L.J. Holmes

L.J. Holmes
In her many Guises.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Resurrecting of the MC QUACK AWARD

I had not intended resurrecting the

MC QUACK AWARD but when a member of the

medical profession has performed so well he or she deserves the quivering carpet to be wrested from the sharpened jaws of gnawing moths, who am I to deny the auspiciousness of this occasion?

Where to begin? In today's medical world one cannot begin with the final perpetrator of

medical "excellence" because the final acknowledgment cannot lie solely upon the shoulders of the one who gives the diagnosis at the end of the medical road. Thanks to the power given, at every step of the process, we must truly start the award process with those who initiate the game.

Pre-authorization for instance....have you noticed you need pre-authorization any more pretty much to sneeze? Makes me wonder how much money the insurance companies made on all those masks in the Asian world last year when every body and his dog was out and about wearing surgical masks in the hope they wouldn't sneeze like, gulp, swines?

But, back to me and my reasons for resurrecting the Mc Quack Awards, On Dec. 13, 2012 my spine went kaflooey...again. I have a spinal cord injury at C3-4 and L5-6. Mr MRI shows this-repeatedly. There's pain involved with this. All I need is a

T.E.N.S. unit and a script for replacement electrodes.

Simple, non-invasive, drug-free AND in my home treatment...except for the electrodes, which okay, do cost about ten dollars a pack of four, is a one time expense...

(my last T.E.N.S. a com-tens unit...lasted me about ten almost eleven years.)

However, insurance companies say NO WAY...lets not do that...let's medicate, and at a cost that is outrageously expensive...monthly...with side effects that will redesign my innards in ways my innards are so not going to like...but who cares?

So DR. MAKE ME FEEL GOOD prescribes an alleged non opiate for me to take before I go to bed.

I'm a light sleeper. Have been for most of my life...mothers usually are...but not after taking this generic non-opiate. My adult daughter had a

seizure and pulled a chair down on top of her, pinning her to the floor as she went. She cried out for me to help. It took her over five minutes of crying out for my help to penetrate the fog the non-opiate Dr. Make Me Feel Good gave me to reach through my dense fog and pull me into some semblance of consciousness.

I have no memory of helping her.

I also have no memory of anything from the next day...including how I got the bruise on my right knee. I literally remember NOTHING and felt NOTHING!

When I DID start to regain awareness I still felt


nothing. I mean I could not feel my legs. My eyes were so blurred I could hardly see. My mouth was so dry it felt like my lips were pasted shut, my stomach swirled with nausea to the point I had to take promethezine to counter the effects of the other drug. My mind could not function for any length of time. I had to

and sit down at frequent intervals, or collapse because I could not feel my legs.

All I wanted was an

$85.00 T.E.N.S. UNIT. Instead I have no memory of my daughter calling out to me for over five minutes because she needed me to take a chair off of her so she could rise from a Grand Mal Seizure.

All I wanted was a T.E.N.S. unit...instead I got

...because I will NEVER take another one of these pills...of being unable to see clearly, feel my legs, move without nausea, or function like a human being.

All I wanted was a

T.E.N.S. unit, but now I'm almost totally free of the drug, and every inch of me where the

Rheumatoid Arthritis is swelling my joints has reestablished its pain levels and my Lumbar and Cervical Spines are equally swollen...still.

I'd rather put up with this pain than having no memory of my daughter needing me and me being lost in some drug induced fugue.

So who do I give the

Mc Quack Award to? The Insurance Company that won't allow the doctors to give me a T.EN.S. Unit instead of these toxic drugs?

The same Insurance Company who insists I go through the chain of medical command starting with the primary and then the Pain doctor, who'll only see me after I've been sent to the MRI specialist...and then only if he's given the report because he's NOT part of the same system as everybody else, and God help me if I happen to have a radiology CD from the doctors I went to BEFORE this primary and this group? (Transferring to this batch?...can't have that...might contaminate their faultlessness!)

I guess I have no choice but to give it to them ALL! It's only FAIR...SOOOO to the Insurance Companies...here's

YOUR McQuack Award...    Congrats

And to allllll the doctors involved...You took a Hippocratic oath that says...overall HARM NONE...

WELL DONE ON THAT DOCTORS! HERE'S YOUR AWARD!