Day Whoa: Hospitals and Interprovincial Healthcare

Sorry I haven't been on top of updating, I've had a rather complicated past week.

After taking a soccer ball and later an oblivious and unintentional fist to the nose within a week, the resulting headache got abruptly and exponentially more intense without reason or warning on Wednesday afternoon. That is generally not a good thing.

So I went to see a doctor here in Montreal (and worried him quite a bit), who sent me to the ER here in Montreal, where an even more concerned triage nurse allowed me to take my 9pm bus on Thursday night in order to get home to Ontario as long as I promised to go to the ER again when I got there.

Upon arriving in Toronto at 3am, a very close friend of mine, Hoben, picked me up from the bus station, drove me to Guelph and even stayed with me in the waiting room of the Guelph ER for a bit. The doctor there saw me after a much longer wait than in Montreal, and despite the headache being so bad that tears had started to flow, proclaimed that there was probably nothing wrong with me, otherwise I'd be dead already.

Regardless, he gave me an IV of drugs that were "gang-busters for headaches" as he said but that "wouldn't make you loopy", so that I could make a decision about whether or not I should get the CT scan he was willing to give me, but really didn't want to. Turns out those IV drugs shouldn't have been given to someone in my situation at all; lets just say that a drug with known interactions with breathing and intracranial pressure don't pan out well for asthmatics with headtrauma... But it still helped a lot!

Jon showed up during the IV drip and came home with me when I was ultimately released with hardly a glance after the drip was done.

Luckily, my friend Dev lived nearby and was willing to give us a ride home when I asked, because she's absolutely amazing and such a sweetheart.

I got home, and after well over 24hrs without sleep, Jon and I were finally able to get some rest.

When my family came home, I was able to scare each and every single one of them because no one was expecting me. I even managed to sneak up on my grandpa when Kristie, Hoben and I stopped by the LCBO on our way out of town.

The weekend in Barrie that followed was (nearly) as amazing as I hoped it would be! The mild-concussion and hospital drugs put a few unfortunate kinks in my weekend, but ultimately, I got to see a lot of marvellous friends I've had trouble seeing for the past few years because of my own personal problems despite still living so close, and spent a weekend chilling with them.

I'm even finally more or less caught up with where I wanted to be homework-wise before the whole concussion/ER/medication combo knocked me for a loop.

So we now return to your regularly scheduled programming thanks to the combined efforts of medical personel across 2 provinces and 3 institutions, Hoben, Dev, Kristie, Bree, Matt, Tommy, Hayley, Hindle and, of course, Jon.

Come back tomorrow for a brand new lesson!

Day 70: What a Feeling!

Why yes, I do use a lot of song lyrics as titles! But this one was just because I had an amazing weekend. As much as I loved being home, it's good to be back!

My first class today could largely be boiled down to "correlation is not causation". We saw how you can prove that bread is one of the greatest problems in the world, though frankly I'm rather disappointed that she didn't make any mention of how the decline of pirates has fuelled climate change.

We also looked at different scientific research methods etc, and while I'd covered all of this in various other spots throughout my education. Something popped out at me and gave me a new way of looking at research. As this wasn't really a lesson, it will be hard to phrase as one, but I'll give her a whirl.

Lesson 66: How something is studied is largely influenced by the nature of the thing itself.

Ok, now some clarity. The majority of scientific progress is done through Positivist research. To immensely simplify some complex ideas, Positivism is the basis of the theory, hypothesis, test, observe, conclude science most people know. Basically, the basic laws and theories that govern the natural world mean that you can predict an outcome and test it, and it will be repeatable no matter who does it.

An alternative to Positivism is the Interpretative Approach. It is mostly used when talking about psychology, sociology and the like. That is to say things that aren't directly and obviously beholden to, or more accurately governed by chemistry, physics and their rules and interactions.

Here's where it gets muddy. Human consciousness is referred to as an emergent property. On their own, no one part of the body contains human consciousness, but taken all together suddenly it's there! It's like with chocolate. No single molecule amongst the hundreds in each bite of chocolate can be said to "taste like chocolate", but with all of them together, there you have it.

So, when you're trying to determine the physical laws and interactions that govern a reaction, you use the Positivist Approach. But when you're trying to study an emergent property like human consciousness and it's resulting cultures and societies, the emergent approach, the Interpretative Approach, only makes sense.

If I ever make any at all...