Sick Of It

Far too long ago I posted a blog here.  A lot has happened since then, and I’m writing this one to be a bit selfish… moreso than usual… so I can tell the story of how I ended up in the hospital twice in 3 weeks one last time.  I’ve told it a lot lately, to many people, and I can’t tell it again.  Too tired.  Too tiring.  Wanna focus on the Now and Forward!  To make it somewhat fun, I’m interviewing myself the way I’d interview a friend at a bar who I haven’t seen for 5 weeks since he posted on Facebook that he was in ICU for some lung thing.

Rewind to Nov. 11, 2014.  We had just finished another round of weeding a large portion of a garden behind our house, and instead of throwing down a weed-suppressing warfare like I prepared for, we went with my wife’s idea to keep it ORGANIC! and threw down a  bunch of hay from a bale we bought for Autumn decorating outside the house.  My flamethrowing would have to wait…

Now, back to the program…

If you want the short version, it’s right here in a hidden color.  Just click your mouse BETWEEN the {{{ below, and drag down to read the short story!

{{{ I had a severe allergic reaction known as Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis, brought on by a previously unknown or undetected allergy to a high-enough intake of a mold commonly found in hay. It shut my lungs down via inflammation and swelling of the alveoli. }}}

DUDE! HOLY CRAP, you’re alive! 
I know, I made it.  Tell me, seriously… anybody bet against me?

HA! OH YOUR GOD, dude, seriously… I was worried, what the hell happened?  Did you get some bad weed or something? HA HA HA
Ha… No.  It’s legal now here and I’m sure the standards are pretty high for the quality control.  It was kind of bad weed though, now that you mention it.

OK, seriously (welling up with emotion)… What happened to you?
Well, the same thing, both times, happened to me.  The doctors didn’t really catch the real cause until the second time, though.  I’m sure they will discount the first visit for that.  But yeah, I woke up one morning about 3, and could barely breathe, like half my lungs weren’t there.  I toughed it out, downed some cough syrup and took a hot shower thinking I could loosen it up, because I’m a MAN.

YEAH, not much of one, but go on.
What?
Anyway, yeah, I just couldn’t get a full breath.  So I go all day, grinding through it thinking it’ll go away, and it doesn’t and I am really starting to freak out.  I just don’t get sick, so we really got freaked out a bit.  Went to an urgent-care clinic, and they threw me in an ambulance to the ER, where they started doing all the could to figure out why the hell I couldn’t breathe.

What’d they say?
Basically, “Well, hmm, it’s like pneumonia but there’s no fluid in your lungs, so we’re not sure what’s up.”  Started pumping me full of antibiotics, oxygen in the nose, and I just wanted to sleep.  I had the oxygen levels of a person who’d just been pulled out of a river and CPR’ed back to this shitrock.

Damn, that’s awful.  So what happened from there?
I eventually got into ICU while they tried to figure it out, and they were checking on me every hour.  I couldn’t breathe for shit, and this sensor they had on my finger would make this annoying BING BING everytime my O2 level dropped beneath 90%, which was often.  I was miserable and didn’t want to deal with anything, couldn’t think straight or talk very well.  Some dipshit nurse apparently missed the memo, kept ducking her head in when the BING BING would happen to, like, “remind” me to “try to take deeep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth.”

Seriously?  Did she not know what your deal was?
I have no clue.  At the 4th time of her doing it, I was just fed up.  This is kinda bad.  She did her little pep talk and I, like, waved her over to the bed. I go, I whisper because I’m just exhausted, “I’m in here because I CAN’T take deep breaths.  So that alarm is going to be going off a lot.  Can we drop it to 85%?”

You told the nurse off?
Weeeelll… I was my own care-advocate, let’s say.  So she started back in on why it should be at 90% and I just closed my eyes and said, “I’ll do my best.”

Editor’s note:  The care team, ICU nurses, and respiratory staff that looked after me during both visits was absolutely WORLD CLASS.  I was their youngest patient by probably 30 years, and they were attentive, good communicators, and worked their butts off for 12 hour shifts among the sickest of the sick, and never skipped a beat or copped an attitude.

How long did all this take?
First trip was a week in-patient.  I went in on a Wednesday night, then started turning the corner on Saturday morning, then felt a lot better by Monday, but still just worn out.  Went home, took it easy for a couple weeks, trying to get my energy back.

You got sick again, right?  Like a couple weeks later?
Yeah, ironically, got sick the same day as my follow-up appointment with my lung docs.

No shit?
Dude, watch the language, there are kids here.  Well, 22 year-olds.  But yeah.  So check it out.  I went home after the appointment, played with my kids a bit, but still, like, my lungs felt like about 90% there.  Worked in the garden, threw down the last of the hay over the last of the weeded areas, went inside but was way more tired than I should have been.  4 hours later I am lying in bed, full-body shakes from some reaction to something.

Oh jeebus, so, something at home or work?
I figured it was something in the garden, stirred it up again.  Same thing that night, lungs shutting down, I’m breathing on this oxygen thing they gave me, and I’m freaking out thinking it’s gonna be worse.  So in the morning, BACK to the doc, back to the ER, and back to ICU.  But this time I told them all we did in the previous day, wrote it all down in a notebook.

Why’d you do that?
Well, mainly because I didn’t want to forget anything, but also they ask a ton of questions, and a nurse asks you, then a doctor you’ll never see again, then another nurse, and on and on.  I knew I wouldn’t want to talk so I just handed them the notebook.

Did they clue in?
Yeah, but it was kinda worse the second time.  They didn’t want to hit me with any drugs to knock it down so that they could get the full picture of what was going on, which meant I had to have a lung biopsy.  So I grind it out while they think I’m having an allergic reaction to “something,” but I was like “I’m not allergic to anything!”  Really weirded me out.

Biopsy, like they cut a piece of your lung out?
Yeah, next morning.  I was miserable, no sleep again.  They do the biopsy, insert a chest-drain tube between the ribs over here, and as I am in the recovery room they load me with a shot of Prednisone to see if that does anything.

What’d it do?  You want a drink?
Yeah, uh, Jameson-rocks.  So the shot, like a steroid shot, starts turning my lungs back to normal in a few hours.  They kept hitting me with that until I got way outta the woods and my O2 started leveling out.  Had  breathing tube in, the whole deal, fun Friday.

Oh damn, you got intubated?
Yeah, easily the worst of the “bated” family.  So I was out all Friday, drugged up.  Saturday morning they pull the tube out, which is not fun.  It’s like in The Matrix, where Neo wakes up in that mechanical womb thing and power-tugs the hose out of his throat.  But I didn’t have to do it, the nurses yanked it.

How’d that go?
I started chatting right after, slowly coming out of the drug haze, bummer, I know. And by that night, steroids, decent day of rest and football and some food, I was on my feet.

So, wait… so this was allergies?
Yeah, apparently.  I never had a reaction to anything before, so I had no idea.  Then the blood tests showed I was fighting off this particular mold that is super common in hay and organic stuff that’s breaking down in warm areas.  So, like, with the two times I was all up in the hay in the garden, both times I got sick like right after that.

Oh jeez.  You almost died because of a scarecrow.
Yeah, so manly.  So, I’m fine now.  I feel awesome.  I feel better than before the first time I got sick, so something had been bugging me for a while, probably that hay, and it just hit critical mass, changed the whole game.  And it helps my case to drop some serious chemicals in the garden next year.  Hay’s just too deadly.

==–==–==–==

So there ya go.  I cannot express my humbled honor in the wake of the love, prayers, support, and care I and my family received while I was ill and getting back to normal.  It makes me pretty emotional to have seen all the comments and prayers on my facebook page and in emails, that many people do care about my existence for more than just financial reasons.  I am very blessed, very lucky, and very happy to be here, healthy, and focused on getting back to Better Than Ever.

Happy New Year to you.  Thanks for reading.

1

Death With Dignity, Instead of What Some People Deserve

Brittany Maynard recently ended her life at the age of 29, having battled aggressive brain tumors for years.  As the tumors caused greater and more painful moments of being awake, and were found to be inoperable and terminal, Brittany called her own exit.  The story has been well chronicled so I won’t cover it again here.  However, a few years ago, this topic arose in Washington State, and it set my mind off into many different, somewhat dark regions.  Having grievously watched my dad’s slow decline to a shell of a man from 2004-2009 due to dementia, the impact and effects on my family and his friends, I really began to wonder what I would do if my health came to a similar state.

The Death with Dignity act, or “physician-assisted suicide,” is available to people who have a terminal illness, incurable & excruciating pain, or have been talked into it by some family members.  There’s a review process after applying to a few doctors, findable via Google and maybe Yelp?  The applicant goes through a fair amount of testing to see what’s going on, and to make sure they’re not trying to get out of jury duty.  Plus there’s the “less than 6 months to live” criteria. Seems subjective, but whatever…

So in all of this involvement of doctors and pharmacists and party planning and “affairs in order” and what-not, comes two main points I think must be addressed.

  1. Is It Wrong?  This is, by nature, a judgmental and personal-ethics statement within each person’s answer.  Is choosing your own biological death’s date, based on a terrible illness, via the quiet undertow of a massive barbituate dosing, more acceptable than other forms of ending one’s life?  Or is it in the days preceding your passing that keep it on the “light side,” being able to say Goodbye and take care of all the particulars and throw a party and cut the line at Starbucks every morning, Bucket List items and what-not?
  2. What If It Doesn’t Work? You’ve said your “good-byes”, or “go F yourself”‘s, whatever the case called for.  Your belongings are accounted for, donated, burned, repurposed, etc.  And you gulp down the pills that are going to drop your blood-pressure to NIL, shut down your brain’s ability to fire off your heart muscles, and you’ll drift into the Great Other.  Until BAMMO you wake up again barfing all over your Red & Gold Satin Burial robe, wondering why Heaven would welcome home a lost angel in such a horrific fashion, or maybe this isn’t Heaven, OH NO, IT’S WORSE… It’s your living room.
    THEN what?  I’d have a quick call to the prescribing doctor and see what the deal is.  But at least you could start calling friends a few days later and freak them out.  Your number comes up on their phone in the middle of their brunch, EEEEEE, creepy for them, FUN FOR YOOOU!

In a time when a fair number of people choose this route I wonder how much Brittany’s beauty played into it.  Seriously, a young, beautiful person (by most standards) with a tragic illness chooses to die a few days after her husband’s birthday, and it’s national news for quite a while.  What about the 78 year-old with colon cancer and carry-on colostomy bag, where’s their press?

I’m all-for the controlled slide to the Afterlife if your health is failing and you wake up to a painful existence every day.  Sure, there might be a cure around the corner.  There might be a pharmaceutical lottery win with your name on it. Or a natural cure right in your own back yard that somebody finds the day after you pass.  But you should call your own shot if your body is taken over by cancer-caused agony.  Can you be a role model of strength and endurance to those around you?  For how long?  Would you call a “deadline” (ha ha) to it, and if you’re not better by that date, Drop the Beats, DJ, this party’s starting?

In case you can’t go the quiet Rx route, involving doctors and lawmakers and news pundits, give me a call. I have access to a human catapult and some moonshine, we’ll go out like a hero in the parking lot of your workplace.  As long as your insurance covers 80%.

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A Mistake Made Is Proof of Production

I made a mistake recently at work… I think…

Not the kind that kills a project or gets anybody fired, but one that certainly led to the most easily-flustered to become flustered, easily.  I had spent so much time updating the directives and forecasts for the area of the project I control that I hadn’t looked over to anywhere else it may have had an impact.  And that’s my mistake; I should know it would do that.  So when the team looked at my work for the 4th time, it hit one person; “Hey, if this is going to happen at that time, did we account for XYZ?”

No.  We didn’t. None of us did.  And the potential impact wasn’t huge in the terms of effort, but certainly would get people’s attention in the monetary requirements.  But it was also a huge “IF.”  And it was also highly unlikely EVERYTHING would come to fruition in that forecast.  Which is why I went a bit over the usual ‘casting.  And… nobody caught it.  The senior members missed it.  I missed it.  We missed it.  A mistake was made.  After the smoke cleared from the panic alarms, I stepped back and realized I would NEVER make that mistake again. I doubt any of us will miss that portion in the future.  It’s now an official “IF-THEN” part of the work.

And I thought back to the other parts of my life where I’ve made mistakes DO NOT TELL MY WIFE I ADMITTED TO THIS I WILL EMBARRASS YOU AT WORK…  And wherein a lot of people make no mistakes, they also make very little noise or progress.  At least they try something a little different.  It starts conversations, it forces evolution, it builds character.  Sometimes it totally blows a part of the Machine to shit, but it at least shows some “give a shit.”  Some folks move up the ladder by never wavering from the narrow path of “The Middle.”  But hey, I missed something, and if I miss it again then i should be let go.  Like my granddad would tell me, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, I’m old as dirt and don’t appreciate this bull shit.”

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Staph Meeting: The Small Bug That Bites Big

About 2 months ago I hit the busiest period of my life in the past 2 years.  Work was humming along, coaching teeball one night a week (not for the money) working out 3 days a week, and preparing to move to a new home/sell a home/argue about moving and packing.  Bizz. Eee.  I wasn’t sleeping much but felt fine.  I was eating healthy and not over-doin’ it with booze.  OK, I suppose “over-doin’ ” is subjective, but for my standards, I was FINE, OK, I was fine…

Then I got hit with a bastard of a staph infection on my thigh.  I think I got it from the mats at the gym, though I usually wipe ’em down before stretching on them.n  I’ll never use mats again.  The smallest cut and a latent response to the bugs and next thing I knew, a cyst the size of half a golfball was growing on my outer thigh.  The part where you sit down and it hits a chair. Or you stand up and your pocketed-phone bumps the side of it.  The area where you nudge it and cry a little. I couldn’t think of it without wincing.

After about 5 days from “implantation” to “it has a heartbeat,” I had a doc take a look at it.  I thought it was MRSA due to my medical training (Thanks WebMD.com!) but it wasn’t.  It was the non-MR staph aureus, which bode well for me.  It was also a nice little scar about the size of a penny to remind me to not F around with that stuff.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago; final weekend of moving into the new house.  90deg-F, in and out of trucks, sweating like a training montage in a 1980’s martial arts film.  And I get the smallest cut on my back from whatever.  24 hours later, IT’S BACK.  The warm, infectious feeling of spreading staph!  Now, I thought MAYBE it was an ingrown hair and begged my wife to hot compress it and break out the big safety pin and go to work.  NOPE.  Too gross for her.  Too much to ask.  And in hindsight that could have spread the bug much further into my system.

The next day I’m begging to see the dermatologist because my other doc was a little too happy to dig in with a knife.  The area on my back spread from a Quarter-sized area of heat and pain to about the size of an adult hand, tucked under my skin.  And it hurt like somebody was pressing an iron into my back, but with a lovely little Vesuvius right there in the middle, a grotesque Ground Zero of bacterial bombardment.  It had moved from a red to a deep purple spot about 1/4″ across, which was not a bruise.  Instead, it’s necrosis; the bacteria and eaten and killed everything in that are and moved on.

My dermatologist took one look and said “OK… well… how much time do you have this morning?”  10min later, laying face-down on the table and lidocaine injected into the infected area.  A slice, a push, and doc says “Yeah, this was getting bad.  You had an abscess here that wasn’t gonna stop.  We’re gonna drain this and see what we can do.”

That was 3 weeks ago now.  I went through a round of Cephalexin to kill it.  I had twice-daily “expressions” of the area to release any fluid built up under the left shoulder blade and in my back.  I couldn’t sleep but in 1 position, and not even a fair dose of painkillers could lull it to rest.  People used to die from this thing, and through the miracle of modern medicine, I have a quarter-sized hole in my back, packed with gauze, and draining only a slight amount of clear fluid and blood while it heals itself.  My wife has become a field-nurse of heroic proportions.  She saw my inner back-meat, and didn’t flinch.

The weird part of all this is… I had been telling myself, and been told by others, to gear-down.  I had about 3 high-stress, low-sleep months where I powered through it and was ready to slow-down once we moved into the new house. Well, I did.  I haven’t been to the gym for a serious lift in 4 weeks.  I slept more.  I drank less.  My body revolted against my mind in order to preserve itself like a biologic Bastille Day; my body needed resources to stay healthy, which I was refusing it due to my own agenda.  Your body seeks balance, HomeoStasis, a mid-point of reserve and expression. I guess this is part of getting older; shut-down for benefit, or be shut-down.

So hot-wash every bit of clothing, bedding, and toweling you have. Steam-clean the car seats.  And remember that you should take it easy now and again.  Life is not a sprint, nor a marathon.  It’s a nice walk around town with a few stops for friends and meals and medically-approved THC-infused brownies.

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A 4 Year-Old Asks of Love

There was a recent uproar in the world of ignorance when ESPN, the world-wide leader in Deification & OverDramatizing the Lives of Athletes, briefly broadcast 2 adult men kissing… ON THE MOUTH.  In the post-Janet Jackson’s-boob-world!!!

It was a moment in the lives of Michael Sam and his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano.  Sam is the first openly-gay collegiate football player, from the University of Missouri, and was the Defensive Player of the Year in the SouthEastern Conference.  When Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the 7th round of the NFL Draft, cameras captured the moment/announcement/phone call from the Rams on TV.  In their excitement and happiness, Sam and Cammisano kissed… ON THE MOUTH.

773959792193016495Source: Deadspin.com

And my oldest son, who is 4.75 years old, happened to see it.  As did I.  It raised my eyebrow, because I immediately wondered how much of an issue this non-issue would become in social media, and then later, the starved-for-content Media.  And knowing my son’s inquisitive nature – he once woke up with the question “Where do we go before we’re born?” – I expected him to ask me something about the ON THE MOUTH kiss he just witnessed between two men.  My family is very affectionate; we are huggers, squeezers, cuddlers, snugglers, pinchers, and kissers with those whom are comfortable with it. But among the men, we don’t kiss.  So I expected a tough question…

So he turns to me and asks, “Dadda, why did those two boys kiss each other?”

And here’s what I said, after my years of living with relationships, learning from loving, and understanding what there is to understand about People and Love…

“Well buddy, those boys love each other.”

And he asks, “Do boys love each other like you and mommy?”

And I can’t extrapolate genetic predisposition or evolutionary precursors of attraction based on brain chemistry and/or the shape of a woman’s hips as a signal of fertility and loin-revving physicality, so in a moment if divine inspiration and minor panic, I told my son this…
“Love is who you like the most.
Most boys like girls. And most girls like boys.
Some boys like boys.  And some girls like girls.
But, just be nice to everybody no matter who they like, and be extra nice to who you like.
And if somebody’s not nice to you, then stay away from them.”

He turns to me and says, “Oh! OK,” and then he paused to work this out in his head.  Then he gets a big smile on his face and he says... “Well I really like that girl Maggie in my class, she is good at coloring and smells like pancakes.”

And I said “Well that’s great, she tries hard at art, and pancakes are always good. So be nice to everybody, ok?”

“Okay,” he said.  “Sometimes it’s hard, but I try to be nice to everybody.”

And I was happy and proud to hear that.
But then he asked me a question I couldn’t answer.  He was loading up with a question that even the deepest of thinkers, the most romantic of romancers, those with far more hues than 50 Shades of Grey and people with remixes of Song of Songs could find an answer for in the 271+ years of human history.  A question so heavy that sinkhole opened in my brain.  My son, not yet 5, asked me…

“So… when do girls start being nice?”

I’d like to address the pre-birth location question now.

2

I feel like there’s an innate ability to parent a child under the age of 1, basic care and feeding. Most people who have a baby can do that, unless they are warped in some way. Most of it is a game of getting the kid on a schedule of sleeping, eating, and playing so they develop eyesight, body control, and communication skills. Also, you can’t leave them alone with a gun or a violent-breed dog, which are about the same thing in cultures that see either a gun or a pit bull as a status symbol above having a child. Anybody can have a baby, but it takes about a week and a couple hundred dollars to get a gun or a pit bull. I’m not saying I’m doing all of this perfectly, but I’m sure as shit not letting people I know, and people you know, get away with being or raising narcissists.

Anyway… After the kid’s 1 they need boundaries. Not just a boundary of a baby-gate to keep them from barrel-rolling down the basement staircase. Nor a leash to keep them in peripheral view while Parent does some on-line gaming. No, I mean intellectual & behavioral boundaries. In other words, working to help the child understand why NO is not a bad thing. I have seen up-close the effect of no “No,” in people my age (sociopaths) and children (theirs and others), and it is about as unnerving as watching a pit bull gnaw at a loaded Glock .40cal.

 The first thing I noticed was a person’s whining. For the adults it was usually an issue in a restaurant where they equated a missing item on the menu with a personal attack. A guy I grew up with pulled this a few times, and the second time he did, I saw what he was doing… because he’s a cheap asshole who plays this game, and doesn’t realize he’s the flat tire on the fun bus. Here’s the ploy:

1)      Ask to modify a menu item by complicating the order (The cheeseburger, but with swiss instead of cheddar and an onion roll instead of regular and no pickles and medium-well).

2)      Keep talking while the server tries to read it back, to confuse the server or muddle the communication.

3)      Fries on the side, not on the plate.

4)      Act like it’s no big deal and be just oh-so-sweet about it.

So, by telling this server to greatly change a simple thing, they set the entire chain up for failure. And usually it’s a break at how the meat was cooked. The average person doesn’t know Medium-well from Medium, but this fuckpuddle would always eat half the burger then send it back for being under- or over-done, and ta-daaa!

We all have to wait while they make a new burger for this dick, and he gets his for free as an apology for upsetting a grown man over the hue of the center of his meat patty. The heavens nearly crumbled…

 As a child he got what he wanted by whining, because his parents had 4 other kids, and his whining was quickly shut-down/rewarded with the cookie, the toy, the shoes, the extra hour of TV, the 17”-rims on the new truck, and eventually the family landscaping business which he plowed into the ground after 4 months and zero work. Whining isn’t in his DNA (his brothers and sisters are talented, fun, hard-working people) but it is hardwired in at this point. He’s now divorced and bankrupt and it’s his parent’s fault for not helping him out of these jams, of course.

The last time I saw him he started to pull the prank, I told our server, “He’s fine, don’t listen to him, he’s just joking.” He got pissed at me and sat quietly staring at SportsCenter while the other 4 of us laughed and drank. That’s right…

HE POUTED LIKE A LITTLE KID. Later he told another friend I was a dick. Behind my back. Good.

Now, a friend’s kid is a spoiled little brat if ever I’ve seen one. As an only child, he is treated like THE only child. His deal is that if he’s told “No” he reverts to pouting (he’s almost 6) and whiiiines and starts to fake-cry. His parents let it roll for about 3min while the kid stews in his own stink and then eventually, while the kid is still in pout mode, his parents say “Ok, you can have this now.”

So the kid hasn’t detached Pouting from Reward. Maybe his mom & dad think they have instilled a clean break between the whining and the lesson, but all they’ve shown the kid is, “Hey, hang on to being rude and withdrawn and eventually you’ll get what you want. You don’t have to apologize or ask nicely. Just be stubborn.”

I know this because I’ve seen it happen a few times. One time he tried to take a toy from another kid, and I said “No, you have to ask nicely if you can play with the Ninja Monster PitBull Cannon.”

Then he cries and says he hates me, which I find a way to overcome. Then he sits right there and turns away and cries loudly, as if his fingernails were being chewed off by a bullet-powered Rottweiler.  Because of a “no,” and a reminder to mind our manners.

His dad swoops in, lest his child be scarred for life with such harsh discipline! After explaining to his dad what happened, his dad does the fatherly thing…

And asks the kid with the Ninja Cannon if his kid could play with it. Well of course the kid’s gonna give it up because a grown-up just asked him to. So not only did his dad miss the teachable moment, he killed the kid’s chance to build manners and a bridge to another kid. Double Middle Fingers, folks. But hey, at least his son quit crying, pouting, whining, or moving on towards growth. Yay.

It’s not easy to have your own boundaries, but it’s a basic need for most of us to keep our sanity. And it starts early. If we’re always told “No,” then we don’t think we’re worth anything and deserve nothing. If we’re never told “No” we don’t understand that some things must be earned, asked-for, or are just off-limits until further notice and some sweet talking and probably a bottle of wine.

But if somebody brings a loaded gun or chain-jerking pit bull into a Farmer’s Market, and nobody says “Hey, come on… This could get ugly, and it’s better safe than sorry,” and something terrible happens then either we have no market for these dipshits to come to, or we have boundaries that say “You have to stop here.  There are very sensitive people within.” 

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You Big Dopamine – Motivation, Neurology, And Execution

There is a root cause of every problem, but we don’t always know something is a “problem,” and often think whatever “is” just “is.”  Like having 11 toes, that extra piggy isn’t a bother until shoes don’t fit right or somebody says “Hey, what’s THAT?”  In trying to find out the Why of things in Life, I highly recommend a little RCA, or “Root Cause Analysis.”  That’s the cause, not the symptom.  If your carpet is wet every morning and you dry it out every night, you don’t need a carpet that dries itself (symptom), you need to stop taking Ambien and urinating in the family room (root).

I found this article about what Dopamine is, what it does, and how to start harnessing it for your own good.  You don’t have to be ADD’ed to benefit from the news here, as Dopamine comes into play in many ways in our daily living and “GSD” (gettin’ shit done).

HOW TO HARNESS YOUR BRAIN’S DOPAMINE SUPPLY AND INCREASE MOTIVATION

A major issue with ADD (which I am writing to include ADHD) is the lack of dopamine or the ability to process it properly in the brain.  Dopamine is the “outcome predictive” chemical.  It is also the “pleasure bath” your brain is submersed into when you accomplish something.  So it’s feeding your brain a signal that “Something we like can be had if we do XYZ, even if it’s a moment of saving our own ass when the cops show up.”  (or whatever you do on Thursdays)  This also plays into our metabolism, sleep, and interpersonal relationships.  Take Dopamine down, or out, and you’re gonna be a crank.

“Increased dopamine in the nucleus accumbens signals feedback for predicting rewards. Your brain recognizes that something important—good or bad—is about to happen, thus triggering motivation to do something.”

I always research anything I think is going poorly, can be enhanced, or needs to be down-regulated, even if it’s my behavior, my kid’s behavior, or my friend’s use of the phrase “a whole ‘nother” because ” ‘nother” isn’t a word.  

I have supplemented with NOW Foods DOPA Mucuna and Tyrosine, 2 natural dopamine precursors.  The former provides a very easy focus and mental ecosystem of being motivated and process-oriented.  The latter is a little more “tightly focused” without the kind of chilled-out feeling DOPA gives you.

I’m not a doctor, but I do advocate for my own well-being at all times.  I’ll soon post a note about how I had to close a treatment-gap I had with an endocrinologist, one where the two options he gave me were so far apart you could almost fit his desire for a bigger boat in between them. 

Thanks for readin’, sorry this isn’t too funny…

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Internet Mosh Pit – Weird, Funny, Annoying Stories – Body Lab, Baby Gone Bad, Bugged by Ebola, Be It Ever So Humble

UK SCIENTISTS MAKE BODY PARTS IN LAB – More men putting in orders for a longer… well…

I like this technology. I like this marriage of biology and humanitarian efforts (lost a nose to a chimp attack? here ya go!).  Eventually somebody will donate their kid’s umbilical cord blood’s stem cells for research into curing a family member’s illness.  Debates will rage over whether or not stem cells from embryos – a long-standing point of contention with Right-To-Lifers – should be made available to those same Pro-Lifers when they think they need stem cells to cure their children of homosexuality. 
And I’d bet that a high number of pervs are already squirrelled away in a corner lab growing their own fleshbot for reasons too BLAAACGHHGH to mention here.

PAKISTANI BABY ON THE RUN AFTER BEING CHARGED WITH THE CUTEST ATTEMPTED MURDER EVER

“Baby Musa Khan was charged with attempted murder along with his father and grandfather after a mob angered by gas cuts and price increases turned violent, throwing stones at police and gas employees trying to collect bills. Apparently, the baby was slapped with the charge when a victim complained that the whole family had beaten him up. The complaint was taken very literally.”

I know we’re not supposed to judge another culture without being inside for a significant amount of time, and being inculcated with its ways and laws and morals, and being afraid of repercussions from authorities if we DO speak out…. but f*ck these guys.  F*cking f*ck their ass-backwards laws and how they treat their women and the inability to trudge into even the 19th century from a societal perspective. 

BUGGING OUT OVER EBOLA IN AFRICA

Ebola’s a bad one, guys. It starts off annoyingly enough with hiccups, then profuse bleeding, circulatory shock, and then you turn the corner and FINALLY die.  It seems like a snakebite reaction. Loss of control internal bleeding, then ya drop and a snake or a lion eats you. 
Worried you may get it?  Well, don’t travel to West Africa for a while, and if you are there, don’t eat any of the following animal meats, cooked over a coffee-can fire or not…

  • Antelope
  • Bat
  • Squirrel
  • Porcupine
  • Monkey

HOUSING IS OUT OF CONTROL ALMOST AGAIN

I live outside of Seattle, but I can see it if I get up a tree high enough, so I am in the Seattle area.  The ability to buy a house is getting tougher again through no fault of my own.  As we align our finances for a down payment and inspections and escrow and gawddam remodels and renting out our condon’t, I see how the market is slowing down as supply and demand battle it out.  People aren’t moving as much because there isn’t much to choose from… So there isn’t much to choose from, and people aren’t moving as much… because…

What I do see are homes being sold at $700K+, sitting empty for a year.  Dozens of them in one development.  And more over there… and more down there… So while some people come in and bump their asking price up ($350K for a 1450sq-ft home with no yard? WHERE DO I SIGN UP MY KID’S COLLEGE MONEY?) due to falsely elevated property values, I understand why people eventually just leave the area.  Why give a bank more money than you ought to for a badly-valued item? 

BECAUSE YOU CAN’T LIVE IN 983sq-ft of splendor forever.

Image

Seattle, WA, 1998 

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Managing ADHD Without Medication

It can be done, this whole management of ADHD and ADD without the use of medication.  If you have the precursory chemical and/or behavioral makeup for either, you have likely coped for many years with the struggle of focus, focus, focus, listen, store, recall, etc.  I am amazed at what I have been able to accomplish in my life prior to my diagnosis. 

That being said, I still think if one goes to a doctor who is a specialist in a field, and you DON’T walk out of there with a diagnosis in their field of practice, that doctor isn’t doing very well in general.  That may explain why I took my wife to  the doctor last week and now I have a pap smear in April, but anyway…

This was a great LifeHacker article wherein the author stated their ability to manage ADHD while in school, and I can see how it would fit very well into the real world.  Not that school isn’t real, it’s just not reality.  Wait until those “Tiger Kids” start hitting the job market, with their Valedictorian status, and their ability to play 3 instruments and speak 4 languages and completely deny all levels of social leisure.  Nobody wants to work with a person who can’t chill the hell out for 10seconds.

There are many silos of diagnoses for ADD, btw.  I can focus on something I am interested in for long periods of time, including writing. For some people it may be gardening, but not plumbing repair, nor dryer vent-cleaning.  So, what, that person has ADD, right?  Do we have to focus on everything all the time?  Maybe all I needed to get over my intellectual inferiority complex in high school was a tap on the shoulder in Trigonometry class, and somebody to tell me;

“Hey man, you’re sitting between 2 of the hottest girls in school, an hour before lunch, and you lifted weights 30min ago.  You shouldn’t be interested in graphing cos t any more than you’re interested in wearing a high-top fade.  Chill.  Get Kristie’s number and chill.”

With all of science working as hard as it has, there has yet to be a pharamceutical breakthrough that makes boring people more interesting.

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America; The Greatest Idea In The World

This may very well fall into the “Love It Or Leave It!” category for many people, but it is something that is gnawing at me, and has been for almost 2 decades.  In the near future I will write up a few entries on the topics of American History, Idealism, Patriotism, Culture, and Future.  I am by no means a narrowly-focused Ph.D’er in love with the topics of Social Refurbishment Of The Family Model and/or Societal Economic Impacts On The Middle Class in Pre- and Post-“Oprah!” America.  But as a guy with a family and an underwater mortgage and 2 kids to feed and clothe and send into the world with a postiive outlook on life, there’s a growing sense that either SOMETHING is in the air to keep people in financial quicksand (move slowly and you can get out!) so they stick around and feed the Beast that is Bad Government, or it’s always been like this and nothing is in control and this ship is rudderless and why do i even give a shit, because it’ll be over too soon anyway?

So that will be coming along in case anybody cares at all, and it will be very opinionated because I don’t want to research a ton of stuff and also I’ll have some great recipes to share!  Thanks for reading!

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