Brown Recluse Spider Bite something to be learned from E-Raq

who is medically in charge at cruz roja now?

What is "unpredictable" about the EMTs now, Dr. Thelin?

Pedro wrote:who is medically in charge at cruz roja now?

Legally? No one. They do have a doctor in charge for now ( http://www.theguadalajarareporter.com/index.php/news/news/lake-chapala/44058-chapala-red-cross-names-interim-medical-chief ), but no one has signed with the Secretaria de Salud to be legally responsible for the place like I was.

Lady Otter Latté wrote:What is "unpredictable" about the EMTs now, Dr. Thelin?

Where they will be, what they will do, what they will charge, etc.

So, no one is medically in charge at Cruz Roja and the EMTs are "unpredictable". Where does that leave people Lakeside with a medical emergency or who might need an ambulance in order to get to a hospital in Guadalajara?

Lady Otter Latté wrote:So, no one is medically in charge at Cruz Roja and the EMTs are "unpredictable". Where does that leave people Lakeside with a medical emergency or who might need an ambulance in order to get to a hospital in Guadalajara?

You really do not want my opinion... However, as long as the ambulance is not being used as a personal taxi to take the administrator to Guadalajara... running code in the Macrobus lane on Independencia, and the EMTs are not at Carnival instead of on the job, you should be fine :)

If i remember right that's how it used to be years ago. So sad

Looks like the gravy train might get a little lean in the future. .

Dr. Sam Thelin wrote:

Lady Otter Latté wrote:So, no one is medically in charge at Cruz Roja and the EMTs are "unpredictable". Where does that leave people Lakeside with a medical emergency or who might need an ambulance in order to get to a hospital in Guadalajara?

You really do not want my opinion... However, as long as the ambulance is not being used as a personal taxi to take the administrator to Guadalajara... running code in the Macrobus lane on Independencia, and the EMTs are not at Carnival instead of on the job, you should be fine :)

Or maybe having unas chelas at the OXXO?

Dr. Sam Thelin wrote:
You really do not want my opinion... However, as long as the ambulance is not being used as a personal taxi to take the administrator to Guadalajara... running code in the Macrobus lane on Independencia, and the EMTs are not at Carnival instead of on the job, you should be fine :)

It sounds like a very poorly managed organization,too bad you were not able to improve it while you were it's medical director.

viajero wrote:

Dr. Sam Thelin wrote:
You really do not want my opinion... However, as long as the ambulance is not being used as a personal taxi to take the administrator to Guadalajara... running code in the Macrobus lane on Independencia, and the EMTs are not at Carnival instead of on the job, you should be fine :)

It sounds like a very poorly managed organization,too bad you were not able to improve it while you were it's medical director.

It actually was getting better for a while. However a series of bad decisions were made by the consejo (head council). The result is what exists today. There is a strong denial that any real problems exist, and that is the biggest problem. However, there are still many dedicated people there, and it will still need support to make it through the problems that are happing.

I met E-Raq on several occasions and she was an independent lady with a delightful sense of humor. She was a Canadian and her husband, a Brit.  They lived in the Racquet Club.

She failed to get adequate medical treatment for the spider bite in time and went through all the horrific treatment described above.

He finally had her taken home from the hospital and hired around the clock nursing care.  A few people she knew received a final email from her husband.  She died at home soon after her hospitalization.
She is missed.

She was, indeed, "unique". I am sorry that I couldn't handle some of her e-mails and had to cut her off. I was dealing with our very own medical disaster with my husband.
E-Raq was also treating herself for parasites that she said she was pulling out of her legs. I implored her to get medical help and she wouldn't.
She had an absolutely outrageous sense of humour and I always enjoyed her posts. She is missed... along with so many others. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

ferret wrote:She was, indeed, "unique". I am sorry that I couldn't handle some of her e-mails and had to cut her off. I was dealing with our very own medical disaster with my husband.
E-Raq was also treating herself for parasites that she said she was pulling out of her legs. I implored her to get medical help and she wouldn't.
She had an absolutely outrageous sense of humour and I always enjoyed her posts.  She is missed... along with so many others. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

I think more than one of us who knew her tried to get her to stop the "self treatment" and get help......but let us hope that what happened to her will serve as a warning to others that don't take things seriously enough and fail to get professional help in time.

Yes she died of complications caused by the brown recluse and also from a batched up surgery trying to deal with her problem..

We liked her, she was a fun crazy lady with a great sense of humor and a wonderful husband she called the pool boy.. both of them were real fun characters. We need more people like them and less of the complainers..

What the hell kind of parasites was she pulling out of her legs? Good God.

Carry Bean wrote:What the hell kind of parasites was she pulling out of her legs?  Good God.

Who knows.

In my one encounter/conversation with her, to say she was obstinate, would be putting it mildly. Had some crazy notion (among others) that smoking cigarettes was good for you.

That's right! She used to argue that. Heh. Didn't work out too good for her tho.

My husband and I have had fairly recent experience (the third week of May) with having to use the Cruz Roja ambulance for an emergency run to a hospital in Guadalajara. The ambulance came within 15 minutes of being called and the paramedics were professional. Unfortunately, the ambulance had mechanical problems near Ixlahuacuan and was only able to go 20 to 30 km up any hill it encountered and quite fast down any hills. I really felt sorry for the driver who was doing his best with his situation. The traffic was very heavy in Guadalajara and it took 1 hour 25 minutes to reach the hospital. My family doctor kept in almost constant contact with the paramedics and with me so that was most reassuring.

She also got a "little" hyper agitated when she was disagreed with, or so I found.

I'll say. Maybe due to not feeling good so that made her kind of cranky?

Anything left on the floor is attractive to the brown recluse. If you pick something up....shake it.

Sorry to hear about E-Raq... some things you can handle better yourself.....and some ...you just can't

slainte39 wrote:In my one encounter/conversation with her, to say she was obstinate, would be putting it mildly. Had some crazy notion (among others) that smoking cigarettes was good for you.

She quoted once on here the name of an organization that claims smoking is "good for you". I wonder who's paying them.

As least the poor woman didn't die of lung cancer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marvin-ross/smoking-bans_b_4454106.htm

http://themindunleashed.com/2015/09/the-secret-health-benefits-of-nicotine-they-dont-want-you-to-know.html

Some info on nicotine benefits.

The Secret Health Benefits of Nicotine They Don’t Want You To Know
Sep 10, 201563,51870


Forget what you think you know about nicotine. Most people see nicotine as a vile, fiercely addictive substance that takes a large share of the blame for the multitude of deaths occurring around the world as a result of smoking.

But there’s another side to the story. As well as having medicinal benefits, nicotine has untapped potential as a cognitive enhancer, boosting attention, working memory and more. The problem – which you undoubtedly guessed – is that using nicotine by smoking cigarettes for its cognitive benefits is like mainlining heroin to treat your cough: it might work, but the negatives considerably outweigh the positives.

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However, vaping is changing all of that.

Nicotine is Not the Bad Guy

The big misconception about nicotine – one held by most smokers questioned in several different studies, usually about two thirds of them – is that it causes cancer. It doesn’t.

The reason for opening with this is because it’s a persistent myth and it offers a hint as to why there’s so much misunderstanding about the risks of nicotine. The simple answer is that it hangs out with a bad crowd.

It’s obviously undeniable that smoking tobacco is a significant cause of cancer and a cacophony of negative health effects. Nicotine, as potentially the most widely-known chemical component in tobacco, is inherently linked to these health impacts in the minds of many people: because it’s believed to be only encountered as part of tobacco smoke, nicotine is assumed to carry a lot of risks.


The problem is that nicotine is just one of about 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, and many of the others are carcinogenic and toxic. When taken out of the context of the cigarette smoke, nicotine really isn’t much to worry about at all, which is why nicotine patches, gums and other medicinal products are widely-used and recommended.

In reality, even non-smokers consume nicotine pretty much every day, with trace quantities being present in tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes and cauliflower.

Additionally, nicotine isn’t even solely responsible for the addiction to smoking. It’s one of many “alkaloids” found in tobacco, and adding these to nicotine enhances its addictive properties. In the same way, the monoamine oxidase inhibitors and acetaldehyde found in cigarette smoke have the same effect. Nicotine is addictive, but – as strange as this may sound – it isn’t as addictive as smoking.

The FDA agrees, and may be changing nicotine patch and gum labels as a result. In their words:

“Although any nicotine-containing product is potentially addictive, decades of research and use have shown that [nicotine replacement therapy] products sold [over the counter] do not appear to have significant potential for abuse or dependence.”
The Medicinal Uses of Nicotine

"So maybe nicotine isn’t going to give you cancer – and probably carries similarly minimal risks to caffeine when separated from smoke – but that doesn’t mean it’s actually good, does it? Well, there are actually many conditions that could be helped by nicotine, including ulcerative colitis, depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, pain, mild cognitive impairment, Tourette’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The list of conditions possibly helped by nicotine may be surprising, but they’re ultimately a result of its effects in the brain. The best example is the use of nicotine in Parkinson’s disease, which was the first time a potential medical benefit of nicotine was uncovered. In 1966, Harold Kahn – an epidemiologist working for the National Institutes of Health – uncovered a curious fact: non-smokers were about three times more likely to die of Parkinson’s disease as smokers.

In Parkinson’s sufferers, the neurons responsible for releasing dopamine (which you can think of as the brain’s “pleasure” chemical, but it does other stuff too) begin to deteriorate, and a drug called levodopa is used as treatment because it’s a precursor to dopamine. Nicotine also increases dopamine, however, and as well as reducing symptoms in Parkinson’s patients and slowing the progression of the disease, it can even decrease one of the more serious side effects of levodopa itself.

Schizophrenia is another key condition to consider, because about 90 percent of people with schizophrenia smoke. There is debate about the reasons for this, but the idea that they are self-medicating with nicotine is a well-supported one. Smoking reduces the negative symptoms of schizophrenia – such as apathy and lack of motivation, which may be related to deficits in the dopamine system – and could counteract some of the cognitive symptoms of the condition too. These cognitive effects, while very valuable for schizophrenic smokers, may even extend to people not suffering from a condition."
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And before anyone jumps all over Espiritu, he/she is correct. E-Raq was half right... nicotine can be good for you but the delivery system of smoking is a known health hazard.
So, I'm going to put up TWO "cheat" sheets in this section. One is on Nicotine and the other is on Cannabis Oil.
We are all unique in our genetics... strawberries are good for you right? Well not if you have an allergy to them.