Saturday, November 11, 2006

Three in the news

I've got some unrelated snippets for you on this balmy Saturday morning (after 2 a.m., I can call it morning, right?).

The first was sent to me by my bestest friend, Luther.
Humiliated frat boys sue over 'Borat' portrayal
Some apparently intoxicated assholes that got caught on camera for the movie Borat are suing because they don't like the fact that everybody can see they are assholes. Luther sarcastically expressed sympathy for the boys, because obviously they would never, ever enjoy a Girls Gone Wild video, what with those drunken girls that, I'm sure, consulted with a lawyer before signing the waiver agreeing to be on camera, right?

Well that's different, honey. The girls in the Girls Gone Wild videos are HOT CHICKS GETTING WILD!

Totally different, right? Thank you, Luther. :)

Meanwhile, courtesy Google News, I learned that I should experience mild surprise over doctors Googling for medical answers. Duh. Yeah, and it's about time, really! Information Week suggests
Advice For Doctors Stumped By A Difficult-To-Diagnose Illness: Google It
answering the question, "just how awkward can a headline be?"

Why did they have to do a study on this? Googling might turn up answers that are otherwise difficult to find, you say? AWESOME! I never knew that! And here I was, thinking I should rely solely on my own brain and those dusty old books on the shelf, because certainly the billions of people posting information on the Web have nothing of interest to offer.

This, not surprisingly, reminds me of a wee event in my own life. Yay, it's story time!

A few years ago, when we were living in the little apartment and Luther was still in the Air Force, I discovered a lump in my armpit. Yup, a fat old lump. It was tender, and it worried me, so I went online and started poking around for medical advice.

The problem with lumps anywhere near breasts is that you cannot get away from the breast cancer scare. I mean, I'm looking at my lump, right? and I'm thinking, "that looks like a lump in my armpit. That does not look like a breast cancer." But you have to really use your minus signs like crazy to get a search engine to ignore the articles about breast cancer, because the search engines really, really, really want to tell you that you might have breast cancer.

Once upon a time I read about how Victorian doctors pinned all ailments in women on their reproductive systems. I should link to an article here, but I'm all out of Google search wisdom on this balmy Saturday morning (it's now almost 2:45, woot!). The gist was that if a woman was sick, it had to have something to do with reproduction. A man could actually be sick, sure, but a woman... yeah. So here I am with this lump in my armpit, and it's like all roads lead to breast cancer, because obviously women are nothing without their titties (conveniently linking us back to Girls Gone Wild -I should change the name of my blog at this point).

Finally, I found lymphadenitis. It's a lymph node infection. Left untreated, it can be serious -WebMD said it could be fatal. My lump had the exact symptoms listed. It was like a fucking "textbook case," you know? Yay, I have lymphadenitis! And off I went to the doctor to get my antibiotics...

...whereupon the doctor looked crossly at his clipboard and not once at me, and he said I needed to be screened for breast cancer. And oh by the way, his voice said, why the fuck am I having to deal with these women's illnesses? obviously she is ill, therefore ipso facto and all that, she has a problem with her reproductive organs.

So I sat there, shy me (because I'm shy, remember?), and said loudly, "well, I was thinking it was lymphadenitis." No response from the doc, industriously scribbling his soon-to-be-famous signature on my chart. "Lymphadenitis," I said, and listed, one by one, the exact symptoms. Scribble screeches to a halt, eyebrows scrunch. Pause. "Yeah. Could be lymphadenitis."

*snort* YA THINK?

I got my breast exam from a nice doctor at my regular "women's issues" clinic. He, too, was annoyed, but when he expressed his annoyance it came out something like, "Why is that moron wasting this lady's time and money?" because at a glance he could see it was lyphadenitis and nothing to do with my precious titties. He examined them nonetheless (who wouldn't?), and then he looked at the antibiotics I'd been given and got further annoyed, because the type I'd been given were sure to give me a yeast infection. Nice. I got new antibiotics and went home very happy with my World Wide Web and my armpit, too.

It's now just about 3 a.m. and time for me to go back to sleep, so I'll leave you with a third and final news tidbit. This is from "Ireland Online," whose staff perhaps could have spent a few extra minutes considering their phrasing.
Al Qaida’s leader in Iraq today vowed his fighters will never rest until they have blown up the White House and reached Jerusalem.
That guy has a funny sense of direction, doesn't he?

Nighty-night.

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