The Secret Society of Lightning Strike Survivors
narratively.com
narratively.com
On the one hand, medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy, we've all heard that. But on the other hand, if it were really as bad as it seems, why don't we do something about it?
I guess the answer is tribal politics. Amazing how we can all be turned against each other so effectively, while a small portion of the population, who needs help the least, has no problem whatsoever advocating vigorously for their own benefit.
This sounds like a person in a burning building saying “if it was that bad, wouldn’t I have left the building already? Maybe there’s a reason I’m in here?”
Like, yeah, our politics are tribal. But one side is debating back and forth about how to fix this situation (with some good points on both sides, I’d be cool with an NHS, a Canadian single payer system, or even a German public/private combo system honestly), while the other side seems dead set on acting like the burning building just needs more gasoline and it’ll turn out alright.
I think you would have to work hard if you tried to build a worse system if you decided to build a system that’s more opaque , unpredictable, bureaucratic, cruel and expensive.
I think the big profits to be made on _treating_ diereses in the US is probably a perverse incentive preventing those companies from developing preventative measures.
"Myth and Measurement: The Case of Medical Bankruptcies" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/
also
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-...
I know it wasn’t your main point, but this really made me think. Is it possible that these traits are somewhat correlated, in the sense that people who are more likely to advocate for their own interests & needs (in a persuasive way) are more likely to be successful in other areas (financial) as well?
Our local dental clinic. "Sorry, we are not accepting new patients at the moment"
But there's a local veterinarian that has a sideline in tooth-pulling, if it gets too bad.
USA is medieval.
Ironically, the last straw for me, when it came to living in America was my diagnosis of akathisia (just like the linked story), which is 1000x worse than it sounds. I have severe depression and I had been taking my medications as prescribed. Because of my taking these medications, I developed severe akathisia.
Literally, before all hell broke loose from the severe akathisia (of which I likely had to varying degrees for years) my highly respected neurologist in movement disorders immediately wrote a scathing report of my situation with the diagnosis. He also gave a ton of recommendations. He also wrote letters to all of my doctors. He did this all within an hour and took the situation extremely seriously.
Unfortunately, even though he is technically a high powered doctor, the US healthcare system has taken a tremendous amount of power away from doctors in general. So a scathing write up in my medical record plus letters to all of my doctors (with recommendations) was all he could really do for me.
I literally ended up in the ER 6 times in a week, with improper help. I kept on being discharged over and over again without any further help and even got in to trouble with the law multiple times.
One time, after being drugged with Ativan (a benzodiazepine) and Ketamine (a general anesthetic) in the ER, from which I had been discharged. I had called my mother and she was going to pick me up from the hospital. She was well on her way for picking me up.
Honestly, I thought I was just waiting outside on the sidewalk right next to the ER, for my mother, but something very wrong had happened. All of the sudden I see a cop car pull up about 30-40 feet away from me and they were headed my way to talk to me.
Obviously the number one rule is to never talk to the police under any conditions. Traffic stops are a good time to practice that, by the way. The best thing you can do is say “no comment, I need to talk to my lawyer first.” Anyways I was drugged up to the extreme so it was not like I was not talking and running my mouth to both of the cops observing the situation.
Obviously I had caused some sort of public disturbance and somebody had called the cops on me and clearly I should have never been discharged from the hospital. Honestly, I have no idea how, when, or even where the public disturbance occurred (obviously this is public record but it is not healthy for me to investigate the situation further).
Anyways, after the cops talked to me, they said that an “emergency detention order” was being issued and that I was going to be forced to get treatment at the ****hole hospital which had improperly discharged me after being hella ativaned and ketamined up.
Long story short, I had 3 interactions with the cops in 1 week. Prior to that I had only had 2 interactions with the police in my adult life (+14 years). Both were traffic stops, but neither were for moving traffic violations (burnt out headlight and expired registration during COVID-19). I was tremendously lucky that I was never charged with anything over that week from hell, and the cops managed to see that something was “off”.
Anyways, like in the above link (excellent storytelling by the way so it is a worthwhile read), there are common denominators that I share with the writer’s son. I am a dual US|European Union (Croatian) citizen and I fled the US after the final hospital trip (from hell actually...it was the worst hospital trip of all time and I am hardcore chronically ill just in general) for Croatia exactly 21 days later (I had to obtain legal documents).
Because of my training in electrical engineering, which I am profoundly fortunate to have, I do LORETA (technically sLORETA) neurofeedback training completely on my own to help heal my brain, just like the person in that story.
Anyways, there is much more to the story that is better not put in writing. Just know that there is nothing that will bring me back to the USA.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/09/national-mp-...
> Pugh and her husband John live on their farm in a mountain valley at Turiwhate, near Kumara. The house's former copper piping acted as a conductor for electrical storms, and Pugh has been struck by lightning twice.
Also saw a lightning bolt hit and blow up a transformer maybe 1,000 feet away. One of the loudest and scariest things I’ve ever seen.
“You’re not an outsider here,” he said.
The group conducted a survey in 2017 of 595 of its lightning strike members and found that 280 of them suffered from depression and 67 were suicidal. Steve Marshburn, the founder, has personally talked 27 people out of suicide. “God,” he said, “gives you strength to do what you got to do.”
That is something we can all learn from this article: to welcome newcomers, give thanks, and ask for power from above.
In summer 1989, a young foreign couple and their 3 year old son were hiking in the Alps. As often happens on beautiful, clear days there, the clouds began to roll in, and the rain started to pour down. Drenched and cold, they tried to walk back to the cable car, but were making slow progress because she was pregnant.
They saw a fence, and some steps (a stile) to climb over it. Rather than continue, they chose to stop and rest for a minute. Holding each others' hands, they sat down.
crack
They lay face down in the mud. He heard a voice coming up the valley "You are mine." Later, they discovered these words in a religious text [1] and their lives were profoundly changed.
They hobbled back to the cablecar in a daze, got down the mountain, and drove to a nearby hospital. She was worried because the baby hadn't kicked for a couple of hours. When the baby did kick again, it brought her great joy! And of course, some pain, because he was kicking.
His burns took the shape of a tree, or fractal, quite similar to the lightning bolt. Just as the article says:
The jolt can severely burn skin, and in some cases it etches an intricate web of scars on the body that resembles the form of a lightning bolt itself, known as Lichtenberg figures, which fade within days for reasons unknown.
He continued his career as a software engineer at CERN. She was holding his hand so received a milder shock but no burns, and their 3 year old son appeared to be unharmed. The baby was born a few months later, with spiky hair, which they joked was a result of the lightning.
That baby grew up, studied electronic systems engineering, before moving into embedded systems, and has thankfully not suffered other shocks since.
That baby was me.
It feels a little weird to tell this story because although I was there, I wasn't yet born. Was the "you" in "you are mine" plural? Did I die and get resurrected before even being born? Only God knows. I feel like my parents tell the story better than I could, and there are more personal testimonies from my life that are more relatable. But if you are ever stuck outside in a thunderstorm, please don't shelter next to an electric fence.
[1] Isaiah 43:1 "But now, O Jacob, listen to the Lord who created you. O Israel, the one who formed you says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine."
When it rains I wear a cape when cycling, but that covers my front and backpack, it's not just for show.
"fighting" and "crime" are destructive; I'd rather be creative as a "maker" or "hacker".
There are things that have happened without any obvious proof, but I don't want to take credit for those. I believe that such miracles point to the existence of the great Debugger, who can stop time and poke at variables to make this finite world grow more.
Perhaps not a great plan...
There were plenty more during the years to come e.g. being grounded, learning to conduct myself properly, I put the "cute" in electrocute.
---
In Navajo culture, a person who has been struck by lightning is to be distrusted.
Not because he is evil. But because he has been touched by a deep strangeness.
He has been touched by this strangeness therefor his actions cannot be trusted. What he will do, why he will do it, how he will react. Not like normal people do. He's strange.
In truth, a lightning bolt is indeed a very strange thing.
It is a transformed cosmic ray.
A spark from very very far away. From a very strange celestial object. A pulsar. In another galaxy.
Very strange. Immensely powerful.
Consider Lovecraft's Azathoth : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azathoth
If somebody claims that has being hit three times by a lightning, their history is statistically suspicious in any case.
Years ago in a chapter of my life that has since been completed, I worked in the Four Corners area on a seismic crew. Our work took us from the depths of the canyons to the tops of the mesas and up the slopes of the mountains. It is truly some of the most beautiful country in the USA.
It was a pretty normal summer day to be able to watch the clouds form over the isolated mountains. Then, in early afternoon they would break free of the mountain's grasp and go scooting across the countryside wetting the sunflower and bean crops on the mesas and kicking off small flash floods in the lower canyon creeks. I assure you that there was plenty of lightning with these isolated storms and their formation always caused us to pause our work so that we could ascertain which direction they would likely go.
We carried with us large quantities of dynamite and many blasting caps. Personally, I started each day with a 75# (34 kg) backpack loaded with paper-rolled sticks of dynamite like you see in old cartoons and 150 caps with a 10 foot long lead (~3m). By the end of a good day all of that would be loaded into shotholes we had drilled, each hole with 1/2# (.23 kg) of dynamite and a single cap.
Safety training told us to be sure all the caps were shunted since all it took to detonate the cap was 1/2V of electricity. On a very dry day, static electricity could accidentally pop the cap, as the story went.
We all had a weather eye out for any flashes, so to speak, and if anyone saw anything we sought two things - separation from the backpacks, and cover from the storm. When you're on a mesa, the slope of the mountain, or out on the flat in the bottom of the canyon the terrain limits your movement and sometimes there simply is no opportunity to put space between you and the explosives in your pack. You just have to get down low and hope for the best.
A lot of good times out there. I have photos I took of our crew taking cover under one of our vehicles during a bad storm. I thought it was funny at the time because the powder box on the buggy had a half ton of dynamite and hundreds of caps in it. I had placed myself in the rain down-slope though I still had my pack. I was just hoping for the best and, as usual, that's what we got that day. A great drenching, a scare from the proximity of the lightning, and a lot of work done under much cooler conditions after the storm passed. The clarity of the sky was remarkable, as if it had been scrubbed of all the dust and everything old was new again.
There's plenty of lightning out there on and around the Navajo, White Mountain Ute, and Hopi Reservations and all across the country surrounding them. I've worked on and driven through that part of the world many times.
Personally, I live and grew up out there. The lightning here tends to be much closer than elsewhere. I’ve even had a few strike trees around my home. One woke me from a deep sleep-so deep I couldn’t move. On,y time that’s happened to me.
It is truly a special region to me and I wish I had been able to spend more of my life out there. I understand why people settled there originally.
Maybe it would be more clear to state that there are areas of Navajo lands with very few trees.
We drove through Navajo land twice in the last week, and there were several trees.
Since a pine tree can weigh like 5,000 lbs, a ton of trees is only like 1/2 of a pine tree.
So, Navajo land literally has tons of trees...
<thanksiamgoingnow>