Tired_Old_Man

:wow2: I am very happy for you.

That was very nice of you. Thanx!!

Tina and I visited a friend in the VA hospital in Brooklyn about 10 years ago. He was in the ward where the cancer patients who got cancer from cigarettes are and it was disgusting to see people who had had their larynx removed smoking cigarettes through the tube that they breath through in their neck. Tina quit smoking a little while after that. Our friend died shortly after also. A coworker who had his larynx removed because of cigarette induced cancer had to keep a damp scarf around his neck to keep the breathing hole area moist. One day I noticed that it had turned brown from smoking cigars through his breathing hole. I know a dozen people who have kicked coke, crack or heroin, and stopped drinking alcohol, but can not stop smoking.

First I want to thank everyone again for all the advice. I also spoke to my church group, my son and an old friend of Tina and I, who is going to be 65 next month and is a nurse. I went to the neurologist today for an 11:15 appointment. I waited until almost noon to be called in and then found out that the MRI report had never gotten to the neurologist's office. When I complained about not being able to discuss anything, he said, "It's not my fault". I explained that the other doctor's staff made my appointment over the phone and I heard them ask for the fax number, put the report into the machine and FAX it. But he said "we never got it". So we talked about what I could remember from the MRI report and about the symptoms I had in 1999. And he did some tests. It turned out that my neurologist in Brooklyn in 1999 was his ex-classmate, that he worked at that hospital years ago and the doctor that I was sent to, to do the test that my insurance would not pay for was their teacher. Well, after he warmed up, things changed toward me. I left the office and drove to my referring doctor's office and after jumping through some hoops, I was given the MRI CD and the report. I took it back to the neurologist, who called me back in and played the CD and read the report. He found 3 instances of Demyelination, but none were large and none correlated to my previous symptoms from 1999. He gave me a Rx for Lexapro, an anti-depressant, and said that we would just have to wait for some symptoms to rear their ugly head, because he doesn't want to treat me with the powerful drugs that are used against MS unless he is positive that I have it. He sent a request to the hospital where I had the MRI in 1999 and I made an appointment to come back in 3.5 weeks. Maybe comparing the MRI's, might show something. But as of now, he can not say conclusively that I have MS, nor can he rule it out. As far as Tina is concerned, I see no need to tell her that I might have something until I know that there is a higher probability. If the neurologist had told me today that I had MS or any other disease, I would have told Tina after her birthday, but since I have no real news to tell her, I will just say that he is treating me for depression. If she asks a lot of questions, I will tell her what I know, but there is no sense scaring her with unfounded information. MS conjures up some pretty strong images in many people's minds. As far as Tina's birthday is concerned, I'm sure when she sees the yard work I did, she will be happy and last week, I went out on my minister's boat, and my minister and I brought back some blue-claw crabs (Tina's favorite) which I cooked for Tina. So after I pick her up from the airport tomorrow, I hope the yard work and crabs will perk her up and I will try to take her out to dinner on Friday, the day before her birthday and then play it by ear from there. We may have Brooklyn over on Saturday and Brooklyn might say Happy Birthday, and how can any proud Grand Ma fight that?

How many would Pass?

Try "Enemy of the State". It is not Science Fiction. It can be done. It is old and can be seen on Cable channels.

Since everyone is debating facts vs opinions, let me state that the following is my opinion: Both celebrities on the Left and on the Right say things that are offensive. Celebrities on the Right usually say things that are offensive to people on the Left. Celebrities on the Left usually say things that are offensive to people on the Right. Sometimes celebrities on the Left or on the Right say things that are offensive to everyone. I think most of us can agree with the above opinions. I think were the divergence comes into play is when LBT members state that there are two differences. #1. Many of the celebrities on the Right are comedians pretending to be journalists, while the celebrities on the Left are people that admit that they are comedians. And I would hope that words of comedians would not be taken at face value as those of a journalist would. #2. Some of the celebrities on the Right are calling for penalties for not only celebrities on the left, but for protesters and elected officials, or anyone else who speaks out against the BuSh regime. My commentary; some questions: Can you imagine what this country would become if and when people were afraid to speak, lest they me thrown in jail? Could you imagine what would happen if part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is used to hold sympathizers of terrorists in jail without charges? (BTW, that would mean sympathizers of accused terrorists, or sympathizers of sympathizers of accused terrorists, since it would not have to proved that the accused terrorist is a terrorist until after they torture him into admitting that he was a terrorist, whether he was one or not.) Where was the outcry from Republicans and those on the Right when Bill Clinton was called a pig on the floor of the House of Representatives? Where was the outcry from Republicans and those on the Right when Bill Clinton was called a murderer of 56 people (x-colleagues and political opponents) by a popular Internet site? Do we need to respect the President only when he is a Republican? Is it Treason to disagree with the President only when he is a Republican?

It doesn't matter what the chances are. If a woman is raped and she wants to be sure that she will not have to be the mother of a child by rape, what right does a pharmacist have to say "NO"? And if the chance is so small to be pregnant via rape, what grounds does the pharmacist have? Aborting a non-existent fetus is against his moral principles? Let the pharmacist work in his own store if he wants to refuse to dispense prescriptions. If he works for someone else, he should follow the company's rules as long as they legal rules.

I used the "Rape Card" because one of the cases that made the news recently had to do with a pharmacist who refused to dispense "Plan B" or to refer the rape victim to a pharmacist to dispense "Plan B" even though the store he worked for required it.

It is the leadership of the Christian fundamentalist movement who, though they are ministers, (I think) act like politicians and businessmen. They are using religion to fill their bank accounts and to feed their hunger for power, yet the masses only see them as men of God.

Regarding "It is quite unusual to be diagnosed with MS in your 60's": I was having a physical exam done in early 1999 (I was 53) and during the prostate exam there was a lack of response that the doctor defined as a "Sacral Negative Response". The doctor sent me to a neurologist who used used pins, hot and cold plates and a tuning fork to check my feeling responses. He said I might have spinal cord or brain cancer, or a tumor and set up an MRI of the brain, spine and pelvis. The MRI was negative and the neurologist sent me to a doctor for a "Sacral Evoked Potentials" test, but my insurance would not pay for it. I decided to see if things would get worse and the only important problem I had was a twitching of my left leg if I moved it into a weird position, like a fat person trying to cut his toes nails gets into. I wonder if that could have been the onset of MS.

The problem is not funding of abortions with tax dollars. That is another myth used to inflame the public. THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT WANTS ABORTION, MORNING AFTER pills, BIRTH CONTROL AND SEX EDUCATION MADE ILLEGAL.

I also read foreign websites like the BBC and Guardian, based in the UK and some based in other English speaking countries. And they often have more on the BuSh scandals than the US papers. There is no comparison between the loss of lives in the humanitarian effort in Somalia that went wrong and the loss of lives in the Iraq invasion that was wrong from the start. The Clinton White House had one sex scandal which hurt no one and could have waited until after the term was over and a few scandals (many of which were found unprovable), while the BuSh administration has been dissolving our constitutional rights as if they had poured acid on the document itself. Cheney and Rove, through their lying and plotting of lies have caused more deaths than many would realize. If it was not for those two and the lies they cooked up, the US public never would have been behind the invasion of Iraq and it may have never happened, hence my "Laugh so hard you die comedians" comment. Yes, the comedians on the left can be harsh, but they are not calling for the execution or jailing of the Republican voters, right wing spokesmen or honest politicians on the right. The same can not be said of the jokes masquerading as journalists on the right.

I am sorry to hear of the pain in your life and your family. I also hope that both of our families can find comfort during these trying times. In a funny way, I think Tina's crying helped you release some of your pent up emotions. You don't know Tina, and in a certain sense, you do not even "know" me. I am but electrons dancing across cyberspace, but this medium can be used for good and I hope your cry was one of those good things made possible through cyberspace. You have a great Husband.

A woman was walking down the street when she was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless woman who asked her for a couple of dollars for dinner. The woman took out her billfold, extracted ten dollars and asked, "If I give you this money, will you buy some wine with it instead of dinner?" "No, I had to stop drinking years ago," the homeless woman replied. "Will you use it to go shopping instead of buying food?" the woman asked "No, I don't waste time shopping," the homeless woman said. "I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive." "Will you spend this on a beauty salon instead of food?" the woman asked. "Are you NUTS!" replied the homeless woman. "I haven't had my hair done in 20 years!" "Well," said the woman, " I'm not going to give you the money. Instead, I'm going to take you out for dinner with my hubby and me tonight. The homeless woman was astounded. "Won't your hubby be furious with you for doing that? I know I'm dirty, and I probably smell pretty disgusting." The woman replied, "That's okay. It's important for him to see what a woman looks like after she has given up shopping, hair appointments, and wine."

Thank you Karen for those warm words and for sharing that story about your niece and hope. And Thank you Leatha for sharing that very personal story with me (and the forum). Not everyone is quick to talk about their meds (of that type) because of the undeserved stigma attached to the illness. And Thanks to everyone else who has shared their ideas and time with me. LBT is truly a wonderful forum because of the people that post here.

Laugh so hard you die comedians.:mad::girl_hug:

Those were nice tries, but I never know who is going to fly in the planes that I fix, except when we were working on Military Charter planes (MATS). Well, they were our planes, but we chartered them to the US Military to fly US troops back and forth. I worked on MATS during the Vietnam war and during Gulf War l. I did not refuse to work on the planes even though I was against the war in Vietnam and would have refused induction. I had and knees plus my father was killed in action in WWll, so I was 4A, and had very little chance of being drafted. It would be impossible to know that someone had a nuke and was going to use it on the flight, but I will play along: An Al-Quiada terrorist is on board and going to nuke NYC as the plane flies over it. I know this for a fact. Of course I would stop the plane, but that is not moral conviction. If you come to visit Tina and I, and fall into our swimming pool and suck a lung full of Water, it is not moral conviction for me to rescue you. It is not moral conviction to stop a killing. Killing is against the law. Abortion and day after pills are not against the law. When the freedom riders and the people who staged lunch counter sit-ins were arrested in the 1960's during the civil rights protests, it was because of moral conviction, but they knew it was against the law and took the penalty by spending the night or week or whatever on jail. The tide turned because the American public saw the police turning huge dogs and fire hoses on little children, so the law was changed. These pharmacists do not want to pay the penalty for standing up for their moral convictions. I was ready to go to jail rather than go to Vietnam. Civil rights demonstrators were ready to go to jail for their moral convictions. But these pharmacists want to refuse to do their job (dispensing prescription), while they want to keep their job and are not ready to go to jail for their moral convictions. You can not have it both ways.

Oh, in case (any of) you are wondering how I get all the work done and still post so much; I pick out a length, treat it with "Round-Up" to stop grass from growing back through the rocks, drive the truck near the area, shovel out the amount of rock required (moving the truck gradually), rake it level and then come in for a few posts, then back out again.

When she asks me how I did all that work by myself, I'll just say, "Thinking of You" and if she smiles, I'll say. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". She has called me a few nights this week and I was almost in too much pain to talk, but I would just tell her that my knees were bothering me. It wasn't really a lie; my knees, feet, thighs, calves, shoulders arms, hands and back were all aching. I just left a few things out. Thank God for "Extra Strength Tylenol".

Just as I was hitting the “Submit Reply” button for the last post, my phone rang. I picked it up and it was Tina uncontrollably crying. It was not a sob, it was full force balling. The first thing that came into my mind was that her mother had died or someone else had been badly injured or worse. What happened, I found out after I calmed her down, was that Tina was talking to her older (and only) sister and the sister said, “Mommy is tired. She wants to go home.” Tina asked what she was talking about and the sister said, “Mommy lived a good life and it is time for her to die.” Tina could not handle that. When I was a child, I had a very big family and there were funerals on a regular basis (normal after considering the size of the family). Tina's immediate family left England when Tina was 3 years old. She had never had a family member die when I met her. I met her within a week after my mother died. I had to be involved in the decision making about my mother's health care including when to stop. Tina was totally insulated from death. She was double insulated. All parents insulate a child from death, but all of Tina's relatives were thousands of miles away, so even her parents were insulated. They would get a phone call or a letter saying that “so & so” had died, but when they told the 5 children, Tina, the youngest usually did not even know what or who they were talking about. Today, it took me a while to calm her, but we wound up crying together and then she calmed down. She can not wait to come home. She asked me what I was doing and I lied to her and said I was working on my car, because I am doing a job on the lawn that she has wanted done for years. I am putting in Marble rocks around the fencing and walks. I have been back to the supply yard over and over this past week getting by pickup fulled with a yard of rock and then shoveling it out all around my property. It is 750 feet, 18 inches wide and 2 inches deep. My back is aching. She will be so happy when she gets home and sees it. It will take about 7 yards at $135 per yard. When they fill my truck bed up from the bulldozer, my truck drops almost a foot in the back and the tires look flat. I hope I don't break my truck or my back.

Thanks to everyone who responding either here or via PM. I will not tell Tina anything until she gets home on Tuesday. I will make my other decisions depending on what the doctor says on Monday when I have my visit. I am going to say something now which may upset some people, especially the women, I would assume. Tina and I are not equals. No two people are equals. Tina and I are so different that our friends were betting that we would not last mire than 2 or 3 years (even before we were married). We will have our 40th wedding anniversary in July. One reason why is because we have made those differences work for us, not against us. I do some things that might appall many of you and Tina does things that might also shock you, but because we blend things together we have created a union that as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Where I am weak, she is strong and vice versa. That means that she does things for me that many women would say, let the lazy bum do it himself, but I do things for her that people tall me she should be doing that for herself. But this is the way we like it and how we have made it all these years. So when Alexandra said, "I know if it were my husband, I'd want to know," I believe her, but I don't think Tina can deal with it, at least not all at once. How do I know? We started dating in 1964. I know when I have told Tina about problems and I needed her emotional support, she became so distraught that I wound up having to comfort her. I know with MS, it would not be the case, but if I was told that I had 6 months to live, yes, of course I would share it with Tina. But if it is MS, ruining her birthday will not help and with all the other problems, I would rather wait for a while. BJean asked, "TOM: In your first post about this you wrote "Muscular" Sclerosis. Did you mean Multiple Sclerosis? Anytime someone in a doctor's office says a word like cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or alzheimers or any other possibly life altering disease, it is jars you to your very core." I am 100% positive about it. In fact it was just that one word "Demyelination" that I could not remember and when I found it by Googling, it was exactly as the doctor described it.

One more thing, Bill Maher is a comedian, says he is a comedian and doesn't claim to be a commentator or journalist. Neither Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity nor Bill O'Reilly claim that they are comedians and in fact they claim to be commentators on the news or journalists. Both commentators on the news and journalists are supposed to be objective, but none of them are. Even Bill O'Reilly admitted on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago that Rush Limbaugh is not a journalist, though Rush thinks he is one. Karl Rove and Cheney on the other hand are not only "not comedians”, but they have the power to harm people by more than innuendo or jokes. They have immense governmental powers and they are involved with increasing those powers beyond what our "Founding Fathers" ever envisioned. So while Bill Maher may offend you and while he may say some things which you find tasteless, he is a satirist mocking the present situation. The present situation that Cheney and Rove have helped bring about through their actions as officials and that Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have helped bring about by pretending to give the news and distorting the facts.

I think you miss one important distinction. Ann Coulter, for example would have me executed for what I have written at "Lap Band Talk". Bill Maher would disagree with much of what you write, but would not want to be punished. Ann Coulter, wants Democrats in Congress executed for what they have said, written and how they have voted in Congress, while Bill Maher would disagree with much of what BuSh and the Republicans do, but he would not want anything to happen to them except to lose their jobs as representatives.

Should pharmacists or doctors take jobs knowing that a percentage of the time they will have to go against their moral values? What happens when Christians of high moral quality start studying to become pharmacists just so that they can refuse to dispense certain prescriptions? Do you know how many cities and towns in the USA have a lock on keeping doctors and nurses and pharmacists out who disagree with the town's high moral values? If a woman is raped and can not afford the bus fare to the other side of the state or another state, should she be required to pay for raising an unwanted child, a child that reminds her of being raped everyday that she sees him/her? And all because it offended the pharmacist's higher moral values? Could you imagine raising a biracial son in a town that hates Blacks, but hates biracial children even more, because a pharmacist didn't think he had to do the job he was hired to do because of high moral values? Do the pharmacist's high moral values include telling the local bigots to leave the child alone or to tell the local people that "we should help the women with expenses for food" and maybe even for council for the women? "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" is what I say to pharmacists. Instead, they are coming into the kitchen to make it hotter and hotter. I may believe in Jesus, but I do not think that Jesus said that people should punish other people based on their interpretation of moral values.