Posts in the “personal” category

In what will hopefully be my last health-related post for a long time ... after seeing 11 specialists and making about 15 ER trips, I think that I/we finally have a good idea of what is happening.

Just like finding a bug in software, once you figure out what’s going on it explains everything, including the passing out, the raccoon eyes, getting sicker when eating ‘healthier’ food, feeling like bones spontaneously break, bad reactions to the statin medication and the last MRI contrast dye, the fake heart attack, everything.

And finally, it’s time for a nice, long party. :) I started celebrating today by going up to RMNP, where it snowed for me.

(a facebook post from september 15, 2016)

“Mast cells tend to hang out at the body’s environmental interfaces (to best serve their defensive role).”

That’s a short but very important quote from the book, Never Bet Against Occam: Mast Cell Activation Disease and Chronic Illness.

Do you have dry, itchy, gritty eyes? Ever have a dry cough, where it feels like no matter how much or how hard you cough, you can’t get rid of the itchy feeling in your throat? Or how about itchy skin? All of these are your body’s “environmental interfaces,” where mast cells are trying to protect your body. (These are also symptoms of mast cell activation disease.)

This image is another good answer to the question, “What are mast cells?” Note that mast cells can release tryptase, histamine, serotonin, superoxide, heparin, thromboxane, PGD2, and PAF. The image comes from this selfhacked.com page.

“Mast cell disorders are neoplastic disorders, which means the mast cells multiply continuously over the patient’s lifetime. As with cancer cells, mast cells do not die, disappear, or cease to function, on their own.”

(from the Mastocytosis Society of Canada)

iamast.com offers these “Six rules of mast cells” on their beginners/terms page.

The Farnam Street Blog has a nice set of core principles in regards to “all that we write about, think about, and strive to achieve”:

- Direction Over Speed
- Live Deliberately
- Thoughtful Opinions Held Loosely
- Principles Outlive Tactics
- Own Your Actions

I have a rough surgery coming up in a couple of weeks, and when I came across the saying, “Collect beautiful moments,” it reminded me that that’s pretty much all we can do in life.

I’ve watched so many British tv shows, I have a hard time driving on the right side of the road.

If you or someone you know has a mast cell disease — a type of autoimmune disease — the tmsforacure.com website has several great infographics. I printed them out so I can take them to new doctors who don’t know me, when I have to go to emergency departments, and for things like my upcoming surgery.

In theory this is my biological grandfather, who I was partially named for. We don’t know if actually is our biological grandfather because my dad’s older brothers were about five and a half feet tall and bald, and my dad was 6'3" and wasn’t bald. The man shown in the picture here died in a fire when my dad was six or seven years old, and he said he only knew his adopted father, who was also tall and had some similar features with my dad.

We joked with our dad about this before he died, but he had no way of knowing which man was his biological father, but he did say that his adopted father was the only one he ever knew, and he considered him to be his father. Either way, all of them were Assyrian.

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

~ Sun Tzu

The quote shown comes from an article titled, How your stress turns into sickness. Personally, with the mast cell activation disease I go right to syncope (passing out, unconsciousness), but to each their own.

Here’s a short list showing the average wages in the United States after taxes vs other countries. I found this list on this tweet, and the data comes from this article.

I currently live in a small apartment (about 700 square feet), and when I work from home I like to run a small fan to keep the temperature consistent throughout the apartment space. My work area is near the windows, so in the summer it’s significantly warmer there than somewhere else, like the kitchen. I’ve gone through several fans trying to keep the temperature consistent, but they were all too noisy, and became a distraction while working, and they were even worse at night when watching television.

So I finally pried open my wallet and spent $99 on this “pureFlow QT7” fan by GreenTech Environmental. On its lowest setting it runs at ~13db, so I don’t hear it at all. During the day I run it on a setting of 3 or 4, and it’s still much quieter than a normal fan, and not distracting at all. At night I run it on a 1 or 2 and don’t hear it at all while watching television.

From my endocrinologist (May, 2018), “For people with a history of thyroid cancer, keep the TSH level in a range of 0.1 to 0.5.”

My previous dose was too high, and my TSH level was basically 0.0 (which I could tell because my heart was racing), but by reducing the synthroid/levothyroxine dosage, it’s now in that range once again.

I’m saddened by people who are so afraid of making a mistake that they come up with a million different reasons as excuses to justify why something can’t be done. They always say, “I would do XYZ, but ...”

All I can think to say to them is, “Quit thinking and just do it.” Or, as Cher said in Moonstruck, “Snap out of it!”

Really, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You’re going to die? Well, I have news for you, no matter what you do, you’re going to die anyway. (I’ve gone unconscious seven times over the last couple of years, and believe me, at that point there’s nothing you can do about it.)

“At the level at which there is only pure pran, a number of labels are interchangeable. This place could also be called pure light or pure consciousness as well as pure pran. The implications of this are far reaching. For it means the universe is consciousness. It follows that when you have succeeded in fully breaking the identification with your body, senses, and thoughts, then you merge into pure consciousness – Universal Consciousness. What you thought was ‘your’ consciousness turns out to be only a part of a Consciousness caught in the illusion of separateness. A person who has severed all attachments and has thus become one with Consciousness is said to be in SAT CHIT ANANDA: total existence, total knowledge, total bliss. This is the highest form of samadhi.”

~ Ram Dass, in the book, Be Here Now

The image shows a quote from the book, Polishing the Mirror, by Ram Dass. (Personally, I fall in love once or twice a week, but I usually try not to bring anyone home.)

“Remember people, that no matter who you are, and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there are still some things that make us all the same. You, me, them, everybody, everybody.”

~ Elwood Blues, from the song, Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

For my “to listen to” list, Shane Parrish interviews Dan Ariely.

From that page: “Dan just about does it all. He has delivered 6 TED talks with a combined 20 million views, he’s a multiple New York Times best-selling author, a widely published researcher ... For the better part of three decades, Dan has been immersed in researching why humans do some of the silly, irrational things we do.”

Here’s a link to Dan Ariely’s page on Amazon.