As enclosed sphere, the brain allows redirection of thoughts.

Something that keeps me thinking at the moment is this one:




Web-psycho-socio-technological it is a clone of TED. But it concentrates on the binding forces of religion & humankind. Usually, I see myself as having little missionary attitude. This time, I admit, I feel the need to share this over http.
Thanks for paying attention.

Crisis, what crisis?

There are two reasons why it took some time for this new entry.
The first one is that the last blog's title remained longer true than expected. Just after having started, and back from holidays, I broke my metatarsal. Which just sounds more sophisticated than "I broke my foot". Most likely, the pain is ignorant to sophistication. Am I starting to get old because such events make me wonder whether this happens because I get old? I had a cross country run with corresponding (new) shoes. And after a while off road and in the woods, back on a straight and easy road, I stumbled at the border from concrete to soil. At least, there are some stars who are by nature prone to this injury: football players like Mr Beckham.
The other reason for this sign of absenteeism from blogging turned into the title of this entry. At the moment, the percolation of the diagnosis throughout myself more or less ended; or there is no notable change in its meaning during every day, and other, life. A lot has changed in short time. Major mental adjustments. But then, there are again days where I might not have spend a single thought on the bone marrow and its production rate.

Holiday also meant Budapest. Which is famous for a long tradition in public pools / baths / spa. For the first time since the 18th of Jan. this year I was swimming in luxurious decorated facility with 50m outdoor pool, sauna, several hot in- and outdoor pools, with built-in chess boards on the side. I had a 5k swim, which was OK. But...since then...no second try.

Out of office

Retro medicine

My reduced posting frequency does not reflect a similar trend in the presence of the illness in my stream of thoughts. It is just that this presence gets more and more interwoven with the fabric of my thoughts. Nevertheless, I still feel more rapid changes of perspective than during usual times, a constant historical overdose. Which might become a new "usual".

As an example, the advice by health officials, to wash hands more frequently as prevention against a pandemic outbreak of one of the H-something-N-somthings gets instantly related to my illnesss. Here, it is one of the treatments of my illness, e.g. phlebotomy.
To me, both hand-washing and phlebotomy to manage serious illnesses sound very antique (In reality, phlebotomy is much older than hand-washing.) Compared along the historical timeline, I am lucky to get phlebotomy in a clean environment by trained staff, and with washed hands. From own experience and in comparison, phlebotomy gives me the better kick. The other week, I "received" the 2nd one ever. In contrast to normal people, this gave me 3-4 days of increased physical power and endurance. What spinach intake is for Popeye is blood outflow for me.
I still observe all recommendations from my Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor (unfortunately, his business model is not traditional, i.e. successful prevention is not his only source of revenue). It does not hurt, but eating warm three times a day is no fun either, especially during summer. On the kick scale, his acupuncture is close to hand-washing.
On the retro scale of medicine, my treatments are real high scorers. In order to thrive under these circumstances, I added hand-washing. Maybe, I will grow this hand-washing into regular swims I had previously.

Experiments & Science

More than a week ago I saw one of THE experts for MPDs like mine. This might sound strange, but it was a lot of fun. In the way of thinking, he and I share a similar approach on medicine as a science. E.g. in case of MPDs, you have to monitor a lot of blood parameters, like hematocrit. I always wondered how comparable the numbers are, e.g. from one lab to the next or from just one sample to the next (which role has transportation time?). He was the first who confessed that he does not know (exactly), but who had studied those influencing factors systematically (like transportation time, temperature...).
The differences are huge!
Currently, he does research on how blood coagulates at a surface (I am surprised that this is not studied yet. But then, according to him, we do not even have a clue about possible chronobiological cycles of e.g. platelet count or hematocrit).
You might guess, I spend half of the entire time (2 hs) with his post-docs in the lab.

Back to my innermost reality, he runs some additional checks to verify polycythemia vera (PV) as my MPD-subtype. The bad thing, I do not have the results yet and the only other possibility is much worse than PV.

From my upbringing in a boarding school, I know how to obey the law. This is what I still do on the Chinese challenge. Of course, with experiments, it is at least double the fun (find the best container to bring warm breakfast to work).

Got milk?

Almost a month went by where I did not take the chance to apologize for the last post. Sorry, but for bookkeeping reasons, I do not want to delete a post.
The BASE jumping is work in progress. Its fascination in general should not be part of the blog. Nevertheless, it stands for parts of my life that seem to slip away. In those parts, "You can not do this, nobody..." (e.g. swims beyond 4 hs for no other purpose) was a big motivator. Now, having this "best before date" imprinted on my bone marrow, the longing to push the (physical) limits dropped to zero.
All of this is OK, I am just watching and reporting.

The other day, I saw an MD with strong background in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The natural scientist in me is always open for well designed experiments. But it is also an intrusion in my every day life. On my prescription it says "three warm meals, no cow milk / products". To someone who rarely eats warm and drinks 3 liters of milk/day, there are some changes ahead! I thought of founding an lactate anonymous: "Hi, I am John and I am the 3rd day without milk. They say, on the 4th, it becomes very hard and you start to moo. I know, this can not be cured, and beware, cow milk products are ubiquitous!"
If my Chi needs more warmth to flow more freely, and takes the blood with it - I do not want to stand in the way. After all, who am I? Currently, I am in "just follow the rules"-mode and try to not combine terms like energy or warmth with natural scientific reasoning.

BASE

The title is an acronym and stands for building, antenna, span, and earth. Contemplating on how to fill a list of things that one must do before whatever happens to prohibit doing, I found out that people can jump from building, antenna, span, and earth structures. Currently, I am wondering how time and cost intensive are parachute gliding lessons? It seems if you want to do this more than once, you have to know the basics. Actually, these "basics" are more than 2000 conventional parachute drops.