chipcom 

Yep, on this we agree.

chipcom 

Who's head is where? I already have what my Dad had, the difference is I'm going to let it kill me all by itself, rather than let a lot of doctors with wonder drugs make my life a living hell in the process. Does Flowmax cure foot-in-mouth disease?

sunday driver

Too bad for you and your dad. Maybe you could develop a self helpless seminar and take it on the road, spread it around to all the people that do trust doctors, that do rely on medications, that do want some hope in their lives, that don't want to leave their families with guilt and feelings of helplessness.

Maybe we should get rid of all the botanically-based and deriviatives of medications, such as narcotic pain meds, heart meds, cancer meds? How about aspirin? Vitamins?
Instead of using aspirin made in a lab from the same chemicals that are found in willows, we could strip the Earth bare of willows and extract the same chemicals from them and produce the same medication in the same labs. That sounds smart.

Something that rarely goes acknowledged by families of patients like your dad that got the runaround with doctors and clinics and treatment plans, is that VERY often the patient is compliant only with the parts of the plan that are easy to follow, or that make sense to them. They strt to shop around for doctors that they think will listen better than the previous doctor, but often the patient--and family--has not been forthcoming with symptoms and complaints and the history of them. It's incredibly frustrating for doctors when patients keep info hidden, or complain only of pain, and only want to be treated for pain and nothing else. People keep things hidden far too long and when they eventually do go to a doctor it's too late, or they go to someone less than adequately qualified to treat them. Hence, second opinions, third opinions, specialists, advanced diagnostics, recurrant lab tests, which is all very frustrating for patients and families. All too often they don't stick with it, or they decide somebody is incompetent because of personality conflict.
Another issue is people get too attuned to one doctor taking care of all complaints, and when something out of their specialty comes along, they don't want to go to a specialist. "I have cancer in my chest. Why can't my cardiologist treat me?" "I have an aortic aneurysm. Why can't the surgeon that took out my gall bladder fix it?" Or best/worst of all: "I don't feel sick. Why do I need all these pills?"

So Chipcom is angry at the practice of healthcare in America, or where ever he is. Fine, he doesn't go to doctors anymore and vent his anger there. Fine. But doctors' schedules are full of patients that are angry about being sick, getting old, being injured. At any given time a person has the choice of how their body is treated, by themselves and by others. But don't blame healthcare for being miserable and dying if you or your family does nothing to access what is available to help yourselves.
And at the age of 47, a person could act more responsible, and a little less selfish, than to denigrate something he knows absolutely nothing about. The difference between Chipcom and his dad is that his dad had some hope for himself, but unfortunately didn't have the guidance and help he needed to make his death less hellish. Unfortunately Chipcom learned the wrong lesson: he learned there is no hope, and the only way out is a miserable death. That's his ignorance and his immaturity. But for the rest of us, we want hope.

davefarb

I have a special technique that enables me to urinate only once per week. Now, my kidneys are rotting and when I do pee, it smells like rancid tuna and has bloody masses in it...but it's only once per week. I defecate once every three weeks. Those turds are rocks. They require mechanical extrication that my wife deplores. My butthole gets deformed.

stapfam

OK. I am an older rider that still rides and still does some strenuous rides at that. A few times I have had to go on drugs to cure a problem and they hit me, and hit me bad. The only thing I take now is aspirin- and I have to have a blinding headache to take that.

I 'll wait till I have a serious problem that requires medication before I take it, and I'll even not take it if it is going to affect me. That medication I take will be prescribed by a Doctor and not a pharmacyst or an advert on the TV and I will also want to know why I have to take it from the doctor.

zeytoun

Yay! Our hero! That Chipcom is sure a jerk. We're all tired of hearing him whine about medicine, and glad that someone had the guts to stand up to the poor little pharmaceutical companies that are just trying to help us feel better. I especially liked the part when you changed tone, and instead of just engaging in a snarky tete-a-tete with Chipcom, you turned to the BikeForum audience, as it were, and used his rapscallian attitude as an object-lesson for the rest of us would-be-helpless-victims. So much so that I will imitate it now.

People, Sunday Driver is a fine example to the rest of us. Unlike people like Chipcom, who says stupid stuff like, Sunday Driver has the maturity that comes only with the sensation of a grapefruit sized prostate squeezing the life out of your urethra. Unlike Chipcom, Sunday Driver has proven credentials demonstrating his knowledge of our individual health needs. He must be a doctor.

Whatever Sunday Driver does, I know this much: he is a peddler of hope.

Thank you fine peddler of hope, thank you.

chipcom 

Oh sorry, I shouldn't be laughing, I should be wailing "oh whoa is me, why didn't I listen to the wise know-it-all and prevent myself from being born with this hereditary disease! If only Dad had used a condom, I might have been born as the heir to a saintly sunday driver! I should have never accomplished all the things I have in my life, I should have just rolled over and accepted a lifetime of drugs and doctors care. Indeed, I guess I should cancel the rest of my life, how can a hopeless waif ever survive!

Gotta give him credit, I'm not sure if I could remove one foot from my mouth and shove the other in as quickly and seamlessly as he has....and I thought I was pretty good at it!

slvoid

Head in ass usually leads to e-coli.

Nachoman

Now you all have me paranoid. I'm going to start mixing flowmax in with my Gatorade.

sunday driver

I don't understand your line of reasoning. If your dad had used a condom, you wouldn't have been born. Unless you have such grandiose thoughts of yourself that you would've been the product of immaculate conception?
But really, I don't care--and neither does anybody else--if you are hopeless or hopeful (you certainly don't hope for help of valid treatment or cure for yourself, do you?) So what have you accomplished? Do you help anybody else with your same disease? Do you help children with the disease? Do you bring comfort and support to people that are in the end stages of their lives? Or do you bring gloom and fewer ideas of hope with your anti-medicine rantings? Do you tell the parents of children with the disease that just because your father died a miserable ****ing death, everybody else should too? According to you, his doctors were incompetent, therefore all doctors are incompetent? He (which is a statistical set of ONE, by the way) received crappy treatment, maybe because that's all there was at the time when your father had the disease, so therefore all treatment forever more will be crappy? Are you doing anything to advance the treatment of the disease? Or is it just easier for you to piss and moan about it? And just what the hell does your father's death have anything to do with Flomax? Are you able to explain that to me? Or is your anger over his misery so all-encompassing?
But Chipcom, you win. You the biggest jackass of the group. That's what you want isn't it? To win something? Well, you win that award. But it looks like your Romper Room groupies have followed you here. Good for you. But you still haven't told us the reason why you think the side effects of Flomax are more difficult to deal with than the effects of BPH. I wish you'd just answer that much for me. But you evidently just don't have anything intelligent to say about it. But I don't want to keep you from your playdate any longer.

It's not your inability to grow up, it's your inability to ask an intelligent question is what truly makes you an ignorant person.

neurocycler

I thought I was the only one who'd seen Dune, I mean... what's a Fremen?

chipcom 

Hey dude, I'm not the 'expert' who's been making judgements and diagnosis from a position of cluelessness, all springing from a simple statement that you can't even deny contained no errors of fact. Indeed, the root problem here seems to be what someone else already mentioned - excessive anal retentiveness, combined with a total lack of humor and an unhealthy anger towards anyone might actually attempt to be light-hearted. I suspect you have another axe to grind as well, but I really don't much care. Get over yourself, life's too short to be such a sour-puss. Geesh.

Cyclaholic

Wow! Sunday Driver is like the Helmet Head of the general cycling forum.....

....and isn't taking Flomax before getting into a pi$$ing contest like this one a bit like pro cyclists taking EPO?

cuda2k

Ok, gentlemen, both young and old, I think we've had enough of this debate here. I don't think that the original post was intended to be a debate on the worth of the drug in question, but the fact that they are using cyclists in their marketing. If you want to continue this debate, please take it elsewhere such as PMs. And also remember, while you may not always agree with other member's opinions, please be respectful of each other during your discussion. Thank you.