Have a look at the boilerplate text at the bottom of www.theclearpill.com:

... It is not our intention or desire for that matter that you use the information contained herein either on this site or on some site that you think is ours as if it were some kind of medical gospel truth. Don’t go diagnosing yourself based on it. Don’t think you can suddenly treat yourself just because you can tap out the http to some web site. If you have or think you have an actual medical condition then pick up the phone and call your own doctor. Only a qualified healthcare professional can tell you whether or not you should use any medicine or other treatment. Except for NZT that is. In the case of NZT, you know what your situation is and what you want your situation to be. Only a qualified healthcare professional can determine if a product described here (other than NZT that is) or on any of our other websites would be appropriate for you to use. Get real. Grow up. Stop reading the boilerplate. Only your qualified healthcare professional is in the best position to discuss with you the risks and diagnostic of any treatment (excluding NZT unless they’re already onboard).

That’s rather high on teh AWSMscale for a supposedly-pharmaceutical webpage.

At the bottom of the page is the text “This film is not yet rated” – rather strange to have this on a supposedly-pharmaceutical webpage, doncha think?

Now have a look at www.theclearpill.com/ask.html, specifically this bit down the bottom:

Your Medications

Write down any medications you currently take and show your doctor. The list should include prescription and nonprescription products or herbal products. Unless you are already taking a heavy duty NDRI, NaSSA or SSRI, there should not be any medication conflict issues. The simple truth is beginning a regimen of NZT will make any of those other medications unnecessary.

Claims that a pill will make any … other medications unnecessary get my hackles up. No, I’m not a pharmacologist, pharmacist, psychiatrist, physician or any other sort of health professional. HOWEVER! I do know enough to realise that text such as that above can be very dangerous.

There are several other parts of this site which make me very uncomfortable as well but then you get to the truly hilari-bad bit, the testimonials:

Due to claims being investigated by the FDA this page is currently unavailable.

So … scam? Spoof? Let’s turn to El GOOG to tell us. The first page of hits got me to this post which makes things rather more clear – it’s publicity for a new movie. So by writing this post, I’m contributing to their publicity. Booo. That means I’ve been conned.

So explaining the title of this post (“+100 on teh AWSMscale .. until you follow the links and realise you’ve been conned”) – if you’re desperate enough to think that a pill with these supposed benefits exists and that it might remove the need for any other heavy-duty mind-altering drugs, then you’re out of luck. If you’re thinking that you’ve come across an actual genuine pharmacological scam site, you’re also out of luck.

Rules for life: ALWAYS read the fine print. ALWAYS engage your critical thinking.

IT IS VERY UNLIKELY I WOULD GO TO SEE THIS MOVIE.

This afternoon I took the kids in to see J. As you’ll recall from this morning, things are starting to look up. She was a little tired when we arrived because she hadn’t really been able to get any sleep after lunch. [The post-lunch siesta is a most excellent concept, btw]. We had a walk down the corridor, looking at the fishtanks along the way (A points them out, raises his hand to point at them and utters “issshhh!”).

Two days ago she wasn’t able walk that distance without sitting down on the seat halfway along, and when we got back to her room she had to rest for 5-10 minutes. Today…. not only was she faster and more balanced with her walking, but she didn’t need to stop and rest along the way. It wasn’t a big speed increase, perhaps another half-metre/minute but when we’re looking at 7-8 metres in a minute, that’s noticeable. She plans to ask for a physio to come and assess her walking tomorrow.

One other thing she noticed about her walking is that two days ago she was unable to step over a vacuum cleaner hose unless she stopped, turned to face the wall and held on to the wall while she lifted one leg over and then the other. While there wasn’t a vacuum cleaner around today to test herself with, she reckoned she would be able to walk over its hose normally now. She’s going to ask the physio to help her figure out stairs too – we’ve got a few and you can’t really live in our house without having to go up and down them several times a day.

Food-wise, her appetite is coming back so much that tomorrow’s breakfast order includes bacon, and whatever she had for lunch today (which she vomited up a week ago) she wolfed down and was feeling rather hungry by afternoon-tea time. The appetite change really puts in stark perspective for us just how rotten she was getting since just before Easter when the migraine started to kick in.

The neurologist was very pleased at her progress, and told her that he thought she needed two good days before she could come home. While today was a better day than yesterday, it wasn’t up to “good”. I’m hopeful that if she can get another good night’s sleep (7-8 hours) tonight, then we might have got to the point where we can really see her coming home soon. It probably won’t be Sunday, but I’m optimistic (with good reason now, I believe) that we could have her home on Monday. We’ll have to start tapering off the various drugs that she’s on too … that’s going to be tedious.

I just got off the phone with J, and she’s feeling chirpy. The u-shaped pillow I took her last night helped give her a comfortable night’s sleep, and she hasn’t vomited at all so far today. She’s alert and while the dizziness is still there, she doesn’t feel as if moving her head will definitely result in a big chuck.

It might not sound like much, but this is a definite improvement – I think she’s turned a corner. Even though she still won’t be able to come home for at least a few days, I do think it will only be a few days more, not a whole darned month as previously feared.

When I took the kids and my Mum in to visit her last night we were delighted to see two “Lollypotz” that one of J’s facebook friends (you know who you are :>) had sent for A and C. Thankyou! They loved the dinosaurs and let’s just say that the chocolates are being rationed carefully to maximise enjoyment!

I could hear that she was smiling while I was talking to her, and that’s put a smile on my face too.

…. because it will be his first day of two days/week daycare for at least the next few months. One of the things we have to do in order to help J recover from the whole blobby craziness (ie, its existence, SRS and radiation treatment after-effects, and how blobby responds) is to give her some respite from A and C. We love our children dearly (and we went through a heckuvalot to get them) and while J has really enjoyed being a stay-at-home mum right now we need her to get that break which having them out of the house will provide.

Fortunately for us, the local daycare centre (about 500m away) where C was going until October last year had a place for each of them on Thursdays and Fridays. I’ve got a bunch of forms to complete tonight, and I’ll have to make a call to Centrelink tomorrow to get a CRN for A. J would do it, except she hasn’t been able to focus and doesn’t have the stamina right now to stay on hold for the 35+ minutes that we’ve heard it takes to get connected to a person. I wish I could do this online, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get it organised (if it’s possible). Also, it wasn’t until this morning that I managed to find my australia.gov.au online registration details.

It’ll probably be a mad dash in the morning to make sure that I’ve got their bags packed correctly and given how A has been expressing displeasure lately (piercing squeals and general tantrum-y behaviour) I just hope I can get him distracted so I can make my getaway! C will be fine I’m sure – as far as I’m aware several of the kids she got to know there last year are still going on the same days so I’m confident that she’ll slot straight back in.

J sounded quite chirpy when I rang this morning. She was moved to a private room down the other end of the ward, so there’s no passing traffic and no noise from the lifts. A different neurologist came past yesterday evening (I assume he’s part of a cooperative group with her actual neurologist, sharing rounds and weekends etc). He suggested that she sleep as upright as possible, because with the tumour towards the back of the cranium, CSF somewhat settles downwards when you sleep. This increases pressure on the tumour and since blobby is being obnoxious, that extra pressure is …. let’s just put it in the “definitely unhelpful” category.

So she did that, and even though she still can’t move her head in the morning (to avoid massive dizziness from the nystagmus) by 9am this morning she’d only vomited once. AWESOME!

Her eyesight continues to make gradual improvements, so by the weekend she might be able to focus enough to do a sudoku puzzle.

My mum is here today (came yesterday morning, stayed overnight); she’s been a great help – thankyou Mum. J’s mum is coming down this weekend on the train, and since Club Wes is right atop Auchenflower railway station she’s going to meet us there.

She’s not much better, sadly. She had about 8 hours’ sleep (6, wakefulness, 2) until 5am, then was vomiting for about 3 hours. She still can’t move her head without feeling dizzy and nauseous, but she does think her eyesight has improved slightly. I’m hoping that’s an indicator that the swelling is starting to decrease, and therefore the optic nerve irritation is ever so gradually subsiding.

I’m still hopeful that she can come home on Wednesday (ANZAC Day), but that’s not based on any understanding of what’s really going on – just hoping that the drugs start working better by then.

I was going to be going to an internal conference at Redwood Shores and have a week of working with the rest of my group in Santa Clara in the second and third weeks of May, but that trip isn’t going to happen now. Even assuming that she’s released on Wednesday, she’s still going to need my support, and the kids will need me too.

My mum is here today and tomorrow, ANZAC Day is covered, and then the kids are at daycare for Thursday and Friday. Somehow, we’ll get through. I will be calling on pretty much everybody who’s offered help, too – for which a very very big thankyou in advance.

Got a bit more sleep last night – 5 hours rather than 2. However, the neurosurgeon didn’t visit yesterday so she wasn’t able to get any sleeping medication.

Awake since 5am, vomiting since 6 though she has managed to keep breakfast down. She can’t, however, move around because if she does the dizziness is insane. On the flip side her eyesight is a little better.

She had a much better afternoon than morning – not only managed to keep food down, but was feeling better within herself, too.

The neurosurgeon has handed her off to the neurologist as primary physician because there’s nothing surgical that needs happening as far as he can determine. This is good news in itself – the more I’ve learnt about the side-effects of headcracking surgery, the less I like it. A piece of good meta-information is that the swelling is showing that the radiation in February is doing its job. It’s just being a real bitch about showing it.

In terms of coming home, since the Epilem takes up to 5 days to start doing its thing, she’s hoping that there’ll be sufficient improvement in her symptoms to be able to come home on Wednesday. We have our fingers/toes/knees/etc crossed that this happens.

On my side of the fence, I’ve managed to keep the kids fed without resorting to takeaways, they’re sleeping reasonably well and not playing up too badly. Thanks to Tim and Sarah yesterday I was able to get the lawn mowed and the driveway swept. Rachel took care of them for a few hours on Friday so I could have a nap, and my mum is coming tomorrow and Tuesday which will be a great help. Thankyou to everybody who has offered to help – pretty sure we will be taking you up on those offers over the next few weeks! I’ve also got the kids booked in to daycare for Thursday/Friday starting this week; not sure how we’ll need to keep that up, but it will keep going for as long as J needs it.

The neurologist said that she pretty much has to stay in hospital until the symptoms ease…. which might not be for a month. Today was a much worse day than yesterday (only having 2 hours sleep probably the cause), so tonight she’s asking for something to put her to sleep. Hopefully it’ll work.

The neurologist confirmed that she’s got significant edema (oedema?) around the tumour. Ugh. He’s prescribed another drug (Epilem?) to help with that, but the primary side effect is to make her very drowsy. This matches up with the migraine drug which makes her twitchy. She’s got to take this new drug until the symptoms disappear, which could be a month or maybe even longer.

Last night J only got 2 hours sleep, threw up her migraine drug and is back to double vision and general blurriness.

So she isn’t coming home today.