Tag: Medical

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1536 and Backward to Move Forward

Much as the winter has been hard on everyone in my close circle, I don’t particularly want spring to arrive. I’d rather have a pleasant winter follow the unpleasant one instead.

I woke up to fresh snowfall this morning after a hard night. Some previous stressor is making my hair shed. Pain has wrapped itself tightly around my intercostal as it radiates from my thoracic spine. I feel as if I’m fighting a light infection as I ran a fever yesterday and today.

I only have a few days till my next loading dose of my new biologic drug Bimzelx which is a new type of IL-17 inhibitor for my ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis. Bimzelx targets both IL-17A and IL-17F, while my previous protocol Cosentyx targets only IL-17A.

Changing medications is a whole thing that introduces way more unexpected problems even with the best of planning. See for instance getting my eyelid sliced open twice to manage an infection. Neat right?

Oh and don’t forget the mold issue. Figuring a solution to our master bedroom and downstairs mold issues means we’ve got some destruction and renovation that we probably can’t accomplish before the summer.

Which is a bit of a bummer as our guest floor isn’t as well air conditioned. Add in the late evening light and I expect the next two seasons will be challenging to make progress during. But sometimes you have to go backwards to fix existing problems in order to move forward.

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Community

Day 1532 and Friendly Service

Much of our winter has revolved around various maladies that require the help of professional from doctors to industrial hygienists.

Alex and I (let’s be honest mostly Alex) have been scheduling a lot of consultations and procedures. While I’ll certainly caveat that selling a service does generally mean being friendly to the customer. But it really feels like like we’ve got friendlier people in Montana.

Even our government is friendly. We’ve has cause to call the county and it’s just so pleasant to engage with a kind, present and helpful fellow human.

We’ve really run the gamut. Our trash needed replacing after a hard winter and the company who does our pickup sent us a new one the next day. A recycling service for mattresses excitedly told us about community programs. The eye clinic got us in the day we called. And on the follow up let us add in an eye exam since we were already there.

We are all accustomed to the frustrations that come from indifferent corporations with private equity minders. Healthcare is by far the worst offender here.

So it’s nice to be reminded in a vulnerable world that American towns are filled with everyday people like you and me. And that genuinely makes me happier. We are all in this together and being friendly makes everything for everyone.

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Medical

Day 1531 and Dumb Novel Problems

I personally find I’ve got an adequate number of problems in my life. I’d rather not go searching for new ones. And yet they keep cropping up no matter one’s hopes.

I’m at the eye clinic at the hospital for a two week checkup on an infection that felt like it literally ballooned my right eyelid. It was either a cyst or a chalazion, the doctor was like eh treatment is the same.

Not to upset those with weak stomachs but the treat is slice open your eyelid and squeeze out the pus, blood and scar tissue. It isn’t as painful as it sounds.

After two weeks of diligent hot washcloths, antibiotic eye drops and doxycycline my eye has reduce the lump to a small pea or large lentil. My body was trying to move it out but it needed a bit more help.

So she sliced it open again seeing if we could get anything else out. Alas the tissue scaring was most of the volume so there was less ooze to be pushed out.

She said I could wait it out but it takes months to move it naturally or we can do a steroid injection and reduce the swelling so it clears more easily.

I’m not a big fan of prednisone when I’m taking it internally but a little localized dexamethasone shot into the eyelid seemed like a good plan to me.

I’ll say that it’s a bit scary trying to stay perfectly still while someone holds a scalpel to your eyelid. Having someone inject a needful of steroids is much worse from a base animal terror perspective for me.

I’m safely through it though now my eye is all puffy again. I’m likely to have a black eye for a bit so I’m excited for all the jokes Alex and I will make about how he hit me. Nothing more awkward than a wife with a black eye.

Categories
Medical Preparedness

Day 1525 and Turbulence

I am doing what I can to hold steady in the turbulence of the moment. Deals are still getting done, founders move companies forward, I do my small part to contribute in the strange dance of rounds coming together.

It has not been easy with both my husband and I seemingly rotating between one health issue to another. It would be nice to have us both healthy at the same time.

Because it is the winter of our discontent I’ve spent more time on Deep Research projects this past month than seems sensible but the urge to find solutions is strong when your health needs mending.

Plus it saves a ton of time when the alternative is calling a bunch of different experts and making progress at best every two weeks with appointments. Scheduling health care of any kind is a mess.

I remember realizing so vividly during Hurricane Sandy that no matter the catastrophe the rest of life went on. Everything will feel turbulent in our new high variance age and all we can do is live through it.

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Medical

Day 1524 and in the Red

The MilFred family household is not at its finest. My husband Alex seems to be in the throes of pneumonia while my body is doing its best to manage a host of medication changes.

We have all the typical work while this goes on along with a few other crisis management projects (mold). All dashboards flashing red.

I keep toying with posts saying I’ll have to consider if this is where the habit goes away or that I need some do not disturb time. This is certainly a big part of why.

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Medical

Day 1517 and Blink Blink

I’m writing this in the waiting room of the new hospital campus in Bozeman. We’ve recently had an outpost of the Billings Clinic go up alongside the highway between Bozeman and Belgrade to keep up with the growth in Southwest Montana.

It’s really nice and absolutely packed with people. The average age looks to be early seventies so it’s not a young crowd in the eye clinic.

The only other mid-life people besides Alex and myself is a prison inmate in a yellow jumpsuit and his two Corrections officers. I had half a mind to go ask him what he was in for while showing off my own deformity m.

I’m unsure if it’s a side effect of changing medication or just plain bad luck, but I have an infection in my right eyelid. It started about a month ago and looked like it was a simple chalazion.

It’s sometimes called an eyelid cyst or a meibomian cyst. It slowly forms when an oil gland (called a meibomian gland) becomes blocked. Cleveland Clinic

But over the last month it went from painless little boba ball sized lump to my entire eyelid being swollen. It got much worse this week especially as I started applying wet washcloths to it regularly.

They were able to perform an incision and curettage (don’t click through if you don’t want to see some gnarly eye stuff) as my discomfort was pretty intense. I desperately wanted it drained and they did not disappoint.

Just wiping up the last of the pus

I hope this heals well and without issues. I fear this was complicated by the changes I’m meant to undergo in my medical protocol from one IL-17 inhibitor to another.

To soften any backlash in symptoms during the change I’m on another immunosuppressant so I’m particularly nervous about infections especially when it comes to sensitive areas like the eyes. I’m glad I was able to get this drained but I’m a bit nervous about how it will heal.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1515 and Hope in the Dark

Given the amount of illness that seems to be plaguing folks this winter I’m surprised we’ve not all decided to hide until Spring thaw.

Every event seems to be a super spreader. Our physical immune systems are shot and I doubt our emotional defenses are much better. Everyone is predicting informational dangers myself included.

It is hard out there and we all experience it in different ways. My medical improvement sprint is plagued with logistical issues, the mold situation in our basement is overwhelming, and yet I have hope that I’ll make it.

o many people are dedicated to building solutions to problems, big and small, that I can’t selfishly let my any of my problems stand in my way. We have to all pull forward together.

I spent a few hours with a portfolio founder working on their fundraise today and I felt my optimism. I enjoyed the flow of work even as the enormous task of raising capital is filled with risk.

I’d taken a risk on directional play earlier in the year. I believe in the founder. They are making their way through YC. I can see their path emerging with every step forward. And I see hope.

Categories
Reading Startups

Day 1510 and Turning It On

Almost two years ago I sent a Twitter DM to a young founder named Isaiah. He was intellectual, curious and humble and I was impressed by his authenticity.

He was strong enough and driven enough to ask for hard feedback. So I told him the truth when he asked. I hated his first idea, gave a prediction about how it would go and said I’d invest in him on whatever he did next.

Lucky for me that feedback turned out to be accurate. We talked for months as he worked through a plan for his true passion for abundant clean nuclear energy.

I was blessed to be put in a position where I could commit as his first investor. His progress since then been extraordinary. Their goal is to make the world’s energy by building nuclear reactors at planetary scale. Today Valar Atomics announced they raised a 19m seed round.

When I say extraordinary I really mean it.

First, we have completed the construction and pressure certification of our thermal prototype, Ward Zero, at our Los Angeles facility—the fastest in history a thermal test unit has been developed and built. Ward Zero will be unveiled next week at an exclusive event in LA. Isaiah Taylor

We are in an age of acceleration. To be able to design and test a prototype this fast is a sign that we can expect better solutions to arrive and quickly if we should so will it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are able to turn on a working reactor in the near future. If you are interested in Valar (working for them or investing in their growth) hit me up on DM.

Reading

Leading Edge newsletter “What Woo Works?”

Spooky, scary, technology is witchcraft

Media

Want to see an android art direct as if it were in the cremaster cycle? The Protoclone is a faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and 500 sensors. Clearly they are doing this just to scare us into giving them attention so here you go. I hope they don’t execute as swiftly as Valar.

Protoclone, the world’s first bipedal, musculoskeletal android
Categories
Chronic Disease Media

Day 1509 and Wrapping My Arms Around The Problem

I am seeing some progress in my various home and health projects. I’ve been doing my best to remain optimistic even though I was not feeling well and the sheer amount of changes required was intimidating. But I’m seeing low progress.

An industrial hygienist is coming to do an arm test tomorrow on our basement as well as the rest of the house to confirm the extent of our mold problems. Our hope is that it’s contained to the bathroom in the basement.

If we have to do a bathroom remediation that presents an opportunity to do some renovations. While exciting that is also introducing more risk. But you can’t waste a crisis right?

Stuff I Read

The Agent Problem

CoinDesk reporting on the Libra scandal in Argentina

Politico: Voters Were Right About The Economy

Epsilon Theory “It Was Never Going to Be Me”

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1506 and Breaking With Convention

I am in a challenging spot at the moment with our household mold issue and my attempts to accelerate changes in my care protocol for my autoimmune condition.

When things are challenging physically I find myself in tension. I want to share and be open in my experiment to write every single day. I am afraid that I’m doing nothing but share weakness by doing so.

I don’t want to telegraph only strain, illness, and struggle. Sure things are hard at the moment, but I am more than my current local minima conditions. Things are quite good.

Just because I feel too weak to articulate all the areas of strength doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just can’t put them front and center right now.

This frustrates and even angers me. Large long term projects and investments are thriving and rather than focus on those I am curling into the fetal position and wishing I could disappear until I’m able to advocate loudly and proudly for my wins.