
Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his adrenal condition - actraub
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/27/health/doug-lindsay-invented-surgery-trnd/index.html
======
disabled
Wow. I actually have a lot in common with this dude. I have a very rare
disease that causes autoimmune autonomic failure, which was initially blamed
as "diabetes complications", due to type 1 diabetes.

I was always suspicious it was something else, as it started when I was
diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 5. I was constantly scavenging the
medical literature when I was in college.

At age 22, it got out of control and I was in and out of the hospital. I came
across a journal article and I realized that there was nothing about this
disease that could eliminate it as a possibility. I knew I was screwed.

My blood was sent to the only lab in the US that tests for it. It came back
positive.

Now, in the past year, at age 30, after trying about 10 treatments, including
in combinations, I am finally in remission.

I am back in school finishing my electrical engineering degree. I am a senior
undergrad. I have a new lease on life. I never thought I would be doing this
well!

EDIT: My diagnosis story is here. But, I was not doing as well as I am doing
now, when I posted it:
[https://rareandextraordinarycom.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/fir...](https://rareandextraordinarycom.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/first-
blog-post/)

~~~
PierredeFermat
That's quite inspiring. Do you mind connecting via email? (Not a media
request; just to learn and exchange some ideas)

~~~
disabled
Sure. Since I cannot PM you, I will use a more private address:
secretsquirrel89@protonmail.com

------
dreamcompiler
Related: A great article on HN member mattmight a few days ago. Matt's a
brilliant computer scientist and teacher who was inspired by his son's
condition to switch careers and investigate rare diseases full-time.

[https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/25/ai-expert-writing-
code-s...](https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/25/ai-expert-writing-code-save-
son/)

~~~
est31
Github link:
[https://github.com/webyrd/mediKanren](https://github.com/webyrd/mediKanren)

------
joshgel
> Lindsay suspected his body was producing too much adrenaline. He knew of a
> drug called Levophed, which is approved by the US Food and Drug
> Administration to raise blood pressure in some critically ill patients.
> Levophed is basically an injection of noradrenaline, which counters the
> symptoms created by excess adrenaline.

This is incorrect. norADRENALINE is a more specific version of ADRENALINE made
in different parts of the body (and which also acts as a neurotransmitter).
outside of nerves, noradrenaline acts on alpha receptors which among other
things constrict blood vessels to raise blood pressure (it is used for this in
critically ill patients). adrenaline acts on the _same_ alpha receptors, but
also targets beta-receptors which have the effect of speeding up and
increasing the strength of contractions in the heart (also used in critically
ill patients with low blood pressures and whose hearts aren't pumping enough).
Epinephrine is another word for adrenaline.

> As Lindsay delved into more medical literature, he found only 32 recorded
> cases of bilateral adrenal medullary hyperplasia.

I don't have numbers to counter this off the top of my head, but congenital
adrenal hyperplasia is a rare syndrome, but still common enough that it is
taught to every medical student and tested on our boards repeatedly.

obviously, im somewhat skeptical, but i guess that plays into his hands since
I'm part of the 'establishment'. Hard to know without more medical details,
which are glaringly missing from any stories I can find about him...

~~~
DangitBobby
From a patient perspective, it's pretty believable. They don't know what's
wrong after the typical battery of tests, so it's incurable or you're making
it up.

I've also had an experience where I basically told the doctor

>I am tired all the time, I sleep 12-16 hours a day and still wake up feeling
completely unrested, and it seriously affects my ability to do my school work
and live my life

and his response was (to paraphrase)

>you just need exercise, fatty

For context, I was in my late teens at this point, and a few pounds overweight
by the medical definition.

Long story short, after many expensive visits with psychiatrists, we learn
that anti-depressants didn't help because I wasn't depressed.

I finally did a sleep study, and it was sleep apnea. A sleep disorder.

This sounds ridiculous, right? As an outsider looking in, it's so obvious. But
this actually happened to me, and I am sure it happens to thousands of
patients all of the time.

~~~
joycian
Isn't sleep apnea more common in overweight people?

~~~
hnick
It is. A Doctor suggested I lose some weight (only about 10kg or 10% of my
weight, which I shouldn't have had) before proceeding with any other
treatments. This was after a sleep study where I had some interruption but not
quite to the point of diagnosing sleep apnea.

------
vladus2000
I went through an annoyance with my vision. I ended up having two separate
conditions (well a total of 5 things were wrong with my eyes, but two acive
major ones and two that will eventually cause more surgery later but aren't a
big deal yet and one that was minor), but because the first one seemed like it
was causing the problems, it took me almost a year to find and get real
treatment for my issues so I could be able to see properly again. It was
really depressing as my vision just kept getting worse and eye doctors were
not helping. Right before my surgery my eyes got to the point I couldn't
legally drive (bear in mind that I was under 40 at this point) even with
glasses.

I just kept trying different doctors until an intern assistant to one of them
saw the actual issue and got me referred to an awesome specialist who
confirmed the diagnosis (and found the other problems I had not known about
yet) and got me to a surgeon who did surgery to fix it. As a result of this, I
strongly distrust doctors and I think they can sense that when I see them.

For those more curious, I had Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension as I am
rather large. Due to being large and doctors being able to see that problem,
they just assumed it was the issue and they never looked at anything else.
They put me on NASTY drugs to fix the issue, but my eye sight just kept
getting worse. I have no idea why it took an intern to see the problem, but in
the end I had ABMD (also known as Map-Dot-Fingerprint Dystrophy). I believe a
total of 6 eye doctors and two neurologists completely missed it. I really
should have gotten the intern's name and properly thanked him, as who knows
how much longer I would have had to go without a diagnosis. IIH can cause
blindness, as it will slowly destroy your vision (or in some cases quickly),
so I kinda understand why they may not have seen it, but from what I have
read, it sounds like ABMD is pretty easy to see if you look for it, and none
of the real doctors did.

So I hope no one out there ever has multiple problems causing similar
symptoms, because doctors can't be bothered to think about that possibility,
at least eye doctors.

~~~
azinman2
If it’s rare then most doctors probably ignored it for that very reason. The
intern, not “knowing better,” likely thought about it as they recently learned
about it.

Why distrust doctors when it was a doctor (in training) that discovered it,
and it took other doctors to treat it?

Uncommon things are a blind spot for most medicine, just like they are in
other fields as well. For example, in CS rarely do we ever expect a compiler
or OS or libc bug, but they do happen.

~~~
vladus2000
If one or two doctors missed it, I would be ok, but basically everyone I saw
ignored it. My neurologist thought something else might be causing it and sent
me somewhere else to get it looked at. That was about half way through the
process, so the doctors were being told that someone thought something else
was going on and they still missed something rather easy to see.

I have had other issues where doctors thought I was lying to them, although no
others that ended up with any serious consequences, just having to go see
someone else.

I also had a doctor recommend dangerous surgery for a condition I ended up not
having. Which, yes, getting a second opinion is good, but had I not done that,
I would have had major surgery on my head that has a roughly 10% chance to
deafen you for life.

I have the misfortune of having multiple rare issues (on more than just my
eyes) and as a result, dealing with western medicine sucks.

My father has similar issues, so I have seen it with him too. For example,
doctors let his appendix explode inside of him after he went into ER twice
complaining of extreme pain in his abdomen. It exploded a few hours into the
second visit and he almost died.

------
IAmGraydon
I don’t understand why it took so long for him to get this diagnosis. Elevated
adrenaline levels are easily tested for in a simple catecholamine blood test.
That test is among the basic panel done when one sees an endocrinologist. It
may not have pinpointed his adrenal medulla as the problem, but it should have
pointed them in that general direction very early on.

~~~
barkingcat
Because doctors in the western medicine tradition don't always accept a
patient's symptoms at face value.

The person in the story got referred to psychiatry because medicine didn't
believe him.

Similarily, many legit medical disorders are discounted as not real symptoms
by western medicine until decades later, for example, lyme disease, which is
caused by a real organism with a real transmission pathway (ticks), with
repeatable symptoms, but was discounted for years as "patients just making
things up".

~~~
fiblye
I’ve got a relevant experience to back this up.

I had a urinary tract infection that I felt progress up to my bladder and
eventually into one kidney and then the next. I would’ve liked to visit a
doctor immediately, but with American medical costs being what they are and
hospitals advising me to hold out a few more days until a doctor in my
insurance network was available, I’d hoped that small stinging pain down there
would go away. But nope, it spread to all the regions mentioned plus I was
passing blood almost nonstop. I couldn’t sleep, could barely walk, and felt
like I was on the verge of dying.

I made it to a doctor once I knew it was a life or death situation, described
my symptoms and the progression, and the guy starts digging into me, trying to
say I’m just fishing for antibiotics (what?) and it’s clearly a kidney stone.
I all but called him a dumbass, because it wouldn’t make sense for a kidney
stone to move backwards up to both of my kidneys. I had to wait around for a
urine test to prove that yes, it was in fact an obvious kidney infection, but
the doctor was still skeptical asserting that it’s probably just a mild kidney
stone, and reluctantly gave my antibiotics that cleared it up instantly.

That wasn’t the first time a doctor tried to argue against my obvious problem
(I also had one argue that I didn’t break a clearly broken bone), but it was
the most frustrating experience.

~~~
Foober223
Some doctors are idiots. No different than people in any other profession.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Some doctors are idiots. Some doctors are only in it for the money. Only a
small proportion of the people who qualify have any genuine deep-seated urge
to help fix human suffering.

When doctors get it wrong, people die. Anyone who genuinely does care about
human suffering is going to find that difficult.

But a lot of patients are idiots too. For every educated more-or-less self-
aware middle class professional a doctor sees, there are tens of patients who
are old, confused, angry, hostile, lonely, unable to look after their own
welfare in more or less obvious ways, or just plain dumb - and barely able to
understand what their problem is, never mind explain it.

So it's not an easy profession - not because doctors have to be unusually
competent to do it, but because they deal with all kinds of people with all
kinds of problems in all kinds of situations, and it's normal for many of
those people to be very bad at being able to explain why they're there.

~~~
uberduber
This. Essentially doctors go through 12+ years to work retail. Many people get
an education just so they don't have to work with retail customers.

Also, it has gotten worse. Before the ACA there used to be a barrier where to
see a doctor you essentially either had a job or money which would weed out a
lot of the nuts.

~~~
tropdrop
And if you don't have a job or money (a "nut", as you say), you deserve to...
die?

------
salex89
Wow... Just wow. My girlfriend is a internal medicine specialist student and
she was blown away. As she read she basically went through a ll possible
explanations that the other doctors had. However she actually knew about this
condition, it is extremely rare but not unheard of. Possibly because of cases
like this she learned about them, but she said she would never connect that to
something looking so neural, it is expected for it to induce cardiological
issues.

------
melling
I wonder if organizations with a living founder who has a specific disease are
more effective at investing for cures.

Michael J Fox helps cures Parkinson’s:

[https://www.michaeljfox.org/](https://www.michaeljfox.org/)

Augie Nieto with ALS:

[https://augiesquest.org/](https://augiesquest.org/)

~~~
RealityVoid
Reminded me of this comment I encountered on HN [1]. Leo Szilard invented his
own Cobalt 60 treatment and cured himself [2]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334660)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard#Cancer_diagnosis_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard#Cancer_diagnosis_and_treatment)

~~~
isseu
Cure himself and discover a new cancer treatment? Wow

~~~
dahauns
Well, We're talking about Léo "I built the first nuclear reactor with Enrico
Fermi" Szilárd here... :)

------
trollied
If anyone else reading this thread has ever felt, or is currently feeling,
utterly dog shit, it could just be stress.

I had kidney pain, chest pain, migraines, felt sick constantly, fatigued... I
look after myself. I run, rock climb, eat ok, not overweight. The doctor was
very worried, gave me anti-sickness tablets as a first thought, ordered every
single test imaginable.

It was just stress, I didn’t think work was doing that to me.

Had some conversations with HR, top management listened, unrealistic dates
shifted. I got better almost overnight.

I’ve read a number of comments here that possibly could be the same, so I hope
this helps somebody.

------
DoreenMichele
_In it, he found an important passage discussing how adrenal disorders could
mirror thyroid disorders._

A former RN told me that adrenal and thyroid issues are interrelated. That was
useful information for me.

I'm a bit surprised and taken aback that the article kind of implies that many
medical practitioners aren't aware that thyroid and adrenal issues can be
similar or connected.

------
_fat_santa
Just wow.

It's interesting to see the parallels between his story and the story of
others who became entrepreneurs. I see so many stories of entrepreneurs
finding a problem with their life or in the world and then fixing it. This guy
took it to the extreme and managed to fix a medical alignment within himself
all while bedridden.

------
shgidi
Love to hear anyone more people who invented a cure for their own illness

------
johnchristopher
So, is it related to adrenal fatigue which is not yet fully recognized AFAIK ?
Would it help ?

~~~
tomhoward
In some cases this could be a diagnosable and treatable cause of the kind of
illness that often gets described as "adrenal fatigue".

I have some experience with this topic, having spent at least 13 years in that
category of people who is ill in a way that mainstream medicine can't really
diagnose or treat - and in a way that has parallels with the symptoms
described in this article (though not nearly as severe or debilitating).

The idea of "adrenal fatigue" and "adrenal insufficiency" has come up a lot in
the self-directed research I've done, but only among complementary/alternative
practitioners like naturopaths and chiropractors.

It's not really a medical way of thinking about things - i.e., "your adrenal
glands must be tired because you've been too busy/stressed". It's not
something you can test for or address with medical treatment - which is why
people who go down that path end up undertaking 'holistic' treatment
approaches like diet, supplements, exercise, emotion-based therapies, etc,
with varying degrees of success.

But there are plenty of people I've come across, particularly in communities
of people who diagnosed with, or presumed as having "Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome", who suffer without any improvement for many years despite trying
every conceivable remedy, whose condition may well be explained by what is
described in this article, or by something comparably obscure, relating to the
adrenals or other parts of the autonomic nervous system.

~~~
rubyfan
I’m curious what sort of stresses are thought to cause adrenal issues. Can
they be environmental/situational vs. chronic hereditary?

About 5 years ago I was fairly healthy, eating great and CrossFit 6 days a
week. Then my body started to become tired all the time. I had pretty high
work stress at the time along with what might be considered frequent
physically stressful workouts. I suddenly found myself sleeping most of my
Saturday and Sundays. Struggling during the week, just enough energy to get
myself to work and back to crash at night. Eventually dropping exercise
altogether. Along the way I started feeling weak, shaky and would have almost
tremors in my body. I had read about adrenal stress at the time and suspected
it might be an issue.

It’s hard to tell what’s related but I eventually developed prostatitis, a few
rounds of cipro and no help. Then almost a year later some pretty severe
digestive issues developed and they thought I had Crohn’s disease, then
hospitalized due to reaction to medicine. Then kidney stones, gallstones,
gallbladder removed. The last few years have been hard but so many people have
it worse.

After the gallbladder removal I’ve finally starting to feel meaningfully
better, digestive significantly better and prostatitis issues resolved.

I don’t work out like I used to, I’ve had times that I try to get into a
running regime but eventually I start to feel sick and pain around my kidneys.
I’m able to do extended hours of yard work and be outside for long hours. I’m
lucky that my health appears to be coming back. I have no idea the ultimate
root cause of all this but I’m counting my blessings.

When I read about stories like this, it’s inspiring and relatable. When
doctors and specialists can’t figure it out they send you to someone else or
suggest psychiatric issues. It’s disheartening and easy to lose faith in the
medical system.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> I’m curious what sort of stresses are thought to cause adrenal issues. Can
> they be environmental/situational vs. chronic hereditary?

“Adrenal fatigue” is an alternative medicine diagnosis. It’s a seductively
simple narrative for people seeking answers to unexplained medical issues, but
the theory is very much pseudoscience instead of actual science.

The biggest red flag for the adrenal fatigue theory is the claim that current
blood tests are not sensitive enough to detect it. This is a common trick used
by alt-medicine practitioners to dodge contrary evidence. We have medical
tests to diagnose genuine adrenal insufficiency (Addison’s disease), but it’s
an extremely rare disorder. Statistically speaking, you almost certainly do
not have adrenal insufficiency.

The truth is that your adrenal glands are part of a larger system of feedback
loops in your body. The adrenal glands don’t operate independently as the
adrenal fatigue theorists would suggest, but rather they work in concert with
your brain’s hypothalamus and pituitary in a feedback loop known as the HPA
axis. Wikipedia can shed more light on the details of HPA axis functionality,
but the key point is that the adrenal glands depend on inputs from your brain.
That brings me to my main point:

> When doctors and specialists can’t figure it out they send you to someone
> else or _suggest psychiatric issues_.

Psychiatric issues can and frequently do manifest primarily as physical
symptoms: Lack of energy, low stress tolerance, digestive issues, oversleeping
or insomnia. These are hallmark symptoms of depressive disorders.

The fact that your symptoms started around the time of high stress at work
combined with frequent, intense exercise is probably not a coincidence. It’s
extremely common for people to notice the physical symptoms first and assume
that their problem must be located outside of the brain. Your resistance to
any psychiatric diagnosis is an extremely common response. Frequently,
patients are offended by any suggestion that the origin of their problems is
“all in their head” because it feels like a dismissal of their genuine
physical symptoms.

However, the key thing to remember is that your brain and your body are not
separate systems. They’re one in the same. It took me a long time to realize
that drawing a line between mind and body is an artificial boundary that isn’t
a helpful distinction when your problems almost certainly overlap both
systems.

I think “adrenal fatigue” has become a popular alternative medicine diagnosis
precisely because the adrenal glands are located outside of the brain. As I
mentioned above, the adrenal glands take inputs from core brain structures.
Your adrenals will only produce what the brain tells them to produce. Yet, no
one wants to admit that their brain is right place to solve these issues, so
they over-focus on the one part of the system that lies outside of the brain.
Psychiatry and modern medicine has understood for decades that HPA axis
abnormalities are intimately linked to depressive disorders, and that
successful depression treatment in any form (therapy, medication, combination)
normalizes HPA axis function. At this point, the hardest part is convincing
patients to accept psychiatric treatment and give it appropriate time to work.

I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better, but I would encourage you to give your
doctors a chance when they suggest psychiatric issues. You’re basically a
textbook case of stress-related depressive symptomology. Modern psychiatry may
not be perfect, but it’s better than years of unaddressed fatigue and
suffering.

~~~
wavepruner
I've spent the last 15 years convincing my doctors, friends, and family that
my physical symptoms are not just a manifestation from mental illness. It took
me pushing myself to the point where I could no longer stand up. My legs felt
like they were being ripped to pieces when I put weight on them.

I had attempted all the psychiatric treatments recommended to me. None of them
ameliorated the physical symptoms.

Then I discovered what physical compounds my body was missing, and the
physical symptoms AND mental symptoms resolved. So yes, the mind and body are
not separate. They are constructed out of the exact same basic building
blocks.

~~~
cpncrunch
You should look at functional movement disorder, and catatonic depression. I'm
not making any comment on your own situation, only on your comment that
pushing yourself to the point where you couldn't stand up proves it wasn't
psychiatric.

Typically people with ME/CFS/FMD get worse if they push themselves. The key to
recovery is rest first and foremost. The symptoms of FMD seem to be a
protection mechanism by the brain, and pushing through the symptoms just make
it worse.

~~~
wavepruner
I won't. You don't know what you're talking about unless you have this illness
and have a minimum of PhD level of understanding of biochemistry and
enzymology.

I've cured myself. Who have you cured? No one I'm sure.

~~~
cpncrunch
Yes I have had it, and am fully recovered now thanks.

~~~
wavepruner
Then perhaps we are talking about two separate illnesses.

~~~
cpncrunch
Definitely not. You are just being closed minded, incredibly rude, and dont
understand how the brain actually works.

~~~
wavepruner
Because I don't take kindly to people telling me that the excruciating pain,
bone fractures from gentle use, and fascia disintegration I had was really
just my brain amplifying pain signals for no reason.

~~~
cpncrunch
I guess in your misplaced anger you completely missed my initial comment of
"I'm not making any comment on your own situation". And nowhere did I comment
on "bone fractures from gentle use", which has not been mentioned until now
and is clearly not a functional symptom.

~~~
wavepruner
I apologize for an excessive amount of anger. But you were commenting on my
situation. Saying you weren't does't change that.

------
RandomGuyDTB
Better link:
[http://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_07a19d2a7645bf0a58a5f75ea2cf...](http://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_07a19d2a7645bf0a58a5f75ea2cf4869)

------
Mc_Big_G
_Doctors were baffled. Treatments didn 't help. And Lindsay eventually
realized that if he wanted his life back, he would have to do it himself._

This applies to almost any health problem you might encounter in the US. It's
rare to find a doctor who actually cares and even more rare to find one that
will dig deep to help you.

One of the greatest lies ever told is that you can trust your doctor and that
there isn't more you can do if the doctor says so.

~~~
joeax
The problem probably lies somewhere between afraid of getting sued and not
wanting to shake the medical groupthink apple cart.

Last year I was suffering through a bout of strange fatigue that came about
right after a mysterious throat infection. There were days I could barely go
up the stairs without being winded or without assistance. I googled around and
started reading about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and found this large,
shadow community of millions of sufferers. Many of these people have had these
symptoms for years, and when they go to the doctor they are simply told "It's
all in your head," and if lucky, they'll run some tests and prescribe
something that gives them temporary relief.

I asked my cousin who is a doctor about his opinion on CFS, and he told me it
was difficult to diagnose and even harder to treat. The most they will do is
refer you to a specialist or even psychiatrist.

After a couple months my fatigue went away on its own. But I did find that
creatine helped. And this has been backed by others in the CFS community who
have stated that eating raw meat relieves their symptoms (natural creatine in
meat is destroyed once cooked). But a doctor would never tell me that, because
if there isn't conclusive proof from a medical journal and/or a big pharma
drug to prescribe, they are either too afraid or unwilling to say anything.

------
xiaodai
What a remarkable story!!

------
bollockitis
Remarkable story. It's amazing how closed-minded "experts" can be. I suspect
there are many conditions that will eventually be understood thanks to the
hard work of people who approach these illnesses with the curiosity of a
scientist instead of the hubris of an "expert."

~~~
onion2k
This guy spent 11 years becoming an expert. He talked to experts. He learned
from and worked with experts. All those doctors and professors in the article
who helped him are experts. He found his answer _in a medical textbook_.

If your take is "experts are rubbish" then you have fundamentally missed the
point.

~~~
tomhoward
Let's try not to be too black/white about this.

Different types of expertise are valid and important, and different people
have different motivations for what they do and how they do it.

The key point of this article is that someone who started out as a non-expert,
was motivated by his own need to overcome an illness that established experts
couldn't diagnose or treat, because they didn't share his predicament.

Let's just try to appreciate that for what it is.

------
bjpirt
Wow, that's a particularly nasty clickbaity headline. He only dropped out
because of the disease that caused him to be bedridden for those 11 years.

Maybe "Student was bedridden for 11 years..." would be more accurate.

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
Piggybacking off of your comment, regarding click bait.

In the news where I'm at, if a 19 year old does something good, they refer to
him/her as a "Teenager."

If this same 19 year old does something bad, "MAN ARRESTED FOR..."

Never understood it.

~~~
have_faith
In our societies obsession with punishment as a means of dealing with
wrongdoing it is easier to justify punishing a man than a teenager, so I think
we subconciously prefer to frame it that way to justify wanting to enact
punishment.

------
unityByFreedom
This is an incredible story. His mom had the same undiagnosed, unfixable
problem. The gist is,

> If he could cut out the medullas of his adrenal glands -- sort of like
> slicing into a hard-boiled egg and removing the yolk -- his health would
> improve.

> Eventually he recruited a surgeon from the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
> In September 2010 Lindsday went to the university hospital, where the doctor
> successfully extracted one of his adrenal medullas.

> Three weeks after the procedure, Lindsay could sit upright for three hours.
> By Christmas Eve, he had the strength to walk a mile to church.

> But progress was slow. In 2012, he underwent a second surgery at Washington
> University in St. Louis to remove the medulla from his remaining adrenal
> gland.

> A year later, he was well enough to fly with friends to the Bahamas. It was
> the first time in his life the Midwesterner had seen the ocean.

~~~
ricardobeat
I understand the urge to summarize, but maybe interested HN users can be
expected to read the article before coming to the comments? This seriously
degrades the quality of discussion.

~~~
alexandercrohde
It's fine to bemoan people _commenting_ who haven't read the article, but
reading the comments first to gauge if the article is clickbait/whatever is a
perfectly valid use-case.

I also cherish summaries like these - if I read the whole article I won't
remember more than 2 sentences of it tomorrow. That distillation process is
inevitable and good. It's a service to do it well for those who are
time/memory-limited.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Thanks! At the time I wrote this, the majority of comments were focused on
criticizing the headline [1], and there was little discussion of the article
itself.

Now I see there are many comments about the content of the article. I don't
know if the summary caused more people to read it or not. I wanted to
encourage more readership and on-topic discussion.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20541644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20541644)

------
aaron695
I don't believe this, but there's not enough info out there online to tell.

Article from his experience before surgery in 2010 -

[https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/is-there-a-doctor-
in...](https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house-
confined-to-his-home-for-a-decade-doug-lindsay-is-certain-he-knows-what-ails-
him-and-he-thinks-he-knows-the/Content?oid=2483138)

