Posts in the “personal” category

Traveling always reminds me of this song: Please Come to Boston, by Dave Loggins:

A couple that lives near me has been having problems, and yesterday the husband asked if he and I could talk privately. After we found a quiet place he said, “My wife isn’t the woman I married ... I don’t like this new version of her, and I don’t know what to do.”

(Sorry, there’s no moral to this story, only that.)

In retrospect it’s humbling to see that doctors spent about half a million dollars over the last 5-7 years to figure out my illness. If more doctors knew about mast cell disease the total cost could have probably been 1/10th of that.

This makes me look forward to the day when doctors have better software, and are willing to use it. (Every time I watch an episode of House I think, “Use a computer!”)

I hesitate to say something because this is usually where I get cancer, a rare disease, or a body part has to be removed, but I did a yogic handstand tonight, for the first time since things started to go south in 2011.

(Photo is of Stephen Amell from The Arrow.)

ExtremeTech.com has a good article titled, AI develops its own ‘alien’ language, the better to mock human underlings.

There’s a guy on a local radio station (104.3 The Fan) named Darren McKee (who guys by the name “D-Mac”), and he constantly uses a phrase that drives me crazy:

“To be honest with you ...”

As I wrote in my book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants, you should never use that phrase.

Why? Because using it for some sentences implies that you aren’t being honest with every other sentence that comes out of your mouth.

Lisa Klimas at MastAttack.org has a nice mast cell disease fact sheet, including the information on the image shown.

From what I can tell by the interactions on the The Mastocytosis Society group on Facebook, there is at least a 10:1 or 20:1 ratio of women to men who have mast cell diseases. Or, more accurately, those are the ratios of people who (a) know they have mast cell diseases and (b) interact in this group on Facebook.

Writing as someone who likely has Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and who has also looked into histamine intolerance, it was surprising to see the headlines in this image being “news” in 2016. MCAS was officially designated as a disease in 2007, and for anyone who knows about it, there’s nothing new about this. Cured foods are well known to be a trigger for people with mast cell issues, meaning that eating cured foods is known to trigger mast cells to release histamine (i.e., to degranulate).

This is a good quote from Dr. Afrin, from this MeAndMyMastCells.com page about diagnosing mast cell activation disease (MCAS, MCAD), which explains why it has taken this long to get close to a diagnosis of my illness. Regular everyday doctors, even the hematologist I saw last week, may know about mastocytosis, but they don’t know about mast cell activation disease.

I sit here on the stairs,
'cause I’d rather be alone.
If I can’t have you right now,
I’ll wait dear.

A. Rose, Patience

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” ~ Buddha

Growing up, I used to envy those people who seemed to be shot out of the womb with a purpose, like they always knew what they wanted to do. But these days I think there’s a great reward in the struggle to find that purpose.

(I seriously doubt that the Buddha actually said that, but hey, it sounds impressive, whoever said it.)

“If you want to be miserable, think of yourself. If you want to be happy, think of others.”

SakyongMipham

The “TMS For A Cure” website has this great page on medications to treat mast cell disorders.

espn has a nice story on how teammates of Jose Fernandez dealt with his death.

From this NY Times article: “But when it comes to the burden of disease,” he added, “some of the leading risk factors are not high intake of unhealthy foods, but low intake of healthy foods.”

As one example, I read in a book about food-related diseases that red meat isn’t necessarily bad for people, it’s just that people in the U.S. tend to eat red meat without eating anything healthy along with it.

I was surprised to see that Deshaun Watson’s max football throwin velocity was only 49 mph at the 2017 NFL Combine. (Image/data from Dane Brugler.) As Benjamin Allbright writes, “Over 55 mph doesn’t guarantee success, but under it pretty much guarantees failure.”

(All info from dawgsbynature.com.)

If you ever want to write your own book as an Amazon Kindle book, here’s the Kindle “supported formats” page.

Per this article on healinghistamine.com, some natural mast cell stabilizers are: Khellin; Quercetin; Epigallocatechin gallate (a green tea compound); Silibinin (from milk thistle); Ellagic acid; Reservatrol; Curcumin; Garcinia mangostana (mangosteen).

The author further states, “Also in the bioflavonoid family are luteolin and apigenin, the latter of which can be found in parsley, celery, rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil, coriander and artichokes.”

March 4, 2017: I’m glad to say that I’ve found a good way to write the end of my book on Scala and functional programming, and I’m writing as fast as I can to get that completed. Unfortunately the bad news is that I started getting sick again this week (pre-syncope and syncope (passing out)), and it’s been slow going because of that. But if I can stay alive, I’m finally happy with how this book is working out.