Category: Personal

Travelling With a 511 keV Gamma Emitter Tomorrow

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

We are a four cancer household of two. I have had stage 3 colon cancer and a couple of basal cell carcinomas. The wife has recently had a lumpectomy for breast cancer, stage 1, followed by 15 sessions of radiotherapy. Tomorrow, she has a Positron Emission Tomography {PET} scan to check on the state of play with her multiple myeloma, it will be an 18F – FDG PET scan. The [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose shows sites of hypermetabolism associated with regular cancer or myeloma. It decays by positron emission, an up quark changes to a down quark.

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The annihilation of the emitted positron causes two ~511 keV gamma “rays” emitted at exactly 180 degrees to each other to conserve momentum. The half-life of 18F is around 110 minutes. The drive back from the centre of nuclear medicine is half an hour, we have a smallish Peugeot 207 and it takes place at less than one half life after injection.

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According to what I have read in the scarce literature, this car journey gives me an exposure of ~0.4% of the annual average exposure to radiation.

Perhaps there is a need for more research on what happens when a patient leaves the nuclear medicine centre? There are health and safety assessments for the healthcare practitioners, what about the carers? This is the third journey like this for me. There will be more.

We have an appointment with the radio-oncology specialist and the haematologist week beginning 2nd December.  We will know a little more about what our immediate future holds by the end of that week….

Being Watched and Residual Fate

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We have two feral cats who live on the compound, Felix who is black and white as you might expect and Gandalf who is grey and now white after the battle with the Balrog. Gandalf is a young, neutered female who is full of beans and Felix is an old warhorse who got her up the duff not long after she arrived here. I captured her and took her to the vets and the local charity paid for her operation for her to be released back here.  

When the wife was recovering from surgery for her breast cancer recently, I fed them both. Gandalf in particular equates me with food. So, I am under constant surveillance wherever I go in the garden. Having a patch of white fur is poor camouflage. Cats think they are clever. I can often feel it when Gandalf is observing me from some random place of hiding / vantage point in our 2 acres. I know. When I turn and look directly at her from say 50 metres, she has on occasion looked surprised and even startled. I have seen her flinch.

I have a kind of sixth sense, which may or may not be reliable.

Of late I have felt some kind of human observation, especially when I am down near the river. It is the wrong time for day for the Korrigans {fairy like beings often associated with water}. The feeling is always of a male, masculine. It has happened a few times in the last few days. But when I have turned to look there has been nobody there that I can see. The line of sight through the gap in the hedge points at a treeline on the hill. It is possible, though unlikely, that someone is watching. What are the crazy Brits up to now? The other day a helicopter flew over our property, stopped directly above, then turned around and headed south. This happened twice in a few minutes. If anybody is watching it must be bloody boring for them. I might set up some trail-cams.

Weird…

Today I have been mulling over if there is any residual fate left for me. The current hypothesis is that I will quietly eke out my days and experience my possibly karmic bad health slowly worsening. I don’t see much left for me to do. I am largely apart from the world. There are cancer and myeloma follow ups for the wife in the next few weeks which include another PET scan. That will advise.

The world is perhaps braced for whatever lunacy might ride forth from Tango man in DC. Maybe he will decree that all Americans must wear tin foil hats on their heads. You might be able to get a special MAGA cap lined with tin foil.

My dreams have pointed at using Tibetan dice for divination. I have made two prototypes from Walnut root. The root is too wet. The ones I made were not fair. It was easy to see that some numbers came up more frequently than others. They were “bent” dice. I have a method of production and nice piece of apple wood for the next iteration.

On the warrior’s path anything is possible. The universe has a bag full of spanners and a playbook full of curve balls. So, you never know for sure. Likelihood is a quiet fade-out to clog popping time.

Fizzling out like a dying sparkler seems quite natural and non-dramatic.

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Sent la pluie comme un été Anglais

Entends les notes d’une chanson lointaine

Sortant de derrière d’un poster

Espérant que la vie ne fut aussi longue

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Inquiry – Inquest – Pow-wow Dream 10-11-2024

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Last night after watching some rugby highlights on YouTube, MasterChef, a bit of the France V Japan game and Strictly Come Dancing we went to bed.

I awoke around 3 AM and then had a relatively short dream in which I was the subject of an inquiry some kind of inquest into what happened and then a knowing and observation that there was/is some kind of ongoing meeting or pow-wow about the findings. Metaphorically the jungle drums are rolling. I had images of several of the people in this inquiry some of whom were known to me ~ two decades ago. There were others who are “famous” or in the public eye.

The contrast between this “dream” and our nighttime entertainment is marked. In no way was I ruminating about this nor have I much. But the dream has brought it to my attention {again}. It is not the first time that I have had dreams about people making inquiries about me.

Nobody {with one exception} has any current knowledge about what I am like, how I behave or how I think. There is nobody I could ask, realistically, to be a referee. Literally nobody has any current knowledge about my abilities and orientation.

If a gang of people gather together to talk about someone when that person is not present is that

  1. Sensible planning and considered responsible behaviour?
  2. A form of conspiracy bordering on bullying?
  3. Rude?
  4. A comforting but relatively pointless exercise? {Look we are doing something about it we are holding an inquiry. We can publish the findings and the matter will be sealed.}

I have pointed out {previously and elsewhere} that I have never appointed nor will I ever appoint a spokesperson or Porte-parole. Anybody claiming to speak on my behalf is therefore a charlatan.

If anyone wants to know what I am thinking, what I want, how I am feeling etc., the answer is obvious. Don’t speculate, guess, suppose or otherwise chew things over.

Ask.

Having One of My Clumsy Days

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I have started with the manufacture of my dice. I have cut a cross section of walnut root with the chainsaw so that it is about 15mm thick. Today I made it into rough cuboids using my hatchet. I quickly realised when chopping kindling that I am having one of my clumsy days. It is probably not wise to play with a sharp knife. It will wait for another day.

Last autumn I was getting nerve tingling in my left hand, two fingers and the thumb. In 2007 I lost nearly all the strength in my left arm due to a herniated cervical spine disc in the c7-c6-c5 region. I got this as a result of an ippon seio nage judo throw at a sports dojo. On and off some symptoms return nearly twenty years later.

I had an MRI scan September 2023.

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There is clear narrowing around my spinal cord. There is osteo-arthritis. The MRI showed I also have a right sided cervical herniated disc c6-c5. When I drive for more than half an hour I get tingling in my right fingers. It is present now.

Most of the time it is non symptomatic.

Last autumn I visited a brain surgeon / neurosurgeon. It was bizarre. He prescribed be a tapered dose of prednisolone starting at 100mg per day for a week!! That tapered off over a month and I would have had no sleep and been a right royal pain in the arse for a month. He also prescribed an injection of steroid into my cervical spine. From what I have read this is no longer best practice. I did not have any of these interventions.

On my clumsy days the gravitational pull of the earth is somehow enhanced. Everything which can drop to the floor does. There was a bit of left sided tremor too, today. These are probably symptoms on the cervical pathology.

If these symptoms don’t go in the next few days, I may go and see the GP. The one thing I have been doing more of, of late, is screen time on this computer. I can easily stop that….

Haircut – Social Self-image Puzzle

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The dreaming symbol of hair is social-self-image. The dream previous is the second one pointing at getting a haircut, popping out to get some money and the number 10. The earlier one in mid-September was set in a swish posh boutique in London, the one today more local. Before Covid I did get my haircut at a male barber in Guingamp. I have not been back since.

Having a haircut implies some kind of change in my social self-image. Tidying it up?

I am not at all concerned about my appearance and would perhaps look downmarket, even quasi-redneck to those who once knew me. About every 5-6 weeks or so the wife gives me a buzzcut at home. I have not combed my hair in over decade. When it is short there is no need. I live in army combat trousers, t-shirts and in winter a jumper.

In Buddhism hair can be called “ignorance grass” which you shave when you enter as a novice.

Outside of this marriage the only people I talk in any way socially to are the man who comes to cut the grass on the sit-on mower and the physiotherapist.  These are at most often bi-weekly and short.

I think of myself as physically strong for my age but struggle with flexibility and arthritis. I am not yet taking regular pain medication. I have seen a surgeon for him to assess if/when I need replacement hips. He was the man who put the Titanium pin in the head of my femur so that I could walk again after it bust. The wear and tear will only increase. I am pretty physically crocked. The ONS seems to think that on average there is ~50% chance that I will make 85. I disagree. That seems an awfully long time, luckily, I smoked and drank.

Primarily I see myself as a retired man, who has difficulty walking for a long time/distance who lives in a big house, with a big garden on a pension below that of the French minimum wage. I am married and by all “normal” metrics socially isolated. That does not bug me one inch.

In terms of likelihood, I will probably not do anything vaguely related to science again. Although I have read widely and perhaps have some knowledge, that is not much use to me and virtually nobody else is interested. My opinion is that what I know has no monetary value.

I have no idea how people see me. I am certainly not well known. Aside from the physiotherapist the people who have interacted with me the most in the last five or so years are the district nurses who care for the wife. They know a little about where and what I got up to two decades ago.

Socially I see myself as someone who does not like to interact and the usual social chit chat about the weather and how terrible the world is, is not my cup of tea. I used to hate finger-buffet death by canapé events.  I am pretty sure that my dislike of “normal” social interaction was a negative factor back when I was still in the world. It detrimentally affected my progression. But that is all by the by and nothing can be done to change the past.

I don’t see myself as someone that people might seek out or want to speak with. I don’t perceive myself as being welcome in certain circles. If I have anything left to offer it is not generally sought. I certainly am not going to big myself up or inflict myself on anyone. My life is sparse and most likely to remain that way or get even more sparse.

I guess that I don’t match expectations. There may be people who have an image of how I should be, how I should look. Who knows.

I am a little puzzled as to why my dreamer has highlighted social self-image because I don’t really have a use for one. I can easily be just another anonymous customer in the supermarket. The village pharmacy has closed down, they knew me a little in there. We now go to pharmacies in bigger towns.

We have has a loose Christmas drinks invite from the garden guy. He is all over the place and I am not convinced of materialisation. I am not sure I would want to go in any case.

Hmnn….

That is a rough go at describing my social self-image. Let’s see if there are more dreams on the subject…

Weird…

Become a Teacher or a Preacher!

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There is a notion that the reincarnating dreamer chooses his or her own parents for birth which provides a cultural context and a genetic make-up. My maternal birth line reached back to the copper mines of Sygun near Beddgelert, the slate mines of Blaenau Ffestiniog and the coal pits of the Rhondda. My paternal grandfather was a docker in Cardiff, helping to shift the coal from the valleys and the steel from the steel works. My parents met at the Guest Keen steel works in Cardiff, a very Welsh story. I have often joked that my physical make up is suited to shifting heavy things in confined spaces, I am genetically qualified to mine a two foot coal seam.

Folklore has it that in valleys where most of the men went down the pit there were only two ways out. You had to become either a teacher or a preacher. There were a lot of teacher exports from Wales who came to educate the English. I belonged to London Welsh rugby club for a while, the exiles, and our pack was made up of Ph.Ds., lawyers and financial traders. Education was a big thing in South Wales. Our pack was very qualified.

It could be argued that solely by mantra I found myself at UCL, The Royal Institution and Imperial College.  In the so-called research golden triangle and at the heart of UK science in the capital city. So, for a while I was indeed a teacher. Though my father was not so impressed his mantra was “those that can do, those that can’t teach”.  Even when I co-founded a laser company, he found it hard to praise and easy to find fault. My family were all extroverts and so often I wished they would shut the F up and I had to flee for quiet time. When you surpass you no longer belong not that I ever really did. The film Educating Rita speaks some truths.

And now it seems I am a tad surplus to requirements, the world has little or no use for me. I will fade away in quiet obscurity on a meagre pension. I have seen and experienced much and there does not seem to be all that much that I want to do. I don’t have a bucket list. I travelled to far flung places as a child. Wherever there was a lead or steel smelter we went, kind of. It makes one difficult to impress. I saw the Sistine chapel at 12 and the Victoria Falls at 11. My childhood taught me impermanence with seven schools across three continents. We also nearly went to Brazil! I had 150,000 air miles by the age of 13 in 1978, when travel was far less common!

I have read quite extensively on various “religious” things, both exoteric and esoteric. I meditated for two decades, daily.

The difficulty is that once I get the gist of how something works. I tend to lose interest. I am not a fan of refinement and repetition. I don’t get hung up on minutiae.

I had some mildly grandiose ideas when a young man, some visions. I am a dreamer after all.

I have a pet theory/hypothesis. Culminating lives do not end with a bang or fireworks. They simply fizzle out. There is no lust for. There is little desire or ambition. One simply pops one’s clogs never to return. One explores and explores until there is not much left which one has any kind of urge for. If I want to find out something about say Myeloma, I can read up on it and assimilate the gist quickly. I know the method and background knowledge helps the understanding.

I am probably not a common phenomenon, given my scientific background and my interest in Buddhism and raja Yogas. This makes me a slightly unusual animal. To me it is no big deal but it stands out as being a bit odd, an anomaly even.

I am probably mostly done. But the universe has a bag of spanners and is fond of the odd curve ball or two. So, who knows? I am sure that I understand the likelihoods moving on but weird shit can and does happen…

If my understanding based on dreams is correct the mantra in the title has been active across lifetimes for me. When I used to talk to university students, I had a fair idea about which ones would go into teaching, I was nearly ~90% accurate.

So maybe I did choose my circumstances of birth after all.

Yes, I think I am probably done now.

Life Divergences and the Wrong End of the Stick

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I have recently had a several months stint on LinkedIn. Because I am an “old fart” I went to university way back when it was much less common in the UK. My class size was of the order of 30. It was hard to get in. There was an in-department tea / snack room which served buttered toast. After a 9 AM chemistry lecture you could get coffee and toast and marmalade. We knew each other quite well and there was a lot of fraternisation between staff and students. Back then there was a lot of booze. It would be frowned upon today, Jurassic behaviours.

It is safe to conclude that when taking the integral of life time earnings of most of my university peer group, based on their LinkedIn profiles, I am at the bottom of the earnings table and I am not going to earn any more. I was the baby of the class being born end of August, but somehow also a social lynch pin. 4 out of 30 came from my school. Most of my peers have been successful whereas my “career” ended in 2007. I did some small “A” level science tutoring for a number of years. I retired around five years ago. Often it is the years 40-65 when people earn the most. I did not.

It could be said that I am a failure and that I failed.

I worked for over a decade as an academic at a top London university. Many of that peer group and people whom I once taught have had and are having way more success than me. There are big cheeses.

There are a number of possible explanations for why I quit at the age of 42. They include burn out, the so-called INFJ door slam, some mental health problems, or the renunciation of a way of life. I was very unhappy that my colleagues were talking about getting rid of people to improve the REF rating. Nice! I figured I could handle going better than others. The decision was quick and nobody anticipated it. I don’t recall having any discussions. I did not have a leaving party because I hate that kind of thing. I handed over my responsibilities and just left. Not many, very few, said goodbye. I thought at the time that it was handled poorly. British people can be awkward and scientists are not renowned for their interpersonal skills. I don’t believe anyone from there addressed the subject with me, certainly not meaningfully.

I was not anticipating what was to unfold in terms of meditations and chanting. My life certainly diverged from where it had been heading. There were consequences which I had not anticipated in terms of my employability.

If you meditate at least once daily for two decades you are likely to differ markedly in terms of psyche and mind from those who do not. If you don’t see someone for over a decade they may try to shoehorn their perception of you into their old version. They may be unable to conceive of what you are like now. They will not know “the point before mind”.

I have no ambition, no drive, no goals, no targets. I am not overly fussed about what happens to me. I am not interested in kudos. There is no driver for me to invent. I doubt that anything I might write is sellable, certainly not profitable. So, there is no point in me trying to publish for money. In one sense I am waiting until my time is up. The likelihood is that my time will be used gardening, doing DIY, strolling and a bit of blogging here and there. I will be a carer from time to time.

I am out of touch with the modern way of life. I have not made a social ‘phone call in near a decade. I have near zero social email use. Just as I am out of touch with modern life, the outer world is out of touch with me.  Only a few people know any of my email addresses and only one person has my ‘phone number. The hospital has it too.

Life is uncomplicated by connectivity.

When you watch the news, it is often a loner who is not popular who turns out to be the perpetrator of some killing or other. People are prejudiced about people like me. They may even pity me and feel sad. That is getting the wrong end of the stick by a country mile. People transfer their obsession with social contact onto me. I am quite happy not to have any. I can go days without speaking to anyone.

I certainly did not add a great deal to UK plc. I once co-founded a company which put dinner on the table for about fifty households. In principle I could have done more. But I did not.

It could be said that I was perhaps fated to do a “Reggie Perrin” only I never came back to work.

I do not know what fate has in store for me, if anything. It is very unlikely to have a wider impact or significance. This could be argued to be a waste. Or simply it is what it is.

Being a four cancer couple already sets us apart statistically. Colon cancer and basal cell carcinomas for me, myeloma and breast for her. She start posts operative radiotherapy next week. I get a “chimney sweep” colonoscopy next year. I am on prostate cancer watch because of slightly elevated PSA. No signs of any lesions in the MRI.

It is pretty clear what the next month is about. The important bit, that is.

I speculate that were I to meet any of the people from my peer groupings it would take quite a while for the penny to drop concerning just how far my life and beingness has diverged from theirs. And they would almost certainly get entirely the wrong end of the stick in any attempt at communication beyond the basic CV style “life fact” exchange. I’ll wager I could understand their lives better than they could understand mine. I came from “there”. I do not think that they could get it nor do I believe that I could convey. They would have to experience over a fair time interval to even begin.

I could be wrong…

I am divergent…

Grizzly Adams – Twitter and LinkedIn

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I have lived to a large extent in a vacuum of social interaction for a number of years. It was perhaps foretold by my like of “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams”. As a teenager I really enjoyed the programme and the lifestyle idea, living in an isolated cabin in nature.  My extroverted parents kept bloody talking whilst I was watching the programmes and often commented about isolation leading inevitably to cabin fever. Although adjunct to society we do not really participate and cannot be said to be socially integrated. We are immersed in nature at the very edge of a village.

Because I have arthritis sooner or later, I will be unable to manage our 2 acres. So, I joined LinkedIn with a view to seeing if I could get some science editing work to help pay for assistance in the garden. That has not proved possible / easy. As a result of this LinkedIn exposure, I delved into the venture capital start-up world to which I once pertained a quarter century ago. It was interesting for me to track down people I did my first degree with and to see what they are / have been up to. When taking the integral over my life I have perhaps been among the least financially successful of all my peers. We live below minimum wage. This is not a usual outcome for a high technology start-up co-founder and an ex-academic from a world top ten university.

What I see is that the tendency to hype and spin has not gone. It has gotten worse. Many of my invitations to join my network have been ignored. People whose lives I helped change can’t be arsed with me anymore, my leper’s bell can be heard across continents, it seems. Some of these people are very “successful” now. I know that I have helped many people over the years. It seems they have forgotten or are embarrassed by me now. I am not resentful I have perhaps always given more that I have taken. It was never done transactionally.

By following the likes of people I knew, I have had exposure to a Jewish / Israeli perspective on some things. I found this interesting and had been unaware of some of the depth of feeling.

Obviously, LinkedIn has a sales / public relations purpose. It is not for deep spiritual insight. It could be said to be for people “on the make”.

Has anyone every studied if LinkedIn is worth the money time and effort? Or is LinkedIn yet another part of our modern FOMO addiction?

Twitter has some gems but it also has a lot of shite. There is darkness, hate and some light. I am amazed at how very polarised the world is now. I was trying to sum it up.

People it seems can be gullible, adamant and evangelical.

They may actually believe some of the stuff they soap box about. Conspiracy theories can be way out there. Deep thought and balance seems missing. OK not everyone likes Twitter/X or whatever. Not every “omniscient” being needs to spout off about their agenda. But it is a sample of our world today. I sense that the younger people are underrepresented. It does not fill me with optimism about where humanity is heading.

In a strange way I find both of these medias “intrusive” the world “out there” is somehow leaking in to they world here. The more I see they less I sense a belonging to that world. I don’t fit in, perhaps I never have.

My working hypothesis is that there is not really much more for me to do “out there”.  I am done, used up. I have had a dream recently suggesting that this self-image may be wrong and that my opinion of self needs a polish, a glow up. But true paths can and may be filled with emptiness as opposed to societal detritus.

It seems likely that in the upcoming weeks I will pull the plug on LinkedIn and now that my research on Twitter is nearly over, I will stop using that too.

I have one observation Twitter live feed is way better before the USA gets out of bed. Reiteration differs from fact. Boring.

Fukawi

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have just turned 60 and the wife has just had an operation to remove a small cancer in her breast. There is some suggestion of active Myeloma sites in her skeleton and she has had a blood test and there will be a new PET scan end of November.

My dreams have pointed again at shenanigans in the SW7 posse.

They have also indicated some measure of darkness.

The human puzzle dream still seems active. I will not be believed.

Again, there is also much indication of the unknown. This is a bit rum because our life circumstance here in the compound is very much known.

The only external interaction is LinkedIn, this blog and Substack. The latter two have near zero read /visit stats.

I started the LinkedIn trial with a view to getting some science edit work to help pay for gardening assistance. Looks to be a dead end. The chronic long term problem of me ceasing to be able to do all the work remains unsolved.

It is clear from LinkedIn that a majority of my peer group(s) have had long and successful careers. Me not. We do not earn enough pension to have to pay tax and it is significantly less than the 35 hour minimum wage rate.

I have had a dream about a dead end too. In that dream I pick up a car and twirl it through 180 degrees to head even further into the unknown. It is not my car, however.

We shall find out in a couple of weeks what the cancer follow up protocol is.

I am thinking about ending the LinkedIn account and perhaps buying a different domain name to use with this WordPress account.

To my satisfaction I have a working explanation as to what the various dream themes are and represent.

Nobody wanted to buy my patent or even inquired. This suggests that there is little point in trying to make a new application, though I might for fun still look at a new quantum modality.

I sense that people remain wary about interacting with me. I don’t know what about a retired 60 year old man living like a hermit makes people wary.

My best guess is we are in more of the same. Namely a bit of gardening, the odd trip up to the coast now the holiday season has quietened down and a smattering of medical appointments.   

That is about where the Fukawi…