Tag: Chronic Disease

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1089 and Silencing Inputs

I am doing very poorly today. All inputs into my system are being read by my senses as pain.

I’ve spent the last two or three hours in a dark room without any systems inputs but background. I’d hoped to become unconscious but was unable to sleep. It was an extended period of consciousness doing battle with pain. I didn’t set a timer or I’d be able to tell you for sure how much time I spent in this state.

I couldn’t read text on paper or watch visuals on a screen, I couldn’t listen to audio or intake spoken word without difficulty and intense focusing, nor could I tolerate novel or new smells. You’d think this would be very boring except that the intensity of the nerve outputs clouded all thought.

My body seems to be reading all changes in systems inputs as painful. I am unsure where the proximate source of my pain might be as it’s both too intense to get outside of and too diffuse to respond to mindfulness.

Typical locations like my thoracic spine hurt but I feel it in every joint as I take inventory. My intercostal muscles across my rib cage and chest are so tight I’d swear I have several broken ribs if I didn’t know better.

I’ve taken several pain medications of varying strengths (anti inflammatory and analgesic) to little effect. I had to stop watching Christmas movies with my husband sometime in the afternoon as I simply couldn’t handle the noise and sound coming from the tablet.

I don’t know how coherent my writing is at the moment and I feared I wouldn’t be able to muster any focus. I am finding it hard to look at my mobile phone screen even at the minimum brightness setting. This usually indicates a migraine but that seems like a secondary issue.

I hope this passes as I do not have time to manage this kind of symptomatic intensity. Perhaps my body knows this and is simply allowing a breakdown on a day where it’s safest to do so. In which case I may need another holiday or two to actually find a break restorative instead of as emergency maintenance.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1086 and Body Language

When I was younger I spent a lot more of my time in my body. As I’ve aged I’ve become more cerebral and this has had a negative impact on my overall health.

I had the opportunity over the last two days to do some bodywork with very present people. It was frankly much needed. I haven’t felt entirely in my own body and was as reactive.

It helped to be with someone who was very present and attuned to body language. I spend so much time communicating in virtual spaces recently that I’ve felt further away from my body than I’d like.

If you haven’t had cause to get in better touch with your body this week might be a good time. There is something to be said for simple communication between humans that isn’t captured in our writing. Maybe artificial intelligence can work entirely without being embodied but human intelligence is still very much embodied.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1084 and Tension

For the last week or two I’ve been getting tensions headaches. While I have migraines that manifest mostly around hormonal cycles, I can’t say I’ve had a tension headache before.

Migraines make me sensitive to light, sound, and smells but this new headache type was more like a pressure inside my cranium. Typical migraine medicine like Imitrax didn’t do much but neither did Advil or Tylenol. I tried caffeine to minimal effect. Exercise seemed to exacerbate the issue, especially if I was getting my heart rate up.

After discussing it with my physician I’ve got a suspicion that I’ve done something compensatory that has caused tension in my upper spine.

I have ankylosing spondylitis in my thoracic spine so it’s a decent hypothesis that to protect myself from the chronic pain there I’ve added additional pressure further up my spine. A inflammatory issue causing a complete different mechanical issue is a logical differential diagnosis.

I’ve got a couple of approaches to fixing the problem. I can get some body work done to relieve some of the pressure in my neck and shoulders with a massage, physical therapy or craniosacral therapy. I can take more magnesium as it is nature’s muscle relaxer. I also can take muscle relaxers.

I think this development is coming now as I’ve been really upping my intensity professionally this fall. I’ve traveled a lot, attended a number of conferences and meetups, and generally applied acceleration to everything in my world. It’s a good thing that Christmas is almost upon us as it seems like it could use some time away from the world. I will be turning within.

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Internet Culture Medical

Day 1069 and Fever

I both literally have a fever in my own body while I am watching a fever burn through one of my favorite extremely online communities in the form of effective acceleration memers versus a heavily armed establishment unit of academic utilitarians. Who would like you to know they aren’t effective altruists I’m sure.

I myself enjoy a good internecine debate as I became a Calvinist as an adult because fuck it the Reformation is the home of the institutional skeptic. Flame wars are the modern 95 theses. And naturally everyone involved thinks their counterparts are reactionaries. Tyranny of small differences.

I’d say more about this but it’s later in the day and like I said I am running a fever. My immune system is remarkably active so I’m honestly shocked a fever got through at all. I actively beat my immune system into retreat so whenever it gains ground I am annoyed and confused. So it’s probably best if I sign off as it’s never a good idea to be letting your fever dreams get the best of you.

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Travel

Day 1064 and Faster San Francisco

I am energized by my day. Any residual pain from the challenges of travel have been mitigated by rest, exercise, meditation and lots of medication.

If I could to give only one argument in favor of acceleration, it would be our capacity to improve medicine. I’d like to find a cure to my ankylosis personally, but it’s bigger than all that. I believe we should do everything we can to improve the health and well being of humanity.

I do so much to balance my own health and wellbeing just so I can keep working and contributing to the startups I love so much. Often I miss so much of life that others take for granted like socializing together. Hobbies, socializing and much of the tapestry of living together is off limits to me as energy budget is too high.

I’d like more capacity in life so I can chose not only to work, but to go to meetups, dinners and whatever else folks get up to in their leisure and community hours.

I am not one for FOMO while I’m in bed recovering, but on the occasional day where I get to do leisure activities I am reminded that I could have more of life if we agreed to prioritize the acceleration of medicine. My energy budget is only limited by the state of our healthcare.

On that note I’ll be at an e/acc meetup tonight in San Francisco. If you think you see me do please come up and say hello. I’d love to meet you. I’ll be wearing the leopard dress I have come to think of as the “spot me in the wild” outfit as well as three distinct wearables.

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Chronic Disease

Day 1063 and Overclocked

Since acceleration is within my meme space so heavily I am pushing myself to go faster. Predictably that introduces some instability in my Julie equilibrium. That’s a fancy way of saying I currently feel like shit.

I’ve been a bit immobile for the last couple hours from hitting some type pain wall from overclocking myself. I’d hope it would pass so I could focus and write but it’s getting late on the West Coast and it doesn’t seem likely.

It’s possible this isn’t entirely the fault of excess strain from travel and it is in some manner hormonal. I wonder if at some point an artificial intelligence will be able to deduce my follicular and luteal phases by sentiment analysis on my blog.

Feels like a compelling argument for restricting government power over your bodies doesn’t it? Imagine the unceasing eye of Sauron collecting context clues about your reproductive system and the right to bodily autonomy goes poof.

Anyways I’m out for the night to go do battle with the pain so I can accelerate more tomorrow.

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Biohacking Internet Culture

Day 1054 and Extra Strain

This year has had a number of absolutely crazy weekends where it’s felt as if the entire world was having the rules written overnight. Seemingly unrelated bits of the world will flare into supernova attention grabbers.

Off the top of my head, I can recall weekends devoted to aliens, bank collapse, room temperature super conductors, war in Israel and fear we’ve summoned artificial intelligence.

The fact that we can participate in the narratives as they emerge on social media means that every type of influence actor does just that. And it’s exhausting even as it’s occasionally a fun interactive game.

Today I found myself with a poor Whoop recovery and more physiological strain that is ideal. You can see it in my awful heart rate variability. Nevertheless I tried to stick to good routines, possibly to my detriment.

My afternoon went from enjoyable walk to migraine to a low stability.

You can see my Welltory data after I went for a forty minute walk. My HRV tanked and I went into a migraine pattern. Thankfully Imitrax, meditation, and a short non sleep deep relaxation exercise got me stabilized in about two hours.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1041 and Short Notice

I’m extremely frustrated right now. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I won’t get into the details, but it’s mostly because I was overstimulated by a very long workday after what was a very productive week.

I didn’t think it would matter if I was a little fucked up today from overexertion yesterday as I didn’t have any major obligations.

Except I got invited to mid-morning to something tonight. I wasn’t obligated to go but really wanted to do so as the guest of honor may end up having a significant impact on my life. And I’ve had an interest in it which I’d expressed months ago.

Now I had strong interest in attending as it won’t be a repeatable opportunity. So I wanted to push myself to go. I did my best through the afternoon to rest and prepare myself. But ultimately my body just couldn’t do it.

I cascaded into a migraine from the smell of my husband’s cologne. All my efforts to try to be restorative with the few hours of my afternoon were gone through a single small instance of environmental stressor. An obvious sign that I shouldn’t be going anywhere if something small could set off symptoms.

Now I’d like to say that I could have made it if I’d slept more. Maybe if I’d not worked so many hours yesterday. But I feel good about the things I prioritized yesterday.

But I am so fucking angry that I couldn’t have been given a little bit more notice as I would have found a way to make it. Literally even one day would have been enough so I could prioritize sleep.

It’s obviously no one’s fault. I’m simply furious that in an effort to budget my energy and physical capacity for what was my priority yesterday, I couldn’t find any remaining capacity today.

I guess the lesson is that if you want me to show up please let me know at least twenty four hours in advance. Or even just the night before.

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1020 and Subdue

I felt like I was on fire. Itchy skin, weeping eyes, coughing and wheezing, a sympathetic nervous system run amok. I was on my second histamine reaction in less than two weeks.

I have had two days of intense emotional work. One tragic aspect of a daily chronicle that’s public is dancing around some of the more private aspects of one’s life while still managing to write. I’ve been doing “a look ahead” exercise for the next decade with my family. Our goals and our challenges and our structures were all on the table. What do we want and how will we pursue it and what stands in our way?

So I found myself needed to sooth the systems. Reactivity is a choice. I wanted to feel my emotions but I’m less convinced I need to feel my hives.

So I downed 50mg of Benadryl, a couple other generic anti-histamines, a white girl downer, and I plugged myself into noise canceling headphones and a face mask. I did a few rounds of Non Sleep Deep Relaxation nervous system exercises. And slowly I was able to subdue reactions. I slipped into real sleep.

I feel better for it. But I also know I need more restorative time. Remaining subdued would be valuable.

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Emotional Work Travel

Day 1014 and Choices

I’m sick. I’m in a foreign country. I feel fragile. The way life, and history, keeps progressing it’s not surprising that I feel fragile, sad, and wistful.

It’s my birthday today. I’ve been looking forward to the new decade all year if I’m honest. The final official marker of middle age is now mine. The childhood yearning to be an adult is now finally satisfied. There is no youth left for me. Only the joyful responsibility of shouldering my burdens.

I’ve never been good at making the safe choices in life. I make choices that are driven by my desire to live a life that makes sense to me. Those choices don’t always make sense to others. I take risks. I suffer their consequences. I pick myself up off the floor. I start over. My regrets are few and my experiences varied and colorful.

I feel proud of where I am in my life. I’ve failed in ways both significant and silly. Any success I’ve had were paid in full by my failures.

I am trembling between excitement and exhaustion at the prospect of the next decade of my life. I have personal and professional goals that are risky. Unlikely even. But I feel as if I must take this new decade upon me with as much energy and momentum as I can muster.

If I do not speed up, then the friction of the world will slow me down. My life is filled with friction. I know the pain of a chronic disease and the curse of Cassandra.

But these are motivating factors for me. I see these risks as worth taking for an interesting life. I hope my next decade is as interesting as my last. And I intend to make the choices required to bring about that outcome.