gusl | chronic rhinitis

About two months ago, I realized that I am chronically congested. It seems I never get better from colds, because I always have mucus. So I went to the GP (huisarts), which sent me to the ENT (KNO, otorhino-laringologist), which made me take out blood for an allergy test.

I have been looking forward to the results all month, and...

Goddamn it, I have no allergies!

His explanation is that I have "hyper-reactivity" to things such as: pollution, perfumes, changes in temperature, humidity, etc, and that there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. So it's: chronic non-allergic rhinitis.

Being one who doesn't accept defeat, I asked him tons of questions.

He also said that the mucus is produced by the mucosa, and that nasal blockage maybe sometimes be caused by swelling which however is NOT due to allergy. My idea with this whole thing was precisely to open my nasal passage more widely, so that when things swell, there's still plenty of room for the air to flow.

Since this was my first allergy test, I decided to go back and clear up whether I am allergic to sulfas... So I asked to look at my medical records. Unfortunately, the secretary had some serious PMS, and wasn't amused with my unusual request:

Bitch- Wij hebben geen tijd voor dit soort ding.
Me- Heb ik geen recht op mijn resultaten?
Bitch- Ja. Maar dat doet de doktor. Heeft 'ie uw uitslag gegeven?
Me- Ja, maar allen wat de KNO betreft. Ik wil iets anders kijken.
Bitch- Begrijpt u het niet? Dit is een KNO... alles is KNO hier.

Finally, I managed to ask the doctor for half a minute, who told me that sulfas are not covered in the test.

It would have been fine if she told me to go ask my GP, but instead she said "we don't have the time to help you", and "you should have asked the doctor when you had the chance", when I was arguing that I should have the right to access my medical records.

It sucks that she managed to intimidate me, take away my positive energy, despite me being totally within my right (having all the "gelijk"). It had to do with her talking faster than me and me not being able to explain myself very well in Dutch. I should practice keeping my spirits with such negative people. Can theater workshops help me deal with nasty people in reality? :-)
I think the first step should have been to lose my respect for her, which I didn't do.

In any case, people like her are a hazard to sick people. Her negativity is contagious.

Anyway, what am I going to do about my nose now?? Should I go live in the middle of the desert?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My worst experiences in the NL have been with our GP (haven't had a chance to visit any specialists yet). From what I gather it's expected that the GP doesn't really do much, but here are some examples of what I experienced.

- my daughter gets sick with high fever, coughing, vomiting, etc. We visit the GP and he tells me the best remedy is homemade tea from natural herbs, like thyme and such. Modern medicine has no answer to, or products for respiratory infections.
- my son gets sick with pain in his ears, fever and eye infections. My wife takes him and the GP's first question to my wife is "So, what do you think the problem is here?"
- my daughter spends a sleepless night screaming, with vaginal and rectal itching, all of us stay up with her the whole night, my wife takes her to the GP first thing next morning. The GP's first remark (before any examination) is that this "may be sexual abuse". Excuse me, but how does someone describe a parent visiting a doctor as abusive, without even performing an exam first?

Since these memorable encounters with our family doctor, I am considering contacting one of the several Surinaamse witch doctors advertising their services in the neighbourhood. I'm sure they have a much better methodology in dealing with patients.

Anyway, I have found out there is a very good natural medicine for flu's/congestions called Airborne, now it's just a matter of "importing" it from the US and paying the negligible 40% or so Dutch import tax.

That's terrible. It can't be that hard to change your GP, can it?

I'd like to see an underground network of competent doctors. It would have connections to the underground drugs trade.

The one good thing about Brazil is that it's kind of an anarchy: for example, there's no enforcement of prescriptions in pharmacies, and for some money you can get see any doctor rightaway (no GP bullshit)... if only it were an anarchy where you had good information...

Have you tried drinking mass quantities of green tea? I believe that has helped me.

really? do you have non-allergic nasal hyper-sensitivity?

I'll look into the green tea, especially since I tried it for the first time Friday and quite liked it (with lemon).

Avoid the US high desert, at least. It's full of sage, which irritates almost everyone's nasal mucosa.

A lot of little people can get very upset when you think outside their little box. Unfortunate, but such is life.

What a horrible secretary. People are that are a hazard to more than just sick people; they're sinks of positive energy. (And what's worse, they're not vampires :) - they don't gain the positiveness themselves :)).

As for Wij hebben geen tijd voor dit soort ding, it's fantastic. Must learn Dutch (adds to very end of very long list). It looks, not only like English, but like my local variety of English - compare for dat sorta ting :).

I've been meaning to write about how often I mistake Dutch people as being Irish from their English accent (the ones who speak very good English obviously)... it's kind of a mystery to me, but I think it has to do with a tendency to enunciate, and to "th"->[d] (tho not sure what they do with the about the "voiceless th")

But I also remember that there were some connections between Dutch words and words used in Scotland ("coin" in Dutch is "munt"... what's the word they use in Scots?)

If "voiced th" -> [d], the I'd guess "voiceless th" -> [t]. In Ireland, also, it's common for these [t]s and [d]s to be dental, while the "regular" [t]s and [d]s are alveolar, as in general English. So, writing [t_d] and [d_d] for "dental" [t] and [d], we have "thin" -> [t_din] but "tin" -> [tin], "then" -> [d_den] and "den" -> [den]. So the distinction is preserved, but realised differently.

The IPA symbols for "voiced th" and "voiceless th" are [ð] and [θ] ("thorn" and "theta", if they don't appear). In X-SAMPA the ASCII forms are just [D] and [T].

I can't think of the "munt"-like Scots word for "coin". But since Scotland and the Netherlands (?) both avoided the fate of England (being overrun by French speaking Normans), I might except them to have shared items of vocab that were replaced my Frenchified words in England (like "coin"). The Normans, or rather a later wave originating in Normanified Wales, got to Ireland too, but since there wasn't much English spoken here then, it was Irish that got the French forms. One example from the top of my head is "contae"="county".

I'd like to hear the difference between dental and alveolar [t]s and [d]s in native speakers... when I do them, I can't distinguish the sounds (maybe barely).

Dutch has a lot of French words though, but it looks like they came after the Normans (they are mostly in original form, and correspond to current French words).

To go off on a tangent, I'm fascinated by how tongue positions encode phonemes... [t] and [k] seem to be produced by completely different movements... while I can consciously control the tip of my tongue, I can't the other parts (e.g. the bit that makes contact with the roof of the mouth to produce a [k]). A nice game is to try to communicate with restraints on your mouth (different combinations of finger insertions blocking lips and tongue from normal operation)

Oh, sometihng I missed in my first response: What do you mean by "a tendency to enunciate"? To me, "enunciation" means speaking with exaggerated clearness. Some people use it to mean "speak properly", sometimes throwing in some very odd ideas, e.g. pronouncing schwas as full vowel (as which full vowel? whichever one it's spelled with, of course!)

To me, "enunciation" means speaking with exaggerated clearness.
Exactly. I perceive educated Irish people as quite enunciative. Are you surprised?
Or maybe it's something about the Irish intonation that makes them sound like they're explaining something very thoroughly (kind of like a primary school teacher).

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