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How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

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Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#241

Post by rayval »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #228
bethekind wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian culture never ceases to confuse me. Nothing is ever straightforward. I tried giving a gift to some, as thanks for letting me sleep on their couch. They told me no no no. I asked my friends about it, they told me it's about face. Omg, I get that honor is a big thing, but it makes normal interactions way more complicated.

Every culture has things like this. "You'll have to pop in next time you're in the area!" does NOT mean "turn up at my house unannounced". Even if it sounds like it. Or "How are you going?" is not a prompt to actually tell them how you're going.

Yes when I first moved to the US, people would greet me with "How ya doing?" and I thought they really did want to know. It took a while to understand that it was just a way of saying hello.

I'm told that, in China, a way to greet someone is to say: "Have you eaten yet?" 你吃了吗

You are not supposed to provide a detailed answer such as: "Yes I ate a breakfast sandwich this morning at 8 am".

Instead you simply say "I ate" (吃了) or "Nope" (没呢)

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#242

Post by Log_out_ »

aniforprez wrote: post #144
jawngee wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried but they wouldn't accept it.

I've dealt with this many times as a South Asian person and it is very possible they still do actually want money. Most people will not ask in a straightforward manner for money and when you offer to pay them, they act all offended. This is a stupid game that I have no idea how it started where they will pretend to not want the money but will still very obviously want it. This has stumped me, being mildly autistic, f…

TL, Dr:Slide it into the paperwork so no face is lost

Sounds like they thought they caught a reseller endangering somebodies sales friendship.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#243

Post by rayval »

dralley wrote: post #85
robmccoll wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have terrible news about systems built on private health insurance (USA): it will still take 666 days to see a specialist, and you will need a referral from your PCP who may also decide they want to see you in person first. This may be its own scheduling nightmare. Then you may find out that your preferred specialist is out of network for your private insurance. The waits are a generally a supply and demand issue m…

I've never had to wait more than a month to see a specialist in the US

I have several different specialists I've had to see and the minimum wait is 3 months, usually 4 to 6.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#244

Post by Log_out_ »

ipqk wrote: post #236
bethekind wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian culture never ceases to confuse me. Nothing is ever straightforward. I tried giving a gift to some, as thanks for letting me sleep on their couch. They told me no no no. I asked my friends about it, they told me it's about face. Omg, I get that honor is a big thing, but it makes normal interactions way more complicated.

Well, maybe start by not thinking that there's a singular "Asian culture".

There are concepts though shared by the area. Piety. Face culture. Ancestry worship. Conservative values.

Some areas may have it to a lesser extent (China were the cultural revolution steam rolled everything and only left superstition) but the concepts shared remain the same,the expression of the pattern varies widely.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#245

Post by figassis »

aniforprez wrote: post #144
jawngee wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried but they wouldn't accept it.

I've dealt with this many times as a South Asian person and it is very possible they still do actually want money. Most people will not ask in a straightforward manner for money and when you offer to pay them, they act all offended. This is a stupid game that I have no idea how it started where they will pretend to not want the money but will still very obviously want it. This has stumped me, being mildly autistic, f…

Often they’re afraid they’re being recorded. So the conversation should be more like asking for unrelated advice and then making some type of friendship, maybe asking for their contact if you needed any more clarification, etc. Also, they might have a trust network, like you get to them through their friends. So you should ask your friends if they know someone working in this department etc, and get an intro. That way they feel safer. You don’t have to pay them monthly, but yeah, do occasionally compensate them for no reason.

Regarding money, you should start with cash. Have an amount you think is fair on your pocket. Tell them this is what you have and thank for their help. If they don’t look happy or they reject/ask for more, tell them it though, but that you need check if you have more in your car. If the difference is a lot, say you need to ask friend for help. Go back to your car, pretend to talk to someone and come back with more. If they really want a lot more, ask for they’re bank account and tell them you’ll need to transfer (throughout make sure to show them that they asking for a lot and this is very hard for you, you have kids, need to eat, get a cab, pay a loan, etc). Also if you tell them you’ll transfer from a different bank than theirs, they might settle on the cash because interbank transfers are not same day.

All this varies by country and what methods of payment are available.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#246

Post by petesergeant »

jameshart wrote: post #140
petesergeant wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I’ve just spent 18 months in Dubai, where I had private insurance, and it was a breeze. See a UK-trained specialist for almost anything within a day or two, and hospital direct billing meant I almost never had to interact with the insurer directly. I guess my point is that as reassuring (as a Brit) as it is to know the NHS is there, private insurance isn’t necessarily bad if regulated well (and that matches…

A consistent theme in responses here is that how long you just wait for a doctor depends on location, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that the differentiating factor between locations where it is easy to see a doctor vs waiting a long time is how many golf courses are around . Correlation isn’t causation of course. Not suggesting golf courses cause doctors. But in general in this thread I see people from h…

I wonder if richer areas tax NHS resources less or more. I could see cost-per-patient-per-year being less in affluent areas for a number of reasons

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#247

Post by genocidicbunny »

philwelch wrote: post #176
thfuran wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Byzantine punishments were more along the lines of castration and facial amputation.

Reminds me of the funniest Crusader Kings bug of all time—a performance issue where the game laboriously calculated over and over again whether or not every character in the Byzantine Empire wanted to blind every other character in the Byzantine Empire.

I loved that bug. To the point that I actually spent a (probably unnecessary) number of hours QC'ing it to try to figure out what was causing it. I didn't manage to figure out that it was the blinding check that was a problem, but I did discover that if you basically murdered all the people in the Byzantine empire, or you elimited the cultures that allowed blinding people, your game perf would go way up.

So I made a little personal mod that immediately castrated (if there was something to castrate) and blinded all characters of the Byzantine empire on game start, and it seemed to solve the problem.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#248

Post by eesmith »

tomohawk wrote: post #231
seattle_spring wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: to downvoters - why the closed mind? Unsolicited medical advice is not appropriate. It suggests that the people suffering from the condition in question have put literally zero effort into solving their problem, when in reality they likely have already heard about and tried every "trick" or "alternative treatment" you're going to suggest. Other common scenarios: * Telling a chronic pain sufferer to "just try…

Let's not conflate "medical advice" with the suggestion on HN that you might want to look into a dietary change. That seems like a form of catastrophization. If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Just because it relates to your health or body doesn't mean it's medical. I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They…

> If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem?

Yes, without doubt.

Scurvy is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include vitamin C.

Beriberi is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include more thiamine.

Quite a few people have allergic reactions to the content of their food, like celiac disease due to an allergic reaction to gluten, which is resolved by switching to a diet without that component.

Some young children got lead poisoning because they would eat paint chips which tasted sweet due to the lead content. Their medical problem is helped by switching to a non-lead paint diet, often by removing the old paint from where they live and repainting, or by moving somewhere without lead paint.

> I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap.

Snoring does not mean someone needs a CPAP machine. How were they diagnosed? How severe was it?

Was the food actually low in histamines? How low was it? Did it affect histamine levels in the blood? As I pointed out elsewhere here, the histamine variability in foods is quite high, and hard even for nutrition professionals to get right.

Is there a response curve between the amount of histamine and the amount of obstructive sleep apnea?

How do you know the cause was due to low histamine vs some other dietary change? For example, it seems excluding citrus fruits is part of a low histamine diet even though they do not contain histamine because they are thought to "trigger the release of endogenous histamine" (quoting that paper). But perhaps there is something else in the citrus - the acid content, for example - which causes the problem.

How does an low histamine diet compare to taking anti-histamines? Why should we expect the former to work if the latter does not? What is the proposed method of action?

We have only to look at the history of scurvy and vitamin C treatment to learn how important it is to understand the details of why a treatment works!

How long does it take for the change in diet to affect people? 1 day? 1 month? 1 year?

Does it work for everyone with obstructive sleep apena or only a sub-population?

> If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not.

I was curious. I looked into it. There appears to be no substance behind the idea.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#249

Post by lucasban »

rayval wrote: post #241
EdwardDiego wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every culture has things like this. "You'll have to pop in next time you're in the area!" does NOT mean "turn up at my house unannounced". Even if it sounds like it. Or "How are you going?" is not a prompt to actually tell them how you're going.

Yes when I first moved to the US, people would greet me with "How ya doing?" and I thought they really did want to know. It took a while to understand that it was just a way of saying hello. I'm told that, in China, a way to greet someone is to say: "Have you eaten yet?" 你吃了吗 You are not supposed to provide a detailed answer such as: "Yes I ate a breakfast sandwich this morning at 8 am". Instead you simply say "I ate…

Working in Singapore, I encounter this often (but in English). It took me a few months before I realised that I did not need to provide a detailed answer.

Re: How to Replace Your CPAP in Only 666 Days

#250

Post by mikebenfield »

_qua wrote: post #183
NelsonMinar wrote: post #147

"Compliance" is the other half of the US insurance nightmare with CPAP. Often insurers demand access to logs of the machine to verify you are actually using it before they will reimburse you. CPAP machines have an elaborate tamper-proof logging mechanism including a cellular modem for data uploads outside your control. Largely to enable surveillance by US insurance companies. In addition to the surveillance being off…

As someone who treats people with CPAP, it’s absurd how many people get them and then don’t use them hardly at all. Yes there’s an adaptation period where you need to get used to using it, but you do need to use it for it to do anything. It doesn’t seem crazy for insurance to want to not keep paying for something that is sitting under a pile of clothes in the corner.

I tried to use a CPAP machine for a while. I honestly could never figure out how I was supposed to breathe with it. At all. It seemed to be physically impossible. I'd try for a while each night, then get frustrated and stop so I could get some sleep. Completely useless to me.

Fortunately I was able to just return it, but if I hadn't been able to, why should that mean insurance wouldn't cover it? I was prescribed this device and it didn't work for me.

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