Firestarter

ABOUT MEI HATE DOCTORS, pretty much all doctors, cept one. In a nutshell i have a pituitary tumor (in the head). I had it removed about 3 years ago now (most painful recovery i have ever experienced).After that i had a new found passion for life, i bought a boat, motorcycle and other goodies.Then..... I began to lose my sight again, (symptoms that made me find the tumor the first time) So back to surgery. Only this time i went to a different surgeon, self proclaimed best in the world, and his record backs his claim.He offered to take it out surgically while the previous doc wanted to use radiation and junk. Radiation = bad, had it once before for my thyroid, plus in the head it destroys alot of stuff, no matter what they say.What was supposed to be a 24 hour recovery turned into.... still recoverying. He got alot of the tumor, but wasnt able to reach it all. But thats not the best of it.First, I LOST 95% of my sight. Scariest thing in the world. I kept my eyes shut for almost two weeks to keep myself calm. I had a second surgery a few days later to correct my vision, but it didnt improve right away. Slowly as days went on i was able to see dots and then eventually light. Currently i have around 50% to 60% of my vision (just cant see to my right anymore now)Heh get this. After my first surgery they put a metal plate in my head to stop stuff from leaking. Well turns out that the plate caused some problems in teh second surgery. Part of my pituitary got cut out with it.I completely lost my faith in God because of all that has happened. If your a God junkie, I DONT WANT TO HEAR IT.To sum up: Insurance wont pay for meds I take enough meds to drop/stimulate a horse and I still have a tumorYou think you got problems?P.S. Ok, Seems I'm getting slack from saying I don’t believe in God. Mainly from God Junkies, Bible Beaters, and God Warriors (From Trading Spouses ? ) . Let me clarify, I seriously DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT.People act like they something to tell me that I haven’t heard before. Let me ask you this: Have you read the Bible?Or do you listen to what people tell you? Quote pastors that read to you? Or just live life by how TV says religion is an idea of living well and respecting others? I'll talk to anyone about religion. If you have something that I haven’t heard or meaningful to say then say it.The one question I ask everyone is: Have you read the bible cover to cover?No? Then what makes you an expert on GOD?Then people have the audacity to say “I don’t want to be your friend because you don’t believe in GOD.”Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to like me for any other reason, I’ll be fine if you don’t like my shirt. But don’t throw up an ignorant reason when you can’t quantify the meaning.Simple test: What religion are you? If any established religion then What would your church say about rejecting someone based on their religion? Would your church do the same?If you’re not a religion but just believe in God, then you’re a Pagan (Look it up).In most communities, it’s not my fault for losing my faith, it’s YOUR fault for not trying to bring me back.I consider myself a nice guy. I give to the Children’s hospital on X-mas, I donate to charity (Ride-for-Ryan), I get off my motorcycle to push people’s car stranded in the road or to help them when they need it. (Which btw is the most thankless job ever, I dunno why I keep doing it. Short sidetrack: I pushed this guys truck uphill to a gas station and he says, “Can you push it over there, so I can fill up my tires too?” grrr, women are worse but I digress.) I tutored college students in about everything in my spare time for free.Luke 10:25-37If you know so much about religion then you know enough to respect my choice.God Bless MY SITESOk, this part I'm just experimenting with. I'm impressed by the amount of people that are willing to read my entire About Me. Anything that long without pictures, I just skip over. :)Currently I am developing three websites on what I know, The Stock Market. At the time of this writing they are under development still, but i got the basic templates up (that i made :) ).They will be to inform about tools, literature, strategies, blah blah blah about the stock market. I'm not selling anything or asking donations. (I hate when people do that, GET A JOB HIPPIES! (Respect my authoritah!))Look around and give me some feedback. "Your site sucks" doesn't count. "Your site sucks because myspace is #1" is at least better. "Your site sucks because I have used that program and it doesnt work and you said..." is actually helpful.Four websites with links are below called "Clicky". My first surgery.I started crying like a baby 20 minutes before it was time to go under. I was scared. Up until that time, I joked about the whole thing. I had about a month to prepare for the surgery and honestly I was thrilled about getting it done. I figured my eyesight would come back and I would be good to go.By the time it was D-Day, I was fairly blind, but different than I am now. Before it was a white haze that blocked my vision, not blackness, but more on that later (when I talk about the next surgery). Looking back I was so stupid. I figured I was going to the BEST doctor in UCLA, head of neurosurgery. He taught it, did it and was an expert at it. I felt comfortable with the fact that I was in good hands. I think that all the plastic surgery shows on TV have desensitized me to the fact that surgery HURTS. All I see is people with problems, go in for surgery, and POOF they are fixed. I got news for everyone doesn’t always work that way.I wake up to someone shaking me saying “George, open your eyes”, “George, can you hear me?”. I can hear, but there is no WAY I am opening my eyes. My head is spinning the worst …. Ever. I peeked and my eyeballs felt like they were going in circles in the back of my head. I HAD to keep them closed so they wouldn’t fall out. I didn’t even realize I had crap all over my face, and stuff up my nose till the next day. When they wheeled me into my room, my family was there. They talked about how well I did, and how well things went then shortly after I puked up a stomach full of blood (almost on my brother who was kneeling beside me). Turned out my head was leaking spinal fluid and blood into my stomach. Heh but amazingly that’s considered normal. Spinal fluid gots a yellowish, oily consitancy.So by the time I felt good enough to open my eyes, I see that my arms are covered with bruises. A large one on my left hand from one of the IV and both at the elbow joint, I guess from transfusions or what not. And of course I can’t move my head, to painful. Best way to describe it would be if you had gotten beaten with a metal baseball bat in the head. I felt like I weighed over 500 pounds because it took all my energy to move, then I was out of breath.There is a strange transformation that takes place when you’re in the hospital. I had a catheter, and when the nurses are playing with your penis to pull a tube out of it, you kinda lose your humility. Plus you could care less at that point.So Day 1 of recovery. Doc comes in to check on me. He’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong. Very caring and passionate only fault I have with him is that he’s behind the times. No more leeches please, thank you. So the doc and student check on my progress by sitting me up (hard enough as that was) leaning me forward and seeing if my spinal fluid stopped leaking out my nose. Guess what, it didn’t. Back to laying down. Keep in mind this is without a doubt the most painful experience I have been through. I got few tattoos which are nothing. I have broken my collar bone, pretty bad. But THIS, I still get shivers thinking about it. I don’t think I can convey my experience that well through my writing, but I’m trying.During this time I had diabetes insipidus, means I pee obsessively. To the point of dehydration. Up until this point I have had a few MRI’s but I didn’t really freak out. I just didn’t like them. Now they shove me in an MRI when I’m immobile and at my worst. Now I do freak out when I go in them. Plus I’m not getting any sleep because every 3 hours someone has to take my blood to test. Good luck picking a spot, I'm completely bruised. BUT GUESS WHAT, that doesn’t stop students! UCLA is a teaching hospital after all.Plus I got this seeping hole in my stomach. Turns out they put a big chunk of fat from my stomach in my head to plug up the hole they made. And I say seeping because they closed it up with Tape!Oh ya did I mention I didn’t get anything for pain but aspirin?This surgery was painful but my second one almost killed me. (Seriously) PHARMACY COMPANIES Something I’ve been dying to get off my chest. It’s my new discovery about advertising ,marketing, the internet all that. Plus it has to do with the pharmacy companies, which I'm painfully familiar with. Right now I am taking Testosterone, DDAVP, Prednisone (steroid), Thyroid, and Dostinex. Dostinex alone is over 100 dollars a pill (taken twice a week) but I’ll get back to that later. Most people “say” they got good insurance, and they don’t have too much anything or much. If you’re in the military then your set. Prior to my first surgery, I upped my insurance to cover surgies and nothing else. I figured they would cut it out of my head and I would be done with it. Little did I know it would turn out like it did. So surgeries covered, however labs and medications and most doctor’s visits are not. So guess what? I got big fat bills. First surgery, I might have spent over $20,000 in bills easy. I should have just let it ruin my credit to be honest, but I paid it. Everything I mean EVERYTHING is marked up at a hospital, most people already know this. You pay 20 bucks for a Tylenol ect ect. So now I find any service outside of a hospital that I can. MRI’s from $2000 down to $600 plus they are open instead of those claustrophobic messes. I save a crapload on blood tests because I order them myself. LabCorp is a total rip. And medicine… this is the biggest crime of them all. There is a big myth out there, that medicine made outside the U.S. doesn’t have the quality standards the U.S. does. First, I can’t check the quality, nor does anyone check it for me. Keep in mind the FDA approves the formula once created, but after that where is the quality control? I don’t see a stamp on my bottles… but anyway. My professor once told me that the pharmaceutical companies don’t spend money on “research and development” it’s all in advertising, billions of dollars worth. I shrugged it off as “ok whatever”. Then of course I started seeing ads for Levitra or Lipitor and all this other stuff. Ok… that costs money. But it doesn’t hit home for me yet. To start my story: So I’m trying to some pharmacy companies online for the medicines that I’m taking. I started with some Canadian Pharmacies, they did good, got it MUCH cheaper than if I went to the local pharmacy. Then as time goes on I would search every once in a while for something better. I would find it and usually be happy with a few dollars savings, (every little bit counts). The harder I try to find a cheap pharmacy I keep running into: BUY VIAGRA, CHEAP VIAGRA, LIPITOR, SUPER CHEAP VIAGRA, ect. ect. I didn’t understand it back then, I figured Goog was going crazy. Not the case. Those pharmacy companies are advertising heavily through the web causing the disruption in the search engines. AND I MEAN HEAVILY. To put it in perspective, if you know anything about Pay Per Click Advertising, then you know that advertisers pay on a per click basis. Search Goog, yahoo, or msn for anything and click on those sponsored ads, you will cost that company $x.xx. It’s more or less depending on the competitiveness of the search term. Like “refinancing” those guys pay out the butt, because they get paid out the butt. I’m talking about maybe $20 a click for the number 1 position that they have to pay.The Basics: If you have a website with ads on it you get a cut of the money the advertiser pay, and if you run an affiliate program you get a cut if they buy something after you click a link on their site. So what’s the best way to get noticed? Get a high position on the search engines, direct traffic to a pharmacy and get a cut. Educational sites are trusted by the search engines because they figure they won’t “sell” anything. Put this in goog “viagra site:edu” without quotes, and what you will see is all the education sites “hacked” (loosely speaking) so that they will drive traffic to pharmacies. All the high paying keywords are like that: sex, gambling, casinos, refinance, ect.It just amazes me how many people believe the “quality” issue with foreign medications, even my doctors. Who are, of course, smoozed by the pharmacy companies to sell their products. FYI if you looking for a high paying job and are charming and good looking, that’s the job you want. Six figures easy.Back to my original theme, I cut my medical costs way down… lower than my insurance used to make me pay (co-pays and ect). The only thing I can’t find is testosterone, but the rest I can pretty much anything without a prescription. I could dig deeper into the whole insurance thing… but if you’re going to tell me that you don’t pay anything… unless you got a government job, trust me we ALL pay. I put the link to those companies under "farm". God WarriorsA lot of people are confused when I say God Warriors, Bible Beaters and ect. Just because you love Jesus or God doesn’t make you one of these classes in my eyes. The people that fit under these classifications are those that cannot control themselves, and use God’s name as an excuse for their actions.There is all types: mostly I get preachers that figure a few bible passages are enough to sway me back. As if the bible has any legitimate historical value. But I’m not here to talk about the inaccuracies or the rewritings, I’m talking about people.My most famous example is from Eric C. Martin Esq. (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewpr ofile&friendid=52427157 )“I do not allow colored people to be on my friend's list. I mean how many beans have you really eaten lately. Cheech or is it Chong? Please die soon, love God!”I submitted this as abusive; most likely MySpace won’t do anything. But he’s an extreme example, most of the time I just get passages about Job. Throughout history this is the excuse that people give themselves to cause others harm. If you know your Catholic history, then you know what I'm talking about. Of course, religion in general, especially in the Middle East is the focal point for all the conflict.I’m confident enough to put up with the ignorance and shine proudly. This is who I am, take it or leave it. ReligionI began writing about my second surgery and about the love of my life. But all the while I have been struggling within myself over religion and fighting those that disrespect my wishes to not be bothered.It was my girlfriends birthday recently and she wanted books. I would get her whatever she wanted but while she was looking for something that she would want. She came across “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens and figured it would be a book I would love. And it is.At first, I was marking all the sections that I loved, dog earing pages and keeping a mental note of my next “blog” to go on myspace. My argument against there being a God is airtight, but I won’t even argue that fact, because there are more qualified individuals that have done it for me (referring to Christopher Hitchens). So I decided I would test my arguement against my good friend. I asked him a simple question. Why do you believe in God? My friend is very smart and logical. I did not expect his answer. In summary, he felt he had a special connection and God him special notice that he could “feel”. That took me back… I had remembered that I had once felt the same way. Although we have different specialties we are both extremely intelligent. (me more so :P) And even with his ability to reason, I found myself taken aback, and unable to proceed to talk to him. Egocentrism and his “faith” would reject anything of reason I would have to say. Then I found that this is true with… everyone.So, I felt stuck on the subject. But my brother would at least talk with me openly, so I talked with him and his wife. Although he had the same view that many people have, I found him ignorant on the subject, but with good intentions. He doesn’t use religion or faith to claim hate, in other words just because the church is against homosexuals, doesn’t mean he will use that excuse. He focuses on the positive aspects of religion. And even though he was open with me, things became heated when I kept telling him the truth of the subject.I feel like I’m in the past with Neandertals that worship fire. Noone can understand me and everyone is violent. Sometimes I wish for my ignorance back, it’s comforting to believe in God. Thinking that I will eventually see everyone that I ever cared about again. Believing the trials in this life will be for a greater reason. To bad I’ve grown beyond it.I actually had an epiphany on religion and human nature. It’s my “feeling” that humans are instinctually drawn to a caste system. Forget the fact of leadership/follower psychology, forget the fact that religion is a crutch for dealing with death/afterlife, and forget the fact that it caters to our ego-centrism that someone is always looking after us. If you try to describe your religion and replace “God” with “Master” you will see what I mean.Of course, I fully expect people to “argue” with me over the subject. Even if I request that they don’t. Even if I request that they read some literature first. Even if I request that they study some history/science. Basically you zero chance arguing with me. Try to come at me with some bible verse, I got a million counters. Try to come at me with stupid TV evangelist comment; I’ll shut that down too. Come at me with questions and I’ll listen and respond. Ultimately, I will respect everyone’s faith, and even attend their events and masses. But no one will grant me the same respect of “Leaving me alone!”

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