7 ms·

Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and sai

Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and said the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics. The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.

carlmr 2y ago
[flagged]
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I suspect that it may be a figure of speech, like "that tastes like piss" (or "ass" or "sh#t"). I always wondered how people knew about that
  - resonious 2y ago
    I think giving birth without anesthesia is far more common that tasting piss or shit. But what do I know...
    - hzay 2y ago
      Pretty common. I did.
      - SapporoChris 2y ago
        You might wish to clarify. The board guidelines do encourage to assume the best in any comment, but many do not.
      - janalsncm 2y ago
        Curious, would you say it was the most painful thing you’ve experienced?
        Dove 2y ago
        I'm not the person you're asking, but I may be able to satisfy your curiosity a little. I have given birth without anesthesia -- in fact, I did so twice. I found it arduous and difficult, and there certainly were moments of pain, but I would not describe the experience overall as exactly painful. You know how when you've been running for a long time and you really want to stop? That was the primary unpleasant sensation for me. Something between a muscle cramp and a side ache, though quite intense. Really uncomfortable, really hard work. Very distressing if you freak out about it and get frightened, but actually a pretty cool experience if you lean into it. Toward the end of labor there was some significant pain, enough to make me yell, but there was also so much going on that I was very distracted from it. You can experience some pretty significant pain and not be very badly distressed by it if you're super focused on some goal and working hard for it, and boy does childbirth have that effect. ;) Now, you shouldn't overly generalize from my personal experiences. Every pregnancy is different, and every delivery is different. But I have always thought the characterization of childbirth as the greatest possible pain was overblown. In my experience, it was more like a major athletic event which involved some significant injury - a marathon or a boxing match or something in that neighborhood. You do really injure yourself enough that it takes some weeks to heal, but I honestly think that part of the equation is comparable to a bad sprain. Maybe a bit worse, but much more like an athletic injury than some of the horrible diseases people get. At any rate, it is not the most significant pain I've personally experienced. That prize goes to an infected gall bladder / passed gall stone. I've also had leg cramps which I thought were more painful than childbirth, though they didn't last as long. To relate it to the original claim, I definitely think it's plausible that dysentary is worse. Internal organs dying is high on the pain scale. (If you're curious about why I chose to avoid anaesthesia, I hadn't liked it during my first delivery. I had a long and painful labor during which anesthesia was delayed, and when I finally got it, I found it didn't much lift my distress -- I later understood that was because my pain wasn't pain exactly, it was me doing a poor job of working with my body. Aaand I was at a dumb hospital that had put me on my back, which is painful, and I didn't know any better. Anyway. I didn't see it as really relieving my discomfort, but it did confine me to bed for a couple days and robbed me of being my most alert and best self during a very important moment in my life. My second two deliveries were better experiences than my first.)
      - watwut 2y ago
        You did what exactly now?
    - querez 2y ago
      Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks). I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2]. Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth. So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life. That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years. On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years. I don't think that what you're saying adds up. Sources: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia [2] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mothers-babies/contents/labour-and-birth/analgesia https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mo...
      - drawkward 2y ago
        >oh you sweet summer child Is the condescension really necessary? Also, the phrase is really overused at this point.
        aspenmayer 2y ago
        The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive. It's usually intended as somewhat lighthearted, but it comes across as smug and pandering, and extremely condescending, like you said.
  - eru 2y ago
    Well, most of our sense of taste is actually smell. And many people have smelled these things before.
  - elcomet 2y ago
    I think the smell gives you a good idea
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    clearly you didn't have the right group of friends in college
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- pvaldes 2y ago
  She most probably participated in a birth event, some years ago
  - glouwbug 2y ago
    This thread is appropriately hackernews
    - mannycalavera42 2y ago
      I strongly plus one on this :proud-of-you-meme
  - EGreg 2y ago
    What do you mean by "participated"? How would one know the subjective pain to compare it, unless she actually gave birth?
- watwut 2y ago
  Births without anesthesia are not unusual at all. Tho it is also a figure of speech.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    The use of epidural, spinal, or combined spinal-epidural blockade is fairly common, now. Up to 80% in some parts of the US. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2719581 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
    - watwut 2y ago
      20% is enough to make it "not rare". It means that more then 20% of women with children have experienced that - because if you have multiple children, one could be with epidural and another without it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

carlmr 2y ago

[flagged]

readthenotes1 2y ago
I suspect that it may be a figure of speech, like "that tastes like piss" (or "ass" or "sh#t"). I always wondered how people knew about that
- resonious 2y ago
  I think giving birth without anesthesia is far more common that tasting piss or shit. But what do I know...
  - hzay 2y ago
    Pretty common. I did.
    - SapporoChris 2y ago
      You might wish to clarify. The board guidelines do encourage to assume the best in any comment, but many do not.
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      Curious, would you say it was the most painful thing you’ve experienced?
      - Dove 2y ago
        I'm not the person you're asking, but I may be able to satisfy your curiosity a little. I have given birth without anesthesia -- in fact, I did so twice. I found it arduous and difficult, and there certainly were moments of pain, but I would not describe the experience overall as exactly painful. You know how when you've been running for a long time and you really want to stop? That was the primary unpleasant sensation for me. Something between a muscle cramp and a side ache, though quite intense. Really uncomfortable, really hard work. Very distressing if you freak out about it and get frightened, but actually a pretty cool experience if you lean into it. Toward the end of labor there was some significant pain, enough to make me yell, but there was also so much going on that I was very distracted from it. You can experience some pretty significant pain and not be very badly distressed by it if you're super focused on some goal and working hard for it, and boy does childbirth have that effect. ;) Now, you shouldn't overly generalize from my personal experiences. Every pregnancy is different, and every delivery is different. But I have always thought the characterization of childbirth as the greatest possible pain was overblown. In my experience, it was more like a major athletic event which involved some significant injury - a marathon or a boxing match or something in that neighborhood. You do really injure yourself enough that it takes some weeks to heal, but I honestly think that part of the equation is comparable to a bad sprain. Maybe a bit worse, but much more like an athletic injury than some of the horrible diseases people get. At any rate, it is not the most significant pain I've personally experienced. That prize goes to an infected gall bladder / passed gall stone. I've also had leg cramps which I thought were more painful than childbirth, though they didn't last as long. To relate it to the original claim, I definitely think it's plausible that dysentary is worse. Internal organs dying is high on the pain scale. (If you're curious about why I chose to avoid anaesthesia, I hadn't liked it during my first delivery. I had a long and painful labor during which anesthesia was delayed, and when I finally got it, I found it didn't much lift my distress -- I later understood that was because my pain wasn't pain exactly, it was me doing a poor job of working with my body. Aaand I was at a dumb hospital that had put me on my back, which is painful, and I didn't know any better. Anyway. I didn't see it as really relieving my discomfort, but it did confine me to bed for a couple days and robbed me of being my most alert and best self during a very important moment in my life. My second two deliveries were better experiences than my first.)
    - watwut 2y ago
      You did what exactly now?
  - querez 2y ago
    Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks). I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2]. Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth. So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life. That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years. On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years. I don't think that what you're saying adds up. Sources: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia [2] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mothers-babies/contents/labour-and-birth/analgesia https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mo...
    - drawkward 2y ago
      >oh you sweet summer child Is the condescension really necessary? Also, the phrase is really overused at this point.
      - aspenmayer 2y ago
        The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive. It's usually intended as somewhat lighthearted, but it comes across as smug and pandering, and extremely condescending, like you said.
- eru 2y ago
  Well, most of our sense of taste is actually smell. And many people have smelled these things before.
- elcomet 2y ago
  I think the smell gives you a good idea
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  clearly you didn't have the right group of friends in college
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pvaldes 2y ago
She most probably participated in a birth event, some years ago
- glouwbug 2y ago
  This thread is appropriately hackernews
  - mannycalavera42 2y ago
    I strongly plus one on this :proud-of-you-meme
- EGreg 2y ago
  What do you mean by "participated"? How would one know the subjective pain to compare it, unless she actually gave birth?
watwut 2y ago
Births without anesthesia are not unusual at all. Tho it is also a figure of speech.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  The use of epidural, spinal, or combined spinal-epidural blockade is fairly common, now. Up to 80% in some parts of the US. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2719581 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
  - watwut 2y ago
    20% is enough to make it "not rare". It means that more then 20% of women with children have experienced that - because if you have multiple children, one could be with epidural and another without it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]