Disease can change body odor, and dogs have been trained to "sniff out disease" [0][1] (i.e. detect via smell) for years. Various researchers have been working on robot noses that would be able to do the same.[2] Presumably a widespread and/or less expensive version of this "robot nose" is what doku means by "AI nose sniffs out many common diseases".
I don’t think the average man should have to work any hours to pay for an average monthly dose of average quality anything that they require to stay alive. Perhaps I’m insane.
I don't believe being able to work is an ethical prerequisite to survival. I don't believe being willing to work is an ethical prerequisite to survival.
The government can work to provide the medication that its citizens require to stay alive. Under such a system, those who are able and willing to work can, via taxes or other contributions, provide medications that some citizens require to stay alive. Many such systems seem to cost less overall than the system currently existing in the United States, so the average man who will work will have to work fewer hours to pay for an average dose of average quality anything required to stay alive.
Alternatively or in tandem, the pharmaceutical companies can sell such medications at cost, with rebates and coupons for no/low-income patients, while still making plenty of profit on reasonably priced pharmaceuticals that patients do not technically require to survive.
People also require food and water (and arguably shelter and clothing). Should those also be provided by society in average doses and at average quality?
That does not seem likely to result in a stable and productive society, particularly when many working people would have below average housing in order that government beneficiaries could have average housing provided to them.
As I said, I don't believe being able to work is an ethical prerequisite to survival. I don't believe being willing to work is an ethical prerequisite to survival.
Yes, I believe people should have food and water sufficient for survival regardless of their ability to work.
In the system, as proposed, it seems like some will choose to work and pay taxes in order that someone who is able but unwilling to work can have better housing and food than they do.
That doesn’t seem like it will have broadly popular support.
> it seems like some will choose to work and pay taxes in order that someone who is able but unwilling to work can have better housing and food than they do
This is certainly possible because it already happens now with the current setup.
Hello, fellow clusterhead! May I ask how you obtained 100% O2? Insurance won't cover it because I have no respiratory issues, and medical supply companies won't talk to me because of insurance denial, even with valid rx. In the meantime, I've been using the canned O2 from sports stores, which is expensive and seems unnecessarily wasteful.
In my case, insurance wouldn’t cover O2 either (actually, I didn’t bother trying), but I had no problem paying cash for a tank with a doctor’s prescription. The up front cost was kinda high, but refills are fairly cheap.
Don’t look for a medical supply place. Look for a bulk gas distributor that sells medical oxygen. For one thing, at the rate you need oxygen for clusters, the small tanks that most medical supply places carry will only last about 15-20 minutes, so maybe enough for one or two attacks. Realistically you want something bigger like a J tank. You also need to get a non-rebreather mask with an inflator bag. A regular mask won’t cut it unfortunately. Search up the ClusterO2 kit for what you need.
If you can’t get medical oxygen, you should be fine with welding oxygen in a pinch. I understand a lot of clusterheads use that without issues. It is exactly the same as medical oxygen, the only difference is that for medical oxygen the tank is purged before each fill to ensure no contamination (although this is very unlikely with welding oxygen anyway, and you should be able to request they purge the tank before filling to be extra sure) and the chain of custody is certified for medical oxygen to ensure that it hasn’t been used for anything else before being delivered to the consumer.
Honestly don’t bother with canned O2. It is not 100% pure, which is an absolute necessity, and they don’t deliver nearly the quantity you need to knock out a cluster. If they help you, great I guess, but it’s probably in your head (so to speak). I took oral eletriptan for years for clusters, before finally realizing that the headache would go away after 45-60 minutes on their own regardless of whether I took the medication. Now I take injected sumatriptan when I’m caught without oxygen, which knocks them out in under five minutes. The relief is nothing short of magical.
CGRP blockers are the true magic. 6 years ago I had the worst cycle yet, wanted to end it. Found a neurologist who actually knew his shit and understands the pain, he got me injectable sumatriptan and emgality. 6 years of no attacks, stress has recently brought on a cycle so scheduled a nerve block to break it. If you suffer from clusters you need to talk to your doctor about getting on these injections, they saved my life.
Appreciate the recommendation, and CGRP blockers will be my next line of attack should my current regimen prove insufficient. For now, my headaches seem to be pretty well controlled by verapamil as a preventative and oxygen/sumatriptan as an abortive, so I’m cautiously optimistic that I don’t need to introduce a new treatment, especially given that clusters supposedly decrease both in frequency and intensity as you age, or so I’ve heard.
It’s funny, but when I haven’t gotten a headache for a while I almost miss them, as if it were proof (to myself, if nobody else) that I wasn’t really just faking this and yes, it really is more painful than any non-sufferer can possibly imagine. But then I get even a slight shadow, as I did just the other day, and I immediately recall how miserable and awful they are and don’t know what the hell I was ever thinking.
Glad you have found something that works well for you to control the beast. Here’s to another year cluster-free; after that, who knows…
> Honestly don’t bother with canned O2. It is not 100% pure, which is an absolute necessity, and they don’t deliver nearly the quantity you need to knock out a cluster
They definitely don't knock out the cluster, but do seem to slightly lessen the pain in minutes. I wish triptans helped, but no luck yet with any we've tried.
Related article quote about a bear attack:
"Literally, as I was being eaten by a wild beast, I wasn't thinking about Jesus or my family or my son. I was thinking my insurance was not going to pay for this," she told The Independent. "I had to make this calculus as I was being eaten, 'Do I want to survive this?' Not, 'Can I survive this?' Not, 'What am I going to look like?'" [0]
In an AMA, she said that the worst part of the bear attack wasn't the bear attack, but dealing with her health insurance. [1]
I've lived in places where the "ice event" that caused the power to go out was freezing rain. That kind of ice can make trees heavy enough to lose limbs into power lines and makes roads slick enough for vehicles to crash into transformers and power poles (hence the power outages), without outdoor temperatures necessarily being cold enough to preserve frozen goods and without there being enough easily available ice outside (e.g. ~.5cm covering on all surfaces) to bring inside for stuffing the freezer.
That is almost exactly what happened here. We basically had sleet for about a full day, it was relentless. In an area that never snows and rarely freezes, a neighbor went actually ice skating down the street. I still have microspikes from my previous life in the mountains, and was one of few people who could get around confidently -- and even then, it was a bit sketchy here and there.
I've never seen anything like it. Individual blades of grass were embedded in solid capsules of ice. I regret not taking the time to get the camera out and do a bunch of photography, but I had my hands full the entire time.
A few nights later, the ice had barely begun to thaw, and then it refroze and then started snowing. I stood outside my home for a bit in the darkness, and listened to the sounds of tree limbs cracking, breaking, snapping, and crashing, like a steady rhythm, for a while. Just, "boom, crash. ... boom, crash. ... boom, crash. ..."
Yes, they're commonly used as "starter" credit cards, to increase credit score. I presume they also come with the other benefits of a credit card, such as the amount of security deposit required when renting a car, as well as fraud and chargeback liabilities and timelines.
I am not the commenter to whom you’re replying. But for what it’s worth, I regularly “actually encounter[]” homeless people, and personally interact with at least a few of them multiple times per week. My image of them is neither abstract nor idealistic. I agree with what deepspace wrote.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01629-8
[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-do-dogs-sn...
[2] https://bigthink.com/the-future/robotic-nose-smartphone-dete...