If you ever wondered how much it costs to have your thyroid removed, the answer seems to be $33,000. And that doesn’t include the costs of everything else related to the process, including initial identification, biopsies, heart tests, radiation treatment, etc. The total cost for the last 4-5 months is probably over $60,000.
From a t-shirt I saw in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“Why am I always sick?” That’s a question I used to ask myself a lot, and other people asked it as well: “Al, why are you always sick?”
I remember one time I was in the same room as my wife while she was on the phone. She was taking to her sister, who was talking about her husband (my brother-in-law), and their conversation went on for quite some time. Afterwards I said, “Wow, I hope you guys don’t talk about me all the time like that.” My wife said, “No, we just say that you seem to get sick a lot.”
In a personal note, I found out the hard way that the Sage Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico had bed bugs when I stayed there in late 2023. The photos below show the bed bugs that I discovered on the bed at 1:15 a.m. one morning, along with the resulting invoice/receipt from the Sage Hotel (formerly named Sage Inn Hotel).
2024 Update #1: I wrote the Sage Hotel in 2024 about my experience, and how disappointed I was — both with the hotel having bed bugs and with their service — and never received any sort of reply.
2024 Update #2: I talked to a person when I later stayed at another hotel, and they said (a) their hotel never had bed bugs, and (b) if they ever did, they would give customers a full refund. (The Sage Hotel would not give me a full refund.)
This first photo is from the bed bug I killed. I woke up, saw something moving in the bed, pressed it with my finger, it popped, and left this blood stain:
“I’m going to have to resect the colon.”
Thanks to diverticula, diverticulosis, and diverticulitis, in 2018 I had to have a colectomy surgery, which is also known as a colon resection. This page is a diary of my colectomy experience.
I had two bouts of diverticulitis in the lower-left portion of my abdomen, once in 2015 and again late in 2017. After the second bout in 2017 the pain never went away completely, and would get significantly worse if I tried to eat normal, high-fiber foods like cereal, wheat bread, broccoli, etc.
A few years ago I had a lucid dream that had a beautiful song in it. Unfortunately I didn’t wake myself up right away, and by the time I did wake up, I couldn’t remember all the lyrics. But my favorite lyrics, which set the tone for the song, are:
What do you think about
When you think about me?
So over time I’ve been coming up with other lyrics as I think of them, such as:
Tonight at the table,
Looking out at the sky,
My thoughts were so far away,
I wish I could tell you why.
And also:
Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy,
She’ll beat you if she’s able,
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.
~ Desperado, The Eagles
From time to time — usually in the winter months, but not always — I like to write short stories. Some are fiction, some are real, almost all are inspired by true events and dreams.
Here’s a short list of the stories I’ve posted here:
A few years ago I had a party at my house, and there was a woman there that I didn’t know, but I felt like I knew her. To be clear, I knew that she worked with a group of people I had invited, but I didn’t know her. Yet, it was a strange feeling, a thousand miles past deja vu. Maybe I had seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it.
When that thought came to me I was talking to some other people, so I shrugged it off for the time being. The party had just begun, and I figured we’d meet soon enough. A little while later a trash can became full, so I took the bag out of the can and walked it to a garbage can outside by a detached garage. I put the bag in the can and turned around, only to be startled to see the woman standing there.
“How do I know you,” she asked.
[From time to time I write little stories that have nothing to do with programming or technology; this is one of those stories. So, if you’re only here for the technology stuff, you’ll want to skip this one.]
I’m standing in the kitchen of a friend’s house at a Christmas party, making myself a drink while talking to a friend named Angie. This was nothing unusual; she and I were always talking about something. We became friends during our last year in high school, and we’ve been talking ever since.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that I have feelings for her, but I guess you could say that I didn’t appreciate her back then. After high school, my ambition took me away to college, and then to a series of jobs in different states. By the time I decided to move back home, she was married and had two young children.
While we talked all the time, this kitchen conversation was unusual. I don’t remember how it started, but Angie did ask me about something I rarely talk about: my parents getting divorced in high school.
In a lucid dream this morning a bunch of people came into my apartment uninvited. All but one of them were maintenance people, and they immediately started renovating my apartment. I argued with them that a little notice would have been nice.
While that was going on, I saw that the other person was a Tibetan monk. While the maintenance people started drilling and cutting in various locations, the monk walked around the apartment breaking all of my things. He’d pick up a glass and let it drop to the floor and break, or work harder to break other things, slamming them to the ground. I ran over to him and asked, “Why are you breaking all of my things?”
He didn’t reply, but broke some DVDs in his hands. For some reason this made me more lucid in the dream, so I stepped on some of the DVDs he had dropped to the floor so I could crunch them more. “I get it,” I said, “it’s the whole ‘impermanence’ thing, right?” Then I thought of something and said, “Stay right here for a moment. Break something if you need to, but I’ll be right back.”
Then I went over to my DVD collection and grabbed my Dalai Lama video collection. I went back to the monk, handed him the DVDs, and said, “Here, you can break these, too. Or watch them. I don’t care.”
Then I remembered that my tv had just started on fire when the maintenance people did something, but it didn’t matter, the monk took the DVDs and sat down silently.
(January 28, 2020)
(Back in 2015 & 2016 when I was especially sick with the mast cell disease — before anyone knew what mast cell disease was — I wrote the following incomplete, fictional story titled, “The Girl Next Door,” based on a very long dream.)
“Here we are, come in,” I say to my two police escorts as I open the door and welcome them in. “Home, sweet home.”
Before they even get past the front door, the young, hyperactive cop blurts out, “Okay, where is she?”
Huh, not much warm and fuzzy “welcome to my humble abode” time, I think to myself. “That’s where it gets a little tricky,” I say.
“What do you mean? Is she here, or isn’t she? If you lied about her, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt.”
“I didn’t lie, she is here,” I said, “uh ... just not in the way you think.”
“Do tell,” said the older policeman as he fingered some books on my bookshelf, looking around, studying everything. Those were the first words he said since we left the police station.
I paused. This is the part where nobody ever believes me, so I’ve found that it’s generally best not to talk about this at all. But when two policemen have you in handcuffs, my decision is more like, do I tell them fast — just blurt it out, or do I find some way to tell them about it slowly? I decide to try to explain it.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” I say, searching for my next words. I walk over to my dining room window and point with my cuffed hands. “Technically, she’s right over there.”
The young, hyper cop comes over and looks out the window. He sees that I’m pointing at a walkway between two buildings. He quickly turns and looks at me. “What kind of game are you playing?,” he asks, seemingly about ready to punch or strangle me.
“No game, sir. This is the thing: Have you ever read about parallel universes?”
“What the ...”
If you’ve ever had an experience where you’re falling asleep at night and suddenly your mind is awake but your body is asleep and you can’t move, fear not, the condition is known as sleep paralysis. (The same thing can also happen during the middle of a sleep cycle, where your mind wakes up while your body is asleep.) For some reason it’s featured in a story here in Business Insider (India). There’s also an article about it here on Wikipedia.
For those times when meditation alone isn’t enough. :)
“Better to be on the edge of a party, don’t you think?” Good line, great movie.
At one point when I was recovering from a surgery I wasn’t feeling very well, so I ended up watching a lot of movies, including 13 Going on 30. I was struck not only by the humor of this particular scene in the movie, but also the empathy.
“There is no death, only a change of worlds.”
~ Chief Seattle
This is one of many cute cards/images from the Great Cosmic Happy A** website.
If you are free of attachment, you will lead a simple life in a simple environment.
~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love
Meditate to raise the kundalini. Think about God, it will go right up.
~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love
This temple and whatever is seen by the human eye are illusion ... Delusion makes everything look real.
~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba)
