I did my heart stress test today and cardiologist said heart is in good shape.  No bad sounds, EKG was perfect at rest and at full tilt.  She said there was absolutely no reason I should have to restrict my exercise in any way.  So now I’ve got a path to recovery and am feeling much better about my situation knowing it is temporary.

     Still have a colonoscopy on May 6th, hopefully source of blood will be benign.  Given all the issues I’ve had with constipation since the boil issue, my gastroenterologist feels that it is likely just related to that.  But will find out next Friday.

     I am so not happy with Group Health.  It is clear their doctors have too high of a work load to get back to patients in a timely manner.  If you need some specialist procedure you need to schedule months in advance.

     I’ve posted about some health issues and not been really specific and it’s generated some concern and a lot of questions so I felt it would be worthwhile to lay it out so there isn’t any speculation.

     I have been having problems since I had a strep-B infection in October that created a large boil, about an inch long in the crease of my leg on the right side.

     The incision apparently cut a nerve and this has created one problem as it heals, it is now in a very irritable state and causing me a lot of grief.

     Then it also took three rounds of antibiotics to kill it, this largely in part to the original infection being misdiagnosed as a staff rather than strep infection and inappropriate antibiotics used.

     By the time all was said and done my gut bacteria was carpet bombed and I’ve been suffering constipation ever since.  I’m living on Miralax for that now until the bacteria re-establishes itself, taking probiotics but they, even good ones, aren’t working yet.

     So if that weren’t enough fun in the process of diagnosing that, they also found I had type II diabetes, and up to this point I had only experienced minor burning in my feet, but after being put on medicines for that, and medicines for high blood pressure, and medicines for high cholesterol and high LDL and high triglycerides, it is now full body neuropathy.

     At times the pain is excruciating, like someone poured a gallon of gasoline on me and set me for blaze and it lasts like this for hours and hours.  This is especially true at night and interfering with sleep, which has made daytime functionality a problem and caused me to get behind on many things.

     While the immediate goal is to get my blood sugar under control with medications and diet, and to that end they are ramping up metFormin every week, the long term goal is to exercise and lose my belly and reverse the diabetes.

     Before I start exercising in earnest, they want me to do a treadmill test to make sure my heart is still up to it and won’t stop on me if I try.  Going in for that on the 28th.

     And then a blood-stool test also turned up positive, could be cancer or it could just be because of the constipation, but I will be going in for a colonoscopy shortly as well.

     I have to tell you this neuropathic pain has given me a whole new understanding of chronic pain.  I think it’s really sad that so many people who need opiates for pain management can’t get them because the FDA has terrorized doctors to the point where they are afraid to prescribe them even when there is legitimate need.  My pain would not be helped by opiates, neuropathic pain tends not to respond well to them but I can understand the plight of those who have chronic pain that could be helped but can’t get the help they need.

     So anyway, those are the health challenges I’m going through at the moment.  Just wanted to let everyone know and I will update as I know more.

     A guy I went to high school with and more or less lived in the radio station there with, Tim Shook, has been hospitalized with a foot injury and is in need of some help.

     He had a golden voice back then and last time I heard him still had that voice.  He has a web site trying to raise some funds to get him through this period.

        http://helptimwithmedical.mydagsite.com/the_story

     I’m kind of going through a medical crisis of my own at the moment but if you’re in a position to help out please take a look.

     Yesterday my wife was hungry so we stopped at Dick’s.  A sign there read, “You are being videotaped for your safety.”

     Totally absurd statement, video taping me is not making me safer in any significant way.

     So I told the employee that I did not want to be video taped, that it did not make me feel safer, and that it was an unreasonable invasion of my privacy, and I delivered these words with absolute dead pan sincerity.

     The employee was obviously taken back.  But then I added…

     “Your equipment taking my image is stealing my soul”, said with the same dead pan delivery and at that point I could see he was seriously disturbed, so at that point I cracked a smile, he realized I was screwing with him, and we placed our order.

     When he brought the food, I told him I was willing to license the use of my image for say $200 per frame.  Keep in mind most video is working at 30 frames per second, that works out to around $6000 per second of video.  Seemed reasonable enough.

     I have always been blessed or cursed with the ability to vividly remember many of my dreams.  However, last night not so good because bad nerve pain made it difficult to sleep more than a half-hour at a time.  It usually takes me about an hour or an hour and a half to get into an intense dream state.

     The night before however, I dreamt of strange structures.  Apartment like buildings, dwellings, that on their roof there was a giant structure that resembled ribs, and they attached to part of a huge dome like structure above.  At some point this massive dome like structure was going to lift all of these apartment buildings with their occupants and take them to another world.  How air and oxygen would be supplied wasn’t clear.  The dome structure was truly huge, many of these dwelling complexes were attached to the under side of it.  The “ribs” allowed the following of the curvature to attach to flat buildings.

     I often wish I could get a picture of something I dreamt, like this, because I’d like to show it to people, but artistic I’m not, my drawing ability is very poor.  I remember seeing a research project in which they were actually extracting images from peoples brains based upon their brain waves.  It involved a neural net being trained by showing people images and using that and the various electrical sensing points as input, and over time the neural network was able to roughly reproduce the images people were seeing but even more that they just thought about.  I wish I had a machine like that to apply to my dreams.

     So I’ve been wondering why this levitating thing only happened once to me and I was never able to reproduce it.

     I’ve thought perhaps because that one time there were no witnesses and maybe witnesses are important because there is something to the idea of consensus reality and that would have broken consensus big time because that stuff just isn’t supposed to happen, or so we’ve been trained.

     I got to thinking about quantum wave function collapse, and Schrodinger’s poor hapless cat who, for a while, was in this superimposed state of being simultaneously dead and alive.  I mean I kind of think I understand how that feels, I think I am feeling it now.

     Anyway, that was resolved once someone came along and observed it either dead or alive.  But what decided which it would be upon observation?  Perhaps the observer?

     And so here is my thought perhaps if we’re the only observer anything is possible, after all we’re just an assemblage of particles, all of which have many possible quantum states, and although the probability of us spontaneously floating up into the air is very very remote, it is not zero.  And so perhaps in the absence of any other observer other than ourselves it can happen.  And perhaps if all observers expect the same outcome, even if it’s improbable it can happen.

     This would explain the successes in such areas as remote viewing at SRI where most people there expected to have a positive outcome, or the Monroe institute.

     Sometimes though when we’re all alone we still can’t do things, we still break our noses trying to run through walls, but perhaps that’s because that is what we ourselves expect.

     This is a problem with today’s surveillance society.  It is locking us all into a public consensus which is that we’re utterly incapable of doing anything interesting.

The Levitation Dream

     I took a nap owing to combination of pain and being tired and I had a dream which in a strange way brings me back to my childhood.

     In the dream I was a pilot in an elite bomber squadron.  What was unique about our squadron is that we flew with the engines off.  We did not rely on the planes mechanics to fly but rather our own will power to levitate and move it forward.

     We were training for a sneak attack bombing run.  We would fly low and completely silently based upon our levitating capabilities.  The training was to refine our control over the craft.

     I was having problems keeping the plane in the air because I felt the mission was unethical and conflicted with my values.

     I awoke out of this dream with the Eric Burdon song, “Sky Pilot”, playing in my mind and particularly the lyrics, “A young soldier so ill looked at the sky pilot, remembered the words, Thou Shall Not Kill…..”

Waking Levitation

     I’ve had one waking levitation in my childhood.  The only such experience of my life although I’ve many times tried to reproduce it.

     When I was in 4th grade, I went to a school called Sacajawea Elementary, it was located on 96th ST NE and 20th Ave NE in North Seattle, Washington.  There was a field to the north of it which spanned the distance between the playground bordering on 95th if the street had gone all the way through (it did not) and 94th, which did.

     I lived on 15th Ave and 90th ST, a white house with a huge unique pine tree (it was a species I’ve never seen anywhere else, very broad) at the corner.  The new inhabitants of this house were total assholes and cut this unique tree down.

     Anyway, the normal route to school was to go from 15th down to 17th and 90th, then go along 17th Ave to 94th, go down to the field and cross it to enter the playground at the school.

     About 100 feet up the hill from 17th there was a fire hydrant and every day I’d run and do a long jump at that fire hydrant and most every day my jump was ordinary.

     However, one day something happened.  When I jumped, I knew I had gotten a particularly good launch so I really pulled my legs up to reduce friction but as I reached the apex of my jump I did not fall back down.  As I continued going down hill, the hill fell away below me and I became quite high in the air.  I went all the way across the intersection and part way down 90th past 17th towards 20th.

     I became fearful that perhaps I would keep ascending up into the sky never to be seen again, or perhaps I would fall rapidly at some great height, but with that fear I came back down to the Earth gently, and had to walk back up 90th to 17th to continue on to school.

     For the remainder of the time I went to that school, I tried to reproduce this jump but never again did I ever exceed an ordinary long jump.

     I’ve got pain from three sources now and they all vary from day to day.  I have diabetic neuropathy, I have a nerve that was damaged by surgery to drain a boil (the L1 nerve), and I have digestive discomfort that is in part related to gut bacteria being wiped out by antibiotics and in part by metFormin.

     For the nerve pain, I have gabapentin (often known by the brand name Neurontin), but usually only take that in the evening as for some reason the nerve pain usually only flares up at night but there are occasional days that are exceptions and today is one of them.  I only have enough for my nightly dose because it’s usually only a problem at night and so during the day like today I just have to live with it, which isn’t easy as it is very distracting.

     I am not used to dealing with chronic pain and when it flares up in the daytime like this I find it difficult to get anything done or to interact with people in a good manner.

     The Bible teaches us we should be content in all things.  I’m having a very difficult time realizing contentment in this situation.

     During the church service this morning, our pastor gave us a moment for private prayer before the closing hymn, and I prayed for help with this.

     Then the closing hymn was, “All is Well With My Soul”, and if you know the story behind it, it is incredible.  I do not have that fortitude however and I’m having difficulties.

     I know God was listening at least.  I can’t say I like the answer (here is a guy that lost his whole family and you’re bitching about a little nerve pain?).

     Saw the gastroenterologist yesterday.  Told me blood is most likely related to the constipation and the constipation is most likely related to antibiotic carpet bombed gut bacteria.

     I’m going to undergo a colonoscopy just to make sure there isn’t anything bad growing there and to check for polyps and the like since I’m 57 and haven’t had one.  Not looking forward to it, especially the preparation for it where I have to drink literally a gallon of laxative.

     They tell me it takes 6-9 months for gut bacteria to re-establish itself.  In the meantime it’s Miralax and probiotics.

     As my body is getting used to metFormin, I am feeling better.  At first I had zero energy and a lot of pain but now pain is diminishing and energy is improving.

     Today I go in to have electrodes stabbed into my nerves and electricity sent to see exactly how much pain they can induce.  Seems like something dreamed up in a Nazi interrogation.