Life as an Extreme Sport

Category: …and everything else

Mostly everything else in a brain-academic way.

the office is out on a morale retreat, please call back later

...and everything else, blog as therapy

I like how Sandra sums this trip up: a morale retreat. And oh, has it been. Surprisingly, I don’t find that I miss Seattle – and this is truly a surprise. I miss aspects of it, sure, and I definitely and heartwrenchingly miss the people, but the city itself? Notsomuch.

But I realized today, over beer, that I have had more physical contact with people today than I have had since I left Seattle, in June 2006. Literally from the moment I met up with Lizzy for lunch, I have been hugging, touching, kissing, leaning against, on, or over people. Reaching out to brush hair out of someone’s face, running my fingers through a scruffy beard, rubbing a back, patting, hands resting together.

This is what I miss.

one augmented human

...and everything else, 2004, Academics, Autumn 04, CHID 370, University of Washington

Laurie is my goddess. She overnighted me both my copy of Microsoft Office, and my backup discs of writing. I now have a large chunk of my life back on my computer, that has been missing since the hard drive was wiped in December.

I’m in the process of reorganizing how I store my documents, and organize the data in those folders. And in that process of reorganizing, I came across this paper, written several years ago for a cultural communication/technology class taught by the guy who went on to become my adviser. It’s interesting to read it again, going on three years after writing it, and see how much and how little my writing has changed.

AHA tells docs: don’t treat chronic pain with drugs

...and everything else, Bioethics

To be honest, this has me sort of speechless. I will be the first to admit that I can be a bit irrationally biased when it comes to the topic of pain management, but that’s in large part because nights like tonight, while not common, are also not very rare: I’m laying on a heating pad, have targeted heat strips on several key pain sites, and am both counting down when I can take my next short acting pain control medication, and contemplating doubling the dose of my longer acting pain medicine.

In short, I’m hurting. And I get very cranky when I see people making recommendations that, were they followed when I was first diagnosed with a chronic pain issue, would have kept me in pain for months while we ran through all of the American Heart Association guidelines.

According to this release,

Patients should be treated first with nonmedicinal measures such as physical therapy, hot or cold packs, exercise, weight loss, and orthotics before doctors even consider medication, said the AHA scientific statement published in the journal Circulation.

Patients who get no relief after those measures have been exhausted can be considered for drug therapy, but doctors should try drugs only in a certain order, the statement said:

“In general, the least risky medication should be tried first, with escalation only if the first medication is ineffective. In practice, this usually means starting with acetaminophen or aspirin at the lowest efficacious dose, especially for short-term needs.”

While most patients are likely to be helped by those drugs, a smaller number may need to try a drug such as naproxen. Patients who require additional help should be given other nonprescription painkillers such as ibuprofen, and only after that option has been exhausted should physicians consider Cox-2 inhibitors.

Oh, where to begin? By the time I finally saw my doc for the pain I was experiencing in my arm, I was in significant discomfort. I was taking 2400-3600mg of ibuprofin a day, barely sleeping, cranky, and had already damaged my posture because I was “sheltering” my injured area. Touching my arm often resulted in me screaming involuntarily. The gust of the fan across my skin brought tears, and I would occasionally run from wherever I was to the shower to let hot water run over my arm and shoulder – the only thing that would bring even a bit of relief.

To even be able to tolerate physical therapy, I had to be drugged to almost unconsciousness. A single woman, I needed to arrange for people to be able to escort me to and from therapy, or have a taxi waiting.

As is, it took my fabulously responsive doctor four months to diagnose me to the point I could be shipped off to a pain management doctor. If, during that time, she hadn’t liberally prescribed a variety of pain medications – including Cox-2 inhibitors – until we hit on a combination that worked for me, I honestly don’t know what I would have done. There were times – there are still times – where the pain gets so intense, so bad, that I become almost consumed by the idea of cutting the arm off, of permanently relieving the pain. I might have broken a limb – left hand, arm, or foot, just to get temporary relief from the fiery pain burning up my right arm. I might have harmed myself worse than that.

And speaking of pain management docs – did AHA even consider consulting any before making these declarations that affect the profession?

I realize I’m rambling a bit – like I said, I’m actually in significant pain tonight, and I’ve had very little sleep the last few days. But I am just aghast that this statement by the AHA presumes to tell another specialty what and how to treat, as well as presumes that there are either NSAIDs or Cox-2 and nothing else.

There are many ways to treat chronic pain problems, and how the treatment happens should depend on the individual scenario. While it would have been perfectly fine for the AHA to come out and say “look, there are some serious risks associated with both the Cox-2 and NSAIDs, and here they are, and this is how we’d recommend using them” – well, okay, that’s one thing. But that’s a far cry from recommending not how to use medication but to treat patients, and from declaring that no chronic pain patient should receive painkillers until after they’ve jumped through a long and potentially detrimental (without relief) series of hoops.

Virginia lawmakers express ‘profound regret’ for slavery

...and everything else

The Miami Herald has an interesting story about Virginia lawmakers expressing a ‘profound regret’ for slavery. It doesn’t include any reparations, but does outline some other measures Virginia has taken in their effort to atone for the racist history of the state. Most interesting to me is the fact that this strongly reminds me of some of the more successful aspects of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee – acknowledging horrors of the past, rather than just trying to move beyond them by saying that they are in the past. There’s an agreement that it’s an important thing to discuss and admit, and an empathizing with those who were adversely affected. All of these things show stronger inclinations of healing and moving forward than ignoring negative history.

It’ll be interesting to see if other states adopt similar measures, and what any long term effect will be.

to boldly go

...and everything else, Academics, Bioethics

I’ve had jobs that are there to just pay the bills. I had an entire career that, like most of the dotcom employees, I fell into sideways, and stayed for the money, not for any particular love of the work. And now I’m working in a field I love, and am passionate about. I live, breathe, sleep and eat it in a way I never truly embraced (but had forced on me) in the computer sector, and I’m enjoying every ulcer-inducing moment of it.

I’m also in a state of some awe at being here, finally, in this position of doing what I love. I’ve been working towards it slowly for years, but I think I really thought it would be several more years, maybe even a decade. So there’s the natural inclination to wonder just how I got so, in my view, lucky! The thing is, though, when I step back, I don’t think luck had anything to do with it. I’m here because of hard work, stubborn determination, and that infectious passion for the subject that lets me step up and speak, regardless of who’s around.

It seems like there’s a growing desire, on a lot of people’s part, to blame their lack of success on things out of their control. If they’d only been born into a rich family, if they could have gone to a fully funded Ivy League college. There’s this belief that some people have an easy life laid out for them, and others are doomed to be living failures, solely because of their birth. There’s no personal accountability, no responsibility for one’s actions – it’s all society, all things outside their hands. It’s an ill-fated, pre-deterministic, martyrdom of “poor me.”

I marvel at people who are capable of living like that, and believing those things. The belief itself seems so toxic! And they would likely look at me, and see someone who’s been handed everything just because I have everything. They wouldn’t see the years living as a broke student, or that I paid for college myself, took out huge loans to get through, worked fulltime while teaching and taking classes. That I busted my ass, and now I’m reaping the rewards. People with that toxic mindset would try to find something in my story to write my success off to, some way where it didn’t stem from my actions. And I think that’s offensive, to me and everyone else who’s bootstrapped their way into success
My father was quite literally raised in a one room cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. My mother lived in a small, three bedroom house in the deep south – with her sister, parents, and five brothers. Neither had college educations when they married, to say they were anything but very low income class would be a gross misrepresentation of facts. And yet they worked hard, for themselves and their children, and they pulled themselves up to where they are now. But there was not a silver spoon to be had for my infant mouth..

I was reading an article yesterday that made me smile, not just because it was a very characteristic interview of someone I have grown to admire greatly, but because of how he speaks of getting one of his most prominent academic positions. He wrote a letter to the new director of a certain center, and basically said “Dear Doc – you would be nuts not to talk with me about the center.” It’s brash, it’s ballsy, and it’s how you get ahead.

Life isn’t going to send you an engraved invitation to join the party; sitting around and moping and waiting will get you nowhere, and fast. Life will happen with or without you; make it happen with you, not to you. Find the thing you’re passionate in, and chase it. Make yourself be noticed, stand up and stand out.