Gall bladder surgery leaves some people with explosive diarrhea every time they eat.
The aphorism is "measure three times, cut once", see? (My grandfather said the saying in Russian was 'measure seven times'.)
Should have known that Apo would be all over this, by inclination and profession.
I have one leg longer than the other right now. I just grew that way.
You don't even want to know, Stanley.
6: it's an epidemic, is what it is. I hope your affliction passes quickly. (Yes, yes, 7 to 1.)
My grandfather said the saying in Russian was 'measure seven times'.
More than three times is just masturbating.
"My experience with vasectomy actually top's another previous horrifying experience I had earlier in my life. I burnt both my hands and face/hair off completely with second and third degree burns in a gasoline fire when I was 16(in 5 months I made a full recovery, pain free). My vasectomy experience as a whole has been by far the worst experience in my 36 years alive here on earth, worse than the fire, divorce, being homeless at one point, all the challanges in my life, you name it."
by far the worst experience in my 36 years alive here on earth
His following six years in the freezing vacuum of outer space were somewhat worse than his vasectomy, but that probably goes without saying.
Presumably "made a full recovery" is not consistent with my initial parsing of "burnt both my hands ... off completely".
Gimpy is right, Stanley. You don't want to know what can go wrong even with the ostensibly simple & easy. IMX "well tolerated" is medical jargon for "Is not writhing and screaming".
Who knew there was a hidden dark side to having your balls stabbed?
I learned this summer that if you go into open heart surgery expecting to be completely healthy, pain-free and, indeed, more athletic than you've ever been afterwards you may end up disappointed.
This wasn't me. I did indeed make that joke.
Because you knew you could outrun him.
I thought as a child (I was not very practical) that for me, if not for every other person, eyeglasses would be like braces, and abandoned when their few years' work was done. No one disabused me of this notion, kindly.
I was very surprised when I learned that broken bones did not heal exactly as they were originally. I was even more surprised when I learned that broken clavicles were left to set in whatever state they were in (usually), and if that seemed weird, tough it out, ol' lumpy-shoulders.
I don't know about medical procedures but I hear a lot about differnet infections.
One thing that freaked me out a little was the idea that West Nile virus is not that bad in its home countries because it tends to infect children, who do in fact suffer encephalitis but come out all right because the skull has some room to expand. Therefore this may be a case where vaccination would hurt rather than help.
Another case where vaccinating would be guaranteed to hurt rather than help is dengue. People who initially got dengue fever are then susceptible to worse disease upon later infections with slightly different strains, because antibodies help the virus enter cells and those cells transport it through the body faster than it did at first, while the antibodies themselves are not that effective because it's a different strain of virus.
There can be especially bad side effects from receiving a hip replacement from Chico and Harpo.
This thread is really not helping my tendencies toward both hypochondria and fear of doctors.
I'm heartened that we've made it 25 comments without a circumcision horror story.
One of the odder side effects of hypochondria is that cauliflower sometimes grows out of your ears.
I forget where I saw some interview recently with a woman who had a vaginal mesh put in after a hysterectomy, and it caused her such intense, constant, stabbing pain (as well as both urinary and fecal incontinence), which her doctors kept shrugging off, so she tried to commit suicide a few times before finally she found a doctor willing to remove the mesh and I forget what he did next. But the look on this woman's face while she was telling this story was so hollow and dark--thousand-mile stare stuff. Shudder.
23- There are two dengue fevers. Normal fever is when you're infected with one serotype (there are 4.) Hemorrhagic is when you're infected with a second different one and is the disease with bleeding eyeballs, etc. The former is still not pleasant, it's called breakbone fever because the convulsions can literally make you break your own bones, but the second is the outbreak-type nightmare.
We have one serotype in our lab which is permitted at BL2, having two serotypes together would require BL4 containment.
a woman who had a vaginal mesh put in after a hysterectomy
People need to realize, these remodeling shows on HGTV are just toxic...
26 for front page mouseover?
25: Teo, if you have a fear of doctors (which shows you're rational, intelligent, and all sorts of other good stuff) you need to cultivate stoicism. Hypochondria ups the chances you'll be exposed to some screening tests and infections floating around the doc's office or the hospital. That leads to doom.
Don't worry, the fear of doctors trumps the hypochondria, which as a result manifests mainly as noticing some problem, concluding from it that I'm going to die, and making my peace with that. So far I've never actually died.
Yeah, that's the way I've worked it so far. Too many people I know got involved with docs and are no longer around.
What are some other weirdo side effects of otherwise relatively common medical procedures?
Well, a CT scan of the lower abdomen in general calls, sometimes, for ingesting a fair amount of a substance (billed as sorta like a fruity vanilla shake, pretty yucky) which later results in uncontrollable diarrhea. Not explosive, quite, but it's advisable to be close to a toilet for at least a couple of hours, ongoing. Someone should have mentioned that.
39: There's another such test and drink that results, if one doesn't drink enough water afterwards, in almost terminal constipation, and the eventual production of pellets so dense they won't flush.
Oh! I nearly forgot this one. Any guesses as to what happens when a doc pops a whole syringe of hydrogen peroxide into a cardiac cath instead of the dye? Right.
That doesn't sound good, Biohazard.
At the same time, I'm not so hip to the anti-medical establishment thing. Doctors (or EMTs) have saved my life a couple of times. I'd be dead by now without medical knowledge. Just to be fair, and clear.
42: I'm all for trust and verify for medical stuff if that's possible. For time-critical events one can only trust.
Verify when possible sounds good to me.
To clarify, I actually (pace Biohazard) consider my aversion to the medical establishment a pretty serious and potentially dangerous personality flaw, and one that I'm working on fixing. I've been lucky so far in being young and generally healthy, but as I get older the probability increases that I'll develop actual serious health problems that will require some level of medical care, and I'd ideally like to be aware of potential problems before they reach the crisis stage. And then of course there are my various psychological issues, of which this is one, which have generally been more tolerable with some sort of treatment than without it.
Also, parsimon, while you're here: I'd like to apologize for the stuff I said to and about you before. There are some things that bother me about the way you tend to interact with me personally and with the blog in general, but snide comments about ignoring you were not the right response. Maintaining an atmosphere of civil discourse where people are kind to each other is very important to me, and I realize that I was not helping contribute to such an atmosphere with those comments. I'm sorry, and I hope you can forgive me and that we can interact with mutual kindness and respect going forward.
There's some sort of contrast dye for a CT scan that is like liquid warmth going through your veins. It's kind of awesome.
45.2 is a good example of why I think so very highly of Teo. Class act.
It's always Yom Kippur somewhere. Or possibly that's happy hour?
|| Are there really no Stony Brook folk associated with the blog? How about Wagner -- whose seahawks are heading to the Field of Red next weekend? |>
45.1 -- The first rule of avoiding all medical care is not talking about avoiding all medical care.
51 I guess I qualify. Did my BA there in the early 90s and was living there (again) as recently as this past summer.
Oh! I was thinking of going to the game next Saturday.
Care to make it interesting?
I had no idea they were doing so well. Back in my day they were still called the Patriots (What's a Seawolf? Indeed.) Unfortunately in that respect I'm very boring as I never gamble. (Long story short: when I was a kid my grandfather had me add up his receipts from a couple of decades of playing the horses - trotters mostly - I found out he'd lost about $12,000, really big money in those days, especially to a kid.)
There's a guy down the street who apparently thinks it's always Sukkot somewhere or else he's just really into plywood in the yard.
46: aaack noooo! the nurse who was narrating my CT scan told me about the feeling of "warmth" 45 seconds too late, giving me enough time to freak the fuck out. and that is not the right chemical warmth, that is like...physical warmth from a fire, but in all of your cells at once. so wrong. on the other hand, di, you would like heroin a lot. I can't say I recommend it exactly, but.
46:
If you give blood and do a double red cell donation they take their regular pint (quart?), spin off the red cells in a centrifuge, pump the plasma back into you, and then take a second pint (quart?) of whole blood. Whole thing takes one needle, maybe 45 minutes. Best part is, the plasma that's been through the centrifuge comes back in at close to room temperature, and feels cold up the veins of your arm and into your vena cava.
Best part is, the plasma that's been through the centrifuge comes back in at close to room temperature, and feels cold up the veins of your arm and into your vena cava.
YUCK!
It is just past five o'clock in Casablanca.
58.last I've found all the opiate injections I've been given (in a gall bladder context, in fact!) to have that verging-on-painful hot feeling. The nurses were laughing about what a bad heroin addict I would be, and that was even before the time I was in the ER and because of whatever they injected me with couldn't shut up and I'm pretty sure the only reason Lee didn't break up with me was because "She was talking nonsensically at 3 am in the ER and it was so annoying!" is not the kind of breakup rationale you can share with anyone you hope will ever respect you.
Back to the OP, I had a cow-orker who had a leg break serious enough to require surgery. (It was broken in 2 or 3 places below the knee -- I don't remember exactly.) When the leg healed, his foot was pointed slightly outward. It wasn't noticeable to anyone else, but it interfered somewhat with his mobility. Fixing it required another surgery.
I don't know if it was a preventable mistake and I don't mean to stoke two's fears, but for me it's a good object lesson in the need to research surgeons and hospitals.
I had a very minor surgery with a doctor I trust and everything turned out ok, but I know I should have done at least some checking into her record and the hospital's.
That guy Apo links in 10 I suspect is nuts and/or has a lot of health problem that are surely not related to a vasectomy. Also, that last line would make an excellent hover text.
From day 8 to 20 I had developed severe pain in my balls(congestion), and the nerve pains from it spread into about everything 1 foot above and below my waist... On day 43 I felt a bad sensation in my left groin, hip and leg at work that felt like it had 110 volts going into the back side of it. On day 46, if I laid back in a chair after work or laid in bed at night, the high voltage pain in my left groin/hip/leg came back and was some of the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life, all night long down the backs of my legs(left mostly)...From this point forward, day 51 to present day 71, it seems like all of my pain has reorganized. It seems to have let up a little bit in my balls(maybe a 6-7 on average), but now it has spread into both of my legs(muscles) and knees almost all day long. I feel severe pain in my balls, groin, hips, upper legs, the backs of my knees. I feel pain in my kidneys, random pains in my abdomen, side aches, and of course my balls still throw a complete fit without warning, sometimes for hours on end.
66: Super-sciatica. Soon to be a SyFy movie villain.
I find this tweet significant:
https://twitter.com/sbristowsd6/status/272594107078152194
I had that fluid that Di and a were taking about for an angiogram once. They warned me but I still didn't like it. It was like all the effects of being mildly drunk without getting high.
I'm reliably informed that a craniotomy to relieve a subdural haematoma can leave some people (not me apparently) subject to epileptic type seizures.
di, you would like heroin a lot
In my experience of opiates to date, they just make me painfully nauseated. Nausea is my least favorite thing in the whole world.
57 What did you have in mind?
63 Yeah, and an Alaska team has the right to that kind of a name but Stony Brook?!
156 potentially unsafe, ineffective, or inappropriate medical treatments.
Does ACA do anything to address the problem of how your insurance may cover Hospital X and Doctor Y but not necessarily, say, Anaesthesiologist Z at the hospital? Recent Widow was telling us about some of the bills he's digging himself out from under, of that nature. Or they'll cover lab tests, but not the person who reads/interprets the lab tests. Etc.
Of course, a truly informed shopper would have been able to secure a really great deal by getting anaesthisized at one hospital and operated on in another.
73: Don't think so. Plans are required to cover all the basic medical services, but who knows how convenient or transparent that will have to be. State-by-state, there may be more leverage via the approval process for plans to get on the exchange.
I find it pretty hard to believe that insurance companies and hospitals would be motivated by increasing profits rather than by helping people to get and remain healthy.
I'm still waiting for the happy day when state regulations prohibit tampering with, disabling, or destroying the smoke detector in an airplane lavatory.
79: "Whoo! We're over Nevada! That smoke detector is history!"
Well that was unexpected. 80 was me.
Foodstuffs of some sort?
It's only the second round, so, you know, nothing too extravagant.
81: If only there were some way to make a bad joke about something going off before it was supposed to.
Like an alarm! That's so funny when they go off prematurely.
I'm not sure how I'd ship a growler of bongwater, but my guys are going to win anyway, so maybe I don't have to actually work that out just yet.
Somebody's smoke alarm went off early so they're drinking a growler full of bong water for Yom Kippur? I have got to start paying more attention.
45.2: I appreciate the apology, teo. To be honest, I was blindsided by your remarks at the time, didn't see it coming at all, so I'll be treading pretty carefully for a while. I can't help that. I don't intend to be uncivil over it.
To be honest, I was blindsided...
Don't worry. That can happen to anybody, I hear.
I'm not sure what measurement a "growler" denotes and can only think of it's meaning in UK slang (bongwater would make a nasty douche).
For some reason, I don't really want to know what the Urban Dictionary definition is.
Thanks.
91 I think it might have come up here before.
Also "its" dammit.
We just covered this all a month or two ago. Jeez.
I knew it was either here or something I read over at The Atlantic.
My favorite part of that photo is the red pompoms on her shoes. I wonder if they were clip-on? Or were those just her go-to shoes when pompoms were in order?
That picture's a classic. Up there with this one.
Yep. That's why I turned to drugs and self-destruction.
Don't think the Hoff ever posed with Mr. T (that would be a clash of the titans) but there's this.
73: The ACA requires your insurance company to pay Z at their standard rates even if they don't have a contract, but it allows Z to bill you if they don't think the insurance payment is enough, and it doesn't require your insurance company to pay that additional bill. According to Kaiser, 9 states sort of prohibit that extra billing.
99- Come on kids, come in the limo with the nice white man
A side effect of a mastectomy involving the injection of Methylene/Isosulfan dye for sentinel node biopsy is that a person pees blue. Not as much of a shock as the feel and look of the chest right afterward, but if she's unprepared, it might alarm a little.
Not that it is in any way comparable, but some of the deeper shades of cake frosting, the kind you get on a Batman-themed cake, will make your poop turn the same color as the little rocks at the bottom of a fish tank.
How much frosting do you have to eat?
103: there's a dye they put in your eye to check for scratches on the conjunctiva, which, over the next few days, means that you sneeze orange.
Okay, enough foreplay. What makes you jizz purple?
What makes you jizz purple?
Listening to Prince on DMT.
Not as informative as one would hope.
104: On the advice of a shrink who on reflection was a lunatic, I once tried an all raw foods diet to treat depression. The main thing I ate was almonds, like for three days straight. I pooped a kind of eggshell off-white. I freaked out and ate a steak right away.
It occurs to me that a straight almond diet plus appropriate dyes could allow one to poop just about any color one chose. Getting candy stripes is left as an exercise for the advanced student.
"Hi, I'm 11 and I want to change my semen color. My friend whos 12 could make his semen turn green and red or yellow, how do I do it?"
Getting candy stripes is left as an exercise for the advanced student.
Extreme constipation should allow sufficient time for layering.
Extreme constipation and enough diet variety and you could do a thing like one of those layered sand jars.
Might still be time before christmas!
Just buzzing past as my semester comes to a shuddering, speechless end, but when my father had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago his doctor extended that leg so it's now the same length as the other for the first time in his life. Crazy!
