An Open Letter to Representative Ilhan Omar…

Dear Representative Omar,

I really don’t like talking about politics, it’s WAY out of my comfort zone.

I’m a lot more at ease about talking about mental health issues and trauma that plays into that, even though I wish I didn’t have to discuss that, either.

But someone has to, and that’s how I feel about this particular matter.

I normally disagree with most things that President Donald Trump says and does.

But he was right about something this morning.

Your apology about Israel and its supporters was LAME.

My being pro-Israel, mind you it’s generally pro Israel, I don’t agree with everything that Israel has ever done, is because I feel it’s the right thing to do, being Jewish helps, knowing some of the anti-semitism I’ve experienced and that’s only occasionally selective as I don’t wear my Judiasm out in public, if I don’t tell people I’m Jewish, they don’t know.

And in my case being Jewish and pro-Israel, ain’t about the “benjamins”, baby, there ain’t any “benjamins” to be had in my case, I’m a poor Jew that believes and wishes more than anything, that there should be peace in the middle east.

I’m also a voter in Minneapolis who voted for YOU.

I thought you would encourage and foster peace and harmony between the religions and socio-economics, not widen the gap in the former.

I, sincerely hope for the sake of all your constituents and because it’s the right thing to do, that you learn more about anti-semitism here and abroad.

Not because of peer or political pressure but because it’s the right thing to do.

Just like anti-Muslim tropes have no place here, anywhere and in our government, neither does anti-semitism.

Respectfully, Lisa

Editorial Note: I didn’t know at the time of publication, that people were asking for Rep. Omar’s resignation. as I loathe Twitter.

As someone who voted for her, I don’t want that, she made a bad rookie mistake that I honestly believe she can learn from in an honest and organic way.

If I thought she was organically a jew hater, I would not be defending her but I am, because I believe she can learn and grow from this.

And one last thing, I have to ponder, if Ilhan Omar was a white male Christian, would the backlash be the same?

I don’t think so.

Give her break and a chance to do the good that those of us who voted for her thinks she is capable of.

Additional note: People have questioned my motives for writing this and if I understood what this particular situation was about, which was about AIPAC, I get it, but this is not the first time Representative Omar has ventured in to territory that could be construed as anti-semetic.

I’m not going to name names, I do know she is surrounded by Jewish peers professionally and personally that respect her and vice versa. I don’t think they would have her support if she was a truly anti-semetic nor would she have mine.

I do think going forward she needs to be careful in what she says about Israel, Jews and the supporters of Israel. For those who support Israel for reasons that aren’t altruistic, not only are people aware of who they are, it will negative effect them, in the realm of politics but support should be  because it’s the right thing to do, which is getting lost in this day and age, not just in our country where we can’t meet in the middle and see others viewpoint, but globally.

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Dear Avenue-YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS!!!

“The Customer is ALWAYS right”….. A quote that was ingrained in me before I became disabled working most of my life in customer service, which truthfully isn’t true, if I’m going to be honest.

If I am going to be more honest, I made a lot of online purchases the weekend before last. 2 of the items were messed up. The first item I received, was a jacket from Sears, not only did I get the wrong jacket, I got the wrong size. They credited me immediately, no other questions asked.

The second purchase that was a disaster, which was a jacket that I had purchased from Avenue. The pleather jacket that I received had severe wrinkles all over the place.

So I called their customer service to query about returning it, I was told I’d be out of the 8.95 for shipping (which is kind of excessive to begin with, all my other other purchases were free s/h or a nominal amount which I received quicker than this wrinkled jacket).

The only way I could have a chance of getting my full money back was sending pictures of the product, which I did. Unfortunately I could not send a picture of the entire jacket with tags and the wrinkles, so I sent 5 different pictures which was NOT to the satisfaction of Avenue.

I also don’t live close to a retail post office, living in Downtown Minneapolis and I was loathe to to spend anymore money and time, as I had been arguing all day with their customer service department who insisted that the jacket had to come back for me to get a refund for the product and it would be minus the shipping and handling.

I finally asked them to cancel my account, which took another 3 queries, but they finally did.

I also contacted my bank to reverse the charge, which they did immediately, not even asking for all the correspondence that transpired between Avenue and I.

I don’t feel good about getting my money back from Wells Fargo.

The company that should’ve reimbursed me for the wrinkled jacket which I’ll either donate to charity, otherwise it needs to be brought to the cleaners to get all the wrinkles out IS Avenue.

There are no longer Avenues in the state of Minnesota for the last several years  and I realize why. They have overpriced stuff, where items the rare time it’s good quality, is not of good value, unless you luck out on rare occasion when there is a sale.

While I know in my case, the extreme aggravation that I experienced is now over, I feel sorry for any of their future customers who think shopping online getting subpar merchandise and having to be financially penalized somehow, is normal.

Is it is NOT. Let the buyer beware, going forward.

There are too many plus size female clothing companies that treat their customers with the respect (which the agents were NICE, the problem was they weren’t willing to do anything for me) and who will take action to benefit the customer when they’ve been wronged and/or inconvenienced by a purchase, that should not cost the customer so much time or to be out of any money.

I don’t blame the reps who nicely but didn’t help me with my order this weekend.

I blame the company that has policies that antagonize a customer, when the company itself, has made the mistake.

While I won’t hold my breath for Avenue to reimburse Wells Fargo for this purchase, I wish they would, because it’s the right thing to do.

In the meantime, I’ll just stick to shopping online with Torrid, that has better customer service, cuter clothing options and on the rare occasion they make a mistake, they take action to rectify it and aren’t scammy with shipping and handling costs.

Note: Comments that aren’t constructive will NOT be published.

Editorial Note: After begging Avenue to delete my account this weekend, because I didn’t want to think about them or the item I purchased, I received this morning an email to review the item and their customer service. Seriously, Avenue? Seriously????

I did though, I dare them to publish it. We’ll see….

How the war on opioids has harmed some patients

A brilliant blog that I originally found on Kevin M.D., I just posted another blog of hers, this blog is also an amazing in it’s advocacy for not punishing all opiate using severe chronic pain patients due opiate phobia by physicians or physicians who worry about stigma if they do continue to treat with care, their chronic patient’s pain with opiates.

EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info

How the war on opioids has harmed some patients – KevinMD – by Angelika – Jan 2019

Treating a patient’s distressing health symptoms with prescribed medication is an unquestioned intervention in any other area of medicine, like diabetes (goal is “control blood sugar,” accomplished by insulin) or high blood pressure (goal is “lower blood pressure,” accomplished by various antihypertensive medications).

Even erectile dysfunction is considered a “medical issue” deserving palliation with a medication (goal is to “achieve an erection,” accomplished by Viagra).

But when dealing with the medical issue of chronic pain…

I hope you’ll go visit the site where my essay was published and perhaps even leave a comment.

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Study: Limiting opioid Rx won’t reduce overdose deaths

A brilliantly written blog by a chronic patient peer who believes like I do, the horrible harm that can come from physicians not willing to entertain the thought of opiates as a form of treatment when patient reported physical pain levels warrant medical treatment.

It doesn’t discount the fact that people die of opioid addiction, it does try to drive home the point that I have tried to do, which is compliant patients are now dying when they have their medications pulled for no reason as they die non drug related deaths due to suicide or have no quality of life, but have been opiate compliant but due physician stigma of those who fear being considered careless for still prescribing opiates and physicians who are so opiate phobic who now who will NOT prescribe opiates for any reason are greatly harming patients who are not at risk of death due to opiate abuse or addiction.

The author of this website is thankfully a lot more concise than I am. ❤

EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info

Limiting opioid prescriptions will do little to reduce overdose deaths, study says – by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff  February 01, 2019

This article is about a very important, and for us very encouraging, new JAMA study that just came out showing that prescription limits barely reduce overdoses. We pain patients have known this all along, but when it’s officially researched and published it will be taken more seriously.

The anti-opioid zealots will try to explain away its findings, but it will be a piece of hard evidence that saner minds can use to push back against these ridiculously ineffective prescription opioid limits.

When the death toll from opioid overdoses began to soar a few years ago… Policy makers naturally sought to put a lid on opioid prescribing.

But a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open finds that reducing opioid prescriptions will have little effect on the death rate…

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My Karma Is STILL A Bitch #10YearChallenge …

 

Disclaimers: This blog is more of a personal blog, than to achieve any kind of activism goal, although it does highlight a few things that cause me to be an activist.

Uggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Okay.

SOOOO,  I’m not on social media much, but on the internet.

The little I go on social media, it’s Facebook.

Not because I have this great love for  da  ‘book, I think it’s vile but no more vile than it’s competitors for people’s attention span, in social media spaces.

I didn’t know though what social media was 10 years ago.

I was still in the system post suicide attempt from Summer of 2008.

When I found Facebook a little over 8 years ago, it was a bizarre but kind of useful way to get acclimated into society, when I started living on my own in January of 2010 (which the whole gory story that it was, is in my 1st blog here on WP).

In the beginning, Facebook allowed me to reconnect and connect with people, socially, in a way that I originally found acceptable.

And in the last 8 years it’s definitely showed me who my real friends are, few and far between.

I am NOT made for this era.

Don’t get me wrong, some of this technology IS really convenient and/or life enhancing.

A lot of this technology is NOT though or how people play the game of life in the social media era is just too difficult and/or soul crushing for me.

For the last few years, I’ve only gone on Facebook, usually only once or twice a month.

Twitter, I only go on, if I need to check something blog related, so it’s way less, maybe quarterly.

I needed the above 300 words to explain the whole reason for this blog.

So, when I went on Facebook about a week and half ago, I noticed something called the “#10YearChallenge”.

I get it’s appeal for both Facebook and it’s users.

I don’t think I’m any better or worse than anyone who enjoyed doing it.

Which I didn’t even attempt it.

Bizarrely, externally, I’m exactly the same I was exactly 10 years ago.

I look the same, I weigh the same and have physically the same skill sets.

I was probably more active then, only out of necessity because I shared a room with 3 other people in 2009.

I’m still living on my own for the last 8 years, but being exposed for the last 10 years of other people’s barriers and bad habits have left me kind of like a recluse gone rogue, but for greater good for others, when I can help people and I realize the irony the ONLY way I help people, is because of the digital era and the access that allows me to others, to help them.

I probably couldn’t care less for that reason, actually not at all, that whether it would’ve been #3YearChallenge, when I looked better and did more than I am now, thank goodness it wasn’t a #15YearChallenge and when I was living a whole different better more productive rewarding life and it would be depressing to have to even think more than I already do, which is ALREADY daily, about that period of time that was the best in my life, even though it had it’s challenges.

I am still going to take my own different #10YearChallenge using words  and if it would help anyone else to do so,whether privately or on here, feel free to do the same:

#1. As much as I complain, I know what’s good, I am grateful everyday for that.

#2. I know myself well and am okay with that, even though I know I have a few strengths and my weaknesses bother me, I still know how to let my sorta free but still sorta in fear freak self fly when I can, but ground myself when it’s in my best interest (metaphorically, obviously!!!).

#3. I’m trying to accept that even though I’m 17 years post gastric bypass and over 8 years post gastric bypass  reversal, that a few of us are always going to be on a bizarre learning curve, health wise and eating wise, as in my case I currently feel like a new gastric bypass patient who’s pregnant (NEITHER is possible) with hyperemesis and it feels like a sick joke, of just how hard it is to eat and drink anything, for the last couple of months.

#4. The hardest thing is acceptance of things that aren’t acceptable, but I’ve been lucky with that, with everyone I love the most still being alive, but at the same time not being able to positively affect their life, but I can change for the better, usually, total strangers with the type of activism I do. Things will have an ebb and flow of good and bad and that a sense of humor and empathy for others, can help a lot and that I’m blessed to have both traits.

Well, these are my contributions in my own wacky #10YearChallenge.

Again, I don’t think that people are bad, if they feel better  in regards to appearance or if they’ve improved their lot in life where it can be qualified and quantified in pictures,  makes them bad.

It just in my case as an activist, is a slight cause for concern that we don’t talk about our insides more, from a psychological growth perspective , as well as personally. Some of us have intangible growth that can never be measured by photography and only with personal evaluation and inventory and that also should be rewarded, if not celebrated somehow, if not by others, at least by ourselves.

Note: I have a bazillion (like seriously, a bazillion)  wls social media buds, who loved the challenge, I’m NOT picking on anyone for any reason. for liking the challenge, nor am I jealous.

I’m in competition with one person and one person, ONLY.  ME, prior to 2007 and if I can’t beat the badass bitch I once was, so be it, and I just don’t care to compete with anyone else.

An Open Letter to #HennepinHealthcare’s Emergency Department’s physicians…

Dear Dr. S and Dr. C (purposely not using last names, for physician’s right to safety and anonymity),

I was in your Emergency Department on 1/15/2019, in the morning around 8 a.m.

I understand as I presented as a very unkempt but for the most part, polite 49 year old obese tobacco using patient complaining about a bad cough, but more concerned about the severe left flank pain that occurred every time I coughed or sneezed that a pulmonary issue might take precedence over a digestive one.

I stopped being quite as polite when I checked my tests online and found after almost 3 hours of being there that I only had a urine analysis and pregnancy test, that was run.

I could understand with your facility being a level 1 trauma center that you may not have had time to read my chart, which doesn’t contain much, as I’m a Fairview patient.

Even though I did have a bilateral salpingectomy with endometrial abalation and d/c at your hospital, over 5 years ago and that my chart while not up to date with diagnoses, is update to with medications I am on, which gives an idea of my health issues.

However, while you got Lisa the vulnerable patient yesterday, you’re getting Lisa the activist today, in hopes it helps with others like me, who honestly thought they had an acute health issue and was NOT drug seeking.

This is what I can’t understand and is unacceptable to me, and when things are that way, I try to say something, make it a teaching moment, regardless of the socio-economics, education and profession of those who’s biases effect how I and others, get treated.

NOT every patient who goes through your ED, is looking for opiates, some of us patients who are obese to morbidly obese, have done everything under the sun, to lose weight (hence my side gig as an activist, like one of 3 GLOBALLY, who helps people in medical and mental health trauma with serious gastric bypass complications, on the scale that I do, as well as other medical and mental health activism that I do).

My visit yesterday at Hennepin Healthcare’s Emergency Department, wasted time and money.

It caused me unnecessary duress, because you have patients with barriers that have a propensity to possibly be violent, which caused enormous anxiety.

But the worst duress I experienced, was the assumptions and absolutely NO questions asked about certain things by physicians, that could’ve made my visit a lot more pleasant.

I did see, after I pushed for a blood work up, that were ordered FOUR hours in to my visit, my labs were good.

I also saw today, that I was prescribed a script that was ordered and filled at your pharmacy of high strength ibuprofen when I have a bleeding ulcer history and NSAIDS are an absolute terrible treatment option for pain for me ( and again, I did NOT ask for ANY medications, nor will I get or take script).

Unfortunately, when the IV came out, my vein spurted which wrecked my discharge paperwork and the pants I was wearing and all over my hands and some of the staff was ready to send me home with no help, until another set of staff saw that I was tired and shaky and helped me and I was appreciative of their help.

For quiet non violent introverts, your Emergency Room department is a terrifying place to be.

As I’m sure it is for a lot of people, introverted or not.

For those of us who’ve been labeled  due to mental health issues, it’s even more amplified, with anxiety caused by patients who are violent and fear of medical professionals who’ve labeled me, in the last 17 years, not just for mental health issues, but because I had bariatric surgery.

And while some staff was great at the hospital, what will leave a last impression from what will be my last visit to your facility, is that a busy physicians didn’t take the time to ask me anything, either assuming I didn’t know or wouldn’t be truthful and while you were nice, once I said something about being upset about that, that’s NOT okay.

So please, for the mental wellbeing of your future patients, if they are ambulatory, alert, articulate and polite, don’t label or practice medicine with preconceived notions about a  patient.

Actually, just DO NOT  practice medicine with any preconceived notions about a patient, like EVER.

As in my case, I loathe seeking medical attention and my visit from yesterday made it that much harder, way harder than it should’ve had to be.

As well as it made it more difficult for yourselves, and I have the utmost respect for physicians (as well nurses and all other hospital staff)  of any specialty, but especially for those who work tirelessly and usually without thanks, in an Emergency Room.

So thank you for your time yesterday and today, and hopefully going forward this will help both patients and physicians in your hospital, going forward.

Respectfully, Alissa “Lisa” Kasen

Update: 1/17/2019, when I wrote this yesterday, I tweeted it to Hennepin Healthcare and to my delight, they actually tracked me down and called me, today,  to address my concerns, which is much appreciated.

What we all OWE to a certain young comic on a weekend night variety show…

Important Disclaimers: My normal disclaimers about not being a clinically professional in any matter, doesn’t apply, in these circumstances and these circumstances ONLY.

While this is a blog to achieve an activism goal, there is profanity, if profanity laced truth bomb type of blog offends anyone, please DON’T read. Thanks!!!

I didn’t want to write this blog, I figured there would be some hypocrisy in talking about someone who clearly just wants to be fucking left alone by the media and his haters.

I ONLY figured I’d give it a shot, not naming his name, and because I don’t make any money on my blogs, would make me less of a hypocrite.

I think maybe I feel so grateful to this individual because I feel less stigmatized with my own mental health issues, by him being so public about his own.

Maybe I feel I can relate to him because I cherish my privacy and am grateful that no one gives a fuck of who I am or what I do.

And that he doesn’t  have that luxury, which should be a right and necessity when people ask for their privacy and to be left alone.

Maybe because if you listen closely, he’s been telling haters and the media, to back off for a while now.

I don’t think just because someone chooses a career path that leads them to be in the public eye, that when they make it clear that they don’t love publicity, that they are fair game.

They aren’t fair game.

And this year has really NOT been fair to him.

Any mistake he’s made professionally, the size of his dick and the history of his love life and more insultingly and disgustingly, questioning how he has one, has been fodder for both haters and the media, in the last year.

Fucking knock this shit off, he’s quietly telling in the only way he knows how to tell people to back off, now it’s up to others, to say it more emphatically that it’s terrible what you’re all doing to him, it’s lazy and cruel at best, and it could be deadly, at its worst.

Do you really need a reclusive activist telling you to get your own life and some ethics, as it applies to bullying and trying to profit off a young celebrity, who needs the fucking world to just give him his privacy and to knock off the hateful and profiting bullshit ???

Consider it done, now….

Note: Nothing not constructive written about the subject of this blog or myself will published.