Falling five storeys from a New York rooftop changed my life
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The initial days after the surgery were confusing, painful, and scary. If the fractures had been another half inch to the right, I would have been paralyzed for life.
Indeed, I lost control over my bowel functions, and for a few agonizing days was unclear if I would ever get them back. I learned how to insert my own catheter to avoid the embarassment of having it done for me.
The following weeks were spent wheelchair-bound in a rehab facility, where each day brought surreal new challenges, but also small increments of progress. A year later, all bodily functions have been restored, with only minor limitations.
If you have also been struck by disaster, and narrowly escaped by sheer miracle, you will understand the intense gratitude and sense of purpose that one is filled with in such circumstances.
Gratitude for all the little things that were almost taken away forever - wiggling your toes, playing a sport, walking to the store, using the toilet unassisted. Gratitude for all the help, care, and healing from medical staff, without which life would be awful and pointless.
And a deep sense of purpose, as you realize how short and fragile that life is. It is a powerful reminder to learn, build, and grow while you still have the resources and opportunity.
I think about it less as time goes on, but sometimes I will see the ground rushing at me, or glimpse a flash of the life I almost had... and it keeps me on my toes.
He told me that after the war, whenever he felt down, he'd think about what a miracle it was he survived, and would feel better.
He lived to be 93.
The sheer joy and gratitude at being alive after the surety of imminent death was a profound experience. I'm not sure its possible to reach that state of being unless you have been in that circumstance.
As you say, it fades over time. I wish I could channel that feeling every day.
Horrifying.
The doctors who are most qualified in making the determination are often the ones with the most legitimate patients taking those drugs but all the legal teams and regulators are completely incapable of differentiating them from the prescription mills (excuse me, "pain management centers").
Slate Star Codex wrote about this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...
Basically, an addict wants to look genuine, so a lot of genuine patients have to put up with stuff designed to cut off addicts. Like the scary "FBI warning" that only shows up if you actually pay for a DVD.
We live in two different computer simulations I guess.
It's much stupider than that.
Addicts want the drug.
So all of the indicators of addiction are actually indicators of wanting the drug.
So anyone who wants the drug is, ipso facto, an addict.
There's no element of addicts trying to look more genuine. Look at that list of red flags:
- Complaining of a need for a drug.
- Asking for more of a drug.
- Asking for a particular drug by name.
- Sometimes taking a drug on your own initiative.
https://intervention911.com/common-signs-of-drug-seeking-beh...
- laiming they need more drugs to replace a lost or stolen prescription
- Misrepresenting their symptoms
- Frequent visits to multiple doctors, including a willingness to travel to a different city or state to see a new physician – a phenomenon called “doctor shopping”
- Unwillingness or inability to provide a complete health history or contact information for previous physicians
It's possible for a non-addicted person to do this, but actual statistics matter.
> Claiming they need more drugs to replace a lost or stolen prescription
Have you really never lost a prescription? I've lost portions of mine once or twice (i.e. I had a week left and lost the bottle). Luckily not having mine is more of an annoyance than anything, but I can empathize for someone in pain who lost theirs. Stealing medications is common in addicts as well, and for every addict that steals a prescription, there's someone that legitimately did have their prescription stolen.
> Misrepresenting their symptoms
If this can be shown objectively, I can't see any way a non-addict would do this. I fear that it sows distrust between the patient and the doctor, though. The doctor is always looking for signs of the patient misrepresenting symptoms, and the patient is always worried that the doctor is going to think that they're misrepresenting their symptoms.
> Frequent visits to multiple doctors, including a willingness to travel to a different city or state to see a new physician – a phenomenon called “doctor shopping”
Uncommon, but it wouldn't be entirely shocking for someone to travel for access to a better doctor. This wouldn't be that out there for someone who has cancer, for example.
> Unwillingness or inability to provide a complete health history or contact information for previous physicians
I've moved a few times in my life. My complete health history probably involves 30 or so doctors if we go back to childhood. I don't think I could even name all of them, much less have contact info for them.
The statistics do matter, but we're talking about subjecting people to pain here. The evidentiary bar should probably be higher than "you did a thing that addicts are statistically more likely to do". I think especially so when the worst case scenario is that we give an addict a fix. I'm not advocating drug use, but the harm caused seems pretty minimal, beyond the cost of administering that dose in a hospital.
Could they not check the chart? Is there even a chart anymore?
You'd be surprised at how questionable hospital care is run in NY, even with $450 / month insurance with a high deductible.
To protect the privacy of the person I know, here's a story from 2-5 months ago:
- Person A goes into doctor's office for something pretty common
- Doctor requests cat scan or MRI (I forgot which one is which) based on symptoms
- Person A gets the scan
- Doctor evaluates results and says to book surgery in a hospital ASAP as it's probably cancerous
- Person A books surgery
- Hospital gives prep instructions to be performed by Person A 48 hours before surgery
- Person A does everything and goes in for surgery
- Person A is prepped for surgery and is put under anesthesia
- Surgeon comes in and looks at the scan in the operating room
- Surgeon says this scan is nothing to worry about and surely doesn't warrant surgery and it's not a tumor or cancer
- Person A is wondering how the surgery went after coming to from being put out
- Nurse says no surgery was done and even she was able to look at the scan and see nothing was wrong
- Person A is told to go home and wait 4-6 weeks to self heal
So let's ignore thousands of dollars in bills (deductibles). All of this could have been avoided if someone actually looked at the results of the scan before going through the motions of putting someone under anesthesia and a massive amount of stress.
That's only 1 of many stories. In another case someone I knew had their blood drawn twice in the hospital because the 2nd nurse didn't believe them when they said they just got their blood drawn by another nurse 10 minutes ago. The vials were literally next to them, about 3 arm's lengths away.
That said man do they fuck up, most recently was a fun one, I had a scheduled appointment, turned up for it, doctor was in his treatment room seeing patients, forgot to see me and went for lunch.
I mean it's minor but I'd checked in, the computer had me as waiting but he'd looked at the list, not seen me and went for lunch - I spoke to the nurse told her I didn't mind waiting while he ate and she tracked him down, he was incredibly apologetic (unnecessarily so, shit happens).
It's inevitable in a system as complex as healthcare that mistakes are going to be made but we probably should assess the proximal causes much like the airlines/plane manufacturers did to reduce the incidence.
Rather than going to lunch, after I sat waiting for 3hrs they closed the department. When I went up to let them know I hadn't been seen yet, they apologised profusely, called back the specialist - who had already left - and saw me after closing time.
That's really scary.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what benefit there would be to a surgeon independently reviewing the case early. Thinking about what they'll need you do in tomorrow's surgery would distract them during today's surgery.
The whole story smells of very bad medical practices (and I'm speaking with the perspective of someone living in a formerly communist country, not some medical Mecca).
>- Doctor requests cat scan or MRI (I forgot which one is which) based on symptoms
>- Person A gets the scan
>- Doctor evaluates results and says to book surgery in a hospital ASAP as it's probably cancerous
>- Person A books surgery
>- Surgeon comes in and looks at the scan in the operating room
>- Surgeon says this scan is nothing to worry about and surely doesn't warrant surgery and it's not a tumor or cancer
This seems really unusual. I'd also say that (as someone who lives in NYC), I can't imagine things going this way.
I have never heard of a surgeon not reviewing the radiology reports, preparing a surgical plan and consulting with the patient pre-surgery.
If this is true, it's flat-out malpractice.
Given the sheer number of people, resources and precious operating room time involved in ordering, prepping and performing surgery, your story stretches credulity well past the breaking point. To put a fine point on it, I call bullshit.
I had surgery a couple years ago. I had specific symptoms and went to my doctor.
He referred me to an actual surgeon who ordered an MRI. The MRI showed what we expected it to show and then the surgeon ordered an additional scan to cover more area to make sure he understood exactly what was necessary. He then recommended surgery.
Not taking the surgeon's word for it, I sought a second opinion. Fortunately, my ex's brother was a surgeon in the same specialty and he offered to look at the MRI (I would have gone to another surgeon myself had he not been available to me).
He completely concurred with the surgeon and I had a successful surgery.
However, the normal process for surgical procedures, especially since there are significant pre-surgery protocols including medical history workups, blood work, discussions about what the surgery entails and risk factors, as well as a pre-surgery consult with the surgeon and/or his scrub nurse.
What's more, the surgical team (not with the patient) will meet at least once pre-surgery to review the surgical plan (which includes reviewing any imaging), and this may result in additional testing if there's any ambiguity.
And none of that is optional. What's more, on the day of the surgery during prep they will mark the location to be operated upon and confirm, multiple times, via existing imaging, discussions with the patient to confirm, specifically, what the surgery is for and what procedure is to be performed.
All of that is done before any sedation or anaesthesia is administered.
So no. That's not a credible story.
i somehow think that a medical doctor should be able to tell whether a person has an opioid [at least in a pain relieving dose] in their system.
This is off topic, but when a drug is 100x more powerful, they just give 100x less of it. So whether you get morphine or fentanyl the effect is approximately the same - and that's intentional.
Arguably the most horrifying is when a male dislocates their hip and one of their testicles falls back into that area. You can imagine what happens when somebody attempts or succeeds in shoving the bone back into it's socket when there's a testicle also sitting in the socket. May be more traumatizing for the nurse that shoves it back in once they realize what they've done :D
My wife does anesthesia and if they’re going to use opioids at all, it’s almost always IV fentanyl. It’s extremely rare that patients report any pain afterwards. Though there’s a big movement toward opioid-free surgery so that’s promising.
At the expense of those who legitimately need it. Given how ridiculous the current climate has become, I would almost certainly preemptively purchase black market opiates prior to a procedure if the timing allowed for it. (At this point, I almost feel compelled to keep some on hand for family in general based on past experiences.)
I'm scared of this stuff after seeing what it can do to a full grown adult but totally understand the medical necessity for it as it saves lives.
Since then I've had many injuries, but in terms of acute pain, that was the worst. Only thing that came close was when my appendix burst.
my sister worked as an admin in some department at a hospital I can't remember. a patient coded and they did nothing because they were marked do not resuscitate but the patient came back on their own. Afterwards, the nurses found the patient was labeled incorrectly.
I've told my wife and mother (mom is an RN) that if any of our family go into the hospital they are not to be left alone.
In your scenario, imagine if the first nurse had it drilled into her that she must tick a box on the patient checklist, which lies very visible next to the patient and is almost impossible to not notice, and you have a physical system that makes it difficult to commit mistakes
I haven't had any problems of this scale, but my doctor can't even schedule a follow-up appointment 3 months in advance.
They can't even use a calendar, much less a checklist.
My pills are prescribed for 3 months and they always manage to hem and haw and almost miss the window as if the passage of time was a recent concept that their practice was unequipped to deal with.
On the other hand, every psychiatrist I've ever had, had no problem getting my anti-psychotics or anti-ADHD medications sent to the pharmacy inside of a day.
Psychiatrists seem to operate out of groups more often (I see far fewer solo psychiatrists). Groups mean that you have to have EHR software that works well enough to transfer patients between doctors, and you have to have standards set up to where doctors can read patient histories from other doctors. Basically your EHR system needs to be functional, which has nice side effects like making scheduling and prescription refills work correctly.
It's incredibly useful to have two sets of ears listening to what the doctors are saying so that you can clarify what they said.
All too often we weren't given anything in writing except what I was doing myself. That's improved quite a bit but it's still amazing to me that people downplay the usefulness of electronic medical records and the printouts that you usually get.
Having someone with you can help. "He's right, Doctor, the nurse hasn't yet ...". A role of maintaining a clear picture of project state, making sure everyone is on the same page, and more.
Patients lie all the time, but if a patient warns them they have received no pain medication or muscle relaxants or whatever, then their job was to check their medical record or with the staff nurse if it was true or not. Any other argument is a distraction.
In UX design, there's "stupid users, they keep doing it wrong", versus seeking to understand user errors and prevent them. In medicine, with medical error a leading cause of national death, those are blaming individuals, versus seeking to understand errors, and systemically reduce their prevalence.
The hospital is a PRIME place for systems meant to avoid mistakes. (Although your example with checklists and pilots is odd; the checklist IS such a system, a remarkably successful one. And over the last 10 years, is used more often in hospitals too. I guess you could say that every checklist should have TWO people check it off or something, but it's such successful technology at reducing mistakes I'm not sure I've seen this suggested).
But no system can make up for doctors who don't respect patients or care about their pain.
So I attempted to illustrate by analogy, that describing a common reason why something happens, isn't being apologetic, or a distraction. Here, it seems possible that head-down engagement in physical manipulation, might have distracted from patient communication and care management. As that flavor of failure is not uncommon.
Regards tech to reduce mistakes, it will be interesting to see AR attempt to blend medical records with point of care. To see the patient, is to see their status. To administer an injection, is to have it recorded. But yeah, culture change is core, and hard. And tech doesn't yet provide great leverage on that. Or sometimes, as with VA OR teams composed by randomized assignment, something non-ideal has been knowingly chosen for its larger-scale properties, and the tech task is to mitigate negative impact. By for instance, detecting when meds were requested, but absent a team familiar with working together, didn't happen. There was a VA trauma surgeon shopping around a request to implement that years back.
No, a spade is a spade, the patient clearly said the Doctor didn't _believe_ him.
This isn't an in-the-zone 'tunnel vision' moment from the doctor, this isn't high stress shutting off the outside world, or CSR type reaction. This is someone _assuming_ a patient was telling a lie, who then lacked the duty-of-care to confirm it, before inflicting unnecessary pain.
I am all for checklists, they are a big part of my work processes and they are desperately needed in many medical and nursing workflows, but this particular case is just lack of common sense and duty-of-care.
I was recently hospitalized after an accident and was unable to have any family with me because of covid measures. As a result I received the worst medical care I've ever experienced. Including but not limited to: waiting 8 hours in the ER with four broken limbs and no painkillers, having procedures done with no painkillers that required them, being given dangerous dosages of drugs because of a miscommunication between teams despite my protests, having sequels from surgeries that were never addressed by the medical team and that I was too high to ask about, having to program my own medical bed so that it'd stop shaking my broken limbs after 5 hours of unanswered pleading with the staff, having to solve severe complications from the drugs with the help of my family doctor, not eating anything for a week without anybody getting worried... I could go on. I'd experienced similar issues during previous hospital stays, these sort of things happen regularly in hospitals, but I always had someone trustworthy with me to point them out and make a fuss before they became real problems.
The second time the doctor said pain killers would be dangerous and insisted I have absolutely no pain killers in my system before reseting it.
His description of it feeling like medieval torture is apt.
While the method indeed is quite similar to medieval torture, it was certainly not the worst pain I experienced that day.
Although I might have been lucky that the doctor worked in a ski resort and was very skilled in "the art of resetting shoulders".
I had spinal fusion and due to an unrelated issue ended up on the medical floor instead of the neurologist floor overnight. I had zero pain medication after a significant surgery and couldn’t sleep. The floor nurse and useless hospitalist straight up accused me of attempting to get pills.
The surgeon came to do rounds in the morning and was visibly shocked, and the overnight bozos didn’t do other stuff, because they never read the orders.
I can't imagine having a shoulder reduced while having a broken back and ribs (and wrist!). The forces required (and precise positioning) to do it comfortably would be hard if they had a broken back. My shoulder was reduced via the Snowbird method [1], which was not very painful. It requires a ton of force on your spine (and an assistant pulling on you ribs!), so obviously a no-go in this case.
[1] http://www.emdocs.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Shoulder-Re...
But if in fact it was the orthopedic team that did the reduction, they are not trained to give the same level of sedation as emergency specialists or anesthesiologists. So there is a temptation on their part to give some dose, not titrate to effect, and then just “get on with it” to save time. What they should do, and do in fact do in my institution, is have the emergency medicine doc give sedation, and then they can happily do their procedure without torturing the patient... Or the emergency docs do the sedation and reduction, which we tend to do for patients who don’t require other inpatient orthopedic care.
[Edit: Also, Bellevue is a residency training site, so this was probably a first or second year resident (they are the ones that most need the experience of shoulder reductions) https://med.nyu.edu/departments-institutes/orthopedic-surger.... But legally, the attending (supervising) physician is responsible for the care given by all the residents they are nominally supervising]
The lawyer would probably need to subpoena the nurse if the notes didn’t have adequate detail to tell one way or the other. About the “pain is only experienced in the moment” - it wouldn’t be hard to find expert witnesses willing to testify that this was unacceptable medical care. But I don’t know enough about the legal aspects to know how that would translate into a claim for damages.
That doesn't make sense to me. The patient is in a shocking situation and intoxicated. More important is that the doctor wasn't even present for the medication so has no evidence at all.
Damages are decided by jury's emotions.
Calculating damages for pain and suffering is usually based on a multiplier of the "economic" damages, the medical bills or lost income from missed work. So in a case where the pain does not result in a longer recovery(or permanent disfigurement or worse) there are no, or nearly no damages. Because of the way tort reform has worked out, it would be impractical for an attorney to represent you unless you can show $25k+ in medical damages, even if it is clear the provider violated the standard of care and it caused you a great deal of pain. Also even in a straightforward case like this, showing that the standard of care was violated is not clear
You could complain to the hospital ombudsman and your insurance co, both to prevent this from happening to others, and because it could reduce your bill.
> To come so close to death does not provide a shortcut to wisdom or contentment. It doesn’t answer all your questions or eliminate your weaknesses. I’m fundamentally the same person I was before, but with one big difference. I’m viscerally aware how tenuous our existence is. How you can be walking on solid ground only to find it suddenly disappear from beneath you. The meaning comes in what I do from this point on. I have been given a second chance at life – and it’s up to me to make the most of it.
The article is clear that there was nothing intentional about this fall, but as a tangent, this excerpt does make me think about people who jump intentionally.
This line of thought is a bit ghoulish, but as far as I know about 90% of people who make an "unsuccessful" suicide attempt never commit suicide [1]. There are confounding variables galore here --- maybe it's the toughest cases who pick the most reliable methods; 10% is still way above the population risk for suicide --- but I've wondered if there's some way to give people that "oh, I'm going to die, and I don't actually want that" feeling that is apparently not uncommon [2] without actually hurting them.
[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survi...
I try not to get in the way of a narrative just to make my own minor point, which is that it’s a good film on a hard topic, and if this topic interests you, perhaps so too will this film.
Thanks for the chuckle, nonetheless.
"Nathan makes a haunted house scarier by convincing visitors that they have contracted an airborne disease."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nathan_for_You_episode...
"Lol"
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V_siZl...
I think the second has a form of self loathing and self hate possibly combined with that tiredness. I think this reflects in the way people choose to commit suicide. I think jumpers have to be of the latter mindset, because jumping off a building was the furthest thing from my mind. When I committed to it, I just wanted it to be over. I did not want to suffer, I did not want to fall thru the air contemplating my mortality, I just wanted to not exist. I think jumping, suicide by cop and those type of attempts come from an internal anger at oneself, I did not have that anger, I was just tired. I specifically chose to OD because I figured it would do the trick and the fact that going out in euphoria seemed to me to be the next best thing from the instantaneousness of a bullet. I survived by pure chance and luck and am thankful I did and am better now, have not had a thought in years, but my point of the post was to say I think there is a pattern to the way people choose to commit suicide.
As for the experience without dying, for the particular way I felt, the only thing I could suggest is if someone offered to put me in a drug coma for 3 months then wake me up and see if I wanted to go back for another 3 months. I would have taken that option in a heartbeat. I just wanted a break from life.
I feel that often.
Even a drug coma isn't enough. I'd come back to new bills and house maintenance or other little adult annoyances like that. And my friends and family would age without me.
My ideal vacation would be: Quit work at 5 pm Tuesday, do whatever I like for a year, and come back to work at 9 am Wednesday.
I had that feeling of if I could just walk away from my life for a year too, just leave it all for a year and maybe I would be better. Tired in the soul is the only way I can describe it to people. At the time I did not suffer from depression and I was not depressed, I have ADD and had a bunch of life event stack up on top of me to where my ADD was so bad that I could not put one foot in front of the other. Something as simple as washing the dishes seemed like moving a mountain.
And I have to say, having experienced the tiredness but not the "tipping over" I find myself pretty afraid sometimes.
Anyways, I bring this up because there was systematic planning in my mind. If you find yourself going over the details it's time to raise your hand and tell someone. I did not really give a shit at that point so actually telling someone would have been easy but I also did not want people to thing I was seeking attention.
Anyways, when I came too I was pretty surprised to find that I was still alive and I set about a plan to ensure that I did not attempt again. For about a year, I would envision my daughters walking down the aisle without me, my sons seeing their first born. My wife, experience this all without me and growing old alone. It was enough for me to see the effect and pain my absence would cause other people. For the time, I could not live for myself, but I could live for them. Eventually I learned to live for myself again.
I find myself pretty afraid sometimes.
My contact info is in the profile, I am a complete stranger. Sometimes they are the easiest to talk to. If you ever find yourself at the tipping point, my door is always open, please contact me if you get there.
I realized what had happened. My thoughts were along the lines of "I'm about to be in a lot of pain, I may as well enjoy it on the way down". I was also horizontal on my back.
It ended up being a 10m drop, so not as big as in this story (I went back and measured it another day). It was soft dirt at the bottom, and there was sort of an indent in the cliff at that point so I missed any jutted-out rocks coming down. When I landed I bit through my tongue and was horribly winded, but otherwise ok.
I am religious but also remember making a firm note on the way down that nothing supernatural appeared to be happening, mostly because prematurely assigning meaning when these things happen tends to annoy me. I don't think I ever thought I was going to die, maybe at 10m I didn't have enough time. I just remember looking intensely at everything thinking I probably wouldn't get the opportunity to fall off a cliff again.
Anyone who thinks there's no meaning to take from these kind of events is wasting a huge opportunity to learn that small things like a gap in a roof can mean life or death
And he goes back at the end! He feels the fear like he should, looks at the gap and is more concerned that he'll learn the wrong lesson than learning no lesson!
Looking at the pictures, I'd vote for another option. The roof of that building isn't designed for casual use. The wall around the edge of the building is calf-height with no railing. What they're doing is likely trespassing, and they chose to accept the risks. The meaning to take from this experience is that you should be extra careful when you go places that are clearly not meant for you to be.
It doesn't matter how fit you are, all it takes is a strong wind gust, so many people underestimate this. That kind of roof access is meant for maintenance work only.
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.188%2C$multiply_1.3545%...
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.221%2C$multiply_2.7195%...
We definitely lived through times when not everyone was attached to a safety harness when going to a protection less terrace. I understand the absolute need for employee protection in a work environment, but as long as precautions are taken so that truly vulnerable populations (kids) can't be harmed even when they are paying attention, communities need to grow up and not coddle everyone's laziness to pay attention to their surroundings like this.
See for example rules done right in this regard - Amsterdam doesn't mandate helmets for bikers.
The whole Netherlands, in fact.
I was under the impression that very few countries mandate helmets for cyclists. Australia, NZ, anywhere else?
I heard a story that dead bodies of men kept getting found in the canals with alcohol in their blood and their flies undone. As you can probably guess, intoxicated men were attempting to urinate in the canals and ended up falling in and drowning. Rather than building railings, they built more public urinals.
Some high school physics:
s = 1/2 at^2 about 1.98 sec of free fall time.
v = at which gives us about 43 mph of impact velocity.
There was a time I was a volunteer at the SF General ER room when I was considering going to the medical school.
We had a guy who fell from a 5 story parking lot that survived with a broken foot. The police came and he wouldn't say what had happened and the whispers behind the ER room was he was probably pushed but he is afraid to speak.
When the ER doctor came to examine him, the doctor asked about two other old scars.
What is this scar? I was stabbed once. What is this other scar? I was shot once.
Yep, talk about nine lives.
So it's all is down to luck.
The human body is incredibly resilient under the right circumstances. The most striking incident in recent memory is Shayna Richardson [1]. She face planted (excuse the vernacular) into a parking lot on her first solo skydive and survived... to give birth to her son eight months later (both are alive and well today).
Wow, is this true? I've noticed that when small babies are picked up, there's a difference in their weight, depending upon whether they want to be picked up or not. Like, by doing something with their body, they are able to make themselves lighter or heavier -- perhaps by clinging more (or less) to the person picking them up, and perhaps by tightening (or loosening) their muscles.
I'm a pilates instructor, if you have any sources that discuss the effect of tense muscles & force, I would really appreciate it. Thanks :)
We don't pick up the baby as a single movement. If we did, then yes there can be no magical weight change. But in reality, there's a bit of a choreography involved. Perhaps the baby holds up its arms, you put your arms below its shoulders, you raise it slowly. During this process, surely it can control how much of its weight you perceive?
Scientifically speaking, the weight of an object cannot change unless gravity changes or it's mass changes. The forces required to accelerate that object in a particular direction vary wildly based on all kinds of things that exert a force on the object.
Off topic, but that does make me curious how "weight" works in an environment where you're exposed to more than one gravitational field. Like if you're close enough to two black holes to be affected by the gravity from both.
I am an atheist but such stories always evoke a delightful supernatural indulgence. I was vicarious with my enjoyment when he said "The world seemed to vibrate with a new intensity".
The quarantine restrictions sound horrifying.
This is the teeniest way a potential deadly fall can change your life.
I remember well the daily list of questions - what day is it? Where are you? Who's the president? It took me a while to realize that these questions were a quick way to evaluate your mental health. I shudder to think how many times I got them wrong. I was so proud when I realized that my room had a whiteboard where they wrote the date every day, and all I had to do to was look to know what day it was. I told the nurse, feeling like I was cheating, but they didn't care - I guess if I had the mental capacity to figure that out it was good enough for them.
MDs just don’t “stop coming by”, this is an absurd statement.
> As my discharge date approached, the occupational therapists stopped coming by and so did the doctors. After a week in the hospital, the staff were ready for me to leave, and I was, too.
“It was dark by now. I was tipsy, but not more so than a regular Saturday night.”
What a strange piece of [fiction || non-fiction].
I think article is missing part of him being either drunk or high, where there would be clear wisdom to stay sober when you are on the roof, there is no other explanation unless he is few years old toddler.