A high proportion of the posts dealing with mainstream medical topics are by people who see this forum as a place to denigrate evidence-based medicine. Then, when others respond to false and misleading claims and set the record straight, they are criticized for not sticking to herbal topics. Similarly, when a particular herbal or other alternative remedy is questioned as ineffective and/or dangerous, there are often gratuitous followup posts attacking mainstream medicine, when the original poster has not recommended or even mentioned mainstream treatment for the problem. So, most of the time it's alt med advocates who bring up the subject of mainstream medicine. There are instances where a poster asks about an herbal treatment for a problem, and is advised to seek an accurate diagnosis first from a physician before pursuing any treatment. This is not meant to rule out herbs or supplements as eventual treatment, but some find it unacceptable and threatening to mention physicians in any context other than a critical one. As for ad hominem/personal attacks, the best strategy is to disregard them and only address health-related remarks and questions. Once trolls realize they can't get a rise out of opponents or spark a flame war, they usually get bored and leave.

Yes, there is Trillium. Also many doctors do not have samples of certain medications and unfortunately are not always able to get them for patients. The senior plan - post 65 with the $100 deductible and a co-pay covers only a portion of the cost of the drug - and the list of drugs covered is decreasing (just ask a pharmacist). My husband turned 65 in Dec. but is still working. However he first had to submit his prescriptions to the Ontario Drug Board - and pay the prorated portion of the $100 annual fee (the full fee is payable each August) and then submit the balance to his office plan. I called the Ontario Drug Board and asked because it seemed backwards to me, but then what can I say? He has 2 prescriptions - the "senior" plan covers 75% of the cost and he pays the balance. But his office plan only covers up to 90% of generics and has a limited dispensary fee - and he cannot claim the $100 deductible against his drug plan - yet the office drug plan is a taxable benefit to him and he has to pay a reasonably high premium for family coverage (NOT tax deductible by the way). So not everything is rosy. I am with jasdip on this - many things do not make sense. And of course I have serious issues with generics - good thing I have only one prescription and the name brand is now hard to get since it is no longer being made. I did try the generic form - the fillers were the issue. So while I can get it I am paying for it. A doctor's note would not help my case - if it comes in generic form - end of story. A young woman I know is covered by Trillium and cannot take the generic form of a particular medication. She had to obtain special approval from Trillium to have the cost of the name brand covered (her doctor etc. had to be involved). Now based on my experience she is concerned that the name brand of the drug might cease to be produced in favour of generics. She was right to be worried - she checked. It hasn't happened yet but it will be in the near future. In my case since I am paying anyway I could fill my yearly prescription and just pay myself - but the pills have an expiry date - as in the active part of the meds. The current batch expires May, 2014. My pharmacist is trying to source a later dated batch for me but the pills are on back-order - if they even show up - and it might take months. I expect this to be the last batch if I can get it. Plan B pill did not work - my doctor is about to have samples! I took only one and that was one too many.

raek, I understand you sooooooooo much and I really,really know where you are coming from. You say : "I said something like...Thanks for giving us that time together, it really meant alot to me." I don't really want to spend to much time on this point because it has happened in the past,....but ......i still think (please don't take it personnaly) that it was a little bit mean to do that. I mean who cares if she allowed your father or not to go and visit you. That was between them. If anything, it should have been your father who thanked her for letting him do something alone not you. Disengage, disengage, disengage. It's not with her you want to make a new start. It's with your dad. You don't need to be disrespectful towards your father's wife however. Did you notice how I am using less and less the words "" your SM'' or ""my oldest SD'' ( i did in an early post this morning, but I'm doing it less and less. Even when i talk about her to whoever. I know say : my DH's oldest daughter. Perhaps you could always refer now to your SM as your dad's wife, spouse, partner, lover, whatever but not ''My SM''. It's a little way of disengaging that I read about on this Web site. It helps. I agree with you also on another point you made. Why would someone travel somewhere when the people they will see aren't his or her friends. DH's oldest daughter just moved back in our city but for a few years she lived five hours from us with her DH and two young kids. You would not believe the number of times DH has asked me to go with him and visit them, the number of times his oldest daughter has begged me to go and visit her, the number of times her then husband asked me to go and see their place!!! Every single time I said NO, i found an excuse...anything, i couldn't leave the dog alone for so many days, I didn't want to put him in a kennel cuz it was too expensive and I didn't want to have to put him through a five hour car drive, etc.etc. I swear to god this went on for about three years and all the time I kept telling Dear hubby why do you keep on insisting on this issue. I will not go visit your daughter. One day he did it again. I said ok you want to push it well here is my answer why I won't even bother a single minute to put myself throught such a trip. I said '' Remember the day your daughter got married. He said yes. I said do you remember how she celebrated everybody she loved and wanted near her on that day by offering them a beautiful corsage to wear. He said yes i remember that. Well, I said, was I amongnst these people. Did your daughter offer me a corsage considering I had been in her life for 14 years at that point? DH said no. So, i said. why in the world would I want to go in your daughter's house when on the most important day of her life she ignored me like you ignore a dog and she has never, never to this day thanked me for the money we (DH and I) gave them as a wedding day!!!!!!! Since then DH has never bothered me or asked me again to go to her house and i don't intend to ever go to the new place she will eventually have once she leaves her mom's place. Finally, raek you say : "I start to remember that he didn't really reach out to me a whole lot even when she wasn't in the picture, but my dislike for her and her's for me has driven an even bigger wedge between the 2 of us." It is so true. I too for a long time really disliked DH's oldest daughter. I blamed everything on her but now i know that DH is just as guilty. He always put her needs first to the detriment of our relationship but things are starting to change. When i see he acts likes this, i don't take it all out on his daughter anymore. I tell DH how i feel about his behaviour towards me and how it affects me or us as a couple. Example : he got a 500 dollar bonus from work. He gave it all to his daughter so she could buy a second hand car. I didn't mind that he gave her money but I didn't want him to give it all to her considering we had bills to play. But oh non. DH had to look good so he gave it all to her. Of course, she never thought i might have some right on that money or that I might deserved to be also told thank you considering her father and I have been together for 18 years and share everything. So you know what I did. For the first time in 18 years, i got a big cheque and I put every single penny of it in my banking account. In the past, when I got some extra money, i was the first one to pay our bills or whatever bill there was around, i would buy him clothes, pay fines, whatever. First thing i knew, i had no money left! DH is not really happy with what I did with this last cheque but ask me if i care!!!! So far out of that whole cheque I spent a big 35 $ on him for a pair of jeans!!!! Enough is enough. I spent over 600 $ on an operation for puppy, i spent a bit on me and i will use the rest to buy some patio furniture! So whenever he complains about this cheque, i remind him I didn't spend it all on me. He will enjoy the furniture and the dog is as much mine as his. So there you go! Next time he has extra money, perhaps he will think a little bit before giving it away and disregarding our/my needs.!!! I keep telling my friends or anybody I know who meets a man who has children and it doesn't matter how old the children are, to run away as fast as they can from that relationship or at least not to get emotionnaly involved with the kids and to keep a distance from the children for a long, long time before they all become buddy-buddy. Knowing what you know today, you must thank the Lord that you are not in that relationship with that man you met who had a child. My alcoholic father left my mother alone with four children. She raised us alone and we lived on welfare all our lives. At one point, my mom met a very nice man. In fact they went out together for 14 years. I really, really loved him. He didn't treat me like he was my father. He was always our friend. Everybody kept asking my mom she wasn't living with this man. She also said. these are my children and i will raised them on my own. I will not force them upon another person. I think my mom was very avant-gardist just like when she decided to register all her kids in an English school when we were living a totally french environment, didn't have english speaking friends, didn't have a cousin or uncle who spoke english, (not even my mom spoke English. She always said she did that so her children could have another culture, be independent and be able to travel. I love her! Sorry for such the long post. I don't know whats happening to me this morning but it sure feels good to be able to vent all my feelings like this. Thanks for reading me. Keep posting.

Hi there, foodonastump. I joined the site just so I could respond to your post here and let you know that I had the same thing happen to me last week with the addition of shortness of breath and heart palpitations/fluttering that had been going on for a few months. The fluttering and shortness of breath had begun to increase and then one evening, I became suddenly dizzy/lightheaded w/a sudden severe headache. Those two made me go to the ER just like you. And just like you, they did all the usual blood tests, EKG, chest x-ray, CT brain scan, and an MRI of my head, echocardiogram, and also checked the veins in my neck via ultrasound. Also like you, they found nothing. They admitted me for observation and kept me on a heart monitor for 2.5 days. Even though I continued to feel the fluttering as usual, the monitor didn't pick up on any unusual heart activity. A few days after I was back at home, I had a tele-visit appointment with my PCP. To prepare for that visit, I logged into the hospital mychart portal to look over all the test results and couldn't believe that I found something that all those hospital doctors (4 of them) had missed, which was that my hemoglobin (iron) was low. I have a history of anemia but what the docs missed was that all of the symptoms that I complained about could easily be attributed to that. That made me feel much more satisfied to have some kind of closure, as opposed to being released from the hospital and told nothing is wrong. You don't have those kinds of events for no reason. I'm suggesting that you log into your mychart at your hospital's website and check over all your test results. It could be something as simple as low iron, like me. Or something as simple as low potassium, which also causes lightheadedness and headaches. The chart will indicate normal ranges for all the corresponding result figures, so you don't have to be concerned with knowing - or not knowing - how to read the results, and you can just google the meaning of the terms you're not familiar with. And consider that just the alarm of your sudden lightheadedness could alone be the cause of your blood pressure spiking the way it did. So that just might be the extent of their relationship.