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26 votes
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Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek hopes his latest brainchild, the Neko Body Scan, will revolutionise healthcare
20 votes -
Doctors have urged Finland's rightwing government to change “problematic and damaging” plans to ban undocumented people from accessing non-emergency healthcare
13 votes -
NHS cannot embrace AI until its basic IT systems are up to scratch. Prof Sir Martin Landray: clinical IT functions are slow and ‘devastatingly user unfriendly’
20 votes -
CEO of bankrupt hospital system faces contempt charges after US Senate no-show
24 votes -
The rise of DIY, pirated medicine: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has made DIY medicine cheaper and more accessible to the masses
81 votes -
How a leading chain of US psychiatric hospitals traps patients (gifted link)
35 votes -
US judge rules $400 million algorithmic system illegally denied thousands of people’s Medicaid benefits
27 votes -
Death threats, legal risk and backlogs weigh on US clinicians treating trans minors
13 votes -
US athletes are taking full advantage of free healthcare in Olympic village
17 votes -
How medical research is failing women. For years, the process for developing and testing new drugs has focused disproportionately on male bodies — to the detriment of female patients.
25 votes -
Private equity firms should prepare for increased US government scrutiny over healthcare investment
9 votes -
A judge ruled a Louisiana prison’s health care system has failed inmates for decades. A federal law could block reforms.
15 votes -
Blood culture bottle shortage challenges US hospitals, labs
13 votes -
I was an MIT educated neurosurgeon. Now I'm unemployed and alone in the mountains. How did I get here?
34 votes -
A critique of the Cass Review
16 votes -
Algorithms are deciding who gets organ transplants [in the UK's NHS]. Are their decisions fair?
21 votes -
Texas abortion ban linked to 13% increase in infant and newborn deaths
54 votes -
The opaque industry secretly inflating prices for prescription drugs
18 votes -
America: a healthy or healthcare economy? The sickness at the heart of US GDP.
9 votes -
Generic preventitive healthcare advice wanted
Thanks to an emergency that resulted in an unexpected surgery, I have reached my health insurance maximum out-of-pocket expense. For those with sane healthcare systems, it basically means that I...
Thanks to an emergency that resulted in an unexpected surgery, I have reached my health insurance maximum out-of-pocket expense. For those with sane healthcare systems, it basically means that I will not be charged for any additional healthcare I receive for the rest of the year as long as it's covered (i.e. no cosmetics or "just for funsies"). I'm expecting a $6,000 bill in the mail, so I'm looking to take as much advantage of this as I possibly can, starting with some minor issues that I've been sitting on for a while.
I'll have to ask my doctor for their referral for anything, but I was wondering if there were any preventative healthcare services I should specifically ask for? I'm already going to be making an appointment for a regular physical - something I'm ashamed to say that I don't regularly do. I'm going to ask the doctor this same question but I figured I'd come up with a checklist just to make sure I don't miss out on anything.
17 votes -
UK NHS computer problems put patients at risk of harm
5 votes -
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is weaponizing consumer protection laws against nonprofit organizations
23 votes -
US, European nations consider vaccinating workers exposed to bird flu
9 votes -
The Controversialist: Marty Peretz and the travails of American liberalism
3 votes -
Cyberattack forces major US health care network to divert ambulances from hospitals
17 votes -
A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it?
19 votes -
Hallucination-free RAG: Making LLMs safe for healthcare
12 votes -
America’s prison system is turning into a de facto nursing home
20 votes -
Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job
18 votes -
NHS is broken - also, did my Pa have a stroke?
Strap in folks, this is a fun one. Yesterday at around midday my almost 75 yr old Pa started feeling extremely fatigued, weak all over, hot and, in his words, very odd. He rang my sister who lives...
Strap in folks, this is a fun one.
Yesterday at around midday my almost 75 yr old Pa started feeling extremely fatigued, weak all over, hot and, in his words, very odd.
He rang my sister who lives 5 minutes away, she got there and immediately called an ambulance. They were there in sub 10 minutes and checked him over. He couldn't even walk in a straight line. They took his blood pressure and it benched 199/98. They said he had a possible stroke and needed to go to A&E (ER for my US friends). Not living more than 10 minutes from the local Medway Hospital (major hospital) they went there. It took 3 hours to get to being triaged. The time was 4:30pm when they're told that the closest Stroke clinic is Maidstone hospital, 40 minutes away at rush hour.
On the way out, they saw the paramedics that had been out to respond and they called ahead to Maidstone Hospital so he was on record. That did nothing. When he got there, it took another 2 hours for them to do another triage, then another 2 to do blood work. Then the stroke unit refused to take him stating that they didn't think it was a stroke. After politely arguing the case my sister had to remind them to do his blood pressure again. At this point it had come down a little. He is still really weak and couldn't hold a cuppa without spilling it.
Eventually they relented and did a CT scan. When they checked the results they said it wasn't a major stroke but could have been a posterial stroke which wouldn't show. They couldn't do anything else there and should go back to Medway. At this point it's midnight. At 1am, my sister is checking my dad back into Medway A&E. 1.5hrs later they're through reception and sitting in waiting room 3 with 29 other people. I headed down at 5am to relieve my sister. Between 5am and 11am they took his blood pressure twice and we waited in the waiting area with everyone, my usually fit and healthy dad in a wheelchair. He's exhausted, had no sleep and was genuinely scared, which he never is.
It took until 2pm to see a doctor and we had to put in an official complaint to the nurses liaison team about the handling to even get that far. An hour later and then he saw a consultant who gave him a thorough check.
Concerned, the doctor said he wants an MRI scan performed, but to do this he was being made an outpatient and sent home. He would get an appointment and come back in the next few days. Why? Because if they admitted him he would join the inpatient side and they have 1 MRI scanner. He may not have been seen for up to 2 weeks and would simply be taking up a bed. As an outpatient the team has 3 MRI scanners and he will be seen quicker, plus less likely to pick up an infection from the hospital. It took another hour and a half after this, plus chasing the team to get them to take bloods and remove his cannula so he could go home.
Sorry for the long read, but how backward and broken is this system?
They still don't know if it was a stroke or a brain degenerative issue, all we know is he is home, cannot look after himself or my disabled mother and the whole situation sucks.
34 votes -
When the US Army uses "enhanced interrogation" on an American soldier
30 votes -
Philips agrees to pay $1 billion to patients who say they were injured by breathing machines
31 votes -
US FDA finally moves to scrutinize specialized health screenings
14 votes -
Health care workers say 'moral injury ' is more accurate than burnout in the face of severe cost cutting
16 votes -
HHS strengthens privacy of US reproductive health care data
10 votes -
Swedish parliament passed a law Wednesday lowering the age required for people to legally change their gender from 18 to 16
34 votes -
I was the poster girl for OCD. Then I began to question everything I’d been told about mental illness.
28 votes -
'I was born intersex and doctors tried to erase me. It's important to speak out' - an interview with Raven van Dorst of the Dutch rock-metal band Dool
40 votes -
Hilary Cass' NHS report is rife with debunked theories and falsehoods
30 votes -
A brief rundown of some of the flaws of the Cass review
14 votes -
Concussion treatment: the insidious myth about resting protocols that even doctors still believe
22 votes -
AI assists clinicians in responding to patient messages at Stanford Medicine
4 votes -
There is no evidence that CBD products reduce chronic pain, and taking them is a waste of money and potentially harmful to health, new research finds
58 votes -
After Appalachian hospitals merged into a monopoly, their emergency departments slowed to a crawl
40 votes -
Deciding whether to continue with chemotherapy and immunotherapy
I have stage four colo-rectal cancer. It's not curable. It's not particularly treatable. I'm getting palliative care, but I'm not yet end of life. They're not offering surgery or radiotherapy...
I have stage four colo-rectal cancer. It's not curable. It's not particularly treatable. I'm getting palliative care, but I'm not yet end of life. They're not offering surgery or radiotherapy (yet, that may change). They are giving me chemotherapy (capecitabine and irinotecan) and immunotherapy (cetuximab).
Prognosis is difficult, but if everything goes well I have about 18 months.
I've had 6 cycles of treatment. I had a re-staging PET CT scan and the results were very good.
But, here's the thing: chemo & immuno therapy suck. I don't just mean "I feel a bit bad sometimes", I mean "I feel awful most of the time."
We've just about got nausea under control, but those meds cause constipation and that's causing problems with my stoma. And because the nausea meds are only used for the first week it means the second week I have problems with fast output, and that's causing other problems with my stoma. My stoma team and my oncology team are not particularly joined up. In theory I can build in laxido for the first week and loperamide for the second week but that's complicated because side effects are so variable. And that's just stoma output -- there's a bunch of other stuff around pain, fatigue, skin toxicity (I'm not allowed in the sun, even on bright but overcast days. I have to use three different creams, but not too much of any of them, and they're not compatible with each other), loss of appetite, etc.
One example of how healthcare isn't joined up and I'm getting conflicting advice (there are lots of these): My stoma team want me to wear a hernia support belt to prevent my hernia getting worse, and to help my stoma work properly. But this is a tight broad elastic belt going round my lower abdomen, right where my diaphragm is, and so it makes it harder for me to breath. My physio doesn't want me to wear the belt because it's interfering with fatigue treatment (which is "do more stuff, but do it slowly, and build in breaks, and FOCUS ON YOUR BREATHING"). My oncology team have no opinion and are leaving it to the other teams.
I know some people just want more life, and they don't care about side effects. "Do anything you can to give me more life". But that's not me. I'd much rather have 3 months of mostly feeling okay and then a month of active death over a year of mostly feeling fucking lousy and then a few months of active death.
I don't know how to talk to my family about this. I have spoken to my care team and they're giving me all the options - (1) continue chemo and immuno therapy on 2 week cycles until I die or until it stops working, and try to buidl in better support meds. (2) continue chemo & immuno on 2 week cycles, but build in breaks (3) stop chemo & immuno and focus on pain relief.
Some tricky decisions to be made.
77 votes -
Hypothyroidism and me
A little over a week ago, I got an official diagnosis of hypothyroidism from my GP. Fair warning, this post is going to be a little bit of a rambly discussion of my thoughts and feelings...
A little over a week ago, I got an official diagnosis of hypothyroidism from my GP. Fair warning, this post is going to be a little bit of a rambly discussion of my thoughts and feelings surrounding my diagnosis and other circumstances surrounding it.
I'm a US American, but I moved to Germany to do my master's degree in 2018 and have lived here ever since. I've struggled with depression and social anxiety since before I moved to Germany, but my symptoms got notably worse in 2020 (perhaps unsurprisingly). In late summer of 2020 my psychotherapist finally suggested I go on an SSRI, but she wanted me to get a blood test to rule out any physical causes. I went to my then-doctor and got such a blood test. Everything was within the normal range except for my TSH.
For those unfamiliar, TSH is the hormone your pituitary gland sends to tell your thyroid to get a move on. It doesn't directly measure your thyroid function, but it's a pretty good indicator something's up, so doctors use it to screen for thyroid issues. High TSH is a sign of hypothyroidism, and low TSH is a sign of hyperthyroidism. Your average person with a healthy thyroid will probably have TSH between 1.0 and 2.0, but some variation exists. The normal range that doctors use here has 4.2 as its upper limit. In 2020, my TSH value was 4.8. My doctor then said that people with hypothyroidism have higher numbers than that, so I was fine. She wrote my a prescription for a low dose of an SSRI, which did help me to an extent.
I've been fat for a long time, to different degrees. After I first moved to Germany in Fall of 2018, I quickly lost a lot of weight. There were likely a lot of factors -- I wasn't living at home where snacks were constantly stocked, I was buying food on a student's budget, I was eating out and ordering takeout less because of my social anxiety and shitty German skills, and I was walking a lot more. When I came back to the US for family vacation in 2019, I constantly got compliments about having lost weight, which felt weird. I was still overweight according to the BMI, but more of a classic midsize chubby at that time. But it wasn't to last, and I did start gaining the weight back. For a while it, I attributed this to my getting more takeout and walking less. But a year or two ago it felt like it stopped being directly attached to my activity or food consumption. I went on medication that suppressed my appetite as a side-effect, but I continued to gain weight. Since I was already fat and had been gaining weight for a while, I didn't mention anything to my doctors because I was already getting lectures about how I needed to lose weight and exercise more. I don't know for sure what I weigh right now because I've avoided weighing myself for months, because I'm scared I weigh over 100kg and I can't handle seeing that triple digit on a scale.
I've tried and failed to become more active and start an exercise routine several times. I joined a sports course at university with some of my friends, but I quit after a couple sessions because I was hyperventilating before warm-up was over. I've tried to do some basic strength training, but I'd be sore for days after even incredibly beginner-level stuff. More recently, my wife and I tried to take regular walks through the nearby park during last spring and summer. But I'd tire out after an embarrassingly short distance, not even enough to get to where we see the ducks (the highlight of the park for me). As the weather got worse in winter I basically stopped leaving the apartment. It's a struggle to put my shoes on without an extra long shoehorn so I don't have to bend over, and anything that requires me to tie my shoelaces is basically off the table.
I've been struggling with work for the past several months. I can't seem to focus on it, even if I take my ADHD medication. I look at the computer screen and I just can't mentally handle the work. Every day of work is exhausting, even though I work a pretty cushy job as a data scientist and I work from home. I do way less than 40 hours of actual work a week but I'm still too physically and mentally exhausted all the time to do anything but the most trivial household chores. I haven't cooked dinner for myself in months (thank God for my wife).
I switched to a new GP at the beginning of 2024 bc I was having trouble getting timely appointments at my last one. We agree to do one big blood test covering everything, since I have a myriad of small complaints and it's been years since I've had one. That test comes back mostly normal, except my cholesterol is a little high and my TSH is a smidge above 5. My new GP then says we should do a follow-up blood test to look at other thyroid measurements (this would be directly measuring the hormones my thyroid produces) to see if I have hypothyroidism. I mention offhandedly the interaction I had with my old GP in 2020 and she says that's not how you're supposed to do that; high TSH means further testing even if it's not that high. A few weeks and another blood test later and I've now got a new diagnosis and a prescription for artificial thyroid hormone.
It turns out that pretty much everything I've been struggling with for years now? May be because of my underactive thyroid. Your thyroid is apparently pretty damn important and it not working right (in either direction) can result in a truly dizzying amount of things going wrong. Depression, brain fog, fatigue, and weight gain are all pretty classic symptoms, but apparently it can also cause problems with your lungs or even contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome. Everyone with a properly-functioning thyroid, take a moment to thank that lil butterfly-shaped guy in your neck.
I'm so glad to have something that's basically a "feel better" pill now. But I'm left with a sense of deep frustration that I've had so many problems that even I dismissed to myself because I assumed they were just cause I was a stupid out-of-shape Fatty. It turns out it's actually not normal for someone in their mid-20s at my age to struggle to put on their own shoes without assistance, even when they're obese. Being unable to take a short walk without needing to sit down because I'm exhausted and out of breath isn't just because I'm fat and out of shape. I've had no shortage of symptoms heavily impacting my life, but most of them I hadn't even bothered to mention to my doctor because I assumed they were just Me Being Fat and that all I'd get was (yet another) lecture.
This is, of course, coupled with a lot of anger at my old doctor for not even running any follow-up tests. I've only been on levothyroxine for about a week and I already feel like I have a little more energy. I could have been spared years of suffering if that doctor had only done what she was supposed to. Fuck that.
But at the same time, I feel such relief. This all wasn't just me being a bad and lazy person. There was actually something wrong. And, even better, hypothyroidism is pretty easy to treat. I just wish I hadn't gone through over three years of unnecessary suffering when I could have gotten this treatment then.
23 votes -
The difficult emotional labour of healthcare workers
9 votes -
Idaho needs doctors: But many don't want to come
34 votes