[darkpuppet]

A bit of a rant, so bear with me for a moment....

I've been travelling a lot lately for work and have been in Italy for a little while (beautiful country, awesome food).

Unfortunately, I suffer from something that requires drugs that really mess with your head. I was fine for a year or so, but symptoms came back and I needed to go back on medication.

I didn't want to use the same meds as last time because the side effects are pretty brutal... so we tried something else. I was on the medication for a few days, and things seemed pretty good, so I figured I was good for my next trip.

Well, let me tell ya -- things are never that simple....

I woke up a few nights into my trip with my entire body on fire. It felt like every cell in my body was electrified. I couldn't sit still, my head was swimming, and I was in agony.... I took one of the medications I use to sedate myself when I feel antsy, but this was seriously worse than anything I've ever felt my entire life. Every sensation you could feel, hot, cold, pain, all at once. Everywhere.

I knew it was a side effect, because I've felt similar rushes before.. just not this bad, so I did my best to wait it out... that and the fear of going to a hospital where nobody speaks english were my primary motivations.

This episode lasted about half an hour. (between me trying to ignore it, and it getting worse, to taking a sedative, to getting comfortable again).

So the next day, I try to call my doctor. She's not working.

The nurse goes to another doctor at the clinic and asks for their opinion.

That doctor tells me to go see a doctor.

At this point, I just wanted advice on how to proceed. Coming off the medication can be just as bad as going on it... do I keep the high dose, do I cut my dose, do I stop, what?

So I call other canadian clinics that deal with my sort of ailments, and all I get is, "we can't give any advice if you're not a patient of this clinic, you have to see your GP".

Wonderful. Hard to get to your GP when you're a couple thousand miles across the atlantic.

Fortunately, one of my italian colleagues was able to get a hold of a neurologist who was able to give some advice on the medication, and I feel effin' good today. "Effin' good" being anything better than yesterday.

I just find it amazing that the canadian medical community would leave one of it's citizens in the hands of foreign medical care when it could have so easily offered an opinion that could resolve my issue in a day.

Whether it was an italian doctor doing it over the phone, or a canadian doctor doing it over the phone, the advice would have been the same, and I wouldn't have had to suffer another day.

Thank God Italian doctors are more worried about helping folks out than their own asses.

</rant>