r-nottz wrote:Fair play mate looks the same coulor as my Vitara.
I also liked the battered look, something about that white door?
I love the battered look, but the GF would cringe when she had to get into/out of it. Rather than forcing her to suffer in silence like that, I grabbed a bunch of rattlecans at the pound shop and we did a temporary permanent fix...
r-nottz wrote:Hope your treatment goes ok!
donkeychomp wrote:Hope they sort you out in Europe Anton...why the fuck the NHS can't help is beyond me...
A week or so before coming out here, I was literally told "Your journey regarding Lyme disease with the NHS is over".
Basically, a test that has recently been proven to be 18% accurate (yes, it gets 82% false negatives) said I was negative. Add to this, they gave me 4 weeks of oral antibiotics, which the NHS website says will cure Lyme. Let's ignore that there was never, ever any science behind that (someone in the US literally just guessed), and a recent study found they could still culture live Lyme disease bacteria from blood samples of Lyme disease sufferers after 9 months of oral antibiotics in 100% of cases. Anyhow, the NHS says I've had my treatment, so they won't treat me. They told me to go see a psychiatrist, but they won't pay for it - I have to get private psychiatric help.
They won't accept the private tests I had done that prove I have chronic infection with Borielia Bergdorferi (Lyme disease) because they weren't done by a PHE (Public Health England) lab - but Porton Down (the lab they send blood to) also isn't accredited to be doing testing. They're a bio-weapons research facility with a sideline in blood testing for the NHS, and aren't accredited to be doing that testing. There's a lab in Germany called Armin Labs that is reported to have a test that is 84% accurate (the most accurate test for Lyme in the world) and they're currently getting accreditation, but I seriously doubt that'll change anything even if I test positive. They've made up their minds that I don't have an infectious disease, dispite never sending me to see an infectious diseases specialist.
This GP, this "doctor" actually told me that I have to accept that I'm sick and stop looking for solutions, just accept it. Just live with the pain, the exhaustion, the seizures, the neural degradation. I'm not joking - she said it right in front of my GF (now my fiancee). It took a buttload of persuasion to get her to give me a private referral to a pathologist who specialises in Boreliosis/Lyme (an NHS doctor, but because he's not in my NHS trust, I can't see him unless I pay for it).
This guy is the UK's leading specialist in Boreliosis, Babesia, Bartonella and related co-infections, and after emailing him my symptoms, he thinks I have either Lyme or one of several emerging diseases he works with, but my GP thinks she knows better than him.
She ignored the fact that I've seen 3 different psychological experts over the last 10 years, all 3 of them have said they do not believe I have psychological based symptoms. She ignores one of the country's leading infectious diseases pathologists, and tells me it's all in my head.
That's the NHS for you now. The Government actually gives incentives to GP's now to NOT make referrals - GP's get more money if they refer less people. There's an actual monetary incentive to fob people off.
The NHS is being torn down from the inside out by the Government, simply because they want to squeeze it's publicly owned assets into the pockets of their mates, jack up the price and get the public to spend more and get less.
I've heard of people not even being given the correct 4 weeks of oral antibiotics when Lyme is suspected. My mum got a weird rash recently that looked a bit like the Lyme rash, and she was given one week of the wrong antibiotic. Even when she showed the doctor the NHS guidelines on the NHS website saying 4 weeks of Doxycyline, she was refused, because in the words of the doctor - "We don't have lyme in this part of the country".
That MIGHT have been true in 1970, but Lyme has spread across the entire US in 10 years. What idiot thinks it can't do the same in England (which has the exact right climate for Lyme) in nearly 50 years???
I mean, there's currently a huge Lyme disease scare with our dogs right now, but they think it's here for our dogs but not here for us?
The level of incompetence in the UK regarding this (literally fatal) disease is staggering. I had to go online and order my mum 4 weeks of Doxycyline from an online doctor. You can get Doxy if you're going to visit Africa (as a precaution against Malaria). So if the NHS asks, I'm visiting rural Africa for the next 6 months, 'k? (Yes, you need to pretend to be out there for 6 months to get 4 weeks worth of Doxy for Lyme).
Lyme is far more deadly than Zika, and affects about 1000x more people worldwide, but it's getting less than 1/10,000th of the funding for research. Lyme is basically identical to Syphalis, but it's passed by the bite of a tick (which can be 1mm across) rather than by sex. It eats your brain, causes symptoms almost identical to Altzheimers, Parkinsons, ALS, MS and a host of other deadly neurological diseases (and various heart conditions) depending on what part of your brain it colonises.
It's not a minor thing, but it's treated like one. It's been described as "the new AIDS" and it's literally reaching epidemic levels in Europe and the US, but the NHS acts like it's no big deal - difficult to catch and easy to treat. It's actually easy to catch (if you were bitten painlessly by a 1mm across creature, would you know?) and really difficult to treat if you don't catch it early (it crosses the blood-brain barrier after a while, so Antibiotics can't kill it, and often hides in your cartilage - causing arthritis and also being out of reach of antibiotics).
So far I'm about 5 grand down on private treatments, but I can walk every day again, so that's money well spent! A couple of months ago, I couldn't walk from my bedroom to my kitchen on some days, and now I'm doing 2+ miles every day.
Not sure how I'm going to pay that back if I don't get well enough to work again, but it's family and I know they don't mind.