Let them eat cake!

Originally Posted by wolf

Sounds like it's time for you to get another reporter to do a story on you so you can live off the donations like the last time.

I am having lots of computer wierdness as I mentioned above. This reply may or may not go through. If it doesn't, I won't try reposting it. You're a tough girl, Wolf, so here you go:

I take it then, that you have studied the work being carried out at the University of California by of John Edmond, PhD. Just which part of his hypothesis do you object to? The part where he identifies oxidative stress as the cellular injury caused by chronic mild carbon monoxide exposure? Or where he hypothesizes, accompanying conditions may include carbon monoxide acting as a rogue neuro-modulator perturbing carbon monoxide-like regulatory processes that are involved in cell signaling?


Surely, you agree with Ellenhorn and Barceloux writing in the peer reviewed monograph, Medical Toxicology - Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Poisoning. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 1988., p. 823]

Severe carbon monoxide poisoning produces anatomic changes (e.g., cerebral edema, hemorrhagic focal necrosis, venodilation, petechiae, perivascular infarct). Bilateral necrosis of the globus pallidus is the characteristic lesion of carbon monoxide toxicity. Other vulnerable areas of the cerebral gray matter include the substantia nigra, hippocampus, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum. These histopathological changes are indistinguishable from other causes such as hypoxia, cardiorespiratory arrest, hypoglycemia, and cyanide poisoning. Rarely, a postanoxic demyelination occurs that follows an initial recovery and progresses to irritability, confusion, coma and death. A 'moth-eaten' appearance characterizes this anoxic leukoencephalopathy in which most of the damage appears in the gray matter of the cerebral cortex, pallidum, thalamus, and cerebellar cortex.

I suggest you get a copy. It’s a real page-turner.

Here’s some more from the above two scientists writing in the same monograph as above:

Neurologic sequelae include visual loss, dementia, retardation, constructional apraxia, temporospacial disorientation, memory loss, dysphasia, personality changes, concentration deficits, and frank psychosis. Parkinson's disease does occur after acute carbon monoxide exposures but is very rare. After initial recovery from carbon monoxide exposure patients may develop neurologic symptoms (apathy, mutism, amnesia, urinary incontinence, headache, irritability, personality changes, confusion, memory loss, visual changes) within 2 to 4 weeks of exposure.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you studied all this stuff in your cartography 101 class years, ago.

Note that the neurological sequelae (that means after effects) INCLUDE the symptoms above, but never in the literature that I have researched, have I found a patient exhibiting every one of these symptoms all at once. CO exposure seldom impact’s one’s long-term memory – not very severely, anyhow. Nor does it necessarily impact their over-all intelligence – although mine has dropped to my dismay.

I can read a scientific paper (taking notes all the while) because I have a BA and a Master’s degree in biology. While you were writing papers on contour mapping and urban geography, I was studying mitochondria, synapses, embryology, chemistry, and physics. I still have that knowledge even though I don’t know what day of the week it is, get lost going places I’ve been 10 times before, forget faces, have severe panic attacks, and can get irritable as hell out of nowhere. These things make it damn hard to hold down a job no matter how smart or stupid you may be.

Now, if it is your scientific hypothesis that I gave up work I loved that paid decent money, and decided to be homeless for a while and then live a life of terror on how I’m going to survive on the SSDI I paid into for 30 years; I suggest you check yourself into your own institution for thorough testing. Don’t forget the neuropych eval.

[LabRat]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Now, if it is your scientific hypothesis that I gave up work I loved that paid decent money...

What did you used to be able to do? I forgot/never knew.

Please don't insult the rest of the cellar, including Wolf, by implying I'm the only one who can use a medical dictionary. Thanks for posting that. I finally have a solid hypothesis regarding the cause of your holier than thou personality.

You used to have more interesting things to say. Now all I read is waa waa waa, poor me.

Too bad.

Originally Posted by LabRat

What did you used to be able to do? I forgot/never knew.

I was at various times a medical librarian, science librarian/subject specialist for both the University of Idaho and Ft. Lewis College in Durango. I was head of Reference at a major public library in Colorado Springs, and I was acting director of the Helen Fowler Library at Denver Botanic Gardens. I finished up my illustrious career as a janitor.

Originally Posted by LabRat

Please don't insult the rest of the cellar, including Wolf, by implying I'm the only one who can use a medical dictionary. Thanks for posting that. I finally have a solid hypothesis regarding the cause of your holier than thou personality.

Please don't insult the men and women who have literally spent their entire adult lives both studying and doing science.

MITOCHONDRIA:
mi·to·chon·dri·on (mt-kndr-n)
n. pl. mi·to·chon·dri·a (-dr-)
A spherical or elongated organelle in the cytoplasm of nearly all eukaryotic cells, containing genetic material and many enzymes important for cell metabolism, including those responsible for the conversion of food to usable energy. It consists of two membranes: an outer smooth membrane and an inner membrane arranged to form cristae.

What's cristae? What's an eukaryotic cell? What's cytoplasm? Further, what is the evolutionary importance of the mitochrondria? Have cells always had mitochrondria? How do they convert food to usable energy?

Hell, what's the difference between a plant cell and an animal cell? I bow before a person of such intelligence as yours who can now throw these words around without ever having read Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene, never studied the ground breaking work of Linus Pauling and, of course, never bent over a microscope, or never sat up all night memorizing those damned isomers and tautometers or the composition of the double helix. Hats off to every cellurite for being able to read the latest publications in Science with only a dictionary.

Originally Posted by Labrat

You used to have more interesting things to say. Now all I read is waa waa waa, poor me.

Too bad.

No, waa, waa poor 12% of Americans living below the poverty line, including many of the disabled. My life would be very different today if some damn scientist would have stuck his head out of the lab and said to me, "You need hyperbaric therapy, baby. You need medicines that we are now experimenting with for various types of brain injury - especially apoxia (go look it up). And while you're looking things up, look up Mary Sue Coleman. We need more scientists like her.

I could write you a horror story every week about the life of some OTHER disabled person living on SSI or SSDI if you want. I am more than willing to write those stories. I can think of 6 or 7 just off the top of my head right now - and me with memory problems!

If you, as a scientist cannot understand the points I am trying to make, then I can only believe you write out of personal bias - not science. I would be fascinated to read your hypothesis, a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences.

I will even comply with a double blind study just for you. And me. If it will help me go back to work, I'll try anything.

And Bri, I have admitted to severe anxiety problems, problems controlling my temper, severe depression, etc. I wasn't this was way before. I am now.

And Bri, I don't want a penny from you. Make your charitable donations anywhere you wish except to me. In fact, send them to Bin Laden first. And if you'll recall, I helped YOU with some of your English Lit questions. My help wasn't anything special, according to you, but you kept PM-ing me with questions, and I kept doing my best to give you research ideas, etc. I never asked you for a damn thing in return except how your papers turned out, and you never even gave me so much as the courtesy of an answer. Then you'd PM me again over Rupert Brooke or some other ass-hole. Why didn't you ask your prof, instead?

Originally Posted by Gary Snyder

Amitaba's Vow
"If after obtaining buddhahood, anyone in my land
gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I
not attain highest, perfect enlightenment...

"If after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
loses a finger coupling box cars, may I
not attain highest perfect enlightenment...

"If after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
can't get a ridehitch-hiking all directions, may I
not obtain highest, perfect enlightenment..."

- From Burning, by Gary Snyder

Explicate THAT for me, Bri. And you thought Herrick was difficult.

[tw]

Originally Posted by marichiko

... if some damn scientist would have stuck his head out of the lab and said to me, "You need hyperbaric therapy.

Did I miss something? Where does hyperbaric therapy apply? Or was it only uses as an example?

Originally Posted by tw

Did I miss something? Where does hyperbaric therapy apply? Or was it only uses as an example?

Hyperbaric therapy if administered in time can undo or even prevent further damage after carbon monoxide poisoning. Essentially, the CO binds preferentially with the hemoglobin in the blood which transports O2 throughout the body. Its like being suffocated from inside. Instead og getting a nice dose of O2, the cells of the body get a dose of deadly poison. The heart and brain require themost O2, so the damage is usually in these two organs. The parts of the brain that are standing at the end of the chow line, so to speak, suffer the most damage. That is why some parts of the brain can be severely impacted while others are relatively unharmed.

Hyberbaric therapy sort of super oxygenates the blood system and can save cells that might otherwise have died.

Orthodoc, sorry about the typo - I meant anoxia. My brain does that now - it creates new and amazing words. Sometimes I catch 'em and sometimes... Oh, well.

Originally Posted by Labrat

BTW, my hypothesis was that her posts/stories are full of holes because her brain is. (see "moth-eaten") It was a bad joke, sorry

LOL! I loved that! Its so damn true! My life has become as tattered as my moth eaten brain. Labrat, I'm sorry I got mad at you, I just get so tired of feeling the need to defend myself to people who have no idea and don't care what I'm talking about.

Dana, you're a dear! And so are you Aliantha, as well as that Cardigan guy.

9th, I'll PM you.

I did NOT want to get into this big fight, I was just fed up with the diet the poor are expected to live on in my county. I didn't mean to start WWIII.

Sure, I mention my life now and then. Everyone on the Cellar does from time to time. Consider me your correspondent from the other side of the looking glass - sometimes.

Now let's go write a poem about Labrat's ass.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by marichiko

My life would be very different today if some damn scientist would have stuck his head out of the lab and said to me, "You need hyperbaric therapy, baby. You need medicines that we are now experimenting with for various types of brain injury - especially apoxia (go look it up).

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been used in cases of acute, moderate to severe carbon monoxide poisoning, since in at least one study it was shown to improve cognitive outcome at six weeks and twelve months. However, its role is still unclear due to conflicting study results and the flawed design of some studies that support its use. High-flow 100% oxygen may be just as effective. It isn't clear that the reference here, however, is to acute poisoning - sounds like chronic exposure ...??? There aren't any studies that I've been able to find that support hyperbaric O2 for that.

Apoxia - ?? That's not in my medical dictionaries. Anoxia, perhaps? Or hypoxia?