The Medical Thread

Oh, I totally get you.

It's just that the idea of a person working in medical field having a fear of needles amuses me, although I can totally imagine that it isn't a rare thing.

Yeah, it happens sometimes. I've even met a few nurses who have no problems sticking needles in other people but are terrified of being poked themselves.

Random amusing note.

In my translation class, we had to translate a medical article. And someone misspelled a big time...

Professor: I don't know how you can get a heart "stork," but I'd imagine it would be much more painful than an actual heart stroke.

I'm imagining either a stork Chest Burster or a stork impaling someone with its beak.

Because I didn't get enough sleep last night (I only got 4 hours instead of the usual 6.5), I had to keep myself up with caffeine.

Like, a lot of it. More than I ever did in my life.

So during online classes in the morning, professors gave the class tasks that are supposed to take an hour. I finished them in about thirty minutes. Judging from the reactions, seems like I did pretty darn good job. I was like, man, caffeine is awesome!

When the afternoon came, though, caffeine wore off and the more I consume, the more distracted and scrambled my mind got so I can't do anything properly.

Not sure if it's the excessive caffeine, lack of sleep, or both. XP

It's generally not a good idea to use caffeine in place of sleep. And I say this as someone with a lot of experience with sleep deprivation and caffeine.

This is why I try not to drink more than two cups of coffee or tea in one sitting. Heck, I usually don't drink more than two cups a day.

Edited by M84 on Nov 26th 2020 at 6:18:25 PM

Once, when I was younger and even more foolish than I am now, I was going to Mardi Gras for the final night only. I didnt want to miss anything, so I decided to drink some coffee. Back then, airlines offered unlimited free coffee, so kept asking the stewardess to bring me more. And more, and more. It was a four hour flight, and I spent the entire time drinking coffee. By the time we arrived, the crew was looking at me with concerned eyes, and my hands were actually shaking. But I stayed up the entire night.

It goes without saying that was a stupid thing to do, and no one should try it.

I'd also be concerned about having to urinate frequently after drinking that much coffee in one sitting.

Trust me, that's the least of your concerns.

Not if you're not anywhere near an easily accessible bathroom and you're in public it's not.

Though tbh, you're lucky that all you experienced was jitteriness and sleeplessness.

Edited by M84 on Nov 26th 2020 at 11:00:43 PM

Oh, I'm old so I'm used to that

I'd be more worried about headaches after drinking too much coffee.

Yeah, headaches are a side effect of drinking too much caffeine.

Generally, an adult can drink four cups daily on average and be okay. Though some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others.

Edited by M84 on Nov 26th 2020 at 11:02:55 PM

I fainted this morning. It wasn't fun, but at least I felt it coming and returned to bed in time to not fall. Looking back, I think I can blame two things working together: One is a quirk of my body, ^{an overactive vagus nerve.}  That nerve is responsible for monitoring the digestive tract, shunting more blood to it, and hitting the "eject" button. Because my vagus nerve is overactive, it shunted too much blood to my digestive tract and didn't leave enough for my brain. The other, more important, public-safety-announcement-worthy thing I can blame is dehydration from failing to drink enough water / milk / non-caffeinated tea / other hypotonic solution beverages after my coffee yesterday. Make sure you drink enough water to pre-emptively replace what coffee makes you pee out!

That happens to me pretty regularly (fainting when I get out of my bed). In fact, I am sure that as a kid I once asked my doctor about the reasons why and they said I probably have a low blood pressure.

I have gotten pre-fainting warning signs immediately by going from prone to upright too quickly. In this case, it didn't happen that way, I was sitting on my yoga ball halfway through a YouTube video before I realized "Oh, Crap! I don't feel good and I know these symptoms."

There's a horizontal section of large intestine right by both your diaphragm and a large blood vessel coming down from the heart. What clued me in was a mass of you-know-what moving from right to left along that section and getting more and more uncomfortable the closer it got to that blood vessel. As the pressure grew, so did the dizziness and black fog dancing at the edges of my vision. I also had the pins-and-needles sensation of compromised circulation in my face, mouth and tongue, as well as a phantom taste of I don't know how to describe it. Because I could feel exactly how fast that mass was moving, I knew how many seconds I had left to get the f%$# off that yoga ball and reposition myself safely.

Edited by Miss_Desperado on Nov 26th 2020 at 11:10:26 AM

@De Marquis - I should try mardi gras in my life at least once...

I personally never experienced fainting before. Back when I was in army, though, I've seen several people fainting in formation from heat. The worst (and also the most hilarious) one was when one soldier right in front of me fainted and I had to catch her.

She also happened to be a medic. For an additional irony, my company commander was just in the middle of warning everyone about the danger of heat strokes.

Oh dear, Did the medic faint right exactly when your commander was listing the symptoms and got to fainting?

If you're ever curious about what fainting is like, I've had way too many repeat experiences to ever forget what it's like, enough to write just over a page's worth of details for a fictional character's point of view before, during, and after the faint.

At my last doctor's appointment, he brought in a medical student. I was excited to be a part of that student's education, and was surprised to learn how many people are uncomfortable with that prospect. I thought, "That's weird, how else do those people expect the students to become doctors?"

As a matter of fact, yes, literally less than five seconds later!

Speaking of which, until posting this I actually didn't know why heat causes stroke, which apparently is called heat syncope. The simple version is that heat expands your blood vessel, which in turns leads to lower blood pressure, and bam.

OK, so I'm asking here because I feel like Google didn't really provide me with an answer I wanted.

There's a scene I'm writing that I don't want to fall too hard under Artistic License – Medicine. Without revealing too much of the circumstances, there will be a slight degree of that anyway, but I don't want it to be "How the hell does that make sense, doing that in real life would definitely kill this person!"

So, what I want to know is this:

Is it true that, when you lose a lot of blood, the heart rate increases? I've seen some articles online that says this is the case, but I just want to make sure. (The sources I found said somewhere between 20 and 40% blood loss is when it starts becoming noticeable, but maybe that's wrong)

Then, I see the regular recommendations when someone is bleeding; Elevation, pressure over the wounds, lying down if possible etc. And then there's trying to keep the heart rate low to prevent more blood loss.

Uh, basically, what I'm wondering is, if the person bleeding is unconscious and can't keep the heart rate down consciously when it starts to reach, like, 20% or whichever percentage is correct... Could somebody keep the heart rate down manually for them? Or what would happen if they did? Would it lead to brain damage? Death? Other unforeseen consequences?

I mean, I understand that the body has this mechanism for a reason, and you obviously shouldn't try to squeeze somebody's heart unless you're a medical professional. Don't Try This at Home.

Scientists at UC San Francisco have used the drug ISIRB, which was also previously used to help restore memory after a traumatic brain injury, reverse cognitive impairments caused by Down syndrome, prevent noise related hearing loss, fight certain types of prostate cancer, and enhance cognitive functions in healthy animals, to reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in rats, suggesting that age-related memory and mental decline is more of a "blockage" rather than permanent degradation.

Edited by tclittle on Dec 3rd 2020 at 6:49:52 AM

Sorry, but when I read that I immediately thought "Too good to be true".

OTOH I wouldn't be very surprised if it turned out that the age-related declines are, in fact, reversible. Many of the known changes of the brain during old age are not really the kind of change that would imply an erasure of existing memories.

Has this article been posted here before?

Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong by Michael Hobbes.

If it has, I apologize. If not, it's an article on the medical community's poor handling of obesity.

Edited by windleopard on Dec 11th 2020 at 11:41:27 AM

"one third"

"one quarter"

"one study"

Sorry, but something looks extremely off about that argument...

What do you mean?

It comes off like it's trying to contest a consensus with far too little evidence, and some evidence which does not actually support its conclusions.