Posts by Justin Fox

brightmarlin44 said:Justin Fox, I honestly had no clue that Libyan doctors were involved in😕 👎 or whatever else was going on😕. I do know that back in the 80s, those students were definitely more prepared than our lot here; the curriculum back then was incredibly rigorous.

There was this massive scandal where a handful of Bulgarian nurses and one doctor administered a vaccine to children that turned out to be contaminated with HIV. It resulted in a huge number of kids testing positive—I think over a hundred. At first, they actually sentenced the medical staff to death before commuting it to prison time. There’s still this endless debate about who was truly responsible for the tainted batch. If I recall correctly, they might still be behind bars in Libya.

They needed a urine sample, so they just went ahead and used a catheter—all sorts of things. Honestly, what possessed you to let them use such a crude method? You can see for yourself now that you're dealing with all this pain because of an unnecessary catheterization, all because someone couldn't be bothered to wait. You could have simply told them you wouldn't tolerate it; they should have given you time to just hold it until you were able to go naturally.

If I were in your shoes, I’d sit down and write a formal letter to the director of the facility where this happened to complain about their procedure. I’d send a carbon copy to Medicare as well. If the director doesn't get back to you within a week, you send another letter to him, CCing Medicare again, and just keep at it. In theory, you might even have grounds for a lawsuit regarding malpractice or improper examination.

This reminds me of that old thread about catheters, where some folks from Seattle were claiming the whole thing was painless and perfectly safe. Yeah, right. What a joke.

I’m currently working on an article about what actually happens to your body when you smash a fingernail against something hard.

brightmarlin44, I’ve got to agree—Mechanical Engineering might actually be the toughest major in the city. I’ve heard the exams are even more brutal than what they throw at you at MIT, and then you have to deal with all that tedious drafting work on top of it. It’s honestly a tragedy that you can grind through such a grueling degree only to struggle with job prospects afterward. It definitely explains why so few people even bother applying to the FBI.

Petrov & politicians: It’s possible. I remember hearing stories about Med school students who had deep connections, getting straight A's without anyone even asking them a single question—which obviously meant they didn't study. Everyone used to whisper: god help the patients when those types start practicing.

Why are you citing Arabs as the best doctors, especially from Libya? Are you forgetting those horrific incidents involving Bulgarian staff being sentenced to death over the AIDS outbreak?

Maybe she'll find some sort of remedy or something else that actually works. Three weeks is honestly a long time; from what I gather, a mucous membrane should heal much faster than that.

It’s entirely possible I’ve got my wires crossed here, >, since I’m writing this purely from memory without checking any actual sources. But surely we can agree on the basic facts: someone died, it turned into a massive scandal, an official commission found a doctor liable, and his punishment was nothing more than being suspended from his practice. If he’d killed someone with a car, he’d be facing prison time.

Ergo: negligence resulting in death equals a suspension. What kind of logic is that?

Sophia Martinez65 said:I heard they believe they have to eat the uterus

Heh, you've got that backwards, according to placidscout9. They keep the uterus. Besides, if we're being honest, the population would probably drop by at least 50% every generation anyway. Not exactly a tragedy for the world at large, is it?😈

Susan Martin24 said:If you asked her, she’d tell you our entire healthcare system—myself included—is basically garbage.

Honestly, I’m right there with her, especially regarding what she thinks about my daughter. 😈

Susan Martin24 said:My darling lives in Vienna, and he had to wait two months just for an appointment with a private ophthalmologist—paying 100% out of pocket, of course.

He actually made a pretty bad call there. Tell him to just find a specialist online, drive a bit north, and he could probably get seen immediately. I suppose if you judge every doctor by that one experience, it makes sense why he was hesitant to go.

Lawrence Wells said:Medicine is unique because the subject you're working on is a human being. If you screw up, someone loses their head. In math or IT, if you miss something, you can just fix it later and everyone moves on happy. So please, stop talking nonsense!

Please, don't lecture me on what's nonsense. I'd much rather you explain to this forum what people mean when they talk about a "requiem for a surgeon." Let’s be honest here: when one doctor makes a mistake, there's a very high chance another doctor will cover for them. If you mess up in IT, you might crash a system, knock out the power, kill the phones, or miscalculate some bank accounts or taxes—which is bad, sure—but the chances of accidentally killing someone are slim. And when things go wrong, it’ll be obvious who did it, and the bosses will hold them accountable.

In medicine, there's this massive gray area where people debate whether things could have been done better or differently. Even when it's medically obvious that someone botched a procedure, colleagues tend to stick together and claim nothing went wrong. Take that scandal in Washington, D.C., for example, where a doctor failed to react properly and handled a case incorrectly later on. A woman died. An inquiry—conveniently called because the media was making such a stink about it—ruled it was negligence and incompetent treatment. The result? The responsible doctor got hit with a brief suspension. That's it. You cause someone's death through pure carelessness—say, because the guy was too busy watching a football game on TV to actually check on his patient—and your punishment is a few months off work? Where's the jail time? 👎

And don't even get me started on the endless list of ways patients are treated. The lack of communication, treating people like cattle, keeping someone in the hospital longer than necessary just so Medicare picks up the bill for the bed, or making people wait months for an exam (unless you have a "recommendation," of course). Or cases where a patient is stitched up in a rush after surgery because, "hey, they aren't a model, we don't have time for fine suturing." All these little acts of sloppiness go unpunished, yet they inflict physical pain and mental anguish. Just imagine how it feels to be in agony, needing a diagnostic exam, only to be told you have to wait a couple of months. 👎

Anthony Kim18 said:small breasts
tiny dick!

how do you get it up for small breasts? 😉

Go ask Susan Martin24; I'm sure she's an expert on that too.

By the way, there’s a massive amount of info floating around online. You’ve got vendors all claiming their products are top-tier, and then you have those self-proclaimed "reviewers" everywhere. If I were you, I'd start by digging through their own claims first; here's an example:
http://www.breast-enhancement-study....ct-reviews.htm

Does it actually work? Honestly, I haven't a clue. But I always ask myself—what's the worst-case scenario? People take birth control pills every day, which are essentially just hormones. These enhancement supplements are mostly just herbal extracts that mimic hormonal effects without being actual hormones. Personally, if I were a woman looking to change my shape, I’d definitely opt for a pill over going under the knife for silicone implants or saline injections.

Aha, Megan Reed, feeling any smarter now?

Casey Palmer5 said:I just can't get behind that logic. Medicine is one of those fields where you're constantly forced to chase down new studies and keep up with endless continuous training. Technology is moving at lightning speed.

"Lightning speed"? Give me a break. Compare that to the pace of IT and then come back to tell me it's fast. In medicine, tiny incremental shifts take years just to be labeled "experimental."😲

Man, medical school... my heart is actually racing just thinking about it.

Nana said:is that your excuse for not having graduated yet😬
forget about all that, just go into med school instead🙏

The fact that you’re trying to claim I haven't graduated just shows how shallow your argument is (which, lo and behold, my dear Susan Martin24 picked up on immediately). I suppose that’s how you conduct scientific research in medicine: one person writes something nonsensical, another person copies it, and suddenly it's "scientifically proven fact" across two different papers. It’s like those old high school cliques—just hiding behind each other. 🙈

Actually, that doesn't even apply to me. I finished my medical thesis right on schedule and gained enough experience to work anywhere in the world (unlike doctors, I don't have to deal with the pressure of passing the USMLE or anything similar). If I really felt the urge, I could finish a medical degree, but I see zero reason to walk away from a career where I earn several times more than a specialist working on call in the US. Why would I enter a profession where opportunities mostly depend on who you know? A field where colleagues are constantly stabbing you in the back over crumbs, and where corrupt, lazy, and indifferent people have completely trashed the profession's reputation?

Besides, I'm not particularly impressed by a field where technological advancement moves at a snail's pace, where there isn't real global competition, and where most systems are tied to government funding (often through strange leasing arrangements that are basically just indirect public sector work). The last thing I want is to be a doctor watching a broken system provide suboptimal care to vulnerable patients, knowing I can't do a damn thing to fix it because the system keeps me on a short leash, serving nothing but the interests of corrupt directors, surgeons, and politicians. 😠

Of course it isn't a keloid; those things are pretty rare. Honestly, Harold Mendoza3, why are you being so high-strung and unrefined?

That’s a fair question. On paper, the law says one thing, but in practice? It’s a completely different story... One small silver lining, though, is that once you're dead, people tend to stop bothering you about what happens to your organs.

Man, what an idea. They aren't going to tattoo over a keloid scar. When someone says "scar," they usually mean a standard one, not some hypertrophic or keloid mess. You can tell just by looking—those things shouldn't be touched. They look more like localized inflammation or swelling than anything else you'd call a scar.
A normal scar is slightly different from the surrounding tissue, which might make it a tiny bit tricky to work with, but once you cover it up with ink, it’ll be well-masked.

Honestly, I don’t see why it wouldn't work. In fact, if it covers up the scar, that’s probably even better, right?

Lawrence Wells said:Justin Fox, give me a break, you're being such a loudmouth! You don't have a clue what medical school is actually like; you're just talking trash because you're dealing with an inferiority complex!!!

Lawrence Wells, let's keep it civil and stop the nonsense. I know exactly how grueling med school is. One of my closest friends is a doctor—one of those rare, genuinely honorable people in the profession—and we spent enough time hanging out for me to see the grind firsthand. It’s not just about memorizing bone names; it's the minutiae, the specific processes, the tiny protrusions and landmarks. I remember hearing them say they wouldn't even bother with the lymphatic system during certain reviews because it was too dense; if anyone pushed for more detail, they’d fail on the spot.

As for the studying part, I've seen plenty of kids who pulled straight A's in high school math only to barely scrape by with a D in engineering school. There's a fundamental shift there. When you're memorizing facts—like anatomy or certain laws—putting in more hours directly correlates to progress. But with problem-based subjects like math or physics, you can memorize the entire textbook and finish every practice set in existence, and still fail the exam. It requires a completely different way of thinking. The number of pages you've memorized isn't a valid metric for how hard a curriculum is. Once someone gets into the groove, they can memorize a lot very quickly, but there are much deeper challenges than simple rote learning.