
My Sudden Trip to Hell - EvilTrout
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-sudden-trip-hell-mark-attila-opauszky/
======
bitexploder
Stoics would encourage all of us to internalize our own mortality, not for
morbidity’s sake, but because it helps live in the moment. The wake up call
stories like this should be simulated by everyone. Imagine if this were you?
Live with a fraction of that pain in your heart and try to internalize it. How
does it impact our choices? Things like fingers and walking become amazing. I
am always happy people share their stories, it helps us all remember our
mortality and make good choices every day. Also, I wish the author a speedy
and continued recovery in their journey.

~~~
yodsanklai
> I am always happy people share their stories, it helps us all remember our
> mortality and make good choices every day.

Not for me. When confronted to death or intense pain, everything else becomes
insignificant and futile. And when things go back to normal, I tend to forget.
I suppose that to be fully functional human beings, we need to ignore the
harsh reality of life! Is it really possible to "internalize mortality"? I
know some people try very hard but are they immune to anxiety and daily
worries, are they happier? I haven't met such a person yet.

~~~
specialist
Me too.

After every near miss, it takes me a while to trick myself into rejoining the
world of the living, where paying rent and doing laundry matters.

Being a geek has been an asset. I can lose myself in solving problems.
Focusing on those thoughts to push aside the other thoughts.

This current cycle, I got a puppy. Total pain in the ass. But he still needs
to be walked, so I get up and we walk. Rinse, lather, repeat.

~~~
bitexploder
I think it comes down to the dichotomy of being human. We have this inevitable
end that we know is waiting for us, but we are alive, dammit. For many on HN,
that life is full of curiosity, so many things to learn, and so much cool
stuff to do and see. Especially for younger people who have not experienced
much grief or loss, contemplating this end is especially jarring compared to
the vibrancy of life. For others it can be very morbid and bring back bad
memories and induce anxiety. I think, ultimately, we should embrace our
sometimes unpredictable end and become comfortable with the idea of our end to
better celebrate our own lives as we live them. I do think Stoicism is not for
everyone and some people just naturally develop a very stoic mindset.
Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to controlling what we can and simply
accepting the rest as our lot in life as humans (the living and the dying).

------
codingdave
> and I would be fully present for all the moments that mattered.

This quote stood out, because as a promise to your family, it really sucks. We
never know what the moments that matter to other people are going to be. Big
events are nice. But when you think back on your life, how many important
moments were from small events? Just having a nice talk, doing a chore with
your dad, telling your mom about your day? How many idle comments from friends
ended up having a large impact on you?

When dealing with family, you need to be there enough that moments happen,
because the scope of their impact on the lives of those around you are not
predictable.

~~~
ChuckMcM
On of the things my wife insisted on was that we always got together as a
family for dinner. That definitely had a negative impact on my career in that
I couldn't be the 'last guy to leave', but it gave me a solid relationship
with my kids as they grew. I am glad to this day that she insisted.

------
madaxe_again
I was going to say “I recall when I had sepsis in my teens”, but the truth of
it is that I don’t - there’s a six week hole in my memory, that skips straight
from lying in a pool of blood and puss on the floor of the kitchen at school,
having a mop thrust in my face, to lying in a bed in hospital with tubes
snaking out of me.

The weird thing is, despite being unconscious for over a month, I woke up
feeling like I hadn’t missed anything, and even now I look back at this with
slight disbelief - surely you’re thinking of someone else, surely it wasn’t
that long. I felt like I’d been out longer after a general for surgery a few
years ago.

They did run a whole battery of neurological tests on me once I was conscious
and eating - they were pretty surprised I had no obvious brain damage - I had
maintained a fever over 108 for several days, despite ice baths and the, what,
20g of daily antibiotics? I do wonder if there was some, but rather more
subtle than what was being looked for.

Re-integrating was weird. For everyone else I’d been as good as dead - they’d
seen me carted off in an ambulance, and then a few weeks later term had ended.
I on the other hand basically went straight from the end of one school term to
the beginning of the next with zero intervening time, and nobody could figure
out why I was pissed off. They kept asking me about what had happened - and I
answered honestly that they probably knew more than I did.

It also sucked that I had no soft landing back into classes, and in the time
I’d been unconscious they’d started calculus - I came back and had to
differentiate and integrate and had no frigging idea what I was actually doing
- I remember sitting in an A-level maths exam a year later and _finally_
having the revelation that it was about curves and rates of change.

All this because I had what looked like a zit on my knee. It grew until I
couldn’t fit trousers over my leg, school offered me a sticking plaster, and
said I wasn’t getting out of sport that easily. Then my leg opened up one
night fetching water in the kitchen, and I lost consciousness. I’ll never
forget the sight of custard in crude oil swirling over the linoleum - perhaps
that’s one side effect of the coma - my last conscious moment is vivid in the
extreme.

Anyway, that brush with death didn’t change my outlook one bit, but then again
I was an invincible 16 year old. The ones since then have definitely left
their mark.

~~~
lawlessone
it sounds like it was the schools duty to get you medical attention far sooner
and they failed.

~~~
madaxe_again
Yeah, the house’s matron was fired over it - and it transpired that she’d lied
on her CV about her experience and qualifications - something that seemed to
happen with alarming frequency at the school.

------
dawhizkid
for some reason I assumed that he would write about how this trauma would give
him a new perspective on what was really important in life, but at the end it
sounded like the experience didn’t really change his perspective on desiring
to work all the time on his startup and that he was only stepping down because
he couldn’t perform 100% and not because this experience changed anything
about how he prioritized work/career?

~~~
brazzy
Read again: he writes that he decided to prioritize his family over work
_before_ all of that happened.

~~~
NateEag
He was clearly lying to himself.

If your job is consuming all of your mental space, which is clearly the
mindset he describes in the article, there is none left for your family.

------
CaliforniaKarl
A high temperature like 104, combined with pain, definitely warrants a doctor
visit. Which doctor (GP, urgent care, ER/A&E)? Let the time, day, and how you
feel be your guide.

In the case of one of my relatives, the result was confirmation they had the
flu (and too late for Tamiflu or the like to be effective). In my case, it was
intestinal perforation that (six months later) led to part of my large
intestine being taken out.

Big congrats to this guy for getting through it.

------
twoquestions
Considering the bills for a condition like this, I'd be wondering if it's even
worth it to go to the doctor. My life isn't worth the destitution visited on
everyone I know necessary to keep me alive, and I can't imagine the moral
calculus his family had to go through.

I'm glad this guy could get the care needed to survive, and I wish him the
very best in his recovery.

~~~
corry
He's Canadian I believe; so while I'm not sure how his care in NYC would be
billed, I think it would be still covered by OHIP (the public health insurance
in Ontario Canada) or maybe travel insurance.

Certainly all the care he received in Toronto would have been covered,
assuming he's Canadian.

~~~
corry
Don't want to spark a healthcare debate, but want to mention that I bet NONE
of the non-US readers on HN would have given a single thought about the costs
involved if this was happening in their countries.

It's wild to me that the potential financial impact of this was part of the
picture for many of the US people reading it (especially the startup founders
who are probably without insurance right now, and this would leave absolutely
financially ruined for life).

~~~
gamblor956
Universal Healthcare is generally only a thing in Canada and the EU. It's
great if you need to wait a few months to see a doctor, but I know plenty of
Canadians and Europeans who come to the US for medical care so they don't have
to wait.

~~~
stordoff
If you need emergency care, you don't have to wait (UK). My grandfather had a
fall recently where he hit his head, and had a brain CT within two hours (he
fell about 1am; he was admitted, assessed, treated, and discharged by 6am). A
family member had an urgent referral for a mammogram last Thursday, and was
assessed and given the results today.

Routine GPs appointments can generally be gotten within a week, and
emergency[1] appointments (where we wait until the GP is done at the end of
the surgery, and are then seen) if the triage nurse determines you need to be
seen sooner can be gotten on the day. You also have the option of speaking to
your local pharmacist, many of whom can prescribe medication for certain
conditions if appropriate, or otherwise point you at suitable over-the-counter
primary care.

A number of places also have walk-in centres for minor ailments where you
don't need an appointment, and they generally have long opening hours
(8am-10pm, 365 days a year for my local one). Urgent dental care is also
available 24/7 in many places.

You may have to wait longer for non-emergency / non-priority / time-
insensitive treatments - my routine MRIs have a lead time of about 8 weeks,
and a specialist referral can be something in the region of 6-12 weeks
(sometimes longer) - but I think that's a fair trade off. You do of course
also have the option of paying for private care as well if you don't want to
wait (often NHS doctors / semi-retired doctors working evenings in my limited
experience).

[1] bit of a misnomer really - urgent but not critical is more accurate

~~~
gamblor956
My wait for a routine MRI is about 2 hours....

My wait for a specialist referral is 2-3 days and any delay is usually on my
end.

There are just some things the US healthcare system accidentally does much
better than Europe.

~~~
gambiting
So you want to tell me that from the point when you ring your healtcare
provider saying "I want to get an MRI done", to you lying down on the table
being scanned the time is around 2 hours?

------
bitL
A friend of mine had her young brother suddenly developing a narrow line on
the skin, growing quickly; 24 hours later both his arms and legs were
amputated to keep him alive.

I am wondering if having allowed emergency wide-spectrum antibiotics freely
for such cases would help? Time seems to be extremely critical in such cases.

~~~
saiya-jin
I would consider it a mandatory equipment of the household. Primarily I take
them on trips to remote 3rd world countries where you can't rely on quick
quality health care, even though most of the time I come back home with them
untouched. For me its usually Sumamed, plus whatever specific for destination
(malaria pills, stomach/throat, eyes etc.). Just beware of the expiration -
they may lose potency and better renew them.

I am not sure I would use them at home in case you describe though - I would
just run to emergency if possible. Also antibiotics don't work with viruses,
fungus or parasites, so its not a panacea.

~~~
flr03
You really don't want people to have ready to use antibiotics at home. It's
already very difficult to contain bacteria resistance to antibiotics.

Very soon people would not only die from rare bacteria related decease but any
kind of random bacteria infection.

~~~
bitL
Your points are valid, people are irresponsible with antibiotics, however
consider that e.g. 1 hour drive to emergency would cost you an arm, literally,
whereas quickly eating 5 pills of wide-spectrum antibiotics would keep the
infection at bay and give you time to drive to ER without any adversarial
effects on your future life. What would be your choice?

~~~
majewsky
The dichotomy is wrong. If you allow people to have antibiotics at home,
enough of them are gonna chew them like vitamins to spread antibiotics
resistance even faster. Then when you have your emergency, sure you can eat
your pills, but it's not gonna do shit.

The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

~~~
SkyBelow
What about an alternative where any usages have to be reported and measured
and incorrect usage has an increasing penalty. It starts small and only ramps
up with repeated abuse.

If you don't consent to the rules, that is fine, you aren't allowed the drugs
at home (same as today).

~~~
spookthesunset
That is impossible to enforce.

Like the parent said, lots of people will pop those things like candy. In very
short order they won’t work at all.

------
pbourke
Wow. Mark was the CEO of one of the first startups that I worked at in
Toronto. I recall him being very driven and focused. It seems like these
qualities helped him overcome this enormous challenge.

Wishing you the best, Mark.

------
_of
Terrifying. Could it be that stress caused the Streptococcus pyogenes
infection? It would be the most sensible explanation. I imagine being a CEO of
a startup is a very stressful role, causing suppression of the immune system
and thereby S pyogenes had a chance to proliferate. I have no idea, just
speculation.

~~~
Pimpus
It was absolutely caused by unconscious emotions (like stress). The following
part just made me laugh out loud:

> This mainly involves infection by the Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria and
> more commonly affects young, healthy adults. I didn't do anything to get it,
> it just happened - like being struck by lightning.

The jarring contrast between medicine's ability to perform surgical miracles,
like those described in the article, and it's total inability to understand
what _causes_ illness, is just comical. I guess there is money in one and not
the other.

~~~
EliRivers
_It was absolutely caused by unconscious emotions (like stress)._

I cannot imagine a mechanism whereby stress causes a human body to create a
bacterium, effectively from out of nowhere. To synthesise it. Do you have any
evidence or even a posited mechanism for this amazing claim? Or is your claim
that the illness isn't caused by this bacterium?

~~~
rtb
No-one is claiming that stress synthesizes bacteria, that is a laughable
strawman.

We are surrounded by bacteria at all times. If stress were to weaken your
immune system, then you might be more easily infected by them. This seems
completely plausible to me (likely, even). It is not a great leap to describe
this link as stress "causing" the infection, even if it might be better to
describe it more precisely. Perhaps "stress meant he couldn't fight off the
infection as he normally would have"?

------
msie
I am disturbed that he was almost sent away from the hospital if it weren’t
for the persistence of his business partner that it was something that needed
further investigation.

~~~
close04
It’s a common thing due to the fact that doctors see too many trivial, common
cases and apply Occam’s razor.

I had the same experience in a big, prestigious hospital. After a surgery went
wrong they insisted I’m ok and getting better despite my less and less
vigorous protests. When they finally accepted to investigate this more
thoroughly they realized the severity. The story repeated itself through
multiple surgeries. Even just hours before the last one they insisted I should
be getting better and again only investigated after several pleas. Which was
very surprising considering that when going into this last surgery my chances
of survival were under 15%, I was basically in septic shock and already mostly
unconscious due to the illness and medication.

I think a doctor’s diagnosis starts with assuming basic issues and escalating
later rather than the other way around. It might make sense statistically...
unless you’re among the unlucky few.

~~~
theseadroid
Would those cases be considered misdiagnosis and incur reliability to the
doctors?

------
puranjay
This was terrifying.

How does an infection like this happen though? What can you do to prevent it?

~~~
magic_beans
The thing with this man is that he assumed he had the flu:

> By the time I landed in New York that day in February, I felt a flu coming
> on. The next 48 hours was a marathon, so I resolved to push through.

And he also experienced some very non-flu like symptoms:

> by Wednesday night I was running a serious fever and my left leg was in a
> surprising amount of pain.

Despite having a high fever and pain, he didn't go to the hospital until he
actually collapsed the next day. Had he sought medical treatment as soon as
the leg pain manifested, his outcome might not have been as dire.

------
vagab0nd
I'm not up-to-date on these bacteria. It's shocking to me that at this day and
age we still don't have good treatments.

Would bacteriophage have helped?

------
twic
This reminds me of the time that science fiction writer Peter Watts got
necrotising fasciitis, and wrote a series of sardonic blog posts with gruesome
photos (seriously - _gruesome_ ) about it:

[https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41](https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41)

He was never in a coma, though, so got to be a bit more chipper about the
whole thing.

------
dennisgorelik
PathFactory received $15M in funding:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...](https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/lookbookhq)

Amount of traffic to pathfactory.com is negligible:

[https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/](https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/)

------
kerkeslager
It's a sign of what it's like to be an American that the following stood out
to me:

The timing of his illness is rather unfortunate, as it caught him in New York,
rather than Toronto, which probably cost him a lot of money.

~~~
aantix
Pay for it with taxes, pay for it with premiums and bills. You’re paying for
it.

No one works for free, the medicine costs money. The money comes from
somewhere.

~~~
Ididntdothis
The doctors’ and hospital administrators’ sports cars aren’t cheap either.

~~~
aantix
Neither are their 500K student loans nor their delayed work opportunities
until 35.

~~~
didbsivdf
Hating on a Dr. for having a nice car is BS, but what you mention are failures
of America.

Only America trains their Dr. until they’re 35, while having them do nothing
towards their medical degree in their undergrad.

Only America saddles then with $500k in debt.

Remove both barriers, and presumably you’d have market forces push more ppl to
the profession reducing wages.

~~~
aantix
"Remove both barriers"

How do you train a neurosurgeon? That level of specialization comes from maybe
a few hundred in the U.S. With that level of scarcity (and demand), their time
is going to be priced accordingly.

~~~
didbsivdf
In school.

But s/he needn’t have a B.Arts in management to apply to med school first.

I don’t know what you mean by “Maybe a few hundred”. Do you mean schools or
neurosurgeons?

If 1., there are only 150 med school for all Dr. in the US, contributing to a
very low number of Dr. Per capita.

If 2. They study medicine. Do residency. And train on the job for the rest of
their lives... just like today [0]

[0] actually one of the reasons for medical errors, a top three killer in the
US, is that most Dr. don’t update their knowledge one thy finish their
residency. :S

------
kuu
This kind of stories I find them scary but inspiring at the same time. Quite
interesting.

