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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
'He wants to live in this world': Edmonton paramedic's infant son in need of heart transplant
As a paramedic, JC Apuada is trained to stay calm under pressure. But nothing could prepare him for the moment when his three-week-old boy's heart stopped beating. Apuada performed CPR and helped save young Oliver's life but, over the past 53 days, his son has been fighting to stay alive through five more cardiac arrest episodes. Doctors at the Stollery Children's Hospital are still trying to diagnose what's causing his heart to give out. 'I just remember walking into the door with my (older) son Theodore after picking him up from daycare, and I heard my wife saying, 'Can you come here quick?' ' recalled Apuada. 'I went to the living room, and she was holding Oliver, and he just looked like a different baby. He was colourless, and he was barely breathing. She was asking if he was OK, and I just remember saying, 'I don't know.' 'We called 911, and I started CPR. It was so scary.' After being rushed to the Stollery, doctors stabilized Oliver and performed a series of tests, but the following day he went into cardiac arrest again. He was put on an Ecmo (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine, which is a life support system for patients with severe heart problems. It stabilized his heart for a period of time, but he continued to have cardiac arrest episodes — a pattern all the more mysterious because Oliver's twin sister has experienced no issues. 'They told us that this isn't sustainable anymore, which was very hard for us to hear,' said Apuada. 'When we've got a perfectly healthy twin baby (girl) at home, and our toddler is also healthy. They just kept telling us, 'We don't know what's causing this to happen.' ' Doctors told Apuada and his wife Britni that their next option was to place Oliver with a Berlin heart, which is a ventricular-assist device. Oliver had to go through open heart surgery, and now has two external pumps that act as his heart. Doctors have done a multitude of tests, including genetic testing on Oliver, JC and Britni, and also performed a biopsy during the open-heart surgery. Each test came back normal. Now, JC and Britni have been told that the best course of action for their infant is for him to receive a new heart. 'They still don't have any answers,' said Apuada. 'It still doesn't really feel real. It's like we're living a nightmare, and we just can't wake up from it.' Oliver will be placed on a donor list, but because of his age, they could be waiting for as long as up to two years. Through all of the cardiac arrests, Oliver's heart has been shocked a total of nine times. 'I remember having a talk with my wife, and it hurts me to say, but when one of the arrests happened, they ended up shocking his heart twice, and I remember hearing my wife saying, 'I don't think he's going to make it,' and in the back of my head, I didn't know if he was going to come out of it — but he has,' said Apuada. 'It's been a wild roller-coaster. Just going from the lowest of the lows, and then you see him improve. But throughout all of this, all you have is hope to hold onto.' The Apuadas have been thrown so much information, and faced decisions no parents should ever have to go through. JC admits they probably haven't processed everything they're truly going through right now — but they're staying as strong as they can despite so many unknowns. A GoFundme has been set up to help support the family. 'The Stollery doctors are some of the best in the world. They're experts. But the reality is when those experts are telling us we don't have an answer for you, it's very hard,' said Apuada. 'We're going to proceed with a transplant, and he will get a new heart, but even then, they don't know if his body is going to do the same thing, because right now, they don't have answers.' Apuada said his wife had no issues throughout the pregnancy. Outside of some minor hypertension one week before giving birth that led to her having a C-section, every ultrasound, blood work and other test came back with no concerns when Oliver and his twin sister Eloise were born. They didn't have any complications when their oldest son was born, either. Oliver remains in hospital, and as the Apuadas wait for him to be stabilized enough to go home, they also wait for that call for a new heart. That's crystallized the stark reality of their situation, but also made them feel proud of Oliver, who keeps fighting despite having spent more time in hospital than at home in his young life. 'In order for Oliver to have a new heart, another family somewhere would have to go through a situation way worse than what we've gone through so far and I remember Britni saying that it's hard, because we were so close to being that family, too,' said Apuada. 'We take a lot of inspiration from Oliver. He wants to live in this world, and he's fighting for it and we're doing the best we can to do whatever it takes to get him through this.' jhills@ One year, four babies and a 'Village' of love: Edmonton quadruplets' family grateful for outpouring of support Cooking with heart: Chef mentoring Ukrainian newcomers at Edmonton kitchen 'You know the grief they're living': Foundation supplying care packages to Alberta organ donor families
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Talk to medical professionals, not just ChatGPT, urge Ontario doctors
ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence tools can sometimes answer patient questions accurately, but Canadian medical researchers caution that the information needs to be carefully checked before acting on what you see. The researchers' advice comes as the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) hosted a media briefing this week, discussing DIY information sources — from search engines to social media to chatbots — and their impacts, as well as what patients can do instead. It's important to warn people now, said Dr. Valerie Primeau, a psychiatrist from North Bay who leads inpatient and community programs for mental health and addictions, because patients are increasingly turning to AI tools. The chatbots give convincing and empathetic results — but the information might be fake. "I have patients now that talk to ChatGPT to get advice and have a conversation," Primeau said. "So I foresee that we will continue having this issue, and if we don't address it now and help people navigate this, they will struggle." Dr. David D'Souza, a radiation oncologist in London, Ont., who leads clinical research into image-based treatments for cancer, said depending on how patients interrupt what AI tells them, they could put off conventional treatments. "A patient came to me asking if he should wait to have his cancer that was diagnosed treated in a few years because he believes that AI will customize cancer treatments for patients," D'Souza told reporters. "I had to convince him why he should have treatment now." Given that consumers will use the tools, OMA president Dr. Zainab Abdurrahman advised if a post says "doctors have been hiding this from you," she suggests checking the websites of relevant specialist groups, such as provincial cancer care associations, to see if they back it up. Fake ads, including AI-generated images, can also lead patients astray, warned Abdurrahman, who is also a clinical immunologist and allergist. While the technology is progressing, today's chatbots routinely answer health queries with false information that appears authoritative. In one study, Dr. Benjamin Chin-Yee, an assistant professor in the pathology and lab medicine department at Western University and his co-authors fed nearly 5,000 summaries of medical and scientific literature into AI large language models including ChatGPT and asked for summaries. They found three-quarters of the AI versions missed key parts of carefully guarded statements. For example, the journal article might say a drug was only effective in a certain group of patients while the summary leaves out that key detail, said Chin-Yee, who is also a hematologist. "The worry is that when that nuance in detail is lost, it can be misleading to practitioners who are trying to use that knowledge to impact their clinical practice." Chin-Yee said AI is an active area of research that is rapidly changing, with newer models that are more human-like and user-friendly, but there can be drawbacks to relying on the tools alone. Similarly, David Chen, a medical student at the University of Toronto, compared results provided by chatbots to 200 questions about cancer from a Reddit forum to responses provided by oncologists. "We were surprised to find that these chatbots were able to perform to near-human expert levels of competency based on our physician team's assessment of quality, empathy and readability," Chen said. But the experimental results may not reflect what happens in the real world. "Without medical oversight, it's hard to 100 per cent trust some of these outputs of these generative technologies," Chen said, adding concerns about privacy, security, and patient trust still haven't been fully explored. WATCH | Researchers use AI to help treat brain patients: Don't rely on a single chatbot Generative AI technologies like chatbots are based on pattern-matching technologies that give the most likely output to a given question, based on whatever information it was trained on. In medicine, though, unlikely possible diagnoses can also be important and shouldn't be ruled out. Plus, chatbots can hallucinate — produce outputs that sound convincing but are incorrect, made up, nonsensical or irrelevant. "There's also been research studies that have been put out that suggested that there are hallucination rates of these chat bots that can be upwards of 20 per cent," Chen said, which could make the output "clinically erroneous." In the spring, cardiologist Eric Topol, a professor and executive vice president of Scripps Research in San Diego, Calif., published a book, Superagers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, that looked at the impact of AI on longevity and quality of life. "There's a lot of good anecdotes, there's bad anecdotes," Topol said of patients using chatbots. "It hasn't been systematically assessed in a meaningful way for public use." Topol said he advises people to consult multiple chatbots and to check that you're getting reliable information. He also suggested asking for citations from the medical literature, noting sometimes those aren't real and need to be verified. Ideally, Topol said there would be a real-world test of chatbot responses from tens of thousands of people tracking what tests were done, what diagnosis was given and the outcomes for those who used AI sources and those who didn't. But tech companies are unlikely to participate because each one wouldn't gain, he said. "It's a different world now and you can't go back in time," Topol said of using the tools wisely.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Woman Places Puzzling Food Delivery Order While Sleepwalking in the Middle of the Night: 'I Was So Confused'
A woman woke up one morning to discover that she had spent $8 on a food delivery the night before She was puzzled because she had no memory of ordering anything and found no trace of a food bag left at her home When she checked her security camera footage, she discovered she had been sleepwalking during the night — and that she had ordered something a bit strangeMiranda Knowles was puzzled after she woke up one morning and discovered that she had spent $8 on a DoorDash food delivery the night before. The British Columbia woman had no memory of placing an order and initially found no trace of a delivery at her home, she told Newsweek. The only clue she had was an email confirmation for the delivery. But strangely, the photo in the email did not show a food bag left at her door. When she went to investigate, however, she found a single packet of honey mustard sauce had been delivered. "I was so confused because I didn't see any bag in the picture, so I ran down the stairs and was baffled to see the little sauce," she recalled to Newsweek. When Knowles pulled up the previous night's footage captured on her home security camera and reviewed her DoorDash order history, she was able to piece together what happened during the night — and she wasn't exactly surprised by the revelation. As it turns out, she had been sleepwalking when she placed the delivery order. Knowles has been a sleepwalker her entire life and has had many similar instances of nocturnal activities, per Newsweek. "It started as a young child and still happens, up to 10 times a month," she told the outlet. "I have cleaned, put Christmas decorations away, crafted items, prepared food, bathed and done laundry. Nothing too crazy, but I can get a lot done while asleep." "I find that I sleepwalk more if I have a lot of caffeine in the day or if I'm stressed," she added of what can exacerbate the sleep disorder. She told Newsweek that her sleepwalking recently has involved lots of delivery orders. "Lately, I've been DoorDashing random items," she said. "Just regular things — onion rings, just a single bottle of Coke, although I don't drink Coke. I either see the email notification when I wake up or I go to leave for work and there's a bag of cold food at my door." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Despite her "random" orders, she was still floored to find out she had a delivery person come to her home just to bring her a sauce packet. She shared security video footage of the moment on her TikTok account, writing over the clip: "POV you door dashed a single honey mustard sauce while sleep walking at 12:43 am for $8." In the caption, she offered her "apologies to the dasher who delivered a single sauce to my door at 1 am 💀🙏." Knowles' video quickly went viral, racking up more than 4.5 million views. When she showed the footage to her husband, he was equally unfazed, she told Newsweek. "I thought it was funny … and he wasn't surprised at yet another silly sleepwalking thing I did," she said. "I do like A&W honey mustard, but I'm not sure why I would order it alone!" While her middle-of-the-night sauce packet order certainly makes for a memorable story, Knowles said it's far from her most extreme sleepwalking incident. "It's up there, but I've also emptied the entire fridge, I've had a bath, I've wandered outside in the middle of the night," she told the outlet. According to the Mayo Clinic, sleepwalking is "a disorder of arousal" that "occurs during N3 sleep, the deepest stage of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep." It can be caused by not getting enough sleep, stress, fever, sleep schedule disruptions, travel or sleep interruptions. Knowles told Newsweek that she has "learned to live" with the condition and takes steps to reduce its occurrence, even recently quitting a stressful job. "I try to keep my life stress-free, but that isn't possible for everyone," she said. "I was a registered nurse in emergency for the last two and a half years, so I was always stressed. Recently, I changed to another job and it's not as much stress, so less sleepwalking." Read the original article on People
