I am a lightweight when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. I've been able to use it effectively (somewhat) for Theodora work related things. I've been able to improve the depth of my internet searches quite a bit. And I've had some success and failures with various personal projects. Saturday morning I was dealing with a bit of frustration which led to my trying using it.
(Note: I use ChatGPT mostly as we have the paid version at Theodora. I use it for all my fairly significant work as I have set up a system so it remembers what we've done in the past and can bring that to what I'm working on now even if I don't remember that it remembers. I use Gemini when I'm doing any kind of internet search or have quick questions I want to research as it is built into Google's search engine and is very convenient.)
The morning started out with frustration over my bout with gout (ha, ha like that rhyme!). My doctor and I had be chatting via her online portal and I wasn't getting any significant information. When I had been at the Urgent Care for the initial attack, there wasn't much information either. Wife's brother has gout and she got from him a couple of medications he was using. I was very suspicious of the medication approach as gout is an inflammatory condition and anti-inflammatory drugs tend to all be hard on the kidney, which is not a good thing when you only have one.
I was sitting at my desk with my computer open and I decided to put into Chat the sequence of events along with my current questions as to what the heck I was it that I was dealing with. Well to my amazement, I got back a rather lengthy and detailed discussion about gout, what causes it, an overview of potential treatments, and an explanation of how the events that led to my 'flare-up' (that is the 'official' gout term when it hurts like hell).
That was just the start. I began asking questions about the drugs, explaining my one kidney situation. Now the discussion began to turn to lifestyle changes related to diet and hydration. It asked me a number of questions about lifestyle such as diet, alcohol consumption, water consumption, etc. It asked me if I would be truthful because if I did not give it accurate information, it wasn't going to able provide me with plan proposals that would get the desired results (no more flare-ups).
It turns out one of the real keys is hydration. This resonated with me as I know I don't drink a lot of water since it goes right through me and I am peeing all the time. We has a long conversation about my traveling (it brought up my recent trip to Ghana since that information was in its history) and how I might manage my hydration in a way where I didn't need a catheter on the plane (that was a joke but Chat said people brought that up all the time in this type of discussion - which is kind of weird when you realize I'm talking to an AI).
Chat now offered some specific suggestions for changing my lifestyle patterns with a specific focus on doing things that would protect my kidney. Now it got even more interesting because with these recommendations continued the questions as to whether I would really actually do this. I thought the first round was too drastic. We went back and forth a couple of times until we had a plan that I would commit to. I have been putting it into action so we will see.
But I didn't stop there. As I was sitting there and working with it, I decided to ask it to research some reading material for me. This led to a search for various types of history books related to Persia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. Which then morphed into some very preliminary travel planning for going to Uzbekistan (very high on my list of places to get to).
All in all, I spent about 2 and half hours. It was a very interesting engagement. And at a minimum, I feel I am way more understanding of my gout and how to try and control it.
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