Posts in the “personal” category

Here’s a little lesson on empathy, from the movie 13 Going on 30.

“A lot of people think that, if you’re writing about something, it’s because you’re an expert on the topic and want to impart your expertise. But sometimes you’re writing about it as part of your attempt to immerse yourself in it and understand it.”

~ Sharon Salzberg, in this discussion with Rosanne Cash

I guess I was just naive when I saw politicians lie on one media outlet and then apologize on another. I never realized it was a formula intended to pander to each audience. I miss the days when George Washington couldn’t lie about chopping down a cherry tree.

~ tweet from Garry Kasparov on Twitter

One thing that’s changed for me in the last year is that I’ve become a little less interested in what spiritual leaders have to say, and more interested in what spiritual laymen have to say. Don’t get me wrong, leaders are great in many ways, but they don’t have bills to pay, and don’t have spouses or children. I’m far more interested in what a spiritual person has to say when they’re in the midst of struggling to pay their bills, and they have jobs, spouses, children, and neighbors.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw a headline about Charlie Munger giving advice on how to be happy. I’ve read a lot of Charlie Munger quotes and he seems like a very nice person, but he’s been a billionaire for decades, and that skews your thinking. Based on my own experience, when you have a lot of money and you don’t have to worry about your health, paying your bills, noisy neighbors, or family problems, life is easy, so your advice is tainted. These days I’ll take “advice on happiness” from someone who is truly happy while living in the midst of the muck. In retrospect, this feeling is one thing that drew me to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning when I was still a teenager.

I think one should hear bells. :)

(“Jones” in this story eventually heard bells himself.)

As a guy who’s been unconscious seven times and had ten operations, I like this, “You have one life” quote. Take it from me, when your lights go out, one of the main thoughts you’ll have is, “I wish I had done <fill in the blank>.”

(The quote appears to be by Beardsley Jones, and the image was put together by tinybuddha.com.)

December 5, 2018: After the operation in July I just got back to a 160 pound bench press and practicing yoga every night. After operation #8 tomorrow I won’t be able to exercise for six weeks. You just gotta keep coming back, keep fighting.

(I share the full quote from the movie Rocky Balboa at this link.)

I was talking to a doctor yesterday about Pericarditis and he said that one possible result could be catastrophic. I was well aware of that possibility, but I thought it was an unusual word for a doctor to use.

That being said, it does sound more powerful than you could die. A lot of people say, “You could die doing <fill in the blank>,” so maybe that phrase has lost some power, where “catastrophic” isn’t used that often to talk about one’s health.

With a little downtime following the pericarditis and subsequent angiogram, I’ve been working on my Grandma’s cookies recipe. They’re not there yet, but they’re getting closer. :)

Thanks to some ongoing abdominal pain from my colectomy surgery back in June, I’ve learned what a Trocar device is. Per Wikipedia (and also my surgeon), “Trocars are placed through the abdomen during laparoscopic surgery. The trocar functions as a portal for the subsequent placement of other instruments, such as graspers, scissors, staplers, etc.”

I have pain in the spot where a trocar device was placed, and the theory is that’s because of a combination of scar tissue and a nerve in that area. A backup possibility is that I may have a hernia in that spot, though the surgeon thinks that’s unlikely. I’ll be having a CT scan soon to see if that shows what’s going on.

All the times
That I’ve cried
All that’s wasted
It’s all inside

And I feel all this pain
Stuffed it down

It’s back again

And I lie
Here in bed
All alone

I can’t mend

~ From the song Outside, by Staind

Back in the day, high school was boring for me, and probably even before my parents were separated I decided to take as many days off from school as I could. A few days ago when I was rearranging my furniture I ran across my high school yearbook, where I found several inscriptions like this one, alluding to the fact that I wasn’t there very often, but I made class interesting when I was there. ;)

January, 2020 update: I read that the girl who wrote this passed away a few weeks ago.

Back in 2008 I went on a meditation retreat where speaking was allowed. The teacher at the retreat was a psychotherapist, and as I learned during the week, one of the students was his patient.

The patient came from a wealthy family, and he went to see the therapist because he had always “lived from his wallet” as he told me, meaning that money was the primary concern in every decision he made in life. He was obsessed with making money and not spending money, and it was causing a lot of problems in his life, including creating stress and ruining relationships.

I noticed that from time to time he would tap himself on his chest, or otherwise place his hand on his chest in the area of his heart. One day at lunch I asked him about this, and he told me that the therapist taught him that every time he thought about money, he should tap himself on the chest as a reminder that he needed to learn to make decisions based on his heart rather than on his wallet. His slogan had become, “Live from the heart, not the wallet.”

“When I was very young, my spiritual awareness was limited to a foggy sense of the presence of ‘something bigger’ than me and my personal life. During grammar school years, I was intent on trying to discover this elusive something. I was convinced that ‘it’ was the primary source of life and of everything in the world. I hoped to end my spiritual confusion by understand this ‘source’ and clarify the meaning of my life. My method for trying to understand this fundamental essence was to examine intellectually all the reasons I could think of for the universe to exist and to try to envision what had ‘existed’ before the universe came into being.”

(A quote from the book, Zen at Work, which I found in a used book store yesterday.)

When I was young, I’d lay in bed at night, imagine traveling to the end of the universe, and then I’d remember thinking, “It can’t end, it must keep going, right? How can the universe come to an ‘end’ unless it’s a balloon, in which case there is still something outside of the balloon.”

Besides books on sports, the first book I remember reading that wasn’t assigned to me by a teacher is Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.

One slip and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
That binds a life for life
A small regret you won’t forget
There’ll be no sleep in here tonight.

(Was it love, or the idea of being in love?)

~ from the Pink Floyd song, One Slip

This is a good quote from the tv series, Hart of Dixie. I remember when I thought about selling my business I knew I might regret it, but I also knew that I was sick with something and doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. So I decided to sell the business and move to Alaska, and that was one of the best decisions of my life. I got to experience things that won’t even be possible to experience in the future because roads are being paved, civilization keeps encroaching on nature, and global warming is melting the glaciers and polar bears into extinction. In retrospect I’d make that decision 100 times out of 100.

“Learn to say, ‘I hope that works out for you’, rather than trying to ‘fix’ or change people.”

~ from Maryam Hasnaa, image by tinybuddha.com

(I see a lot of people who bring stress on themselves by trying to control friends, relatives, and partners. Unless you’re someone’s boss in a place of work, you should ask yourself, “Why do I feel the need to try to control other people?”)

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

~ possibly from Lao Tzu

I’m glad to say that I’ll be going back to regular consulting work again very soon. If you’re interested in the gory medical details that led me to quit consulting work (and write five computer programming books and a couple thousand blog posts), here you go:

• Back in 1999 I founded and co-owned a small software consulting company
• Over time I knew I was sicker than the average person, and it was getting worse
• Despite symptoms like constantly getting colds, the flu every winter, pink eye, difficulty breathing (intermittent asthma), rashes, compartment syndrome in both legs due to jogging, blood blisters in multiple places, migraines, and heart issues (irregular heartbeat and SVT), doctors suggested it was in my head
• Figuring I might die before doctors figured anything out, I sold my business and moved to Alaska to at least have some fun before it was over
• I got a bad digestive illness two months after moving there; that led to having my gallbladder removed
• Symptoms kept getting worse:
  • I road a bicycle every day, and suddenly couldn’t ride as far one day as I could the previous day; this kept getting worse
  • Diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease
• For family reasons I moved to Colorado
• New symptoms and medical procedures included:
  • Enlarged liver and spleen
  • Increasing muscle weakness
  • Thyroid cancer
  • Brain fog
  • Flushing
  • Hives
  • More rashes and reactions
  • Peripheral neuropathy
  • Went unconscious seven times (syncope)
  • Nearly went unconscious over 20 times more (pre-syncope)
  • A TEE test when a previous test showed that blood was flowing backwards inside my heart
  • Three “fake heart attacks” (what in retrospect was allergic angina)
  • 17 ER visits, one of which showed my kidneys were rapidly failing (this would eventually be a good thing, because it led to further lab tests that eventually led to a proper diagnosis and solution)
  • Several bouts of diverticulitis
  • A PICC line in my arm, followed by a blood clot
  • At one point doctors thought I had an adrenal tumor that could kill me any day and the good news was that there was a 90% chance of surviving that surgery
  • Over 100 blood tests
  • Nearly 20 CT scans and MRIs
  • Anaphylactic reaction to MRI contrast
  • An angiogram after a nuclear stress test showed a dead spot in my heart after my third fake heart attack
  • Had to have part of my colon removed
  • The 24th and 25th doctors finally found anomalies in lab results (only because the “fake kidney failure” led them to do those tests)
  • Pericarditis (inflammation around the heart)
  • More pre-syncope and syncope

Finally an answer

In late 2016 those last two doctors thought I might have a rare blood disease called Mastocytosis. (So rare, it wasn’t featured on House until Season 8.) I tested negative for that, but this led to the final diagnosis of another rare blood disease, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). Statistically, it’s so rare that there are only 26 of us in Colorado.

If you’ve ever heard of the “Bubble Boy” or “Boy In the Plastic Bubble,” this disease is related to that. You can read these stories about two women who have a more severe version of this illness at these links:

• Rare disease makes woman allergic to everything, including her husband
• Meet The Teenage Girl Who Is Allergic to Almost Everything

Following that diagnosis I almost immediately switched to a diet of eating only a select group of organic vegetables and fruits, and all of the symptoms rapidly dissipated. I still had to have three more surgeries in 2017 and 2018 to clean up problems that were caused by the untreated MCAS, but these days — January, 2019 — I feel better than I’ve felt in twenty years, exercising hard every other day and working a full schedule. And after writing books like Scala Cookbook, Functional Programming, Simplified, and Hello, Scala while mostly hoping not to die, I’ll be going back to regular programming/consulting work in about a month.

(And yes, there will also be more books. Three more books are currently in the works.)