Merged Arday life and death

[SpuriusMaximus]

Lemmy literally had tumours hanging around the back of his neck. They were benign but he had them cut out now and again but never got rid of them completely. We are not medics so how do you know Arday lied about his conditions?

Ha ha ha, NO. Just no. A benign skin tumour like a lipoma or keratoma is NOTHING like a glioma. I had a lipoma and got operated for it. It was just an inconvenience. ANY type of GLIOMA is NOT benign. In fact, as I just said, it includes some of the most aggressive types of cancer know to man, all the way to grade 4. (Grade 4: better start practising yoga real quick so you can kiss your ass goodbye in time.)

And here's a 'fun' thing about things growing in your brain (tumour or haematoma or whatever): the brain is enclosed in a rigid fixed-volume skull. Anything growing inside causes pressure, which can get as bad as eventually pushing your actual brain through your eye sockets like toothpaste. It's a medical emergency, not something you can just endure by force of will.

 

[Rolfe]

It wouldn't be a lipoma or a keratoma. I've forgotten the name, but there is a type of benign fibroid or polyp type tumour which grows subcutaneously and has to be repeatedly removed. It might be congenital. Somebody help me out here! The condition has absolutely nothing to do with testicular cancer, or with any sort of brain tumour. (He can't have had a glioblastoma, it would have killed him.)

Arday's multiple claims of serious medical incidents are perhaps the most wild of the lot. Any one of these things would be life-defining, probably life-changing for a person, but he claims to have breezed through about half a dozen separate things.

 

[ahhell]

Lemmy literally had tumours hanging around the back of his neck. They were benign but he had them cut out now and again but never got rid of them completely. We are not medics so how do you know Arday lied about his conditions?

I don't but given the rest of his lies, it's seems far more likely than not. If my neighbor I don't know very well tells me they have cancer, I'd likely believe them without evidence. If Arday said the sky was clear that day, I'd check before leaving the house without a rain jacket.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

It wouldn't be a lipoma or a keratoma. I've forgotten the name, but there is a type of benign fibroid or polyp type tumour which grows subcutaneously and has to be repeatedly removed. It might be congenital. Somebody help me out here! The condition has absolutely nothing to do with testicular cancer, or with any sort of brain tumour. (He can't have had a glioblastoma, it would have killed him.)

Arday's multiple claims of serious medical incidents are perhaps the most wild of the lot. Any one of these things would be life-defining, probably life-changing for a person, but he claims to have breezed through about half a dozen separate things.

Fibroma?

 

[Matthew Best]

ETA: That wasn't the car crash incident, that was caused by a racial attack from some youths. Arday pleaded with the police not to prosecute them (from within his locked-in syndrome, we may assume), and they were so grateful they became reformed characters.

One of them even asked Arday to be godfather to his child! I'm sure that child will be making himself known any day now.

 

[Rolfe]

Fibroma?

Yes, I think so.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just to add: what does lock-in syndrome actually mean? Well, it actually means that the ventral pons (part of the brainstem) got damaged to the point of the brain, save the autonomous functions like breathing or heartbeat, being basically severed from the rest of the body. The patient is fully paralysed otherwise, but MIGHT (but often doesn't) keep being able to move their eyes (those thick nerve bundles go straight to the brain,) and otherwise retains full use of the rest of their brain.

Full recovery is EXTREMELY rare, and takes a VERY long time. As in MANY YEARS. It usually begins (and usually ends) with learning to blink morse code in front of a camera, or moving their eyeball left for a dot and right for a dash. (If you want to see a graphic and depressing but medically accurate illustration of this, look up Metallica's "One" video on YT, where the guy just uses his military training to repeatedly blink, "KILL ME!" in morse code.)

As usual, my medical knowledge is very probably subpar, so someone more clued in (like @Rolfe) please help a bro out, even if it means setting him straight.

 

[Rolfe]

You're pretty much right. You might read a book called "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" written (by blinking code) by a French journalist who developed the syndrome after a stroke. He never regained movement and died a few years later.

It's difficult to imagine what this story is based on. Was he semi-conscious at one point and heard people talking? About switching off life support??

And on the face of it this (caused by a racist attack) is a different episode in his life from the one (caused by a car crash) when he had to learn how to walk and talk again, and different again from the one where he had a brain tumour removed just a fortnight before his PhD viva, which led to a stroke, which led to his forgetting everything that was in the thesis but he didn't ask for a postponement and passed anyway.

Why wouldn't you believe him?

 

[theprestige]

@Vixen, what's your take on the story of the guys who beat Arday into a seizure, but he pleaded with the courts to not punish them, and later they took a class from him, and one of them asked him to be the godfather of their child?

Do you think that happened?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

@Rolfe
Oh, patients with lock-in syndrome are AFAIK fully aware (if it's ONLY lock-in.) Not partially, but fully, which is the scariest part. You're fully aware, but locked inside your own brain. Hence the name. Nothing else is damaged except the link to the rest of their body, other than eyes and hearing (which bypass the ventral pons and go straight to the brain.) He would AFAIK be definitely be able to hear that. (But again YOU are the medical expert, please set me straight if I'm wrong.)

But how would he even tell them not to? If he could communicate in morse code (obviously well enough to dictate a statement to the DA,) he wouldn't even be in that predicament.

But yeah, who on Earth wouldn't just believe Arday, amirite?

 

[Rolfe]

I'm wondering what (if anything) he might have experienced that grew into the "locked-in" story. You're right about the syndrome. Eye and eyelid movement is the lot.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'm wondering what (if anything) he might have experienced that grew into the "locked-in" story. You're right about the syndrome. Eye and eyelid movement is the lot.

Nothing from my experience is even close, except maybe dreaming and being unable to control it. Kinda rare, tho, since I tend to lucid dream, so if I realise I'm railroaded (among other criteria) I tend to go lucid and soon wake up. So I dunno about other people's dreams.

(Fun trivia, other people tend to report that other people in dreams get incredibly scary when they're told they're dream characters. Mine just go "of course" and often even "what else did you even think this was?")

 

[Pixel42]

Nothing from my experience is even close

The episodes of sleep paralysis I had in my 20s were frightening enough, and those only lasted a few minutes.

 

[Emily's Cat]

They ruled it was honest error. Accept the finding.

They ruled that OJ Simpson was not guilty of murder. Accept the ruling.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Interesting story in ILTA-SANOMAT of 36-year-old Rauli, whose epileptic seizure turned out to be caused by a brain tumour (-glioma) which was treated by removal. (It's in Finnish but you can click 'translate to English'.)

Rauli, 36, luuli tapelleensa yöllä – Totuus oli paljon pahempi https://share.google/xDn4xeHLzsq2jBM5K



So it's not such a tall story that Arday's brain tumour was similar.

The hacks have no access to his medical records. It would be illegal. It is utterly irresponsible of them to claim he faked his medical symptoms.

Just FYI, having a seizure due to a brain tumor is NOT an epileptic seizure. It's a seizure, sure, but not an epileptic seizure. I don't know what the appropriate term for a tumor-induced seizure would be, but I know it wouldn't be referred to as epileptic, they'd be identified as Non-Epileptic Seizures (NES).

 

[Emily's Cat]

How on earth is that supposed to be relevant?? I've gone to college and uni with up to several people with dyslexia, none of them ever had any problems citing sources. Do you even know what dyslexia is (as manifested in geopositioned exams at 1 psi atmospheric pressure, with line of sight to the Moon)?

I mean... Arday was an epileptic, dyslexic, autistic, non-verbal-to-age11, non-reading-to-age-18, brain-tumored coma patient with locked in syndrome that cleared up just before their thesis!

Why would anyone question that perfectly plausible collection of things all happening to the same person?

Is it possible? Sure, it's possible. Is it likely? That's a whole different question, now isn't it?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Lemmy of Hawkwind/Mötörhead was covered in tumours naturally. Lots of boys have problems with a testicle; it's not uncommon. If Arday had a glioma in his cortex or epilepsy proper - even childhood epilepsy that is grown out of - it is not that uncommon. In addition, as the ghostwriter for Prince Harry said, memoirs aren't necessarily factually correct, just someone's lived memory, so whether or not Willy had one more sausage for breakfast than Harold, or whether Harry really killed X no. of Taliban, is all a moot point and apparently acceptable in memoir writing.

Relatively little juvenile epilepsy is "grown out of". Most becomes well controlled around the end of puberty, but most forms of epilepsy don't just magically resolve themselves.

 

[Rolfe]

I mean... Arday was an epileptic, dyslexic, autistic, non-verbal-to-age11, non-reading-to-age-18, brain-tumored coma patient with locked in syndrome that cleared up just before their thesis!

Why would anyone question that perfectly plausible collection of things all happening to the same person?

Is it possible? Sure, it's possible. Is it likely? That's a whole different question, now isn't it?

Is it possible (add in all the marathon running and professional football and snooker playing, why not?) and that individual still manages to get his intellectual act together to secure a professorial chair at Cambridge?

 

[Emily's Cat]

He must have put it out of mind...

Maybe that memory was stored in the scrotal brain tumor?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Lemmy literally had tumours hanging around the back of his neck. They were benign but he had them cut out now and again but never got rid of them completely. We are not medics so how do you know Arday lied about his conditions?

What are you on about? Lemmy had an extremely aggressive metastatic testicular tumor that cause their death. They died just a few days after the diagnosis came in, and with only a short period of time from when the first symptoms (speech issues) get them into the doctor to be evaluated.