Posts by Brandon Newman95

restlessbadger2 said:Where in Chicago can I get a CDFI blood vessel scan done using a referral, specifically looking at the VB sling?

Maybe Holy Spirit

Melissa Sanchez8 said:You need someone who actually takes searching for a cause seriously, unlike your current doctor. Those are the absolute worst—when they just slap a diagnosis on you based on your age, how you look, and a couple of basic blood tests.
It really comes down to how much you're willing to spend, given the situation with your doctor. You’ll probably have to go private, since I doubt you're getting referrals for any deep-dive testing through her.
Reading through your symptoms, my first thought is a hormonal imbalance, especially with the changes in your cycle and the hair loss. Have you done a full hormone panel yet? Like progesterone, estrogen, FSH, LH, estradiol, all that stuff?
And what about your thyroid? Did you check your antibodies? Just looking at T3, T4, and TSH isn't enough...
Those mental health symptoms could definitely be linked to hormonal shifts, along with those hot flashes you mentioned.

Where exactly are you feeling the cramps and abdominal pain? Is there a connection to when you eat? Can you link them to a specific time of day, certain foods, or anything else?

You mentioned working in food service—what does that entail exactly? Are you exposed to anything specific at work?
Also, don't ignore that spinal pain. You really need some imaging or tests to figure out where that's coming from.
You don't sound crazy. You just sound exhausted by everything you're going through, which is totally valid.

If I were you, I'd start with a specialist endocrinologist and simultaneously try to track down the root of the abdominal and back pain.

Just to add to that—get a neurologist. And don't let those doctors who say "you're young and healthy" dismiss you. They always pull the "you're too young for serious illness" card. Also, see a gynecologist for the sexual hormones.

Sandra Allen60 said:Thanks!

Sent you a DM.

Rebecca Rivera3 said:Hi everyone. I just had another MRI, and while the lesions themselves haven't changed, they’re showing up hyperintense now. They're located right in the white matter areas responsible for cognition, emotions—basically everything.
I'm currently on Misar with extended release; has anyone else tried this? It feels like it lasts all day.

Looking back at all the heavy stuff I've taken, I've done 2 or 3 antidepressant pills, about 5 to 10mg of Diazepam, and some Xanax. Things are better, but compared to how bad it used to be, this is great.

I'm tapering off Quetiapine; taking it very rarely now.

My goal is to finish my degree, move past this depression and anxiety, and finally reach remission.
I just want to finally feel comfortable in my own skin.

I look like one of those Barbie dolls, and because of that, men often treat me like a toy rather than a person. They don't show respect, and honestly, it's pretty awful.

Why wouldn't you be able to pull all that off?

Joshua Cox2 said:From where I’m sitting, we’re losing our healthcare bit by bit. Some departments in certain hospitals are flat-out turning people away. They just tell you, "Go to your local outpatient clinic," and act like they couldn't care less... except those clinics haven't been taking or scheduling patients for three months now! Honestly, I can't see this as anything other than them funneling everyone toward their own private practices. Scumbags!

And then there’s that absolute clown on TV acting like he’s lost his mind. He’s out there talking about these surreal two-month waiting lists! Hahaha, please. You’ll wait a whole year just to see an ophthalmologist at Holy Spirit. And I bet things are even worse over at the Chicago hospital.

What they said about the Chicago hospital and Holy Spirit is true for once, but they actually *are* still seeing and scheduling patients.

crimsonraven said:Do they have good doctors? Have you personally experienced them? All I care about is finding someone compassionate, someone who won't just brush me off...
t? It's really important to me.

I don't have any first-hand experience there, but they seem pretty solid to me.

crimsonraven said:Hey everyone, I was hoping for some advice on where to get a gastroscopy done right now. Honestly, there's zero chance of getting one through my referral up north, and I have no clue where to go privately in Chicago. I'm feeling worse by the day, and my GP is still acting like it's the height of COVID-19 while I'm here suffering. Please, if anyone knows a good private clinic or a solid gastroenterologist who can see me ASAP, let me know.

Arithera clinic

Ryan Reed8 said:Hey everyone,
does anyone know where in Chicago I can get an epicutaneous patch test for the standard allergen series?
I need a private clinic because waiting for a referral through Medicare is going to take forever and this is pretty urgent for me.

Maybe try Bates, if they even do those. Not sure what the deal is with Breyer either.

Robin Diaz4 said:My uncle at the Jordanovac location (or Rebro Hospital now) can't even get an appointment for an initial exam. He actually had surgery scheduled just two weeks ago. 😢

Maybe try asking around—if he was set for surgery two weeks ago, they mentioned some procedures might be moved to other hospitals, maybe somewhere near Zabok.

granitepanther45 said:Hi,

My dad was scheduled for chemo at the Jordanovac clinic on April 8th. We finally managed to get a hold of a floor nurse over the phone, and she told us that the chemo sessions are actually being moved over to Rebro Hospital (it's on the 1st floor, green building), but we just have to wait for them to call us with an appointment time. That was a week ago, and honestly, nobody has called us back yet.
On top of that, she couldn't even tell us who would be managing his care now, since our usual pulmonologist got transferred over to the ICU at Rebro.
Apparently, they've been redistributing all the doctors from the Jordanovac clinic to other hospitals.

Does anyone happen to know if the pulmonologists at Rebro are going to take over the patients from Jordanovac?

Thanks everyone for any info you can share.

Word is they’re moving things back to Jordanovac next Monday. I'm not sure if I should even post a phone number here, but those were the Jordanovac numbers that got rerouted to Rebro after the earthquake hit. Seriously, just call every single day and pester them. Be annoying. Be persistent. Literally don't stop until they answer.

Donna Kim84 said:They totally knocked me out. Everything went fine, though. I just woke up. It felt weird, honestly—like being in a dream when you suddenly just drop off. I just shut down and then popped back up. Now I’m just super sleepy. Feeling a little bit tipsy, too. My balance is a bit off, but it's probably just me feeling it. Took the bus there and took the bus back, stopped by the pharmacy to grab the stuff they prescribed. Just resting now. Phew...

Just sleep it off. I’m not even sure how many hours you have to wait before you can drink anything. It’s btin that you want your results to come back clean after this. You’re gonna be out of it for a little while. But you’ll snap out of it soon enough.

Donna Kim84 said:Is anesthesia actually necessary for a gastroscopy, and how dangerous is it?

Usually you just get local numbing. They make you swallow this tiny little tube with a camera on the end—just don't fight it, okay?—and you have to roll onto your side. Basically, they just spray a bit of stuff in your throat to numb it. At least, that's how they do it here in the States.
If they go with general anesthesia, though... man, I don't know.

Joseph Taylor11 said:Most of my predictions actually end up coming true, quite consistently.
I’m seriously considering a career change. Maybe I should open a Tarot reading booth... ☕

And then you can just read everyone's fortunes, I guess.🍿

Joseph Taylor11 said:Budapest isn't a country.

Fine, my bad. It was a slip of the tongue. My relatives are scattered all over the map. When those universities started shutting down, a lot of them scrambled to get people out before the borders actually slammed shut. The restrictions they're rolling out here in Canada have been standard practice for ages, and honestly, I was pretty shocked to see they've implemented them in Norway too.

Joseph Taylor11 said:But what does "residency" actually mean here? Are we talking about a specific municipality or just the city?

I can't help but wonder if Canada and Canada deal with the same mess we do—having thousands of tiny little townships that act like independent nations, making it impossible to travel between them... ☕

(By the way, I was referring to Germany up above...)

Look, residence is just where you're officially registered, you know? It's your legal address. Same goes for your temporary stay/address.

Joseph Taylor11 said:But what does "residency" actually mean here? Are we talking about a specific municipality or just the city?

I can't help but wonder if Canada and Canada deal with the same mess we do—having thousands of tiny little townships that act like independent nations, making it impossible to travel between them... ☕

(By the way, I was referring to Germany up above...)

It's just specific-Canadian Konjic-something. In Canada, they have home quarantine. It's happening everywhere.
Budapest has closed its borders. You couldn't even get into Canada.
Norway-who were traveling out during an Osla-weekendic to somewhere else. They managed to leave right before they got hit with quarantine and those insane fines.
In Canada and Norway-who can work from home, they just do it.

Nathan Bailey6 said:I'm curious—how does domestic travel usually work in other parts of the USA?

Look at Oregon—it’s non-existent. Someone moves to a different state and suddenly they lose their residency rights. They just have to stay there.
Canada is the same way.
Norway works the exact same.

Jack Cook7 said:This CDC guy is turning into such a massive joke. Look, I don’t have the highest opinion of the CDC to begin with (not that I want to get into why right now), but this whole thing is just crossing the line. It seems like there isn't a single job the political party can't hand out to one of their buddies, but the second they actually have to do something real? Total chaos.

Someone already brought this up, but let me say it again: none of the officials—and I'm looking mainly at Beroš here, since Capak seems way too dim to even answer this—has said:

- Just how much are all these anti-corona measures going to cost this country? First off, in terms of medical bills, and second, in terms of the economy grinding to a halt.

- How many people are going to die or end up permanently disabled compared to previous years, given that most of the healthcare system's resources are tied up fighting COVID? If we save, say, 100 people from the virus, but 500 more people die from other illnesses than they did last year, then the math just doesn't add up.

The only silver lining to crushing the economy is that the political party will finally be forced to start cutting salaries and laying people off in the public sector. Even that idiot Vilim Ribić is out there whining and crying about how cutting pay and firing public workers will hit consumer spending hard, which will lead to layoffs in the private sector because nobody will have money to buy anything... honestly, you can't even laugh at the guy anymore. It's not polite to laugh at people with special needs.

Anyway, Beroš and that little remnant of Capak are stubbornly dodging one specific question. See, incubation basically lasts up to 14 days. That means this stabilization at around 60 new cases over the last three days isn't the result of Capak's "tougher" measures (or his threats of even tougher ones, damn him!) but rather the stuff they did 7 to 15 days ago when they shut down cafes, restaurants, hair salons, and stuff like that. Just to remind them: that mass outing on Sunday, March 22nd in Washington, D.C. because of the earthquake is definitely going to cause a spike in infections in about a week (around April 1st). And Mr. Strict Joke will surely take that as ultimate proof that Americans weren't being obedient enough and need to be disciplined even harder.

Same goes for Beroš—he won't say why he didn't stop travel toward Italy and Austria in time, even though everyone knew those were the new hotspots where our first cases came from. Same goes for why he was letting locals return from Germany without quarantine, allowing them to join the first wave.

Either... or... maybe they actually have no clue what they're doing!!?? 😲

So they just practice being strict by blaming us and throwing around nonsense just to hide their own ignorance, incompetence, cronyism, and total disorganization!?

But nah, it couldn't be that. It's the political party! Hey! Par-ty!

As for healthcare, you live or you die. Natural selection. On the flip side, heart surgeries are being put on hold, and oncology patients are stuck in limbo. We'll pay for this crisis, sure, especially since everyone from private healthcare is being pulled into the public sector. I'm afraid what's coming next is the privatization of healthcare.

stormybadger8 said:They finally showed up and made a move because of the quake, and that was a whole two days after the shaking stopped. 🤦
The sheer panic of suddenly and violently evicting students from their dorms while simultaneously deciding to ban leaving Washington, D.C. was quite literally the worst way they could have handled this.
It’s proof that our "famous" Civil Defense is a total mess, there’s zero coordination, and clearly, Božinović can't make timely decisions on his own, which is just how it should be, right?...

If they had just gathered everyone up temporarily and organized them toward the Arena, which was already set up, and then worked on housing in the student dorms...
But no, instead they let people scatter and fend for themselves first, then scrambled to talk about closing markets, and only then thought about what to do with a mass migration caused by a pandemic...

That chronic incompetence from Božinović and his crew completely trashed everything Beroš and the Health department had been working on for weeks.
We’ll see the true scale of the disaster caused by Božinović's ineptitude in about 10-15 days, when thanks to this ultra-clueless minister, we'll likely have 10,000-20,000 infections and God knows how many deaths.

Just watch the curve over the next few days and you'll see why there's a massive spike around April 1st...
http://gdi-online.maps.arcgis.com/ap...bfad8db4f64aec

It's going to get a lot, lot worse, because this is being fueled by the fact that a bunch of people in isolation were basically left to wander around on their own.
You can't blame those people; blame Božinović and his team, who were in a bigger panic than the citizens themselves.

Look, your place of residence isn't something you can just undo. As for the infection, I fall into a high-risk group, and hey, miracle of miracles, I'm only 50. Those measures would've been implemented one way or another, but honestly, I think both the public and Božinović were just caught in a massive panic.

Paul White9 said:And they didn't even introduce those passes until AFTER the earthquake hit!

Look, nobody saw this whole scenario coming. Those passes? They only rolled those out after the earthquake. And Canada has been under quarantine for... I don't even know how long now. Over there, they don't mess around—the penalties are brutal. My take? Sure, people moved their wives and kids to safety, but it’s always the ones who *should* be staying put that break isolation. In the end, it's always the innocent people who pay the price.