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Medical Nemesis

21 Oct, 9 tweets, 3 min read

52F vs 11C is the same temperature. When I see these numbers I react differently because I experienced them in different contexts - pedestrian in a large city vs a driver in the rural US. 52F is warmer and I dress for early fall than 11C which calls for light winter clothes. /1

I am working on understanding where Ivan Illich was coming from. It’s tediously slow and fraught with knowledge gaps due to my personal limitations and lack of recorded knowledge from certain times and places. /2

Simple biographical facts lay rich foundation that form personality and worldview. Catholic Dalmatian father. Converted into Lutheranism then Catholicism educated and functionally literate Jewish (ethnicity are this point) mother. /3

Illich’s first languages were French, German, and Italian. He thought of himself as Dalmatian but never learned Serbo-Croatian as a child. How did these languages and ideas wrapped in words influence his thought? We may never know but it doesn’t hurt to ask and try to answer. /4

Yesterday a man was working on fixing a clicking valve on my French stove. An American peered at the appliance to figure out what an engineer in France did to design this valve. What appeared a technical issue to him was obviously a different design thought process to me./5

We quote. We understand words. We often fail to know and understand what a person means in context of their history, background, personality, and the time of this particular uttering. /6

When you pose a question to the universe, you usually get an answer. I’m trying to understand Dalmatia and an unknown converted German Jewish woman with roots in Bukovina, a region that neighbors Galicia, which used to be my home. /7
Map 1911

Crkva Svetog Ivana (Church of St.Ivan) in Sutivan, Brac in the vicinity of where I suspect his ancestral home stood. Photo of Illich in Sutivan /8

A feeble attempt to understand... pieced from reading Cayley’s interviews with Illich, a short private conversation with Cayley that made me feel I could break the death barrier to get a glimpse of the man, knowing Illich was a man of God, and staring at Google maps. /9

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Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

5 Oct

The notion of risk dwells within the theory of probability. It asserts that an event may take place based on objective data not subjective circumstances.

In 19th century how long a person would live was thought of on subjective basis. /1

It means that I looked at you here and now and considered your circumstances and wellness or sickness, perhaps comparing you to people who live next door and imagined how long you have left. /2

In 21st century I decide how long you have left based on actuary tables. These tables pool the aggregate of all people somewhere sometime and come up with chance of you living till x, y, z. /3

Read 27 tweets

Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

3 Oct

How do you treat a viral respiratory disease with a fever such as flu or Covid if it presents symptomatically as flu? In old school conservative approach you don’t. It runs its course. You run the fever 2-5 days. You suffer body aches. By the end of first week you feel better. /1

Better but far from well. Residual symptoms and importantly fatigue remains for three weeks or so. It means rest and sleep. You eat a modest restricted diet. Don’t pop pills. Medically in the older people you would watch for secondary bacterial infection.

Important part is to start getting you up and out of bed, at first to go eat, then to take short walks outside. Air the room where the sick person is by opening a window several times during the day. /3

Read 8 tweets

Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

3 Oct

Can you speculate anything based on the President’s look before going to the hospital or the treatment he received.

No. He can be very sick and medicated to appear on a video to make him presentable. He may be lightly ill and that’s it. /1

Can you speculate about President’s condition based on the treatment he received.

No. What happens in medicine is often random and defies logic. The presentation is often misleading. Desire to fix things just in case often leads to do something outright harmful. /2

As far as the list of meds the President is on, most likely an abridged version. A typical American man of his age and look with regular access to a doctor, most likely is on meds to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, maybe control heart rate/rhythm. /3

Read 5 tweets

Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

2 Oct

Let’s look what happens when you construct a viral infectious disease as the most dangerous disease you ever faced.

First of all you become very worried, scared. It disrupts your thinking, sleep, eating and digestion. All of this weakens you and makes you more vulnerable.

You are likely to focus and amplify symptoms you normally ignored or suffered without much notice. If you don’t have symptoms, you will look for them. You will think you must treat yourself even when you are healthy in an attempt to save yourself from perceived danger.

Treatment will be divorced from what you feel or severity of symptoms. You may attempt treatments that are new and experimental. Each treatment, old or new, can and will interfere with your ability to heal. Most will recover despite clumsy administration of poisons.

Read 5 tweets

Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

16 Sep

https://twitter.com/bigfatsurprise/status/1305971942336401411

When I first came to America, I was very suspicious of non-fat and low fat products. Always sought out a rare full fat product and cooked with butter all my life. As with masks now, no need to engage in mass insanity of any diet.

https://twitter.com/bigfatsurprise/status/1305971942336401411

Understand butter:

It’s a precious food due to limited availability in a natural homestead/farm situation. You wouldn’t be using a lot of it. You wouldn’t have unlimited supply of it. You wound have uninterrupted year round supply of it.

Study butter in context.

A frequent problem in Southern restaurants - too much butter.

When you cook with butter, it makes food taste delicious. Too much of it - taste deteriorates. You should feel like you are eating straight butter.

Read 4 tweets

Medical Nemesis

@Medical_Nemesis

28 Jun

A simple algorithm for thinking about an ailment. If you developed a condition that you never had before, the first step is to think of there were any unusual changes in your life recently.

If a painful sore appeared in the corner of your mouth (angular cheilitis), think what is different that may have cause it.

A typical western medicine approach will mask the symptom by applying anti fungal or antibacterial cream, oral rinse, saliva drying potion thus obscuring the cause.

Read 6 tweets

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