xylophone

That's the best laugh I've had in a long time.........how on earth do you think up such utter claptrap. trump couldn't even broker a watertight deal with Stormy Daniels!!! Whatever meds you are on......stop taking them asap!! Or lay off the Kool Aid.

Many thanks Sheryl, very much appreciated.

Yes Sheryl.....I have had several echocardiograms to measure its size and it has not altered over the 3 years I have had it. Due another one and bloodwork etc in September. I have just looked out the echocardiogram taken a couple of years back and the summary says, "mild aortic root dilatation (sinus part 4.2 cm)". Stable. PS. I have just found another echocardiographic report dated a year ago and it states: mild aortic root dilatation (sinus part 4.2 cm, ascending aorta 4.3 cm).

Thanks again for replying Sheryl and my policy is from Allianz Ayudya and I initially took my health insurance out at the age of 59 with BUPA here, because in doing so I was guaranteed cover up until age 90+ and BUPA was later to become another company before its latest name, as above. Upon renewing the Allianz policy, I simply have to sign a form and arrange for payment from my Thai bank account, so no medical history needed in this case. As regards my bulging aorta, I am under the auspices of the heart doctor at Bangkok Phuket Hospital who has been checking on me every six months since it was discovered, and now thinking about it, it was probably discovered about three years ago?? The bulge is very slight and the heart doctor doesn't seem to be too worried about it, even suggesting that I might only want to come back once a year for a check on it! But I have suggested I will go back every six months just to make sure and for my own peace of mind. On that point, since it was first discovered the bulge/aneurysm has not increased in size. Although my blood pressure has not been that high, I am on Cardura XL 4 mg mainly because I was already on that medicine for a previous prostate problem, so the doctor suggested I stay on that as it will help lower my blood pressure. He doesn't seem to be too worried about a possible rupture and my next appointment is in early September so I will quiz him more deeply on my situation and possible options. Taking a step back and looking at everything, I will probably continue with Allianz because it's a simple thing to do and the agent here has been very good over the years, dealing with my questions and requests. Once again, thank you for your most informative reply and keep up the good work.

Add to that trump's lies and he has absolutley no credibilty whatsover....he just can't help himself, but the sad thing is that he actually believes his own lies:- "In his rambling May 31 monologue following his felony convictions, Donald Trump somehow found time to reference the ill-fated Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. Trump declared: “I ended the Russian pipeline. It was dead. He [Biden] comes in and approves it.” Trump went on to allege that Biden did so because money from the former mayor of Moscow’s wife was paid to the Biden family. Similarly, in a speech at CPAC last year, Trump noted that he “got along very well with Putin even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. … I ended it. It was dead.” Trump added that “nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along.” In fact, Trump did not stop Nord Stream 2 — he enabled it. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline went from zero to 90 percent completed during Trump’s presidency. Rather than stop it “dead,” the Trump administration rejected years of bipartisan congressional calls for imposition of sanctions to stop the project. Only when Congress, in frustration, passed mandatory sanctions did the administration finally take concrete action. But by then it was too late. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4726844-trumps-nord-stream-2-disaster/mlite

Many thanks for your reply Sheryl, and I'm still giving some thought to the Cigna policy, along with the Allianz option, but before I make a final decision I wonder if you or anybody else on the forum can answer something for me, because I don't seem to be able to get a straight answer from my current agent.......... I have been with Allianz for something like 15 years and have renewed my policy every year over that time, with no gaps or anything similar, so I thought I would be "continuously covered" for any medical condition over those years, BUT during my last year of cover a small bulge was discovered in my aorta during an ECG, which I go back every six months to have checked, and because it was an outpatient procedure and only cost about 5000 baht for everything, obviously I didn't claim, mainly because I only have inpatient cover. Now it's come to me renewing the policy thereby having what I consider to be "continuous cover" am I covered in the event of something happening to the aorta, or is it considered to be something which I have to declare therefore be excluded from ongoing cover? It may sound a simple question, but over the years I have had unbroken health insurance cover with this company, so can they simply refuse to pay out based on one event in un-broken health insurance cover? As regards your point about prostate-related issues, I did notice in the Allianz brochure that once a medical condition had been dealt with and had not re-occurred within a five year period, then it was covered after that?? Anyway if I have to pay for any prostate treatment, then so be it. Any feedback welcomed.

You are spot on Sheryl, because it is the Cigna Global "Close Care Plan" and looking into it, Cigna has offices worldwide and this particular agent was calling me from the Dubai office, which I've checked, is a bone fide office. So I'm checking it out more carefully and to be honest, what little "pre-existing conditions" I have, I'm not really worried about and they can be excluded from this policy if I should take it out. The fact that there is no age limit for enrolment and the total cover is around 18 million baht for an annual premium which is almost equivalent to the Allianz which I have now, and which has a total cover of 1 million baht, so it seems like a good deal. In addition a friend has informed me of the AIA health insurance cover which I need to look into because that also has some benefits. I suppose the only thing in favour of staying with the Allianz policy is that any pre-existing conditions I've had since taking out the policy, should be covered going forward, and one other thing is that they have all of my details and it's simply a question of walking into a local office and signing a form, whereas other policies/companies may well involve medicals, extensive form filling, and so on – – so some homework to do on this on my part. Some decisions to be made on my part and I will post my decisions here for the benefit of others.

I have just found this thread, which may well be fortuitous in my case because I am in the process of renewing my existing health insurance cover with Allianz, however I baulked at the huge increase in my policy, up from 153,000 baht per annum, to 213,000 baht per annum, and that is only for a 1 million baht maximum cover!! I asked the agent if she would go back to the company and check out if I could increase the maximum cover and also include an excess, which it currently doesn't have. However she said that the company does not allow any changes to their policy (this policy), so I went back to her and suggested that the maximum cover could stay the same, however I would gladly pay an excess (deductible) of anything between 50 and a hundred thousand baht, as surely that would make no difference to their liability? I am waiting for a reply, however in the meantime I have been checking out other policies and there is bad publicity on the Internet with regards to WrLife, but I applied to Cigna insurance to see what they could do and much to my surprise I have received a quote which covers me for health insurance in Thailand and NZ, and has a maximum cover of 18 million baht, and although it has an excess/deductible of 110,000 baht, which I don't mind paying, the annual cost is only 163,000 baht......... So I am considering this because I don't mind paying the excess/deductible if it becomes necessary, BUT one major factor in this policy is that there is no age limit (something I found to be quite amazing) and as I am 76, especially in light of the 18 million baht top coverage!! To be honest I'm a little wary because this seems a little too good to be true, especially as there are no age bands in the policy, so am I about to fall victim to an online scam, or has anyone else had any experience with this type of Cigna policy? Your feedback would be welcomed, and I will answer any questions to which I have/may have the answers.

Could always do a trump and make his rich buddies happy as well as lining his own pockets. Also............ Measuring the True Cost of Trump Tax Cuts Wall Street Week April 12th, 2024, 2:55 AM GMT+0700 Natasha Sarin, professor at Yale Law School, is the co-founder of The Budget Lab, which analyzes federal policy proposals for the American economy. She says that a full extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades. (Source: Bloomberg) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-04-11/measuring-the-true-cost-of-trump-tax-cuts

Poor, sad man.....I feel so sorry for you believing a nut-job of a conspiracy theorist. Still, as the saying goes; "they walk among us".

The orange muppet who says he is mentally fit and who is a "stable genius" is not proving his point!! "US Election 2024: Trump challenges Biden to a cognitive test but gets the name of the doctor who tested him wrong" LOL!!!! You couldn't make this stuff up! https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/us-election-2024-trump-challenges-biden-to-a-cognitive-test-but-gets-the-name-of-the-doctor-who-tested-him-wrong/HIGRXXLZIBDANOUPC

What a complete crock.......no problem with speaking the truth, but lies are still lies no matter what spin you want to put on them. And he has got his just rewards, thankfully:- Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' assets will be liquidated to help pay the $1.5 billion he owes for his false claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, called Infowars “soon-to-be-defunct” as his clients move to collect on the debt in state courts. He said the families will also pursue Jones’ future earnings. “Today is a good day,” Mattei said in a text message after the hearing. “Alex Jones has lost ownership of Infowars, the corrupt business he has used for years to attack the Connecticut families and so many others. ... Alex Jones is neither a martyr nor a victim. He is the perpetrator of the worst defamation in American history.” The relatives said they were traumatised by Jones’ comments and his followers’ actions. They have testified about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, some of whom confronted the grieving families in person saying the shooting never happened and their children never existed. One parent said someone threatened to dig up his dead son’s grave. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/alex-jones-personal-assets-to-be-sold-to-pay-15b-sandy-hook-debt-company-bankruptcy-is-dismissed/OMB5DMZMRNARHJLN3WK4NPIXUI/

There speaks a dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist..........deep state. pizza parlour, drinking children's blood and maga supporter. Sad.

Jeez........"Hurt feelings" indeed, when the parents of the children killed were going through a grieving process, and at that time other nut jobs were knocking at their doors accusing them of hiding the children because they were not actually dead!!! IMO anybody who thinks that this sort of harassment is simply "hurt feelings" needs to get real, and some, and I personally think your post is disgusting.

Be careful........I was given one similar to this and when I opened it up to check the internal connections, I found it was a complete mess and the supposed "earth" wire wasn't connected to all of the "pins" and the neutral and live wires were connected to different points. For 159 baht, you get what you pay for.

Watched a movie which I thought was very good, called, "Sleeping Dogs" starring a very bloated Russell Crowe (he has really let himself go) and although IMDB gave it mixed reviews it was easily worth a 7!! The twists and turns in the movie kept me interested throughout and the ending was totally unexpected. Well worth a watch IMO.

Good stuff Simon, and thank you for posting this, because it looks similar to the results I got a few years back when I had similar to you and the local urologist at Bangkok Phuket Hospital kept prescribing any old antibiotic he could think about, despite me asking him to get a culture because I was feeling very sick indeed, to get the very results which are published here. Anyway as can be seen in your post, the Carbapenems would seem to be one of the most effective treatments for you, however they are not taken orally, but have to be given intravenously, so I visited the hospital here for 10 days on a daily basis (or was it 14 days?) to have the treatment and it cured the infection. Good luck in whatever antibiotic you choose, however remember to discuss it with your doctor or urologist, so that you get the full lowdown on the treatment and effects thereof.

There follows some of trumps statements early on in the pandemic.......read and weep; the man is an idiot especially when he said the 15 people infected going down to close to zero!!! After which hundreds of thousands of Americans died:- "In his first speech after his hospitalization for Covid-19, President Donald Trump stood on a White House balcony on October 10 and made a grand declaration about the coronavirus: “It’s going to disappear. It is disappearing.” His words might have sounded more dramatic had he not been saying the same thing for eight months. Trump has stuck to the refrain no matter what has been happening with the pandemic. Since February, the President has declared at least 38 times that Covid-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing. His proclamations have been wildly inaccurate. When Trump first started making the claim in February, it was about the time the US had just suffered its very first known Covid-19 death. More than 220,000 deaths later, Trump continues to falsely claim that the virus will somehow just go away — even as the US experiences yet another surge in cases and hospitalizations." https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/10/politics/covid-disappearing-trump-comment-tracker/

His DELAY in shutting down flights was responsible for thousands of deaths in the USA........excellent my ass!

No surprise that Hamas terrorists are using Palestinian men, women and children as shields in one form or another, because they are gutless cowards and have no regard for the lives of the Palestinians that they are basically sacrificing, when they are supposed to be looking after their welfare. No doubt there are going to be lots of posts regarding the death of these Palestinians and blaming the IDF, when the blame should be sheeted to the Hamas cowards who continue to carry out such blatant tactics as using Palestinians as shields. And before the whingeing starts, it's only to be expected that civilians will be casualties in any war, and Hamas should have realised this and probably did, trying to carry out a win-win situation – – i.e. they can attack the Israelis and consider it a win hiding behind innocent people, and on the other hand if the Israelis retaliate, and in the course of this retaliation, Palestinian civilians are killed, then it furthers their propaganda with regards to garnering condemnation of Israel and support of their cause. All in all it's a nonsense. Civilians are killed in every war and it's an historical fact, and if one looks back at Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the millions of civilians killed in those cities, who had nothing to do with the actual war, but it was justified by the world and still is. Furthermore the carpet bombing of Dresden killed many innocent people and that was part of war, just as the bombing of the cities in the UK by the Germans was – – so war is what it is and I sincerely hope that the IDF continue with their campaign to eradicate Hamas.

Trawling through some movies on BBC iPlayer, I came across one that I couldn't remember much about, called, "Hope and Glory" and it was about a young boy's experience during the bombing of London in the Second World War, and although I was born in 1947, after the war had ended, the war had a huge impact upon me and my life...... At the age of about five I do remember going to the local shop with the coupons to get our rations for the week, which were very meagre indeed, but we survived with the help of dad's allotment. Now onto why the war had a huge impact on my life..... It wasn't till I was much older that I found I had a half-sister who was the product of her young mother's liaison with a Canadian soldier, and he left to go back to Canada and she never found him. A little later her young mother, my birthmother, had another liaison with a local married businessman and I was the product of that liaison, and of course no one would speak about it because he was a married man of some standing in the town and she was a single woman, so I was an unwanted baby and was adopted out to a local family who, in the end didn't really care if I was there or not (long story). The movie had all of these elements in it – – the effects of the war, a Canadian soldier, a pregnant English girl with no future with him, somewhat wayward young women as regards the soldiers, and it really did bring back memories and was quite poignant in many ways. C'est la vie! Sorry for the ramble, but the movie is worthwhile watching, especially in this 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

It matters not how much factual and verifiable information you post, the ant-vax brigade will still be exactly that....anti-vax and conspiracy theory nutjobs. Oblivious to all but their own twisted and misshapen views. Carry on your good work.

I read an interesting article about the Palestinians, and it appears that they were a race of people who were not much liked by their neighbours and other races nearby, at times being labelled as a "warlike race" and by others as an unlikeable race of people. It would seem this would still hold true judging by the actions of the countries you mention in your post!

You make some very good points in your post and I also believe that many Palestinians are complicit in the Hamas actions and do nothing to stop them, just turning a blind eye, as the saying goes. As for those people who are constantly whingeing about the Palestinian civilians being killed, as I've previously stated, Hamas started this war and must have realised that Palestinian civilians were going to be killed as a result of it. However, something caught my attention last night when I was watching a documentary on the Normandy landings at D-Day and it certainly applies to this current situation, because it was stated that over 20,000 innocent French folk were killed when the Allied forces were bombing coastal towns and villages from their ships anchored offshore, because the Germans were hiding out amongst whatever shelter they could find. So innocent civilians were killed and that is the price one pays for war, but having said that, after the Second World War, although there were many French civilian casualties killed by the allies, no one ever laid blame at the door of the allies for this............ Now there are "innocent" Palestinians being killed by Israel's incursion and the reaction is astounding, not because it's actually happening, but because it's exactly what happens in war and it has happened since time immemorial and my example above highlights this. Give Israel the power to wipe out Hamas by whatever means possible, and of course it will mean the death of some innocents, but that's the way of war and always has been.

"Subcommittee members also found nothing to suggest he "orchestrate[d] a campaign to suppress the lab leak theory ... After 15 months, the Select Subcommittee still does not possess a shred of evidence to substantiate these extreme allegations that Republicans have levied against Dr. Fauci for nearly 4 years," Ruiz said". https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/110460 A REAL witch hunt and that nutjob MTG also chimed in with her nonsense. Republican politics at its worst, and some.