I just came back from the doctor's office. He wanted to see me to follow up on a letter he received back from a specialist he sent me to.

Some back story. There are, basically, 3 endocrinologists in my town. - I used to see until she went crazy - I've seen a few times. He's the superior type of doc that doesn't believe patients have the right to make their own health decisions. He thinks he's god. He's also lazy and recommends treatments that will make HIS life easier, irrespective of how that will impact the patient. I've literally had shouting matches with him because he won't listen. Any time you ask a question he takes it as a challenge to his authority - any question at all. - I've only been to once and wouldn't go back to even if I was quite literally dying. We were joking about Dr. House the other day, well she's Dr. House without the genius, if you can imagine that. All patients lie to her. She has absolutely no bedside manner. She asks questions to "trap" you and then answers back without listening, assuming she already knows what you're going to say (and its a lie anyway).

So my doc needed to send me to see an endocrinologist because I wanted to change my meds and he doesn't feel qualified to do the job properly. He gets why I have a problem with & 3. However, he's never believed me when I say that is crazy even when I've described some of our interactions. So I agreed to go back and see . That was 6 weeks ago.

So today, I'm in there and he's reading the letter from . She's recommended that I should be put on a certain medication (which, it turns out I'm already on), for a newly diagnosed condition (which I was diagnosed with years and years ago) because this can lead to yet another condition (which I already have). Nothing about why I was sent to see her in the first place.

My doctor was nearly sputtering....but, but, you already....and mumbling other stuff.

So I say "like I said, she's crazy"

"She probably just had a bad day" he says.

I wanted to laugh so hard. Anyway, it doesn't bother me. I don't care if she's crazy, she gave me the new meds I wanted and any follow up from this point purely involves blood tests with actual numbers that she isn't likely to mess up.

so basically what you are saying is free medical care is not all we have heard it is cracked up to be.

I am sorry you have been and are going through so much. I hate docs sometimes. And yet, what would we do without them? Years and years and years ago I injured my back and was taken to the ER. The specialist who was on call was not in the hospital so they spoke to him on the phone. He ordered them to give me a total of 19 shots in my spine. All without having examined me or seen x-rays or anything else. I refused the shots. He eventually came to the hospital and stormed into my room and proceeded to use a sharpie to draw on the sheet of my bed to make a diagram of what he thought he was going to see in my spine and why I needed the shots and then to have my spine entirely fused together! Well, I ended up refusing his treatment completely and got kicked out of the place. An ambulance had to take me home. (This was on a Saturday.) On monday I was taken to a chiropractor who kept me in his office for a week, literally. After that I was in a wheelchair for about a month. BUT I eventually got out of that chair and never had my spine fused or any of the shots. I still have back problems and they really are worse the older I get but still.

Doctors can be total crackheads.

Its not free by a long shot! Its paid for in a lot of different (indirect) ways. But, overall, I still think its better. Yeah, I've had a lot of crackpot doctors and just plain bad doctors, but I've also had some great ones.

Your ER doc sounds like major ass - doctor is god type. Do what I say or get kicked to the curb? There is so much wrong with that! I'm glad you were able to find a solution that worked for you.

All I want from a doctor is advice. I want to know what's wrong and what my options are. Yes, even the options that the doc doesn't believe will really help. I want a realistic assessment of how things will progress if I don't do anything at all - and by this I don't mean vague future health threats that may or may not happen. They sometimes put so much emphasis on making the outlook seem so bleak because they want to SCARE you into THEIR treatment of choice. I don't want scare tactics, I want facts. Not a child who needs to be told the boogieman will get me if I don't listen to mom and dad.

I once had a great doc who used to say this is the problem. These are solutions. Option A has the best chance of working, however, option B is non-invasive and easy, but only works in 30% of cases. I recommend we start with option B, and if it works, great, if not we can then move on to option A. Then she'd wait for me to ask further questions, or make a decision without pushing. The point was that I was the one who had to live with the consequences, so it was up to me. I was so sad the day she moved her practice to another city.

Well, yeah, I realize free is never really FREE!

All I want from a doc is drugs :D

.. mind if I come here for a shriek and scream y'all.. I hope not. First, WTH is going on with this damn Twisted staff! I asked Ike (Solsticespirte) about it and then Jenn (smilesnz) sent me to a thread where the BA are going to make weapons stat based now!? What sense does that make? Does anyone understand it? From what I understand just 1 stat will change the focus of staff. If you have 3500 Str and 3501 Def it'll be a defense based weapon? Im so confused - tiers were bad enough to try and figure out but weapons that will be faster if yall happen to have a point more on speed then the other two? What is the point of that shit?

And second.. AAAAAAAAAAAH! What did they do to wishlists?! It's like other collections now, page after page instead of just scrolling down to see whats on it! I do not like change in the first place and this change the worst yet I think! How can we do a quick search for a little something to send to a friend if there's 10, 15 or 20 pages that we have to wait on to load?

Not liking either of these things one little bit. Not one bit. Is it just me?

edits Im sorry Lypsyl, I came in here to freak out because I don't want to say much more about it in the lair, sometimes I've noticed if I see something I don't like others jump on the bandwagon and next thing you know they're in an uproar because of something I said.. in here I can speak my mind - like that ^ there but I also didn't see your posts about the doctor.

I hadn't seen or heard about any of these changes. I HATE CHANGE. The wishlist I assume was to make it load faster. You know what I don't see on there? "You have this item" And I hate that being gone! I used that all the time for gifting.

Stat based weaponry? UGH. How on earth are we ever supposed to figure that out? I will end up using the same weapons I always use because it will be too confusing to figure out.

Where has everyone been? It has been so quiet in here lately. Not only am I not getting any tickets or whatever they are called today, but I miss you guys!

I noticed that too, that came in so handy, they just have to put that back - putting it back the way it was would be even better. As for weapons if this is how things are gonna go, they'll look good in my gallery or wardrobe.

I posted something about the new staff's stats vanishing and Ike mentioned what's being called a 'stat-based weapon build' which I had no idea what that meant. So, this is what Ike said:

I was like wait.. what!? So just 1 point changes the weapon!? Jenn posted the link to where Jason says thats the way it's gonna be basically and asked me if it made sense and I tried, I really did but it just makes no damn sense to me.

http://subeta.net/forums.php/read/818609/Focus-and-Skull-Staff-RESEARCH-THREAD/7

shakes my head What's the freaking point, ya know? But I learned way back when the cap was cough suggested cough that suggestions are eye candy, so I didn't bother posting.

Why yes please, lets do make battling even more complicated and inscrutable. I don't get it now, never mind adding weapons that change based on if you trained or not yesterday. My pet takes 8.5 frigging hours to train once...and what if I have her all set up the way I want, then collect her pay from work and get a stat gain...or decide to work on scratching my 5 billion scratchcard achievement? Or wander the site randomly and get a stat RE? What then???? Granted there currently only exists one weapon like that and I don't own it, but apparently that's the direction they're all headed to.

Training already takes way too long, and trying to train to a specific way so you can use a certain weapon? Doesn't make sense since they'll just build a bad guy you can't beat with that weapon and then what do you do? You really, really need a jack of all trades pet on this site. Trying to specialize just allows you to fight one big opponent and leaves you completely vulnerable to everyone else. So what are they trying to encourage everyone to have multiple battle pets? Well fine, if they want to go that way, then dammit allow us to build and save armory setups!

I am beginning to hate what battling here has morphed into and battling was one of the reasons I came here from Neo in the first place. I know these guys, Jason and I were battle buddies back in the day, so I honestly tried to understand why this was being introduced - every time I read it I got more confused. Since the Battle gods first started jacking with weapons Ive wondered how the hell a newbie going to learn how to battle when every time we turn around they're changing this or revamping that. But this, this idea takes the cake.

Seriously, if you're sending troops to war, do you choose a rifle that does exactly what it says it'll do or one that changes from an attacker to a defender to being what.. swift-ness (no clue what a speed-build might do) because you forgot to check how they were feeling that day? Decisions, decisions.

The only thing I got out of what Jason said was he plans on using the "stat-based build" from now on and to that I say yeaaaah, no thanks. I'm good.

And that's a good point - if they can come up with whatever kind of programming it takes for a weapon that's icons change based on each pet's stats why cant they figure out how to save weapon lineups or a scroll library/armory. We have drawers for wardrobe, it cant be that big of a stretch to save weapon sets too.

They can trash a weapon in a matter of seconds but it took a year and a half to get 1 stat unblocked. Using Google I found an old thread where someone asked about maybe using exp for Intel and one of the guys said not gonna happen, keep reading books. I couldn't let that one fly without responding.

(I remember this because it actually got their attention) A few days later Amy asked me if I would mind using a few boosters to see if the Lady was able to gain intel from them. How hard was that to program? I have no clue, but I'll bet it was a lot easier then whatever it's gonna take to set up this.

Back to the wishlist topic for a second. Destiny posted this:

Ok. Right. So let's do it right before the biggest shopping seadon of the year! WOO!

battling. SO what are pets that are already stat capped supposed to do? There is no way we can "even up" our pets at this point. Unless they do away with the cap we are doubly screwed. I won't be rushing out to grab new weapons if they are going to be made this way.

I hope they figure something out, yeah, we can always do an account search like in days of old but like you said, we've got about 4 weeks before trees show up, dont we? groans Did they say anything about the changes before they put it in play? I didnt come on subeta until late this afternoon so I didnt read the news, just scanned over it quick.

And yeah.. believe it or not having a capped pet was what started me on that tantrum. ^^;; The cap has always been a sore spot with me and I got pissed yet again and lost my train of thought. If they lift the cap I would blow a gasket.

There are a few boosters that have negative effects but that would cost us a fortune to drop a few stats so I dont know what we're suppose to do except stuff any other new toys from battling into our gallery if we're not gonna use it in wardrobe. The only way I'll be putting any sP into weapons from now on is if it's something we have to buy, like the seasonal challengers from the cash shop .. even tho I'll never use it, I'll still buy whatever I have to. I wish I could say I wouldnt but I would - I know I would.

as much as I do not want you to blow a gasket....I really am hoping they lift or raise the cap. There are a couple of challengers I just have not been able to max out (One I only beat once!) And I want that loot, dammit!

And yes, I am with you. I will buy whatever they come up with just to have it. But it is more fun to say NEVER!

I was never into battling, its just not my thing. I trained my main pet because I could see it was something I might someday want to look into and the training system was so slow that if I didn't start right away I'd never have a chance to get into it. But I can say that every single "improvement" they've made to the system has made me like it less and less. My pet will NEVER be good enough and that's just depressing.

I also spent oodles and oodles of sP on a weapon set that worked great for me. It made battling fun for a little while. Then they revamped the system and not only did my whole method have to change, but the mega-millions I'd spent suddenly had next to 0 value. That pissed me off, discouraged me and made me totally and completely reluctant to spend any amount of sP on weapons, because those might lose all value yet again. As a result I have a pet with decent stats, who can't fight worth a damn because I refuse to spend 50% of my sP resources on something that will not retain its value over time.

I was actually never a fan of the "you have this item" for a number of reasons. First of all, when I was working on my hoarder achievement, the vast majority of time, I wanted to look for items that I had extras, not just one. Second, it showed you items that were glued to collections, so I didn't have them avail to give away even if I wanted to. And I hoard so much stuff that I can look at a wishlist and "you have this item" shows up more often than not, so I still ended up having to run countless account searches.

Second it really slowed down loading times and more often than not, wishlists would crash my system. Or I'd get the time out error, or subeta down error and have to reload and waste more time. Wishlists have always been annoying and slow to load, but when then added that feature, it made it way worse.

I like pagination, but I think they make the pages too small. There needs to be some compromise between keeping a low amount of items per page for fast loading, and breaking it down into so many pages that your time saved loading the whole thing isn't eaten up by having to load so many pages.

I do hope they come up with something to replace the "you have this item" - but its just so typical of how they work. Something's broken. Decide on a way to fix it without taking into consideration how its going to end up even more broken. Look for solutions after the fact. Let it drag on for months, or even years.

I understand where you are coming from with the "you have this" bit. I would see it more often than not of wishlists too. I generally have a pretty good sense of what I have in collections vs. what I have that can be accessed to gift or sell so I didn't have to do too much searching. I had the constant crashing when trying to load them too. I think everyone did. I understand "fixing" that issue, it sure needed fixed. But yeah, like you said fix it RIGHT. And I totally agree about the pages being to short now! We can handle more than what, 30 items a page? Maybe they are trying to make it useable for phones?IDK. It is annoying in so many way.

yep, I totally agree.

new subject, haha Why do they release cash shop stuff when it is only 2 or 3 weeks before black friday? I know there is no guarantee that there will be a sale but still, don't they know that most people are going to wait and see?

I actually appreciate that. I like to try to buy up CSC before a sale or event so I can buy it cheaper. Knowing I intend to buy something gives me a better idea how much CSC I should try to pick up.

interesting how we have such different takes on the same thing. I guess that is why they can never make everyone happy, lol. I have a hard time controlling myself when there is something in there I want to buy. That beanbag is just screaming at me not to wait! But I know if I do buy it now I will be kicking myself later. I did buy the beanbag from this month's collection but held off on getting the other things. Now, those weird morostide things they released near the end are not calling my name at all! I will probably get them during the sale but I will almost for sure never wear them so they are not eating me alive with their BUY ME screams!

LOL, and there's a reason for them to release stuff right now :P They know the instant gratification people will spend spend spend even when they know it isn't in their best interest.

For me, there are several good reasons to wait. One is that I often find that I just don't want the thing as much as I thought I did when I first saw it. Second, its generally easier on my pocket book, either because I can buy it cheaper on sale, or from another user, or acquire it another way. Third, the longer I want something, the more I appreciate it when I finally get it - but that's very much a personality thing and its not something a person can learn or unlearn.

you are just so logical and reasonable and...MOTHERLY!