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Patrick Volkerding Battles Mystery Illness

Posted by michael on from the two-aspirin-and-call-in-the-morning dept.

sethadam1 writes "Calling all Slashdoctors! Pat Volkerding, maintainer of Slackware Linux, needs your help. This morning, he posted his very detailed account (mirror) of his battle with Actinomyces here on the Slackware FTP server. Patrick has given his blood, sweat, and tears to the open source community for years in Slackware, one of the oldest surviving Linux distributions. If you can, please help!"

3 of 675 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Get Help Now, Maybe? by notthepainter · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article, it isn't clear if the infection is in his lungs or not. If it is, he is also likely not getting enough oxygen to the brain. I should know. I had a pulmonary embolism a few years back. I almost died. The day I was admitted to the hospital I emailed my wife telling her to come home and take me there, I didn't dial 911. Why? My brain was starting to shutdown. I realized this years later when reading "Into Thin Air." I was essentially above 28,000 on Everest without oxygen. I don't know Patrick, but I hope someone who does can convince him, on the phone, that he should not necessarily be making decisions right now, he may not be in the space to. It does sound like he needs to be admitted.

    I was lucky, I lived.

  2. Re:Strange story by Hawkeye477 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not to be rude but in your last sentence you completely summed up the problems I have had with doctors and what is wrong with doctors, which is "They are just as egotystical as programmers". I'll never understand how doctors think they actually understand the human body, they always think they are right... it drives me nuts. If I say it hurts .. it really hurst! it's not mental!

    A perfect examples of my last run in with dr is... I'm 25 years old with the problems of a 50 year old and everytime a new one hits me the doctors take forever to believe me and then I usually end up having to figure out what I have and force it down there throats until they come to the same conclusion themselves ... The latest one in my shitty annoying illnesesses is a herniated Disk in my back between L1-L2 ... Since the pain was in my back and front, the doctors (not just one, but many) all assumed I had intestinal problems, or kidney problems ... no one wanted to listen to me that it hurt more depending on the way I moved until they stuck enough poles up my ass and could not find a thing and did an MRI on my Lumbar spine. This took (9 months!)

    One bit of advice for Doctors (and Programmers). STOP BEING SO DAMN EGOTYSTICAL! computers and the human body are very very complicated machines, u ain't always gonna be right and shoudl look at all the syptoms of the problem and LISTEN to the patients (or users)...

    SO that is my little rant as I sit here high on pain killers trying ot make the pain go away from my screwed up disc ...

    --
    My Web Site - www.ocean-liners.com
  3. Re:Get Help Now, Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, yes... but within reason.

    Remember, 90% of everything is crap. That is especially true of the Internet, where anyone can post information as if it is true. Think of how many times you have gone to a website about something in your area of knowledge, and found it to be misleading or downright false.

    Doctors, even long before the internet, have to deal with lots of people who like to self-diagnose, self-medicate, and generally make it hard to do real medicine. Penicillin is almost useless now because people used it improperly (e.g. for the flu, for too short a duration). There are also a lot of hypochondriacs who think they have fatal diseases for every sneeze (especially mothers with their kids). Doctors have a lot of training and experience to know what is likely and how best to deal with it, and having patients tell them what to do doesn't help. Again, think of all the times someone asked you about their computer and didn't listen to your reasonable response. Usually they just want you to agree with their uneducated diagnosis.

    That said, there are a lot of uncommon illnesses out there, things that a doctor may see once in their lifetime, if that. If they studied well, they might recognize it. If they really take an interest, they might be able to look it up. If it resembles something common, though, it is likely to be missed. You are the only one really committed to keeping yourself healthy, so you are probably the only one who is really going to research a possible rare illness.

    Where does that leave you? I don't know. It is safer to waste your time and annoy your doctor than to ignore what might be a serious condition. But, your rate of return will be low and you just make your doctor more disgruntled (I can't hardly get mine to speak to me) and drive up the cost of healthcare.

    My solution is to have several doctors in the family, so that I can talk to them off the clock and actually get them to pay attention to me, but I'm lucky that way.