Last week I posted a blog detailing a shocking experience. I failed to get an emergency admission and the critical medical testing I needed.I wanted to wake people up. You can find that post near the top of my blog titled “And……After….All…That….”
I want to do a few things today. I have come across some terrific articles this week, which clearly illustrate one of the priorities I am trying to communicate: that we must keep our local medical infrastructure working so our big idea factories can do what they do best. I have made it no secret I love Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. I know everyone from door attendants to very uniquely specialized experts. They make incredible things happen. When I read about what they are currently working on, I was flabbergasted at how much creativity and brilliance is being used in every possible direction to attempt to tear down every barrier stalling us.
A not so quick aside first updating my current medical status. I was able to go back to Northwestern on Friday and found the environment had gained control. Instead of the desperation and chaos I saw Tuesday; things were starting to run smoothly again. I was able to get a specialized advanced nuclear imaging test, which finally showed there was nothing imminently dangerous going on in my lungs, like the previous fear of a blood clot. We still do not know why I can not catch my breath, but nothing there will drop me fast. On the other hand, some blood-work came back with indicators of some kind of heart disease. I have no idea if this is serious or not. I can not get into a Cardiologist until the Friday after Thanksgiving. I am trying to stay as calm as possible until I find out more: doing mindful exercises, checking out on reality with my kids playing games, and watching movies. Could you send me your bingeable favorites? The following result I got some info back is potentially terrifying. I have been experiencing changes in my physical, neurological, and cognitive abilities in the last four months. It could be something very treatable, like the very rare CNS Graft vs. Host disease. I have had GVHD in the common areas where it shows up, my skin and lungs, and currently, my eyes. It is treated by amping down my hyperactive immune system to keep it from attacking healthy tissues. It’s not a great time to get immune-suppressed, but that’s how it is. I had a brain MRI recently, and it looked OK. This new scan was a follow-up test that looked at my entire cervical spine. It came back pretty scary, but I have no idea if it’s severe or not. Some words I was terrified of seeing are in the report. “moderate to severe,” “gray matter impacted,” “demyelinating.” These are the words that appear with neurodegenerative diseases like MS, Alzheimer’s, Dementia. But I have no idea at all yet. Next week I will be getting an EEG that will show brain activity and then in the beginning of December, a battery of neuro-cognitive tests. I am trying to take a complete break from perseverating this. But it creeps in.
Follow my breath, escape reality to my own little video game island Animal Planet. I play with my niece. Where everything is always calm and happy and beautiful, and I have complete control.
OK, back to the topic. I saw this great map from the Department of Health and Se rices that beautifully illustrates how our local hospitals are getting overloaded all across the country and, in turn, overloading our more significant crisis centers. See map and article going into detail linked below.
When I was at the hospital I had several employees ask me if I had heard that they had pulled off the first successful double lung transplant for Covid-19 patients. They were excited and proud. I went to look at the study and was flabbergasted to see just how much they are doing. Its incredible. It made me happy and gave my great hope. If really does explain very specifically why we need to keep our research hospitals unencumbered so they can do magic like this. Its a ton! I am going to attach the article from Northwestern that has links to each of the programs I will list here if you want more specifics. Prepare to be blown away – in a good way for once.
- First ever attempted double lung transplant for Covid-19 patients. They were successful and working on getting this new solution out to the medical profession as soon as possible.
- Launching a registry, seeking 5,000 volunteers for trials. They are exceptionally good at this. They have a whole building of ongoing trials going on. They started one, just for me, that ended up saving my life.
- Uncovering a new vulnerability in COVID-19 spike protein – opening the door, for a simple, potential treatment pathway.
- Their Epidemiologist testified before the US Senate on investigating the impact of Covid-19 on minority and older adults.
- New research documenting the neurological involvement of Covid-19. Time to get the Neurologists on board! This is not just a respiratory disease as originally thought.
- Using new AI powered tools that make it possible to prioritize the most promising studies while ignoring unlikely to yield to results. They are stepping on the gas hard!
- Northwestern researchers are developing a new antibody tests that only require a finger stick.
- Developing a wearable device which creates a data set of algorithms to catch early symptoms all allow medical management for you while you are at home.
- 3D printing face shields and sharing that information
- Identifying anti-viral compounds which can be embedded in masks so they could self-sanitize.
- A medical student at Northwester put together a project of 140 volunteers on the street to help the community with shopping, virtual tutoring, collecting masks and more. These people are making the time to genuinely care. It sickens me to see such true hearts vilified.
- Daily fact checking on public statements to enable research reporting, public statements and social media reports for accuracy. They are trying to take the crazy fear mongering out of our information flow.
- Kellogg and Northwestern partnering to provide strategic consulting to support local business.
- Northwestern Economists will advise the City of Chicago as economic and social recovery planning gets going
- Northwestern School of Law have been accelerating Covid-19 prison release efforts.
https://news.northwestern.edu/coronavirus/research-recovery/
WOW!!!! RIGHT?!!! Makes me fell happy and hope. This wonderful big bank of growing knowledge can only be accessed by allowing specialists to bring their specific skills and creativity to the table. We are not qualified to fully understand the full scope of this problem and decide our plan of action. Our role is to stay out of their way and support them and listen to what they are asking us to do so they can focus on solutions for us. So wear a mask and do virtual Thanksgivings.
Knowing of the incredible acts of love this exhausted groups of heroes is working on for us, imagine how I felt when I heard this from a nurse friend in another part of the country: “We are scared to wear our scrubs into work. There are hostile organized groups that spit at us and yell that we are liars and creating conspiracies. We are scared” This is not an abortion clinic, this is an exhausted ER nurse dragging her ass in and risking her life for us for another unending shift. WTF!!! The first words that popped into my head were “social insanity”, this feels like group irrationality, a crazy cult attacking our healers. Madness. The next word that popped into my head was “Barbaric” are we starting down the path to Mad Max time? That’s when I again checked out of current day reality and relaxed and let myself fall down a very big, very deep rabbit hole.
I have had way, way too much time alone the last few years to pontificate about what is going on and why, and that has brought me to this point. I am a freak. I have an extremely eccentric way of looking at Society and its functions because of my archaic areas of studies and some very detailed experiences which provide insight into some of our system operate.
Ready to go for a ride? You can just stop here if you just wanted to hear about my day or a presentation of data. For the brave, buckle up and lets go!
Probably very few of you know I have a degree in Ancient Mediterranean Art History. I have studied many early civilizations. I have studied the evolution of the brain and societies. This always makes me pull very, very far back deep into the history to the beginnings of civilizations and before when I look at social problems. Yep we are going back to cavemen time even. On the other end of things I have a Masters Degree in Visual thinking. My program evolved from the Bauhaus School from Germany that introduced new ways to design and embraced current technologies. Told you I am an eccentric freak!
When you look over this amount of time, at the rise and fall of of many civilizations . Patterns emerge that repeat over and over and over again that show how societies emerge from barbarism and start taking the steps of becoming a more civilized society. Much of this has to do with the ability to specialize. We can no longer do everything. We need to allow specializations and expertise of skills to develop. So do what you do best. You are not qualified to be an expert at everything. Similarly there are patterns of red-flags that can start showing up even with the most successful and enduring civilizations. Tools start failing. Cracks start to happen. The civilization starts pulling apart and devolving. Sometimes they completely devolved back into barbarism and disappeared. Sometimes they were absorbed into a more successful society. Sometimes if it was not too big, and able to make effective changes it my even be able to recover, at least until the cycle starts again because it is not fluid and adapting. I feel we are at this crossroads right now.
Often successful civilizations have some of the same very developed and every effective social tools. These important tools are used to lay very solid foundational bricks which then can allow social advancement. With out this rock solid foundation, everything starts falling down and you start entering social chaos and de-evolving your society. Each brick has to bear its weight properly. Maybe they started out working well but the structure just got to big on top for it to support what is above. In which case new bricks need to be added. Maybe some of the bricks are not longer 100% of the time holding up the building, they are getting borrowed to be used on a different problem, but they have not been replaced. So down our building starts coming. Our foundation must be stabilized, or down it all comes. I think this is where we are too. Time to look at our foundation and lay out some new bricks.
So what are our foundational bricks that look wobbly and no longer functioning to me? Have we outgrown our foundation? I think so.
Here are what I think are some of our important bricks which are no longer functioning.
Education: What have we allowed to happen here? I remember in HS and college having entire courses taught where we were taught about how to vet information and sources. We were taught about what evidence back research was, and how to look for red flags we had bad info. How to determine reliable information. Where did this important component of education go? Have we overburdened our classroom with non-teaching time and worksheets so critical thinking skills are not developing? This is what I was taught. This seems to be missing now, many people must not have been taught this. No wonder people are scared and do not know what to believe.
Government and Politics and Legal Systems: Our governments have been so completely taken over by lobbying and fundraising they no longer act making the best decisions for public welfare. Its impossible. Even the most sincere, are corrupted by financial pressures. Somehow this has to change completely to make decisions for the public good. They are not, and we are angry and do not want to listen to them. Then you get an emergency situation like we are in, but their is at this point so much trust has been lost their leadership is impotent.
Science and Medicine: again corrupted to the point of being forced to make decisions based on financial and legal responsibilities rather than pure scientific advancement. This has made us mistrust our science and medicine. No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories!
Economics: I am helping my son do eLearning HS Economics and Government right now. Something really caught my eye in the Econ book. It was going on and on, in the biased way our textbooks sometimes do, raving about how great the US Economy is and how the rest of the world strives to be like us. Yep, that resulted in a major coffee snort! lol! But it was the next sentence that drew me. After this long string of advantages the text seemed compelled to mention a disadvantage. It said even though this was a remarkably successful economic model, it was unsustainable.What?!!! As if grew larger and larger and larger, the model predicts a larger and larger gap between the rich and poor. Once this economy had reached a certain size it was impossible to function any more and a very modified or new economy needed to be adapted. Whoa!! Does this sound familiar at all? Does this say we can not fix it? Does this help explain the anger and violence we are seeing building everywhere? Ah maybe.
Creatives: Again have become corrupted by profit and not seen as important. These are our problem solvers. Our outside of the box thinkers that bring new perspectives. Where did this get devalued?
So where are we at to really not keep running into crisis again and again. Do we need to replace some bricks, add more, tear down the foundation and make a new one? Or have we really started slowly heading to Mad Max?
I am not trying to fear monger. I want to start focusing on the bricks of our foundation. I love our society and still believe people are basically good if they are not getting screwed over by dysfunctional or bombarded rrelevant garbage.
Maybe I have just been up too long, unable to sleep because I am pumped full of steroids.
Time to check back out for awhile and go to my happy little island and plant flowers and talk to transsexual flamingos.
Exercises in Equanimity 