For SCIENCE! (and for Siggy) and local stuff. by Fremdfirma

That's two different autoimmune over-reactions occurring simultaneously. o.0

Have to look at the other science.

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Sunday, May 29, 2011 9:09 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:

ETA- But mostly... glad to see you cheated death.

*hugs*

Indeed. Seconded, and then some!

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Sunday, May 29, 2011 11:58 AM

Reduced differentiation between the temporal lobe and the cerebral cortex could maybe cause some functional spillover from typically temporal lobe activities into social or communication processes.

Facial recognition, speech, auditory input, even some object recognition and situational interpretation could all become complicated, a tangle of conflicting signals bleeding over into other every day activity. The amount of complication could vary, from creating parallel thinking styles to serious impacts on function.

The Gliese 581 system would be nice to visit in general.

And yay for the girl being freed from the foster hell. Though she's still going to be messed up from what I understand... But at least you used your new "undying" status to scare the bejesus into people doing what's right.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 12:40 AM

Yeah, well, it wasn't fun - the main hassle was the neuro stuff, plus having your own blood vessels upstairs exploded from the inside like that doesn't do wonders for your cognitive and coordination abilities, not to mention the unholy pain... which as usual, there was some pretty extreme bitterness between me and the medical staff over the current state of pain control in medicine, fuck the DEA, with a fistful of razors, I say.

For reference, here is what lead to the destruction and shutdown of The Pain Relief Network.
http://www.slate.com/id/2278244/pagenum/all/#p2

That bitterness wasn't at all helped by watching a friends father die in screaming agony not too long ago from stomach cancer, all the while those bastards doing everything in their power to keep him hanging on as long as possible, while denying pain control under the embarassingly thin fiction of concerns about addiction, which is kind of ludicrous with an obviously terminal patient - and of course the financial devastation has ruined his family as well... I ain't goin out like that, if none of my enemies have the chops, my friends will do for me - it's sickening that we're willing to grant our pets a mercy and dignity we're unwilling to give each other.

Anyhows, yeah - somehow I managed to get up off the floor, stagger to the car (on crutches, no less!) and drive to the clinic while clinging to consciousness by mere threads despite what I can best tell from all that medicalese seemed to be a slow-motion stroke, my stubborn jackassery is kinda legendary for damn good reason.

Along with this came what I first took for mild heat rash which soon exploded into little pox everywhere, leading to their first (and idiotic!) initial diagnosis of Varicella, aka Chicken Pox, which I already had, told them I already had, only to be completely fucking ignored, quarantined, and prescribed an utterly *useless* course of antivirals - it was only the mad science docs insistence on a punch biopsy and a shitload of tests which ever convinced the damn confirmation-bias-blinded fools otherwise in the end.
He's a right smart bastard, once he realized just how damn tough his patient was, he immediately discarded their diagnosis since even if it *were* Varicella, it wouldn't have put me on the floor and in fact I prolly would have mostly ignored it, so he went back looking for something more serious.
I was a bit annoyed with him though, they took so much blood for testing even the nurses started to worry, eighteen tubes the first day, and due to improper storage or care, had to come back and take eleven more, I think, and over the next few days enough of that to leave my arms looking like a damn junkie pincushion, yick.

Once I realized the clueless assholes were going to be of no use, I started cheating (slipping ice under my tongue to throw off temp readings, using breath and mental disciplines to stabilize pulse and BP, and pretending I wasn't in pain) and playing hardball, and really, really put the arm on them to let me out - pointing out that time is a finite resource when you work for a living, and I had a landlord and contracts to pacify, not to mention seeing to my cats - what I couldn't tell em, since they wouldn't listen anyways, is that I am to a great degree a lair-critter, I *need* to be in my fortress/comfort zone, medical support or not, and so long as I am away from there it puts me at a severe psychological disadvantage great enough to be of real medical concern in a crisis.

I did bend them into cutting me loose, even if they damn near wrapped me in plastic when they did - remember they were still thinking Varicella, which is contagious, and I got things sorted pretty quick, but that took energy I couldn't really spare and I collapsed again, and worse, those cute little pox subsided a bit, and then in came the REAL thing, I mean genuine old testament biblical, a plague of fucking boils - and them bastards hurt like a mofo, and in some damn sensitive places, plus inflaming the nerves in my arms to where my hands were about on fire, throbbing and stinging (I still got some of that goin on now, plus numbness in my ring and pinky fingers, but that's goin away) and the worst of it was the inability to hold a thought clearly unless I devoted all efforts to it in a very damn singleminded fashion - so I could only do ONE thing at a time and had to constantly write down what I was supposed to be doing and keep the notepad in one hand at all times.

Then the mad-doc calls me back and having blistered the egos of his compatriots, has me dragged back and re-admitted for treatment of the actual problem, in which he resorted to mad science of a kind which left his peers somewhat appalled - when they told him "The shock could kill him!", he just laughed (he's got a *great* mad science laugh too, almost villainous, I tellya) cause by then he'd gotten, and actually READ, my previous medical records.

And from that point things improved rather rapidly - one thing I have learned is why the Wayne County cops are so fucking stupid, Steroids really, really interfere terribly with your cognitive process, it's like having a goddamn static generator in the center of your brain munging up every single thought and one really has to fight to keep a coherent train of thought.
(funny bit about it, we had trouble filling the prescription cause the damn police have bought em all up, just about, which says nothing good about em, you ask me!)
We gotta taper them off, cause of the dosages and whatnot, but I'll be damn glad to see the last of em and get back my usual sharp sidewinder processes, instead of this linear brute force approach I gotta use currently.

And yes, Byte - there was a little but of that, auditory in this case, intrusive audio, mostly music, kinda like having an MP3 player in my head, so it wasn't all that irritating, since whenever it happened there was a mental connection between the music in question and what I was doin at the time so I could use it as a focus baseline.
Not so much communication difficulties per se, as a simple unwillingness to do so due to lack of coherence, but remember I had my Ex backing me up as soon as she heard about it, and she's a hardball corporate negotiator, and has known me as close as anyone ever does for more than a decade, so she handled all that without actually needing any input from me - and if she wasn't available Alice could have done it, and would have, but better that she didn't have to since the situation put her in a tough mental spot, since while she believes heart and soul in what I do, she also personally hates me, and holds a lot of pent up bitterness about it.
(Wendy of course alternated between picking up the slack on the work shifts, and hiding under her bed in mortal dread, as her reaction to stress is to all but barricade herself in somewhere, and she still has attachment issues.)

Anyhows, the crux of this seems to have been an autoimmune reaction, apparently there was some kind of misfire/miscommunication in there regarding a mild hand sprain and my immune system went overdrive berserk and ran wild - which is about all I can figure for the slew of medical doubletalk which for the most part seems an end run around outright saying "We have no bloody idea." - something no doctor is too keen on saying outright, of course.

Also, while it took a lot out of me (I could barely stand at the time), indeed it was worth intervening with the so-called authorities over Arianna, since not only was my presence unexpected (Malek about shit a brick), but in that I really did *LOOK* like a half-dead plague victim at the time - that whole crawled-off-the-deathbed to come put a boot up someones ass works even better when you really do look the part, heh.
Although I will say there's suprisingly very little scarring - the damn pox/boils just kinda went away, without leaving too much carnage in their wake, not that I care overmuch.

And one more boot up the DPDs ass comin, over the crime lab - such as it ever was anyway, when DPD policy is to simply grab whoever they think they can pin it up and beat a fucking confession out of them, then stick them with a professional dive-taker (aka public "defender") for counsel anyway, ain't like they ever really USED it, unless they needed to cook up some bullshit "evidence" to convince their supposedly-random, but in fact loaded, jury pools of something, anyways.

Detroit's abandoned crime lab adds to a disturbing U.S. trend
http://www.freep.com/article/20110529/NEWS01/105290502/1001

Quote:
This is just another glaring example of what is now an epidemic in crime lab negligence," said Drew Findling, chairman of the Forensic Discipline Committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Of Detroit's lab fiasco, Findling said: "It's really one of the most shocking stories."

The Free Press discovered last week that evidence sat in a decaying old school for months, the remains of the city's crime lab that was ordered closed in 2008 because of shoddy police work. Among the rubble -- susceptible to thieves and vandals -- were thousands of rounds of live ammo, sealed evidence kits and case files.

Worth askin where the money goes, over this, what with their posh casino HQ and sucking the budget so dry the firefighters and EMTs ain't got enough to go around, innit ?
Won't take too much more of their bullshit to have the whole damn city howling for their heads, torches and pitchforks in hand - which is about the only way any reform *IS* gonna happen around here so long as that bitch Worthy is in power, poisoning the whole mess from the top down.
There's a reckoning gonna come there, sooner or later - and I'd rather sooner.

And now I must be off to the obligatory BBQ for our ridiculously contrived and deceitful holiday supporting the senseless slaughter of dipshits for american corporate interests, yay whoopty.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 10:38 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Hi Frem

Just a comment for clarity - I don't think you dislike modern medicine, since what got you better was powerful and fully modern medicine. I think you dislike - and here I have a hard time coming up with the phrase - Brain dead medicine? Bottom of the barrel medicine? Plug and crank medicine?

Anyway ...

Frightening stuff you went through. I hope you make a full recovery with no lingering mementos.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 10:54 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"The Free Press discovered last week that the crime lab -- housed in a deteriorating old school building on Brush Street -- was abandoned and unsecured."

But it's not like the people in the crime lab were guilty of malfeasance. They didn't just put down their samples, and go for an extended coffee break, leaving the doors wide open on the way out.

By what I get from the story, the problems are far higher up the chain - ie police department upper management. The lab was ordered closed, one police com was supposed to make sure the stuff was secured and transferred, he was fired in the middle of the task, and the next one dropped the ball.

The reason I point this out is b/c lately a lot of hard-working, honest, productive workers - teachers, lab people, nurses and aides, firefighters and EMTs - are being made to walk the plank due to structural problems created by the higher-ups; problems over which workers have no control.

I don't want this to be more fuel on the fire for those who don't bother to read the articke.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 4:27 PM

Not sure about that, 1kiki, apparently the fix was very unorthodox, from an equally unorthodox doctor.

... Maybe.

But, Frem, what was it that worked? Oh man! you shoulda asked that doctor if he'd agree to send you his write up! Maybe you still can.

Though I guess he'll be around if it ever happens again.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 4:54 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Steroids ...(funny bit about it, we had trouble filling the prescription ...)."

Steroids are pretty SOP for autoimmune reactions, even when the doctors know nothing else except 'it's some kind of autoimmune problem ...'

I expect his treatment was a pretty stiff dose, perhaps even coupled with some them fancy new immune modulators.

But, did you google (when did that get to be a verb?) the dx? It's some serious nasty trouble.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 6:11 PM

Oh yeah, basically a massive doseage of intravenous steroids backed up by an unspecified mixture of schedule II/III drugs, antibiotics and at least one "grey-area" drug which may or may not be officially approved for use.
All at once - whoo.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MushroomSamba

The other docs were kinda flaking about that, given the potential for lethal system shock, and I got to hear a bit of the conversation since they were just around the corner - mad doc said something to the nature of that they were "used to working with aluminum, and this guy's built of steel." since unlike the others he'd actually read the medical records and noted my history of surviving or even shrugging off what would normally be lethal damage or blood loss.
He was right too, the only adverse affect I noted besides a bit of altered perception was a sudden craving for more caffiene, thoughtfully provided via several large mugs of coffee.
(this is a running joke with me and medical folk mind you, no matter *how* bad it is, my very first request is always, always gonna be a mug of coffee - Doc Corvera made it a standing order to have a mug waiting in the recovery room every time he worked on me.)

Apparently there's gonna be multiple writeups, since I had a damn parade of residents/students coming through to poke at me, ask stupid questions and take pictures - I put up with that, begrudingly, since every bit of collected knowledge may eventually help someone else down the line, and told them so - which THEY found quite gratifying since at times like that most folk are too wrapped up in their own problems to really care about such things.
And hey, why not - if my illness could serve a useful educational purpose, it'd be selfish and silly not to make use of the opportunity, right ?
I did request that my privacy/anonymity was to be respected, which was only fair, however.

I might look into some of the writeups, but right now I am in that fuck-off mood about being poked or prodded any further since I am better and nearly fully recovered, and the followup phase is when they all start pushing Big Pharma wonder drugs at you, which I consider offensive and annoying as hell, especially my clinic doctor is bad for this since he does recieve actual kickbacks and gifts from them - I blow off his efforts in that respect and tolerate him otherwise because his office is more or less down the street, and he's effective enough at scratch-n-dent damage without too many stupid questions about where it came from.
Although I already suspect the gist of the writeups is gonna be the concept of a patient with a very potent, aggressive immune system having more of less a friendly-fire incident within it, which is what so far appears to have been the case.

I did get mad-docs card and added it to my file, the guy borders on downright Sparky, but seems to lack the arrogance and god complex most official medical docs seem to have these days, and you are correct, Kiki - in that it's not modern medicine per-se which grinds my gears, it's the combination of arrogance, incompetence, and collusion between Big Pharma/Medical Corps and hospitals/treatment personnel, resulting in everything from complete fiascos to downright malpractice, something I have a HUGE issue about regarding proper diagnosis, usually in relation to childrens behavioral issues, but also a primary factor here as well.
Done RIGHT, modern medical tech is pretty awesome, but used for profit or self aggrandizement it can be pretty horrific, and there's not a lot of recourse when folk have all the wrong attitudes about it thanks to doctors being treated as minor gods, instead of the medical version of mechanics.
Just cause I know quite a bit about old-school/natural/holstic medicine, and have some axes to grind about misuse, abuse and misapplications of modern medicine, doesn't mean I dismiss it entire - but when I get to flaming about it, some folks do tend to get the wrong idea, sure.

Hell, some days I don't think they go far enough, too much mental inertia and clinging to ideas which AT THE TIME, were pretty advanced, when these days there are better ways to go about it no one wants to investigate cause they're mired down on the concept that things have always been done this way and always will be, instead of innovating and creating - which is, in the end, what Mad Science is all about.

SCIENCE!

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 6:43 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I have this silly idea in the back of my head - you know how we all carry 3 - 5% Neanderthal DNA (except the SubSaharan Africans)? I keep thinking that a lot of our problems like autism are due to chemical pollution triggering our random Neanderthal DNA bits to get activated. Or for our random Neanderthal DNA to deactivate our human DNA.

I'm probably WWWAAAAaaaaaaaayyyyy off base on that. It may even be quite humorous to experts.

Oh well, some day when I retire I'll be able to dig into those oddball notions that catch my interest.

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Monday, May 30, 2011 7:01 PM

KANEMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I have this silly idea in the back of my head - you know how we all carry 3 - 5% Neanderthal DNA (except the SubSaharan Africans)? I keep thinking that a lot of our problems like autism are due to chemical pollution triggering our random Neanderthal DNA bits to get activated. Or for our random Neanderthal DNA to deactivate our human DNA.

I'm probably WWWAAAAaaaaaaaayyyyy off base on that. It may even be quite humorous to experts.

Oh well, some day when I retire I'll be able to dig into those oddball notions that catch my interest.

Hilarious...you can't be serious....roflmao....and to think I actually respond to some of your posts....bad matt.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:09 AM

I know what steriods are, but I'll have to dig into the other medications you mention a little. It's an interesting little puzzle, and thanks for indulging my curiosity enough to answer. It's only been, what, about a week since you were released? Probably feeling pretty trashed still, though your ability to write multiple-paragraph posts is a welcome sign of improvement. Completely understand your "poke and prod" reaction here.

Anyway, good explanation on the modern medicine thing. That's probably the right outlook.

1kiki: Um, well, there is about a 1% to 4% incidence of Neanderthal genes in non-African humans, and a few of those do have to do with cognition. But my guess is that the disorder is wider spread chemically and structurally speaking than just the few genes in question here would suggest. And actually Neanderthal DNA is really similar to modern human DNA.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 5:18 AM

Nah, I'm all good - in fact practically bouncing off the goddamn walls cause I anticipated a longer recovery and have nothing work-related to freakin DO till late Fri/Sat morning, and now that the last of those nasty 'roids (for your curiosity, specifically Prednisone) have worn off I can practically feel the wheels in my mind cranking back up into gear again.

I bounce back *quick* as a general rule, and yanno that might actually have to do with genetics, a lil bit - remember I am in part descended from hillbillies and mountain men, which are some of the toughest mofos on the planet, who take a damn LOT of killing, folks like Albert Johnson of Rat River, Liver-Eatin Johnson, Hugh Glass, and of course Devil Anse Hatfield - in fact not too long ago some crazy grudge holding jerk accosted me with a pistol in the local gas station parking lot, but decided not to engage cause he didn't think he had enough gun to finish me, *laugh*.

Anyhows, gonna polish off the backlog from my in-box and prolly go downtown to harrass them some more over the crime lab, make sure that stuff winds up properly inventoried instead of dissappearing into some klepto cops trunk and such.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 6:40 AM

Weird coincidence, I was just looking up Prednisone for unrelated reasons. Decided Dexamethazone would work better though. People who write sci-fi have odd interests.

Would you believe that I'm considering that the Pax may work as an allergen/inflammatory agent that can pass the blood brain barrier and damages the dopamine producing cells? As well as technically being a combination pesticide and anti-depressant.

*Beat*

Yay for feeling much better, I could kinda tell from the posts, though I couldn't tell if you were 100% yet.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 8:01 AM

DREAMTROVE

Welcome back, glad you're not dead. Keep on with that not being dead thing. It's much more effective than the other. Oh, and Prednisone is nasty stuff.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 8:39 AM

Yeah it is. Be nice if we could get TGF-B and IL-10 and those other natural immunosuppressants in workable form instead of all the synthetics.

But it seems to have done the trick here. I have this funny image of all these T-cells in pirate outfits wrecking havoc everywhere and Frem just slapping them all down and yelling "shaddup!"

What're they going to do about that thrombosis? Because last I heard blood clots in the brain, not good. On the other hand, I think coumadin and the like can actually release clots from places, soo, gotta be careful with that one too.

Actually, if any of the doctors try to put him on anti-blood clotters and anti-thickeners, considering stuff I've seen, maybe he should avoid it... That stuff seems to only really work as preventative, and once you HAVE clots, it seems to be a bad idea.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011 3:08 PM

Well, while I was actually in there, they were using Heparin as a preventative, I've got a whole damn checkerboard of little dots where they just went down the line like an old dot matrix printer with the injections - once released though, it wasn't a major concern cause by then my systems were back to self-regulating, and they do a pretty good job of it, not to mention using a combination of carefully selected diet and proper hydration to offset both that problem and the digestive system issues caused by heavy painkillers (which bind you up) and antibiotics (which do the opposite) - most folk don't think about it so much, but why not use *every* weapon in your arsenal, yes ?

Which amounted to eating a lot of rice krispies with a banana as a side (and the organic milk/vitamin D to backstop skin healing of course) and tons of apple juice.

And now, of course, to take some of the most amusing advice I've ever had a doc give - I hadn't realized it at the time, but the tinnitus I was thinking was possibly a precursor of high blood pressure was actually part of the onset of this problem instead, which in fact must have started well before I had any clue and I was just shrugging it off for quite a while before it came to a head, see, so I was cutting back on salt and less-healthy diet options for a while before this...

Only to be told by one of the internal medicine doctors that my sodium level was distressingly low and my blood pressure pathetically weak - and... that I should eat more junk food!
*laughs*
How often do you hear THAT one from a doctor, eh ?

I am SO having pizza tonite.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011 10:14 PM