Scary Yankee Chick

I’m debating moving this blog to Substack and I’m curious as to folks thoughts on that.

When I first moved it to my own site I was blogging enough I felt it was worth it. These days? I’m doing good to blog once a month. And I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth out of the site. I will likely keep the site, and direct the substack to here (supposedly thats possible anyway) so that you won’t have to change any links. Maintaining the ownership of the domain name isn’t expensive, its the hosting of the page itself that adds up.

In theory I can move all the blog posts over there, so that I won’t lose any posts, testing shows it doesn’t move all the meme posts over correctly (it just appears to grab the first meme) but everything else appears to move over correctly. At the link I posted in the first sentence you can see the last 10 posts I imported to see how it works. I don’t know if that means I won’t be able to do meme dumps at all, or if I’ll have to break them up more, or what. But that appears to be the only potential issue that I’m seeing.

Edit: Ok, it’ll import the first 10 posts and nothing else. I’m waiting response from tech support to find out what I’m missing.

In my various Links posts I’ve posted a selection of articles and studies looking at modern Alzheimer’s research. The community has imploded unfortunately due to the discovery of fraud in the research. Its frustrating to watch. Alzheimer’s, and dementia in general, touches many families and it’s horrifying to watch a family member forget, well, everything till they turn into a breathing shell.

Yesterday this article was in my feed:

My Mom Was Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Then She Got Better.

““It’s Alzheimer’s.”

My mom was 61 years old. She had been struggling for years with mysterious symptoms that no doctor could explain.

……

But a year ago, my family experienced a miracle.

In January 2023, my mom went into the hospital to have a small surgical procedure, meant to patch a leak of spinal fluid. Instead, it cured her of all her symptoms. “

“We later discovered that, a year before Mom had her procedure, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had published a newsletter subtitled “Physicians Treating Dementia Should Look for Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak—A Treatable Cause of an Otherwise Incurable Condition.” The study had examined 21 patients who presented with headaches, significant fatigue, and a diagnosis of Chiari and dementia; nine of them were found to have a leak, and repairing it had entirely cured their symptoms.”

The newsletter referenced:

New Research Detects Potential Hidden Cause of Dementia

A new Cedars-Sinai study suggests that some patients diagnosed with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD)—an incurable condition that robs patients of the ability to control their behavior and cope with daily living—may instead have a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which is often treatable.

In this study, investigators used this imaging technique on 21 patients with brain sagging and symptoms of bvFTD, and they discovered CSF-venous fistulas in nine of those patients. All nine patients had their fistulas surgically closed, and their brain sagging and accompanying symptoms were completely reversed.

21 isn’t a huge number, but 9 patients with an identifiable specific issue, who ALL experienced complete reversal of the symptoms after the procedure….well THAT feels pretty damn significant. I hope that the medical systems are watching.

Been feeling a bit off since Tuesday. Mild sore throat, probably from the post nasal drip, fairly heavy post nasal drip, headache, general case of the blah’s. No fever, no chills, no cough. A bug has been going around work, which is pretty typical for this time of year, but some folks have been coming down really sick from it. Called out of work yesterday (Wednesday), this morning it wasn’t any better, so I called the doctor’s office to see if I can get an apt.

They won’t schedule me for an in person appt because “you have covid symptoms”.

But they won’t schedule me for a telehealth appt because “the sore throat requires an in person appt”.

Dude.

So I ask what do I have to do to get an appt. Answer: take an at home Covid test. I don’t have one. Well, you’ll need to take one to get an appt. So I ask “So if its positive I can’t get an appt?”, response “oh, no, we’ll just schedule you for a telehealth appt”. But you just said you can’t do a telehealth appt because of the sore throat. “oh if you’re covid positive it overrides that”.

Look, the damn sore throat is because of the post nasal drip, I get a sore throat every time I get a sinus infection. Just schedule me for the telehealth. Nope, can’t do it.

So you don’t want me to go out in public if I’m covid positive, but you want me to go out in public to find a covid test?? Well you have to have a test done before we can schedule you an appt.

The fuck?

For the record, the at home test is negative. But now I’m so pissy I don’t want to talk to the office again, and I’m not THAT miserable, so fuck it, we’ll see what I feel like tomorrow.

I love my doctor (we had a long conversation about covid, symptoms, treatments, and the like a couple years ago, and if it wouldn’t cost her her job she’d have been outright agreeing with me), but the hospital that the practice is attached to is going to drive me to drink. The receptionist, who is not even an entry level nurse, should not be making medical decisions on how to treat patients.