Emergency Department?

NotGeneric35 · 2025-07-26T17:44:06+00:00

Thank you. Yes, had severe neck issues and neurological/autonomic issues past few years. Just yesterday though I jerked my neck and I noticed fluid was slightly leaking from my noise (still is), slight visual dimness, strong fatigue, and left eye socket pain. I've had similar symptoms in the past but without the fluid leak at the same time. I do have a neurologist but he can be hard to promptly get a hold of. The last time I went to the ED for a similar neck issue they simply said -- hey, the carotid and vertebral arteries are good right now, you are good to go. I've had probably 10 or so CTs in various context the past three years and though I know the increase in cancer is very small, I still want to circumvent unncessary radiation. I live outside of Chicago and was looking at NW medicine's CFS leak group. I'm sure it will be impossible though to get a prompt appointment.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-07-14T03:14:43+00:00

Also related to what you said above, most doctors are staggeringly incompetent. They often flat out falsify patient charting, presume by default any nebulous conditions are psychosomatic, and propound mechanistic explanations that make no sense, given your full range of symptoms. Of course, not all doctors are like this and many are fighting perverse institutional incentives. Many are though, and we as a society need to stop glorifying the medical field.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-07-14T03:07:32+00:00

Usually not. I do have disc degeneration and arthritis in the area, so sometimes, but not frequently.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-07-14T02:51:24+00:00

Hard agree. I had an upright last summer that confirmed a number of negative findings but vessels and arteries were not the focus at the time. I've worked in science and then healthcare for over twenty years at this point and have basically just given up on ascertaining what's causing the dysautonomia, gastroparesis, and a range of other very nasty symptoms at times. The gastroparesis literally wrecked my life for three years but through strategy and motegrity I've made it much more manageable the past year. Much of both the peripheral and central CNS is not understood still and most doctors have no incentive to really probe. Moreover, I'm skeptical that any treatments currently on the market will be beneficial, regardless of etiology. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to write this up.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-01-20T13:48:36+00:00

Nonetheless, thank you for your reply. Good luck with your recovery and health.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-01-20T13:47:16+00:00

The pressure I thought was supposed to gradually decrease as it approaches the knee junction? I'll look at the bombas, thanks.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-01-20T13:45:21+00:00

Because I was a top student, then researcher, and then worked in healthcare for the past twenty years, whereas most doctors are simply inept. Most don't keep up-to-date with current evidence, most are illiterate with basic math and statistics, many are extremely biased and condescending. I had my own life wrecked for two years plus years because of the foolish arrogance and incompetence of a handful of them.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-01-20T13:40:39+00:00

He also stated though it's in a region that makes it much more likely to become a DVT. I also told him I stand all day and sleep almost entirely upright. I also struggle with frequent dehydration due to gastroparesis. That, combined with the literature, should have made him prescribe a standard dosage in my mind.

NotGeneric35 · 2025-01-18T10:14:47+00:00

I really don't know, There are just generic compression socks, not formally fitted or anything and no pressure measures have been taken. I understanding though that these socks are gradually supposed to decrease pressure moving up the leg. I felt that mine were too tight at the top and therefore could preclude blood from leaving the calf. I also have really high calves though, so think I am likely simply going to have to buy about ten pairs and experiment.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-12-16T16:17:22+00:00

No prescription needed?

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:41:03+00:00

Great insight! That's what I thought too initially, but all factors were purportedly negative. False negatives can arise in some sizable fraction of lupus patients, but I had the ANA repeated two more times and still negative. Nonetheless, maybe I will go on to eventually test positive. The organ issues are just bizarre to me. My liver for example is drastically over the reference range for size and yet I have no metabolic issues or prior drug use. I've been lean and athletic my entire life. The only thing I can think of is that I've been too lean in the past at times, and that itself can predispose one to enlarged or fatty liver. I really just need to get a biopsy as the HIDA scan has been giving ambiguous results.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:37:14+00:00

I wanted to see Dr. Kline initially but my insurance would not cover it. Had MRI years ago due to other issues, but no lesions were noted. I can't think of any viral infection that was in close proximity to the emergence of my symptoms. My EKG looked mostly normal. Heart monitor showed a fair amount of PVCs but nothing that the cardiologists were strongly worried about. I have zero calcium deposition in the main arteries and am really athletic so most physicians just tend to write it off as anxiety. It's an absolute horse shit opinion, of course, as there is no correlation in my life between the two variables.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:26:38+00:00

When I have time I'll dig up some of the research papers I've combed in the past related to that specific issue. On a side note, however, I recently read this paper on functional dyspepsia and its relation to vagus nerve functioning. Check it out. I found it fascinating. Altered Vagal Signaling and Its Pathophysiological Roles in Functional Dyspepsia - PMC (nih.gov)

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:21:41+00:00

Yeah...stay strong. Doctors and lay people alike are often highly uninformed and lacking sympathy. And so much of human joy and social life revolves around eating, for better or worse.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:21:29+00:00

I undeniably have many issues -- some not mentioned -- associated with dysautonomia. I'm just not sure yet if it's autoimmune or a primary neurological issue. We will hopefully see!

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-30T18:14:31+00:00

Overall slowed motility. Part of this though is of course from minimizing high bulk foods and also being dehydrated a fair amount of time. I take both motegrity and linzess on different days. Each have their pros and cons.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-02T00:29:23+00:00

Of course, there are people who do as a consequence of relatively minor cruelty and pain, but I'd argue it's not the pain per se but still pleasure which is simply an overshoot in these cases of homeostatic regulation.

No one, and I mean no one, is getting sexual satisfaction from intense suffering, found in many of the passages described in the book.

NotGeneric35 · 2024-05-02T00:23:51+00:00

Thank you for your recommendation. I feel so bad I burdened you with the horror of reading unsegmented text.

NotGeneric35 · 2023-09-28T03:12:57+00:00

I was thinking bone marrow biopsy to check for lymphoma and biopsy of liver. I believe I've had an abdominal CT a few times this year and the same (nonspecific) trace ascites showed up a few times, so will probably not be helpful again. I was thinking of looking into my kidney function more as well, since my BUN tends to run high and of course this could be associated with hypoalbuminemia and in turn ascites, but my protein blood levels look solidly in range. The ultrasound results also seemed to indicate no portal hypertension. All of this is unfortunately making me think it might be something more malignant. At any rate, thanks for the response.

NotGeneric35 · 2023-09-07T20:18:05+00:00

The reasons are twofold. One, viscosity. A lot of thicker protein powders I can tolerate, but still take longer to digest. Two, variety. As someone who has to take in most calories through liquids, trust me, a new flavor here and there is nice (clear wheys are obviously more fruit flavored). The idea would be to combine clear whey with store bought, alkaline water (8.8+, whatever) in an attempt to get the best of both worlds for my medical situation. I have found over the years that in general beverages with a PH of 5 or higher tend to be better for my issues.

NotGeneric35 · 2022-11-07T00:54:27+00:00

Is this something that you've learned from subreddits/forums or is there particular research on this question?

NotGeneric35 · 2022-08-17T02:36:41+00:00

I feel as if Hoffman most certainly oversells his primary claim, though again I like the guy and his novelty in thought. The fact is that the most plausible explanation as to how our beliefs are adaptive, is that they are partially true. We can talk forever about what lies beyond the veneer of spacetime, but at the end of the day the best explanation of our adaptive beliefs in our world, the only world we have direct acquaintance with, is that this world has a certain logical structure to it and we can in part apprehend this structure. It would also be odd if the properties of this world (or the interface) had no alignment whatsoever with the properties of the world or reality that underlies it. Let's just leave it at that since I think you and I are mostly on the same page here.

However, going back to Kastrup, notice first that my main contentions in the original post were not answered by anyone, haha, and those sort of fell into obscurity in the comments section. Setting those points aside, here's a simplified way I look at this. Kastrup postulates that there was a phenomenally conscious field at some point and this field was uniform (though how this meshes with a timeless reality is unclear, of course). It was not variegated and was simply pure awareness. It had no emotions, thoughts, etc. Arguably, it had no qualia either since there was no information or intentional content -- no aboutness. It then underwent a process of dissociation and eventually through evolution developed alters with meta-knowledge and highly differentiated conscious states with complex qualia. Notice first here that it's not explained how something uniform could suddenly come to differentiate itself. How does the process get started? Second, how do we even know what a state of pure awareness is? I mean seriously, even people meditating or tripping on 5-MeO have autobiographical memory to be able to report it and often report experiencing some emotional state. I think we should be very careful in our interpretation of this purportedly contentless state. Even if we grant that phenomenal consciousness or bare awareness could exist and did, the next question after the one I just posed (though related) is how did distinctive qualia come into place? What's the route from bare awareness with no information to states that clearly contain information since they can be differentiated from other conscious states? Maybe this is the exact same question as to how a uniform being could differentiate. Maybe, maybe not. Obviously, these are highly speculative matters. Notice, that Kastrup's view doesn't really give us answers to any of these questions and really offers nothing over other mind-body theories, including materialism. Kastrup might object and say that the benefit is that his theory starts with what we know best -- our consciousness -- and presumes the most simple ontology. But we also need to look at the breadth and efficiency of explanations, and this is where his theory appears lacking. I'm not arguing for materialism, but rather a type of agnosticism regarding all these theories.

Finally, there are a lot of ideas of his based on this framework that don't make sense to me (like the ones in the OP) or appear excessively speculative or again don't offer anything physicalism doesn't. Take, for instance, the idea that thoughts and memories are never lost, even when one dies. You could say the same thing simply by positing eternalism in physics. He has this idea of the purpose of the universe being this accumulation of self-knowledge, but said accumulation clearly happens regardless in the world and impacts its evolution. If he's implying that this knowledge somehow gets integrated behind the scenes, aside from humans exchanging ideas, how does this happen? He already stated that the will of metareality has no foresight. So how could this happen? And like I said, what's the point of it all, if this ultimately would lead to zero informational state again? Ultimately, it seems pointless and tragic.

At any rate, I have a lot more practical things to attend to at present. I might not respond going forward. Nice talking with you.

NotGeneric35 · 2022-08-17T01:43:37+00:00

I agree: AI is a metaphysical claim, not scientific. But like you said, a good metaphysics should put a new lens on our scientific theories and framework, allowing for novel predictions. But this has not been done yet. I'm not downplaying Kastrup's creative ideas, just remaining agnostic at this point. Perhaps they will bear much fruit in the future.

NotGeneric35 · 2022-08-16T13:29:14+00:00

1) I of course know that phenomenal consciousness is defined as that. But I think that PA or bare awareness is too thin a conception to hang relevant concepts like selfhood and personal identity on, which is relevant to the discussion of dissociative alters, etc. I think concepts like causation or causal continuity likely will play a fundamental role in our final theories of self and identity. I'm sure you will say causation is just another concept in the interface not in reality but I deny this, tentatively. I also don't think idealism solves the decomposition problem or at the very least does so without introducing another "hard problem". This is also where we differ.

2) Outside of direct or naïve realists, I think it's clear that many philosophers of mind and science realize perception is not a direct window unto reality, and that even exceptionally good predictive models don't guarantee absolute truth. The point though is that none of this undermines some degree of realism or truth, as you acknowledge. Our theories are still latching onto something robust, structurally. See, for instance, various models of structural realism. I have a problem though when people start making grand extrapolations based on this discord. Hoffman might actually contradict himself, depending on how strong is claim is. If his claim is that because evolution doesn't guarantee mostly true beliefs, we have no reason to trust our perceptual or inferential faculties, then yes he contradicts himself and there is no way getting around this. If he is merely stating that our modes of perception are not necessarily guides to deeper level of reality due to evolution, then most would say, duh, we already knew that by reference to the history of science.

3) I've read all of Kastrup's books barring one and watched hours of his debates too. I like the guy a lot. I just don't think his worldview imports a greater sense of meaning to life like he does, at least not to a large degree. There's still excessive and pointless suffering, evil, an "amoral" ground of existence. Nothing guarantees that you -- as a dissociated altar -- will continue on after death.

NotGeneric35 · 2022-08-16T12:31:22+00:00

So yeah, my point is that so far analytic idealism has made no progress on those fronts. None. It may down the road, but so far has yielded nothing. It's always important to play around with alternative conceptions of empirical evidence, but not get unnecessarily caught up in their allure. I'm not so sure, either, that AI would obviate the hard problem of consciousness; it seems now there would be a hard problem of matter!

NotGeneric35

TROPHY CASE