the hallway in grade 8 than i did in the classroom.

i just spent the time in the hallway doing homework or reading; my grades were like 90-95%, so nobody wanted to "disrupt my future". it's that POTENTIAL thing again....

when i was in my early 20s, i started writing all over my walls.

graphs.

charts.

i was looking for the center of power.

i've been (i think unfairly) accused of stalking two people. trolling, definitely. not stalking.....never been charges laid, never been any justification to lay any.....but it's certainly been anti-social behaviour.

i've been fired for bad punctuality repeatedly.

around 2006, i decided that the problem of existence can be reduced to chasing immortality. the only justification to exist is to attempt to find immortality. if you fail, you've lost nothing - if you succeed, you've justified your existence. any other type of existence is a waste of time.

i still believe this, i just don't think it's feasible before quantum computing becomes a reality, and i don't think that's feasible in my lifetime. all this talk of singularities is based on this exponential growth curve that i don't think is sustainable. there's a point where moore's law is going to flatten out and we're going to find ourselves up against a brick wall. there's a solution in quantum computing, but i think it's a ways beyond us.

consider fusion. 50 years ago, it was the future. we're still waiting.

we're going to be waiting quite a while for those quantum machines to be able to do anything useful, as well.

i mean, to begin with, we've got to understand da fuck is even happening. we're fumbling around in the dark looking for a light-switch with this - over-reaching the theoretical possibilities and assuming things beyond what is actually realistic.

you will fit on a usb key one day. for now, getting you there is well beyond our computing capabilities, and it's going to be that way for a long time.

so, i've resigned myself to the meaninglessness of my existence.

as rational as this all is, it's pretty nuts.

i really think getting those school records is the right way to start. i can excise my narcissism through providing my life story. and, anybody convinced i'm sane by the end....isn't.

there you go jess, that's using that noggin...