For the past year I’ve been developing a cough.
I’ve been waiting for it to go away but it hasn’t.
Eventually I went to the doctor.
He wanted to know why I didn’t come earlier.
He said a persistent cough was a very worrying sign.
I knew he was hinting at cancer.
I said I kept waiting for the cough to clear up.
He rolled his eyes and sent me down to the X ray dept straight away.
They did X rays of the front, back and sides of my chest and lungs.
Back upstairs the doctor checked them out immediately.
He said the good news was he couldn’t see any evidence of cancer.
He said they’d need to do more tests.
I looked on the Internet to see what that meant.
Maybe a bronchoscopy: a camera down my throat and windpipe.
Possibly a transbrochial biopsy, where a piece of tissue is taken from the lungs and analysed.
Either way it didn’t sound like it was going to be pleasant.
But I had a bronchial problem and there didn’t seem any alternative.
A bronchial problem demands a bronchial solution.
The next day I had an appointment with my eye doctor.
He asked how I was getting on with the eye drops he prescribed for my glaucoma about a year ago.
I said fine.
He said, no side effects?
I said, like what?
He said, like maybe coughing for instance.
I said, funny you should say that, I have been coughing a lot.
He said, yes some people have that reaction.
Try pinching the top of your nose for a minute after you’ve used the eye drops.
It stops them getting into your blood stream.
So that’s what I did.
And the coughing stopped.
I didn’t need a bronchoscopy, or a transbronchial biopsy after all.
I had a bronchial problem, but I didn’t need a bronchial solution.
The coughing was caused by eyedrops.
The obvious answer was the wrong answer.
But that’s what the human mind does.
For experts just as much as anyone else.
It defaults to the obvious answer being the right answer.
Because we jump to a conclusion without having all possible information.
Or, to put it another way: we don’t know what we don’t know.
So we assume that what we know is all there is to know.
The problem with believing that we know the answer is that it stops us looking elsewhere.
It closes our minds to possibilities.
We have been brought up to believe there is strength in having firm opinions, when actually there is weakness.
Jeremy Sinclair likes to quote Socrates: “The only true wisdom lies in knowing that you know nothing.”
I prefer Lao Tsu: “The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know.”
Or, as Alfred North Whitehead said: “The problem with the world is that the ignorant are arrogant and cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Or, perhaps more useful to creative people, as Edward de Bono said: “A conclusion is just a place where you stopped thinking.”
Hope you better now. Take care.
Firstly, Happy and relieved you’re well and
thanks for the information about eye drops.
I don’t know whether you’ve heard of this
saying from the West Country, but I can’t
avoid the opportunity for a bit of black humour:
‘It’s not the cough that carry’s you off,
It’s the coffin they carry you off in’.
Kev,
When I was young the joke was about a hearse going up a hill and the coffin falls out the back.
It slides down the hill and through the window of a chemists.
As the pharmacist looks at it the lid slowly opens and the corspe sits up.
The pharmacist yells “What do you want?”
The corpse says “Have you got something to stop this coffin?”
It reminds of the comment I heard recently: “When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail…” The question is, how to break free of our own expertise and solve the problem that is really there, not the one we think is there because we are experts…
I went to the doctor the other day, I said I’ve broke my leg in three places. He said, ‘Don’t go to those places.’ ~ Tommy Cooper
Thanks for the humour, I have to go to the Dentist on Friday.
Looking But Not Seeing.
Working class people in Britain are typically stubborn, educationally resistant, suspicious, and opinionated. They also are very resistant to change, have poor manners, and have trust issues.
They also like a massive fry up.
Bacon, sausage, black pudding, eggs, beans, tomatoes, fried bread, more bacon, mushrooms, kidney.
Frying is an easy and quick way to cook, you don’t need much sense of cooking to make a fry up as you can see when it is all ready to be eaten. So basically it is a cooking method for thick people.
Problem is though, fried food in quantity will damage a human liver.
This is not good for the workforce or society as old blokes dropping dead from liver failure is generally upsetting, even if they are thick and cannot tell good jokes of their own, and they won’t change their bad habits like eating massive fry ups.
So somebody somewhere had a look at this problem and decided the British working class needed medicine. But working class people didn’t trust people like doctors, as doctors had had an education.
There is a natural flavouring used in Asian cuisines, it is quite piquant and pleasing to some, and an added benefit is that in Asian medicine it is known to repair or at least minimise liver damage.
That ingredient is tamarind.
Tamarind is a primary ingredient in the ubiquitous HP sauce, which one can see on many a table in working class greasy spoon cafes, and in many working class kitchens.
HP sauce is medicine by stealth, for people too stuck in their ways to change their eating habits
Pingback: CETA and the two conflicting ideas | Koenfucius
Dave,
This is unrelated, but I thought you’d like it. Spotted it on twitter: Brazil’s credit card interest is outrageous, the highest rates in the world (around 480% a year). So this guy notices that Mercado Livre (regional version of ebay) let’s you buy stuff in installments with 3% interest a month. He advises people in 3 tweets how to get out of credit card bottomless pit by: sell a product for the amount you owe to the credit card. Buy that product from yourself in 12 installments, with 3% interest. As a seller, you get the cash all at once – with which you zero your credit card debt. Then you pay your new debt in 12 installments to Mercado Livre, with 440% less interest a year. This guy has just hacked the debt trap.
That sounds absolutely brilliant Gustavo
I was trying to ready myself for a sad news. I’m so glad it didn’t go that way!
//
I believe this refers to the belief of true skeptics — that what we know isn’t all there is to know :’)
or what Julia Galef calls the “scout mindset”.
Logan,
You’re exactly right, I’ve seen her TED talk and this is definitely the ‘scout’ mindset.
Well spotted
Just saw “I Daniel Blake” at the cinema yesterday. It made it painfully clear that the honest working classes who fall into the poverty trap are not being attended to properly. It also cheekily demonstrates how ingenuity by bucking the system and using a bit of ‘nouse’ turns survivors into businesses. Well worth watching if you can handle reality.
Kev, not wishing to threadjack here but “I Daniel Blake” is a movie, not reality. And I personally have zero empathy or sympathy for some dumb fuck who in the 21st century doesn’t know how to use a computer mouse (whereas in truth most people have been using trackpads and touch screens for several years because they bought e modern hardware that uses them. So a corded mouse is very dated, but then so is Ken Loach).
This story hits home. Developed a persistent cough. For two an a bit years no lung Dr in US could figure out why. Saw a gastroenterologist in Venezuela who had read about a kidney medication that caused coughing as a side effect. Changed medication in January and cough gone.
Lol! Nick. It’s still the truth for many people Up North and its exactly what the Job Centre is like. It’s like an extension to the tele messaging services every time you want to pay a BT, Eon, London Electricity, Mobile Phone, Bank, bill or call NHS not-so Emergency Services. The point is everyone is looking down into mobile phones and the art of face to face LIVE conversation is becoming extinct. This is a great loss to mankind. It’s so impersonal, nobody cares any more. Everyone just wants to read the conclusion without asking questions about the debate. Look at the US elections. 18% voted for 2 people (BBC Online). For the sake of argument, that means each candidate has won 9% of the national vote. So 100% of America is now being asked which of the 9% choice candidates they want as President. That’s insanity.