Chetzemoka

Terminator 2 didn't even feature a single shot from the actual movie in its teaser trailer. It was just that iconic:

https://youtu.be/h4ThFNL_2tI?si=ufRA5SzDH1f6uf8b

Thanks for the well wishes. Also last year I participated in a clinical trial with this same team at the Brigham. The drug trialed there is called bocidelpar. It targets a mitochondrial receptor called PPAR-δ. We're still waiting on the results of that trial to be released and it's probably a good 3-5 years away from FDA approval in the US if all goes well. So here's hoping for the best

So, the team that I'm seeing at Brigham & Women's in Boston has a testing protocol called invasive cardiopulmonary exercise testing or iCPET, which involves putting a tube into a large vein in the neck, putting a heart catheterization through that, then putting a tube in an artery in the wrist. This allows monitoring and comparison of blood pressures inside the heart vs. outside the heart as well as comparison sampling of arterial blood vs. venous blood. In addition to this, they apply EKG heart monitoring and respiratory monitoring via a gadget you hold in your mouth and breathe through. With all this insanity in place, they put you on an exercise bike until you can't stand it anymore.

What they find on this test is a combination of two things. First, the pressures inside the ventricles of the heart do not increase in response to increased physical activity the way that they should. "Low ventricular filling pressure caused by preload failure." And second, the DEoxygenated blood returning to the heart has too much oxygen in it, indicating poor oxygen uptake on a cellular level, which they hypothesize is caused by mitochondrial problems.

The treatments include a drug called pyridostygmine, which increases acetylcholine neurotransmitter to increase autonomic nervous system response to physical activity (and therefore increase blood return to the heart). Or a drug called midodrine, which also supports blood pressure. Plus supplements to support mitochondrial function like CoQ10, creatine, and ALCAR.

I'm not cured and back to where I was prior to getting sick by any means, but I'm able to hold down a full time job, which prior to treatment I most definitely would not have been able to.

Oh definitely and 1000% would never say that productivity is the purpose of life. That perspective is so disgusting, in my opinion. The interactions I have with my patients that bring such satisfaction are the exact opposite of "productive" and frequently put me at odds with the goals of the corporation I have no choice but to work for.

Probably, for me, I'd say my purpose is to lift up people around me. To help them find the ways they are strong and support them through the ways they are weak. Sometimes the only thing I can really do to help someone in the moment is make them laugh, so I try to do that. Sometimes I just sit with them while they cry. Being a nurse just happens to be a profession where I can do this and also receive a paycheck, so it works for me.

I like to picture the world as a scale of good things and bad things. I can't fix all the bad things, but I can add weight to the side of the good things every day. Put one more thing on the good side of the scale and tilt the world in that direction however minutely. I won't tip the whole scale by myself, but my efforts combined with all the other people in the world doing good things that I don't even know about certainly will, even if I personally don't get to witness that tilting.

And that last paragraph is pretty key, in my opinion. Imagination is a fundamental ability of human beings and what we believe about ourselves and the world affects us more than anything external to ourselves. And the way we imagine ourselves and the world is always inherently within our control. So I think part of "what we do" in life is to create meaning.

Yep. Person here with CFS/ME prior to Covid being treated by a research team that is now also studying Long Covid. AMA ✋

I'd first ask you to define happiness.

Temporary pleasures will always be fleeting, unreliable, and fraught with danger. Drugs and alcohol feel great in the moment, for example. So does eating junk food and watching TV. But we all know the problems with these things.

Is happiness the pleasure brought by fulfilling hobbies? That's probably a little more productive, but also will never be continuous. And often, if you try to make that your entire life, it loses its joy. The recreation is often the joyful part.

Personally for me, my interactions with patients and being able to use my intellect to help people medically is so deeply satisfying that I'm motivated to go to work despite there being so many things to hate about my job. So that's an interesting wrinkle on the idea of happiness.

I'm not really trying to get at an answer here. We just had a whole meditation retreat at my church about this exact topic: What is the purpose of life? But maybe some ideas to help you clarify your own thoughts about the subject.

It's a huge problem in the towns and cities immediately on the other side of the border and that's the primary concern here. Imagine where you live and 671 unhoused and unfed human beings walked into your town every. single. day. No local municipality in the world has the resources to deal with that. It has to be the federal government.

That's not to suggest that building walls in the wilderness is an effective intervention. But it is an unfortunately popular one. It must be coupled with federal programs to receive, house, and find work for the people arriving at areas not blocked by a wall.

But the people living in those border towns don't deserve to be burdened with a problem created by federal government policies. The feds need to fix the problem.

United States specific: The naming system of hospital units or some other standardized indicator of what skill level is actually practiced on that unit.

An ICU should be an ICU, not "Intensive Care Unit" at this hospital, but "Critical Care Unit" at that other hospital and the"Stepdown Unit" here is called "Progressive Care Unit" there, but "Transitional Care Unit" at that other place.

It leads to so much confusion when trying to transfer patients between facilities and/or understand what kind of care they were receiving at a previous admission at a different facility.

Aliens

(This exchange is from the second movie lol)

I am mildly obsessed with the Saturn V. It's just such a feat of engineering and human cooperation.

ahem

Definitely not the Chetzemoka lol

Although as much as I love the Roci, I might have to go with the Donnager as my real favorite. It's just so damned intimidating.

US

In Play Store go to Apps>Categories>Social>Top Free Social Apps and you're number 10!