The Russian winter
Nov. 3rd, 2011 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigojoReaders will know their history might have heard of how Napoleon seriously contributed to bringing about his own downfall: he tried to conquer Russia. His troops were obviously nearly all French, and France has quite a mild climate -- parts of it Mediterranean and parts of it influenced by the Atlantic winds. They weren't equipped for the Russian winter, which is bitterly cold and frequently two figures below zero, so they couldn't fight and many of them froze.
A century and a half later, Hitler tries the same thing, and although Germany is further east and its eastern parts (especially then, when they ruled parts of what are now Poland) have a continental climate with cold winters, they were still no match for the Russian winter. Whether Hitler intended to make good his conquest of the near part of Russia or just to murder all the Jews is a matter of debate, but it's generally considered a bigger act of folly than Napoleon's, because the danger to soldiers of being sent into frigid conditions without the right clothing was already known of by then.
This came to mind when hearing about the ordeal a friend with ME in West Sussex is having trying to get treatment for a tooth abscess of some sort which has been causing her serious pain for the past few weeks. They have given her medication to fight the infection, but from what I hear, as soon as she finished the course, the pain came back. They have told her they will not operate on it until January, which is obviously quite unacceptable as she will be in considerable pain in the meanwhile, in addition to the pain and other symptoms the severe ME already causes her. She is bedbound and tube-fed after a major relapse four years ago. The damage to her teeth may, incidentally, be related to sugar-heavy prescription drinks she had to live on in the early stages of her relapse as she was able to chew and swallow solid food, before her swallowing became much weaker and she came to require tube feeding. The problems with her teeth are therefore iatrogenic, so it ought to be up the doctors to sort them out as quick as possible. Since these problems with her teeth started, her activities online have become somewhat sparser, so it's reasonable to assume her ME has got worse, which is understandable as pain is a stressor that can worsen ME (while ME itself can cause extreme pain), and has to be controlled, or its causes dealt with promptly.
Now, a few miles up the road from my friend, there used to live a lady with severe ME called Sophia. And a few more miles up the road there was a lady with severe ME called Lynn. Both of them are dead now, one of them because her mistreatment caused a catastrophic relapse when she had been getting better, the other because years of lying in terrible pain and enduring repeated, traumatic medical crises worsened by medical negligence, perverse disbelief and callous treatment led to her deciding she wanted to die, and ultimately taking her own life. Sophia and Lynn lived in different parts of Sussex to my friend (and to each other), and none of the staff who treated them are dealing with my friend, but surely everyone heard about their stories (especially Lynn's) on the news. In fact, ITV Meridian have covered ME quite a lot beyond these two stories.
The doctors treating my friend must have some idea of what they are dealing with. There have already been two well-publicised disasters involving women with very severe ME in less than ten years. They can surely learn to treat an ME patient decently without waiting for yet another serious tragedy. To send yet another sufferer out into the cold would be not only to make serious mistake, but to make the same serious mistake that someone else made with the full knowledge that it is a serious mistake. Which would, actually, be rather worse than a serious mistake. It would be a crime.
A century and a half later, Hitler tries the same thing, and although Germany is further east and its eastern parts (especially then, when they ruled parts of what are now Poland) have a continental climate with cold winters, they were still no match for the Russian winter. Whether Hitler intended to make good his conquest of the near part of Russia or just to murder all the Jews is a matter of debate, but it's generally considered a bigger act of folly than Napoleon's, because the danger to soldiers of being sent into frigid conditions without the right clothing was already known of by then.
This came to mind when hearing about the ordeal a friend with ME in West Sussex is having trying to get treatment for a tooth abscess of some sort which has been causing her serious pain for the past few weeks. They have given her medication to fight the infection, but from what I hear, as soon as she finished the course, the pain came back. They have told her they will not operate on it until January, which is obviously quite unacceptable as she will be in considerable pain in the meanwhile, in addition to the pain and other symptoms the severe ME already causes her. She is bedbound and tube-fed after a major relapse four years ago. The damage to her teeth may, incidentally, be related to sugar-heavy prescription drinks she had to live on in the early stages of her relapse as she was able to chew and swallow solid food, before her swallowing became much weaker and she came to require tube feeding. The problems with her teeth are therefore iatrogenic, so it ought to be up the doctors to sort them out as quick as possible. Since these problems with her teeth started, her activities online have become somewhat sparser, so it's reasonable to assume her ME has got worse, which is understandable as pain is a stressor that can worsen ME (while ME itself can cause extreme pain), and has to be controlled, or its causes dealt with promptly.
Now, a few miles up the road from my friend, there used to live a lady with severe ME called Sophia. And a few more miles up the road there was a lady with severe ME called Lynn. Both of them are dead now, one of them because her mistreatment caused a catastrophic relapse when she had been getting better, the other because years of lying in terrible pain and enduring repeated, traumatic medical crises worsened by medical negligence, perverse disbelief and callous treatment led to her deciding she wanted to die, and ultimately taking her own life. Sophia and Lynn lived in different parts of Sussex to my friend (and to each other), and none of the staff who treated them are dealing with my friend, but surely everyone heard about their stories (especially Lynn's) on the news. In fact, ITV Meridian have covered ME quite a lot beyond these two stories.
The doctors treating my friend must have some idea of what they are dealing with. There have already been two well-publicised disasters involving women with very severe ME in less than ten years. They can surely learn to treat an ME patient decently without waiting for yet another serious tragedy. To send yet another sufferer out into the cold would be not only to make serious mistake, but to make the same serious mistake that someone else made with the full knowledge that it is a serious mistake. Which would, actually, be rather worse than a serious mistake. It would be a crime.
