Medical Questions I'd Like Answered...

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 10:54 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:I've been seeing a good bit of parental knee jerk reactions online to this (and I can vividly imagine my own parents' opinion of the law).

How many kids have a copy of their medical records or even fully understand anything they may have enough to tell someone else? Many times parents are there and do "al the work", which means a kid might not know a damn thing about their own health. this along with the abuse bit makes sense to me.

How often do kids get a chance to talk to a doctor alone anyway? to ask the question THEY want answered rather than only what the parents (whoa re busy and don't have time to waste on silly questions) want to know.

i can bet most high school aged kid don't know a damn thing about their own health unless they have something very big like aspergers or epilepsy, or some of the other common bigger things.

to this day i have no idea what childhood illnesses i ahd because the medical records and doctor visits info was something for the paretns. who can we get kids to care about their lives, when they know nothing about them.

how many here at the ages in that pic knew anything about their medical history?

how many here know their blood type today?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 11:13 pm

Aharon wrote:What does QotFU stand for? I checked both urbandictionary and acronyms, and didn't find it.

Laertes wrote:Queen of the Fucking Universe, I assume.

Laertes has it absolutely correct.

shadzar wrote:how many here at the ages in that pic knew anything about their medical history?

I did.

shadzar wrote:how many here know their blood type today?

I do.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 11:36 pm

shadzar wrote: how many here at the ages in that pic knew anything about their medical history?

how many here know their blood type today?

I had surgery at age 3 for pectus excavatum and that is about all that was significant about my medical history. I never knew or even thought to ask that history of that condition would be why I have had breathing troubles since always-my lung capacity is tragically weak, and when I exerted myself with anaerobic exercise it was not uncommon to be hacking up tons of gross mucus.

I've known my blood type for some time, but probably not in highschool. I didn't weigh enough to be allowed to give blood until College.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 12:36 am

I did a blood test once and I passed - they gave me an A+!

I know my medical history, but given most of that has happened in my adult years, that's not really surprising.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 1:59 am

My blood type's A+.

My medical history's a litany of broken bones (My score so far: I've broken both arms once, I've broken my right hand twice, I popped a ligament in my left ankle (happily reattached now) ), some medication...

I did get my nose broken at the beach the other year, but I set it myself.

So my medical history's not that complicated.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 2:54 am

How do you drain an adult infected ear?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 3:19 am

Put a heating pad on warm on a pillow, cover with a towel, and lay your head (bad ear down) on it. Wait. Take a pain killer.

I've heard of some people putting peroxide in their ears, but I have no clue if that would help.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:39 am

q-tip and hydrogen peroxide will help break up wax buildup, but then leave not much left to help an infection.

you need to go to the drop store and get some ear drops really. until then try to use a cotton ball outside your ear with some sports tape or medical tape or whatever it is called if you are going to be somewhere wet to help keep out new infections until you do get some medicated ear drops.

i have other methods i use when my ears bleed from wearing glasses and sinus infections, ut they are dangerous and will stick with the saying "Never stick anything smaller than an elbow in your ear."

try calling a pharmacy and asking for drops, but be sure to get the ears clean of excess wax so the medication can do its job and be ready to have a dripping ear after the medication in case it does try to remove any wax. i suggest keeping baby wipes handy for that.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 5:38 am

In light of all the suggestions that fill up this topic from irradiating bone marrow to dying, please do enlighten me with all your dangerous methods for draining the ear.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 6:15 am

Ear infections can be scary. It's how I lost about 50% of my hearing, dead nerves in the ears, and a fucked up sense of balance. I'd say not to fuck around with them, in my experience; medication is a wonderful thing sometimes.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 6:35 am

Basically, ear infections can be on either side of the tympanic membrane. If you have an infection on the inside, you are not going to be able to accomplish dick diddly by jabbing at it with a stick or pouring hydrogen peroxide or whatever the fuck from the outside.

If you want to get a drain put in, then you get someone else to drill a hole in the membrane and place a fixed tube to allow drainage without tearing. It looks like this:

Probably, you don't want to do that, which means that you want to facilitate drainage the other direction. And the inner ear drains into your sinuses, not your external ear. You can help open those channels by thrusting your jaw forward and performing a valsalva maneuver. Or, if that sounds too complicated, you can chew gum and have your jaw go through the motions it needs to automatically. You can also help clear the sinus passages by snorting salt water or using a decongestant nasal spray.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 5:05 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
virgil wrote:My wife has a condition where she will pass out in elevators or sharp turns (describes it as an extreme falling sensation), and we're trying to get it diagnosed. It's absolutely worse in elevators, and several trips in a day will get her weak for about half a day; but she can avoid adverse reactions in the car by not looking directly at the road and clenching her body when the sensation hits her. We don't know what riding an airplane will do to her.

The ENT doctor saw nothing wrong with her ears, the cardiologist gave her a halter monitor for her heart for a month; and saw nothing unusual, though we didn't take any elevators during that time (Texas is flat), so she only got close to passing out a few times in the car. We recently finished going through a tilt table, which was unable to even provoke a reaction and so found nothing.

The cardiologist for that wants to surgically implant this one recently released sensor that will record stuff for three years. She's not comfortable having that done just yet, especially since they're completely unwilling to hook her up to a monitor and walk into an elevator at the facility (or roll up in a wheelchair to keep her safe). Should we disregard the doctor's idea for now and move onto a neurologist for testing?
The fact that it triggers on elevators and cars makes me think balance. Inner ear, semi-circular canals, vestibular nerve, CN VIII, Medulla Oblongata. Something somewhere in that system is probably fucking up.

So I'd go after some of the easy tests for that sort of thing first. Have her walk with her eyes closed, especially go up a couple of stairs with her eyes closed. Put her in an office chair and spin it around a bit and watch to see if her eyes go all bouncy. Have her walk across an uneven surface both with the lights on and in the dark. In addition to giving good data, these can also be extremely hilarious.

With the information I have so far, should I get a 2nd opinion with another ENT? All they did was a hearing test and looked inside her ear with one of those standard light-up scope things.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 5:49 pm

have you tried that stuff for motion sickness? sometimes the simplest things can be the most effective and it just sounds like a case of extreme motion sickness to me. that r a lack of oxygen like excessive g-force causes.

blood iron levels been checked?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 7:00 pm

virgil wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:
virgil wrote:My wife has a condition where she will pass out in elevators or sharp turns (describes it as an extreme falling sensation), and we're trying to get it diagnosed. It's absolutely worse in elevators, and several trips in a day will get her weak for about half a day; but she can avoid adverse reactions in the car by not looking directly at the road and clenching her body when the sensation hits her. We don't know what riding an airplane will do to her.

The ENT doctor saw nothing wrong with her ears, the cardiologist gave her a halter monitor for her heart for a month; and saw nothing unusual, though we didn't take any elevators during that time (Texas is flat), so she only got close to passing out a few times in the car. We recently finished going through a tilt table, which was unable to even provoke a reaction and so found nothing.

The cardiologist for that wants to surgically implant this one recently released sensor that will record stuff for three years. She's not comfortable having that done just yet, especially since they're completely unwilling to hook her up to a monitor and walk into an elevator at the facility (or roll up in a wheelchair to keep her safe). Should we disregard the doctor's idea for now and move onto a neurologist for testing?
The fact that it triggers on elevators and cars makes me think balance. Inner ear, semi-circular canals, vestibular nerve, CN VIII, Medulla Oblongata. Something somewhere in that system is probably fucking up.

So I'd go after some of the easy tests for that sort of thing first. Have her walk with her eyes closed, especially go up a couple of stairs with her eyes closed. Put her in an office chair and spin it around a bit and watch to see if her eyes go all bouncy. Have her walk across an uneven surface both with the lights on and in the dark. In addition to giving good data, these can also be extremely hilarious.
With the information I have so far, should I get a 2nd opinion with another ENT? All they did was a hearing test and looked inside her ear with one of those standard light-up scope things.

Yeah. If she didn't get at least a look at her eyes during head movement, you should get a second opinion. You're concerned about vestibular function, not cochlear function.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 8:48 pm

ishy wrote:
How are you supposed to determine if you're suffering from too much pain?

This is an interesting question that I am dealing with right now. My whole life I have always been able to just willpower through things that bother me, a trait I either learned and/or inherited through my mother (who has survived things that would at least get a head nod from Wolverine). In the past few years, and most seriously the past few months, it has gone from "psychological triumph" to "medical problem" to "personal tragedy" to "philosophical conundrum". It's hard for me to determine whether I am no longer able to bear all this pain because of my recent neurological problems, or whether I have developed neurological problems from years of telling pain to fuck off.

The past few weeks have been an interesting experiment- my new neurologist has taken me off the opiates I've been on daily for... well, a long-ass time, as well as some other legacy meds my previous dumb neurologist had me on. So it's been rough. At one point my body actually hijacked my mouth and told my mind "Go fuck yourself." Out loud. I'm not even joking. Were I a spiritual type, it would have been spooky/cause to start my own sect.

So that's why the above question is so interesting, especially with the combination of new doctors, hospitalizations, intensification of symptoms, arrival of new symptoms, and general decline in my cognitive function. I hate 1-10 subjective ratings anyway, but now it's even harder to measure pain on. I mean, I was a daily 7 with spikes of 9 a year ago, going down to 5 with narcotics. Now I'm a daily 9 with spikes of... what? Texas? It's worse than before, subjectively, but I'm not dead or paralyzed, so how fucked up is that? Did my scale break or did my give-a-fuck-o-meter?

Urgh. Vent over.

Virgil, get thy wifey to another ENT. I would recommend in the meantime a cane for safety- if the triggered dizziness becomes a spontaneous drop attack(I get them), it could be very dangerous. OTC meclizine is good, but if there is some metabolic component you may want to wait. A good ENT looking into the vestibular stuff will want to do a "caloric reflex test" (among other things, but that is a sign that they are being thorough about it and not dicking around). Don't tell your wife how shitty this test is, though. It's basically combination of this and this. But a useful diagnostic tool.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 9:01 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Virgil, get thy wifey to another ENT. I would recommend in the meantime a cane for safety- if the triggered dizziness becomes a spontaneous drop attack(I get them), it could be very dangerous. OTC meclizine is good, but if there is some metabolic component you may want to wait. A good ENT looking into the vestibular stuff will want to do a "caloric reflex test" (among other things, but that is a sign that they are being thorough about it and not dicking around). Don't tell your wife how shitty this test is, though. It's basically combination of this and this. But a useful diagnostic tool.

We've been busy with funeral stuff, so I haven't made the ENT appointment yet. She has done the at home test of going up/down stairs with her eyes closed, as well as uneven surfaces, and handles them better than I do; which is understandable considering her previous activites. The tilt table from two months ago induced not even a hint of a reaction. One doctor did prescribe meclizine for car rides, and they do nothing to help. As I said before, it's been a condition for as long as she can remember; and the only things that seem to trigger it are car turbulence (especially tight turns), spinning in a chair, and elevators (the most severe of them all).

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 9:02 pm

How is she with altitude, just out of curiosity? That really fucks with me.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 9:27 pm

@Virgil:
does it help her at all, if she closes her eyes on the car rides?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 5:32 am

and the only things that seem to trigger it are car turbulence (especially tight turns), spinning in a chair, and elevators (the most severe of them all).

Don't they all cause sustained compression of the neck? In a way a tilt-table and stair-climb wouldn't? Could be blood supply from a clogged neck artery, or something like a slipped disk in the neck.

Had an x-ray? My aunt fell over one day for no reason and it turned out to be a neck vertebrae was rapidly disintegrating due to a failure of blood supply and had to be replaced, six months of "I told you to not fucking-well lift anything" said the doctor, to recovery.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 4:45 pm

Stahlseele wrote:@Virgil:
does it help her at all, if she closes her eyes on the car rides?

Yes, looking directly ahead at the road makes it notably worse for her. When it starts flaring up in the car, she leans forward and tenses up to notably lessen the issue.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 5:12 pm

so if closing the eyes helps it's probably not the ears then i'd guess?
at least not the ears alone probably.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:21 pm

Stahlseele wrote:so if closing the eyes helps it's probably not the ears then i'd guess?
at least not the ears alone probably.

Ehhh, as I understand it, not necessarily. The trouble is can be the brain is receiving conflicting inputs. Eyes tell you the world is oriented this way, ears say another way. By shutting out one you get rid of the conflict, but the ears are still a problem.

[edit: changed "is" to "can be" since there's lots of potential causes of vertigo, ears just happen to be one of the most common sources. My stance remains that ruling out ears/vestibular dysfunction on the basis that when eyes are closed some symptoms abate is just nuts. Relieving discomfort during vertigo episodes by closing eyes is quite common.

Hopefully your second opinion has more expertise, Virgil.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:41 pm

No, it's not the ears.
It's the brain.
The Eyes Perceive and Report 1
The Ears Perceive and Report 1
The Brain comes up with 3,7 and THEN you have the Problem.
That's how motion-sickness/seasickness works broadly speaking.
So you can then pretty much exclude the sensory organs as the cause.

This case does not sound like a strong motion sickness to me yet though.
Missing Data and me not being a doctor. Frank can probably do more with this.

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Thu Jun 26, 2014 2:01 am

Frank might find this amusing,

http://themetapicture.com/this-is-what- ... deal-with/

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Jun 26, 2014 2:32 am

codeGlaze wrote:http://themetapicture.com/this-is-what- ... deal-with/

Patients, being people, are a hoot, but I've also seen as many of those where the care givers are the morons too. Hell, I've probably forgotten more than that even. Comes from working in a big hospital with big bureaucracy which selected for mediocrity systemically for decades.

erik: "The battery in the tele-pack has gone dead"
nurse: "oh shit, wasn't that keeping their heart beating?"

(a telemetry pack is just a wearable wifi-EKG... in retrospect I wish I'd told her yes, because batteries consistently ran dead before being replaced)

nurse: "there's no room to put the leads"
(erik goes up to pt room because sometimes you gotta do it yourself... finds poor patient completely covered in tons and tons of ekg stickers that were never removed after drying out)

The places I've found EKG leads placed by nurses... the horror. The horror.