Hi all,
         you are speaking to a famous TV star! Well... my ulcer is
slightly famous for 15 seconds on Channel 9's "Good Medicine."  As I
was saying to Maxine and Jen: Kerry's got a pretty fair show, and
Sara's layout for Women's Day ought to go well.

  They took 1« hours to take a few pictures for Women's Day (I got a
nice polaroid of Jess), and 3« hours to video a 4« minute segment for 
Good Medicine, all done on the cheap. Gee... TV is not like it used to
be.

  For Woman's Day, the photographer is freelance and the TV producer
(Maxine) provides the copy. The photographer had nearly as much
equipment as the TV cameraman! For Channel 9 and Good Medicine, the
cameraman and soundman are also freelance. Channel 9 provides the
segment producer, Jennifer Keyte flies up from Melbourne, and the
Editor back at the studio puts it all together. My guess is $4,000
for the whole 3-hour shoot: two segments a day (plus the series
producer, office staff and the editor); three of four 4« minute
segments in the 30-minute show plus imported video from similar shows
in the US and England... $25,000 for half an hour of TV that rates 26
in prime time. A nice little earner.

  The presenter's main job is not the actual interview; it's to relax
the interviewee. She spends 20-minutes talking and making notes to
relax you, and to decide what questions will get a response. There is
no director - just the cameraman.

  They don't actually do an interview: she asks her questions deadpan
with the camera behind her, and just lets the interviewee rabbit on
for a few minutes. When it's edited, she'll do a voiceover. She keeps
asking questions until the cameraman (he seems to run the whole thing)
thinks he has enough of me talking to edit 10-seconds. They get you to
do the bits he likes again, maybe a few times until it looks good to
him (until he sees 10-seconds in all the crap), and that's it. They
call it an "overlay." Then they swap the camera onto Jen and she does
the "noddies"... I rabbit on about nothing with the camera behind me,
and she pretends to listen and nods on camera.

  So, she asks: "Well, Bob. I suppose you feel good about having your
ulcer cured," and I reply:

  "Yair, it's terrific. I eat everything now and gobble the gravy."

  Then they edit it, and she says on voiceover: "They say you're a
raging poof, Bob. Do you like cocksucking?"

  Then they show her nodding, and me sucking a gherkin.

... STOP PRESS!

  They fucked up. Me and the doctor talking about ulcers was so boring
they needed more footage, so another cameraman turns up at home to do
another overlay of me hanging about the house for human interest. They
were going to video me bashing Jess with a baseball bat, or offering
verbal abuse to my 90-year-old mother but the light was poor so they
showed me washing the dishes instead. I offered to type an abusive
letter to Paul on the computer, but he said washing dishes was more
interesting. ROFL!! I told him I never washed dishes; I thought you
just threw them out. 
 
... On Channel 9, May 7 at 8:00 pm and in that week's Women's Day.

  And on the ulcer treatment, the good doctor has devloped a kit for
GPs to do the breath test, so it's about to get even easier if he can
get the Feds to put it on Medicare. Anyone with a history of proven
ulcer would be breath-tested by the GP, the little bottles sent off
the Concord and the mass-spectrometer, and if positive for the germ
there's be a week's course of antibiotics, another breath test to see
if it's gone, and that's it. It worked for me... after 14 years of
nursing ulcers.

  The key is the little urea pill with carbon-13 in the urea instead
of common carbon-12 or the older radioactive carbon-14 method. You
fast for 2 hours, have an orange drink to stabilise the empty stomach
(citric acid does that) and then blow in a test tube to set a
reference level for the C13 in the CO2 in your lungs. Then you take
the C13 urea pill and give the germs 30-minutes to break down the urea
into CO2, blow into another bottle, and that's it. If there is no germ
present, the urea passes straight through. The mass spectrometer
analyses the two levels of C13 and can tell how badly your gut is
infected by helicobacter. The cut off level is 3.5 and mine was 35.
After the treatment it was 1.7.

  It's a strange germ, it loves acid and *causes* acid. It grows best
with a pH of 1.2 so to kill it you first have to reduce the stomach
acid with Losec or Zoton, and then hit it with *two* antibiotics. The
stomach then becomes normal and reinfection is unlikely.

  In *all* cases if the germ is present, the stomach is acid and its
lining is inflamed, but not everyone with the germ gets an ulcer. It
also causes cancer if untreated for a long time (like me). The doctor
wants to treat *all* infections but the fuckwits in Canberra are
arguing to save a few bucks on Medicare. With luck, Dr Woolridge will
get stomach cancer and die soon.

  In 98% of cases if you have an ulcer you have the germ, and in those
cases when you get rid of the germ you have better than 98% chance of
never getting another ulcer.    

  They've known about the fucking germ since 1983 (the research my
ulcer was invloved in, confirmed it 14 years ago), but it's taken them
that long to get Health Department bureaucrats to approve treatment.
They looked up the old records, and they *knew* 14 years ago I had
helicobacter! If I ever get stomach cancer, I'll find the name of the
cunt who held it up so long, and take the bastard with me!

Regards,
Bob
   
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

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