Posts in the “personal” category

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.)

A quote from the first episode of the tv series, The Dead Zone:

“Don’t you hate talking to sick people? You never know what to say. Just try and be cheerful, I guess, right?”

During one of my hospital stays in 2015, a nurse who was nearly named Amanda stopped in several times to talk to me, both when she was checking my vitals, and a couple of times on her breaks. We talked about life, death, and things in between; deep, honest conversations.

The song “Sara” by Fleetwood Mac — sung by Stevie Nicks — is one of my highest-rated songs in my iTunes collection, and is apparently about a baby that was conceived by Ms. Nicks and Don Henley of The Eagles. You can read more about it at lifenews.com.

As a note to self, I had the worst migraine headache I’ve ever had on December 17, 2019. I threw up twice during the event, and fortunately I finally started to feel better after the second time.

A brief conversation about the symbolism of flowers, from the movie, Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil:

MANDY: You want to send some flowers?

JOHN: I think so. I don’t know, though. It’s kind of complicated.

MANDY: For whom? What’s she like?

JOHN: I don’t know her that well.

MANDY: Roses are a favorite ... a bit presumptuous. How about poinsettias?

JOHN: Perennials might give the wrong impression.

MANDY: Too long-term?

JOHN: Yeah, it’s hard to say.

MANDY: This is complicated. How about petunias? They’re pretty without being presumptuous, smell nice, and in 3 days you throw them out. Sound like what you’re looking for? (pause) Sorry, we’re all out of petunias.

When I fell asleep last night I had Amazon Prime Video running on my tablet. Then when I woke up at some time during the night, there was a squirrel talking in a kitchen, and then I saw that he was talking to Robert Downey, Jr. Turns out it was this fun Alexa/Doolittle ad, supporting Toys For Tots.

(And on the Dolittle front, this Dolittle “Auditions” video provides even more fun.)

Video of the day: A deer scores a soccer goal and then celebrates.

A “Northern Exposure” coffee mug, with a Tundra Comics design.

“Sometimes the mind ... for reasons we don’t fully understand, just goes to the store for a quart of milk.”

(Or for ‘december,’ in my case.)

(Quote from Dr. Joel Fleischman, Northern Exposure)

“I don’t know what this is, or why this is Amy, but I’m tumbling for you in a big way. You know what I mean? I’m plummeting off the edge of the Earth ...”

~ from the Northern Exposure “Pi” episode.

A wee bit of cause and effect:

I may never have lived in Alaska
if I didn’t first go there on vacation.

I may have never gone to Alaska on vacation
if Colorado wasn’t on fire in 2002.

I may not have thought to go to Alaska in 2002
if I hadn’t discovered Northern Exposure ~1996.

I may never have discovered Northern Exposure
if I didn’t quit a job I didn’t like in 1995.

I may never have discovered Northern Exposure if a tv channel
that doesn’t exist today hadn’t aired it back then.

This keeps going back in time until I was born (or before then),
but that’s the basic idea.

I don’t always get sick, but when I do ... it’s nice to find other people who are going through what I’ve been going through, and they still have a sense of humor about it. If you have a Pinterest account, this “My Mastocytosis” page is great.

I think I originally saw this “kindness changes the brain” quote in a pschologytoday.com article titled The Positive Psychology of Kindness.