CPAPtalk.com

"Doc, I had a friend who had an S9 Escape machine and he came home from work one day and it was gone."

My friend got bedbugs from their Escape. No way I want to risk that, Doc.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to download some Hose-Annas on iTunes

archangle wrote:"Doc, I had a friend who had an S9 Escape machine and he came home from work one day and it was gone."

The CPAP of Choice . . . in penitentiaries 'round the world.

Your serve, archangle.

...

"My S9 Escape machine is great." - Paul Newman

archangle wrote:"My S9 Escape machine is great." - Paul Newman

But he is dead!

BlackSpinner wrote:

archangle wrote:"My S9 Escape machine is great." - Paul Newman

But he is dead!

Yes, but before Paul died, he played the titular character in a classic prison movie, Cool Hand Luke.

"Luke Jackson is a cool, gutsy prisoner in a Southern chain gang, who, while refusing to buckle under to authority, keeps escaping and being recaptured. The prisoners admire Luke because, as Dragline explains it, "You're an original, that's what you are!" Nevertheless, the camp staff actively works to crush Luke until he finally breaks."

Reviews: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cool_hand_luke/

Fantastic ensemble performances, many great lines. My personal favorite:

In a brutal fist-fight with the much bigger Dragline, Luke was knocked to the ground time after time, yet, covered with blood and 9/10ths unconscious, he refused to stay on the ground, staggering to his feet again and again.

Hours later, after being cleaned up, Luke wins a game of poker on a pure bluff.

Dragline (chastising the loser): Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me - with nothin'.

Luke: Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.



Answering my challenge, Archangle spun in a great American Twist serve, with a huge kick at the end. I think I've been aced.

...

Yes, but before Paul died, he played the titular character in a classic prison movie, Cool Hand Luke.

Ah, I see. There was about 20 years where I didn't see movies or TV. At the time they triggered migraines and sometimes worse so I avoided them.

I was thinking maybe an older movie "The Great Escape" but that was Steve McQueen.

BlackSpinner wrote:I was thinking maybe an older movie "The Great Escape" but that was Steve McQueen.

OOPS.

BlackSpinner wrote: Ah, I see. There was about 20 years where I didn't see movies or TV. At the time they triggered migraines and sometimes worse so I avoided them.

Wow, that's brutal.. I presume you caught up on your reading.. I too, suffered from such a condition, but only for a few months. .Think it had to do with with the way one's eyes must instantly jump their focus in the frame each time a cut is made. .With advent and increasing popularity of rapid cutting, this could truly be called torture.

One the bright side, you've Rip Van Winkled your way through 20 years of mostly bad films and even worse TV.

If you desire, a simpatico member could start an new thread, an anonymous poll that doesn't mention you by name, but simply asks for our member's top ten list of TV and film for the last 20 years, naturally stratified into "John Simon Approved, Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow and Beyond The Three Stooges", to suit your tastes and mood. .Someone more popular than I (an easy requirement to fufill) would have to start the thread if we expected to get any replies.. Btw, no worries about your name being linked to that thread, since I'm posting this message to you here, we have guaranteed privacy: .most members likely have my posts marked as "make invisible".

With a blu-ray player, a bag of organic popcorn, and a one month free-trial subscription to NetFlixs, you're all set.


.

If you desire, a simpatico member could start an new thread, an anonymous poll that doesn't mention you by name, but simply asks for our member's top ten list of TV and film for the last 20 years,

Nah don't bother. It is amazing how pain can colour ones tastes, but I haven't really been a fan of movies or TV ever since.

I'm late coming to the table but I have to comment on McSleepy's excuse for the medical profession as fear of malpractice.

HORSEPUCKIES, Mcsleepy!!! It wasn't all that long ago, BEFORE the threat of malpractice became such a big issue due to a surplus of attorneys, that doctors and nurses dang near had a heart attack if you snuck a peek at your blood pressure, pulse and temp that they had written down. I well remember those days! I delighted in peeking over their shoulders!!

As has been mentioned, there are the scripts they write for medications that they rely on you to take as scripted but don't oversee and the analogy re: diabetics.

It is strictly from tradition that is not shed lightly by the medical profession harking back to the days of snake oil and doctors walking on water who could do no wrong (and successfully hid it if they did - and could count on their colleagues covering for them as well).

Pardon my throwing a wet blanket on the humor!

Proceed.

Well, Slinky, it may not strictly be malpractice suits, but you can't blame it all on a desire to keep their profession in a veil of mystery. Whether litigation is involved or not, it is a fact that patients have always sought retribution, sometimes disproportional to the perceived harm done, if something didn't quite go as planned. I am far from agreeing that this status quo is how things should be, but what I am saying is that the medical profession has some good reasons for wanting to keep certain knowledge from their patients. The big problem is that what works well for a large number of patients, does not work for some - well-educated, independently-thinking, non-conforming patients, like us. To keep away from the specific topics we have at hand here, and to which we are so partial, I'll give an example with a different area (although, I'm sure many people here have experience with it): sedation. Most people want to have the assurance that "once they put me under, I won't feel a thing", while the truth is, at least with sedation, that once they put you under, you'll feel it all right, but you simply won't have any conscious recollection of it because of the purposefully induced amnesia. However, your unconscious mind does record the experience and it becomes a permanent part of it. It is something I realize and understand, and would rather avoid, as much as I can help it, but I've been lucky in being able to do so. Imagine how people who have no choice would feel if their doctor told them how things are really going to be:
Doctor: "You're going in for an upper GI endoscopy", Patient: "You're going to sedate me, right?", D:"Yes, but all it's going to do is make you dizzy and light headed. You'll be gagging and feeling the stretching in your guts, and you'll be kicking and fighting, but nurse Betty there has a training in Taekwondo, so we won't let you hurt yourself, hopefully. But once we're done, you won't remember how bad it was".
Imagine the chaos if that's how things rolled out. I have personal and objective knowledge of that scenario and the factors involved in it, I'm not making it up. I know, it is not a direct extrapolation for most other medical situations, but you can get the idea. People are different and most are truly better off being told fairy tales. The fact is that most people have the attitude of: "doc, just fix me up" and any additional knowledge would only mess them up. I'd rather know the truth and make my own decisions (I've had all my endoscopies without sedation). I'm sure people on this board are of the kind who want to know and be allowed to make their own decisions, or they wouldn't be here. But I'm sure there are many people who would rather be told by their sleep doctor (and DME) what they need, and be done with it. Sleep apnea and CPAP treatment are in its infancy and doctors are quite inefficient in treating it properly (hence the existence of this board) and that makes it much more prone to criticism than other areas of medicine. You can see how there really aren't any true sleep doctors out there: they are all practicing something else (you can't specialize in sleep medicine right out of medical school) and only in rare cases have they ended up focusing solely on sleep medicine. So, those doctors are used to approaching their patients as they do in other areas, which are well-established. We are in our right to complain about how we are treated but there are some objective reasons for why doctors act as they do.
Like I said in my previous post, I wish there were an option to declare yourself as "wanting to know" and sign a release, and be given full disclosure, but I just don't think that's possible.
McSleepy

McSleepy wrote: . . . the medical profession has some good reasons for wanting to keep certain knowledge from their patients. . . .

The key to my full agreement with your statement is your use of the word "good" before the word "reasons." In those situations in which it is truly best for the patient not to know something (in my opinion relatively rare and always a very risky spot for the doc), and the decision not to fully disclose is motivated by kindness to the patient, and (and this is a big one) it is clear that the law and hospital policies will back the doc up on that later, then so be it. But when the motivation is simply doc covering his butt instead of doing what is best for the patient--well, that is not a "good" reason, from the perspective of any patient, and the patient has the right to fight for his rights in that balance.

McSleepy wrote:. . . most are truly better off being told fairy tales. . . . any additional knowledge would only mess them up. . . .

I have pulled this out of context to make the point that it is rarely true and that even when it is true in one sense it may be false in another. Patients have a right to consent or refuse any treatment or any aspect of any treatment, inconvenient to the medical people or not, and that right would be meaningless if no one is required to give patients the information they need for informed consent. The right to bodily integrity is a basic human right that has application in every medical situation, even when the mental capacity of the patient may be under question.

McSleepy wrote: . . . Sleep apnea and CPAP treatment are in its infancy and doctors are quite inefficient in treating it properly (hence the existence of this board) and that makes it much more prone to criticism than other areas of medicine. You can see how there really aren't any true sleep doctors out there: they are all practicing something else . . . We are in our right to complain about how we are treated but there are some objective reasons for why doctors act as they do. . . .

I agree that it is important to know why docs act the way they do. It isn't just a matter of empathizing with the medical people; at times it boils down to "know your enemy." And there is every nuance in between to the relationship, depending on the specific circumstances. Truer words have never been spoken, though, as far as sleep medicine being a newborn babe when it comes to treating breathing-related sleep problems. Many of the docs seem to believe in some odd fairy-tales themselves, seems to me.

McSleepy wrote: . . . Like I said in my previous post, I wish there were an option to declare yourself as "wanting to know" and sign a release, and be given full disclosure, but I just don't think that's possible.

This is the only statement I can't sign off on at all.

All that a patient should have to do to prove he wants to know something is to ask. That's all. Just ask.

The paperwork should be provided to the patient who doesn't care what happens to him or why. He can sign over his power of attorney to whomever he wishes. Until he does so, though, he retains the right to ask questions and to get straight answers from any medical person on any level (even one as debased as a DME employee) on the basis of his being a human being with the right to attempt to obtain healthcare that respects human rights, such as informed consent and bodily integrity.

In my non-lawyer, non-medical-professional opinion as a patient, that is.

Slinky, I found your wet blanket comforting, myself.

Thanks, jnk. It is ridiculous to even consider that a patient should have the need "declare yourself as "wanting to know" and sign a release, and be given full disclosure...". All I NEED to do is TELL the doctor I want to know. Period. Its MY body, MY health, I am the one who endures the benefits - or consequences - of any procedure or therapy that WE agree to and the medical professional damn well had better be right up front and truthful w/full disclosure 'cause if I find out otherwise the pooh shall hit the fan in that medical professionals face!!!

It doesn't make one diddley-squat bit of difference whether I am one of a vast minority who wants the full truth. I'm an adult, I asked, that is sufficient. Just as I do NOT want some medical professional deciding whether I should have my hand cut off or not I don't want some medical professional deciding whether I should have sedation for a colonoscopy or a CPAP instead of an APAP. And, yeah, I have my colonoscopies and endoscopies w/o sedation. I even underwent a hysteroscopy w/o sedation or anesthesia at my request. God bless the OB/GYN and anesthesiologist willing to respect my wishes in this regard!!!!

I think both McSleepy and Slinky made some good points. Doctors and the medical profession in general do have the so-called 'God complex' and I can see them wanting to protect everything they've learned over a 10 year period and spent tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve. It's inconceivable to them that someone with little or no medical education could know more than they about a particular illness or treatment.

But on the other hand, you've gotta admit there are some awfully stupid people out there who do some dumb and outrageous things that end up in court with the blame being put on the practitioner. As a result, we see some of the silliest warning labels on everything such as "Caution, may cause drowsiness" on an OTC sleeping pill bottle. And I half-jokingly say that I wouldn't be surprised if one day hair blow-dryers have a label that says "Warning: not intended for use in the treatment of sleep apnea".

So, I can understand why the profession is not going to freely allow a patient to manage their own therapy by adjusting their own pressures.