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In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

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Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#211

Post by pmyteh »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #165
sgjohnson wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NHS is garbage. After experiencing them once I took on a private health insurance that cost me £300ish per month. So now my taxes paid for the garbage public healthcare system that I didn’t want, and then I had to pay for the private insurance. Unfortunately most people aren’t that fortunate to be able to easily justify spending extra £300 a month on health insurance so they just cope with the NHS.

Wow, only £300? Private insurance in the US is so much more than that. When you get care, is a portion paid by NHS and the remainder from the private company? Or maybe the existence of NHS puts healthcare costs much less than that in the US.

It's mostly lower because the scope of private medicine in the UK is generally a lot narrower: it's used for getting fast access to specialists and elective surgery, and a nicer room in hospital. If there's a serious complication when having your private hip replacement you're probably going by ambulance to an NHS ICU. Ditto emergency care. So a lot of the expensive parts of healthcare fall on the NHS even if you have private cover.

Something a little similar happens in the US: as a visitor you can get travel insurance including private medical care for much less than regular private insurance, because the insurance company isn't on the hook for long-term problems, just for a medevac back to your home country.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#212

Post by pmyteh »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #203
ghufran_syed wrote: post #114

The funny thing is, as an orthopedic surgeon in England, Wallace probably hadn't put in a chest tube in years, while the other "junior" doctor training in internal medicine, Tom Wong, probably did one every week. I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect Dr Wong probably did most of the procedure while the senior doctor Wallace took most of the credit later. As the senior doctor, Wallace was certainly responsible for…

I don't think the ground exam was flawed--rather, she was downplaying the problem because she wanted to fly.

The surgeon noted in the case report that he didn't carry out a full primary survey on the ground, for reasons that seem a bit weak in retrospect.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#213

Post by selimthegrim »

selimthegrim wrote: post #129
NittLion78 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Wahlberg's character in Three Kings has to do this after getting shot while wearing kevlar because his lung collapsed.

I believe there is a rather gruesome in situ depiction of the pnuemothorax

*pneumothorax

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#214

Post by kube-system »

ada1981 wrote: post #210
kube-system wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I was alluding to. Part of the high bankruptcy rates in the US are because we have very liberal laws about bankruptcy. Not only do you get to keep your home, but the majority of people who file Chapter 7 keep everything . That’s not to say we don’t have issues with medical costs… I’m just speaking generally about using bankruptcy rates as an indicator.

Can you share more about people keeping everything?

They’re called “no asset chapter 7” filings.

The TL;DR is that the law allows you to “exempt” certain assets, mostly, basic necessities that people need to live a basic productive life. The point of bankruptcy is to make people pay what they can reasonably afford, not to make them pay every penny possible. The types of assets that chapter 7 does take away are things that poor people often don’t have anyway.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-chapter-7-no...

I think TV and movies have led people to believe that people “lose everything” when they file bankruptcy and end up on the streets. That’s just not reality, at least in the US.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#215

Post by kmano8 »

sizzle wrote: post #144
kmano8 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to me in college. Driving home from the movies, chest started to hurt on inhale .. I decided to "sleep it off", which obviously didn't work. Went to the ER in the morning. Got the chest tube and spent about a week seeing if it would heal naturally, then they removed the offending part of my lung, and did a mechanical pleurodesis (a procedure that sticks your lung to the chest wall so it can't collapse).…

Hope you’re doing better now. That is a lot to go through at a young age to say the least.

I am! Thank you. It's been almost 15 yrs .. I have a few scars from the chest tubes as a reminder. My lung capacity is normal. Every so often I get some numbness on that side when it's storming outside. In the couple years following, I did go through some hypochondria, thinking I had any number of related and unrelated issues. I've been advised not to scuba or go climbing Mt. Everest (ha!), though I do wonder if and when the other side could strike.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#216

Post by webmaven »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #175
kmano8 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to me in college. Driving home from the movies, chest started to hurt on inhale .. I decided to "sleep it off", which obviously didn't work. Went to the ER in the morning. Got the chest tube and spent about a week seeing if it would heal naturally, then they removed the offending part of my lung, and did a mechanical pleurodesis (a procedure that sticks your lung to the chest wall so it can't collapse).…

For anyone reading these comments with growing anxiety who gets occasional, short duration stabbing pains when breathing in (lasting only a couple minutes at most), allow me to put your mind at ease by directing you to the Wikipedia page for precordial catch syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precordial_catch_syndrome Very similar symptoms, totally harmless, to the point where the recommended treatment is "reass…

I get that every few months, though I'd describe it a bit differently:

First of all, it is usually brought on by sitting hunched over and breathing shallowly for a while (like, an hour). And the pain isn't exactly stabbing, unless you're counting being poked hard with a Popsicle stick.

It releases if I breath deeply enough, with an odd crunching sensation, sort of like popping really small bubble wrap, or cracking knuckles on a tiny hand.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#217

Post by adenozine »

adenozine wrote: post #43

I've seen this in a rom-com before, where they poke a hole in the person's chest and they survive by decompressing the trapped fluids out of the hole. Weird to think about surviving something because you were stabbed in the right spot. Cool stuff.

Just Like Heaven. It's just like heaven where he jabs the guy with a steak knife because he's haunted by the unsettled spirit of a female MD, whom he later falls in love with.
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