Paradoxifi Ann Clark McFarland

Some aspects of medicine are a paradox. For instance, there are treatments that will hurt before they can heal. Or, there is the ordeal of having an operation. A surgeon must cut before he can cure. Thankfully, we live in a time where healthcare and healing are aided by the gift of anesthesia.







What is anesthesia?







In general terms, anesthesia is medicine given before surgery or medical procedures to put you to sleep. Under the influence of anesthesia medicines, a patient experiences loss of sensation. This affect can be with or without loss of consciousness depending on the desired outcome.







When did anesthesia first come on the scene?







A Christian Creationist might believe that the first episode of anesthesia appeared on the scene when God created a woman. The bible describes the “surgical” event in the second chapter of Genesis starting with verse eighteen.







“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.







But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. While he slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that God took he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,







“This at last is bone of my bones







and flesh of my flesh;







she shall be called Woman,







because she was taken out of Man.”







Who claims the credit for modern anesthesia?







In American history, the credit goes to a dentist named William Thomas Green Morton. His mojo juice was ether.







On “Ether Day,” Friday October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, William demonstrated how the inhalation of ether vapor could overcome the pain of surgery.







How did anesthesia work before ether was discovered?







It didn't. Only remedies that alleviated pain or caused a stupor were available. One record of a surgery without anesthesia came just thirty five years prior to William's demonstration. It concerned a woman named Frances (Fanny) Burney d’Arblay who might have been spared a great deal of agony had she lived to see Ether Day.







Fanny lived from 1752 to 1840. She wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography, and twenty volumes of journals and letters. Her work influenced writers who came after her, namely Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray.







In one detailed and gory letter to her sister Esther, Fanny describes the event of having a mastectomy for breast cancer without anesthesia.







Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, Napoleon’s own surgeon, performed Fanny's surgery. Fanny received little detail beforehand to keep her from being nervous. It took a team of nine to hold Fanny still and accomplish the procedure. The ordeal lasted over three hours. Amazingly, Fanny lived an additional twenty-nine years after her nightmare. Her story begs for the gift of anesthesia.







In this podcast episode, Healthcare, Healing, & The Gift of Anesthesia, we discuss a variety of aspects regarding the use of anesthesia.







Show notes include:







1:30        Episode riddle (We present a riddle or puzzle with every episode and give the ans...

Thanks to China, Italy, and NYC, doctors have learned a lot about Covid 19. The new virus is the most recent and novel science event to affect millions of people across the world. In this podcast, MD Talk: Virus News and Clinical Treatment, Dr. Tim McFarland elaborates on some of the newest Covid 19 treatment discoveries.







Many of us are tired of hearing about Covid 19.







However, this new disease is here to stay. On social media and the daily news there is a constant barrage of information about Covid 19. Some of the details are misleading or at best, confusing. It is our hope that this podcast discussion will relieve some fears and also strengthen listeners resolve to stay the course to minimize Covid 19 cases in their community.







In our highly politicized climate, each new release of “Covid 19 information” seems to add fuel to the divisions between people.







An ancient story about some bulls and a lion illustrates a caution. The tale is credited to Aesop, a person, believed by many to be a former Greek slave who lived in the late mid-6th century BCE.The narrative goes something like this….







Once upon a time, a lion made a daily trek to a field to watch three bulls graze. The view of a possible meal was irresistible. Early on, he had tried to attack them, but the bulls kept together and drove him off with their sharp horns and hoofs. He had little hope of eating them, but he came to drool over them anyway.







Then one day the lion came to the field and found the bulls in separate corners as far away from each other as possible. The bulls had had a fight. The lion seized his opportunity. The bulls became easy cat food when they stood apart.







The moral of the story seems to be this.







United we stand. Divided we fall.







With Covid 19 or politics, if we don’t eventually and consistently pull together, then we are likely to become easy pickings for more "lion-like" disasters.







It is our hope and prayer that this does not happen to our country, or even our personal lives as we face our differences and foes, virus or otherwise.Be encouraged as you listen to this MD Talk podcast about virus news and clinical treatment. Then, let's work together to protect one another.







"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves." Philippians 2:3























Show Notes:







3:20 Review of RNA and DNA and how a virus acts in the body







4:15 Discovery of Dmitri Ivanovsky related to virus presence







5:00 Virus math, contagious rate, cycles and R0







7:40 Using math to beat Covid 19 spread (Tracker board )







8:20 Corona virus family news







9:10 Guns and Covid 19 transmission spread







10:00 Social Distance test







10:38 Masks, mosquitos and fences







14:45 NBA bubble







16:00 New things learned regarding Covid 19







16:50 Remdesivir treatment







17:50 Off label treatment explained







18:00 Ivermectin treatment







19:00 Covid 19 and Inflammation response







19:30 Pulmacort, steroids, and Cholchicine treatment







20:15 Covid 19 and clotting







20:55 Prophylactic treatments , proning and intubation







26:00 Cure for Covid 19?







27:00 High Risk groups and factors

In this podcast episode, consumers learn how to be their own best medical expert for important decisions regarding their healthcare. With so much contradictory health information readily available via the internet, understanding how to be your own best medical expert can be challenging. Facts based in good science can be hard to identify.







In addition, facts take time and effort to establish. A new airborne contagious virus pandemic will not have adequate studies about specifics until time has passed and the event unfolds. But, researching information of airborne viral disease events of the past for comparison is possible. Also finding good science data on the use of protections, such as mask wearing to avoid disease spread, can be done.







The key to web research is to remember that anyone can put up a website and promote their version of science "facts."The idea that “good information based on accurate science” will rise to the top of your web search is not a given anymore. Knowledge is in an age of paradox. While vast amounts of information are more readily available than ever before, it takes close scrutiny to sort out fact from fiction.







How can healthcare consumers better discover accurate answers?















First, understand the difference between anecdotal information and scientific statistical analysis of group data.















What is anecdotal evidence?







An anecdote is a story. In medicine, it is what we share about a medical experience we have had or someone else has had. We share it and often believe it is "evidence" that proves a course of action is correct. As humans, we are predisposed to like anecdotes, because we can relate better to stories. Scientific evidence is hard to grasp.







What is scientific evidence?







Scientific evidence today lies most often within the scope of statistics. Statistics is also a science, and it deals with collecting, organizing, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from sampled data to the whole population.







A proper medical test study design will have an appropriate selection of study samples. Also there will be a double blind component which means information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld (masked or blinded) until after the experiment is complete. Good blinding can reduce or eliminate experimental biases that might come from a participants' expectations. Other bias possibilities that need to be eliminated in the study would be any effect on the participants caused by the observer's study of them, observer bias, confirmation bias, and other sources of bias. Peer review is also part of a good scientific study.







Decades ago, scientists didn’t conduct randomized controlled trials. They based their data and treatment on case series and anecdotal evidence. (Anyone ever hear of heroin being used as a cough suppressant for children in the early 1900s?)







Medical recommendations for treatments from physicians today are most often based in studies with statistical analysis of large groups of data. Do we really want to go backwards and use anecdotal evidence as the mainstream basis for treatment again?







Ask yourself this question when looking at medical information.







Is this source of healthcare information rooted in anecdotal evidence or based in evidence from a structured study that used the scientific method to determine results and eliminate bias?















A second major concern when examining healthcare and medical expertise is "conformation bias."







Bias can occur not just in the study itself but also in our...

In this podcast episode, Tech Talk: Language, ASL, & Machine Learning, we interview software engineer, KJ Price, whose many work projects include the creation of a website to help people find datasets and a Machine Learning model project in conjunction with ASL  Machine Learning is a sub-field of Data Science, which is a popular study field that has expanded tremendously in the last decade. Machine Learning is a form of AI or artificial intelligence







Language, as it is used by humans to communicate, involves complex and complicated sets of rules for sounds, sentences, and meaning. The use of language allows humans to collect information into broad bodies of knowledge about life and the world. Future generations draw on that collected knowledge expressed in language and do not have to start from scratch every time.







Language seems to be a uniquely human ability.







But as of yet, there are no unique finding that scientists agree upon that explain the exclusive connection of language to humans. Although chimps and apes have some capacity for language, it is primarily expressed in the use of signs. Their ability to respond to gestures and pointing varies with their environment and exposure to human interaction. One especially bright gorilla named Koko was able to understand a thousand or more signs and two thousand or so words of spoken English. (insert link)







There are many debates about how language skills are acquired by humans.







One of the more prominent language theories came from linguist Noam Chomsky in 1957. He suggested that human beings may be born with an innate understanding of how language works. What language we learn, whether it is French, Arabic, Chinese or sign language is determined by the circumstances in our lives. Chomsky believed, as did/do many linguists, that humans have some kind of genetic wiring that predisposes them to understanding communication structure.







Machines can be taught language type skills using machine learning methods.







Machine Learning works by using datasets and teaching a computer application to recognize patterns in the data so that the machine can perform tasks automatically, where these tasks used to be done manually. An simple example of this type of task would be to “teach” a machine to be able to distinguish between a cat or a dog in an image. After a few hundred examples of images that contain cats and other images that contain dogs, a Machine Learning model could be “taught” to recognize the difference. Then, none would need to manually look through each image and label them as “cat” or “dog” as a computer could label hundreds of these images in just a couple seconds.







Siri uses Machine Learning to handle requests from Apple users. Siri’s process is related to a data science field called “Natural Language Processing” Natural Language Processing, as used by Siri, is an exciting field and a bit of a holy grail to be able to have computers and humans communicate using human language.







Another example of this type of Machine Learning is to teach a machine to tell if a body of text represents a positive attitude or a negative attitude. For example, you could analyze published articles and see if they are in favor or against a political party. This is called “Sentiment Analysis,” where the machine is taught to decide the general sentiment of a body of text.







There are many other ways that Machine Learning can be used in natural language. For example, IBM’s Watson can understand the English language with very high proficiency. Another example is Google Translate. These all use Machine Learning for natural language understanding and natural language generation.







Interestingly,

Mental health & disease crises is the theme of this podcast episode. Building mental stability, either as an individual or family, is always a benefit. But in times of disease crisis, such as a pandemic, the effort becomes critical. Hosts, author, Ann Clark McFarland, and her husband, Dr. Tim McFarland, talk with podcast guest, Rebecca Jones, a Christian counseling graduate student, about the unexpected event of disease crises such as Covid19 and how it impacts mental health.







Disease crises affect our mental health in different ways.







In times of disease crises, families and individuals face unforeseen challenges. However, everyone does not experiences the crises in the same way. The idea that “we are all in this together” is good, but we are actually “in it” and experiencing “it” (the crisis) in many different ways.







The "new normal" seems abnormal and reminds us of loss.







In addition, the "new normal" often reminds individuals or families of the losses they have experienced. For example, the smaller losses might include the inability to use prior methods of coping, which may not be available or permitted in the "new normal." Larger losses, such as the loss of a loved one, loss of health, work, ability, or routines, can supercharge the emotions of sadness, anger, and fear.







Disease crises holds both a physical and mental challenge.







Recognize that coping with disease is both a physical and mental challenge. Take the first step of acknowledging the challenge. Don't ignore or avoid building better mental health strategies in your life. Learn to identify mental health problems, find resources, and adopt best behavior practices during times of disease crises. The effort you make can make you more resilient in future crises times, and if you are part of a family, the work of building better mental health strategies can lead to better functioning homes and relationships.







Helpful Resources







Additional resources: Dr. Bessel Van see Kolk’s website (has details on schedule and why as well as great article for single adults)







Virtual Hope Box is an app that helps teach calming/relaxation techniques (like deep breathing and meditation) as well as a few other things and resources within. 







Podcast Timeline & Tips







02:00     Mental Health & Disease Crises







03:15     Mental Crisis: Global vs Personal







07:30     Negative or Harmful Responses







09:50     Signs of Starting Negative Responses







10:50     What Can We Do If We Go Too Negative







12:30     Tips to Successfully Handing Crisis







14:50     Sympathetic Nervous System – Fight or Flight







16:45     Tips for Families with Teenagers







19:00     Tips for Families with Younger Children







22:00     Tips for Families with Special Needs or Prior Mental Health Issues







23:10     Couple’s Advice







25:10     Singles Advice







28:15     Stages of Grief







31:00     Rebecca shares her faith story and Elijah example.







MD Talk: Mental Health & Disease Crises is the third and final episode concerning the unexpected virus season of Covid 19. The first episode, MD Talk: Virus Habits and History, explains the behavior and structure of a virus and explores contradictions and assumptions about viruses. The second episode, MD Talk: Virus Combat Tips, identifies ways to fight virus impact and spread and boost the immune system.

In this episode, we offer virus combat tips to stay well and avoid getting sick. In our focus on the unexpected STEM subject of Covid19, Dr. Tim McFarland offers examples of the ways ordinary people can combat a virus infection. Board certified in Family Medicine with thirty plus years of medical practice experience, he currently works as an ER physician and hospitalist. Discussion topics include:







Does viral dose and viral load affect your outcome?







Who or what is a super spreader?







Is there a better way to use my mask and gloves for grocery shopping?







How do I minimize surface contamination?







What is herd immunity and why is it beneficial?







What old wives tales do people use to help heal? Do these things work?







When do I need to get help from the hospital for my illness?







If a Covid positive person is identified within a household in America, then what happens?







Why are we still out of toilet paper?







What impact does faith have on a crises?







MD Talk: Virus Combat Tips is the second of three podcast episodes. All episodes center on the unexpected virus season of Covid 19. Our first episode, MD Talk: Virus Habits & History explains the behavior and structure of virus entities versus bacteria. The show also pointed out the contradictions and assumptions about viruses. Our third podcast, MD Talk: Mental Health During Crises, will identify strategies to sustain good mental health during times of emergency. After this series, we plan to divert to non Covid 19 topics and highlight unexpected STEM and faith stories.