Door swing survey

Was the purpose of the HOA visit to discover how many residents were in flagrant violation of HOA rules regarding which way the main entry door swings?

"HeyBub" wrote in news:8o2dnQ3TYMUwP_bQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Bubby, that is a csae of hineininterpretieren, or I missed your smiley here.

:-)}

No, just the annual meeting notice. This is not a real HOA (no deed restrictions or lien powers) and we have the opposite problem from most HOAs nobody has an opinion about anything. The big issue at the meeting will be the menu for the Easter cookout. It is a very low pressure environment. All we really maintain is a park shelter and a boat ramp. Nobody really screws with you for having a car up on blocks in the driveway and you can paint your front door any color you want, no matter which way it swings.

In this case it is probably a sample of what they were building all over this area at that time. This was not a builder specific neighborhood. The houses were all built independently over the last 50 years. I am sure I would get a similar result if I looked at any of the places around here that only sold lots and you build your house. I suppose you could use street view on Google to see.

"HeyBub" wrote

Gawd! We do HOA reserve studies. Over 600 now. We're the beancounters, and have nothing to do with nothing. But homeowners glomm on to us and have to tell us all sorts of tales of drunkenness and cruelty with regard to their HOA's.

Go figger.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

wrote

We have a HOA at our cabin. The dues are $25 a year. There are 17 cabins. We have a natural spring water system, maintained by an M.D. who has a cabin there. I hope nothing happens to him. We have never had a meeting or collected dues. Yet, more than $425 worth of work gets done every year. We just pass the hat, and cover for owners who aren't there until they visit, then no problemo collecting. But, some people MUST have rules and laws. And, don't forget the enforcers ....... Oh, my, if we had enforcers, we couldn't have the three and four cabin parties with tents in the yards for the kids, or a lot of it.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

wrote

Here's an interesting site in Nevada. We use it to get definition re: property lines, and what belongs to who, mainly on landscaping in big projects. Tons of personal info, and very helpful. You can get owner info on any lot that goes back to when they brought the dirt in.

But we use Google Earth to get more precise measurements. Google Earth does not make any property line delineation unless it is a government installation, Nat. Park, some others. Google Earth is also very useful for us planning ATV rides, and exploring the wilds around here before we go. And for even looking around the world.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

"SteveB" wrote in

BRAIN FART!

My husband has fibromyalgia. I can't quite recall what he takes for it (he's a grownup and manages his own pills), but he doesn't spend much time sitting on his ass bitching. He certainly doesn't spend his life all doped up.

Cindy Hamilton

I understand the street price of both Vicodin and Oxycontin is up to $1.00 per milligram, so an 80 mg tab of Oxycontin could be as much as $75 (more likely it's around $60, but it depends on the market).

A 30-day supply, two tabs per day, would be about $3500+. If you're on Medicaid, the script would cost you from $1.10 to $4.40.

Um, there're two kinds of Oxycontin addicts:

1. Those who take it for pain relief, it hurts when you don't take it.
2. Drug addicts who shoot it intravenously. It feels really good when you do so. It hurts when you don't take it.

Yeah, I understand.

There may actually be a disease but I think every one I know who say they have it, do it for the pills. These are people who I have known for 40-50 years.

I believe a good physical therapy program would mitigate or eliminate most of their symptoms without drugs. I have a particularly ugly form of arthritis (RA) along with some garden variety osteoarthritis and I am mostly drug free. 30 Voltaren lasts me over a year.

Now, that's a more legitimate response, so I'm willing to share a piece of information with you. No, on second thought, I'll ask you if you would like to put your RA under control? With a drug that would cost about 9 cents a day, and with the only side-effects, if present, being some sleep irregularities and more vivid dreams during the first week or so, and with that the dividend of being less likely to get cancer. That's a question to you, and anyone else.

And they feel crummy when they wake up, don't they?

Not for nothing, but that's a pretty inane way to phrase what you seem to be saying. If someone has been helped, or knows of others that have been helped, by a product/drug/whatever, the normal thing to do would be to spread the word.

The way you phrase it you come across as a salesman. "Would you like to save three hundred dollars a month?" Sheesh.

OK I will bite? What is it

... and don't say Methotrexate

I have read the 4 page warning sheet on that. The "don't do while on this drug" reads like my daytimer.

I HAVE spread the word, but certainly not on a home repair site.

You asked for it, here goes. This is going to read like an Urban Legend, but it's not. Promise I'm not making any of it up as I go along, either. But it can be a message of hope for someone with Cancer, autoimmune dysfunction, and other conditions. Even autism and Alzheimer's.

In 1977, the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology was shared by 3 researchers studying endorphins (endogenous morphine) (spelled several ways). Part of the activity was to use a drug called naloxone to inactivate them. Example-person with dental pain comes in, is told they are getting a medicine that will reduce the pain, and it does. But the "medicine" was sterile water. Then they were told they were going to be given something even STRONGER, to reduce the pain even more. But it didn't. Because this time they were actually given the drug Narcan.

A person can be brought in with respiratory depression from a narcotics overdose. Naloxone (Narcan) is given, and that person can be up and chatty within minutes. The narcotics have been removed from their receptor sites, they are just drifting around in the system with no place to go. Pretty impressive.

Well, there happens to be a lot of narcotics addicts out there, and during the Nixon era, there was a push to develop an oral version of Narcan. After all, there would be no point in holding someone up for money to get the narcotics if the narcotics were not going to give any effect.

And indeed, such a drug was developed, it was named Naltrexone. Give a narcotic or an alcoholic this drug in the morning, no point in hitting the needle or bottle during the day.

The New York court system put an enormous number of its jailed narcotics and alcohol addicts on probation, contingent on taking the Naltrexone once a day. No depending on them to do it, either. The terms of their probation were that they had to show up at the community center to be given it by a person who made sure there was no doubt that it was indeed taken, swallowed, etc. And it was so nicely water-soluble, once it was down and watered in, it was sufficiently absorbed for the day. (Later, an abdomen implant was developed to bypass the daily administration)

But anyway, going back to the addicts. They didn't like to take it. Because it made them feel crummy, with no prospect of feeling better with narcotics.

At about this time, in 1983, a New York physician, Dr Bahari, a neurologist and immunologist, noticed that his drug addict patients were showing up with new sets of symptoms. Rare stuff, like Kaposi's Sarcoma, other stuff that was later put into the symptom- set of AIDS. His patients were getting it from shared needles, and there was no cure. At that time, AIDS patients were only showing a 9% survival rate. So Dr Bahari's addict patients were not only feeling extra crummy, they also knew they were destined to die very soon, and in a dreadful fashion.

Dr Bahari hired a researcher to check endorphin levels in the blood, since the addicts were apparently self-medicating for some reason. Sure enough, the level of naturally-occurring endorphins was only a fourth to a third of what the "normal" population has. And the narcotics (or alcohol) brought the level up towards what others (such as myself) take for granted.

Well, Dr Bahari used this information to see if there was some way of helping his patients perhaps feel better, like giving it at different times, amounts, etc. They found that the critical thing is that by giving less than a tenth of the 50mg dosage, at bedtime, it appears that the body checks the endorphin level during sleep, and if it is at "zero", it brings the level up. In the addict research, it was brought up to three to four hundred percent of what they had as THEIR baseline level.

So here were addicts waking up feeling refreshed with endorphin levels as high or perhaps higher than their nonaddict counterparts. And so it was very easy to keep participants in a study when all they had to do to continue to feel so good was to take a small dose of narcotics antagonist at bedtime. How counter- intuitive would that be? Isn't that bizarre?

Interestingly, the addict patients of Dr Bahari survived at a rate over 30%, instead of less than 10%. (There's a trial on AIDS patients in Mali now)

But anyway, enough for the addicts for a bit.

As a neurologist, he was sent a patient with Multiple Sclerosis. This is a condition in which the body attacks part of itself, the nerve sheath, in the process of dealing with something else, such as possibly the wheat protein. There wasn't really a lot he could do for her, other than give her drugs to suppress the immune system's activity, but she had also mentioned how she felt bad in the morning and how it got worse over the day. Dr Bahari, with his experience with the addicts, told her about the low dose naltrexone that was helping them feel better in the morning, and suggested she give it a try. Not only did she start feeling better in the morning, her M.S. symptoms STARTED GOING AWAY.

By using less than a tenth of the dosage of a medicine that was already approved. At bedtime.

Ahh, but here's the rub. In order to get the tenth dosage protocol to be anything other than "off-label", it needs several millions in clinical studies, etc. Dr Bahari wasn't going to do that, and neither were any of the other doctors that were using the protocol.

The immune system doesn't really have a lot to do. It just needs to be able to discern what is supposed to be there, and what's not. And if it doesn't get adequate signals, it can be like the blindfolded boxer. Strong, but misguided. The endorphins appear to provide a substantial part of that signal, and if they are deficient, the immune system will be, too. Not a matter of "making it stronger" but rather "giving it better direction".

So Dr Bahari also used the protocol for people with cancer, as have several other physicians. It's one of those "can't hurt, might help" things. After all, it is already approved at ten times the dose rate, and its only side effects appear to be sleep irregularities and more vivid dreams during the first week or so. There are people with pancreatic cancer, essentially a death sentence, living for years with the low dose naltrexone (LDN) as their only medicine. Same thing for lots of other cancers. Including metastatic breast cancer. Among the LDN community, there is a saying. "Until there's a cure, there's LDN". No surprise, there's an LDN internet group with over 5,000 members.

Well, no problem with side effects, especially considering the side effects of some of the nasty drugs that are approved. But how about the COST? Now that's a problem. If I were to go in to my doctor and tell him how I have a good job, and a narcotics habit I'm afraid I will be caught at, and want something to help keep me "clean", the doctor could prescribe the generic version of Revia, the 50mg version of naltrexone. And with insurance, a month's supply may be about 38 dollars.

Take one of them, dissolve it in 50 cc of distilled water, leave it in the refrigerator, and shake it up and draw off 4.5 cc for the nightly dose. That's about 12 doses per tablet, thirty tablets. Pretty doggone close to a year's supply for less than 40 dollars. About a dime a day. Care to speculate why no drug company would even consider getting an approval for this to become mainstream medicine? Besides, naltrexone went generic years ago, hard to see any profit, easy to see why it would be kept a professional secret. After all, it would compete with detox centers, weight loss sites, very expensive medications, etc. See why I characterized it as being like an Urban Legend? Even as a premeasured capsule from a compounding pharmacy, it would only be about a dollar a day, and much more portable. What's the point of having made a career of narcotics rehab when all the addict would have to do is come in for prescription renewal? And there are plenty of people that know it's not likely to be made an over-the-counter medicine. On both sides of the pharmaceutical industry fence.

Besides helping the body recognize cancer cells, how about the other stuff? What about the other "immune dysfunctions"? Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, all kinds of other things that are characterized as "autoimmune". Give the body the right signal, get it to stop working against you.

Recent study of Crohn's patients showed a 67% remission rate, with over 80% being much better, nearly 70% of those in remission. That's almost 7 in 10, for a condition that people have had to "learn to live with". How about M.S? Recent study of the worst kind of Multiple Sclerosis being resolved, with the most vocal victim being Joseph Wouk, son of Herman Wouk the author of "The Caine Mutiny". Joseph's left arm was dangling and useless, they thought he needed spinal surgery, then he was diagnosed with M.S., and while he was awaiting approval for Tsabra, which is really nasty stuff, he found out about and got admitted into an LDN study. Three months later, he was able to comfortably use his left arm. He has a 30 minute YouTube commentary on it.

The drug companies aren't doing the studies, it's the universities. Princeton recently took 10 women with fibromyalgia, 6 of them got better with the LDN protocol. I'm annoyed with that study because they did not differentiate why the fibromyalgia was there. Because it is very rare to be a stand-alone condition. It's there because of a co-morbid condition. If the other condition was thyroid deficit, LDN wouldn't help, but if it were Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, it could. Rheumatoid, yes, osteoarthritis, no. Cancer, yes, malnutrition, no.

How else, besides narcotics and alcohol, do people feed their endorphin bank? Excitement, comfort foods, even scratching a cat, being spoken to in a complimentary way, all kinds of other ways. Eating protein, starches, etc. Alcohol has 7 calories/gram, quickly absorbed. Even vomiting causes an endorphin increase. A late-runner, the one that keeps resetting the alarm clock, then rushes around to make up the time, has learned an endorphin- enhancing technique. As has the kleptomaniac, so many others. Including the parachutists, the bungi-cord jumpers, white-water rafters, etc. Alcoholism is very common among police, fire, EMS, and military. Feed that endorphin bank. Don't forget chocolate to help reduce the rate of endorphin degradation.

A person with rheumatoid arthritis or whatever is under doctor care. Far as I'm concerned, if the person's doctor is not or has not been willing to advise about the possibility of hope with LDN, I'm not the one to tell them. It's up to them to make the push, and they have frequently already given up. So I quietly listen to the person telling about how the sophisticated drugs have not been able to beat the cancer, or others tell about their fondness for particular foods, or how they really live for a fast car, etc. Not everything enhances endorphin production, but a lot of foods, activities, etc. serve that function.

The antidepressant industry is massive, same for the pain medicine market, as well as the illicit narcotics industry. Every person in need getting a boost in their morning endorphans quota for a little over a dime a day would cripple several industries, can't have that. But on a personal level, it might not have too much impact on the world economy for a few not having to live with a condition.

Anybody that got this far, congratulations. You were subjected to Monologue #23. Any research, pro or con, is up to you. Yes, there are negatives. But when weighed against the alternatives, not significant ones. But I invite all to decide for themselves. Research? Just use LDN as one search term, cancer or whatever condition as the second. Or use "low dose naltrexone", in quote marks, as one of the terms. Could even see some stuff about how it can help Autism, with its abnormally high endorphin levels.

Or, hey, read about the efforts to get Oxytrex approved. A single microgram of naltrexone with Oxycontin to keep from having to progressively ramp up the dose for the same levels of analgesia.

Interesting stuff. At least, I find it so.