Rhinocrisy

In the 1997 movie “As Good As It Gets”, Helen Hunt’s character complains to her son’s doctor about the fucking HMO bastards restricting her son’s care. The scene hit a nerve, drawing spontaneous ovations around the country.

For me, the movie didn’t ring so true. Many people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) have had their own run-ins with HMO bastards, but the doctor-patient relationship portrayed in this movie: thoughtful, caring, doctors, kindly imparting knowledge and useful recommendations on grateful patients, is just a Hollywood fantasy for most PWCs (People with CFS).

I have been through doctor’s appointments that were more cross-examinations than examinations. I have had doctors get angry with me for suggesting treatments I’d read about and I’ve had doctors get angry with me for refusing treatments I knew would be harmful because they had “a hunch” it might help. I’ve had a doctor lecture me about the importance of doing schoolwork while I was too sick to watch television and a doctor get visibly angry when my test results showed that she still didn’t know what was wrong with me. Like virtually every PWC, I have had multiple doctors tell me that I “NEED A PSYCH EVAL!!!”, as one wrote in my file. (FWIW, I’ve had numerous psych evals.) And compared to many people with CFS, I’ve gotten off easy. I can only imagine how the patients of people who read Psychology Today articles like Is It All in My Head? are treated.

Now, I have seen a handful of doctors who were very good and there are some brave doctors who have put their careers on the line to research treatments. Literally. One researcher at the American Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome conference I attended informed me that if your name appeared anywhere near the words “CFS” you would never get funded on anything, CFS-related or otherwise. That was 1999, perhaps times have changed. Interestingly, non-scientific surveys of doctors and researchers at the conference showed that most either have or had CFS themselves, had family members or spouses with CFS, or were the doctor present at a large outbreak.

If the personal is political and all that, then right now PWCs are still in the bewildered analysis stage. As in, what could we have possibly done to qualify us for such animus? There are theories, this from a woman on a mailing list I’m on:

[T]his is because there are 9 times more women than men with [Fibromyalgia, a related disease] and [CFS] sufferers are also overwhelmingly women. And this is just how women get treated, most of the time.

Get used to it, guys. Sorry, but you have a “woman’s condition.” So get prepared to be blamed, belittled and not believed.

And I think that’s part of it. But Gulf War vets who came down with a very CFS-like illness get virtually the same treatment, as did Multiple Schlerosis patients around the turn of the 20th century. So, my question to you and the entire blogosphere is this: why do doctors suck so much? What can be done about it?

Uzbekistan is blowing up. Since I was planning on going there sometime next year, this eenterests me greatly.

The New York Times is reporting from Moscow (with binoculars, I guess) the following:

MOSCOW, May 13 - Armed gunmen attacked police posts and stormed a prison in eastern Uzbekistan early this morning, unleashing a day of protest, chaos and violence that left at least 10 people dead and dozens more wounded, according to news reports, official accounts and one person who claimed to have joined an uprising against the government of President Islam Karimov.

I take from this that they were relying at least partly on Karimov’s propaganda. The short, short version, as far as I can figure it out:

Twenty-three Muslim businessmen were put on trial by Karimov, accused of being part of a relatively unknown group of Islamic extremists, Akramia, which the government claims has an association with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a violent, bomb-throwing Islamic extremist outfit. Akramia is the group of supporters of jailed Uzbek dissident Akram Yuldashev (Yaldushov), who Karimov locked up in 1999 on charges of plotting to overthrow his government. Why anyone would want to do THAT, I can’t possibly imagine.

The Akramis don’t seem to be very good candidates for terrorists - they are completely above-board, forming a respected business community around the city of Andijan. They have implemented their own welfare/profit-sharing system. They are, indeed, devout Muslims, but they vehemently deny being part of any extremist network.

The arrest followed a recent bombing in Tashkent. The Akramis responded by threatening to… call for demonstrations in the streets.

Well, they were convicted, following a highly-polarizing trial. After the recent upheaval in Kyrgyzstan, people are no doubt feeling their oats. So they demonstrated in Andijan, probably tried to free their jailed comrades. Karimov responded by sending in troops who opened fire on the crowd, killing maybe a dozen or so. NYT gives us this:

By nightfall, troops loyal to Mr. Karimov’s government gained control of the central square, dispersing the protesters, according to news reports from the city, citing government officials. The government also claimed to have retaken the mayor’s office, which the armed gunmen seized in the hours after storming the prison, but it was not immediately clear what happened to at least a dozen hostages they had captured. Gunfire was reported in the city for hours afterward.

Mr. Karimov’s government announced earlier today that nine people died and 34 were wounded in the initial violence. It said that “an armed group of criminals” attacked the city’s police and military posts and stormed its prison shortly after midnight today, freeing hundreds of prisoners. The gunmen and freed prisoners were then joined in the central square by hundreds of protests in what appeared to be a spontaneous demonstration of support.

As always, keep this FOREMOST IN YOUR MIND. The Uzbeks are our allies in the “War on Terror”. (Holy fuck.) We send people to Karimov to be tortured, who has them boiled alive for us.

The White House responded, thankfully. They said this:

“The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan added.

“While we have been very consistently critical of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, we are very concerned about the outbreak of violence in Andizhan,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Washington was particularly concerned about “the escape of prisoners, including possibly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization we consider a terrorist organization,” Boucher said.

Lovely, lovely people, our goddamn motherfucking cocksuckers. I mean, government.

Another conversation I had in my kung fu class produced this idea:

Consider the possibility that Paris Hilton does not exist. There never was any such person, nor is there a younger sister Nicky Hilton. There IS an actress who plays Paris Hilton. Her name is Claudia Farraday, and she is employed by a small and obscure production studio. A few years ago this studio paid a large and undisclosed amount of money to the Hilton family to make use of their family name. They would create a character, a true-to-life character around whom they would build a brand. Television shows, videos, clothing lines, makeup - you name it. All built up with far more verisimilitude than any screen creation could offer, because this one would actually BE real - as far as anyone knew.

They engineered their creation perfectly: she would start quietly, appearing as a model here and there - to establish credibility. Then she would blow up big, with instant notoriety that would fuel the growth of her prime-time television show. If it went well, they could move on from there… maybe maneuver for a book deal. Pepper her life with curious and scandalous incidents that would attract the attention of the appropriate consumer brackets. Quoi? Paris Hilton’s private phone book was hacked and published on the Internet? How salacious! (”Yes - Danger paid quite a bit for that little piece of promotional theater.”)

It was the perfect mechanism, for a public jaded by threadbare, aging forms of entertainment. Those old dog-and-pony shows wouldn’t work on this tough, calloused public. But a sucker-punch, a fake - a dose of concocted reality. Ah. That would catch them unawares.