Nobody Cares about Your Health

[Rose Karuna]

This would make SO much difference to SO many people who are struggling.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote link because why not

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote link because why not

I tried to find out if this is the practice here, but I could find no reference to it.

The Organ Donation Service says,

For many patients in need of a transplant the best match will come from a donor from the same ethnic background.

Kidney donors and recipients are matched by blood group and tissue type, and people from the same ethnic background are more likely to have matching blood groups and tissue types.

For other organs there is a need to match blood groups, but less or no requirement to match tissue types.

Organ donation and ethnicity

A shortage of donors from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups means many people may wait longer for a transplant. Learn more today.

www.organdonation.nhs.uk

There's nothing about ethnicity here or on the various links to external organisations, either

Chronic kidney disease - Diagnosis

Find out how chronic kidney disease (CKD) is diagnosed, who should get tested and what the stages of CKD mean.

www.nhs.uk

 

[Free]

Oh, to have the job of the CDC tweetmaster...

 

[Noodles]

Someone had to make those gifs. Which I find amusing.

 

[Free]

Someone had to make those gifs. Which I find amusing.

Someone got PAID to make those gifs. Which I find absolutely wonderful.

 

[Free]

The great sleep divide

Sleep deficits are robbing poor people and racial minorities of health and earning power.

arstechnica.com

On average, the poor live less healthy lives and are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as the rich. That’s true for many well-documented reasons, including less healthy diets with too much processed food, polluted neighborhoods and a lot more toxic stress. In recent years, however, researchers have added one more factor to this mix: It turns out that the poor, as well as socially disadvantaged racial minorities, sleep much less well on average than the rich, which can take a major toll on their physical and mental health.

“We used to think that sleep problems were limited to Type A professionals, and they certainly aren’t immune, but low-income individuals and racial minorities are actually at greatest risk,” says Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation, who coauthored an analysis of socioeconomic disparities in sleep and health in the 2020 Annual Review of Public Health.

Inadequate sleep among low-income adults and racial minorities contributes to higher rates of illnesses, including cardiovascular disease and dementia, both of which are more common among these groups, Troxel and her coauthors point out. One study they cite attributes more than half of the differences in health outcomes between whites and Blacks, for example, to differences in quantity or quality of sleep. You might think of this as the great sleep divide.

 

[Rose Karuna]

Someone got PAID to make those gifs. Which I find absolutely wonderful.

Someone at the CDC has a great sense of humor. This was one of my favorites.

Zombie Preparedness | CDC

Learn about the CDC Center for Preparedness and Response’s zombie preparedness messages and products.

www.cdc.gov

 

[Free]

HHS spending bill advances without Hyde Amendment

A key House subcommittee on Monday cleared a spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) without including a decades-old rider prohibiting funding for abortions, kicking off…

thehill.com

A key House subcommittee on Monday cleared a spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) without including a decades-old rider prohibiting funding for abortions, kicking off what is likely to be a long and bruising fight.

For the first time in 40 years, the Hyde Amendment was excluded from the spending bill introduced and then cleared by the House Appropriations labor and health and human services subcommittee.

The HHS bill also does not include the Weldon Amendment, which has been in place since 2005 and prohibits denying federal funding to entities that do not want to cover or provide abortion services.

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I had my first real experience of telemedicine this weekend.

Thursday afternoon I noticed small red rash on my right breast, and some more small to medium patches rapidly joined it under my right arm pit and on my back near there -- it looked as if I'd been splashed with some sort of irritant liquid.

Anyway, I turned to the main NHS site for advice, and concluded that I should probably wait to see if it cleared up over the weekend and seek medical advice if it didn't, but come Saturday it was really quite painful (more so that I would have expected from what the NHS site led me to believe) so I took another look and decided, on second thoughts, it might well be shingles, which are most responsive to treatment during the first 72 hours, which I took to mean I needed to speak to a doctor before Sunday.

Anyway, about 3pm on Saturday I called the local pharmacy to discuss matters with them, as we're encouraged to here for non-urgent advice, and they agreed I should phone 111, our out-of-hours number for non-urgent medical issues. After a long wait, which I expected because of Covid, and it is, after all, "non-urgent", I got through to the call-takers (who I think are mostly qualified nurses and paramedics).

After I'd described my problem to the call-taker, she asked me what was obviously a standard list of questions, some general ones about health and personal circumstances they ask everyone and some specific to my condition, and told me to expect a call back some time that evening or night, though she did warn me I might have a long wait.

I had a call-back around 8 or 9 from someone who wanted to check I was OK and to apologise for how long it was taking, and then about 2330 I received a call from an out-of-hours doctor who I assume from her age was recently qualified and providing out-of-hours cover while she looks for a more permanent post.

Quick rehearsal of my story and some questions, then after we switched to video so she could take a look at the rash, she confirmed it was indeed shingles (bleah), advised me about contagion, pain relief and so on, and texted a prescription to the local pharmacy for me to pick up on Sunday, which I did, and now all is on the mend, though still somewhat uncomfortable.

Overall I was impressed by the experience - identifying the problem as shingles and starting on the course of anti-virals within 72 hours of the rash appearing has made a big difference it seems, and it was also far easier for everyone, and certainly much more comfortable and convenient for me, than attending a hospital emergency room.

Also, I was struck by how easy the whole thing was -- just a few phone calls.

This is one of the many under-appreciated aspects of the NHS, I think -- not only are hospitals and people's regular doctors and health centres part of it, but the NHS is also responsible for providing things like emergency cover and advice, and coordinating with private health care providers (opticians, dentists, pharmacist etc) whose services are provided under contract with the NHS.

It also provided an insight into how much technological advances change our lives in so many ways -- not just being able to look up my symptoms online (the internet is still something of a novelty to me) but also video phones and the like, and texting prescriptions, on which the whole exercise depended.

Anyway, I was impressed.

 

[Sid]

We have a pretty much similar system in place over here. The group of family doctors in a region run a special post where always some doctors and nurses are on duty outside office hours.
In my region it is situated in our hospital right next to the emergency rooms.
Emergencies picked up by ambulances end up in the emergency rooms straight away.
If you need medical advice or a doctor in the weekend, you call that family doctors post.

A specialized nurse will answer the phone and will do the triage (with help from a doctor if needed) and that can have several outcomes depending on the situation you're in:
1. You have to wait until next day or until after the weekend and then see your own family doctor (or call again if the situation worsens)
2. You get an appointment to come to the post and see a doctor (within a few minutes - hours depending on the situation)
3. A doctor will come and visit you at home (when traveling to the doctors post is really not an option)
4. If the triage nurse finds your situation to critical, he/she sends an ambulance and they take it from there.

It is all covered by our basic insurance, but if you deliberately claim things are worse than they are (only because you don't want to wait until regular hours) you have to pay the bills yourself.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

We have a pretty much similar system in place over here. The group of family doctors in a region run a special post where always some doctors and nurses are on duty outside office hours.
In my region it is situated in our hospital right next to the emergency rooms.
Emergencies picked up by ambulances end up in the emergency rooms straight away.
If you need medical advice or a doctor in the weekend, you call that family doctors post.

A specialized nurse will answer the phone and will do the triage (with help from a doctor if needed) and that can have several outcomes depending on the situation you're in:
1. You have to wait until next day or until after the weekend and then see your own family doctor (or call again if the situation worsens)
2. You get an appointment to come to the post and see a doctor (within a few minutes - hours depending on the situation)
3. A doctor will come and visit you at home (when traveling to the doctors post is really not an option)
4. If the triage nurse finds your situation to critical, he/she sends an ambulance and they take it from there.

It is all covered by our basic insurance, but if you deliberately claim things are worse than they are (only because you don't want to wait until regular hours) you have to pay the bills yourself.

I was struck by how easy it was to do it all remotely.

Over the last few years the local group practice that serves my area has shifted more and more to remote services when it can (I order repeat prescriptions online, for example,and they send them to a local pharmacy I've nominated) and most consultations with a doctor on routine matters are over the phone, but this is the first time we've actually done the visual part of the consultation by smartphone too.

It wasn't ideal -- answering a question how hot my skin felt to touch was difficult, since I didn't know what she thinks hot skin feels like, but I have that difficulty with questions like "on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt?" since, while I know what I'm comparing it with, and how much that hurt, I'm not sure how much that means to anyone else.

But overall I was impressed and hope to use remote consultations when I can in future, unless either the doctor or I think face-to-face would be better.

 

[Sid]

I haven't seen my internist and diabetic nurse as long as the corona pandamic is around. Everything over the phone and Internet.
I even had two consults over the phone with my eyedoctor recently about the results of a few tests she had ordered. Very efficient. No extra traveling time needed.

Now I get a new system to measure my glucose values in my blood. With a sensor on my arm that I have to replace only once every 14 days and the values can be scanned with my smartphone. No longer do I need to use a needle to peek in my fingers 4 times a day to get some blood to analyze.
And...... the results are going to my diabetic nurse's computer automatically as well.
So help will be a lot easier that way too.

I get my new medical appointments over the internet.
I have an own account at the hospital computer system where I can read and download all my medical files and test results.

Same goes for the family doctor.
One can install an app, and then you can schedule your doctor appointments with it, ask the doctor short questions when needed through mail, read your medical files, order repeat prescriptions.
And they have a website with a ton of information about all kinds of common diseases, so you can read up before you go to see the doctor or afterwards of course.

Times are changing fast now.

 

[Ashiri]

but I have that difficulty with questions like "on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt?

That is one of those questions it is very hard to answer and I really wish the person asking it would provide examples... although perhaps not for level 10.
I've been asked "On a scale of 1-10 compared with the worst pain you've experienced" for my fractured arm and it was like "oh, maybe a 4".
Also glad to have a good public health system here.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

That is one of those questions it is very hard to answer and I really wish the person asking it would provide examples... although perhaps not for level 10.
I've been asked "On a scale of 1-10 compared with the worst pain you've experienced" for my fractured arm and it was like "oh, maybe a 4".
Also glad to have a good public health system here.

The question, though, is "how much does it hurt?" rather than "does it hurt as much the worst pain you remember experiencing?" The numbers are just another way of saying, "a little" or "a lot". They're not going to be compared with anything.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I wonder what would be a good way to gather info on medical stuff? The norm is a study or such but there is a lot of useful info out there either known by the relevant conmunity or to individuals. For example multiple people on a trans server i am on are either doing something unique or randomly encountered information. Not a lot of data from it but if all such servers could colate what they found it could be a data source that could be drawn from.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Romana]

Just catching up on this thread.
I had my second shingles vaccine the other day and it's still kicking my ass. I knew, of course, that whatever it did would be much better than getting shingles, and reading Innula's post upthread underscored that. I hope it's better, Innula.