Tag: Illness

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1264 and Party’s Over

I am going on my third week of having Covid symptoms. I don’t know if it’s time to call it “Long Covid” but my autoimmune response to it feels like it’s being dragged out.

My family doctor (an absolute gem of a general practitioner with a concierge clinic if you are ever in need in Montana) helpfully reminded me of the basics of immune response.

The infection is cleared but my immune cells did not get this memo. I’m still coughing, I’ve got clear phlegm, and I am struggling with a high respiratory rate. I am exhausted.

Yesterday I went for a short 15-20 minute stroll to get sunshine and I found myself with a very heightened respiratory rate overnight.

Apparently even small stressors like pollen count or exertion are hard when your immune response is overactive. I’ve been living with an autoimmune condition for years so while rationally I know this, it helps to be reminded.

If one is inclined to a forced metaphor, the party is over and the guests have left but the host hasn’t figured out it’s time to turn off the stereo, lock up and pick up the trash.

Calming immune responses is a tricky business. Sometimes you succeed by waiting it out as your system slowly resets to a healthy baseline. Sometimes you use more interventionist approaches with either local or systemic steroids. I try to avoid this but sometimes the only approach is the brutal one.

It’s my hope that the party being over means I can simply manage the mop up but I hope my immune cells decide to chill and get back to baseline soon.

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Internet Culture Medical

Day 1260 and Boredom

I’ve never understood boredom. I am very much the kind of nerd who enjoys learning. I’m mostly topic agnostic so life has been a pretty joyful experience of deep dives & rapt attention.

I struggle to be empathetic towards boredom as everything interests me. I don’t know if curiosity is innate or learned but I’m glad I have it in abundance.

The closest I get to understanding boredom is the exhaustion and brain fog that comes with illness. I’ve had an awful bout of Covid that I’ve intermittently worked through over the past two weeks.

My mind just has less capacity to hold onto focus. I’m in pain and the misery of the experience makes it harder to do more than the basics. I normally thrive on focus but now I’m stuck in ongoing being able to do tasks that require less cognitive overhead.

This has led to a kind of boom and bust set of cognition for me as I save up my focus for the deals that just can’t wait and then I am like a zombie on my fun unable to do much as finish a pdf about “situational awareness.” Maybe this is what they meant by boredom all along?

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Biohacking

Day 1258 and Relapse

I woke up feeling reasonably good this morning. I thought perhaps my prayers have been answered. I have been managing a case of Covid for over a week so I really wanted to be turning the corner on recovery.

It’s hard fully rest with an infection and this case overlapped with a lot of big things for my portfolio companies. That excitement made it even harder to stay away from working. I was joyfully working all weekend for multiple deadlines.

I’ve not been the best behaved patient though I have stayed in bed. I thought I’d at least maintained the appropriate protocols for sleep, nutrition, supplements and medication.

What I really wanted was to go outside and enjoy the weather. June in Montana is heaven. Cool bright mornings turn into sunny dry days.

I thought that a short walk in this type of environment would be healthy. I walked the property and down our dirt road. I wasn’t out for more than twenty minutes.

Walking by our little pond fed by a creek.

It was too much. By early afternoon I was exhausted, feverish and coughing. I slept but it was the fitful half conscious sleep of the sick.

I am disappointed as I want this to be over. The pushback from supposedly health giving activity like strolling in the morning sun was immediate. It isn’t over and I’ve been punished for joyful nativity. But damn it’s a beautiful day to be alive.

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1253 and Dragging

I may give myself an out today to get very little written as despite me being a bit further into my “I’ve got Covid” saga I am in no way feeling better.

I do not want to have a long case of Covid or the much dreaded/debated Long Covid and I am trying to remain optimistic about the situation.

I do not feel optimistic about it as absolutely every aspect of my normal health troubles are 10x worse and I’ve got all your other fun symptoms like coughing.

I’m scared as it’s not getting better which brings up the anxiety that I’ll be back to where I was in 2019-2020 when stabilizing my health was more than a full time job.

I don’t mind having a part time job managing my health. Or as I prefer to think of it a side hustle as a biohacker. Except instead of making money I spend money.

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1252 and Maximum Health Protocols

I must have wanted some early 2022 vibes as my current “Covid infection after a traveling to a crypto conference” feels aesthetically familiar. It still feels like we are in the same long now of Empire’s End but this time with more geopolitical risk.

I can’t think about most of this at the moment as I am officially on my Maximum Health Protocols which is a mix of expensive piss and biohacking basics with a hint of woo and a triple helping of pharmaceuticals.

I still feel like shit but my hope is that dedication will save me from long post viral complications. I’ve worked too hard on my health to let some stupid inflammatory Covid event get me off track.

Covid isn’t any more worrying than most triggers to my overclocked autoimmune system but the additional pain of the inflammation isn’t doing me any favors. Does anyone else remember cytokine storms? To quote South Park, I member

I dislike the brain fog and exhaustion as it feels like writing about illness has become boring. I’d rather be going on tangents and rants but I’m stuck linking to posts recommending vitamins and sleep. Probably a sign that I love my work that my irritation is this strong.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1251 and Summer Covid

I don’t know why this didn’t occur anyone earlier but this morning as I went about my news review the New York Times surfaced a piece on handling a rise in summer covid cases. My brain went huh so I took a Covid and as it turns out this viral thing is in fact just fucking Covid.

Whomp whomp.

A blast from the past. A positive Covid test!

If anyone wants to make some jokes about how I was just at a crypto convention I could use some throwback pandemic humor. I am certainly enjoying the irony.

As new variants of the coronavirus continue to gain traction, doctors and researchers are bracing for a potential rise in cases this summer. KP.2, one of these variants, now accounts for 28.5 percent of cases, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a small increase in Covid-related emergency room visits and positive tests

Summer 2024 Covid

I am naturally not thrilled. I know no one takes covid seriously anymore so protocols are lax but I’ve got an overactive immune system. I don’t want to give myself any chance at post-viral nonsense nor do I want to put anyone around me at any additional risk.

For what it’s worth I hate being sick in public so only my husband Alex has been in particular close proximity to me as my symptoms got worse. I pulled back from the conference as soon as my symptoms really hit.

I will not be leaving bed until I’m sure I’ve got this absolutely licked. I am throwing all the usual suspects in the biohackers arsenal at this thing. If you’ve got suggestions for fending off post-viral nonsense send them my way.

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Medical Travel

Day 1250 and Viral Load

I very much picked up something awful and I suspect viral in Texas and am going to be coping with its fallout for a few days.

I’ve lost track exactly of its onset as my brain is scrambled by cold medication, decongestants and the process of being sick. You go very hard trying to show up for panels and dinners and then you find you can’t get out of bed at all.

I do find it modestly funny to crack jokes about being high on DayQuil and experiencing coughing fits so strong incontinence is a concern. But I guess it depends on your sense of humor. Yes that’s a diaper joke. Either way I’m useless to myself and others except as a source of amusement.

I haven’t had the sort of viral or bacterial load type infection that one would qualify as a cold or flu for sometime.

My immune system is so overclocked that your common cold barely stands a chance. I have endless autoimmune problems but actually having the flu is a bit unusual. I hope it passes soon. Till then I’ll be in bed hopefully not wetting it.

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Medical Travel

Day 1248 and DayQuil High

I got a bit of a viral thing going on as my time in Austin for the Consensus conference wraps up. I feel as if missed a lot of time with people I’d wanted to catch up with simply because I was sick. I made it to all the programming and a few gatherings.

I am not the only one who is being stricken by various forms of infection. It seems like a lot of folks even at the conference were struggling. So perhaps it’s just a case of conference crud but it’s still annoying as nothing is so awful as a DayQuil high.

If I missed hanging with you I am very sorry. I am available on other channels. And I hope my panels were ok! For now I’ll rest and appreciate that the DayQuil high is keeping the misery at bay

Categories
Biohacking Media

Day 1204 and Moral Panics

I do not care for podcasts but I listen to a Bloomberg podcast called Odd Lots for entertainment. I’m an avid participant in the niche in-group you might have once called Financial Twitter. The hosts of the podcast Joe and Tracy are part of this community as well.

Usually I listen to it for the fun expert guests who come to do commentary on their corner of the markets. Today’s episode was titled how the American workforce got hooked on adderall. Which I personally think is a very provocative title.

Over the last few years, users of the popular ADHD drug Adderall have been frustrated by regular shortages in getting their prescriptions filled. Various regulatory and supply chain factors have contributed to the inability of producers to keep up with demand. But this raises the question: why is there so much demand in the first place? How did a significant chunk of the labor force — from tech workers to Wall Streeters — begin using the drug as an aid for their work and everyday lives? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Danielle Carr, an assistant professor at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA, who studies the history of politics of neuroscience and psychology. We discuss the history of this medicine and related medicines, what it does for the people who take it, and how market forces opened the drug up to almost anyone.

Odd Lots “Hooked on Adderall”

My impression of Danielle Carr was of a nuanced thinker with a lot of historical insight who happened to have haplessly taken on some academic moralizing about whether the wrong class of person might be abusing stimulants. I’m perhaps the wrong class of person to be commenting as I don’t use any stimulants stronger than a cup of coffee in the morning.

I was struck how the narrative eventually came to demonizing market demands in contrast to the I’m sure completely neutral national health systems. The theory being we might keep better track of the vulnerable in such a system struck me as classist. Adderall may be an American healthcare market issue only because those poor London bankers have another go to black market stimulant. We just don’t mind because they make money.

Moral panics around pharmacological intervention seem to be a flavor of the decade sort of thing. Prohibitions catch on when the wrong kind of person gets themselves into trouble of abusing something that was otherwise contained to social sanctioned consumption.

Perhaps in less inclined to judge on these things because I don’t witness the abuse but I also think paternalism is the excuse schoolmarms and aristocrats love in equal measure.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1181 and Up All Night To Get Lucky

I’m in a new and odd pattern of activity recently. I maintain a flow like hyper awareness on my rotation of professional obligations with little sleep for two or three days. Then I break to sleep with as little movement or energy expenditure as I can manage for full day. It seems to be working for me.

I would prefer to call this approach “fits and spurts” or “the lion hunts when it’s hungry” but that sounds more like a behavioral problem than a protocol. Which, given the endemic narrative civil wars against empiricism in the N of 1 gym bros, seems about right aesthetically. Experimenting with your body is your right.

I have made many shitpoasts about this culture after yesterday New York Magazine “are we having unrealistic expectations about the same traumatized dude” essay. I don’t know anyone involved in that particular situation but I take lots of biohacking tips from broken people because I am also broken. Physician heal thyself. Biohacker hack thine own protocol and or behavioral problem.

So any distinction between a protocol and a behavioral problem is perhaps unnecessary except for optics. We can do a wash coating of public relations speak but it’s a virtue to seek to serve your gifts while carrying your sins. I personally advocate for a minimum viable approach to this but omnia vanitas

We do what we can to fix and accept parts of ourselves that we cannot live with and pray we find wisdom as we accept our own hypocrisy and failures. I hope that I do less harm to others and most especially less harm myself. I do not accept any type of coercion I didn’t choose myself. Neither should you. Don’t ride any dicks unless that’s what you like.