Of Opiates and Endoscopies

Karl Marx said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”  It can be argued that religion once kept Medieval kings and their kingdoms in-line.  Now we have TV!   TV keeps all us Amuricans (and probably the rest of the electrical world) in line…praying at the the boob-tube altar. 

So, does anyone besides me think that the switch to digital is one of the dumber ideas our government has stumbled upon (besides the bailout)?  I’m no PhD in sociology, but doesn’t our government indirectly depend upon TV to keep us, the masses, from rising up and becoming mobocracy?  If we didn’t have Survivor or Iron Chef to numb our brains and our tushies into submission how else would Congress be able to pass the economic stimulus-es?  These stinkeroo spending packages look like they’ll be funding a bunch of projects that are vaguely reminiscent of the proverbial bridge to no-where… 

Please; someone cleverer than I, explain in simple terms why the heck are we switching from an analog to a digital TV signal during the, “worst economic decline since the Great Depression”?  (I don’t know who first coined that tagline, but it has been all over the place on the TV news! ) Really now, my old TV is perfectly fine! Why in the heck would I go out and get a digital one…especially…right now? What about the unemployed and the underemployed and those just struggling to get by…can they afford cable or satellite…right now?  And, why oh why would the government take away the wubbie that many of us depend upon to forget our cares…right now?   In the 30′s sales of movie tickets went up…why?…people wanted to forget the misery of the Depression.  We NEED free TV now…so we can forget about the craptacular state the economy is in…now. 

But really, I digress. 

And, I’m babbling.

And today, TV didn’t help me forget tonight what tomorrow brings.   7:30AM tomorrow I have to report to Methodist for yet another test.  Oh JOY!  This time it’s an endoscopy.

I’ve had an endoscopy before.  Over six years ago.  It was relatively painless.  My throat wasn’t even scratchy like I had been warned.  The GI lady inserted an IV…and then one minute we were talking about where I went shopping for my shoes… and the next I was waking up on a wheelie bed in my own curtained-in psuedo-room.  (It was like a horse stall made out of curtains.)  GI doctor found six ulcers.

So my old hemotologist, Dr. J, read my medical history and assumed I have ulcers again because of the chronic pains in my abdomen.    While I really don’t put creedence in Dr. J’s opinions I figured I might as well find a new GI doctor and have him take a look-see.  If it the procedure doesn’t hurt and may or may not indicate anything worse than a reoccurence of ulcers why am I so nervous?

Because my new hemotologist Dr. C has confirmed I have an iron overload disorder.  Dr. J was wrong.  Could he be wrong about ulcers too?  What else causes stomach pain?  Well iron overload a.k.a. hemochromatosis does and so does stomach cancer.  O God please…why does that “C” word keep popping up all the time?

I actually started to tear up during FrontLine.  TV don’t fail me!