Yes, yes, our insurance plans like to say we have Teledoc services available but who really does? I don't. That shit costs extra. And I fully expect if you did pay for that, it'd be some call center rep looking shit up in the same online source you would.
Which brings me to the action I spoke of at the top -- what do we all do nowadays? We have a mild symptom and we Google it. Or, if you're like me and for some reason implicitly trust the millions of faceless contributors to Wikipedia, you go straight there.
So AGAIN this evening I sit down to watch some show I think I never saw before and, yup, lo and behold, I'm immediately recognizing each scene as it plays out.
GOOD OL' SHAMELESS SYNDROME!
I mean, what is this shit?! I never got to the bottom of this. Is it just a part of "getting older?" I'm "only" 61. I don't think that's a common age for such commonplace dementia symptoms, unless, it's, well, FUCKING DEMENTIA! I mean, if it is, then what should I do? How would I know what steps to take regarding it? Or is it something more attributable to the behaviors I've typically been prone to, aka, binge drinking? And if so, is it blackouts in memory from that time or is it residual long-term damage to the brain from the drinking? Arrgh!
So I took that "nowadays plunge" and sunk into the depths of the virtual pages of Wikipedia to see what I could find.
Oh and the things I did find are, well, (Happy Halloween) horrifying.
Have you ever heard of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease? Here, read all about it. Sound familiar? Sound like Shameless symptoms? Well, a little but since Shameless has been going on for way more than a few months and patients with this disease don't typically last very long, I guess it isn't that.
But look at the shit that causes this disease...prions. I'd heard of these fuckers before. Screwed up proteins that "fold" incorrectly and convince normal proteins to do so as well acting like a virus thus causing a chain reaction in an organism. What? This shit isn't even life and it can do this? How the fuck? And if the prions are found they need to be destroyed by fire since they are nearly indestructible by usual sterilization methods. Medical equipment infected with them needs to be sent to an incinerator.
Makes you think of that shit in the show "The Last of Us" where these spores infect animals and people and make fungus grow mutating them. Oh shit, but that's not all fiction, that's actually real!! Look at these examples! This actually happens!!
Ding Dong! Is that trick-or-treaters at my door? I better get a fucking blowtorch cause I ain't lettin' any mother fuckers near me forever! NEVER! AHHH!