Senility and Dementia: Part 1,438

I know I’m being repetitive, redundant, and have posted this on multiple occasions, but I’ll do it again to reiterate what I believe is an important point.

I’m going to speak anecdotally: I am not a researcher in psychiatry nor am I a neurologist and I admit relative ignorance in the science of aging. What I have managed to do is treat well over sixty thousand patients over forty-seven years, and have tracked at least two thousand, and possibly many more, through middle age into old age, often extreme old age. I have in many cases made observations and drawn conclusions which held up over time. So I’d like to make a few statements of what I’ve experienced-I’m not quoting scientific articles or research but simply observation.

Since as a dentist I observed people ever three, four, or six months routinely, I saw people’s medical and psychological improvement and decline as a step-function, rather than as a continuum. Thus, I was in many cases able to discern changes in character prior to the family (in most cases) and note it in the extensive Rolodex in my brain. When I enter a treatment room, I always begin by saying “Good morning (or good afternoon), nice to see you again, what’s new?” and let them go from there. Now when I would notice what I termed a hesitation or change in speech patterns, I would take it very seriously and note it to myself only.

After a number of years, I was able to almost invariably predict who was eventually going to manifest significant mental decline. I will also state for the record that I cannot remember once being surprised when informed that someone was diagnosed. Many individuals followed the usual pattern which I’m certain most here have either experienced or familiar with.

But some had a slow declination with exaggeration of their personality’s vagaries. My folks who were eccentric, egocentric, or psychiatric demonstrated significant accentuation of these behaviors in addition to the usual mental decline. It made dealing with these individuals very difficult and often toxic even in the early going -and many of them I knew for decades. Many stories…some almost funny, some horribly tragic, but in most cases the spouse or children were surprised, and I quite frankly never was.

The point I’m attempting to make is that, for example, Ronald Reagan’s problems were apparent to me prior to his inauguration and I have a hundred people who will attest that I stated at the time, unequivocally that he had early Alzheimer’s disease or other form of dementia. People called me ageist or it’s equivalent in 1980, but I knew when they told the story of the mandatory presence of a glass jar of jelly beans coupled with his speaking style change over the years since he had been governor, that there was an early manifestation of the issue.

With this guy we’ve got now, it’s been going on for a while but slowly, such that the populace gets used to the aberrant behavior and the declining slope of the sanity curve and makes allowances. Note the Harvard and Harlem issue the other day and the Alcatraz nonsense invented from whole cloth. These will increase in frequency and the question is, when does the MSM drop the pretense.

When are they going to do that, those ignorant, cowardly, stupid bastards? That…as the Bard wrote, IS the question.

For your viewing pleasure and amusement:

Two things today: This guy is gonna sign an executive order renaming

the USA to The United States of Trump. You think he won’t do it? The Gulf of America is sufficient to remember Amerigo Vespucci, right? Who cares who Vespucci was…just another sailor. The country should be renamed after “its greatest President” right? RIGHT???

Meanwhile, last weekend my wife and I went out for my birthday dinner to this very nice (and famous at the Jersey Shore) restaurant. We had a drink at the bar and then went upstairs for dinner. Afterwards, when we came downstairs, I remembered that I didn’t have smaller bills to tip the parking lot attendant, so I stopped at the bar, saw the lady bartender, and asked her “Do you remember me?“ She said that she certainly did and I asked her if she could break a 10 for me… That two fives would be fine. She took the bill and walked over to the cash register.

While she was doing that two fairly big guys were sitting at the bar, one of them was wearing the usual red hat with the lettering on it, and he said “I’d have given you two fives for a 20.“ And I said “Yeah, well you need better jokes more than the 20.“ His companion then said “I would have given you a 5 and 3 ones and…“ And I cut him off right there and I said, “And what YOU need to do is improve your math skills.”

Now the interesting part of this is at no time while engaging in this repartee did I look at them, I was watching the lady down the bar and didn’t even give them the dignity of staring at them. The last thing they expected from this older guy was that kind of instant instantaneous comeback and they just sat there semi-stunned. I took my money from the bartender, thanked her, and went out to my car. My wife said to me, “that was amazing how you handled them.“. I remarked to her, “Yeah…but that’s exactly how bar fights start.”

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but you sort of had to be there. Fucking MAGA’s.

So he's gonna live to 200, be the Pope,

would have been a .400 hitter in Major League Baseball, knows more about the military and war than the Generals and Admirals, is 6’3” and 224 pounds, is the greatest President of all time except maybe for Lincoln but not necessarily, had the best first 100 days ever, is MIT-Professor brilliant genetically, is a sexual dynamo with an impressive member, is the most successful negotiator in the history of the world, and is beloved by billions all over the Earth and likely in other solar systems and galaxies.

A bigger load of bullshit has never been created in the history of the known Universe. You would have to harness the power of the Mississippi River to clean out the steaming pile, much as Hercules used a river to clean the stables. I would proffer that you’d need a Dyson sphere-sized Pail to hold all the feces, both literal and figurative.

I find this mildly interesting:(Reflections in a pile of bullshit)

Herein, I am going to examine three so-called medical truths from 1980. Each of these were stipulated to be conclusively effective and absolutely required in executing certain forms of treatment of human beings. If you failed to do any of these things, you were considered to be Subpar, not worthy of your credentials, and in some cases legally liable… Although not necessarily when it came to Good Samaritan laws in certain states.

First, anyone who had heart valve damage or a replacement valve prior to any treatment which might cause bleeding due to invasive processes, required Penicillin, or amoxicillin pre-medication four times a day two days before, the day of, and two days after the treatment. We were told as practitioners that every dose was critically important and if the patient were to admit, missing a dose or two a priori, then we were not to perform the procedure. I cannot begin to tell you the number of hours I spent imploring patients to take the required doses, following the procedure and staying up nights, worried that something bad was going to happen to them, which would ultimately be my responsibility. I am not necessarily talking about legal responsibility, but the idea that I may have damaged someone exceedingly for a dental cleaning or an extraction. But now, we premedicate using antibiotics one hour prior to the procedure and no medication thereafter. Many criteria went into the metamorphosis of this regimen, but the question is why did someone not take this into account for decades? Or conversely, is this dose of medication sufficient statistically? The answer is: I have no frigging idea.

Second, in CPR resuscitation back in the old days, the technique of the pre-cordial thump was sanctioned if you witnessed the patient actually collapse. It consisted of striking the sternum toward the lower part in order to possibly reestablish ventricular rhythm. This was a very, very big deal and was on every single test that we ever took, and it got hammered into us via all kinds of trick scenarios when we were attempting to pass our CPR test so that we may be relicensed. Now it turns out that the pre-cordial thump is no longer recommended at all whatsoever for pre-admission resuscitation. No explanation, no data presented, no contrary opinion, no Nothing it was simply announcement. The assumption, of course, is that new pronouncements are more valid than old pronouncements. Yeah, sort of like when Republicans tell you that in fact, Ukraine invaded Russia and the latter is actually just defending herself. Of course, they will say that studies show whatever, but do recall that there were ostensibly studies in existence which showed that OxyContin was non-addictive, but in fact there were no such studies.

Third, in keeping with the CPR theme, all kinds of complex combinations of breaths and chest compressions were mandated involving one or two individuals rendering CPR and it was absolutely required that everyone know and understand every nuance of the resuscitation protocol because if you dare do it wrong, the patient who has little chance of recovery anyway we almost certainly die. And this major guilt trip was hanging over everybody, as to whether they would remember exactly what to do when the time came if there ever were such a time, and it was thrust upon you randomly and frighteningly. So now, nobody talks about ventilations almost at all whatsoever. It’s all about chest compressions and rescue breaths are secondary - to be given if at all, after thirty chest compressions if able. OK… fair enough…but oh boy do I recall our groups being harangued in the early days by the EMS personnel who used to teach this. Gone are the “staircase ventilations” and all the other nuances of the procedures.

And here’s a bonus for you: for well over a hundred years silver amalgam restorations were placed in back teeth. If well-placed they might last forty years or much more. If questionably placed they might only last twenty to thirty years. In the old days I used to see fillings of long standing with fingerprints in them because the dentist hadn’t bothered to use a condenser to press the material into place and rather used his or her thumb. Really. Now, we place composites, tooth-colored fillings which, if well placed in most individuals may last 5-10 years before they wear and break and if questionably placed, are literally failing as the patient walks out the door. And as an aside, all the cavity preparation has to be is damp and the bond is failing immediately followed by recurrent decay, possibly root canal treatment or extraction.
Now there were some junk science papers that the mercury in the silver fillings was toxic to the patient. I am here to tell you that silver filling material mixed in pre measured capsules has virtually no free mercury and there’s much more in a can of tuna. But in many jurisdictions amalgam use is either forbidden or the patient is required to sign a waiver, so therefore it is rarely used now.

The combination of composite resin use executed poorly and the removal of fluoride from drinking water is going to increase the risk of dental disease exponentially and the profession will be an ideal one to make a fortune during the next thirty years and beyond. Of course, the morbidity and mortality of significant dental disease is not trivial, and death rates definitely go up in areas of poor dental care.

Good frigging luck. The whole system has been dumbed down in many cases due to highly questionable if not fraudulent research performed by hacks and greedy corporations. The point of this post is to demonstrate by example that almost none of us know what the actual facts are surrounding anything in our lives anymore and one cannot rely upon official pronouncements then or now.

To all who were closed out of my previous post due to Postimages:

I sincerely apologize. I have never ever had a problem with that until just this moment. I will switch providers and I thank you for your input. I do so apologize again…

For your general observation:

So he breaks the football trophy and then the Pope dies immediately

This guy is a “Wreckin’ Machine”. (A tip o’ the cap to Burgess Meredith’s character in Rocky 3)

Keep him away from the Statue of David, Mount Rushmore, rocket launches, airports, skyscraper construction sites, and anywhere else where human lives are at risk or valuables may be destroyed.

It’s the opposite of the Midas touch: everything he touches turns to shit.

Pope Francis died, 88

Pick your news outlet.

The Unified Field Theory of American Politics and Civilization: Prologue

My first moment of political thought occurred on Election Night, 1960, when, as a seven year old, I stayed up all night watching the primitive coverage of the Kennedy-Nixon returns on NBC. I was also simultaneously listening to the radio, WOR 710 AM from New York City, since even at that young age, I was a fan of talk radio's premier raconteur Jean Shepherd who at that time had an all night radio show which was mesmerizing. The station was breathlessly reporting the returns coming in from all over the nation. This Presidential Election Night was my first horse-race, my first extra-inning game, my first sudden-death overtime. This...was exciting.

So for sixty-five years I have been closely watching the progression and decline of many aspects of our nation. I at one time was a voracious reader and would exhaustively read the works of authors, both obscure and well-known. Due to my profession, that of general dentistry in a metropolitan environment, I have come into contact with a significant number of individuals, some influential and some not, who are aware of certain occurrences which are not generally known by most, although many are in fact in the public domain. I have watched information and disinformation wars throughout my life, and have been lied to so much by, well, by nearly everybody, that I have a real feel for knowing who is prevaricating. It comes with the clinical territory - similar to how a law enforcement officer will know when something just doesn't "sound right". Everyone has their "tells" and the vast number of individuals would make very bad poker players, even if they sincerely believe that they are adept at telling lies. They should know that they can fool most of the people most of the time, but never ever everybody all of the time.

Some of the ideas which I will present will not be popular and will be instantly negated by some here, if not many. There are those who believe simply that two or more people never ever sit in a room or poolside and plot a strategy, an insidious plan, or an assassination. These individuals demand absolute proof far beyond a reasonable doubt to alter their view of the status quo, and quite frankly, at this age and stage, I have no interest in arguing with them. What I would like to proffer is a synthesis of seemingly unrelated stories and events which may, or may not, demonstrate that there is "something" or somethings" going on which far transcend in the minds of the political and societal hierarchy, any of our "trivial" political skirmishes, or in fact, the health and welfare of tens or hundreds of millions of human beings, to say nothing of "inferior" forms of life, or even the health and welfare and even the existence of the planet.

Much is made of the philosophy spouted now and again concerning significant cataclysmic discoveries that unleashing certain information upon society would destabilize it terribly, possibly leading to riots or mass death. This may or may not be entirely true, but I will attempt to demonstrate over time that we have been slowly readied for significant change, and that change may well be coming, and right soon to paraphrase a plaque in the film The Shawshank Redemption. We have reached a societal plateau of globalization and it has not been random or by chance. I will, using popular themes, attempt to demonstrate this coming radical change.

To digress for a moment, The Unified Field Theory in physics is an attempt to organize all the disparate fields: electromagnetic, gravitational, and the fundamental forces including the forces among elementary particles as well as the fields which allow the description of space-time known as general relativity. This is a monumental task, requiring genius-level understanding of the Universe and its components. At one time, these forces were considered to be entirely separate but no longer and it is my desire to show that many of the things ongoing are quite closely related, and obviously so. One of the interesting sequelae of discoveries in mathematics and physics is that after the fact, people will often say, "Well, that wasn't so complicated. Why didn't someone derive it sooner?" Well, the answer to that question is that in those fields, the genius sees through the complications and visualizes the reduction to simplicity. The derivation of E=mc^2 is rly fairly straightforward, but it took an Einstein to see it first.

Much of what exists in recorded human history is eye-witnessed by individuals. We may always debate the credibility and accuracy of what these people say that they saw and heard, but at some point there comes a time when we must accept a series of possibilities as reasonable truth and draw conclusions. There were multiple individuals in Dallas, Texas on Novermber 22,1963 who stated unequivocally that they saw a rifle barrel, heard a report (shot fired), and saw smoke coming from the white picket fence behind the notorious grassy knoll. Each of these individuals was either told that they had not seen this, that they were mistaken, or were never called upon to testify that they had seen it. This included a police officer who rode his motorcycle up the embankment because he was certain that he had witnessed a rifle shot.

There are military pilots and ground crew who have visualized objects traveling faster than anything conceivable on Earth in a non-ballistic fashion and were told never ever to discuss it or face the wrath of the military in extremis. Why would these individuals fabricate these stories en masse? Civilians who have never been doubted in their lives were suddenly made out to be mental defectives or liars when they reported similar circumstances, Who in his or her right mind would need that?

Now for those of you who believe this all to be hogwash, that the human processing capabilities are unreliable, such as witnessing an event, or hearing a noise or conversation, that there is no plan, no plot, no structure in that which has occurred, then this is not for you. Please spare yourselves the agony of having to cope with what you might term "paranoid, ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy-theories of a delusional old man typing in a basement with Cheetos-stained fingers". For those of you who might be interested in a somewhat different perspective than you are used to reading, I hope that I can stimulate your thoughts to consider things "outside the box" and to further consider that there may be more than three spatial dimensions in true reality, whatever that may be.

Stay tuned: "I'll be back".