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Autistic abuse in school
I know there are many great teachers out there who take pride in what they do, working hard for their students for very little pay and benefits. Unfortunately, it only takes a few bad apples to cause horrible scars to the educational system, not to mention the children and parents involved. This sort of thing cannot be allowed to continue. A simple transfer is inexcusable.
As for what I’m talking about, Mr. Chaifetz says it better in his own words:
G.I. Meltdown
Wow! What a rough few days!
I was scheduled to have a gastro-intestinal procedure done on Friday morning so they could do some biopsies and other tests. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but hey, whatever it takes to get some answers, right?
Well, Thursday night, I was to drink a gallon of this stuff that, well… cleans you out. It was nasty, but worse yet, I reacted horribly to it. It made me dizzy with blurred vision, nauseous, and I finally began vomiting. And all of this triggered dystonic seizures.
Knowing how important it was to drink that crap down, I kept at it, and of course, it started kicking in eventually. So for hours, it was: drink, seizure, toilet, vomit, seizure, drink, seizure, drink, seizure, toilet, vomit, seizure… something like that. My mother was here because she was to drive us in the morning, so she was keeping holding me up in a chair while I jerked and twitched, and naturally she finally said “Enough!” because it wasn’t right to go through all that. We’d fought through it for six hours and I’d only gotten through half of it! Plus, she’d given me enough Benadryl to calm the seizures that I could no longer stay awake.
Later in the morning, she called the clinic to let them know the situation and to hopefully reschedule, and -get this!- due to a water problem, they were cancelling all appointments for that day. We would have driven hours to get there after all that trouble, only to be sent back home.
They said they’d never dealt with anyone having CD seizures triggered by drinking the solution, so they would figure out what to do and get back to us later in the day. They never called back. It could have been because it was so hectic with all the rescheduling, though. I’ll have to wait until Monday and see what’s going on.
But man, I’m still sick from that stuff! They said it goes right through ya and it’s done quickly, but nope. Me no likey. I dunno. Maybe I’m allergic or something.
On a good note, I’m working on a project that will get some old and unpublished stories of mine available to readers in ebook form (“Zombie Bastard” is among them). It should get a chuckle out of some of you. Going back through them has kept my mind in a better place through all this. When I’m finished with those, I intend to get back to Fear the Woods (Oak Clan to those who remember it as that).
KHP kicking ass in Starhawk!
Even if you don’t follow the Starhawk game (I intend to get it, just can’t on day one) this video is incredibly well done. Follow the link below and the video stars Adam J Whitlatch, Louise Bohmer, S.D. Hintz, and Kh Koehler and you can create your own with friends from your Facebook list.
Prayers/Good wishes/Vibes needed
However way you roll, we could use some warm thoughts headed toward a friend right now.
On Saturday, someone from Robin’s past called up out of the blue, who lives a few states away, and he was in our town. Pleasantly surprised, we explained how to get to our house and welcomed him inside.
I won’t give details on who he is to offer some amount of privacy, but he was at a very low point in his life, suffering from depression and ready to die. He’d hit the road with a suicidal plan but somehow ended up driving all day instead. He then realized how close he was to an old friend he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. He thought he’d say goodbye, but when he got here, he asked for help.
It was the weekend, and Easter weekend at that. I know from experience that there wouldn’t be very much accomplished at a hospital until Monday when all the doctors are in. Our house is suicide-proof and we had an extra bed, so we visited, watched movies, and just bonded in general until today.
Again, I’m not going to get into any more details about his actual condition out of respect for him, but we were happy that he felt comfortable coming to us. Since neither of us drive, my mother helped him to the hospital today so he could be admitted and get the help he needs. He went voluntarily because he wanted to go. We talked about it all weekend and though he was visibly anxious, he showed amazing strength given his current state.
Robin and I are extremely proud of him right now.
An odd thing: the nurses were awestruck that my mother would help bring in a stranger like that. They kept repeating, “I just can’t believe it.” Seriously? I don’t get it, and neither could my mother. Have things gotten that bad?
Anyway, we don’t know how things will turn out during or after his stay, but we wish him well.
Kindle and changing ebook prices
A while back, there was some outrage going around about teh ebil Amazon empire and their treacherous ways with lowering Kindle prices on some ebooks, which may or may not affect royalty payments.
One author, we’ll call him John Doe, went on for weeks about it. He’d published an ebook through Kindle and one day, he found the price was lowered drastically. Upset, he contacted Amazon about this and they quickly turned the price back. Problem solved, right?
One would think so, but the issue turned up on several blog posts afterward, lighting the fires under several others who basically had no idea why they were angry but why the hell not! It even turned out that the author’s ebook had, indeed, lowered elsewhere beforehand, and Amazon had simply price-matched, per their TOS, but… THEY’RE STILL EBIL!
The unnamed author kept saying how the big publishers would never treat him that way. To that, I say bullshit. Not just bullshit, but big, wormy, steamy, bullshit. And I add, why isn’t he back with them if they’re so snazzy?
Let’s clarify a few things: when you put something up through Kindle, you may think you’re self-publishing but you’re not. Sure, it’s a lot closer to self than the traditional route. No rejections to deal with. But Amazon is still the publisher. You come to an agreement with them, make a contract to provide a good for their services, the same as you would with Bantam or Harlequinn or any other publisher. They allow you to set a price but there are stipulations: don’t undersell them, and royalties will be higher or lower depending on the price you choose. It’s your job to adhere to that agreement and not throw a big nasty tantrum all over the Internet if you fuck up.
And if this happens, and they choose to change the price of your book, it’s the same as if any other publisher decides to change the retail price in order to keep up with the competition. This is rarely the case with them because they let the bookstores handle all that, but in Amazon’s case, they ARE the bookstore. But if a publisher is at a convention and they need to push some books, they’ll damn sure knock the selling price down to sell, paying the author a royalty of THAT.
Personally, Google Books screwed with the prices of some of KHP’s titles and Amazon adjusted to match, and they still pay the normal royalties. Everything is cool with that. No need to FFfFFFFfffrreeeeeaaakkk!
Get what I’m saying? Chill people. I’m going to bed now.
“Ted” looks EPIC!
This upcoming movie “Ted” from Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and starring Mark Wahlberg looks awesome! I can’t wait!
EKG Pac Attack!
I worry about the stress these last few weeks have put on Robin, and she’s been fantastic, so everyone knows.
So today, I got out of the shower and noticed in the mirror this strip of hair shaved away from my chest for the EKG test yesterday. An idea came to mind. I grabbed a marker, did a little sketch work and showed Robin!
That put a smile on her face:
Quick Medical Update
I just walked in the door and I feel like I’ve had the crap kicked out of me, so I’m afraid I’ll need to keep this short.
Went to Columbia early this morning to see the blood doctor. Just before lab, I had a long and nasty dystonic seizure so I got my blood drawn in a Benadryl haze. They found that my blood cell count was getting back down to safe numbers, which is great! They took me off of the prednisone because it’s awfully hard on diabetics (raises blood sugar) but it was nice while it lasted, and they’ll continue to check my blood each week for a while. They wonder if I’m having a bad reaction to one of my meds, but none of them are new (these problems are) and… which one?
As we were leaving Columbia, I began having more severe digestive problems, similar to what got me into the hospital last week, and we stopped to call the doctor. He said to get my butt to the Columbia ER. So I spend the afternoon there, where I had another nasty seizure. It was there that they ran some tests and found that my liver is getting better, so that was good to know. They’re getting me hooked up with a GI specialist next, but discharged me because there was really nothing else they could do since everything else is improving.
Had another seizure in the car on the way home, about an hour ago, so I’m sore, weak, and exhausted. That’s not bad news, really. I’m just not feeling it, is all.
Found my third fan music video!
First, I wanted to thank everyone for their extremely kind thoughts and well wishes here, on Facebook, and elsewhere for my recent health problems. It means worlds to me and really does help me get by that much easier.
I think the new meds are helping the seizures because I haven’t had any today (doc said that might happen). They’d gotten so much worse this week, though, that I’m having a hard time walking. I’ll deal with that over the actual seizures – hell yeah! Day’s not over yet, but you count your blessings by the hour, sometimes by the minute. Enjoy every moment that you can tolerate, lol. I mean, my normal meds aren’t touching my migraines or muscle pain in the stomach, legs, etc, but I’m sure it’d be tons worse without them, so it could always be worse. Chest keeps hurting, especially, but I think it’s from lying on my side a lot. See, my right shoulder wouldn’t stop twisting and jerking while in bed, and it kept waking me up, so I turned over and put my weight on the damn thing to keep it still.
Anyway, on to the blog post’s subject: I had a rough time getting to sleep last night, probably adjusting to new meds or whatever, so I searched through a bunch of VHS tapes. There were these three old music videos that I’d made in the 90s using two VCRs and a CD player, just for fun, and I’d found two of them, already. Well, I’d about figured the third was lost but finally found it. So I transferred it to digital and uploaded it to YouTube. I joke on each that shrooms were involved, as well, and yeah, I ate a lot of them with friends back then. Hallucinogenic mushrooms grew wild in the surrounding cow pastures down there and they were legal, at least at the time – don’t know if they are now. We’d pop in movies while music played and often times we’d notice how something would sync up so well like Pink Floyd and Wizard of Oz. Our favorite was Obituary’s “Cause of Death” CD with Evil Dead 2.
I had created a special part of my site for sharing things like videos and pictures. I don’t have much on it yet, but it should be a fun distraction for myself and I can hopefully share some laughs and fun memories with all of my friends, possibly scar a few minds, LOL!
Here are the specific links to the videos if you’d like to check them out. If you like them, by all means – Share!:
Home from the hospital, but shouldn’t be.
I just got home from the hospital which would normally be a good thing, but this time… not so much. I have a lot to tell, though, so bear with me.
Keep in mind, that I’m no expert in the field and I’ll be explaining things in very basic terms to the best of my understanding, so if you know more about it than me and feel the urge to correct me or whatever to show how smart you are, please don’t. However, if you’d like to share knowledge or experiences, that’s completely different and welcome. If you don’t know the difference, then all I can say is 
Some may know of some issues I was having with higher than normal hemoglobin in my blood. It’s been a long time since I’d mentioned it, so no biggie if you didn’t know. For some reason that the doctors couldn’t figure out, my bone marrow is making too many red blood cells, close to the danger zone but not quite, so they’ve been keeping a close eye on it with tests about every three months.
They say if the blood count ever crosses that line, the doctors will have to draw blood out on occasion to take off the excess. Sounds like a plan, should it come to that.
Well, it came to that, and then some.
At the beginning of the month, my blood test showed my hemoglobin count to be just hair below the danger zone, so my family doctor said to make an appointment with the specialist in Columbia, MO again (3 hours away). They were able to schedule me in for the 29th. However, all these problems started on the 10th and I went into the ER. Many tests later, my doctor discovered that not only did my hemoglobin suddenly shoot through the roof, but also my white blood cells and I developed Idiopathic Hypereosinophilia.
Basically, my bone marrow not only produced a dangerously high amount of your average red and white blood cells, but also these special white blood cells called eosinophil that are used to fight infections. The “Ideopathic” part of my syndrome means there is no known cause for it to happen. It just did.
But when you get too many and they don’t have things to attack, they find things to attack. In my case, they went after my nervous system, causing my seizure activity to worsen. Then they attacked my digestive system so it wouldn’t work correctly and it hurt all the time. Then they attacked my liver. It’s enlarged now and in reaction to it, it’s currently pumping way too much iron into my blood.
If left untreated, it is fatal and it’s because they eventually go after the heart. And yes, they found damage starting on my Aorta valve – lymph nodes to be specific – but the doctor said not to panic because he believes it’s been caught in time and he began treatment immediately.
Here’s the game plan: To filter out those nasty bastards, I was started on Prednisone right away. Then he wanted to transfer me to Columbia where some gastro-intestinal and blood specialists to care for my digestive system and still-damaged liver, and also drain out some blood and get my iron count down.
Instead, he had to discharge me against his will.
Why?
Medicaid gave me the boot. They refused to approve staying longer than today. So once again, thanks to all those wonderful people who delayed healthcare reform via bickering so that people who need the help are still waiting for it to kick in.
Anyhoo, my doctor really busted his ass today. He’d been sending tests everywhere, so he got the results so quickly by hounding the Mayo clinic, etc, to hurry up and tell him over the phone while he waited. Then he told Columbia to bump up my appointment at all costs and at least got it to Tuesday morning. He wasn’t allowed to show it, but I could tell he was upset.
He’s been awesome with helping me get to the bottom of Conversion Disorder and now this, and whenever government/financial BS gets in the way, he comes through for me, nonetheless. I joked with him that I get a certain sadistic joy out of throwing him all these curve balls.
The hospital staff were great, too, and gave them some wild scares with my CD seizures. They knew epileptic seizures, but this is so much different and they lasted a long time. I felt terrible seeing their panic and not being able to say it would be okay. They were strong, though, and did what was necessary. Boy, I went through a lot of Benadryl while there!
Anyway, I’m hungry! Talk to you later.
