Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his adrenal condition

Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by unityByFreedom on Saturday July 27, 2019 @08:48AM (#20541790)

This is an incredible story. His mom had the same undiagnosed, unfixable problem. The gist is,

> If he could cut out the medullas of his adrenal glands -- sort of like slicing into a hard-boiled egg and removing the yolk -- his health would improve.

> Eventually he recruited a surgeon from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. In September 2010 Lindsday went to the university hospital, where the doctor successfully extracted one of his adrenal medullas.

> Three weeks after the procedure, Lindsay could sit upright for three hours. By Christmas Eve, he had the strength to walk a mile to church.

> But progress was slow. In 2012, he underwent a second surgery at Washington University in St. Louis to remove the medulla from his remaining adrenal gland.

> A year later, he was well enough to fly with friends to the Bahamas. It was the first time in his life the Midwesterner had seen the ocean.

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by ricardobeat on Saturday July 27, 2019 @08:56AM (#20541827)

I understand the urge to summarize, but maybe interested HN users can be expected to read the article before coming to the comments? This seriously degrades the quality of discussion.

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by alexandercrohde on Saturday July 27, 2019 @09:14AM (#20541891)

It's fine to bemoan people commenting who haven't read the article, but reading the comments first to gauge if the article is clickbait/whatever is a perfectly valid use-case.

I also cherish summaries like these - if I read the whole article I won't remember more than 2 sentences of it tomorrow. That distillation process is inevitable and good. It's a service to do it well for those who are time/memory-limited.

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by unityByFreedom on Sunday July 28, 2019 @08:20AM (#20547149)

Thanks! At the time I wrote this, the majority of comments were focused on criticizing the headline [1], and there was little discussion of the article itself.

Now I see there are many comments about the content of the article. I don't know if the summary caused more people to read it or not. I wanted to encourage more readership and on-topic discussion.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20541644

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by amundsentb on Saturday July 27, 2019 @09:04AM (#20541854)

I am often more interested in the comments here than the content of the article so I am happy with the summary.

I can often understand what the article is about and go to the comment section for pros and cons

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by ricardobeat on Saturday July 27, 2019 @10:13AM (#20542117)

For reading, maybe, but it's a lot harder to contribute something meaningful if you don't know the context to start with.

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by pmelendez on Saturday July 27, 2019 @09:00AM (#20541837)

There is a popular trend where people will read the comments first and depending on the discussion they move to read the article

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Re:Bedridden for 11 years, he discovered a surgery for his a... by gshdg on Saturday July 27, 2019 @11:27AM (#20542433)

I’d call it a tactic, not a trend. It’s been around since the advent of halfway decent comment sections.

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