Speaker For The Diodes - August 18th, 2010

05:24 am - QotD

"I've been thinking a lot about pain lately, now that I have the 'legitimate pain' of a broken ankle. I'm still kind of flabbergasted that my rheumatologist missed my broken ankle because she was so busily checking in to see if I'd been seeing a chronic pain shrink for my RA.

"But also just ... Having a broken ankle is like Queen for a Day. I mean, with chronic disease, you trudge through life trying to get your doctor to not put you in the category of med-seeking or whatever, but with a broken ankle, you get same-day appointments and specialists at a major research facility, relaxed-looking doctors who have lots of success stories under their belts and who have loads of fancy, fresh equipment. And insurance companies? They pay for it all without making you spend a year using a less effective treatment before they actually pay for the thing that works.

"To be honest, I'm in much less pain due to a broken ankle than I am when I'm having a flare, and yet this little break in my bone has opened so many doors for me that I can't help but wonder how different my life would be if RA pain treatment came with the same perks, and if chronic pain was the object of the level of funding that goes into, say, sports medicine.

"But then, of course, broken bones heal. Chronic disease is ... well, chronic. And depressing. Even for doctors and researchers, I'm sure. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy."

-- smallstages, 2010-07-29

01:51 pm - On Linking To My Entries

A brief reminder ... while I do appreciate being told when folks quote me or link to one of my entries, you can save a little time with the knowledge that asking whether you may link to one of my public entries^[1] always gets the same answer: it's public, so yes. Same goes for quoting portions in ways that most reasonable (and reaonably educated on IP issues) people would consider "fair use"^[2]: I expect that you ask before reposting an entire essay, but reasonable-length quotations are fair game because I 'spoke' in public (as in, the equivalent of hearing me give a speech, not the equivalent of overhearing my personal conversation that happned to take place in the street). So yeah, please do let me know you've done it, but you don't need to wait for me to check my email and respond to a request for permission before you link to one of my public entries or quote portions thereof.

This goes double for when you want to re-quote something I've quoted from someone else: I have absolutely no legal, ethical, moral, or aesthetic claim on other's words I've quoted, and it's not my place to grant or refuse permission for anyone else to do the same thing I'd done.

[1] Which is well over 99% of what I post -- I'd have to go back and check, but I think I've posted fewer than a dozen friends-locked entries since I started blogging.

[2] Okay, admittedly a lot of people have really screwed up ideas about what this legal term actually means (for starters, not-for-profit does not automatically imply fair-use, nor is it defined as a fixed percentage of the whole ... and there's a degree of vagueness and requirement for judgement calls built in even after you do un-learn the various myths and misunderstandings about it).