Is privacy using ANY OS a myth?

[Qqmike]

Interesting. DIY, huh? I'll look into all that. Thanks.

[jglen490]

DIY healthcare, other than taking care of a cut or scrape or simple aches and pains, is risky business. It will attend to symptoms, but cannot consider or mitigate cause.

It's hard to find a health care professional that you can trust to be interested in YOU, as if YOU are his/her only patient ATM. When one of those comes along, attach yourself like velcro. As I've gotten older, my health care is not a self-centered activity, it is instead a partnership. Some Drs. love to tell you what to do for the two minutes that you get to see them; others listen to what the patient has to say and adjust to the conversation. My primary Doc is that second kind of guy. I've been going to him for over 25 years, and he has helped me to discover a non-malignant growth - which was surgically removed - and helped me to head off an actual heart attack - even though I still ended up having a quadruple bypass. And many other similar things.

No "DIY" healthcare can ever do that.

[TWPonKubuntu]

@GreyGeek, thanks, I'll look into the hearing aids also.

[GreyGeek]

DIY healthcare, other than taking care of a cut or scrape or simple aches and pains, is risky business. It will attend to symptoms, but cannot consider or mitigate cause.

That it is. My wife and I have being seeing a particular Dr for over 10 years. He's that second kind of guy. I have major hours in Chemistry, Physics, Math, Biology and General Science. As an Assoc. Prof at a Midwestern college for a decade I taught Physics, Calculus, DiffEq, Anatomy & Physiology, Microbiology, Organic Chemistry and several pre-nursing courses. I taught dozens of kids how to draw blood, measure blood pressure, generate audographs to determine hearing loss, and several assessment tests of symptoms. When my wife began taking Warfarin I obtained an INR machine ffrom Roache and began taking blood samples to measure it. Later, when I developed "irregular irregularity" in my heart beat (which was a complete shock to me because I was a long time runner with a resting heart rate of 55-60 and a BP of 120/80) I began measuring my own INR. IF you go to the doctor's office to have it done it will cost (me) $15 copay and $15 for the test. Buying the test strips and doing it myself costs $5/test.

I'm not the average bear when it comes to biology, but I am also smart enough to know that anyone who acts as his own doctor has a fool for a patient. I never do anything without the advice and consent of my Dr. That's how much I trust him. But, at 78, a lot of diagnoses and treatments are no longer considered because of how close sunset is. The limb of my Sun has dipped below the horizon.

It's hard to find a health care professional that you can trust to be interested in YOU, as if YOU are his/her only patient ATM. When one of those comes along, attach yourself like velcro. As I've gotten older, my health care is not a self-centered activity, it is instead a partnership. Some Drs. love to tell you what to do for the two minutes that you get to see them; others listen to what the patient has to say and adjust to the conversation. My primary Doc is that second kind of guy. I've been going to him for over 25 years, and he has helped me to discover a non-malignant growth - which was surgically removed - and helped me to head off an actual heart attack - even though I still ended up having a quadruple bypass. And many other similar things.

No "DIY" healthcare can ever do that.

Exactly. But, audiologists aren't exactly physicians. Most, these days, are glorified sales persons using a special lingo to sound more professional than they are. Their goal is to sell expensive hearing aids. To that end, most no longer generate true audiogram, a plot of frequency and hearing level for each ear. Today, they play an audio recording of a person rubbing their hands together. They instruct you to adjust your headset volume so that what you hear in the head set is identical in loudness to you get rubbing your hands together. That's their calibration. Then they play a series of audio recordings where a person with a bland mid-western voice reads sets of three numbers amidst a noisy environment. The numbers get softer and the noise gets louder. Sometimes the voice is in one ear and other times it is in the other ear. When you can't successfully write down the three numbers that is the lowest level of your hearing. For audiograms a series of sine tones from 100 cps to 16,000 cps is played in each ear. For each frequency you push a button when you first hear the tone. "Hearing thresholds are defined as the lowest level sound that can be heard 50% of the time." From those readings a graph for each ear is made and it show the frequency response for each ear. My hearing aids have three screws for adjusting low, mid and high range frequencies, sort of like an equalizer. They allowed me to adjust the amplification so that I was able to hear sounds lower than 20dB with the aid's volume set at its lowest value. As the battery ages, usually within 5 or 6 days, I can increase the volume setting. You can tell instantly when you have the correct volume setting because the sounds you hear become "natural" in loudness and its like you are not wearing aids at all.

[Qqmike]

I think you have to be very careful plopping down the thousands of dollars audiologists conclude that you need. OTOH, I read that if you have more severe hearing loss (possibly also with tinnitus), then it's a complicated game to get the right hearing aids that can be adjusted. Mild or even moderate hearing loss can be treated OTC/DIY. I'm not sure what to believe yet! I get a free (medical) hearing test through my med insurance, so maybe I'll get some data (and opinion) from a hearing test and then decide what to do.

On medical stuff ... I firmly believe that you should start by keeping ALL your medical records: get them, keep them, indefinitely. That's #1. #2 is to work with your chosen medical professional as a partnership, as you guys have said above ("the second kind of guy"). #3 is 'Don't believe everything a test or a medical professional tells you.' In particular, radiologists have a tendency to over-do some of their reports; some are too diligent to list all possibles under "differential diagnosis"; and some seem to be sold on their Dx impression and write their report to favor that Dx. Caution. Think for yourself. Get other opinions.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Does anybody know of a Linux hearing aid (only half joking here)? I'd like to have wireless control of a hearing aid set.

The downside is that this is a step closer to embedded mind control: "Must. Obey. The. Voices. You will do as we command!". Perhaps it is better to stick with the manual controls.