The Article

I was thinking about the article. Realize, it was written about a very old experiment but it talked a lot about how the patient would be seen in the medical world of the 90's. It also talked about specific possible modern treatments and any hope they might offer.

I find these latter two to be very interesting. Namely why? Why bother? It's an iatrogenic condition that is basically not likely to ever be found in the population. Additionally, as it turns out, the suppositions they made are spot on.. Entirely accurate. For example, it talked about how the patient would head to the ER three times. I would already be on my second, but I just pushed through #1. Also, it talked about how it was standard to have such patients NPO and give them laxatives that draw water they the intestines. Both of which are harmful here by isolating the bowels from any other food source for the candidiasis. Another thing it mentioned was how in hospital settings, they tend to draw blood by pulling with syringes... I believe the specific words about it were overly enthusiastic or something, implying the tech would pull too hard. This is bad practice and in my case pulls potassium from the flesh into the draw. Yet another example was how good vein sites were hard to find near the end. I didn't understand that as the condition makes your veins stand out and I've always had "great veins." But now, I understand, because my arms look like a junky's arms. No visible bruising, which must be due to the fact the flesh has no life in it, but they do ache and the right arm veins are red, swollen, and hard as a rock. Finally, it spoke about how blood draws were further affected and the condition exacerbated with more fluids by the habit of techs using full syringes to flush the IV site with saline before and after medicines were administered. That one was very odd. How would I make that up? Turns out the right volume is twice the cannula volume but delivered via a 10ml syringe. They used the right sized syringe but too much volume.

Why would it discuss drugs and treatments that might help in theory but all had reasons that they wouldn't work? Dialysis, intra-abdominal dialysis, various drug classes, and chelation were all discussed. I had another book, a medical dictionary, I would use to look up terms I didn't know. As a result, it took me a long time to read the article and I learned a lot. But I find it interesting the author "theorized" so much and so accurately.

My thinking is that the author must have seen a patient with the condition or known of one. But how? I really don't see someone getting this condition without purposefully undergoing the experiment. So, perhaps this author was involved in such things or knew of them, I don't know. It just strikes me as odd and I'm not your usual conspiracy-theory type of guy.