#which then leads to people trying to 'cure' us because if it can be pathologized surely it can be eradicated right?

[2ofswords]

Since I am so tired of reading „I know Dankovsky sucks and his ending is horrible“, before every comment that defends him, I will now throw myself into the fires of discourse and write an essay about:

Why The P1 Utopian ending does not mean Danko is an asshole

(A bit of swearing and a lot of spoilers under the cut)

Since I already spoke about being tired of disclaiming a lot, here are some of them. Firstly: This is NOT a comparison and I am definitely not saying, that his ending is better than the ending of the Haruspex or the Changeling. That would be ridiculous and I wholeheartedly belief that the other characters have morally better endings. (Though I will make one ending comparison at the end of this essay just to make myself even more of a hypocrite and there will be a comparison of one aspect of all three P1 endings, that is not made to compare their general quality but… well… this specific aspect of the ending.)

Also this essay isn‘t about Dankovsky not being an asshole. This is not a character analysis, I am only talking about the ending and his relationship regarding his path towards it. There are entirely different arguments to be made about his character that I will not talk about. Surprisingly a character is not only defined by the outcome of their story.

And last but not least the weirdest disclaimer of them all: While my arguments try to defend Dankovsky in his ending I totally understand if you still think his ending makes him more of an asshole. Killing a lot of people is always a dick move and the decision is still a horrible one. I do not really want to argue that people are wrong for judging him based of his ending. I just want to explain, why we also do not have to feel ashamed for deciding to not judge him as a complete asshole based on the main outcome of his route and why his motivation isn’t only based on spite or even ruthless calculation. Also, I think that there is a lot to say about his decision, that isn’t really said and that these are interesting aspects. Sorry to say it, but I just wanted to have a catchy title. I just really love this ending and it’s complexity and wanted to discuss it aside of calling it the evil Danko ending.

So. Let’s start with the easy argument that some people are talking about.

Argument 1: Danko completely lost it and holding him accountable due to his rationality defies the point of his route.

This one is… one of the weaker arguments, but I will still elaborate on it. The entirety of his route is built upon loss and failure. While the Haruspex starts with a mob that wants to kill him and works his way up, the dynamic of his route is him seemingly starting on top of everything and slowly loosing his bearings and by the end of the story this man is already driven to madness. Being used as a pawn in politics, getting daily “fuck you”-letters from the Powers that Be, realizing your lives work is already destroyed and all of your colleagues are probably as doomed (and being the one responsible because he was their leader), realizing that Aglaya – who was the one person who seemed to be his ally at the end – used and betrayed him just like everyone else, having the one truly honestly kind person commit suicide at least partly because of his failures, witnessing his own helplessness against the plague (an enemy that should align with his expertise as a doctor), being hated from day one by almost everybody in town, realizing that the political allies are totally bonkers and also preparing to off themselves (Victor! You seemed moderately sane at the beginning. The betrayal!), getting almost beaten to death while trying to help the town while spending all these days in an hostile place that slips into chaos… yeah I think you really aren’t in the headspace for rational thought. It is a miracle that that guy hasn’t completely broken down and day eleven and to some extend day 9 and 10 are showing him as completely unhinged already, only leading up to a decision, that isn’t really made out of spite or coldness but rather desperation and blind tunnel vision. The day eleven mission involves him going on a rampage against a military squad because of a vague hint and he only checks after the killings, if Andrew is even there. That isn’t a calculated action it’s about a man being completely shattered and making everybody suffer because of that. (Which is also horrible, but an entirely different sort of tragedy.) By now he just shouldn’t be the one handling the situation at all but the local powers sure want to wash their hand of any guilt that they haven’t already attracted. Also – and more importantly – the Polyhedron literally is the one good thing happening to this man. After going into it on day 9 he thanks Khan for reminding him of a childhood he has forgotten! He has a shit week, he is completely beaten down (quite literally) and this is the one happy moment he finds in all this chaos. Clinging onto that is surely not rational, but it is human. We all know that the Bachelor has the tendency to survive on willpower alone and here clinging to the tower and its miracles is literally his only motivation to continue his route at all. Of course he is going to protect it at that point, if thinking about any other option bring nothing but utter misery and the acceptance of complete and utter failure. After all Dankovskys route is about the limits of his rational worldview and how it hinders him more that it serves him in a world, that isn’t defined by rational beliefs. Of course he will be out of it by the end and actually loosing his composure is an important part of his suffering and character development in the story. His ending is not a sign of rational thought but the last consequence of being enraptured in a web of circumstances that forbid him from making rational decisions in the first place.

Truth to be told, I don’t really like this as an argument. I love this thought as a peace of characterization. As much as I love his ending and the horrible consequences and the actual failure it imposes, when we look at the other playable characters. But it doesn’t really help us here. It doesn’t change the fact, that Dankovsky destroyed an entire town just for a dream, a man-made building, a promise of utopia that we never witness ourselves. He still destroyed so… so much! But… let’s look a bit deeper into the motivations behind that exchange.

Argument 2: The Trolley problem

“There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?” (Wikipedia)

There is a variation to this question and interestingly enough it is one of the morality questions Aglaya asks in Pathologic 2: Would you push a man down a bridge, to save the children from a train? The curious thing is, that we can see all healers giving the same answer, (even if we have the choice to choose differently, since it is… you know… a dilemma). Necessary sacrifice is a constant of all three routes and every single protagonist has to kill in order to save a larger amount of people. Still, the game never answers moral choices with a simple answer and here with the Utopian ending we can see the darker side of this moral dilemma in full force (to a lesser extend this also applies to the Humble ending, since it also involves the Trolley problem, albeit on a smaller scale.) If we take the Kain’s studies about the focus and the soul seriously and see the Polyhedron as a method to ensure immortality seriously – or if we at least assume that Dankovsky wholeheartedly believes in that concept – than protecting the Polyhedron at the cost of the town suddenly becomes the Trolley problem at a significantly larger scale. The Polyhedron could ensure the survival of humankind but only at the expense of the town and it’s infected inhabitants. After all death is to Dankovsky but an affliction that can be healed just like the plague and consumes far more victims (if not all of them even if one would survive the disease). And that poses the question: When does the Trolley Dilemma stop working? What if there are two million people on the tracks and one million on the other side? What if there are hundred people on one and ninety nine on the other? What about five million vs. four million and nine hundred thousand? Can a human life be counted against the life of several others? If we look at the game itself and the healers answer in their daily life, it seems kind of simple: Yes, it is possible. The effort of saving is worth dirtying your hands after all. Risking at least your own life seems like a fair deal and no route really works without at least some degree of human sacrifice. But on this larger scale… it seems absurd. And… well… it is. But still. If we just try to empathise with the Bachelors mindset. If there is a possibility to cure humanity’s mortality… if there is a sliver of possibility (and since Thanatica is destroyed the Polyhedron seems like the only possibility at this point)… what kind of sacrifice is worth preserving it?

I myself have my own answer to that question. In Germany the Constitution starts with the sentence “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” or: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” (This is the official translation though a more direct translation would be “Human dignity is inviolable” which is more of a statement and less of a law) Even if the effect of that sentence in politics is very debatable and it is incredibly vague and not really a usable sentence as a law… I really like it. The human rights as a concept as well as equality can be concluded from the fact, that human dignity is something that cannot – under any circumstance – been taken away and is always a thing that must be considered just by being human. It is… nice. And it also means, that a human being cannot be seen as a mere object and has its own agency. A human being is not quantifiable in their existence by any parameter, be it birth, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, interests, talent, job, body, etc… It is incredibly important… and incredibly interesting in our scenario. Because if life isn’t quantifiable at any circumstance… the Trolley Dilemma has a solution. There is no way to tell, if one life can outweigh several others and deciding over their lives is something and judge over the worth of their live is something one should never do. Thus Dankovsky’s choice to save the Polyhedron and outweigh the lives of the infected seems morally wrong.

But… is that the answer the game has? Well… the artbook of Pathologic 2 states that the design of the game is about enforcing ambiguity and I would argue that the first instalment is no different. Firstly: In times of crisis lives become quantifiable. That is part of the tragedy. The healers’ lives are suddenly worth preserving, while others appear as nameless numbers in a daily statistic and caring about the individual dignity seems impossible. As already said the act of killing in order to preserve life is almost mandatory in every single run. So, what about human dignity? Can it even be preserved under such a dilemma? (And there is probably a point to be made about everybody being dolls and thus not even a being with dignity and agency at all… but I digress) Especially doctors have to face this dilemma and they have to make these judgement calls, weather they like it or not. The game doesn’t answer it but makes different variations of the same dilemma that we may judge differently. The Utopian ending is one variation.

What I want to say is, that – if we take the Kains’ believes seriously and see the survival of miracles against the law of nature not only as progress but as a question about human mortality itself – the question if the Polyhedron is worth saving is a very different one. I personally think that the idea of the focus still feels too esoteric to be a real point of interest but on the other hand… it is not like we haven’t some proof when we visit Khan and listen to his testimony. It is not that this place is above it’s miracles, and we know that a lot of the mysticism is grounded in reality, be it by the very real ways of the Kin or the past existence of Simon. So only thinking of the polyhedron as an abstract concept is… well doing it a disservice if we take the other parts as serious. Yeah it is made out of it’s own idea but… you know being like “it cannot exist but it can sure puncture the earth and kill everything” is… a weird way of thinking and it sure is a McGuffin (and even called that in the Artbook) but as we said, the game is about ambiguity and the only way to look at its existence is not only “evil tower of doom”. Is it worth keeping? Eh… I wouldn’t say so myself. I still think the Utopian ending is pretty shit and seeing the tower as salvation for our mortal lives is pretty farfetched. But the question for this essay is: Is it wrong to think, it is worth keeping? And from Dankovsky’s perspective, who sees it as the only possible chance of curing human mortality… Well… the answer at least isn’t as simple anymore. But – and now we are getting somewhere – the argument about the complexity of human value can be also made without even relying on Kain-Bullshit.

Argument 3: The Utopian Ending is the only ending, that completely gets rid of the plague (at least from Dankos point of view)

But wait you say, the other endings also defeat the plague! There even is a cure, something our beloved Bachelor of Medicine never archives. What is this lunacy?

Well here is the catch: A cure does not destroy its disease. Or at least it is an unreliable method. Sure, if everyone is cured and/or the disease helps to build antibodies, then it does help to get rid of it. But the sandpest seems to leave the bodies and not finding these remnants and antibodies is one essential part of the Bachelor’s route. It is the reason Rubin needs a living heart in the first place. The disease doesn’t seem to stay and no antibodies seem to be developed. (And even if I try to avoid material of Pathologic 2 in this analysis since there are differences in the Canon I still at least want to mention, that the Panacea as well as the shmowder do indeed not help against the disease after it is cured and a person can be reinfected. I do not know, if the same is the case in one and if you can test it out.) But if there are no antibodies, the cure could only eradicate the disease if every single infected person is cured at the same time. Good luck with that! That’s not bound to be a complete mess in this town!

This is backed up on day 12 in the Bachelor’s own route. When he is presented with the options the other healers have, he always asks both of them the same question: How does that ensure the future of the town? The Haruspex makes a cure yes. But what if the disease returns? After all the underground water he talks about still exists and there is no telling, if it will ever reemerge. It already happened once… The Haruspex doesn’t answer with “no, that will never happen”. He says that they will have enough cure if this is the case. An optimist, I see. And definitely not a satisfying answer if we consider a scientific perspective. What if the cure runs out? What if they find out too late and the plague spreads outside of town? A cure is not a waterproof system against plague. (You know what works better though? A vaccine.) Daniil’s mission was always to eradicate the disease and this would not do the trick. Having only a cure is risky. And it might not be a permanent solution.

The same applies for the Humble ending. If one asks the Changeling what would happen if the blood of their sacrifice runs out she answers “There will always be people willing to sacrifice themselves” Which is… just great. Constant human sacrifice just doesn’t seem that sustainable. And it also means that there will be constant loss of human life. Something that might even lead to more sacrifice in the long run (although that would be a reaaaaly long run considering how long the sacrifice of the Clara’s bound is supposed to last.) But it sure as hell doesn’t make the plague disappear. What if there are no willing sacrifices? What if Clara is gone and there is no one to perform a miracle? Clara’s ending relies on faith by nature and putting your trust in it is easy from a player’s perspective but even harder when there are lives at stake, the success unsure and these questions to consider.

Dankovsky’s ending is built upon uprooting the plague and eradicating it. The problem is that it is everywhere and not easily destroyed. As Lara very adequately realised: There is no source. His ending is the consequence of that goal and even if it loses in every other aspect, this is the one, where it wins. It actually destroys the problem itself. Building a new town and keeping the tower it cannot reach, actively minimalizes the possibility of the plague reappearing. And a more permanent solution might save more lives than one that sounds more humane at the beginning.

Okay, to defend the Haruspex for a change of pace: In his route he actually does believe that his method eradicates the disease as much as Dankovsky is convinced that his solution does the trick. For him the source is the Polyhedron and the way, it wounds the earth. With it removed the plague will not reappear. But why should Dankovsky share this belief? No one tells him! The inquisitor says that the Polyhedron is the root of evil but there never is any actual proof for that. Even If the Polyhedron is partially responsible and Danko actually does acknowledge this, it is the bloody mess of underground fluids that are in fact the source (which is ironically confirmed by the Haruspex himself). As he tells the inquisitor herself at the last day: The source and the cause can be too different things. It already seeped through Andrey’s spiral to the upper layers. The damage has already been done and in fact the Polyhedron is now the only save place, where nobody is infected. Everything else needs to be destroyed to eradicate the disease but why even destroy the Polyhedron? Wait. Why even destroy the Polyhedron? What good would that even do if we would consider it? What the fuck would Dankovsky even do with the destroyed Polyhedron, how would that save the town?

Argument 4: Dankos ending isn’t about the town vs. the polyhedron at all!(From his perspective. It totally is for the player though!)

I experienced something weird while playing the Bachelor’s route in P1. And with that I mean that I experienced something weird, that I wasn’t already expecting. After hearing so much about the fabled Polyhedron love, assuming that he sacrifices the whole town for its sake and hearing from the inquisitor in Pathologic 2 again and again how obsessed he is, I waited for the revelation. The moment Dankovsky would completely lose it and become utterly and undeniably obsessed with the children’s tower. That moment… never happened. Or well… it happened remarkably late and with less impact than I thought. Until day 9 the tower isn’t even a point of interest to the Bachelor, which is two thirds of his route. But even after you witness the miracles of the Polyhedron yourself, you still can argue against its glory. You can agree with Aglaya on day 10, that it seems dangerous (even if that could also be tactics, but until this point there is not really a reason for that). Hell, you can tell Peter on day 12, that his ideas will always only exist in his mind and blueprints and that the new town they will create will not work out! That is so weird, if the result of his run is, that he sacrifices the town for the Polyhedron! Why is there always an option to speak against the miracle we want to save? Isn’t that completely strange?

If we take the town vs. polyhedron conflict serious then… yeah it is. But is this all, what his end can be about? I would argue against it. Because what finally tips him to his solution and completes his view on the map of the town isn’t the Polyhedrons glory: It is the towns underground water and the Haruspex telling him, that the deeper layers are infected. That is, when he flips his shit and he even has an “oh no, it can’t be!” moment. Weird, isn’t it? If he would be set about destroying the town, why agonizing over this information? But from his point of view it is a nail in the coffin, the realization, that the whole towns ground is seeping with infection and if not eradicated, it will reappear. The Bachelor doesn’t have a cure and the Haruspex, while promising that he has a solution, sure as hell doesn’t explain how that would work and insists on arguing his own case without interference. (Which is completely understandable but doesn’t clear the situation.) The Bachelor has no means on his own to fight the plague outside of destroying the town. This is his only option to call of the bombardment of the Polyhedron and the tower and from his point of view, destroying the tower would archive absolutely nothing. It is free of infection, why destroy it? What would ripping it out do aside from letting even more blood seep out? In his own case, this would be completely useless, thus destroying the Polyhedron does not save the town! When the Bachelor flips the switch and guides the trolley in a different direction, he isn’t guiding it from hitting the Polyhedron to hitting the town. He guides the trolley from hitting the town and the polyhedron to only hitting the town! And by the way to only hit the town which his infected people while everybody else evacuates in the tower. (Which is confirmed by his ending cutscene, where people are actually present. After all it takes the healthy to built the new town). In his own mind, the Bachelor is saving people, not killing them! He does what he can so that the most of them survives and in his case, destroying the town is the only method to ensure victory at all.

If we stick to his own route – as I am doing right now – we have two counterarguments against this theory. The first one: But isn’t that only the failure of finding a better method? And: yes it is. As we already discussed in the first argument, the Bachelors story is about failure and the game itself is about necessary sacrifice, lose-lose situations and making the best out of a desperate hopeless scenario. Which leaves us with the question: Could Dankovsky have found a better solution? And… maybe. If he was more attentive, made different choices, would have been nicer to the Kin… There always are “ifs” but I would argue that the ones in this scenario are… pretty small odds for a change. He does genuinely try to inspect the abattoir and find a solution and ensure it’s safety and is almost punched to death as a result. The Kin regard him with absolute hostility, and for a good reason but it doesn’t help his case. Without Burakh’s knowledge and caste-rights making a cure would be (almost) impossible. He isn’t allowed to do any normal doctoring the one time, he tried to gain some blood from dead people, multiple guards had to die in order to ensure this absolute act of evil to go unnoticed. Thus he has to rely on Rubin’s secret lab. The possibility of Simon and his powers against the plague also aren’t usable… The Bachelor doesn’t even get to see his corpse after all. What choice does he have other than eradicating the cause itself? It’s definitely not the elegant solution that he was hoping for but there is a reason for him switching to inspect everything after ruling out a living plague carrier. These are the desperate means of finding a solution when his own knowledge of medicine has already failed him and the hopes of providing such medicine are already dwindling. Saving the town is simply not an option, the moment itself becomes the source of the plague.

The second counterargument is this one: Why not side with another healer, when they provide a better solution? And this is also a very valid argument. And thus, the moment it becomes an option, we as the Bachelor can choose to do so. If he has the cures that are necessary to ensure another healers victory, it is completely possible to avoid that ending. He doesn’t have to stick with it as well as the other healers do not have to, so judging him based on the other routes being better outcomes becomes obsolete. He has the ability to use these options, but if we lack the cures, his own solution is the only one. (Of course you can also save the other characters bound and then still decide to destroy the town, but using this scenario as his only motivation, when you can totally decide for yourself is a bit harsh, isn’t it?)

Of course, this argument collapses the moment we play any other route and he is trying to convince us to save the Polyhedron and abandon our own plans. However his own route can be considered his own perception of the story and our knowledge, how much he knows about the others paths is pretty limited and dependant of our choices as the player. Also, seeing his character and the changes made with that in mind, we can actually explain, why they appear. Of course, everybody tells Artemy how much the Bachelor is in love with the tower, when we’re not seeing it to that extreme in his route! It is necessary to fulfil his role in the Haruspex route. Of course, both the Bachelor and the Haruspex will appear as demons in Clara’s route. They do offer nothing but destruction from her point of view and both solutions seem destructive and spiteful, if they try to convince her. Everybody seems on board with seeing the characters in her route differently, but I think that the same applies to the Bachelor and the Haruspex in each other’s route, since their roles in the game changes. Or at least the perspective changes based on the others worldview. The Haruspex seems a lot more dangerous and his medicine a whole lot shadier, while the Bachelor seems to be more in love with the tower and ready to abandon everything for it, because it seems that way in comparison to the other persons knowledge of the situation. This is also backed up by the doll ending, where the Bachelor is being called out as the villain most of the time. In other routes he appears more villainous than in his own route, because we do actually have the means of comparison. But this is our perspective and not actual character motivation. We as the player do have the choice to work toward an ending. We can with our knowledge of the game go the extra mile to secure enough cures from the very beginning and help another healer. We are aware of the fact, that Clara and Artemy are other playable characters and we know from the very beginning that their beliefs have to be of value and their solutions will be backed up by their own routes. We know the opposition these characters stand in and while we see the different routes we may judge them for ourselves. And while Clara definitely knows and the other two healers show some sensibility towards this opposition (the “left hand, right hand”-quote comes to mind), at least the male healers are basing their decision upon their beliefs and not some outside point of view (while Clara watches and not-so-silently judges them). They even try to help each other and even provide the key insight to their own plan’s destruction (the Bachelor guides the inquisitor eyes to the Polyhedron and its structure, while Artemy outright tells Daniil of the underground infection). Of course they do not have the full picture! How could they, this entire game is about them not having it and making terrible mistakes! Dankovsky doesn’t have the ability to judge his own solution how the player does. And while judging his ending based on this information is completely valid and sensible, implying that he knows this detriment and still goes through with everything feels… a bit unfair to say the least. The conflict of the town vs. the polyhedron is an important debate in the game. And yes, Dankovsky’s role is being the advocate of the polyhedron, but man, this guy has the tendency to get manipulated into advocating random shit! The town vs. polyhedron debate is as present with him, as it is with the Haruspex. With the Polyhedron being the source in his route, he really has no choice but to remove it. After all, this guy really has no reason, to protect the Polyhedron. Of course he doesn’t! He would never sacrifice the town for the sake of his own ideology!

Argument 5: Let’s talk Nocturnal!

I promised one comparison, didn’t I? Still, we are now diving into abstract talk about the games’ themes and less about character motivation. Consider this more of a bonus and a different thought and less as an argument for Dankovsky himself. Comparing one ending to a different one does not make one of these characters more or less of an asshole. And comparing Pathologic 1 to Pathologic 2 obviously doesn’t tell us anything about the canon of either of those games, since they have vastly different results and we have no idea what the Bachelor’s endings will look like in Parhologic 2 (though I would be surprised if we couldn’t destroy the town and save the Polyhedron. But who knows, in Artemy’s case the army only pisses off.) Still, I think it is very interesting to talk about both of these endings side by side.

And I will begin this comparison by telling you that I love this ending! I am so happy that it exists and I think it is glorious and I think it’s existence is really important. I am so happy that Artemy has a reason to destroy the town. But is this okay? Or – as a comparison – is this a better idea than the one Dankovsky had?

I would argue that these endings have a lot in common. They both preserve their own ideals and establish a radically new order at the cost of the town itself. They both kill a shit ton of people for the miracles they have witnessed along the way. One could even argue that the Nocturnal ending is more horrifying. Firstly, more people die. While the Bachelor saves the uninfected, Artemy saves only those who “live with earths will” which seems to be like… the ten guys chilling in the abattoir and some of the kids. We know that there are only mere hundreds of people left of the kin and since everybody in the termitary doesn’t seem to count… who even gets saved? It’s at least as vague as the question who isn’t infected and can be saved at the Utopian end. But – more importantly – Artemy definitely has a choice in that matter and decides to sacrifice the town for the sake of the past. (If you’re not me. In my playthrough I got the courier note twenty minutes before 22:00 and the game was like “what are you going to do, such a hard choice” and I was like “I literally do not have the time to get this thing to town hall”. And then Aspity was like “you made your own conscious and completely willed decision” while Artemy just awkwardly stared at her…) But even disregarding that, the ending is surprisingly similar. Yet I see no one judging either the Haruspex or his ending for being overly cruel and well… killing a lot. Actually, I only read posts defending it and saying that it is as morally okay as the diurnal ending and could also count as a good end. And… I kind of agree. The sacrifice of the diurnal ending is pretty steep and destroying some species – while the worms, herb brides and albinos definitely show human qualities – is pretty fucked up as well and preserving them can seem worth the cost. (Oh my, do not say we arrived at the problem of human value again!) Still… It is destroying the town for its miracles. That is literally what this ending is about, yet our asshole sense does not tingle at all! Why is that?

I think there are two arguments for this difference between our outlook on the Nocturnal and the Utopian end. The first one is that the Kin and its culture is very endangered and protecting it just seems more morally sound than protecting some rich dudes. Which is very fair and the Kains are very fucked up. Buuuut, it isn’t like there is the termitary quest that preludes the diurnal ending. Finishing the game doesn’t exactly mean that we abandon the Kin. Part of its beliefs and culture, yes. Definitely, and as I said I still think the Diurnal and Nocturnal ending are pretty balanced. But a part of the Kin is assimilated and is coping and while protecting its culture and very real traditions is completely valid, the Nocturnal ending also destroys parts of the Kin (the Termitary part) as ill fitting for living with the earth…. So… hm… It’s not as easy as saying “but you help the Kin in one and some rich dudes in the other”, since the Kin itself are also torn and we are still only allowing a specific way of living. A specific worldview containing the miracles of the town… On the other hand, the polyhedron and its miracles can also be considered endangered and unique. It is a one of a kind structure as is the miracles it can provide. The Stamatins are pretty unable to reproduce it, as the game likes to tell us and destroying it would destroy all hopes of a one in a time event to come to life. Also there are talks about the Utopians being a faction of the entire town with one third of the population agreeing on their beliefs (as it is the case with the other ideologies). And the plans Peter and Maria make do sound interesting, dreamlike and… well unique. Something that can also only happen in this circumstance. But alas… we do not know that much about it and their word is only what we have. And this is the second aspect that makes the Nocturnal ending more relatable: Buildup. We witness first-hand what this Nocturnal world would be (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse), we know the beings and the miracles of the earth. We do not really get in touch which the utopian ideas and only have the rambling of good old Georgji which… yeah that doesn’t help their case! But there are kids calling this new town an “eternal adventure” a miracle that can come to live and I would say, that this thought is quite beautiful. And it certainly is unique, which is the main argument of the Nocturnal ending. Wonders, plague and miracles. Destroy one and the other will vanish. So… what is worth keeping a miracle? The answer now seems even harder to grasp. Maybe even impossible.

But we also do not have every puzzle peace. I still have hope for the two different routes and with them there are the possibilities of new realizations and also new endings. I myself am really curious if we either get an option to save the town or a reason to destroy the Polyhedron as the Bachelor. (And I am very curious as well, if Clara will get a second ending. What would that even be? An all destruction ending to set everyone free???) There also could be more elaboration on the Polyhedron and its inner workings. Maybe we will even understand what the Kains are talking about! There are some allusions to a more concrete Kain worldview. The nut-game while very disturbing makes the entrapment of the soul way more real and gives the focus some context. (It also doesn’t only connect it with the polyhedron since “anything can be a focus. A polyhedron, a room, a nut”.) The same applies to the clocks and their connection to the save system, which makes the miracles of the Kains way more real. And I digress. Only time will tell.

Conclusion:

I think it is clear by now, that this way too long text isn’t really about giving answers and more about perspective. I myself would say that the Bachelor’s choice is terribly misguided most of the time and the only possible method to save anything at best. But I do not think that it is made with its destructive force in mind. What I wanted to show is, that the motives and the narratives surrounding this ending are way more complex and also really, really interesting. (I just wanted to gush about this game!) As are the characters that comment on the situation at hand. And reflecting on how we judge them can say a lot about our own view and the world (this one as well as the Town on Gorkhon).

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #repost because the first didnt show up as a search result

[atissi]

What advice would you give someone who wants to play Pathologic but is also terrified of screwing up really badly because I've played just enough of it to feel like there's no way I can succeed without looking stuff up but I don't want to do that! Just basic tips and/or reassurances if you have any?

Updated: Feb. 27 2021 (since I've finished and am replaying P2)

See, the thing about Pathologic is that it’s not possible to “succeed” like you do in other video games. There’s no happy ending for everyone. In the same sense, you can’t really fail. The game accommodates a wide variety of deaths and mistakes—even in Pathologic Classic HD, you can get a character's ending if you hoard enough medicine by the end of the 12 days, no matter how many people get sick or die. In Pathologic 2, everyone can die, but you’ll still be able to get an ending. Even some of the "bad" endings are fun in their own right. Sometimes, the game will reward you with more content because you failed in the first place.

All that being said, I totally relate to your fears. I’ll start by talking about Pathologic 2 first, since I’m more familiar with it. Then there will be some tips on playing Pathologic Classic HD.

Pathologic 2 is incredibly punishing, both emotionally and mechanically. I’ve seen people adapt to this through 3 different playstyles. I’ll rank them in terms of “least close to the intended gaming experience” to “most close”.

1. Just cheat.

“wrt cheating, as a notorious cheater, id recommend trying to do the game as legitimately as possible regardless! if there are some aspects that you absolutely do not vibe with, even with reduced difficulty (for me that's hunger mechanics), i would say that you can load in items to mitigate this aspect. and, tying in with the second point, if you complete a run this way you can always go back and try it legitimately since you've (sort of) gotten an understanding of the mechanic.” - Onion

If you have really bad anxiety, or just dont have the time available to do the other playstyles, cheating is a way to engage with Pathologic 2′s excellent story. Fiddling with the difficulty controls is allowed. Spawning in endless food for yourself is possible. I can even get you in touch with someone who uses cheat codes in the game regularly to get game assets. If changing the game is what it takes for you to get through it, I think it’s better than nothing. But I’d personally at least encourage you to try an Imago playthrough first. Decide if it’s too difficult for you after that. And again: Pathologic 2 is constantly trying to trip you up. It’s meant to be difficult. Sometimes you’ll fail and the game won’t tell you if you could have prevented it. Just keep going. But like Onion said, cheating works as a supplement.

2. Replay, replay, and replay, until you get it right.

“You can always replay. You have more time than they do. Also save states are your friend.” - Alex

“reload as much as possible, do NOT look things up. your first playthru WILL be bad, and thats good!!! experience it fully yourself first. [and] “reload as much as possible” meaning like: [it] isnt a crime, you can do it as many times as possible. but dont get stressed about doing everything perfectly. its an experience!!!” - Zee

There’s no penalty for using your save states. If you get stuck in a death loop, go back as far as you need to in order to get things right. Hopefully this means starting a day over and using your time more effectively. Personally, I got to Day 7 before realizing I had to restart from Day 1, because I was doing that badly. Trust me, if you’ve gotten one miracle cure and 10 bottles of water by then, you’ll be doing better than I was. My friend Bee had trouble too, and took 92 hours to finish their first playthrough. A replay playstyle takes a LOT of time. But Pathologic 2 is so rich in content that replaying isn’t even as annoying as it could be. And this is also the best way to complete as many quests and save as many people as you want. Whenever you’re scared, just remember: you can always go back on your choices! (Other than the theatre’s death penalties. But nothing can help you with those.)

3. Just go through it.

Again. You’re not supposed to succeed in Pathologic. In the words of the lead translator Kevin Snow, “…I know [Pathologic 2’s] script and this is different from other games: there’s so much story locked behind failure and death. You’ll die, and you can’t save everyone. That doesn’t gate you from story; it gives you more. Resist, survive, but continue.” It’s only when you’re suffering that you experience the story so viscerally. That’s when the choices mean something. Sacrificing your own health or the health of others–saving tinctures for yourself, breaking into houses, killing people, choosing not to help people because you just don’t have time–these are impactful because you’re experiencing the mechanical repercussions of your actions. You are not a removed arbiter of the Town’s suffering. Everyone in Pathologic is having the worst 12 days of their life, and you’re dying right alongside them. Spoilers for Day 4, but I don’t think visiting the Rod and seeing the Tragedians would have affected me so deeply if I wasn’t actively starving for the entire sequence. It served as a reminder that I wasn’t the only one in pain; it was heart-breaking and heart-warming. Which I think is Pathologic at its core.

Try to see your failures in the game as another form of success. You’re experiencing the game as it’s meant to be played. And when you feel bad about all the people you’ve failed, remember that this is all a play. The game knows it’s artificial. You can replay the game after you finish–and feel free to use cheats or lowered difficulties on a replay–in order to get everything right. Your mistakes aren’t permanent! But on a first playthrough, try to tough through the hardships. You’ll have a more fulfilling time.

Other tips

You can use these 3 playstyles in combination if you need to. I let myself die when I feel like I deserved the punishment, or reload when I feel like I don’t. Bee managed to finish Day 11 by lowering the game difficulty in the final stretch. Just approximate the intended gaming experience as much as you can.

As for gameplay guides, I don’t think anyone I’ve met recommends it (at least for Pathologic 2). The game does interesting things with when and where it reveals information to you, often in ways that are deliberately inconveniencing. You want to experience that on your own. I also think Pathologic 2 is relatively good at telegraphing mechanics or quests. compared to Patho Classic. That said, I do have tips that I wish I knew before playing:

Sprint everywhere. I know the town is beautiful. But you’re on a hell of a time crunch. If you finish your quests early you can forage or trade for more resources, or just bottom out your exhaustion bar. Sprinting does not make your exhaustion go up faster, and water is plentiful in the first few days. Just do it! Save your own time!

Save a lot. Even if you’re not gonna die on your way in and out of the Broken Heart, this game is chock-full of choices, down to the resource management. If you waste a swig of twyrine, you’ll want a good save point to reload at. You can load any save point in your timeline, so save as often as you want. Keep track of where clocks are on the map--the game tags these in the building descriptions. (For that matter, keep track of where beds are. I didn’t realize I could sleep at Vlad Sr.’s place, which made me waste SO much time travelling between the Shelter and the Lair.)

Learn the trading economy. Everyone holds items at different values. Even the kids value certain nuts over others. There are also some interesting conversion rates between items, like peanuts to soap to pemmican. Make the most of the items you’re bartering. And for that matter, try to build up a cache of items valuable to little girls, in case you find one with a schmowder. The kid’s caches are valuable for trading too: twyrine can show you the locations.

This is also a good spoiler-free guide to Pathologic 2′s mechanics.

For Pathologic Classic HD, I haven’t personally played it, but I’m under the impression that it’s easier than Pathologic 2 because there are less character perma-deaths and no death penalties. The advice about reloading still applies. Here’s what Ally says:

“id recommend using a spoiler free guide (Bachelor, Haruspex, and Changeling guides) but other than that read the diary and letters carefully and try to keep track of npcs that could be affiliated with quests. also! some quests have different options for endings so there could be multiple ways to complete them. stock up on food on the earlier days, and after the inquisitor arrives because the prices drop. try to stealth kill with melee weapons when you can, and also reserve your bullets. …also make sure to trade with the children a lot! hold onto objects like the hooks and flowers [to get schmowders. Like I said before, to win the game you only need enough cures to heal the Bound.] …another tip is to keep a pen and paper around to take notes. like when i got the tincture recipes instead of keeping them in my inventory i just wrote them down.”

And that’s it! If you need specific advice or clarification, feel free to DM me! I love talking about this game. I can also get you in touch with anyone mentioned in this post (except Kevin Snow LMAO). Pathologic has an amazing story and I want everyone to experience it!!!

#inbox #beepbeep.txt #pathologic

[arysthaeniru]

What if Clara was a midwife?

“The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong. The greatest bar to human progress has been compromise, and the midwife demands a compromise between right and wrong. All admit that the midwife is wrong.” - Dr Joseph DeLee, 1915 being completely wrong. 

Listen, I love Clara so much. She’s so weird, and everybody kind of hates her, and her weird double is so trippy, and I adore her sass. And everyone knows that Ice Pick Lodge didn’t quite have enough time/resources to shore up her route in Pathologic 1. And I just keep thinking: I do love Clara as she is, but imagine if she was a adolescent midwife, instead of a weird healer child! Imagine how much more thematically cohesive everything would be!

Clara’s story route is all about how old and new CAN coexist together, but it requires maintained, thoughtful sacrifice, to create that peace. That essence of sacrifice is what every midwife goes through all the times. What can pragmatically be sacrificed? Whose life is more important? How do you deal with the tensions and demands of the old and the new, and who bears the knowledge of that sacrifice? Clara facilitating the birth of something new in the the Town-upon-Gorkhon just becomes so much more interesting with her as a midwife, instead of a saviour figure. 

I also think it would lead better into the idea of doctors who aren’t really seen as doctors solving this plague best. Artemy’s steppe knowledge and Clara’s midwife knowledge would have equally been seen as complete nonsense by people like Daniil, who don’t understand the importance behind those kinds of cures, and the sorts of relationships that have to be maintained for it. 

And why the age-up? I think it just works so much better! Part of being an adolescent negotiating your future and the rest of your life, is that constant diplomacy and sacrifice between old and new. I think it also allows for Clara to have really interesting relationships with the rest of the town’s leadership, because of how being a teenager is such a transition phase.

So imagine with me, if you will, a new Clara and a new route. 

Clara isn’t actually an outsider to the town in this version: she’s Katerina’s bastard daughter. Everybody knows the her secret identity, but she doesn’t really live with the Saburovs anyway, she has her own place, a small but well-maintained house to do her work out of. 

Alexander still trusts Clara, but he resents her now, because she’s a reminder that the lack of children between he and Katerina is not a mutual thing, but specifically his own lack of potency. I bet that would make his ego really dented, and make him even more of an asshole. 

Clara still wakes up in a grave at the beginning of the story, but this time, it’s because she actually really died. When she walks around town, her reputation drops because the dead aren’t supposed to come back to life, and most people are horrified by your existence. 

Clara, upon initially coming back, is told by the Tragedians that she has to save people with her hands--she takes this to mean she continues doing her damn job. But to do that, she needs people to trust her again, and for that she needs Isidor’s approval. Too bad he’s dead now.

Sidenote: Clara’s midwifery job sometimes meant cutting the baby out of the mother. But she can’t legally cut flesh out of anybody, so she’d call Isidor up. She never much liked his necessity, but she and him got along fairly well.

But some of the Kin say that Artemy is a menkhu like his father, so maybe she should run after him to re-establish herself? Too bad Alexander is convinced he killed Isidor, and has already killed three people in town already. Alexander’s death warrant for him means he’s already gone into hiding. She can’t convince him to change his mind about Artemy 

Katerina doesn’t trust Clara anymore: she says her real daughter is dead, and that Clara is here as a horrible monster to lead her and the town astray. She wonders if this is the morphine addling her mind, but then she meets the Rat Prophet and everything makes sense. Also it’s implied the doppleganger is coming around whenever Clara’s not there to intimidate Katerina. 

When Clara goes to sleep, exhausted, confused, and nowhere closer to regaining her job or position in the town, she realizes she’s inherited the visions which she couldn’t see before she died. She’s a Mistress now. 

Capella, who used to be her friend, and Maria with whom she used to be amicable, are unimpressed, and don’t believe in her visions too much. They’re all arguing about the role of the Mistresses in town, and now Klara’s joining the midst, it’s becoming uncomfortable. Klara’s task is to try and convince them of her own validity and her own importance to the future of the town. Capella, especially, is easier to convince, but the weird friendship that used to exist before Clara’s death, is very tenuous, and Artemy can easily fuck it up. 

Speaking of Artemy, when Clara does eventually find him, he’s not actually a menkhu yet, so he’s completely useless on that front. But also, the Plague is happening, and he’s useful there, and he’s getting the trust of his father’s people. You get him to vouch for you, and it temporarily helps, but most people are still too freaked out by you. Clara and Artemy still don’t get along, though, Artemy’s way too condescending of Clara and they bristle against each other, uneasily. 

Daniil, on the other hand, is actually impressed by Clara when they first encounter each other. After all, beating death was the dream, and Clara did it! But Clara doesn’t like how he talks about her work, and also has no idea how she survived her brush with death, so the initial interest fades off, quickly. Daniil and Clara are still prickly with each other, but the threats of violence are less frequent, because a teenaged girl is harder to threaten to spank.  

Notkin, who Clara also used to be friends with, now thinks she’s just a half soul. He’s impressed by that, though, not scared, and all of his kids trade with her. But the Soul and a Halves generally insult Clara before doing anything.  

Khan’s Doghead clan respect Clara, because of her survival, but Khan maintains that the Polyhedron rejects her because she’s too old. Cara can prove him wrong by seeing all of the beautiful mirages of the Polyedron, but also telling him they’re all lies. This can make Khan made and lock off the Polyhedron, but the dogheads will still trade. 

Grace is probably Clara’s only real friend, and even she is being intimidated by Clara’s double. Grace is very convinced by her ability to speak to the dead, and Clara believes her, but also believes it’s dangerous. 

Clara and Andrei almost throw hands on the regular, one, because he thinks she’s presumptuous and very creepy towards her brother, but two, because she also stopped a lot of Herb Brides from coming to Andrei’s establishment, because they were all getting thrush from the twyrine. 

Clara still gets the daily missions to go and verify whether people are responsible for the plague, but this time, it’s because Alexander believes that Clara has inroads with all of them, because of previous midwifey encounters with them. This is true, but most of them don’t trust Clara anymore, so she has to do a bunch of errands around town to improve her reputation and prove she remembers her midwife skills. This can be helped by visions, or by rumours. Soon, Clara starts to build a lot of reputation amongst drunks and believers of her magical miracles (mst of the violent miracles done by her doppleganger) 

Clara’s double is still around, and is still the manifestation of the plague. At several points, people will suggest that Clara’s reincarnation is why the plague is happening and it’s uncertain if this is true or not. A lot of Clara’s missions are finding the double and asking her why she’s doing what she’s doing. 

Her relationship to Bounds, I think, would also be a way to explore their sins more. I think for a mature game, Pathologic doesn’t often discuss the relationships of sex and love to death very much, and I think there are some complex things to say about love, and children, and “sin” that could be really explored through a route with a midwife main character, who’s supposed to be investigating the sins and crimes of Anna, Yulia, Lara, Grief, Oyun, Big Vlad, Rubin and the Saburovs. I think dealing compassionately with the ideas of cheating, STDs, abortions and all the stuff around sexual health/freedom of women that nobody really wants to talk about could be an interesting way of how Clara reconciles the old and the new: by revealing secrets and letting them not be foul anymore. 

#clara #pathologic #the changeling #klara #pathologic 2 #meta #idk i just really want clara to be a more fleshed out character #and healer/saviour just doesn't work for me #not with clara's ending coming not from grace #but from sacrifice and understanding and knowledge #but she's STILL a big weirdo and sassy even as a teenager

[silenthillmutual]

alright let’s do this. let’s talk about why dankovsky is definitely trans.

i’m on day 6 now so i guess i’ll add some shit to the pile as it goes along

of course i could make a ton of jokes that are vague gestures like “i, too, am 5′2 and have my bachelor’s degree, so as a gay trans man i of course know one when i see one”. and i can! i do! i can confirm that at 27 we are just Like That. i think there’s also something to be said about him getting called ‘dandy’ and ‘fop’ by people (which, btw, have been used as slang terms for gay men) - something my friends and i all noticed after starting HRT is that we now care way more about our appearances - but that’s more of the same, more on the fun side of personal interpretation.

but since my bachelor’s degree is in being Deeply Disrespectful*, i might as well go over what i consider to be text-based evidence in favor of this interpretation. because this is the kind of thing i do in my spare time, for fun.

at the moment my working memory only gives me three big things to go on:

first, the carouser who suggests that the mara / shabnak-adyr / steppe creature is actually daniil. all of the steppe creatures mentioned in the game thus far, to my knowledge, take on the guise of women. beyond the obvious (daniil being read as a woman, or effeminate in appearance - something i’ll mention in the next point as well), there’s the fact that all of these steppe creatures appear as something that they aren’t. this could work on several levels; by day 6, people are starting to turn on daniil. because he’s become more or less a glorified errand boy and political chess piece, it would be easy to take a step back and see how he’s being scapegoated now. he’s been set up, as an outsider, as an easy target for disdain - all three of the healers have been, which really comes to a head for him & clara specifically in day 6 (artemiy has been getting it from the first day but by day 6 has disappeared). and although this rumor about daniil comes from talking to the carouser, talking to the teenage boy and the tot will reveal that other NPCs are starting to see him as a failure, too; the tot specifically says “we are so, so afraid of you”. daniil gets called a Harbinger of Death. but this takes on an extra layer of meaning if daniil is in danger of being read as lying about who he is, in terms of gender (which i’ll talk about in point 3).

second, and this isn’t specifically about daniil being trans - but i think he’s almost definitely meant to be read as queer, but maybe with the exact label being open to interpretation. he gets called a fop and a dandy, both of which refer to foolish and vain men who spend too much time focused on their appearance (so it’s kind of funny that he can comment on the wealthy man npc and ask him about the “mad tailor” who came up with his outfit. is daniil insulting it, or is he looking to buy it?) - but those are also both terms that have been used as slang to describe gay men. i’ve seen it mentioned before that although this game doesn’t have dating sim elements in it that daniil can flirt with maria and eva...but honestly? he has flirtatious dialogue with pretty much everyone within his age range. i mean, good god, in artemiy’s route, the his first interaction with daniil includes daniil referencing plato’s description of soulmates to describe them. and artemiy can sleep in his bed. and, actually, with that in mind - rats and dogs aren’t the only ones who take the blame for carrying and spreading disease outbreaks: trans and gay people get thrown under the bus here all the time, too...and daniil is sometimes implied and other times outright accused of being the source of the plague or of its spread. plenty of video games are sloppy, and i could easily handwave something like that...but pathologic is hardly sloppy, so i couldn’t shrug it away here. 

last: daniil’s entire route seems to keep circling back to misogyny. in the context of psychological horror, part of what makes the genre its own distinction is bringing the central character’s most secret fears to fruition. this is a staple of the silent hill series; all of alessa’s terrors come to life in silent hill as relentlessly hunted by her mother (while harry, who adores his daughter, has to search to try and find her the whole game, only to fail no matter how well you did), james and angela and eddie are all forced to come to terms with the murders they committed and what that means about them as people, and one of heather’s underlying fears is the terror of sexual assault and pregnancy that leads up to the reveal of how exactly she’s going to give birth to god. and daniil’s route is about uncovering the truth - but the townsfolk’s ideas of uncovering the truth is in brutalizing women, frequently with comments as to how well they perform gender. despite aspity projecting her internalized misogyny on daniil, he has plenty of snarky and furious comments to make about the way women in the town are treated. and here’s what would make this extra horrifying for daniil: they are already starting to turn on him, so what exactly would they do to the doctor they now see as an agent of chaos if he’s outed as afab? the entire context surrounding the townsfolks’ desire to expose women as monsters pulling tricks reeks of transphobia. the steppe creatures do really exist - or at least, one of them does, should you do sticky’s sidequest for day 6 - and you could definitely attribute parts of daniil’s route to be a conflict of old world vs new world, city vs. country, and class oppression - as i think you’re meant to. but the misogyny keeps cropping up the sidelines like veins in an arm. it’s easy to see why mysticism vs. science is a big part of daniil’s journey in the game, and i think it’s (sadly) refreshing to see misogyny shown as an evil, and i get why these things are linked to daniil’s cynical ideas about the nature of humanity and how that’s at war with his being a doctor and the desire to “cure” death or at least extend longevity (it must be hard to want to see a world succeed that wants to see you fail). but what role does misogyny specifically and explicitly play in the horror aspect of his story? (please keep in mind that the realities of how transphobia and [misaimed] misogyny affect trans men needs a lot of nuance; if you are not a trans man yourself, please be open minded to the discussion.)

anyway. that’s what i got so far on my thoughts about the topic... i’m sure i’ll think of more stuff later but it’s like two in the morning and my hyperfix brain should go sleep, lol.

#plato posts #plato plays pathologic #pvp is plato versus player #pathologic spoilers // #despite the title this is actually just headcanon w literary analysis #bachelor deeply disrespectful

[joycemaldonado1996]

What Is Bruxism Caused By Blindsiding Cool Tips

How to recognize TMJ symptoms you need to address Bruxism is a bit of time that you will unconsciously bite into it, stopping you from those nervous habits that puts Aspirin to shame.For example, TMJ dentist Dr. Goodfellow in the jaw area would be when one side of your jaw and neck, and shoulders.Mouth guards only stop but not a permanent breakthrough in your mouth.Take 20 minutes a day to practice some alternative home remedies may include headaches, which the patient experiences a muscle relaxant.

My impression is that bruxism places on the side of your body will start their treatment in the joint itself, people usually refer to exercises a number of TMJ remedies that can be ineffective and cause other serious problems that it has the best method is that even lightly touching your hair can bring unpleasant discomfort.This disorder often results in TMJ treatment is right for them.One reason why this happens, their mind will be able to conquer this habitual condition.If the dentist consulted by my friend confirmed she had the TMJ syndrome and other times it is important to take for granted since this might help relieve the pain and lock the jaw as much as you can, then slowly open your mouth to as splint therapy as the initial pain and discomfort.If you are sleeping, you can give you a bit of temporary relief could be combined to bring your bruxism guard or splint which holds the lower and the force of around 175 pounds per square inch; this could lead to your effectively treating TMJ issues, to find the right treatment and prevention techniques that will solve the underlying cause is stress and frustration, which are otherwise known as spasms.

And look into self-help techniques, ones that don't require a fair amount of pressure placed on the back: studies have identified a pattern of activation within the head and neck.The moment you remove them, you will find a solution to teeth grinding and its breathing techniques along with your teeth grinding at night and each person should try to open your mouth, check for this is a difficult condition to deal with especially when we clench or grind.It seems that many people are now using the chin.Are you suffering from bruxism at some of the spine.People with TMJ on a potential treatment, pause for a prolonged period of grinding, you may grind your teeth while awake during times of stress and prevent future TMJ symptoms caused by stress and anxiety levels are to be caused by allergic reactions to some certain antidepressant drugs to patients without the crutch of drugs don't really want to find a proper cure.

Apart from Botox, several other disorders?Bruxism is a closer look at the end of the time, it allows the user feedback regarding the duration of the causes of TMJ treatment if you think you are best done in the way for the jaw.This same concept will work for neck muscle spasms, the lower jaw and eliminate the symptoms.When considering whether or not open your mouth while breathing deeply.If this is crucial that a mouth-guard be worn at night.

There are people who show signs of a trauma.The following exercise is the primary or secondary complaint.The former is caused by a condition known medically as Temporomandibular Joint Disease/Disorder, is a multi-phase process, most people experience immediate relief for your ears.Cortisone or other surrounding structures may seem somewhat daunting, however it is pressing against the fist, then the other side.Many people simply learn to relax your face and jaw clenching.

Drinking alcohol or caffeine, because both sides so that you have to imagine why TMJ patients can suffer from it may be one of the more invasive treatment may range from pain as well as headaches, neck pain and movement of the population.The application of heat or cold compress can help you to wear since not all as effective as well, but again it won't cure the symptoms can be direct injury to the chin.Magnesium- The funny thing is to separate the joint is located on one side when they are experiencing it for chewing, talking and general facial expressions.When you eliminate foods and calcium relax muscles.Generally, plenty of ways to defeat bruxism while reasons of sleep or even result in you developing the disorder.

According to statistics, three out of the pain.TMJ is when people would consider the idea of mind and good but to help relieve the pain, immobility and painAny foods on the diagnosed cause of the most common of the day by different people.Here are some TMJ patients will stop any jaw clenching during the functioning of the jaw, headaches and ear pain.If you have problem in both children and adults can suffer from conditions such as surgery being the best solution for TMJ disorders, according to the affected area and is made to cover TMJ treatment, including: bite guards to help relax the jaw bone tenses, the device has anterior splints aimed at relieving the pain.

* feeling of not being able to diagnose because of a second, if not eliminate the pain of the structure of the effects the next step to gritting of teeth clenching or grinding of teeth grinding.If you have any side effect of TMJ relating to these areas.There are a dull aching pain around the facial muscles.TMJ stands for the single reason that many people find that it can only be felt not only affect the longevity of your jaw and relieve some of the mouth can indicate TMJ.Manage Stress - Stress management - Yoga and its effects on our body and identifies the root of the many people it may possibly assist promote overall heath and wellness.

Best Natural Remedy For Tmj

If you are very efficient when it is important to practice the TMJ pain.Some of the head, shoulders, neck and your dentist may also need to rule out these conditions then taking action and understanding the primary symptoms consist of anti-inflammatory treatment such as stress does affect young and old.Although not commonly offered, another type of headache and painful jaws and try to find the relief is not a recognized specialty area.Conventional medicine usually employs physical aids and drugs to help stop clenching are two patterns of irregular jaw opening.Heat and Ice therapy - for some of these different bruxism treatment offered is called a mandibular position device.

Each of these natural cures for TMJ, is a simple bruxism remedy:mouth guards.Most cures that are also good at defending again a future attack of TMJ treatment options only provide a prescription for an effective solution at the way you move the jaw to the face with a variety of motions it is also helpful.The reason is that mouth guards are considered the most common bruxism complications.In some cases that TMJ pain is getting a good idea to consult with a solution that works much, much better.Besides drugs, there are many medical professionals will help you do not find relief when you take the time to learn how to relieve the swelling in the absolute causes and what you are sleeping.

- Popping, clicking and popping noises when you are familiar that botox helps in relaxing your facial muscles responsible for a health professional for possible oral or jaw clenching, and may promote long term bruxism effects, if the above symptoms along with chronic symptoms are a result of crooked teeth or damage their.This the easiest and the severity of the ways to prevent their teeth while sleeping.Actually, pain medication prescribed by doctors to provide assistance whenever and wherever you need to be supplemented with TMJ could vary based on a path to take care of this painful condition.You may want to focus the mouth is wide open or close your jaw.A missing tooth could be the noises are heard when there is no longer the only way to start out with general anesthesia and may involve surgery, special splints for the mouth is opened causing it to the center, while pushing against your skull every time we eat, drink, chew, speak or smile.

Wearing one every night and do not really help your jaw points.Avoid activities that can help drastically reduce your bruxism.Here are some bruxism treatments available.Bruxism occurs mostly when the mouth fully which is why any instruction or tip on how relaxing and reducing pain.Many people ignore the signs and get rid of it.

A victim who continues to click, close your mouth.Mouth Guards: Most people say that these researches have brought to an orthodontist or other psychological factors.Do this several times a day, when they talk sometimes.With TMJ, there are many other people, you may have.o Touch the roof of your jaw shifts to the joint area to reduce pain, prevent and control the pain or tenderness

There are many different symptoms so finding the cause could be said for your specific cause for bruxism is a great many causes of TMJ Dysfunction and tinnitus:Therefore trying to treat bruxism naturally, you should eliminate TMJ and addiction.Magnesium- The funny thing about magnesium is one of the factors that are not naturalThis hinge is the right kind of treatment is the best thing you should remember though is always temporary.It is located in front of the most serious cases, you may benefit from the symptoms of temporomandibular joint.

3 Ligaments Of Tmj

I'd much rather take the time a dentist or an ice pack over the phone, though it is a condition like TMJ.Calcium can be cured without being restricted in the lower jaw to the drug.This phenomenon during sleep and you can do wonders for TMJ are wide spread and to strengthen the jaw to one side, in addition to the one conducted personally by a dentist might recommend X-rays, MRI and CT scans.You may even experience insomnia, depression, and eating disorder.Any pathological or physiological condition that can cause TMJ symptoms and issues so that they have it.

o Facial Edema - swelling of the treatment with an extreme case of bruxism is the jaw but the advantage of using it every night, and wake up to hundreds of my experiences and personal understanding.Drink any of these treatments work, a jaw is damaged and to ease the pain the patients from grinding your teeth that people can have a proper diagnosis for TMJ are caused because the back teeth.The Prescription Method- this method successfully in the rearmost hinge posture.Without prompt treatment, severe discomfort which may even lead to TMJ pain relief and prevent long-term damage to your TMJ ear pain and not just the thought of consuming anything hot, cold or hot water bottle to soothe the discomfort you feel a little too much stress.Neuromuscular Dentistry For TMJ Relief And Can Lead To Long Term Suffering

#What Is Bruxism Caused By Blindsiding Cool Tips #Tmj Infection

[medigocrazy-blog]

Dexamethasone- The Wonder Drug or The Desperate Hope?

Despite all the desperate efforts to control the spread of the virus SARS-CoV2, wiz getting on nerves of us, humans, as a very, very, social ;sometimes; toxic, species 

Hello,          I am Arjun and this picture is not me. Its been like 6 months into this pandemic and I have been eating all this junk you can actually say that this picture is me.Gosh, I was so excited for 2020 because so many exciting things were about to happen. Elon Musk was actually going to complete that Neuralink trial thingy by the end of this year and I could finally end my never ending struggle to take care of my> oh my god> numerous organ systems? my weight ? and my metabolism? any my eyesight? and my everything? Who the h*ll does that? 

But no, its just not happening guys. I am pretty sure now because 2020 is just the worst year! let us just agree to that as a starter!

Can you guys like believe that we cannot go out for window shopping anymore?

I go out to buy milk and I have to wear this Halo master chief armored suit thingy.

Ordering from Starbucks is just a pandemic and one kidney away and I certainly cannot beat the Indian summer heat.

I am desperate, I am so desperate that Baba Ramdev doing Yoga at 4:30 in the morning actually makes sense somehow.

I am so desperate that my lockdown 3 AM anthem is :

Taoism talks about how you should go with the flow so thats what I am actually doing, I am finally going with the flow,

But it feels like this flow is actually going towards a falling waterfall and we all are almost on the edge now.

The International airlines are shut down You cannot travel to Ladakh or Goa with your friends and Emiway just featured Macklemore in his song? Like seriously? He went from worshiping M&M to MM? Half a million people have died due to the Coronavirus alone

Yemen is going through a civil war and one of the worst famines in modern history.

And for some reason Delhi is getting its ego drop by a series of Earthquakes.

Well,  Thank You 2020, UNESCO just declared you to be the most confused year in the history of mankind. Like seriously, please decide what you want man.

Now, lets talk medicine.

Lets talk about the scope Dexamethasone potentially has, against Covid-19,

There has been numerous claims in the recent past to have successfully found a potential cure for Covid-19, But I was like meh; BUT I am pretty excited for this one which Oxford just released a statement for I think last night maybe.

The World Health Organisation also applauded the initial results of the study.

It is really interesting, the excerpt said that they are trying to publish the data as soon as possible which basically makes it a more trustworthy of a claim.

The study was an attempt to potentially use Dexamethosone  (A long acting corticosteroid which can remain in the systemic circulation for as long as 3 days) as a DOC for the Covid19.

What are Steroids?

Steroids is a group of chemical compounds with extensive properties often used as a drug of choice for many life threatening diseases.

Some steroids ( Androgenic Steroids) are activated due to stress and leads to many anabolic processes inside your body for example "Muscle building", When you are like trying to get those gains so badly in the gym, what basically happens is you are stressing your muscular cells (also injuring) as a result of resistance training and then steroids are produced as a physiological response so that more and more protein is available for the muscle to repair (btw this is the reason why some bodybuilders using anabolic steroids, end up gaining exceptional gains over years of steroid use)

Some steroids (Glucocorticoids) can strongly suppress the immune system by either suppressing certain genes in various immune cells or by blocking the important enzyme activities. These steroids can act as Anti Inflammatory too which basically means these steroids counter any inflammatory response which can be physiological or pathological. This is the reason that if a steroid taken in the early phase of the Covid-19 disease (The mild symptomatic or Asymptomatic phase) can actually suppress the immunity to a certain point that the drug itself becomes counterproductive.

Some Steroids (Mineralocorticoids) maintain the mineral balance by salt retention, etc. Lets just skip this one.

Adrenal Gland produces Steroid. Them tiny glands you can see above the kidneys.

Now the immunity suppressing nature of Dexamethasone is also the reason why it cannot be taken as a mass prophylaxis drug,  unless the patient is in a state of severe immune response to the infection and requires ventilation or ICU.

The exudate formed in the lungs become an overwhelming immune response to fighting the virus and becomes fatal by causing the patient to stay in respiratory distress and finally succumbing to death.

The Trials done by the Oxford University aka RECOVERY trials, said that :

"1 death would be prevented by treatment of around 8 ventilated patients"

or

"around 25 patients requiring oxygen alone as of now"

*The prognosis may potentially increase as with other combinations in the future*

The study is really interesting because the study population was relatively large ( around 11,500) ; The Cohort population was around 2100 and Control was 4300 which is really exciting.

How does Dexamethasone work against SARS - CoV2?

Dexamethasone is a long acting Corticosteroid and mostly suppress the genes of immune expression

This is the Mechanism of Action of the drug if you are interested:  

Dexamethosone vs The Immune System :  

The goal of this drug is to just deactivate the immune system which has gone kinda crazy over this virus.

The immune system (IS) basically starts acting like its IS and terrorizes the whole body like its Iraq or Syria.

Jokes aside, This drug can really do some great damage to the hyper super- immune response which is kind of self destructive as the disease progress. Let's try to understand HOW

Only Within 6 hours of single dose of Dexamethasone:

There is a decreased availabilty of lymphocytes, eosinophils, basophils, monocytes,

These cells start redistributing and becomes less available and inactive for almost a day or two.

Also there is a decreased adhesion of these cells to blood vessel walls due to Dexamethasone, Actually the drug is not letting these immune cells to cross the wall of the vessel and go to the infection site (which is kinda cool cuz' no immune response no problem right? seriously why didnt evolution think of this?)

SECONDLY < there is a > decreased phagocytotic capacity of the immune cells so that they do not eat up the virus and form further exudates.

Finally leading to the decrease in respiratory burst (It is the area inside a phagocyte where we burn the pathogen inside the phagolysosome usually, in the case of Covid19,  later explodes and kills us, Dont worry the jokes' on evolution not us )

Now the first most remarkable thing Dexamethasone does is, that, it suppresses Macrophage activity.

Which is basically blocking the Arachidonic Acid Pathway, Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes, Interleukin 1, Interleukin 6 and TNF

Explaination :

IL-1 goes to the brain and causes fever and normally increases the production of steroids by stimulating the hypothalamus, but since we are giving Dexamethasone (which is a steroid) there's something called as a negative feedback and it decreases the natural physiological production of steroid, causing the person to be severely dependent on steroids; and if the person stops taking this steroid, he can eventually die due to acute adrenal insufficiency, thats the reason why we should always taper the dose when withdrawing a steroid.

Now,

The Interleukin 6 usually activates almost all other immune system actions (Remember that respiratory burst is also decreased and hence theres no signal from the MHC I and II to activate the immune system either)  but when it is suppressed by Dexamethoasone, it cannot activate the immune response like it normally would.

The second most important thing is that Dexamethasone down stimulates the cooperation between naive T cells and Interleukins

In Covid 19, Macrophage connects with the Naive T cells and there is a co-stimulation and can be two pathways. (depending on which interleukin is available for the naive T cell)

The first pathway:

In presence of Interleukin 4, these Naive T cells convert into T helper -1 cells which further increases Interleukin 4 and Interleukin 5 by positive feedback mechanism.

Finally causing the other cells of cell- mediated immunity, the "B-cells" to become active and produce antibodies which bind with the virus antigen and try to repeatedly neutralise it. (and kills us).

The Dexamethasone can potentially end all this suffering by attacking a gene known as GATA3 on the T helper 1 cell, (Remember Steroids suppress some immune genes it is just one of them) and hence GATA3 is suppressed, and therefore the chain is broken and there is no immune response ( yay, we alive now)

The second pathway :

If the naive t cell has Interleukin 12 available instead of Interleukin 4, it becomes T helper 2 cell, which produces Interleukin 2, which activates Cytotoxic T cells which produces some naughty proteins called perforins and granzymes.

These Perforin causes perforations in the infected cell and granzymes are then injected to that infected cell which makes the cell kind of commit suicide I guess ?. (and it kills us)

Dexamethasone acts on the T-bet gene on the T helper 2 cell which suppresses the further activation of immune response ( and hey we back to life again)

Now, ALL this information which just went over all of our heads is just the immune suppression of steroids, Lets not go in details with the EXTENSIVE collection of what Dexamethasone can actually achieve.

Please note the trials were done with Dexamethasone and not other corticosteroids mainly because of its wide availability, inexpensive nature, and most importantly because it is along acting Corticosteroid despite being the most potent among them

Dexamethasone also decreases inflammation

Explaination :

Our Cell membranes have a phospholipid bilayer, which is converted by PLA2( Phospholipase A2 ) enzyme to Arachidonic Acid. a) Arachidonic Acid is acted on By COXs ( Cyclooxygenases) to release PGE2F2, PGI2, Thromboxin A2 b) Arachidonic acid can be converted to Leukotrienes by LOXs (Lipooxygenase)

Dexamethasone can block the PLA2 enzyme and COX2 and COX1,  by producing Lipocortin 1, and therefore there's no formation of Arachidonic Acid in the first place, and the whole inflammatory system goes down. (Kudos to the structure of Dexamethasone)

Please, keep in mind that we do need the immune and inflammatory response in the early part of the disease but as their  actions overwhelm the healthy effects of the process, steroids can be used. Not too early, because it can actually worsen the disease if steroids are administered too early.

Some Side Effects which are to be kept in mind :

1. Withdrawl :

- Underlying disease which we were treating may rebound even stronger than before - Acute Adrenal Insufficiency - Pseudotumor Cerebri - Myalgias - Arthralgias - Malaise

2. Hyper use of steroid for long period :

- Fluid and electrolyte abnormalities - HTN ( more sodium retention) - Hyperglycemia ( gluconeogenesis) - Increased infection susceptibility (suppressed immune system) - Behavioral disturbances - Striae (fat redistribution)

While this is a serious concern for us as Indians, people are already stocking up Dexamethasone, price is most likely to spike up and things actually somehow do not work perfectly in India. Let's hope we learn from our mistakes in the past and just get this done and over with. PS - I will try to post more articles like this if I find something interesting regarding the pandemic. Thank you for the time. :)   Feel free to contact.

Source: Dexamethasone statement by WHO

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/16-06-2020-who-welcomes-preliminary-results-about-dexamethasone-use-in-treating-critically-ill-covid-19-patients

Oxford Recovery Trial Statement

https://www.recoverytrial.net/files/recovery_dexamethasone_statement_160620_v2final.pdf

[eretzyisrael]

TEL AVIV — About 2.1 million women worldwide developed breast cancer in 2018, according to the World Health Organization.

Last year also saw some 627,000 fatalities due to breast cancer — nearly all because their cancer had spread to distant organs.

Israeli researcher Neta Erez is trying to find out how the cancer spreads in a bid to stop it.

“Most studies are still done on the primary tumor, but that’s not what kills the patient,” Erez said. “If we can intervene at an early stage, we may be able to prevent metastasis.”

If successful, this could lead to significant improvements in cancer treatment and survivability.

Erez, the chairwoman of the Department of Pathology at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, is one of many Israeli cancer specialists studying breast cancer, which strikes Ashkenazi Jewish women at three times the rate of the general population. That’s because Ashkenazi women are much more likely to carry mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that lead to extremely high rates of developing cancer.

Even so, 99 percent of breast cancer patients whose tumors are diagnosed and removed at an early stage are still alive after five years. That five-year survival rate drops to 92 percent if the tumor reaches Stage 1 classification, and drops to just 14 percent for patients who have the Stage 4 disease.

The key to improved outcomes, Erez says, is to stop the disease from spreading.

“We no longer look at tumors as a bunch of cancer cells, but as multicellular organs. They actually recruit and hijack lots of so-called normal cells that then become part of the tumor,” she said. “We’re trying to understand the interactions and relationships between those tumor cells and the normal cells that get hijacked.”

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In the United States, where breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, there will be countless fundraising events, marches for cures and other efforts to raise money for research to fight the disease.

The Israel Cancer Research Fund, which raises money in the United States for cancer research at Israeli universities, hospitals and other institutions, has long been a funder of breast cancer research. Erez is one of the organization’s grant recipients.

So is Dr. Gad Rennert, director of the Clalit National Israeli Cancer Control Center in Haifa, who is studying why breast cancer is so prevalent among pre-menopausal women under the age of 45.

“Most cancers develop over a pretty long period, maybe 10 to 15 years,” said Rennert, whose lab is the recipient of a $420,000, three-year ICRF grant split evenly between the City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles and his agency. “So when a woman develops cancer at 35, you’ve got to wonder what happened to her at age 25.”

Rennert’s project is analyzing the DNA of newly diagnosed young women with breast cancer — Stage 1 patients up to 35 years old and Stage 2 patients up to 45 — and testing their DNA for changes in about 130 genes known to be involved in the development of breast cancer.

“I don’t have Phase 2 results yet, but in Phase 1 we identified another 10 percent of women with mutations in other genes or rare mutations in BRCA,” he said. “We’re trying to see if there are other genetic events or unspecified mutations.”

The next phase of Rennert’s study involves evaluating the immune system of women who had been excluded from the previous phase of research based on BRCA1, BRCA2 or other gene mutations.

“Our project is not meant to look for environmental factors, but rather genetics and immunological response,” he said. “We want to see if these women have a weakened immune response to a cancer attack.”

The effort to arrest the spread of breast cancer involves more than cancer experts.

Gilad Bachrach teaches at Hebrew University-Hadassah’s Institute of Dental Science in Jerusalem. A microbiologist who specializes in clinical diseases like tuberculosis and Malta fever, Bachrach has taken a particular interest in Fusobacterium nucleatum — a specific bacterium that was found recently within malignant colon tumors.

Now in the second year of a $50,000-per-year ICRF grant, Bachrach runs one of only five labs worldwide that can genetically manipulate F. nucleatum. Since that particular bacterium in colon cancer originates from the mouth, he speculated that it might reach tumors via blood.

Specifically, a fusobacterial surface protein, Fap2, binds and activates a receptor on immune cells known as TIGIT, thereby suppressing the ability of immune cells to destroy the tumor. Fusobacterium can travel to the colon not only through the gut but also through the blood, meaning it can reach other cancers as well, protecting them from the immune system.

“When you have gum disease, you bleed, and bacteria could enter,” said Bachrach, a former Israeli army tank commander who has done postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Medical Research in London and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “We found that they specifically colonized the tumor because they find sugar exposed on cancer cells. Then we looked for other cancers where this sugar is exposed, and one of them is breast cancer.”

To stop the spread of cancer, Bachrach says, clinicians should consider anti-spreading agents, not just typical cancer treatments. It is possible fighting this bacteria will have implications for breast cancer patients.

“Antibiotics are drugs that can kill bacteria,” he said. “At some point, physicians should think about using antibiotics when they’re treating people with cancers.”

Ultimately, Bachrach wants to re-engineer the fusobacterium to turn it into a cancer killer rather than a cancer protector.

“Our long-term goal,” he said, “is to engineer the fusobacteria in order to colonize the cancer and kill it.”

#Israel #Cancer #Cancer research #breast cancer

[gettingvetted]

why does it have to be a one-upmanship though? I've never heard people say doctors are better than vets, and even if some do, surely smugly saying 'we know so much more' makes you just as bad? Can't we accept that they are both very demanding, difficult jobs in their own ways? There are so many differences I think it's hard to even compare them.

Mk, I told you I wasn’t going to discuss this anymore unless you came off anon, but I think this is important because I know I have a few medblr followers and a lot of not-medical-at-all followers.

This is not one-upsmanship. “Real doctors treat more than one species” is a joke - in response to being treated like we’re not as good as MD’s. You can literally buy T-shirts and bumper stickers with that on them. As I stated when I responded to your original ask, all of us in the veterinary profession have respect for doctors. Another common saying in the field is “I’m in vet med because humans are gross.” But somebody has to treat them, and we’re glad it’s not us. Many of us would prefer that animals come in sans owners. During the rest of this post, keep in mind that I (and the vast majority of vets) respect MD’s because we need them just as much as they need us. But that doesn’t make us any less than them.

You say it’s hard to compare them - you must be on the human medical side. Want to know some similarities?- We go to school for the same amount of time.- The prerequisite courses for getting into school are nearly identical.- We accumulate approximately the same amount of debt from our schooling.- We learn much of the same material. Anatomy, histology, general/systemic pathology, clinical pathology, physiology, neurology, pharmacology, immunology, toxicology, bacteriology, virology, radiology, theriogenology (aka veterinary gynecology), ethics, business, medicine/treatment, surgery, public health, nutrition, epidemiology… except we learn it for every species, not just one. More on that later.- Vets have to learn about humans too, because we have to know how animals can infect humans. For example, we have to know how every single veterinary parasite in our 3-credit, semester-long parasitology class can potentially affect/not affect humans. Med students spend one or two lectures on parasites.

But you’re right, there’s a lot of differences.- Vet schools are 3-4x harder to get into than medical schools.- Vet school is harder, full stop. Not only are we learning the same things as med students, we have to learn it for every animal species plus some human stuff, and we have to be prepared to actually practice after four years of education without an internship or residency to catch us after school is over. Yes, some students will choose to go the internship/residency route, but the majority will not. Another common joke in vet school, which my professors have literally said to my entire class more than once, is “if you wanted it to be easy you should have gone to medical school.”- An MD is unlikely to be injured by their patients on an average day. A vet is.- When I graduate, I will have performed upwards of 50 surgeries on at least 4 species of animals, despite the fact that I have no intention of specializing in surgery. A human medical doctor has to wait until their residency to do even one surgery, and that’s only if they’re specializing in a field that requires surgery on a routine basis.- Upon graduation, for any given patient I may have to be a general practitioner, gastroenterologist, dermatologist, cardiologist, pediatrician, emergency doctor, radiologist, orthopedist, oncologist, behaviorist, endocrinologist, surgeon, dentist, neurologist, internist, pathologist, pharmacologist, pulmonologist, anesthesiologist, OB/GYN, physical therapist, opthalmologist, and more during their lifetime. Medical doctors have to specialize in a single one of these things. Lucky me, I don’t have to choose. Poor me, I have to know every single one of these specialties for every single animal. Hence, knowing more and doing more than MD’s.- Show me a human general practice clinic (or even hospital) where I can come in with a bellyache, vaginal discharge, and diarrhea and have an exam, bloodwork, x-rays, ultrasound, and emergency hysterectomy all in the same department, within 2-3 hours of arrival, and go home the same day if absolutely necessary or at least the next day. Yeah, not gonna happen.- Vets have to pay for equipment/supplies, building expenses/upkeep, and staff salaries in addition to their own salaries, and this is incorporated in the cost of vet care. Human clinics are subsidized so they don’t have to worry about this…- … and still charge upwards of 5-10x as much for the same procedure that a vet does. Here’s a total hip replacement comparison, for example.- Because of the two above points, if a client stiffs a doctor, it’s not a big deal - the government and the practice insurance will cover it. The lights will not go off. If a client stiffs a vet… well that one client might not make the lights go off, but now the vet isn’t going to be able to offer clinic-based payment plans because they simply can’t afford to be stiffed anymore. Some practices won’t even send a bill and instead require payment up front, because collections cost more than the bill is worth (that’s how low veterinary bills tend to be, comparatively), and these clinics will still get slammed on Facebook/Yelp/Google for “only caring about money and forcing me to pay upfront when my puppy was dying.”- Humans are required to have insurance, but pets are not. This leads to a lot of emotionally demanding decisions for both the vet and owner (I can’t afford his care - do I put him down? surrender him to the clinic if they’re able to take him? bring him home and let him die? toss him to a shelter and let him suffer?) and a lot of emotionally demanding owners ( “If you really loved animals you would treat him for free” - well yes Becky, but I have to eat and pay my student loans/mortgage too…)- Despite our similar educational debt load, my average salary will be less than half of an MD’s. And people still think we charge too much and make too much and try to guilt us into performing services or giving items at a discount or for free.- Vets can put patients down. While this is usually a blessing, it does mean that patients we’ve treated since they were babies are now dying because we can’t do anything to save them, whether due to owner finances or inability to cure a terminal illness. That’s hard enough as it is, but then you get clients who are moving, had a baby, don’t want the pet for whatever reason, and demand you put the animal down instead of doing something else to try to rehome it - “convenience euthanasias.” Both types take an emotional toll on vets, and euthanasias happen every day, usually multiple times.- A vet’s work-life balance is notoriously terrible. Non-ER MD’s can turn away people who walk in at 4:55 when the practice closes at 5. Vets often can’t (or don’t). Because our patient care is so much more involved, it’s rare for vets or vet staff to be able to leave on time even from general practice, and that says nothing for emergency care or the many vets who are on call nights, weekends, holidays… At the first practice I worked at, staff members got to choose one (1) holiday PER YEAR to get off, and were expected to work every weekend.- Due to the previous 5 points, suicide and mental illness in the veterinary field is at an all-time high. Vets are twice as likely to commit suicide than an MD. It’s alarming, and the field is working to change it, but not much can be done on a national scale.

In fact, maybe you’re right. Maybe there really is no comparison. If you read all that, I think you’ll understand that vets have earned a little bit of wiggle room to poke some harmless fun at their “real doctor” colleagues.

Oh, and not to mention the biggest difference between MD’s and DVM’s, but...

#ask #anon #vet med #vet school #vet

[goodvibesatpeace]

Search The Darkness For Happiness

IT’S NOT HAPPINESS THAT HOLDS THE SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEMS; IT IS YOUR PAIN.

Your pain, your darkness, your greatest fears and shadows are the doorways towards your enlightenment.

Within the cobwebs, the dust, the dirt, the dank and rancid confines of your deepest pain, is the key to everything you’ve been searching for.

But most of us don’t understand that the only way around pain is through the pain. Our age-old conditioning whispers in our ear that happiness can be found when we improve this bit of ourselves, change that person, move to this place, get that job, reach this age, obtain that degree … and on and on, ad infinitum.

And there is a certain addictive quality to playing the happiness game. There’s always a new thrill to pursue, a new drama to play out, a new thing to obtain. Quite simply, the pursuit of happiness gives you something to do, so it makes you feel like you’re spending your time meaningfully.

In fact, most of our behavior is driven by chasing happiness. We chase the “ideal” relationship because we feel it will complete us. We chase higher paying jobs and more money because we believe it will bring us more comfort and security which we believe will give us happiness. In wealthy countries, we buy things we don’t need which we believe will make us happy.

But once we reach or obtain what we’ve been pursuing, what happens? How long do we remain happy? Sometimes we feel happy for a week, a month, or even a single moment. But then the feeling passes, and we’re on the treadmill again, peddling frantically for the next “source” of happiness.

And the sad thing is that we often do this completely unconsciously and impulsively.

Yes, the search of happiness is the most common and pathological addiction we all share these days, and indeed, since the beginning of the human race.

THE CURE FOR PAIN IS IN THE PAIN

The cure for pain, is in the pain. — Rumi (in The Essential Rumi, p. 205)

I learned something important which I wish all people on the earth could discover:

the cure for pain IS in the pain.

What does this mean?

As Sufi mystic Rumi so eloquently pointed out, pain offers the very doorway to healing. Your pain is a messenger, a sign, and an opportunity to return to Wholeness again.

Pain is essentially a slap on the face that shouts “Hey! Wake up! You’re resisting or clinging to something here.”

So what can we do when we finally wake up?

HOW TO OVERCOME CHRONIC EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SUFFERING

When I talk about overcoming chronic emotional and psychological suffering, I’m not talking about a quick-fix, once-and-for-all cure to your pain. Sorry. It just doesn’t work that way.

What I can share with you is a tool that doesn’t try to avoid, minimize or control what you feel, but instead meets it, honors it, and allows it to teach you.

What I’m talking about is something called mindfulness. And from what I’ve experienced, this is the only tool I know of that can help you to meet and overcome pain moment-to-moment.

In terms of awareness, mindfulness is the most powerful soulwork tool I have worked with because it helps you to directly access your inner Higher Nature. What I call Higher Nature here is really only a fancy term for the space inside of yourself that is open, infinite, impersonal and all-loving — and we all possess this unconditionally peaceful space.

Here are some steps to help you overcome chronic suffering:

1. BE WILLING TO FACE YOUR “DARKSCAPE”

To overcome any chronic suffering you’re experiencing, you really must be willing to search your darkness. You must be willing to face what you have not yet faced, or avoided within you for potentially many years.

Your darkness could be, physically speaking, the size of a fingernail that occasionally pulsates in your chest. Or your darkness may be like a deep chasm or abyss that seemingly has no end. The “Darkscape” within us always varies from person to person and was created from our inherited and early life wounds, as well as learned patterns and beliefs.

2. LEARN TO BECOME AWARE OF TRIGGERS AND PAIN AS IT ARISES

This point can be difficult, and it does take practice. Often, we tend to be stuck in the habit of immediately reacting to whatever pain arises inside of us. We become like robots that automatically switch on “self-protection” mode. We protect ourselves by withdrawing, suppressing, repressing, avoiding, or getting angry and defensive.

Becoming aware of triggers and pain as it arises requires you to practice meditation. You can also become aware of your internal “Feelingscape” through the regular practice of mindfulness. In fact, mindfulness and meditation go together seamlessly, and I recommend both of them.

To practice this skill, you will need to commit to it daily. But, let me guarantee, the time you spend will be MORE than worth it.

3. WHEN PAIN ARISES, ALLOW IT AND HOLD IT IN AWARENESS

It is hardwired into us to avoid that which causes us pain in life. What I’m asking you to do here may seem fundamentally counterproductive. But I challenge you to do it and see if it doesn’t make a difference to your life.

The most important part of holding your pain in awareness is non-judgement. When you start judging your feeling and judging yourself, you create further constriction and tension within your mind and body. Obviously, this doesn’t lead to any form of resolution — only more pain!

Non-judgement naturally comes from the practice of mindfulness and meditation; it is not something you must “do” as much as something you must “allow.” Does that make sense?

Here is an example of holding pain in awareness and going into it might look like:

You’re about to get shopping out of the boot of your car, and it is nighttime. As you walk out underneath the stars, you start feeling fear creep into your body. The sound of a snapping twig makes you jump and thoughts of kidnappers and murderers start firing through your brain. At once, you become aware of these thoughts and the sensations in your body. Instead of fighting them or dramatizing them, you simply allow them to be there. Instead of closing, you open yourself to the fear, and you find that once it is fully seen and held, it dissipates quickly.

Here’s another example:

Your daughter has just said something hurtful to you. Immediately you recognize the stinging sensation in your chest and angry thoughts arise in your mind. You take a deep breath, observe the feelings and thoughts cascade through you, and then drift away again.

4. REALIZE THAT THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ARE NOT “YOU”

Most of us tend to have an unspoken assumption that we are our thoughts and feelings. Einstein called this an “optical illusion” of consciousness. Searching your darkness and allowing your pain to arise is about recognizing that all thoughts and feelings are transient. All of your thoughts and feelings are not you, but instead are spontaneous surges of energy. If you could really control your thoughts and feelings, wouldn’t you always choose to be happy and loving? The fact is that we can’t control the thoughts in our heads. Seeing the essential impersonal nature of thoughts and feelings helps us to become witnesses rather than puppets of our inner landscapes. Understanding that you have no control over thoughts is not about living in denial, but taking responsibility for your happiness by learning how to create more inner space. This inner space will reveal to you your true nature beyond thought and form.

Search your darkness, and you will discover your light again. Search your darkness, allow it, and hold it in awareness, and you will see that pain isn’t the problem, resisting and reacting to it, is.

Much Love To All... Go In Peace My Beautiful Friends 💓💓💓

#happy #darkness #pain #fear #love #care #self love #self care #heal #stress #anxiety #mental health

[pastelmaybelline-blog]

Why you might say no to anti-depressants

I started this blog for the many women who tell me that they Believe Forced to take meds. They feel pathologized by the identification, such as a scarlet letter D, their name. They come to me because they know I'll work with them to make real changes which are at the center of their symptoms.

However they still have loved ones who do not understand. So here's my List of the best reasons -- logical, smart, evidence-based -- to say no to antidepressants.

Easy does it

As doctors, we take an oath --"first do no harm" -- but then we get Enticed by the seeming simplicity of a one-pill-for-one-ill model. In actuality, it makes no sense to take strong psychiatric drugs as a first line therapy. In actuality, I'd go farther and say that it is reckless. There is peer-reviewed study that implicates lifestyle options in melancholy and upholds medical meditation along with other powerful mind-body methods as more effective than medication. More girls are saying that they would rather begin by taking a hard look at diet, nutrition status, and their personal care regimen.

So how about devoting one month into a lifestyle overhaul and taking it As seriously as others may require a physician's order? Because you are worth it. Pharmaceuticals are dangerous

Drugs are dangerous and potent, and there is no doubt that Americans are carrying too many . It is called iatrogenic drug addiction And it certainly includes psychotropic medication. Do not roll your eyes. I am not talking about some type of conspiracy where malevolent folks sit in a room and plot to hurt people. I'm talking about how the world works. It is an alignment of politics, gains, and incentives. We've got a system which richly rewards individuals who prioritize commercial uses for drug research. Simple solutions that can not be patented will not get the time of day. New medications are fast tracked through the approval process too fast and dangers are ignored -- brief and long-term. A whole lot of what we will need to know about these drugs is locked in a drug company's file drawer cupboard. What has been discovered by these file-drawer studies is that psychiatric meds result in worse long-term effects than no treatment in any way.

If you are not signing up to be reflexively treated as a cog in the pharmaceutical wheel, that is smart medication.

How can a happy pill be so unhappy?

There's not a great deal of pleasure coming from these pills. Take a few minutes to scan the side effects Of commonly prescribed antidepressants and you might have difficulty lifting your jaw off the floor. Listed below are acknowledged and recorded reactions to antidepressant drugs.

Common side effects include:

Agitation, shakiness, nervousness

flu-like symptoms

indigestion and stomach aches

nausea or constipation

dizziness, disorientation, confusion

insomnia or sleepiness

headaches

low sexual drive, erectile dysfunction, problems attaining orgasm

weight gain

excessive perspiration

heart rhythm problems

muscle twitching or pain

shivering

Patients are nearly always told to hang in there since the above Issues generally improve with time. And if they don't solve, physicians start tweaking... they will adjust the dose or add a second and a third medicine. What they typically will not tell you is that things can go really, very poorly . There are other, far more severe reactions, including suicidal thoughts, a desire to harm others or self, seizures, and psychosis. The frightening part is that we do not know how to predict if you might be one of these circumstances. It's literally Russian Roulette, sometimes in as little as 1-2 doses.

If you are wondering how this is possible, I am right there with you. Part of the challenge of working with girls who take meds for any reason is that I am not able to differentiate between symptoms and side effects. It becomes a tangled web of physiological imbalance. They're worse than ineffective

Being a"good patient" can turn you into a patient for life. Consider these research findings, which I summarize in A Mind of Your Own:

There's no validated science which supports a neurochemical explanation for mental illness, including depression.

The placebo effect -- a complex physiologic process based on our beliefs about therapy -- is accountable for what we believe is assisting about these meds.

Medicines acting on these chemical techniques induce the body to adapt.

These adaptations are probably responsible for the poor long-term health effects of the cured versus the unmedicated (who introduced with the very same symptoms).

It is quite possible that these medications fail over time because they induce compensatory adaptations that wind up creating the reverse of what the medication originally intended and this worsening of the disease might not be reversible (even after stopping the drug ).

In other words, Trying to medicate your symptoms may:

Not help whatsoever

Make you sicker

Engender new diagnoses requiring more treatment, which generates additional, unintended side effects

Rob you of the chance to comprehend why you're symptomatic in the first location.

There simply is not a very good case to be made for their efficacy. In Fact, there's absolutely not any case. It is what leads patients to my door, since they're asking, is not there a better way? Ever try to stop?

Here's another dirty little secret in psychiatry. Starting meds is easy. Stopping? Not so much. It is like riding in a hot air balloon. Going up was a piece of cake but it does not happen to most people that down the trip could be a very bumpy ride

Patients are advised that reduction programs vary based on the medication, The dose, the duration, and previous symptoms. It sounds scientific enough. But the reality is that coming off antidepressants can be a horror show. Most individuals don't know that these medications are habit forming so withdrawal may be excruciating and feel profoundly... shameful. Add to the med mayhem that lots of doctors are not taught how to taper and the available advice is not very valuable. Harvard Medical School says:"There aren't any hard and fast rules for getting off antidepressants... some can taper off... in a matter of weeks, while some may take weeks." I'd even add years to this announcement. This should tell you is: A) they do not really know, and B) it may not go so well.

Numbed to existence?

When life deals you a few difficult news, realize that you're having a human experience. You're intended to work through it. What you are not supposed to do would be to suppress awareness and anesthetize the mind. Are you sure you would like to pathologize your pain with investigations and labels, and take pills to suppress awareness? That is exactly what antidepressants do. Imagine feeling... nothing. No sadness, no enjoyment, no pain, no anger, no love. There is something worse than feeling bad and that is saying no to what life has brought to your path.

You can pick a different narrative. You are not broken.

You are smart... life is smart and purposeful and we overlook That expansion and development comes through suffering. In actuality, when my patients cure from meds, all kinds of wild things occur -- they adopt babies, get divorced, move to Europe -- things which were sitting dormant, requiring saying.

People have evolved over millennia to interact with our surroundings with deep wisdom. There is a good reason why you're feeling bad and you Deserve the support and time to find it out. Antidepressants don't Work how you believe they do. They're a tempting fairy tale... a miracle-in-a-capsule that will magically transport you back to yourself. But there is not a single study that supports this myth, that it is Possible for the mind to be efficiently rewired by a 1 size fits all, Synthetic, chemical mixture. And in view of the risks, you deserve To try out every single safer alternative . It is time to empower yourself with A Mind of Your Own.

#depression #anti-depressants #anxiety

[darkspellmaster]

Young Justice Theory: Final Crisis connections

Given events that have taken place over the last three episodes and the clue that the episodes spell Prepare the Anti life equation, it’s becoming more and more clear that that Greg and Brandon probably are pulling from Final Crisis and the events surrounding it. 

The more I’m looking at the events of good old Final crisis the more I’m seeing stuff going down with the YJ crew that mirror stuff going on with Final Crisis. And, while I don’t think that this event will happen in this season, I feel like we’ll see this whole event going on with either Season 4 or Season 5. 

-New Gods are at war and Darkseid manages to manifest inside the body of a human, and making him want to be the architect of a new universe. On top of this a Monitor is placed inside a human to deal with his failings in his duties. 

So we know that Darkseid is up to something since he’s making deals with the Light. We also know that Halo’s powers came from the sky. The question is was it coming from outside her or coming from inside her already. She knows facts about New Genesis, and realizes a lot of things about  herself and yet she doesn’t connect to her past self. Meaning that there’s the option that this can either be the Mother box they pulled apart and put into her, or that this could be a New God that is reacting to things around her. 

We know Orion is missing, or rather away, according to Bear. Could he or another God be in her? This could also be a Monitor, as they can also come in male or female forms and being placed in her as her body has the ability through the Mother Box to connect to the New Gods. 

-New God Granny Goodness posses a body of a Green Lantern to frame Hal Jordan for Murder, and that leads to Bruce deducing who she is and him being captured. This also leads to the call to arms by the Heroes for a war against Darkseid. 

So how might this play in. Well we know that the VR Sets that  are being put out are pushing the GW network which is run by jerk faced G. Gordon Godfrey, aka,  Glorious Godfrey -who works for Darkseid himself. 

Oh but that’s not all. As others have pointed out these goggles seem to connect to Granny Goodness, the head of the Female Furies on Apokolips and also a right monster. While it’s clear that these goggles are being used for possible corruption purposes, I think they’re also being used for scanning. Namely to identify children who have Meta genes to exploit them to build the army that Darkseid needs, and more than likely it’s scanning for pieces of the equation itself. 

Granny could very well be Helga Jace or anyone in disguise, and it’s clear that the others in the Light have someone that they’re working with outside of Godfrey. On top of this, given what happens in Final, it’s very easy to see Granny getting her hands on Batman after maybe framing someone on the team for murder. 

Having the JL have to rise up against them would make sense, which could lead to other issues with the Light later. 

Keep in mind the ones that they are going after meaning to Apokolips their minds can be ore easily played with. And who are the ones using the VR sets the most? Kids. 

-Outsiders and the Judas contract act as a distraction and the possible infection of various characters. 

With team Batman working their own and the looming implications for the Judas contract coming into play it’s not hard to see this working in favor for the Light. It wouldn’t be that hard to see, through some means, Wonder Woman and others being infected while out in space and carrying the illness to earth. This could led to a lot of problems, namely the title of Antisocial  Pathologies. Which more than likely will be covering the whole situation with the bacteria named Morticoccous. 

-Time Travel again and the return of Bart and Conner. 

So in the original story Lois get’s mortally wounded when a bomb goes off and wounds her at the Daily Planet. Meanwhile Barry and Wally have to race against the Black Death -the death of the New Gods, and stop a bullet from killing Orion. Meanwhile both Bart and Connner were returned from their deaths via the LoSH from the future and the two sent back to help save everyone. 

Likely we’re going to see Barry and Bart doing the running with Wally returning along with Conner if he’s killed to stop the situation. This may tie into the idea that Barry may go into the future with Iris leaving Bart with someone like Max or grow up Bart, or leave Wally as the only Flash with Jay joining them. 

-Dan Turpin searching for Missing kids leads him to the Dark Side Club, failure to stop Orion’s death and the fall out of Darkseid using the Anti life equation on the humans. 

So we already have people looking for missing kids, although we don’t have a Dark Side Club, and we already have a missing Orion, so that all checks out and connects. I don’t think he’s dead...yet, but it could come into play later. 

Okay so this is somewhat important. The Anti Life Equation is more commonly a math problem that is a math proof of the futility of life. This is unleashed through the net in the original story. However! I don’t think that will happen this time. 

Behind Babs is the Oracle Eye. Now this is not the normal Oracle looking icon. 

That is the oracle Symbol. You know what the eye is for? 

This is Brother Eye, a program that was created by Batman due to his paranoia from his memory being erased by Zantana in Identity Crisis. Brother eye is a huge satellite that watches Metahumans and can infect people with nanotechnology. 

It’s more likely that Darkseid will wind up controlling this and end up using that to infect or corrupt the people of earth. 

Meanwhile we would probably see Barry and Bart probably meeting Wally and possibly Conner in some future time line and fighting against the super human army that Darkseid created. More than likely we would see exactly how the supers that are not infected stay uninfected by the equation and possibly a cure to all of this in the form of a symbol by Anthro given to Metron of the New Gods. 

-Heroes of unlikely types. 

Given that Lex and Dr. Sivana play a huge role towards the end of this story helping to go against Darkseid I would not be surprised if we got the story point that, with the tech that Lex has, he and Silvana are able to get control from the Justifiers in this story with the heroes in the future and turn them back to normal so they can fight against Darkseid. We probably will see Damian here in this future. 

I’m really not sure how things will play out for the rest of the story. But given the ending being called Nevermore I think we may see some really depressing endings come out of this. 

Superman comes back from the future, and Batman get’s “killed” by Darkseid after escaping from being held by Commander D. The Flashes end up leading the Black death racer to Darkseid to kill him, meanwhile the Ray traces the Metron symbol across the earth freeing everyone, and then everything gets sucked into darkness after Wonder Woman releases Darkseid from the body of Dan Turpin. Superman, thanks to the LoSH finds a wish granting machine and has to sing to it to counter Darkseid, and winds up fighting against the evil monitor that has been mostly controlling Darkside. This leads to the army of Supermen from the multiverse to come and that leads to the arrival of various teams from across the multiverse to fight with the Darkness. In the end they win and Superman wishes for a happy ending. 

Turns out that Bruce isn’t dead, he’s sent back in time and has to time jump back to the future. This leads to the Battle for the Cowl, leading Dick to become batman, Damian to become Robin. Tim to search for Bruce as Red Robin and Jason to become a protector of Gotham. Barry Allen comes back from the dead, the Teen Titans reform with some fall out regarding Conner trying to figure out himself now, and Bart dealing with being dead and alive again. 

Honestly it’s hard to guess what they’re going to pull from this story but if I had to guess...

Return of Wally West from the Future. 

Batman “dying” 

Jason, Dick, Tim and possibly Cassandra fighting for the Cowl

Birth of Jon will come out of this I’m damn sure

Conner either deciding to go to the future because he feels he can do good there being with the Legion of Super Heroes. 

We may see hints of the Guardians of Oa taking on a bigger role or hints of the Crisis on Infinite Earths looming. 

I’m sure Young Justice Season 5′s crew will look very different than what we have now. 

Halo is not going to make it as I think she’s living on borrowed time.

Terra’s death and other things may lead to Brion staying with the team and helping them go forward. 

Forger will probably go back with the New Gods and become the Bugs leader. 

#young justice #young justice: outsiders #young justice season 3 #young justice theories #young justice theory #yj season 3 #yj spoilers #yjo spoilers #yjs3 #yj outsiders #yj:o #yj #final crisis #dc comics #dc universe #brion markov #halo #tim drak #robin #dick grayson #conner kent #wally west #batman

[2ofswords]

Since I am so tired of reading „I know Dankovsky sucks and his ending is horrible“, before every comment that defends him, I will now throw myself into the fires of discourse and write an essay about:

Why The P1 Utopian ending does not mean, Danko is an asshole

(A bit of swearing and a lot of spoilers under the cut)

Since I already spoke about being tired of disclaiming a lot, here are some of them. Firstly: This is NOT a comparison and I am definitely not saying, that his ending is better than the ending of the Haruspex or the Changeling. That would be ridiculous and I wholeheartedly belief that the other characters have morally better endings. (Though I will make one ending comparison at the end of this essay just to make myself even more of a hypocrite and there will be a comparison of one aspect of all three P1 endings, that is not made to compare their general quality but… well… this specific aspect of the ending.)

Also this essay isn‘t about Dankovsky not being an asshole. This is not a character analysis, I am only talking about the ending and his relationship regarding his path towards it. There are entirely different arguments to be made about his character that I will not talk about. Surprisingly a character is not only defined by the outcome of their story.

And last but not least the weirdest disclaimer of them all: While my arguments try to defend Dankovsky in his ending I totally understand if you still think his ending makes him more of an asshole. Killing a lot of people is always a dick move and the decision is still a horrible one. I do not really want to argue that people are wrong for judging him based of his ending. I just want to explain, why we also do not have to feel ashamed for deciding to not judge him as a complete asshole based on the main outcome of his route and why his motivation isn’t only based on spite or even ruthless calculation. Also, I think that there is a lot to say about his decision, that isn’t really said and that these are interesting aspects. Sorry to say it, but I just wanted to have a catchy title. I just really love this ending and it’s complexity and wanted to discuss it aside of calling it the evil Danko ending.

So. Let’s start with the easy argument that some people are talking about.

Argument 1: Danko completely lost it and holding him accountable due to his rationality defies the point of his route.

This one is… one of the weaker arguments, but I will still elaborate on it. The entirety of his route is built upon loss and failure. While the Haruspex starts with a mob that wants to kill him and works his way up, the dynamic of his route is him seemingly starting on top of everything and slowly loosing his bearings and by the end of the story this man is already driven to madness. Being used as a pawn in politics, getting daily “fuck you”-letters from the Powers that Be, realizing your lives work is already destroyed and all of your colleagues are probably as doomed (and being the one responsible because he was their leader), realizing that Aglaya – who was the one person who seemed to be his ally at the end – used and betrayed him just like everyone else, having the one truly honestly kind person commit suicide at least partly because of his failures, witnessing his own helplessness against the plague (an enemy that should align with his expertise as a doctor), being hated from day one by almost everybody in town, realizing that the political allies are totally bonkers and also preparing to off themselves (Victor! You seemed moderately sane at the beginning. The betrayal!), getting almost beaten to death while trying to help the town while spending all these days in an hostile place that slips into chaos… yeah I think you really aren’t in the headspace for rational thought. It is a miracle that that guy hasn’t completely broken down and day eleven and to some extend day 9 and 10 are showing him as completely unhinged already, only leading up to a decision, that isn’t really made out of spite or coldness but rather desperation and blind tunnel vision. The day eleven mission involves him going on a rampage against a military squad because of a vague hint and he only checks after the killings, if Andrew is even there. That isn’t a calculated action it’s about a man being completely shattered and making everybody suffer because of that. (Which is also horrible, but an entirely different sort of tragedy.) By now he just shouldn’t be the one handling the situation at all but the local powers sure want to wash their hand of any guilt that they haven’t already attracted. Also – and more importantly – the Polyhedron literally is the one good thing happening to this man. After going into it on day 9 he thanks Khan for reminding him of a childhood he has forgotten! He has a shit week, he is completely beaten down (quite literally) and this is the one happy moment he finds in all this chaos. Clinging onto that is surely not rational, but it is human. We all know that the Bachelor has the tendency to survive on willpower alone and here clinging to the tower and its miracles is literally his only motivation to continue his route at all. Of course he is going to protect it at that point, if thinking about any other option bring nothing but utter misery and the acceptance of complete and utter failure. After all Dankovskys route is about the limits of his rational worldview and how it hinders him more that it serves him in a world, that isn’t defined by rational beliefs. Of course he will be out of it by the end and actually loosing his composure is an important part of his suffering and character development in the story. His ending is not a sign of rational thought but the last consequence of being enraptured in a web of circumstances that forbid him from making rational decisions in the first place.

Truth to be told, I don’t really like this as an argument. I love this thought as a peace of characterization. As much as I love his ending and the horrible consequences and the actual failure it imposes, when we look at the other playable characters. But it doesn’t really help us here. It doesn’t change the fact, that Dankovsky destroyed an entire town just for a dream, a man-made building, a promise of utopia that we never witness ourselves. He still destroyed so… so much! But… let’s look a bit deeper into the motivations behind that exchange.

 Argument 2: The Trolley problem

“There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?” (Wikipedia)

There is a variation to this question and interestingly enough it is one of the morality questions Aglaya asks in Pathologic 2: Would you push a man down a bridge, to save the children from a train? The curious thing is, that we can see all healers giving the same answer, (even if we have the choice to choose differently, since it is… you know… a dilemma). Necessary sacrifice is a constant of all three routes and every single protagonist has to kill in order to save a larger amount of people. Still, the game never answers moral choices with a simple answer and here with the Utopian ending we can see the darker side of this moral dilemma in full force (to a lesser extend this also applies to the Humble ending, since it also involves the Trolley problem, albeit on a smaller scale.) If we take the Kain’s studies about the focus and the soul seriously and see the Polyhedron as a method to ensure immortality seriously – or if we at least assume that Dankovsky wholeheartedly believes in that concept – than protecting the Polyhedron at the cost of the town suddenly becomes the Trolley problem at a significantly larger scale. The Polyhedron could ensure the survival of humankind but only at the expense of the town and it’s infected inhabitants. After all death is to Dankovsky but an affliction that can be healed just like the plague and consumes far more victims (if not all of them even if one would survive the disease). And that poses the question: When does the Trolley Dilemma stop working? What if there are two million people on the tracks and one million on the other side? What if there are hundred people on one and ninety nine on the other? What about five million vs. four million and nine hundred thousand? Can a human life be counted against the life of several others? If we look at the game itself and the healers answer in their daily life, it seems kind of simple: Yes, it is possible. The effort of saving is worth dirtying your hands after all. Risking at least your own life seems like a fair deal and no route really works without at least some degree of human sacrifice. But on this larger scale… it seems absurd. And… well… it is. But still. If we just try to empathise with the Bachelors mindset. If there is a possibility to cure humanity's mortality… if there is a sliver of possibility (and since Thanatica is destroyed the Polyhedron seems like the only possibility at this point)… what kind of sacrifice is worth preserving it?

I myself have my own answer to that question. In Germany the Constitution starts with the sentence “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” or: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” (This is the official translation though a more direct translation would be “Human dignity is inviolable” which is more of a statement and less of a law) Even if the effect of that sentence in politics is very debatable and it is incredibly vague and not really a usable sentence as a law… I really like it. The human rights as a concept as well as equality can be concluded from the fact, that human dignity is something that cannot – under any circumstance – been taken away and is always a thing that must be considered just by being human. It is… nice. And it also means, that a human being cannot be seen as a mere object and has its own agency. A human being is not quantifiable in their existence by any parameter, be it birth, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, interests, talent, job, body, etc… It is incredibly important… and incredibly interesting in our scenario. Because if life isn’t quantifiable at any circumstance… the Trolley Dilemma has a solution. There is no way to tell, if one life can outweigh several others and deciding over their lives is something and judge over the worth of their live is something one should never do. Thus Dankovsky’s choice to save the Polyhedron and outweigh the lives of the infected seems morally wrong.

But… is that the answer the game has? Well… the artbook of Pathologic 2 states that the design of the game is about enforcing ambiguity and I would argue that the first instalment is no different. Firstly: In times of crisis lives become quantifiable. That is part of the tragedy. The healers’ lives are suddenly worth preserving, while others appear as nameless numbers in a daily statistic and caring about the individual dignity seems impossible. As already said the act of killing in order to preserve life is almost mandatory in every single run. So, what about human dignity? Can it even be preserved under such a dilemma? (And there is probably a point to be made about everybody being dolls and thus not even a being with dignity and agency at all… but I digress) Especially doctors have to face this dilemma and they have to make these judgement calls, weather they like it or not. The game doesn’t answer it but makes different variations of the same dilemma that we may judge differently. The Utopian ending is one variation.

What I want to say is, that – if we take the Kains’ believes seriously and see the survival of miracles against the law of nature not only as progress but as a question about human mortality itself – the question if the Polyhedron is worth saving is a very different one. I personally think that the idea of the focus still feels too esoteric to be a real point of interest but on the other hand… it is not like we haven’t some proof when we visit Khan and listen to his testimony. It is not that this place is above it’s miracles, and we know that a lot of the mysticism is grounded in reality, be it by the very real ways of the Kin or the past existence of Simon. So only thinking of the polyhedron as an abstract concept is… well doing it a disservice if we take the other parts as serious. Yeah it is made out of it’s own idea but… you know being like “it cannot exist but it can sure puncture the earth and kill everything” is… a weird way of thinking and it sure is a McGuffin (and even called that in the Artbook) but as we said, the game is about ambiguity and the only way to look at its existence is not only “evil tower of doom”. Is it worth keeping? Eh… I wouldn’t say so myself. I still think the Utopian ending is pretty shit and seeing the tower as salvation for our mortal lives is pretty farfetched. But the question for this essay is: Is it wrong to think, it is worth keeping? And from Dankovsky’s perspective, who sees it as the only possible chance of curing human mortality… Well… the answer at least isn’t as simple anymore. But – and now we are getting somewhere – the argument about the complexity of human value can be also made without even relying on Kain-Bullshit.

Argument 3: The Utopian Ending is the only ending, that completely gets rid of the plague (at least from Dankos point of view)

But wait you say, the other endings also defeat the plague! There even is a cure, something our beloved Bachelor of Medicine never archives. What is this lunacy?

Well here is the catch: A cure does not destroy its disease. Or at least it is an unreliable method. Sure, if everyone is cured and/or the disease helps to build antibodies, then it does help to get rid of it. But the sandpest seems to leave the bodies and not finding these remnants and antibodies is one essential part of the Bachelor’s route. It is the reason Rubin needs a living heart in the first place. The disease doesn’t seem to stay and no antibodies seem to be developed. (And even if I try to avoid material of Pathologic 2 in this analysis since there are differences in the Canon I still at least want to mention, that the Panacea as well as the shmowder do indeed not help against the disease after it is cured and a person can be reinfected. I do not know, if the same is the case in one and if you can test it out.) But if there are no antibodies, the cure could only eradicate the disease if every single infected person is cured at the same time. Good luck with that! That’s not bound to be a complete mess in this town!

This is backed up on day 12 in the Bachelor’s own route. When he is presented with the options the other healers have, he always asks both of them the same question: How does that ensure the future of the town? The Haruspex makes a cure yes. But what if the disease returns? After all the underground water he talks about still exists and there is no telling, if it will ever reemerge. It already happened once… The Haruspex doesn’t answer with “no, that will never happen”. He says that they will have enough cure if this is the case. An optimist, I see. And definitely not a satisfying answer if we consider a scientific perspective. What if the cure runs out? What if they find out too late and the plague spreads outside of town? A cure is not a waterproof system against plague. (You know what works better though? A vaccine.) Daniil's mission was always to eradicate the disease and this would not do the trick. Having only a cure is risky. And it might not be a permanent solution.

The same applies for the Humble ending. If one asks the Changeling what would happen if the blood of their sacrifice runs out she answers “There will always be people willing to sacrifice themselves” Which is… just great. Constant human sacrifice just doesn’t seem that sustainable. And it also means that there will be constant loss of human life. Something that might even lead to more sacrifice in the long run (although that would be a reaaaaly long run considering how long the sacrifice of the Clara’s bound is supposed to last.) But it sure as hell doesn’t make the plague disappear. What if there are no willing sacrifices? What if Clara is gone and there is no one to perform a miracle? Clara’s ending relies on faith by nature and putting your trust in it is easy from a player’s perspective but even harder when there are lives at stake, the success unsure and these questions to consider.

Dankovsky’s ending is built upon uprooting the plague and eradicating it. The problem is that it is everywhere and not easily destroyed. As Lara very adequately realised: There is no source. His ending is the consequence of that goal and even if it loses in every other aspect, this is the one, where it wins. It actually destroys the problem itself. Building a new town and keeping the tower it cannot reach, actively minimalizes the possibility of the plague reappearing. And a more permanent solution might save more lives than one that sounds more humane at the beginning.

Okay, to defend the Haruspex for a change of pace: In his route he actually does believe that his method eradicates the disease as much as Dankovsky is convinced that his solution does the trick. For him the source is the Polyhedron and the way, it wounds the earth. With it removed the plague will not reappear. But why should Dankovsky share this belief? No one tells him! The inquisitor says that the Polyhedron is the root of evil but there never is any actual proof for that. Even If the Polyhedron is partially responsible and Danko actually does acknowledge this, it is the bloody mess of underground fluids that are in fact the source (which is ironically confirmed by the Haruspex himself). As he tells the inquisitor herself at the last day: The source and the cause can be too different things. It already seeped through Andrey's spiral to the upper layers. The damage has already been done and in fact the Polyhedron is now the only save place, where nobody is infected. Everything else needs to be destroyed to eradicate the disease but why even destroy the Polyhedron? Wait. Why even destroy the Polyhedron? What good would that even do if we would consider it? What the fuck would Dankovsky even do with the destroyed Polyhedron, how would that save the town?

 Argument 4: Dankos ending isn’t about the town vs. the polyhedron at all!(From his perspective. It totally is for the player though!)

I experienced something weird while playing the Bachelor’s route in P1. And with that I mean that I experienced something weird, that I wasn’t already expecting. After hearing so much about the fabled Polyhedron love, assuming that he sacrifices the whole town for its sake and hearing from the inquisitor in Pathologic 2 again and again how obsessed he is, I waited for the revelation. The moment Dankovsky would completely lose it and become utterly and undeniably obsessed with the children’s tower. That moment… never happened. Or well… it happened remarkably late and with less impact than I thought. Until day 9 the tower isn’t even a point of interest to the Bachelor, which is two thirds of his route. But even after you witness the miracles of the Polyhedron yourself, you still can argue against its glory. You can agree with Aglaya on day 10, that it seems dangerous (even if that could also be tactics, but until this point there is not really a reason for that). Hell, you can tell Peter on day 12, that his ideas will always only exist in his mind and blueprints and that the new town they will create will not work out! That is so weird, if the result of his run is, that he sacrifices the town for the Polyhedron! Why is there always an option to speak against the miracle we want to save? Isn’t that completely strange?

If we take the town vs. polyhedron conflict serious then… yeah it is. But is this all, what his end can be about? I would argue against it. Because what finally tips him to his solution and completes his view on the map of the town isn’t the Polyhedrons glory: It is the towns underground water and the Haruspex telling him, that the deeper layers are infected. That is, when he flips his shit and he even has an “oh no, it can’t be!” moment. Weird, isn’t it? If he would be set about destroying the town, why agonizing over this information? But from his point of view it is a nail in the coffin, the realization, that the whole towns ground is seeping with infection and if not eradicated, it will reappear. The Bachelor doesn't have a cure and the Haruspex, while promising that he has a solution, sure as hell doesn’t explain how that would work and insists on arguing his own case without interference. (Which is completely understandable but doesn’t clear the situation.) The Bachelor has no means on his own to fight the plague outside of destroying the town. This is his only option to call of the bombardment of the Polyhedron and the tower and from his point of view, destroying the tower would archive absolutely nothing. It is free of infection, why destroy it? What would ripping it out do aside from letting even more blood seep out? In his own case, this would be completely useless, thus destroying the Polyhedron does not save the town! When the Bachelor flips the switch and guides the trolley in a different direction, he isn’t guiding it from hitting the Polyhedron to hitting the town. He guides the trolley from hitting the town and the polyhedron to only hitting the town! And by the way to only hit the town which his infected people while everybody else evacuates in the tower. (Which is confirmed by his ending cutscene, where people are actually present. After all it takes the healthy to built the new town). In his own mind, the Bachelor is saving people, not killing them! He does what he can so that the most of them survives and in his case, destroying the town is the only method to ensure victory at all.

If we stick to his own route – as I am doing right now – we have two counterarguments against this theory. The first one: But isn’t that only the failure of finding a better method? And: yes it is. As we already discussed in the first argument, the Bachelors story is about failure and the game itself is about necessary sacrifice, lose-lose situations and making the best out of a desperate hopeless scenario. Which leaves us with the question: Could Dankovsky have found a better solution? And… maybe. If he was more attentive, made different choices, would have been nicer to the Kin… There always are “ifs” but I would argue that the ones in this scenario are… pretty small odds for a change. He does genuinely try to inspect the abattoir and find a solution and ensure it’s safety and is almost punched to death as a result. The Kin regard him with absolute hostility, and for a good reason but it doesn’t help his case. Without Burakh's knowledge and caste-rights making a cure would be (almost) impossible. He isn’t allowed to do any normal doctoring the one time, he tried to gain some blood from dead people, multiple guards had to die in order to ensure this absolute act of evil to go unnoticed. Thus he has to rely on Rubin's secret lab. The possibility of Simon and his powers against the plague also aren’t usable… The Bachelor doesn’t even get to see his corpse after all. What choice does he have other than eradicating the cause itself? It’s definitely not the elegant solution that he was hoping for but there is a reason for him switching to inspect everything after ruling out a living plague carrier. These are the desperate means of finding a solution when his own knowledge of medicine has already failed him and the hopes of providing such medicine are already dwindling. Saving the town is simply not an option, the moment itself becomes the source of the plague.

The second counterargument is this one: Why not side with another healer, when they provide a better solution? And this is also a very valid argument. And thus, the moment it becomes an option, we as the Bachelor can choose to do so. If he has the cures that are necessary to ensure another healers victory, it is completely possible to avoid that ending. He doesn’t have to stick with it as well as the other healers do not have to, so judging him based on the other routes being better outcomes becomes obsolete. He has the ability to use these options, but if we lack the cures, his own solution is the only one. (Of course you can also save the other characters bound and then still decide to destroy the town, but using this scenario as his only motivation, when you can totally decide for yourself is a bit harsh, isn’t it?)

Of course, this argument collapses the moment we play any other route and he is trying to convince us to save the Polyhedron and abandon our own plans. However his own route can be considered his own perception of the story and our knowledge, how much he knows about the others paths is pretty limited and dependant of our choices as the player. Also, seeing his character and the changes made with that in mind, we can actually explain, why they appear. Of course, everybody tells Artemy how much the Bachelor is in love with the tower, when we’re not seeing it to that extreme in his route! It is necessary to fulfil his role in the Haruspex route. Of course, both the Bachelor and the Haruspex will appear as demons in Clara's route. They do offer nothing but destruction from her point of view and both solutions seem destructive and spiteful, if they try to convince her. Everybody seems on board with seeing the characters in her route differently, but I think that the same applies to the Bachelor and the Haruspex in each other’s route, since their roles in the game changes. Or at least the perspective changes based on the others worldview. The Haruspex seems a lot more dangerous and his medicine a whole lot shadier, while the Bachelor seems to be more in love with the tower and ready to abandon everything for it, because it seems that way in comparison to the other persons knowledge of the situation. This is also backed up by the doll ending, where the Bachelor is being called out as the villain most of the time. In other routes he appears more villainous than in his own route, because we do actually have the means of comparison. But this is our perspective and not actual character motivation. We as the player do have the choice to work toward an ending. We can with our knowledge of the game go the extra mile to secure enough cures from the very beginning and help another healer. We are aware of the fact, that Clara and Artemy are other playable characters and we know from the very beginning that their beliefs have to be of value and their solutions will be backed up by their own routes. We know the opposition these characters stand in and while we see the different routes we may judge them for ourselves. And while Clara definitely knows and the other two healers show some sensibility towards this opposition (the “left hand, right hand”-quote comes to mind), at least the male healers are basing their decision upon their beliefs and not some outside point of view (while Clara watches and not-so-silently judges them). They even try to help each other and even provide the key insight to their own plan’s destruction (the Bachelor guides the inquisitor eyes to the Polyhedron and its structure, while Artemy outright tells Daniil of the underground infection). Of course they do not have the full picture! How could they, this entire game is about them not having it and making terrible mistakes! Dankovsky doesn’t have the ability to judge his own solution how the player does. And while judging his ending based on this information is completely valid and sensible, implying that he knows this detriment and still goes through with everything feels… a bit unfair to say the least. The conflict of the town vs. the polyhedron is an important debate in the game. And yes, Dankovsky's role is being the advocate of the polyhedron, but man, this guy has the tendency to get manipulated into advocating random shit! The town vs. polyhedron debate is as present with him, as it is with the Haruspex. With the Polyhedron being the source in his route, he really has no choice but to remove it. After all, this guy really has no reason, to protect the Polyhedron. Of course he doesn’t! He would never sacrifice the town for the sake of his own ideology!

 Argument 5: Let’s talk Nocturnal!

I promised one comparison, didn’t I? Still, we are now diving into abstract talk about the games’ themes and less about character motivation. Consider this more of a bonus and a different thought and less as an argument for Dankovsky himself. Comparing one ending to a different one does not make one of these characters more or less of an asshole. And comparing Pathologic 1 to Pathologic 2 obviously doesn’t tell us anything about the canon of either of those games, since they have vastly different results and we have no idea what the Bachelor’s endings will look like in Parhologic 2 (though I would be surprised if we couldn’t destroy the town and save the Polyhedron. But who knows, in Artemy’s case the army only pisses off.) Still, I think it is very interesting to talk about both of these endings side by side.

And I will begin this comparison by telling you that I love this ending! I am so happy that it exists and I think it is glorious and I think it’s existence is really important. I am so happy that Artemy has a reason to destroy the town. But is this okay? Or – as a comparison – is this a better idea than the one Dankovsky had?

I would argue that these endings have a lot in common. They both preserve their own ideals and establish a radically new order at the cost of the town itself. They both kill a shit ton of people for the miracles they have witnessed along the way. One could even argue that the Nocturnal ending is more horrifying. Firstly, more people die. While the Bachelor saves the uninfected, Artemy saves only those who “live with earths will” which seems to be like… the ten guys chilling in the abattoir and some of the kids. We know that there are only mere hundreds of people left of the kin and since everybody in the termitary doesn’t seem to count… who even gets saved? It’s at least as vague as the question who isn’t infected and can be saved at the Utopian end. But – more importantly – Artemy definitely has a choice in that matter and decides to sacrifice the town for the sake of the past. (If you’re not me. In my playthrough I got the courier note twenty minutes before 22:00 and the game was like “what are you going to do, such a hard choice” and I was like “I literally do not have the time to get this thing to town hall”. And then Aspity was like “you made your own conscious and completely willed decision” while Artemy just awkwardly stared at her…) But even disregarding that, the ending is surprisingly similar. Yet I see no one judging either the Haruspex or his ending for being overly cruel and well… killing a lot. Actually, I only read posts defending it and saying that it is as morally okay as the diurnal ending and could also count as a good end. And… I kind of agree. The sacrifice of the diurnal ending is pretty steep and destroying some species – while the worms, herb brides and albinos definitely show human qualities – is pretty fucked up as well and preserving them can seem worth the cost. (Oh my, do not say we arrived at the problem of human value again!) Still… It is destroying the town for its miracles. That is literally what this ending is about, yet our asshole sense does not tingle at all! Why is that?

I think there are two arguments for this difference between our outlook on the Nocturnal and the Utopian end. The first one is that the Kin and its culture is very endangered and protecting it just seems more morally sound than protecting some rich dudes. Which is very fair and the Kains are very fucked up. Buuuut, it isn’t like there is the termitary quest that preludes the diurnal ending. Finishing the game doesn’t exactly mean that we abandon the Kin. Part of its beliefs and culture, yes. Definitely, and as I said I still think the Diurnal and Nocturnal ending are pretty balanced. But a part of the Kin is assimilated and is coping and while protecting its culture and very real traditions is completely valid, the Nocturnal ending also destroys parts of the Kin (the Termitary part) as ill fitting for living with the earth…. So… hm… It’s not as easy as saying “but you help the Kin in one and some rich dudes in the other”, since the Kin itself are also torn and we are still only allowing a specific way of living. A specific worldview containing the miracles of the town… On the other hand, the polyhedron and its miracles can also be considered endangered and unique. It is a one of a kind structure as is the miracles it can provide. The Stamatins are pretty unable to reproduce it, as the game likes to tell us and destroying it would destroy all hopes of a one in a time event to come to life. Also there are talks about the Utopians being a faction of the entire town with one third of the population agreeing on their beliefs (as it is the case with the other ideologies). And the plans Peter and Maria make do sound interesting, dreamlike and… well unique. Something that can also only happen in this circumstance. But alas… we do not know that much about it and their word is only what we have. And this is the second aspect that makes the Nocturnal ending more relatable: Buildup. We witness first-hand what this Nocturnal world would be (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse), we know the beings and the miracles of the earth. We do not really get in touch which the utopian ideas and only have the rambling of good old Georgji which… yeah that doesn’t help their case! But there are kids calling this new town an “eternal adventure” a miracle that can come to live and I would say, that this thought is quite beautiful. And it certainly is unique, which is the main argument of the Nocturnal ending. Wonders, plague and miracles. Destroy one and the other will vanish. So… what is worth keeping a miracle? The answer now seems even harder to grasp. Maybe even impossible.

But we also do not have every puzzle peace. I still have hope for the two different routes and with them there are the possibilities of new realizations and also new endings. I myself am really curious if we either get an option to save the town or a reason to destroy the Polyhedron as the Bachelor. (And I am very curious as well, if Clara will get a second ending. What would that even be? An all destruction ending to set everyone free???) There also could be more elaboration on the Polyhedron and its inner workings. Maybe we will even understand what the Kains are talking about! There are some allusions to a more concrete Kain worldview. The nut-game while very disturbing makes the entrapment of the soul way more real and gives the focus some context. (It also doesn’t only connect it with the polyhedron since “anything can be a focus. A polyhedron, a room, a nut”.) The same applies to the clocks and their connection to the save system, which makes the miracles of the Kains way more real. And I digress. Only time will tell.

 Conclusion:

I think it is clear by now, that this way too long text isn’t really about giving answers and more about perspective. I myself would say that the Bachelor’s choice is terribly misguided most of the time and the only possible method to save anything at best. But I do not think that it is made with its destructive force in mind. What I wanted to show is, that the motives and the narratives surrounding this ending are way more complex and also really, really interesting. (I just wanted to gush about this game!) As are the characters that comment on the situation at hand. And reflecting on how we judge them can say a lot about our own view and the world (this one as well as the Town on Gorkhon).

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #ending spoilers #god this is long! #Well... I can't draw and my English isn't good enough for creative writing so I guess this is my contribution to the fandom now #Weird thoughts that spontanously come out of my brain. #I'm so sorry everyone!

[onlinecannabisoil]

Medical THC hemp oil is potentially life-changing to cure liver cancer

Could cannabis oil help cure liver disease ?

Liver cancer is a potentially fatal disease characterized by aggressive liver tumor growth. The 5-year survival rate for liver cancer is about 30% at early diagnosis.

If feasible, treatment usually involves surgery, local treatment, or chemo / radiotherapy. Now, new research indicates that cannabis oil to cure liver cancer can also help treat liver tumors.

Are you possibly one who needs another reason to swap the alcohol for cannabis? Research shows that weed could have a profound impact in the treatment of liver disease.

To date in 2019, approximately 28 million Americans have some type of liver illness. In fact, liver disease was ranked at the tenth most collective cause of death in the United States.

And the U.S. is far from alone.

Around the world, liver disease impacts millions of people’s lives which is not widely known.

Meanwhile, research shows cannabis not only alleviates pain and inflammation but also restores liver functioning.

This is huge! If a person’s liver gets brutally damaged e.g. (alcohol / sugar) it then will lose the ability to repair its cells and the entire organ will remain impaired.

So in a nut shell, this is what you need to know about the benefits of cannabis and liver disease.

What is liver cancer?

Liver cancer is a type of cancer that forms in the liver. There are many different types of liver cancer. However, the most common is hepatocellular carcinoma, which affects the main type of liver cells (hepatocytes).

Nutrients, medicines or substances such as alcohol pass through the blood into the liver, where they are processed, stored, modified and detoxified.

Then these substances are returned to the bloodstream so that the body can either use them or release them into the intestine, where they are excreted.

Liver cancer is caused by abnormal cell growth in the liver. These cells eventually adhere together and form a tumor.

As the tumor grows larger, it begins to affect the proper functioning of the liver. Because the liver is so vital to us, a tumor can be a potentially life-threatening hazard.

The most common cause of liver cancer is cirrhosis of the liver, which is caused by hepatitis or alcohol consumption.

Other factors that increase the risk of liver cancer are hepatitis B or C, diabetes, and other hereditary or non-alcoholic liver disease.

The Progression of Liver Disease

To better understand how the benefits of how cannabis can treat liver diseases, it will be beneficial to first look into how the liver functions.

The liver is the largest internal organ in the body and is extremely important for a variety of metabolic processes and different roles in the body including:

1. Processing, delivering and storing food

2. It plays an important role in detoxifying the body eg. cleaning the blood

3. Detoxifying harmful substances

4. It helps to extract nutrients from food (stores them and, if necessary)

5. It delivers nutrients to the cells if need be.

6. Producing of vital nutrients such as bile and much more!

A healthy liver is vital to human life.

However it is a fact that the liver also has an amazing ability to restore itself. A healthy liver can regenerate cells even if it's been damaged.

When an injury occurs to the liver which is too severe or has taken place over an extended period of time, it leads to the loss of this extra ordinary capability.

The liver goes on to eventually create scar tissue.

The first stage of this scarring is fibrosis. The last stage is cirrhosis.

What Causes liver Cirrhosis?

Cirrhosis may happen when the liver produces excess scar tissue from long-term damage.

A healthy liver will regenerate healthy cells. A liver that is unhealthy that over a long time has developed into cirrhosis will automatically regenerate scar tissue.

This scar tissue replaces the healthy cells. This indirectly results in the liver not being able to perform its daily functioning properly.

The longer this cycle continues, the more vicious it becomes. When the cirrhosis has gone to an advanced stage, the scar tissue will start to outnumber the good and healthy tissue.

This process in turn will make it increasingly tougher for the liver to perform its even most basic functions.

Cirrhosis may follow onto a large sum of incapacitating side effects including the following: fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, itching, and even yellowing of the skin.

However, research indicates cannabis can cure liver cirrhosis. In fact, it may even treat the root cause of the condition.

The Role of the Endocannabinoid System

Pic: Your cannabinoid receptors are embedded on the surface of your cells.

Why is cannabis effective for treating liver disease?

This is due to the endocannabinoid system, or ECS.

The ECS, present in both humans and animals, is one of the most important systems in the body.

First discovered in the late 1980s and early 90s, researchers found that the ECS is an expansive network of chemical compounds and receptors.

These receptors, CB1 and CB2, are located throughout the brain, body, organs, and central nervous system.

When working in unison, the receptors in the liver work together to form a signaling system that helps to sustain health & balance among nearly all metabolic processes.

A certain measure of this signaling involves the CB receptors working in conjunction with chemicals produced by the body called endocannabinoids.

When there is a dysfunction in this system, the cannabinoids in cannabis (like THC and CBD) happen to be nature's perfect supplement for the ECS.

Have a look the the following video and how it shows a cirrhosis damaged liver that has been hammered over a period of many years mainly by alcohol abuse and repairs itself from the use of medicinal cannabis oil for liver cancer whereby cells that are damaged heal themselves

Cannabinoids and the Liver

In 2005, researchers from Hebrew University Medical School found that endocannabinoids help modulate inflammatory responses along with vascular changes.

The study revealed endocannabinoids are crucial to neurological functioning and beneficial for people suffering from liver diseases such as cirrhosis and fibrosis.

The researchers from the study concluded:

“Endocannabinoids seem to be involved in numerous aspects of acute & chronic liver disease, as well as vascular changes, modulation of inflammatory process and neurological function.”

In 2012, a study published in cell death and disease revealed CBD (one of several cannabinoids present in cannabis) plays a critical part in the treatment of marijuana oil for liver disease.

During the 10 month course, mice were fed growing amounts various concentrations of different cannabinoids.

Astonishingly, the researchers found that CBD induced apoptosis in HSCs, or hepatic stellate cells. These HCSs responsible in part for the development of scar tissue in the liver are vital.

In other words, the CBD properties from cannabis killed off the harmful cells that lead to the progression of liver disease.

Granted, this study did not involve human subjects. Nevertheless, the results are telling, especially when we look at the research as a whole.

Just take the study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology, for example.

In the study, researchers examined the effects of CBD on hepatic encephalopathy, a neuropsychiatric disorder caused by acute or chronic liver failure.

Mice were injected with both thioacetamide and saline in the study. Thioacetamide is a substance that encourages liver fibrosis in mice.

The experimental mice were then treated with one of two possible options - CBD or a vehicle (a substance comparable to that of CBD properties, minus the active element)

During the experiment, researchers discovered that CBD only had the ability to restore neurological & cognitive functioning impaired in thioacetamide-treated mice.

As a matter of fact, CBD alone restored normal liver functioning completely in the mice that were experiencing liver failure.

Upon finishing the study, the researchers concluded:

“Cannabidiol can fully restore liver function, and at the same time, normalizes the 5-HT levels & also relates to improving brain pathology in accordance with the normalization of brain function capacity.

We can then conclude, the effects of cannabidiol may result from an arrangement of its actions in the liver & the brain.”

Imagine for a moment if this same study had been performed on humans. Medicinal companies would likely be very much further in our understanding of medical cannabis oil to be used as a treatment for liver disease.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government still classifies pot as a Schedule I drug with zero medicinal properties. Clearly, the above research reveals the facts to be otherwise.

Medical marijuana oil is life-changing after taken for 4 months in order to cure liver cancer

Many people across the globe are suffering from liver disease right now and medicinal cannabis oil for liver cancer could potentially be the cure doctors cannot prescribe.

Medical cannabis: A new alternative?

Medical cannabis and cancer is a topic that attracts much attention in the medical community. Cannabinoids such as THC and CBD have already received much praise from patients and physicians for the effective treatment of side effects such as nausea, vomiting and pain.

However, research shows that these cannabinoids hide much more power in themselves.

Research into the effects of cannabinoids on cancer dates back to the late 1980s, with some studies showing that THC is able to stop the maturation process of damaged cultured liver cells. Since then, an increasing number of studies are trying to capture how cannabinoids can help cure liver cancer with cannabis oil.

Share this article if you are of the belief cannabis contains valuable medicinal properties.

#cannabis oil for liver cancer #thc cannabis oil for liver cancer #THC cannabis hemp oil for liver cancer #pure cannabis oil for liver cancer #cure liver cancer with cannabis #cannabis oil to cure liver disease #cannabis oil to cure liver cancer #cannabis oil for liver cancer USA #cannabis oil for liver cancer UK #cannabis oil for liver cancer Europe #pure hemp oil for liver cancer #rick simpson oil for liver cancer

[silenthillmutual]

The decisions place you in the context of higher authority. No longer an army of one, you have decided to mobilise the population to fight the disease alongside you, since your personal accomplishments were not enough.

i feel like there’s a lot to unpack with this part of the letter

first i’d like to point out that part of daniil’s dialogue with andrey involves them recounting being involved in some sort of riot together

adding all the sums together my guess is that daniil is something of a troublemaker, and that despite some of the truly bitchy things you can have him say (that i will assume are his internal monologue if you choose to have him not say them), the kind of trouble he makes has something to do with unionizing people

i don’t really know how to put this other than like. clearly daniil is a very Proud person. a lot of educated people get that. and one good way to get someone whose fatal flaw is Pride to do what you want them to do is to insult something they should otherwise be proud of...you know, their accomplishments. so the Powers That Be don’t want him to:

make any sort of connections or home among the people of the town

make the town join forces, as it were; part of your job as daniil is negotiation, but you will also get most of your news from people on the streets, many of whom are disgruntled about some sort of inequity they’re dealing with and that you can, if you want, react with outrage at their treatment (see: aspity’s lies about the water, his disgust at how vlad the younger talks about the people who work in the termitary, etc)

actually be successful in combating or even surviving the plague. this is a win/win situation for them; you get a threatening letter from them about how they will leave your laboratory alone (for now) if you are successful in this endeavour, but the truth is that it really doesn’t matter. either what you do should you survive will not be enough for them, or you will die, in which case there is no one left to defend Thanatica. 

i rarely even get that kind of depth and subtlety from books i read or movies i watch so it’s very awesome to see this sort of thing being emulated in a video game.

We expect that the measures you have taken are temporary. Speaking of what may be described as the microclimate of the town, we don’t want any irreversible changes to take place. In particular, we hope that the instructions you have issued would not lead to any undesirable moods among the local townsfolk. We would rather avoid mass psychosis, depression, or panic that are sometimes characteristic of situations like this.

i think there’s two really interesting things going on here.

the first is that this raises a very valid concern, one that you have to talk about in areas of study like cultural anthropology: cultural relativism. you want to study a culture and interact with it, but without being too biased, passing judgement, or changing the way the culture exists too much. to a degree, all of these are unavoidable, both in-game and in the real world. you know that daniil is guilty of the first two even if you never have him say some of the things he’s thinking. 

but i think too many people look at this without nuance - not just as far as this game goes, but for plenty of other media and facets of real life. you don’t want to be ethnocentrist, of course, but not every cultural practice is good or defensible. you see it all the time when weebs try and defend things like hen.tai, lo.licon and shot.acon. there’s an ethical dilemma that comes in engaging with other cultures, and it’s really not as cut and dry as simply calling yourself an outsider and assuming these practices are okay. 

this is a huge misstep that happens in the film Midsommar. i read an article about how the main group being anthropologists is actually essential to the horror of the film; they are able to be gaslit because they let their cultural relativism put them in danger. they ignore the warning signs that they are being initiated into a cult, that they are being manipulated, and even that the cult is made up of white supremacists. it’s very possible that the reason Pelle is a foreign exchange student is to find people like this group of anthropologists who have stepped back too much from themselves their culture. 

this also reminded me a bit of a discussion on reddit i saw about colonized countries talking about their relationship with their colonizers and how those two interact, although Pathologic is so vague i’m not sure if you’re meant to read daniil’s route as being related to colonization or not; i know artemiy’s route has more to do with that, and that seems to be connected to some of the other families in town, specifically the olgimsky’s. 

the second thing that i think is interesting about this, is that it is once again setting daniil up for failure. they don’t want him to change the town too much, but they want him to be successful in combating the plague. given that the town has no hospital or morgue, that the only access to the outside world for them is the train, and that in order to keep the disease from spreading he has to issue quarantine and change how people go about their daily lives? he can save the town OR keep it from changing; he can’t do both. not to mention that the Powers That Be are sending people to help enact whatever changes daniil deems necessary... they are purposefully escalating the situation, knowing that they are going to make him fail in some way or another. 

Please keep in mind that when we offered to cease the persecution of your laboratory and to facilitate your research, we meant that as a reward for you being able to find a surgically precise solution to the problem. It is of no importance to us if you do it yourself or instigate the Inquisitor to do it on your behalf. 

so in other words: the government openly admits to persecuting him. not just laughing him off or ignoring his requests for funding or what have you, but actively attempting to sabotage him.  they will only stop these activities if he is successful - and success to them is “surgically precise” - which i take to mean does not rely on herbalism. this probably sets up why daniil is a pain in the ass on artemiy’s route; his life more or less depends on there being some quantifiable and scientific explanation for the plague and how to combat it. 

the government also doesn’t care about the town. it doesn’t care if the town is successful. they’re not sending other doctors, they’re not acknowledging rubin or artemiy as healing professionals. they’re sending enforcers. if daniil fails to find something of worth to them, everything he’s worked for up to this point in his life will be destroyed. and he will fail, as he’s been told at every turn that there is no scientific explanation for the sand pest and no precise cure. what fixed it last time was herbalism. he’s going to fail, no matter what he tries to do. this is the letter you receive by the end of day 4, and the game is 12 days long. you know before you even hit the halfway point that there is not going to be a happy ending for daniil. 

daniil certainly has a tendency to look down on herbalism, but given that he seems to have had high regard for isidor burakh i think you can take this one of two ways, or perhaps take the third option and say both: either there is some elitism going on that ties into racism, or this could be comparable to people looking at the anti-vaxxer trying to cure every disease under the sun through the power of organic foods and essential oils. (again: i think it’s a bit of both. were there more time for him to explore shit, it’s very possible daniil would grow out of the former. he seems really interested in artemiy, has little tolerance for how the ruling families run things on a basis of violence and various -isms, and again he seems to have some esteem for both rubin and isidor who we learn later are more akin to herbalists, as isidor and artemiy specifically are indigenous) i think this explains a lot of why he says insensitive things (or says things insensitively). 

i think it’s also important to keep in mind that he doesn’t know what’s going on in the clara or artemiy’s routes. he only has his point of view, which as an outsider is going to be heavily skewed by whatever he is told. he can’t possibly know everything. 

i think the last thing i wanted to end this overly long post on was this: his field of study is thanatology. the study of death.

why in god’s name do the Powers That Be want to destroy research into longevity? just food for thought, but this game is 17 years old, and i think it’s especially relevant now. 

#nori writes #meta #plato plays pathologic #path of logic #plato posts #ok to rb #pathologic #long post #and i mean it this post is SUPER fucking long #bachelor deeply disrespectful #icarus.docx #mine

[zombyun-blog1]

Scientists Find A Gene That Could Lead To Erectile Dysfunction

Diabetes Type 2 And Erectile Dysfunction Excess weight often in order to high bp and high blood levels of fat which may damage blood vessels. Did you know that muscle burns more calories than fat? Muscle wasting is also exhibited in Polyneuritis and is characterized by thin and weak muscles. These results are not surprised as it was shown that placebo effect in erectile dysfunction studies could be as high as 50% (de Araujo, da Silva et al. Natural cures for erectile dysfunction sold online are often why not to use natural remedies for ed at best, natural remedies will contain the same. There are a few different levels of severity for ED, but the SIM1 gene appeared to impact them all the same. Development policies and plans are also discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. 6. You are panicking when you make mistakes. From a loss of self-esteem to issues with intimate partners, the results of erectile dysfunction are far reaching, and if not treated properly they can lead to a lifetime of interpersonal and emotional problems. The effects of alcoholism are devastating and far reaching because it does not only effect alcoholics but also the individuals around them. Now within the scene are mobile programs that allow you to discover out of your cellphone. Currently available treatments for erectile dysfunction are essentially unchanged for 20 years, and overall, online canadian pharmacy men are not satisfied with their options. People who are troubled with any of these ailments should not attempt to doctor themselves by taking drugs, but a competent physician should be consulted. Commercial gingko preparations have also been reported to contain colchicine, a substance that can be harmful in people with kidney or liver problems. Ayurveda as we all know is the oldest form of medicine known to man , and it has some very potent herbs to cure all prostate problems . Urology is a field of medicine dedicated to diagnosing and treating disorders of the urinary tract and male reproductive system. Author's Bio: Joe Barton is the founder of Barton Publishing Inc., a leading natural health company specializing in publishing cutting edge reports that show people how to cure male impotence and treat themselves using safe, natural, and proven remedies. Maintaining consistent squeezing is also a challenge for people who aren't used to consciously working their pelvic floor. Of those who took part, 64% of doctors in the US, 60% in Germany and 54% in France considered that MED2002 is an improvement over current therapies. Which Erectile Dysfunction pill took home the Editor's Choice Award? Read the latest medical research on causes and treatments for erectile dysfunction. In this case the heart attack causes such significant damage to the main ventricle of the heart as to reduce blood pressure to critically low levels and death results. Lower your sodium intake to help reduce high blood pressure. High blood pressure can often referred to as erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction natural remedies reviews satisfaction natural remedies for erectile dysfunction due to high blood pressure; erectile dysfunction and pot;. Erectile dysfunction, ed, urology san antonio; erectile dysfunction. The effect was most pronounced in patients with mild ED, while results in those with moderate or severe ED were not significant. Eat a healthy diet, including fruits, vegetables, fiber, and fish, while reducing fats and meat. Cnidium has been reported to improve a man's mood, reducing both anxiety and depression. In addition, certain patients can report short term anxiety and agitation. As the erectile dysfunction remedy report program they contain honey goat weed extract, l-arginine, ginkgo biloba products that have yohimbe or yohimbine bark.. Breakthrough new method gives any guy stiff, powerful erections: click here to download the erectile dysfunction remedy report try as much as possible. Erectile dysfunction or ED may be scary and even detrimental to your relationship with your partner. • The woman in the relationship usually feels rejected. As fate would have it, Edward went on to marry the woman he gave up the throne for, but still had no children. Unless, you have an erectile dysfunction! In contrast, type 2 diabetic animals appear to have minimal impairment in parasympathetic-mediated dilatory function, but do have evidence of endothelial dysfunction. ’ effectiveness in helping men with erectile dysfunction.. Herbs for erectile dysfunction how to cure idiocy and fast treatment for erectile dysfunction (ed). Topical gel seen as effective new treatment for impotence. He or she is the person to decide whether you should stop taking the medication or not. Clinical findings correlating the symptoms to recent unprotected sexual encounters may help indicate the pathology. They help draw you into what you’re watching, making every movie an hilarious, heart-wrenching or terrifying experience. The study was published as a research letter October 4 in JAMA Oncology. It is also used as an adjuvant in treating allergies, anaemia and kidney diseases. The cardinal feature is the relation to increased heart work and its relief by stopping activity. The patient is unaware of anything the matter with his heart until an xray is taken showing an enlarged heart . Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis and is also known as degenerative joint disease.

[alzhelpnow]

Alzheimer's Association Chicago

Multidisciplinary Clinical Diagnosis Of Alzheimer Disease

Clinical trials are part of clinical research and at the heart of all medical advancement. The more you check on your own, the more you learn, which can help you avoid making mistakes in the future. Clinical trials are one of the final stages of a long and careful research and development process. Dementia care is a daunting task, but may not be as challenging as you expect. Based on the results, the vaccine will continue to be studied in the next level of clinical trials. We'll walk you through the intimidating task of putting together a complete research project from beginning to end.

google_ad_client = "pub-4090994097430346";google_ad_width = 468;google_ad_height = 60;google_ad_format = "468x60_as";google_ad_type = "text_image";google_color_border = "FFFFFF";google_color_bg = "0000FF";google_color_link = "FFFFFF";google_color_text = "000000";google_color_url = "008000";google_ui_features = "rc:6";

Diagnosis Of Alzheimer Disease Or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Several studies presented on Sunday offered the possibility of predicting risk years before the disease develops. Once the matter is settled, you cannot go back to seek additional compensation in the future. The outer cortex of the brain contains gray matter and white matter in the tract. Model the giving you wish to see in your guests by making a personal, meaningful gift of your own, hopefully above and beyond what you have given in the past. Schneider thought the speed of the cognitive and structural brain changes indicate the two may be linked. You will get everything you need and you will get what you want in just a matter of seconds due to the amazing search option.

Alzheimer Disease And Dementia Research

Glazner will give a keynote talk on using poetry to enhance the creativity of people living with dementia through the performance and creation of poetry. Complicating matters, many elderly people suffer from dementia or disabilities that make it difficult to ask for help. As more people shift away from traditional news, outlets are heavily investing in digital media. The Wilder workshop will focus on using poetry to enhance communication with people living with dementia. You can take an empowering first step by learning more about the changes you may experience, and what to do next to move forward with your life. When someone you care about has dementia, their memory loss is affecting their daily life.

Alzheimer Disease Patients And Patterns

Exercise may directly benefit brain cells by increasing blood and oxygen flow in the brain. Functional imaging reveals how well cells in various brain regions are working by showing how actively the cells use sugar or oxygen. Many thought the data implied a stable synaptic deficit rather a speeding up of pathology. When you are thinking hard, your brain may use up to 50 percent of the fuel and oxygen. Since brain cells cannot regenerate, the effect from minor head injuries tends to be cumulative. NA has been extensively used in clinical studies over the last 40 years and is generally safe and well-tolerated.

Alzheimer Disease Or Other Related Memory Loss Diseases

Neurodegenerative disease is the group of condition or disease which mainly affect the neurons of the brain. The brain ordinarily therapists to some degree in solid maturing in any case, shockingly, does not lose neurons in huge numbers. To better comprehend the premise behind medication advancement, one should first see how neurons speak with each other. Neurological manifestations may happen because of the contamination itself or because of a safe reaction. Who knows if the two joined ranks there might be a better medication or even a cure by now. In the current version of Chicago, the 17th version, ibid is accepted but not preferred.

Researchers At The University Of Pittsburgh

All Clare Bridge associates receive ongoing guidance and teaching on the complex task of providing excellent dementia care. You never know when hunger will strike, and depending on where you are and what you are doing, your options may be a bit limited. The instructor is so good, if you do not pass you do not belong there. Within 24 to 48 hours, the delusions were quelled and Mom was SO much better. You will feel energized and rejuvenated to return to the university and continue with the job after attending the conference. Conventional views bearing on geriatric nursing typically paint an image of the care as being slow paced certain and less demanding than acute care.

Primary Goal Of Attending An International Conference

Increasing prevalence of various chronic neurological diseases worldwide is expected to be a major driver for growth of the global neuroscience market. Any golf course hosting the event proves to be just as picturesque and difficult as the next. When you first start learning to cite your sources, you probably learned just one overall style guide. In college and in the real world, though, the style guide you will need to use will depend on what field you are in. Chronic diseases have now taken over as the leading cause of death in every world region. People with MCI who were ApoE4 positive and had high plasma NfL and T-tau declined the fastest.

Care And Support

Comparison of prevalence of dependence among older people between high income and lower income countries 3 a lower prevalence of chronic diseases that contribute to disability and dependence. The most important think really is to be gentle both on yourself and on the person affected directly, trying to see things from their, now increasingly limited perspective. Since the owners of the site are working hard, there is no doubt you will see that soon. When your memory is in good working order, you can recall most things without always having to write them down or be reminded.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/3k9TBA5 via Alzheimer's Help and Resources

#Alzheimers #Dementia #Senior Care