Mark, you are in my prayers. You’ve endured far more than your share of pain.
I continue to enjoy your company on this forum, and you have made and will continue to make a difference. Whatever you decide on the surgery, I’m in your corner.
Sincere best. See you here tomorrow.
TSM
MarkM, you have my sincerest best wishes that your situation improves. Hopefully some of the comments and stories will bring a smile and brighten your day a bit. 
Not that it’s any consolation but I’ve been through 5 major surgeries and probably need 5 more. My better half has been nagging me for many years to go to the doc but the thought of seeing a medical professional just pxxxxx me off to no end so I just rely on a perpetual state of POed to keep going. The wife says I’ll outlive everyone because of the attitude…
Thanks, again. I’d just like some answers. The last couple of years one thing after another has been malfunctioning and my docs can’t come up with an explanation for even one of them. I can’t help but think there is some connection, but I’m no doctor and what research I can do doesn’t find any connection.
I guess I have something new that causes extreme hypertension, tinnitus, chest wall pain that moves around, difficulty swallowing, terrible hip pain, and now toes and elbows that split open and won’t heal properly. Oh, and panic attacks in flurries separated by months. It’s been ghastly. All that on top of my usual problems has left me a complete mess.
OK, being PO’d is not the worst state to be in. It helps me sometimes by reminding me it’s my body, not theirs. I’ve got so many surgical scars I say it would be easy to tell which parts were mine if a serial killer dismembered me. Gruesome, but true. Right now I also have the inconvenience of having to find a new pain doc. The pain guys on my medical plan don’t use the brand of spinal cord stimulator I have implanted. I’m sure something can be figured out, but right now I just don’t feel up to it. I’m also not very happy with my primary care physician, but he could be worse and finding a better one would be work I’m not up to. Hope your ills work their way out better than mine are right now.
@MarkM
You have my sympathy as well. The medical field and the necessity to use it is filled with catch 22s. The life saving drugs we are all thankful for have their own debilitating side effects and it’s really tough to navigate through the treatment process. Having been in and around and on both the giving and receiving end of professional medical treatment, it becomes a full time job trying to get the best out of well intended treatments that can often do some harm as well as much good…and we never know it. Personally. I sure hope there is light at the end of your tunnel of medication needs and a more pain free daily life. You deserve it my friend.
@markm, my best wishes go out to you. One of the things that has always been most apparent to me over the years I’ve been working with the discussion board was that the community lives up to its name. Yes, a lot of people come and go, but for those who more regularly contribute here, it’s not just about cars. Most of the time discussion stays within the realm of car stuff, but once in a while it veers off to demonstrate the extra dimensions. Threads like this, which began in a somewhat different vein, show off what’s best about this place. Just chiming in to offer that from the lackey’s-eye view. As you were!
PS: a little official business...as for the discussions of theories of disease causality/correlation -- views expressed are those of the posters! Not really the domain of our lousy show.
Although people do have better health care at the end of their lives, and do live slightly longer, the “average lifespan” has increased mostly because of a reduction in infant and pre-teen deaths. Back when the average lifespan was say 45 years, hardly anyone died at age 45. People died either early on (infant through teen) or died much later (65-80). This is one example of averages being misleading.
There’s no question that the factors you present skew the data, but I have to tell you that if my dad had lived in the 1800s he’d have died of his heart attack years before he actually did. And I would have died in 2007 of my first heart attack.
Eradication of communicable diseases and dramatic improvements in hygiene have also been major factors. And, frankly, so have cars. Horses in populated areas did, in fact, cause the spread of disease. A wet, rainy, muddy, urban street full of horse droppings was a major source of disease. You might be interested in a book entitled “The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!” by Otto L. Bettmann. He documents the fact that in the good ol’ days these things as well as lack of antibiotics made the good ol’ days not as healthy as we’d like to think… and life expectancy was commensurately shorter.
My grandmother’s comment about the good old days was that she lived in them and the whole world smelled of horse manure.
You’re talking about Annette Funicello, right irlandes?
for my generation, both Annette and Elvis are complete names, heh, heh.
“My grandmother’s comment about the good old days was that she lived in them and the whole world smelled of horse manure.”
Absolutely!
And…think about women’s fashions in the 19th & early 20th centuries.
Their skirts literally swept the streets, so they must have been carrying remnants of that manure into their homes on a daily basis.
@MarkM have you had a test for Lyme disease? It very well could be psychosomatic issues, in which case I would suggest a good herbalist, can’t hurt. Stigmata have even been called by some a psychosomatic issue. The total understanding of the human body brain connection is not yet understood, but had a friend with ms that found a good herbalist, put ms into remission, vs the debilitating effects of standard medication. Now I am sure this is difficult to digest, but at this point I think you might be willing to try it. ps are you rejoining the golf league this year!
@VDCdriver
But as was mentioned about averages of life span,deaths at 0-1 yrs of age really pull the average down,the people that were spread out usually maneged the Biblical 3 score and ten,sort of a little hobby of mine but I look at tombstones and do a little math,it seems a whole lot of Folks managed to make to about 70 or near abouts(genetics play a factor in longetivity too) not with standing plague and catastrophe,the human body is pretty good at healing itself,but I do not buy into the 120 year lifespan thing.But as was mentioned,the hygiene and sanitation were horrible in the" good old days that were bad" at the very least our later days are much more healthy and enjoyable now,quality of life can be a lot better,we are simply designed to last a certain amount of time-Kevin
Thanks again, all. This is indeed a very supportive community. I have a bunch of unrelated diseases, as well as some current serious problems for which I have no diagnosis. The good news for me is that I have great timing. At least two of my problems would have killed me years ago if I hadn’t lived just long enough for effective drugs to be developed. Unfortunately, the early drugs also had massive side effects that I’m still living with even though I haven’t even taken those drugs in over a decade. I never complain about those drugs because they kept me alive. The side effects are ugly, but mostly treatable. What’s really got me down is these new problems. My health had been fairly stable for over a decade (OK, there were a few adventures), but in the last 18 months it has been one thing after another, from panic attacks to massively high blood pressure, chest wall pain, major pain in both hips, and now calluses on my feet that cracked open and won’t heal right. That’s almost certainly related to peripheral neuropathy, which has been getting worse, but it’s a problem I just don’t need right now.
I don’t know how anyone who isn’t intelligent, organized, and speaks English gets adequate medical care. I get terribly frustrated at how poorly my doctors communicate and I have to keep reminding them of things that should be in their records. Sigh. And I’m in San Francisco with access to some great doctors. What must it be like in rural Alabama. Scary to think about.
My wife often says she would have like to have lived in The Good Old Days. I try to tell her we are living in the Good Old Days right now. Back when she fantasizes about, she would have been a slave testing Cleopatra’s poison.
Or, dying during child birth. Or, seeing her kids all die of small pox.
We have the best health in history, if we go low carb. We have the best cars in history today. I don’t begrudge those who want old cars and are willing to produce the resources to keep them running. I want the best cars available, and I can’t imagine a car much better than my 2002 Sienna has been for me.
Bad living habits can greatly reduce your life span. The average Russian male lives to age 62; not much higher than males in Nigeria. Yet, Russia has relatively good haelth care and a very good eduction system.
Russian women live considerably longer than Russian men.
I have done considerable study into local history in my rural Third World village, via genealogical data I get via the Web from Salt Lake City.
At one point, I discovered a nearby county (municipio) apparently had a population around 5,000 (based on 250 births when the birth rate was usually 50 per year per 1000 population) and in the 1870’s, one year had nearly 200 small pox deaths.
The average age at death that year came out to around 8 years old. Which is not the same as average life expectancy, unless it continues a long time.
Yet, there were several people who lived into their 90’s.
Most of those small pox deaths were younger than 3 years old. Apparently, they had an epidemic every 3 or 4 years, and those who survived were immune. They did have one women in her 20’s who died of small pox, which meant somehow she had escaped all the other epidemics. The epidemic would come only when there were enough new babies who weren’t immune, and as soon as they died or got immunity, the epidemic would die out for several more years.
The sad part was small pox vaccine (an extract of cow pox) was already in use in other nations.
As far as difficulty in getting good medical care, most of it involves the very rare smart doctor, not the hospital nor testing facilities. And, that smart doctor is as likely or unlikely in rural Alabama as in NYC.
My SIL told about a friend who had been in very bad health for several years, and was expected to die. With all kinds of testing, no one came up with any idea what the problem was. Finally, someone got him to go to Anderson’s in Houston. He came dragging in, looking bad. A young doctor came bounding up to talk to him before he could even register.
In a minute, several other doctors were there, all excited, talking to him, asking him about his problems. Right there, before he registered or had any tests, they figured out what his problem was.
That’s a cool story, Irlandes. Well, only if what they diagnosed was curable, but I’ll assume it was. I’ve also done a lot of genealogical research, and even in the US, things were pretty lousy until the two big breakthroughs, antibiotics and vaccines for the common childhood diseases. And decent sanitation, too, but that wasn’t so much of a problem for the mostly rural population, if a big problem in the poor parts of cities. Of my great, great grandmother’s family of eight kids, she was the only one to make it past 20, and she lived to just over 100. The rest died of all kinds of things, mostly communicable diseases, but also a farm accident and one who just disappeared (he was seven.) It was all so random. An uncle of that family died in a train wreck, a cousin was murdered along the side of a road, and another fell into a vat of boiling molasses.
In an earlier era, one of the biggest killers of women was burning to death due to cooking at open hearths in long, flammable dresses. Being a woman was rough back then. You see so many older men with young wives and second families. Hardly ever the opposite. Widows seldom got that lucky.
We did a family tree research and it went back to 1542 during the Spanish occupation of The Netherlands which lasted till 1648 with the treaty of Westphalia.This was the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition, and constant war. Our family joined the heritics (Protestants) and suffered much.
Nearly all of my ancestors were landholders (farmers) and looking at their ages, one died at age 42 in the 1800s, while all the rest lived to well in their 70s or 80s. I count my blessings for having ancestors with good genes. My older sister (the weakest family member) passed away this January at age 80. I now have 3 older sisters, ages 85, 83, an 81, and 2 younger brothers, ages 70 and 72. All are in reasonably good health for their ages.
Many speciallists say diet, lifestyle and attitude are the most determing factors (other than genes) in determining life expectancy. In China I would add air pollution, which kills a significant number of citizens. The average Russian male lives to only 62, in spite of Russia being a relatively developed country. Russian women live considerably longer.
One sociologist determined how civilizeda country was by looking at the gap in life expectancy between its men and women. Skandinavian countries have the smallest gap, Russia the largest by far. The USA is average. Nearly everywhere, no matter how they are treated, women live longer than men.