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The Other Half

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Re: The Other Half

#241

Post by ars »

geoyang wrote: post #73
spinchange wrote: post #28

I wonder all the time why we don't have more widely available, "consumer grade" tech like handheld ECGs, etc., to help better detect stuff like this. (There are products like this, but not in U.S. markets to my understanding - at least not without a prescription) If you're unfortunate enough to suffer from something like anxiety attacks and also have heart trouble in your family's medical history it is very difficult…

We are currently beta testing a device that can take your EKG and provide some level of analysis on your phone. If you are interested, we have currently have a private beta and have a few more openings! Of course we have much more planning in our production version. Please feel free to take a look: www.grektek.com. As the other reader mentions, cardiologists are the ultimate judges and even that can be difficult, but…

The "purchase" link goes to kickstarter which says the project is canceled?

Are you charging people for a beta test?

Re: The Other Half

#242

Post by gpawl »

matt4077 wrote: post #137
Dangeranger wrote: post #48

This story and the comments make me curious as to how many hard charging project leaders have, or would, work through a heart attack. These words stuck out to me: > I was fucking annoyed – I felt like I was just super tired and needed some energy, and energy drinks and caffeine weren’t doing the trick. He then went on to keynote a conference and live for what seems like at least two more days without seeking medical…

I'm not completely sold on the relationship of stress and heart disease. I spend some time working in politics, and almost all principals worked 18h-days with less than 5h of sleep during the week. Yet life expectancy is higher than average. There are obviously ots of competing factors at work: they have plenty of opportunities to eat healthy, and the discipline that makes them get up at 5am also makes them go for a…

higher than average for people with similar wealth, education and medical history, or higher than average nationwide, including people in poverty with poor health care and nutrition?

Re: The Other Half

#243

Post by DaUR »

derefr wrote: post #235
DaUR wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if I disagree with you, or if my perspective is this same perspective from a different angle, but: I would say that it's more that men tend to (expect to) derive their self-esteem from things they do, rather than things they are—so they invest much more time in doing things, and much less time in being things. I agree, but that seems tangential to the point. It's a gender difference that has been const…

> The assumption here is that women nurture themselves because they want to look good, I don't believe that at all. You'll nurture yourself because you'll want to do it, instinctively, without needing any willpower. That wasn't what I was trying to communicate at all. My intended meaning was that women—by wanting to look good, or to seem happy, or to put on one of the numerous other faces people expect women to prese…

> That wasn't what I was trying to communicate at all. My intended meaning was that women—by wanting to look good, or to seem happy, or to put on one of the numerous other faces people expect women to present to the world—are forced to pay attention to their own bodies.

I misunderstood that, you're right.

About your wider point: you seem to put a lot of importance on societal roles ("expected to", "narratives"), and I don't think much of this (if at all) is caused by society rather than self-directed. You're arguing that women are more physically nurturing than men (which could well be true), I'm arguing that it's inconsequential as to how to make men more self-nurturing.

Re: The Other Half

#244

Post by gpawl »

komali2 wrote: post #103
ginko wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Guys/gals... If there's any unusual pain in your chest cavity at all, just drop whatever it is you're doing and get it checked out. It might not even seem that bad at the time... it didn't to me and it didn't to Jason Scott... just do it. Yeah, but where do you draw the line? I guess that will sound silly, but I'm always afraid that people think of me as a hypochondriac if I ran to the doctor for every little pain,…

https://www.ghc.org/healthAndWellness/?item=%2Fcommon%2Fheal... TLDR: It's probably not a heart attack if you can pinpoint the pain, if the pain gets worse on a deep breath, the pain is related to movement of your shoulder or arm, or if it only lasts a few second. You should call a doctor if the pain is mild but consistent and is untreatable by pain killers, and remains regardless of if you're resting or not. You sho…

What do you do if you've had symptoms for weeks/months? Until you've been diagnosed with a heart attack, the word "mild" does mean much. People over the age of 35-40 have many chronic mild pains

Re: The Other Half

#245

Post by eric_h »

yannk wrote: post #143
uladzislau wrote: post #20

A tablet of aspirin taken (even chewed if it's too bad) by the first symptoms of the chest pain can save your life.

Why? Because: (small amount works, chewed is better) http://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/aspirin-for-heart...

As an aside, I know this simply from experience with taking drugs recreationally. Chewed or otherwise ground up pills hit you faster, and I've found dissolving a ground up pill in hot water is the winner, as far as time to kick in.

Pharmaceutical pills have all sorts of additives intended to delay the release of the active chemical, recreational pills have an obviously less rigorously tested version of the same.

My mother, a (retired) cardiovascular pharmacologist, taught me that the quality/effectiveness of those additives is often what differentiates brand name drugs from generics (sometimes significantly, admittedly she's been retired for quite a while now, so that information might be out of date, but she actually did some professional research on the subject back in the day).

I'll never forget the time when I, at about the age of 11, was sent in to the store to buy a big bottle of Aleve that my mom was going to "smuggle" across the border to Canada for her sister (Naproxen was prescription only at the time in Canada, but available OTC in the US - amusingly, Tylenol w/codeine was the inverse). I bought a generic naproxen sodium instead (thinking I was so clever for saving about half the money I'd been given), and I got chewed out and sent back into the store to replace it. That was what she got for teaching me to actually read the active ingredients of drugs on the label ;)

Re: The Other Half

#246

Post by textfiles »

Hi, I'm Jason Scott. I had a heart attack and I'm the one who wrote the essay this is linking to.

Since the entry was written last week, I went back to the Emergency Room twice. The first was because I was just feeling "a little weird", and they did a round of tests and verified that no, I'm healing fine, that's just how I feel now (I feel less weird every day). The second time was a few days later when I experienced a notable shortness of breath. This time, the cardiologist said it was likely a side effect of one of my drugs (it's known to do this) and we swapped the medication. Now I'm feeling pretty great.

I mention this because one of the themes of messages in here are "I don't want to be a bother/I don't know if this warrants a trip to the ER" and those two thoughts should NOT be calculated into your deciding to go. Believe me, they'd MUCH rather work on "guy feels funny" than "guy got shot by other guy in argument over the Playstation" or "Guy drank so much he crapped himself and fell onto a sprinkler and is bleeding profusely".

The doctors thought I should not fly for two weeks after the procedure, so we booked an AirBNB for the extra time. My hosts of the two events I spoke at (ACMI and MuseumNext) have essentially paid for this entire extra AirBNB time, which is generous and wonderful and I give a shout-out to them. Additionally, the hospital gave me a letter indicating I couldn't fly, and MuseumNext was able to move my international flight with no real added cost; that's also worth a shout-out. Melbourne is a very nice place to be resting.

The main annoying part is I was (mostly) doing the right things, health wise - I had dropped 30 pounds, and was walking like crazy - I'd upped my step goals on the fitbit after I kept smashing them. On a trip to Japan last year for three weeks, I'd walked over 160 miles. I'd done this because I'd seen so many contemporaries drop dead or get really sick in their 40s and 50s - computer life is not a healthy life. The silent and unaddressed problem, on my side, was cholesterol - it was choking my arteries. Drugs will help that, but I've now radically shifted my diet to approach it naturally as well. I'm raring to go on long walks again, so I will definitely continue that. But please bear in mind - I might still die! Nothing is guaranteed!

I also see a lot of differing opinions on "see doctors" versus "not see doctors". I can't imagine how having a regular doctor checkup is in any way bad. It might not affect what you DIE OF, but it can't hurt quality of life - when I had bad kidney stones for years, it was certainly my doctor who gave me the drug that fixed that. And other small notes have made my life better as well.

Money/cost issues are worth a whole other post.

Finally: I see that 25% of the thread is an argument over linking to the title versus describing the essay's contents. I see people are VERY INTENTLY CONCERNED over the two sides in this discussion. As always, HN knows where to aim the energy.

Re: The Other Half

#247

Post by Mahn »

textfiles wrote: post #246

Hi, I'm Jason Scott. I had a heart attack and I'm the one who wrote the essay this is linking to. Since the entry was written last week, I went back to the Emergency Room twice. The first was because I was just feeling "a little weird", and they did a round of tests and verified that no, I'm healing fine, that's just how I feel now (I feel less weird every day). The second time was a few days later when I experienced…

I don't have anything to add other than to say thank you for sharing this with us, and I wish you a speedy and full recovery.

Re: The Other Half

#248

Post by textfiles »

ars wrote: post #238
scandox wrote: post #53

In Ireland when you say "other half" you generally mean wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend or partner. And the No. 1 thing I thought reading this was that Rachel, whoever she is, must be a damn saint.

They say that in the US as well.

Everyone in Ireland and the US says Rachel is a damn saint.

Re: The Other Half

#249

Post by makeset »

komali2 wrote: post #103
ginko wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Guys/gals... If there's any unusual pain in your chest cavity at all, just drop whatever it is you're doing and get it checked out. It might not even seem that bad at the time... it didn't to me and it didn't to Jason Scott... just do it. Yeah, but where do you draw the line? I guess that will sound silly, but I'm always afraid that people think of me as a hypochondriac if I ran to the doctor for every little pain,…

https://www.ghc.org/healthAndWellness/?item=%2Fcommon%2Fheal... TLDR: It's probably not a heart attack if you can pinpoint the pain, if the pain gets worse on a deep breath, the pain is related to movement of your shoulder or arm, or if it only lasts a few second. You should call a doctor if the pain is mild but consistent and is untreatable by pain killers, and remains regardless of if you're resting or not. You sho…

Also remember that heart attacks in women can exhibit markedly different symptoms, e.g. without any chest pain or arm numbness, often misjudged until too late.

https://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HeartAttack/Warnin...

Re: The Other Half

#250

Post by neotek »

jrwoodruff wrote: post #34

First job out of high school was working in a department store. One of the sales guys I worked with was Keith. He smoked, liked to drink and go to Disney World. After returning from a Disney World trip, he told me how he spent most of it on the hotel room floor because he 'threw his back out' and had general chest pain. Nothing excruciating, just annoying enough that he wasn't up for hours of walking. His friends tol…

>I felt silly, but really everyone that I dealt with was cool about it.

Twice in my life I've presented at the ER with severe chest pain that I thought was heart-related, twice it turned out to be nothing serious (musculo-skeletal pain in one case, very bad indigestion in another), and both times I felt like a fucking idiot for even just showing up, let alone after being told I just need to eat more fruit and shit more often.

But at no point did anyone in the hospital, from the cleaning staff to the nurses to the doctors to the x-ray technicians to the people at the front desk, ever make me feel unwelcome or that I had wasted their time.

When I apologised to a nurse for taking up space in a bed that should have been put to better use for someone who was actually ill, she sat down next to me for a moment and told me that she would rather I was wrong a thousand times and "wasted" a thousand beds in hospital, than right one time and dead at home because I was trying to avoid embarrassment.

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