Although I think my perspective is a bit skewed, having grown up in a tick hotspot here in Germany. Everyone is aware of ticks here, pretty sure it’s taught in elementary school. And the encephalitis vaccine is pretty much standard, too.
I mean… Medicine is super hard. You have to remember, when it comes to biology, we’re still figuring it how everything works and there’s way less that we actually understand than what we don’t understand.
I try to think of it like this, doctors aren’t like engineers, because engineers actually have all the specs for the materials or systems they’re working with. They can run the numbers and tell you what will happen when the system is altered in x way. Doctors are more like hackers, they have to reverse engineer a complex system that they never got a spec sheet or user manual for. They can’t read much of the internal diagnostics and the hardware itself wasn’t built with any sensible order or design philosophy. Frankly, it’s a terrible system to have to support and maintain and they don’t really have the tools or information to do it.
All that said, doctors do an impressive job. And seriously though, this hardware suuuucks…
I would think that if a patient comes in with a rash beneath their belt buckle, the first thought isn’t Lyme disease, it’s nickel allergy.
If they were told about the tick bite, maybe a shitty doctor. But nickel allergies are crazy common. Something like 4-5% of men and 15-16% of women. And I suspect, personally, that the number for men is higher but most men don’t wear jewelry and might assume belt buckles can just cause rashes without realizing it’s a nickel allergy.
Then there’s me, asking the lady selling pendants at the ren fair if they’re nickel free, and then sighing when she says, “No nickel at all, they’re stainless steel!”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of stainless steel has nickel.”
“It’s surgical grade steel!”
“Right. Sure. That can, and probably does, still include nickel unless it’s one of the more expensive 400 series alloys and not the more common 316 stainless. Ask me why I know this.”
Dang, what a shitty doctor.
Although I think my perspective is a bit skewed, having grown up in a tick hotspot here in Germany. Everyone is aware of ticks here, pretty sure it’s taught in elementary school. And the encephalitis vaccine is pretty much standard, too.
I mean… Medicine is super hard. You have to remember, when it comes to biology, we’re still figuring it how everything works and there’s way less that we actually understand than what we don’t understand.
I try to think of it like this, doctors aren’t like engineers, because engineers actually have all the specs for the materials or systems they’re working with. They can run the numbers and tell you what will happen when the system is altered in x way. Doctors are more like hackers, they have to reverse engineer a complex system that they never got a spec sheet or user manual for. They can’t read much of the internal diagnostics and the hardware itself wasn’t built with any sensible order or design philosophy. Frankly, it’s a terrible system to have to support and maintain and they don’t really have the tools or information to do it.
All that said, doctors do an impressive job. And seriously though, this hardware suuuucks…
I would think that if a patient comes in with a rash beneath their belt buckle, the first thought isn’t Lyme disease, it’s nickel allergy.
If they were told about the tick bite, maybe a shitty doctor. But nickel allergies are crazy common. Something like 4-5% of men and 15-16% of women. And I suspect, personally, that the number for men is higher but most men don’t wear jewelry and might assume belt buckles can just cause rashes without realizing it’s a nickel allergy.
Then there’s me, asking the lady selling pendants at the ren fair if they’re nickel free, and then sighing when she says, “No nickel at all, they’re stainless steel!”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of stainless steel has nickel.”
“It’s surgical grade steel!”
“Right. Sure. That can, and probably does, still include nickel unless it’s one of the more expensive 400 series alloys and not the more common 316 stainless. Ask me why I know this.”