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The Other Half

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Re: The Other Half

#291

Post by thecrazyone »

fapjacks wrote: post #278
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…

Seneca talks about this a lot. When I first started going to war in my early twenties, I began confronting my own mortality, and found myself slowly being funneled towards the great Stoics.

Humans have found different ways to deal with their own mortality - denial or religion or saying that's "natural". More people learn, their techniques have also changed, like (almost) no one thinks you/somebody died because it rained the day before and the rain gods spite you for doing XYZ.

My point being, drawing from the practices of people multiple centuries ago might not be the best thing

Re: The Other Half

#292

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

tropo wrote: post #283
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors and cardiologists are used to false alarms. In fact, according to mine, cardiologists provide more diagnoses of pleurisy than pulmunologists. If it could be a heart attack, or similar life threatening thing, you go to emergency.

I've gotten the "pleurisy" diagnosis, twice even, and I don't believe it. Pleurisy seems to be the catch-all default diagnosis for when they can't find anything wrong and just want you to go away. There isn't actual evidence in favor of pleurisy, just the inability to find something else wrong. In the first case, I'm pretty sure I had a panic attack. At least they served me bacon and eggs, probably hoping for a repea…

> Pleurisy seems to be the catch-all default diagnosis for when they can't find anything wrong and just want you to go away. There isn't actual evidence in favor of pleurisy, just the inability to find something else wrong

It's a valid diagnosis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_of_exclusion

I once waited four hours to see a doctor because of a sharp pain in the left side of my chest when I breathed more than shallow. The doctor told me it was probably a muscle spasm and to take some Advil. I thought "what an asshole" as I left.

About 20 minutes later, someone told me a joke, I laughed, and was cured. Turns out the doctor was right.

If you had ECG, x-ray, CT scan, echo, and everything looks fine, then the treatment is the same regardless. If you think you had a panic attack or hurt your back, then communicate that to your doctor. It's important.

Edit: thought I'd mention: my wife is currently diagnosed with pleurisy. She went to the ER due to shortness of breath and chest pain a month ago. We've done all the tests possible. She's still in quite a bit of pain. Pleurisy usually takes months to resolve. If you were diagnosed and it disappeared within a day or a week, then you were likely misdiagnosed. However, it does not necessarily mean the prescribed treatment was erroneous.

Re: The Other Half

#293

Post by martyvis »

lancewiggs wrote: post #227
shanusmagnus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree with this more. I'm from MN, we tend to be pretty polite and understated, assume that doctors (and other authorities) know what they're talking about. Had a friend who progressed to a heart attack in a waiting room because he didn't want to make a fuss. Make a fuss.

This was in Australia. A senior cardiologist has no motivation other than saving your life, and the symptoms were very clear. Meanwhile a stent operation is relatively trivial - as was explained later in the piece. If he'd asked for a second opinion it could very well have added enough time to make things a lot worse.

Interestingly this article on HN last week addressed the finding that while stents are often prescribed for chest pain symptoms it is doubtful they have a more favorable outcome than other treatments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713563#13716162

Re: The Other Half

#294

Post by markvdb »

ars wrote: post #237
komali2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding insurance, I wonder if you would have gone in if you were Keith, who at 35 is working sales at a department store. He might not even have been insured.

Want to disrupt the heart attack market? Make a small home machine that can take an EKG and tell you if everything is fine, or if you should go get checked. Adjust it to give some false positives, but no false negatives. Make it cost around $50, and make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check). If machine learning is not up to the task, then send the EKG to a doctor, I belie…

Want to disrupt the heart attack market?

Might be a good idea! Just don't stop there and be more ambitious. Kill the heart attack market as much as you can by making this technology widely available to those that need it at no cost. Find different ways to earn something from it...

If there is one thing that has been proven over and over again, it's that the market and health care don't go together in terms of efficiency. I'm not even touching the ethics angle here...

When I hear the n-th iteration of the basic income discussion and the "useless" class, health care strikes me as the area to make a real difference in, much more than "basic income". Because even the "useless" class will find ways to sustain itself, given adequate health.

Re: The Other Half

#295

Post by et-al »

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…

Maybe not for heart disease, but stress should be number one for health overall because it affects all the other things you mentioned: sleep, appetite, exercise, and smoking.

With the principals being able to work 18h days, I think their discipline plays a huge part, as you wrote, and maybe they're outliers who naturally cope with these demands better than the average person. I personally can't sustain 12h days for more than a month.

Re: The Other Half

#296

Post by JonoBB »

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…

About 2 years ago I started feeling some chest pains at night. I was just over 40 at the time. I phoned the NHS helpline, who had a paramedic at my house within 1 minute (literally) and she hooked me up to a portable ekg. She found nothing wrong but thought it was a good idea to go to hospital. She stayed with me till the ambulance arrived about 45 minutes later. Ambulance staff was brilliant, and everyone at the hospital too. I checked out about 3 hours later after free everything (x rays, blood tests, egg, etc). I know the NHS has some problems, but they were outstanding in all respects that night, and not havin to even think about the financial side was pretty good too.

Re: The Other Half

#297

Post by martyvis »

magoghm wrote: post #45
jdhn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you realize it was a heart attack? Did you go to the doctor and have them check it out?

At first I looked for information on the Internet about the pain in my arms an saw that, among many other things, it could be a heart problem. A couple of weeks later I started feeling pain on the left side of my jaw (much like a toothache) at the same time I felt the pain in my forearms. Searching again on the Internet I saw that now it was quite probably a heart problem. About 48 hours after that, the pain in my ar…

My wife asks if you are male or female? (I understand if you'd rather not say.We have read that female often have this type of gradual heart attack - my mother-in-law being one)

Re: The Other Half

#298

Post by codeisawesome »

khedoros1 wrote: post #264
dzhiurgis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bosses had to retire after run-ins with the crystal meth law they themselves passed... Wait, what?

Sounds like his bosses were politicians who helped get stricter drug laws passed, then were caught using those drugs.

(Presumably to sustain the will power to work 18h days on 5h of sleep)

Re: The Other Half

#299

Post by adrianN »

ars wrote: post #237
komali2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding insurance, I wonder if you would have gone in if you were Keith, who at 35 is working sales at a department store. He might not even have been insured.

Want to disrupt the heart attack market? Make a small home machine that can take an EKG and tell you if everything is fine, or if you should go get checked. Adjust it to give some false positives, but no false negatives. Make it cost around $50, and make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check). If machine learning is not up to the task, then send the EKG to a doctor, I belie…

Good luck with the lawsuits when your machine gives the wrong answer.

Re: The Other Half

#300

Post by agumonkey »

bleair wrote: post #208

This part fascinated me : "" I waited 5 anxious minutes, and then was bought into a room with two doctors, one of whom turned out to be Dr. Sonny Palmer. Sonny said Georg thought I needed some help, and I’d be checked within a day. I asked if he’d seen the letter with his name on it. He hadn’t. He went and got it. He came back and said I was going to be operated on in an hour. "" You obviously don't want to be rude w…

Communications in hospital is so subpar it's alarming some times. Long wait for stupid data transfer. "Data races", contradictory informations and judgement.

I agree with your advice, but rare are the doctors that don't bounce what you say until it's really heavy.

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