Perenti

Oh boy, so familiar. I have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is another CNS sensitised pain syndrome. "localised" for CRPS is usually a whole limb though. It's hard to explain how fully mind-consuming neuropathy is, as most people don't get much more than a toothache or a sciatica flare (which are bad enough, but usually "short" lived).

I've had an aweful lot of procedures and meds over 30 years, over 200, including 12 spinal procedures in 12 weeks when an attempt to deliver steroids to the C7 dorsal horn tore my dura mater. Very unpleasant.

It's really hard, as you say, to find good medical practitioners when you've got chronic nerve pain. They have to understand the relationship between hyperalgesia, allodynia (things that should not hurt hurting like crazy), movement (and lack of same) and meds, physio and psychs. Other injuries get involved once your brain is programmed to hurt you, and post surgical care involves more hard drugs to avoid sensitisation, leading to more complex drug tapering to get off the damn opioids (which only make chronic nerve pain worse paradoxically).

You say "I'm at my wit's end", and I've been there, past it and back again. You need to see a pain psychologist, a specialist psych. They can teach you "Jedi mind tricks" that may work for you. Things like how to focus your conciousnes into a bit that's NOT hurting. How to use disassociation to help getting day-to-day tasks done when you just want to curl up in a ball and cry.

I also strongly suggest you get in touch with other chronic pain patients. It's incredibly helpful to know you're not a weak freak who is a wimp and a weakling. To hear that other people have the same struggles. And to hear strategies for doing things that don't hurt as much.

Here in Brisbane people used to meet once a year in King George Square, for "Colour the World Orange" day. Three of these people are now friends who know what I mean by "it's not a good day". I found actually meeting other sufferers in the flesh to reinforce knowing that I'm not alone with this curse, other people struggle too.

And one from that group is in remission. We're all living vicariously through her, as this gives hope. Hope is what we all need.

With increasing global temperatures, increasing numbers of people are vulnerable to heat related illness.

In my case, whenever it's above 36C I have a significantly higher chance of sudden death (Brugada Syndrome), so I hide from heatwaves in air-con. Since we've had 3 days above 30C this week, and winter is officially over today, I think it's a good air-con summer ahead.

Some Banjulung people also respect shrooms traditionally. There as psilocybin mushrooms through most of the non-arid parts of Australia.

Indigenous Australians really really like drugs. There are rules about how often you can trip, and with whom, but there are magic shrooms over much of Oz, as well as plants with opioid-like effects, such as pituri.

I lived backing onto a roundabout for 10 years. Hoons would do massive donuts at speed, at all hours, often spearing off the road. One neighbour had cars through his fence twice, across from him had a retaining wall that took a few cars out. Opposite him there was a drop to some gated units, a car came through the roof of one of them.

Roundabouts are brilliant, but they don't stop maniac drivers showing off.

There are a lot of hayfever allergens in Australia. I have to wonder if that has something to do with it, or whether it's got something to do with how kids today don't seem to get covered in dirt.

You forgot to mention that koalas' fear response is to climb the fool cuddling them with their 5cm claws while urinating clamydia infested urine into the wounds.

I would not cuddle one, but if you do for God's sake make sure it's in a proper zoo, there they sedate the ones for cuddling. Do not shout, or move suddenly anyway.

My surname is Foster, and on Australia Day 2000 my collegues and I had a comfortable afternoon at The Australian Hotel on Coronado Bay. My mischevious friend, when ordering drinks said "... and Mr Foster will have Jack Daniels on the rocks. His entire family is sick of beer."

All evening I was being feted by blue collar Americans believing that as an Australian named Foster I _must_ have something to do with the beer.

I went to the Outback Steakhouse in San Diego in 2000. The menu was very American. When I asked the waiter if they actually had Australian food he apologised for the lack of kangaroo.

I'm not entirely convinced he was joking.

No, but in the general vicinity, in the Tweed Valley...

Yep. They just see a life to save, and will do everything they can to achieve it. It get's worse with a rare disease, as they want to be in the paper about it.

Yes. I don't qualify for Voluntary Assisted Dying though. If I ever need it I can take stronger measures, using simple science and engineering. I did have a cardiologist suggest that if he was me he'd refuse getting implant upgrades and fixes, which was sobering.

Chronic pain changes you, and rarely for the better. It's nigh impossible for someone who hasn't had to deal with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for months or years on end pain that's up on the extreme end of the scale. We try to hide it, to protect our families and loved ones for what we live, but sometimes it's too much.

Suicide is natures' rational solution to unending torment. Christian teachings and traditions try to say that suffering is holy, and it is righteous to endure. How come it makes people into assholes then?

Between knowing I have the option, and the amazing power of venlafaxine, I do not need to either fixate on or commit suicide though. At least for a while now.

I will never judge anyone who intentionally kills themselves as I don't know how painful their reality was.

It's worse than the article says, because it's from a doctor's perspective.

I have CRPS, one of the contenders for worst chronic pain you can have. It's a "suicide disease", because if it advances to stage 3/4, there's a suicide rate of about 70%. It sucks a lot. I've had well over 200 spinal procedures over the last 30 years to try to mitigate the pain, with dozens of other surgical procedures in less tricky spots.

I also have Brugada Syndrome, a "drop dead suddenly without warning" disease. When diagnosed, I wanted to take my time before consenting to having an implanted defib. The doctors announced that "Mr Foster, we believe you are not rational at the moment", fortunately I had a friend with me who assured them I was probably the most rational man in Brisbane.

I was threatened with an ITO (Involuntary Treatment Order) if I didn't go ahead with having an internal defibrilator put in me. I went ahead with the procedure.

So I can't even die by refusing treatment, as "sane" people resist dying at all odds. If I don't want invasive, painful procedures that take over a year to recover from, then the courts will claim I'm suicidal and issue an order to the hospitals to proceed with more bloody cutting.

No, sane people say "I've had enough". Fortunately my current GP understands, as he says "Sometimes people feel they've had enough medicine".

Best footnote for June:

returns should be thought of as domesticated gotos but domesticated in the same way that cats are domesticated

I had a friend get charged with cultivation in 1982 for 200 female plants.

His lawyer called in lots of witnesses that Geoff smoked a _lot_ of dope, and that it was for personal use. He also presented a petition with nearly half his village saying it was personal use, as he really smoked a _lot_ of dope. He also helped anyone with any task, and was a generally loved person, not a drug crazed maniac, but very very chill.

He was fined for personal use. This was Australia, not Brazil, but Judges are supposed to use discretion. The only problem is when discretion is code for prejudice, not justice.

When being assessed for MMJ, my cardiac arrythmias were taken into account. I'm very prone to cardiac arrythmia (Brugada Syndrome), and THC _is_ causally associated with cardiac arrythmia. It's generally a problem with either naive users or heroic doses though. In turn, cardiac arrythmias in general increase the risk of stroke. Due to my general propensity for death, my medical team looked long and hard at this.

There seems to be little or no evidence of long-term cannabis usage increasing cardiac mortality beyond that of smoking (inhaling particulates and random aromatics). The improvement in my sleeping (yeah, I know, rem sleep blah blah, I get more than 2 hours sleep at a time now) reduces my cardiac risk along with the health benefits of being generally less stressed.

OMG!!!

For YEARS I've wondered why I get a buzz from CBD, when it's "not psychoactive".

It's incredibly affirming to know I'm not the only one.

As for flower, I feel "full" while others have more, although I'll feel like more before they do (as they've had like half as much again as me).

The big thing is different ppl seem to have different sensitivities to different cannabinoids. This probably means something about the relative densities of CB1 vs CB2 receptors

I know where you're coming from. Chronic ill health can be a really isolated life. I get out once per fortnight to the supermarket, once per month to the pharmacy, once per 6 months to my GP. Other than that I get away from home maybe once every 2 or 3 months.

I've had people say they'd go mad living my life. Well when your body works against you you just have to suck it up and deal with it.

As for friends, I have very few because I'm angry all the time. Being alone helps not face charges.

EDS is also highly associated with ADHD and ASD.

Remember, the article is talking about people with profound disability, not people who can comment in forums. I think it would be fantastic _if_ there's a set of markers in a young infant that can be acted on preventing non-verbal, constantly in terror, withdrawn inmates of special hospitals. I don't think they're talking about my dislike of telephones, or fear of shopping centers, or frequent confusion with figurative versus literal language.

Even though the last thing has got me in fights more than once. Fights that are sudden, surprising and unwarranted to me, but completely expected given how I reacted to what someone said.

So what's the issue with non-verbal "autistic" people then? All those people with the same symptoms and presentation, if that's not a disease or better, a disorder, then what is it?

But she could talk? And touch another person without screaming? Because _severe_ autism is non-tactile and non-verbal.

The level of severity being discussed here is non-verbal, screaming all the time, just in a state of abject terror. These people have _severe_ ASD.

I'm diagnosed ASD as well and I strongly disagree with your statement as it stands.

There are people who are profoundly impacted by autism. I _can_ go to a shopping center. I don't like it. I may have to hide in the bathrooms for a while a few times while visiting but I _can_ do it.

But I know people who spend most of their lives in fear, because there is just so damn much going on around them all the time. Their senses are turned up to the point that the sound of their own breath is like a lion roaring. The splash of light across the curtains as a car turns into the street is like a lightning flash. Sounds, sights, flavours, smells, tactile sensations all turned up to 15 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Often these kinds of people never learn to talk, or read. They end up living in homes (modern asylums) because they need constant care. And inside they're screaming in terror all the time. Sometimes they scream aloud.

I believe these people deserve better. Helping prevent the development of severe disability is what I believe the article is talking about, not eugenics.

I'm on the spectrum (diagnosed), and also like being me (most of the time).

But what about the poor sods who have so much happening all the time that they don't get the chance to learn to speak, or read, and scream in terror continually at the unending sensory deluge they try to live through? If there was a way to prevent that kind of presentation of ASD I think everyone would be better off. I took "prevention" to be about prevention of the life restricting developments of the condition.

On the other hand, if "prevention" is about culling the gene pool, I'm dead set against that.

I'm not convinced this is unknown. How is this any different from say Karman vortices? I also question how well a paddlewheel in water scales to and models a birdwing in air.

How can I use this without a smartphone?

In my experience, if cannabis gives you a bad time like that you _should_ avoid it, as it's those people that I've seen go mad and never really come back. Not everyone has the same THC experience, and I'm convinced there are people for whom it's really harmful.

It's great for me though, helps with the suffering associated with chronic nerve pain.

Can anyone tell me what this means:

"Other countries, notably China, have proverbs that say they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."

Proverbs? A stitch in time saves nine. Many hands make light work.

Please, anyone, show me a proverb that says "they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."

Maybe it's a Western Australian, or Indonesian, or Thai...

GMT+8 covers a lot of places