Phlegm Misting the Orifices (or PMO, as I call it)

   My brother thought that the concept of "Phlegm Misting the Orifices" (or "PMO" if you are like me and gravitate towards acronyms) was really good fodder for jokes.  I told him that people with PMO often have a "slippery left distal" and that "their windows of perception are muddy" and that set off a big round of guffaws.  I admit, it is pretty hilarious to throw the term around when people act flat-out crazy.  We used it to describe a couple of the residents in my Dad's neighborhood in a retirement village in Ocala, Florida, and actually, it really, really describes a cousin of mine...... she is as PMO as they come.  

   But what does PMO mean?  Well, if you have Phlegm misting the orifices...  your windows of perception are muddy.  Like everything else in Chinese medicine, your windows of perception can be physical or emotional.  If your physical windows of perception are muddy, you might be deaf.  You aren't perceiving sounds the right way. You might be blind.  You aren't perceiving sights the right way.  You might have Alzheimer's disease, and can't perceive what happened ten minutes ago. 

 

   If your emotional orifices are muddy, you don't process the emotional reality of what is going on around you. Maybe your spouse is staying out all night,  comes home smelling of cologne that isn't yours, yells out a name that  yours in the middle of sex... and you are blind to the fact that he or she is cheating on you.  Or maybe your drug-crazed child steals hundreds of thousands of dollars from your father on his deathbed, yet you continue to see her as "a good girl." Or maybe you just talk and talk and talk for 45 minutes to your friend on the phone, and then tell her how very much you enjoyed the conversation, and it never registers with you that she said just  "hello." and "good-bye" and you said absolutely everything in between.  Maybe you are just black-out drunk - in which case you are both physically and emotionally PMO.  No matter which way the ball bounces, you aren't picking up on physical or emotional cues going on around you.

   So what brings me to this topic tonight?  I think it had a lot to do with the way the day went.  I decided long ago that there is phlegm misting the orifices of the collective unconscious in America, and it was totally reinforced today when I tried to pick up my Dad's prescriptions at the pharmacy.

First, there was a (thankfully) short period of time when we thought he no longer had prescription drug coverage.  For someone who takes 17 prescription drugs a day, one of which is Plavix, two more of which are insulins,  this would have bankrupt him by the end of April, if not by the end of the week.  (Turns out he IS covered, so we only need to worry about bankrupting Medicare, instead.)  Secondly, I picked up a prescription for some kind of solution that was supposed to help his amputated toe wound heal.  $83.  Turns out it is a mild bleach solution -  had I known in advance, I could've mixed the same thing up for 83 cents.  Thirdly, everyone I told this story to just clucked.  No outrage, no desire to go to the picket lines, no boycotting the pharmaceutical companies, nothing.  Just clucks.  Cluck, cluck, cluck.

Clear Phlegm America!  Wipe clean the windows of perception!

  .  Our problem in America, is not that people don't have insurance.  It is that :

#1: Without insurance, you cannot afford western medication.  It shouldn't cost a month's wages to treat a case of strep throat. 

#2. People will dicker and bargain for days over the price of a car, but never even ask the price of a knee replacement.  The fact that someone else pays for our medical treatment eliminates the very best benefits  of capitalism  from our health care system. 

#3: There are very few pharmaceutical medications that you should have to take "for the rest of your life".  Yet the statistics on medications that people take every day with no exit strategy in sight are staggering, and nobody thinks twice about it!!! 

     When I was put on blood pressure medication 12 years ago, it was with no exit strategy in sight.  I questioned my doctor about it and he looked at me as if I had three heads.  "How long should I take this?" I asked.   "Forever." I was told.  Well, do the math.  I was 38 at the time.  If I died at the young age of 72, at a copay of $30/month - $360 per year - that is $11,520 over a lifetime in medication alone.  Not counting the doctor visits to renew the prescription, the $$$$ out of pocket I had to pay for investigative studies when the beta-blockers I was taking  caused a heart arrhythmia........  Criminy.  

So, here we are, with poor Daddy, taking 17 medications for the rest of his life.  Who knows if it was actually the diabetes that led to all of this, or if a lot of his problems aren't drug-related..... once you mix three or more pharmaceuticals, there is no way to know how they interact with each other.  But in the eyes of a lot of  Americans, that is all right - no cause for concern, as long as someone else PAYS the BILLS - because there is a rampant case of drug-induced PMO going on right now..... 

Bye for now.