There are a few things that do not add up about this report. I am not doubting that Beck is seriously ill, or in real pain, but I suspect he has not described his medical condition as clearly or consistently as his actual doctors would.
It is hard to see how his doctors could tell him he would lose all neurological functioning in 10 years if they don't have any idea what the diagnosis is. Ditto the supposed medical opinion that he would be dead by now if he had stayed in NYC. He is describing some kind of progressive neurological condition, with severe pain and impaired function, yet he main assessment he refers to is some kind of "traumatic brain injury" test, on which he says he scored in the bottom 10% last year and now is at 90%. It is not clear to me why a TBI test would be used to assess status in a progressive neurological condition. There has been a lot of focus on TBI in the last decade, and I have not worked in this field for twice that time, so it is quite possible there is some kind of TBI test that I am not familiar with - if so I would be very interested in learning more about it. I would have thought that there is no single test that can quantify TBI in the way that Beck seems to be suggesting here. They give something like the Glasgow Come Scale (which is a relatively subjective indicator of a patient's immediate mental status) or various kinds of imaging tests that indicate areas of impairment in the brain, or a collection of neuropsychological tests, none of which would yield the kind of score he is talking about. He also says that his doctors told him he has not had REM sleep in a decade. I am not aware of any way a doctor could make that statement unless Beck has been hooked up to an EEG every night for the last 10 years. The effects of a decade of REM sleep deprivation would seem to be quite severe - I want to avoid making jokes about Mr. Beck at this stage, but I would expect at a minimum such a person to have very impaired memory & concentration, and to be very irritable and probably gain a lot of weight. Of course his medical condition and records are nobody's business but his own (unless I suppose he is a officer in some for profit publicly held corporation), so he is under no obligation to provide the public with any information. But it does seem that he wanted to share his medical status, in what appears to be a very complex and challenging case, he would have been better served giving written permission to his physicians to release information and then ask them to come on his show and explain what they think they know. Mr. Beck's description is, frankly, a bit bizarre. On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Bob Jersey <[email protected]> wrote: > Of course, he's feeling much better now... the first thing I thought of > when finding this TVNewser > <http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/glenn-beck-reveals-serious-health-problems_b245568> > (link) piece on his (ostensibly usually-dramatic... I don't get to watch > this channel, as it is on the next higher tier of cable here) reveal was: > Is this the result of years of banging your head against the wall? > > B > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
