cynthia

We all have heard of the many pregnant women (many within days or even hours) of giving birth, who cross our borders illegally in order to ensure the babies are US citizens, thus allowing the rest of their families to enter as relatives of US citizens (and eligible for all the social & economic aid programs designed to help eligible US citizens).

Why not pass a law that any baby, born within a year (or any reasonable time period) of a mother's illegal crossing, is NOT a US citizen, but a citizen of the mother's country of origin)?

I have no problem with those who enter legally, work, & pay their taxes like the rest of us. But, it's really getting me hot under the collar when I stand in line in any market, bank, or grocery, behind 10 or more men with wads of money in their pockets because they're paid sub rosa, wiring money back to banks in their home country. Unless they can prove they're here legally & paying income taxes & octal security taxes like the rest of us, they should be charged a corresponding government tax for their transfer. It chaps my a$$ when I go to Walmart to buy their cheapest market items, while they walk through, waving their wads of money & buy huge large-screen tv's & expensive stereos, then use food stamps to buy their groceries.

Let's figure out how to change the laws, & get them to cover real US citizens!

I always see statistics that put the US at, or the near of, the top countries with the most criminal activity (excluding the Middle East). But, if you break it down to individual states, some of which are larger than most European countries, would each state taken alone still hold on to that reputation?

Today I saw a group of symbols spray-painted (very neatly) in a parking lot. It was a square (looked like it had squiggly arms radiating to sides) over a Jewish cross over an inverted triangle. (Could have been looking upside-down, which would mean it's inverted). Anyone have any ideas what it could be?

For years I experienced times when I'll fall asleep and cannot be awakened. I've woken in the hospital, the drs tried everything to wake me, like pain stimuli, narcan (in case it was overdose, but this happened before I was on painkillers). I will sleep 14-18 hours at a time, wake up a few nminutes and go back to sleep. One time I was paralyzed when I woke, drs didn't know what it was. I e seen all kinds of drs, seeing a sleep specialist too. I have mild apnea, but dr said it's not bad enough to cause these episodes of sleep. Sometimes I go 48 hours with no sleep. But, I can't get anything done, like housework or hobbies, etc. I've even fallen asleep while shopping. Besides my primary care dr, I see a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, neurologist, rheumatologist, sleep dr, pain clinic, physical therapist. No one has answers. At times my muscles will twitch uncontrollably, I'll end up tossing a glass of water, can't hold into my phone; this usually happens around the time I get a bad sleep attack. I also have aural hallucinations, usually music. Sometimes it's bad enough I feel like I'll go nuts if it doesn't stop. I'm really getting frustrated.

I recently found out I have Rheumatoid arthritis (I'm 61 years old). While I have some pain, and my right hand is deforming, I've been living with this a long time, unaware I had it.

My rheumatologist tried me on Plaquenil, which didn't seem to help; his next step is Methotrexate. (I already have the bottle of pills). His nurse gave my husband a few pages of information, and the possible side-effects are terrifying! Everything from infections, liver disease, kidney problems (I'm also diabetic, but not overweight), it can even CAUSE cancer.

I really feel this is way too drastic...when I googled Methotrexate, it came up with lists of warnings and possible side-effects before giving any other information about the drug.

My rheumy told me we basically need to destroy my immune system in order to prevent joint damage. My husband works with a large group of people who are always coming in to work sick, and he carries all this home to me. I usually don't get flu or colds, but stomach bugs put me in bed for a week. There's no way to avoid catching these things, and my husband can't just quit his job because people insist on coming to work sick.

I'm told this is a milder form of chemo, but, still, after reading the warnings I'd rather not take this stuff unless I actually have cancer. RA doesn't seem severe enough in my case to risk my health like this. I have a hyped-up immune system, never had measles, chicken pox, etc. So I have to get vaccines too. Is it worth it?

For years I've had sleeping troubles, insomnia at night, falling asleep in day (once I worked in call center & fell asleep on phone, customers didn't notice). I fell asleep one day & they couldn't wake me, thought I was dead. I was let go that afternoon.

I frequently have an overwhelming urge to nap various times thru the day. If tv is on, I hear it but it becomes part of a dream. Sometimes I go days without sleep, then a week or more it's nearly impossible to stay awake.

Last fall I was in hospital because I couldn't be awakened. They did a sternum rub, everything to wake me. They even tried narcan, which had no effect (been on a low dose of morphine since my "retirement" because of back injury). Sent home, back to the same cycle of weeks of sleep, a few days awake, & more sleep.

Last month I started falling, went to ER, went into coma. Again, narcan no effect. (No dreams) I awoke paralyzed, which wore off. All 4 drs say narcolepsy. I have vivid dreams unless in a "coma".

Would a neon blue Paraiba tourmaline glow faint pink-orange under a black light?

My dr has me on ms-Contin & ms ir & Valium. For several years, with different tests and different locations, my instant drug screens continually give a false-positive for methadone. I've never had methadone, don't take any illegal meds. When it gets sent off to the lab it confirms that I don't take methadone, but I can't understand why the screens (and the screens were not all the same brands) keep giving me a positive for methadone. It has me in trouble at my pain clinic each month until they get the lab results back. Anyone have any ideas why?

I live in a duplex; recently the other side was rented to a woman who claimed she'd quit smoking (cigs). Well, she smokes constantly, but a lot of what she smokes is pot. This is an older house, subdivided & the smoke whooshes between our apartments, even tho we're on separate HVAC, etc. I usually have a live&let-live, I did my share of illegals. But I can't be around pot. It gives me horrible migraines, plus I go to a pain clinic & get tox-screened every month. My last screen came up positive for illegal substance. I've been noticing the smell, & feel if it is negatively affecting me I need to confront her about it. I get tox-tested tomorrow, if they say I'm positive again I'll be discharged. Tennessee is one of those states that hates dope (even though the ancient farmers here grow some high quality stuff). Our last neighbor before this woman smoked crack, but I didn't have to smell that, he was more discreet about it. How can I talk to this woman without becoming confrontational about it? I tend to leap on people when I have a problem with them, especially if they're doing something that adversely affects my health. Our landlord already dislikes her but she has a 3-yr lease and I need to prove beyond any doubt she smokes dope. Even a tox-screen on my part just shows it's in my system, not how it got there. Please, can anyone tell me how to handle this with finesse?

I live in a duplex. Last month the landlord spent a lot of $$$ fixing up the next-door unit, the previous tenant had smoked heavily (regular cigs as well as crack) and the walls were ruined. He & a crew spent days scrubbing walls & ceilings, then repainting. Before the new tenant moved in be came over and told me she'd told him she had quit smoking; he didn't want anyone smoking & ruining the place again.

He specifically asked me to let him know if I smelled smoke (smells travel strongly between the two units.).

The other day I heard her come in and almost immediately smelled cigarettes. She sprayed a strongly scented perfume (gave me a headache). A few minutes later I saw her smoking when she went to check the mail, so it's not my imagination. What makes this especially difficult is my husband & I just quit smoking last year, & smelling the smoke really makes us both crave cigarettes.

So, I know for a fact the new neighbor is smoking; my landlord prohibits smoking now & specifically asked me to tell him if she smoked. (He doesn't allow pets either but she snuck in a cat). Should I tell him the new tenant smokes? I don't want to be a busybody narc, but the smell is bad & he DID ask me to let him know.

I asked this under another (wrong) category & got 1 smart-aleck answer. I desperately need help; I'd like to be quick but there are lots of factors.

2 Brothers; "A" received his inheritance from Mom years ago, he's out of her will. "B" was executor; Mom redid her will with me as executor, my son as alternate. Somehow B found out & managed to talk Mom around to changing it back to him. He tried having his wife made alternate in place of my son but Mom refused. She had her lawyer make me executor again.

She told me about it; B had lied & slammed me. He kept asking about her guns. When my dad was ill with brain cancer B called him constantly, asking if he could have Dad's rifle when he died (B didn't get it).

B was in a bad motorcycle gang (the Breed), & worked for the Mafia hijacking trucks & claimed shooting a few people. Also distributed meth (enormous quantities). I am terrified of him. Mom won't answer her phone; she screens her calls cause she doesn't want to talk to him. She's 86 & easily upset, needs Xanax after talking to him.

Eventually B will learn I'm executor; with his violent past there's no telling what he'll do. I want to be certain he doesn't get those guns, which, after several calls & a lot of Xanax, Mom finally caved & promised to him. She doesn't want him having them.

Mom lives in PA, rest of us in NashVegas.

I'm honestly frightened, I know he's had short stays in prison, but don't know if he has a felony record. Can anyone tell me what to do? I can't afford a lawyer; this is really eating away at me. Every time I fly up to visit Mom he starts with the questions about her will. He doesn't believe I fly up there just to see her. All he's concerned with is the guns & money. He thinks she has a pile of money stashed away; when I tell him she spent it all on buying her house (which is worth about $100K) he thinks I'm lying.

Well, that's the situation. I need to know what to do. I'm hoping I can get some sincere suggestions.

TIA

I was speaking with someone on my iPhone when another call came in. Before I could hit "hold" & answer the other call my husband sent me a text message. My phone totally locked up, even after the original caller hung up. I had to reset (press "home" button & "off" button til the apple re-appeared). When I tried to answer the text message I got a message on my phone that I couldn't send an MMS until I went to "settings" & entered my phone #. I had to go through the set-up as though it was a new phone (it's a 4S, I've had it over a year). I always close out all my apps (push home button twice, then touch apps at the bottom of the screen til I get the red "X", then close out all the apps). I don't know how common this situation is, how many people are talking, get another call & a text message at the exact same time, but I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else, and, is this a glitch? My computer crashed (our power went out & when it came back on it fried my computer) so I haven't been able to sync any of my iStuff for a couple of months. I don't like being computer-less, I'm afraid if I something like this happens again I'll be in danger of losing my phone! (My son is building me another computer, hopefully I'll have it soon!)

In the last couple of years I've noticed more & more people tweeting and texting during movies. The glow of dozens of screens around me are annoying, and I'm tempted to take out my iPad just to shine it around the theater to jog some of these rude folks into giving up their texting. Why bother to go to a film at all if all you're gonna do is sit there & text, tweet & update Facebook? Especially with the high price of tickets now.

Perhaps cinemas could have special showings for people who want to sit on their smart phones so the rest of us watch the movie without having to deal with the myriad glow of countless phone screens.

Instead of "smoking or non-smoking?", the question of the future will be "texting or non?"

All my life, no matter what time I go to bed, get up, how long I sleep, exercise, whatever, my body feels sluggish & just plain ill til early afternoon. Then suddenly I start feeling great, have loads of energy & can go on for hours. I've tried changing various aspects of my life, including sleep, wake, diet, exercise routines, etc, but nothing makes any difference. I thought maybe circadian rhythms could be altered with time, but my body stubbornly refuses to change. I'm in my 60's now, so guess I never will change, but it would be nice to know why. (BTW, never been overweight, get needed exercise, only recently dxd with diabetes, a result of 2 months of steroids prior to sinus surgery)

In July I had a skull CT scan; I got blinding headaches for years. I used this hospital several times for decades; mostly for headaches. Once I was told I had a sinus infection, given antibiotics & sent home.

My last ER visit was different, the dr told me my sinus polyp had grown in size & I needed to see an ENT surgeon. I said "WHAT polyp"? Turns out in 2004 a scan showed I had a polyp in my left sphenoid sinus. I was never told this, even though in following years I had 3 more scans, all showing the polyp was growing. I was never told.

I saw my PCP, who told me polyps could be treated with steroids. First, tho, he looked at my scan. He returned to the exam room visibly shaken, told me it was serious & he wouldn't touch it. He said I should've been told about this long ago. It filled the sinus, eroded through bone & pushed my nasal septum aside. He made an appt with an ENT surgeon for the next day.

The ENT looked at my scans & put me on antibiotics & prednisone for a month. After 4 weeks I had another scan; it showed no improvement. I had the surgery a few days later. The procedure was risky; there're vital structures (carotid artery, optic nerve) that could easily be damaged. I could bleed out (I had to stop my plavix) or be blinded. My ENT said if he ran into any difficulty he would stop surgery & not proceed further.

The mass he removed was the size of a ping pong ball. A week later I was confirmed diabetic after a bout with ketoacidosis, which nearly killed me. I'm now on insulin.

Many of the males in my dad's family had diabetes, but none of the females. I've never been overweight, blood tests never showed signs of diabetes. My PCP & ENT believe it was the prednisone that triggered diabetes.

Do I have a case against the hospital that knew of this problem nearly a decade & never told me? The mass would have been small enough to deal with non-surgically & I most likely would not now be a diabetic. I'm a 60 yr-old female.

Every time the moon gets full I get terrible headaches &nausea. The nausea is so bad that zofran, a chemo patient drug, doesn't help. I have to go to the ER & get IVs along with morphine, steroids, & powerful antinauseants. They send me home & after the drugs wear off it all comes back. Before it starts I pass a lot of urine for a day, so I try to keep hydrated. I can tell a full moon is coming up now because I have a nagging headache and already feeling nauseated. I'm post-menopausal, so this isn't hormones. My doctors have no answers. It's NOT migraines...I have something called Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder. Antibodies clog my blood vessels, but I take blood thinners for that & it shouldn't make me sick like this. It's been going on for years, & I'm getting so tired of spending 1 out of every 4 weeks hurling and in blinding pain.

A few years ago I had a fever of 109 f ( had NMS from taking seroquel). I am having lots of heart trouble, mostly my BP. Had a cardio gram, my arteries are clean, in good shape (BTW, I'm 60). I'm on 3 different meds to try to get my BP down but it's not working. Can the fevers have damaged the part of my brain that controls heart? It took drs a few monts to dx my fevers, they started low ( would go up to 103 then go down, but come back next day. I was in hospital several times in a coma, had lead-pipe syndrome and "spoke in tongues", I was unaware of what I was saying, they couldn't understand me). I can't go outside, my body thermostat doesn't work so well. Also I will be talking and totally forget what I was talking about, have to ask the other person what I was saying to try & remind me. It's embarrassing & frustrating! When I left ICU once a dr said he was surprised to see me alive, & when I go to the ER now they all cluster around because I was their first NMS patient.

Whilst in the ICU a few years ago, I heard, from the room next to me, the agonizing cries of a woman who had stage 4 liver cancer that had metastesized; there was no chance she could recover from this.

Trapped by my own tubes, wires & monitors, it was impossible for me to avoid hearing hours and hours of her crying, moaning, and begging for death. One of the nurses told me the woman's husband refused to sign a DNR; in fact, he wanted her kept alive as long as possible. If her heart stopped he wanted them to use "heroic measures" to keep her alive.

This woman was suffering horribly, and I was surprised at the brutal treatment by some of the nurses. Instead of giving painkillers by IV, they insisted she swallow pills, and she was harshly scolded when she spit them up (hello, the cancer had spread to her stomach).

It was a relief when they gave her something by IV and her cries stopped about an hour. When my husband came to see me I begged him to get me home, I couldn't take it. He sat with me til I was released, & heard what this woman was going through. I was horrified when he said if I was sick like that he'd keep me alive as long as possible, because he couldn't bear to lose me.

My son joined in the argument, siding with my hubby. I do NOT want to go out like that...in a case like that, is refusing life extension when it's only going to be added time of agony & begging for death considered suicide? My husband & son say it is. I don't think it is suicide, but I don't want to go to hell when I die.

So, would it be a mortal sin to refuse meds to keep me alive if I was in that situation? I was really traumatized by the experience; when I got home I sat upright in bed shivering, unable & unwilling to lie down & sleep for days afterwards.

Just feeling nostalgic whilst listening to REALLY classic rock, from the '60's. Grew up near Philly, just how many other folks remember the original Electric Factory...I saw so many tremendous groups perform there while they were still considered "hippy music". Anyone else remember the coffins in the walls for seating?

I've been in Nashville since '78, haven't been to the "new" Factory; there's a great music scene here but I would so love to go back in time and see some of those acts again when they were considered underground.

If you could go back in time, who would you go back and see?

(this app won't let me select arts , so that's why it's under dining out)

Had arteriogram in '09, my arteries are clear. (dr said it looked better than someone half my age of 56). I'm on metoprolol, clonidine & amlodipine, as well as plavix, valium & gabapentin. Also have tachycardia & Prinzmetal angina. Nitro brings my BP down to normal, but it shoots right up again. I'm in pain management for fibro & back probs, take morphine & hydrocodone. Also have autoimmune probs, something called antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, hence the Plavix. In past had a stroke, DVT, loss of vision. Otherwise I'm really really healthy! Never get flu, no childhood diseases despite multiple exposures.