There's a common meme in stories about someone needing a transplant and it unknowingly coming from a loved one or some stupid shit like that.
Here's this is being joked about in the most absurdist way possible: Orchiectomy is a surgery in which the testicles are surgically removed, be it to help with dysphoria in transfeminine patients, get rid of a cancer, get rid of necrotic testicle (like from a really bad testicular cancer), or some other situation I'm thinking about. Now that still leaves the last panel unexplained, and that's where truck nuts come in; in the US, there's a really fucking weird thing some people do which is to buy plastic testicles for their trucks, which hang from the rear bumper, as depicted in the comic.
That's it, that's the joke dissected and dead at this point.
Absolutely great point which I had not considered.
On the crystal bit: honestly, alternative medicine stuff, as bogus as it may or may not be, can be fine and even sometimes helpful if it doesn't replace any of the actual medicine. Not only are placebos pretty dandy, some alternative medicine things actually help with treatment adhesion sometimes, because it can make the patient feel empowered in their health outcomes more than the usual spiel of "keep hydrated"/"eat well"/"sleep well"/"exercise" and in turn, can help people actually do these things, because they feel that they can actually impact their health with things they do.
Now, does this good outweigh the risk of them dropping the actual treatment over the alternative medicine stuff? I don't know, I'm not a researcher in this area, but I feel like not everything we do had to make sense you know? If something feels good and there's no harm in doing it, go ahead and knock yourself out, we are after all, sentient meat, and that comes with quirks.
On the crystal bit: honestly, alternative medicine stuff, as bogus as it may or may not be, can be fine and even sometimes helpful if it doesn't replace any of the actual medicine. Not only are placebos pretty dandy, some alternative medicine things actually help with treatment adhesion sometimes, because it can make the patient feel empowered in their health outcomes more than the usual spiel of "keep hydrated"/"eat well"/"sleep well"/"exercise" and in turn, can help people actually do these things, because they feel that they can actually impact their health with things they do.
Now, does this good outweigh the risk of them dropping the actual treatment over the alternative medicine stuff? I don't know, I'm not a researcher in this area, but I feel like not everything we do had to make sense you know? If something feels good and there's no harm in doing it, go ahead and knock yourself out, we are after all, sentient meat, and that comes with quirks.
On the crystal bit: honestly, alternative medicine stuff, as bogus as it may or may not be, can be fine and even sometimes helpful if it doesn't replace any of the actual medicine. Not only are placebos pretty dandy, some alternative medicine things actually help with treatment adhesion sometimes, because it can make the patient feel empowered in their health outcomes more than the usual spiel of "keep hydrated"/"eat well"/"sleep well"/"exercise" and in turn, can help people actually do these things, because they feel that they can actually impact their health with things they do.
Now, does this good outweigh the risk of them dropping the actual treatment over the alternative medicine stuff? I don't know, I'm not a researcher in this area, but I feel like not everything we do had to make sense you know? If something feels good and there's no harm in doing it, go ahead and knock yourself out, we are after all, sentient meat, and that comes with quirks.