Category: Personal

Challenges – Genetics – Having to Endure – Lama Dorje

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

A working hypothesis I have is that because I do not strut about, talk a lot and generally bullshit, people feel that I am need of education by them. Somehow, they are kind enough to bestow the benefit of their grandiose and unsolicited opinion on me so that I, a mere lowly pleb, might learn from their magnificence. So many offer me their opinions. Obviously, I am in dire need of education.

It is a catch 22. Do you let them rabbit on {endlessly} or flash intellect and make them feel more insecure than they already are. I don’t have an answer. Neither works well.

You may infer from the above that I am an arrogant arsehole. Your reflection in the mirror which is me may not reveal my essence.

Given all the tests in a medical sense that I am having its sounds a bit like someone meandering around in search of some kind of elusive diagnosis of sorts. That could be the case. Or it could simply be the generosity of the French healthcare system in action. The tendency for prophylaxis here is higher than in the UK.

The “health” finger continues to point at genetics. There is a non-normal make up, perhaps. Maybe I am special, so fucking special, or a creep, or a weirdo.

In my extensive recapitulations there is a recurring theme, “having to endure”. I have had to endure all sorts of things starting with bullying at school(s) and being gossiped about extensively, especially when my back was turned and I was not there. I am not paranoid; I have anecdotal evidence in support of this tendency. People curry favour by gossiping and in the past, they have claimed power by association to me. Those days are long gone.

I have an inkling that the current health drama belongs to the subset of “having to endure” challenges. There is little I can do; I simply have to endure and remain calm.

Śāntideva in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, has a whole chapter on forbearance. Bodhidharma was rumoured to have sat watching a wall for nine years.

Maybe one day instead of enduring I may give both barrels. I doubt many could handle it if I ramped up to 9/10 face to face with them. It would be very intense. Outside of experience.

The other working hypothesis I have is that I am tangentially involved in the drama, schemes and socio-political shenanigans of others. The thing is they are over “there” and I am only truly involved in their illusions. People make shit up; they make a drama out of it and somehow, I am caught up in their imaginations. I am written into their imaginary scripts.

I used to wear black Levi’s 501 jeans for decades. I now wear army surplus combat trousers. This dress makes me look a bit like a pikey prepper. I do not look for one minute like an ex-intellectual or the co-founder of a high technology high power laser company. So people tend, in the first instance, to talk down to me, even worse I do not speak high quality French, God’s only intellectual language. I must therefore be an idiotic stupid moron. They judge a book by their mis-interpretation of the cover. The French are as, if not more, arrogant than the English.

What can you do? Let them rabbit on {endlessly}. There is no point in trying to change their habits or self-opinion.

The wife and I have a joke. If I wore Buddhist robes people would treat me entirely differently. If they saw me thus attired in their dreams, they would find it weird.

“Alan always wore jeans in life!!”

There is a part of me that might order some robes on line and do a TikTok type experiment. Go in jeans to an estate agent one day and in robes the next…

But that would be fucking about…

Is there some as yet unseen diagnoses?

Or am I simply enduring the Gattling gun fire of multiple medical tests and appointments?

The current bet is towards the latter…

Low Parathyroid Hormone – Hypoparathyroidism?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The results for the three different mutations of HFE gene are in. I don’t have any of these. Which excludes the vast majority of the diagnoses for hereditary haemochromatosis. The footnote from the lab suggests contacting the centre for rare iron related disease in the big university hospital 150 km away. They may just talk with me as an ex-boffin.

I do feel a tad rusty these days, like the tin man my joints could use some oiling.

That means the polycythaemia primary or secondary question is in focus. Is there a malignancy or did my blood just adapt to smoking tabs?

My parathyroid hormone (PTH) is low, it is 26 pg / mL.

———————–

“The iPTH reference interval of a healthy blood donor population was measured as 25.2–109.1 pg/mL (2.7–11.6 pmol/L) at 2.5 and 97.5 distribution percentile. The iPTH reference interval from data stored in the laboratory database was 19.3–112.5 pg/mL (2.0–11.9 pmol/L). Furthermore, 60% of the whole population had prevalently insufficient vitamin D concentration (<30 ng/dL; <75 nmol/L).

Mineri et al., Clinica Chimica Acta Volume 521, October 2021, Pages 1-8.”

———————————

So it is at the rare end of a distribution yet just within the 2.5-97.5 percentile range. It is probably within experimental error out of the range. The error bars on 26 picograms must be big in a small sample!!

–

“PTH is secreted primarily by the chief cells of the parathyroid glands. The gene for PTH is located on chromosome 11. It is a polypeptide containing 84 amino acids, which is a prohormone. It has a molecular mass around 9500 Da”

–

My results for Calcium and Phosphorus were very normal, this latter statement is a bit weird. Low PTH levels are very rare and usually come with low Calcium levels. That pathway is messed up. Low parathyroid hormone screws with the Calcium concentration and bone turnover.

——

Symptoms of hypoparathyroidism

Hypoparathyroidism often starts if glands in your neck are damaged during surgery.

Symptoms include:

  • a tingling or burning sensation in your fingers, toes and face
  • muscle pain, stiffness and spasms

————

I have these two but these are caused when Calcium is too low!! So I do not have hypoparathyroidism.

We have another “contradiction” of sorts so the GP has asked advice from an endocrinologist. My guess would be re-test and if the value is still low maybe do something.

I am going to have an Alpha 1 Antitrypsin assay tomorrow which may add a piece to the jigsaw puzzle, concerning my lungs.

I’ll wait to hear from the GP as to what the endocrinologist suggests. It could be more tests, or not.

On the GP front we are probably good until September now…fingers crossed…

The working notion is that whatever it is that may be going on, it is just not manifesting in a sufficiently serious way, yet…

It could just go away or it could develop.

I am a bit of an anomaly, so it is no surprise that my blood results are a tad skewed from the normal.

Girlfriend in a Coma, Punctured Bicycle and Caligula

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Reviewing my most recent blood tests in preparation I can’t help questioning. Is it serious? Probably not. But like Spike Milligan quipped “I told you I was sick!” Is the whole shebang massively overly dramatic?

–

“I know you’re antiseptic, your deodorant smells nice
I’d like to get to know you, you’re deep frozen like the ice”

–

I don’t think I am obsessing simply going along with it all but it being my nature, I do look things up. It gives me something to do and stops me playing outside in the traffic.

–

“I’m knobbled on the cobbles
Cos I hobble when I wobble
Swim!

—–

Hello to you out there in Normal Land,

you may not comprehend my tale or understand”

–

I did not come by this notion of surgery all by myself. I have not been the one pushing this agenda. It has taken up a lot of time and money so far, both for me and the French health system.

–

But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

–

Perhaps I am missing the point entirely.

–

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

–

It all seems so very far away, so unimportant.

–

Where be it Blackbird to?
I know where he be
He be up your wurzel tree
And I be after he
Now I sees he, and he sees I
Bugger’d if I don’t get him
With a girt big stick, I’ll knock him down
Blackbird, I’ll have thee

–

I remember aged just shy of thirteen walking along a beach in Pwllheli North Wales, that sentiment is more timely now.

–

People try to put us d-down (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-cold (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin’ ’bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

–

Shit Happens…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This afternoon whilst watching Al Jazeera News I had a feeling of warmth towards Donald Trump. He said “Fuck” live and direct to camera. It brought a smile to my face and has slightly changed my opinion of him. He should do this more often; it will be good for his ratings.

I never thought I would say that.

On June 21st I quoted Robbie Burns “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…”

Which is a more poetic way of saying shit happens.

The ethos for the year has been to investigate the possibility of getting replacement hips done here in France before we sell up and downsize. I had an orthopaedic appointment on Monday. That investigation seems to have hit a road block which I cannot see a way around. I am due a non-urgent nuclear medicine appointment for a 90mTc Bone scan. Later this week I get my gene tests back and may discuss the “osteoporosis” blood results with the GP. After that the next appointment will be early autumn, assuming nothing acute crops up. I may explore if there are other avenues for the hips. It being both a small world and the back of beyond there may be none.

–

–

This means that I will have to factor in many more months with the severely osteo arthritic hips. I can probably hack it.

It does raise the question of if to put the house on the market or not, with a mind to a UK based plan B.

It is just one of those things which cannot be helped, shit happens. I will just have to adjust to what is / may be possible. It is perhaps a kind of accepting stoicism that things are out of my hands.

Did you know there is a shopping channel “JML direct”? It was on this morning when I got out of bed. It look likes I will be getting up early ongoing as a pain management strategy.

Word wanted to write that “piano management” perhaps suggesting an alternate career.

It look like a re-adjustment in orientation and thinking is now in progress…

What is the next tune, Pete?

Taking Stock – Massive Disconnect

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

It is one of those things. If two people are interacting and one thinks they are miscommunicating and the other does not, who is accurate? Many assume that they are communicating better than they actually are. People can be oblivious when miscommunication occurs.

—

—

The observable evidence of the “we are above the law” thinking from the USA has just been drilled deep into concrete bunkers in Iran.

“We don’t like the bastards, we can kill their asses as and when. Deals, treaties, international law are only pieces of paper after all!! We have the God given right!! {And the B2 bombers}.”

So now it is overt {again}. It is unclear as to how things go from here. Maybe the global least harm is a petering out.

I am not filled with joy at the prospects of peace and goodwill for all.

I have been noting of late a complete disconnect between how I am and think and, others. Today the orthopaedic surgeon suggested I look at what I might want to do and to use this as a guide as to the when of facing the knife. In my mind I simply adjust to that which I am able to do. I do not get upset and frustrated if I cannot jog round the block or walk 10km. The suggestion washed over me. Why would I even bother to think like that?

This disconnect is even more obvious when watching 24 hours in A&E on the TV. I hear people talking to camera saying that they could not survive without so and so, expressing their catastrophising on hearing that their loved on has gone to A&E, thinking the worst.

Why not simply make your way there and find out what the best guess scenario is from the doctor? What benefit is there in catastrophising?

Clearly, I am weird by comparison.

One could argue that I am indulging in medicine, with all these scans, check-ups and blood tests. I don’t think that any of them are urgent or life critical. I have already accepted that I have pre-cancerous prostate cancer. It seems to me a matter of when not if. The PSA value is going up…

I am due an arse-cancer chimney sweep soon. After that there is a five year holiday for “good behaviour”. It is probably worth getting that done.

Way back in the nineties when they were investigating my polycythaemia, I was a regular visitor to the phlebotomy centre. It being St Thomas’ there were a few Jamaican nurses, some of whom were a good laugh.  I would get bled. They would check my haemoglobin on a regular basis. If my addled memory is correct the results of phlebotomy were to enhance my haemoglobin count over a few months. We ended up dropping it, the bleeding, I was asymptomatic and perhaps the medical student had finished their research project.

In terms of all the tests none of them will change the reality, they may alter the apparent awareness of reality. That is about it. Maybe it is simplest just to drop them all, to let things be. If I don’t drive it, it will fizzle out.

We come back to the whole pain question. I have no idea how others experience pain, nor whether or not I have a high pain threshold. I suspect that I am not at the overly sensitive end.

I can tolerate things without moaning. I am not overly prone to whinging. We could park the idea of hip surgery and revisit it in a years’ time.

Maybe I just need to wait and see what transpires…

It is a very strange disconnect when people imagine some kind of ambition or want. They transfer it on to me. They think I am somehow like them. They expect this. It is impossible to explain how I feel to others, nor begin to convey the difference in wiring, orientation and motivation.

It comes back to this feeling. I make people uncomfortable by interacting therefore it is perhaps better that I do not. I observe this discomfort. I don’t have to inflict myself.

Hmnn…

Social Discomfort – Social Anxiety Disorder

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I think it fair to suggest that social discomfort is a pillar of comedy. We all find it funny if sometimes uncomfortable.

–

–

The more uptight, pompous and status oriented one is the more likely one is to experience social discomfort. Heaven forbid that someone do something inconsistent with their social position, something gauche, something off trend. A pleb should kneel and kotow. They must know and accept their place.

At the Babraham Institute once, one Ph.D. student wrote in the feedback for a course that I gave, that it was unprofessional for me to say that my former employers, Imperial College, were a cold efficiency employer. They were not a hugs kisses and birthday cake bunch. He felt perhaps that I was slagging them off. Though many would have been happy to be called cool {cold} and efficient, competitive and perhaps ruthless. As a young man he had a lot to learn about reality and maybe his idealism would soon be tarnished.

Psychologists have a fundamental assumption, that people like to socialise and that they SHOULD do so. It underpins much psychological diagnoses according to my non-erudite and hence inexpert eye. It is clear to me that my unwillingness to play the social game has impacted on my career advancement. One could say that socialisation is a societal pre-requisite for promotion, a needed social skill.

On the DSM-5 social anxiety scale one is asked if one avoids social contacts, extensively prepares for them and self-medicates in order to face them, the so-called Dutch courage. It suggests that one is fearful of social situations. Maybe one simply does not like them and therefore avoids them {like the plague}. It is not uncommon for people to get pissed, smoke weed and snort Charlie in social situations.

Does that make them psychologically ill and diagnosable?

I’ll postulate.

Modern psychological wisdom is prejudiced against introverts and introversion. Such behaviours are seen as faulty and in need of fixing.

As usual it is the extroverts who dominate the “air time” or soap box.

In terms of the anxiety disorder, I meet the avoidance criteria but not the fear.

Is it bad not to want to surround yourself with gobshites arseholes and knobheads? To not share a finger buffet and talk endless shit with them?

Why not avoid something that you do not enjoy?

This kind of avoiding seem pretty darned sane to me.


In general I dial back on the boffinaciousness because it causes social discomfort and nobody likes a know-it-all. Which means that you often have to wait for people to catch up. I used to self-handicap with a lot of weed, which also enhances patience in all areas apart from munchies.

In France some are seemingly embarrassed to speak poor English, where no English are embarrassed with their appalling French. It is weird. Is it about control? There is social discomfort. They do not slow down {in French} and talk to you like a moron as is common {in English} in the UK. I sense a discomfort.

I went to see the zebra at the zoo.

I’ll postulate further.

Social discomfort and the fear thereof is very limiting and causes many problems. Things that need to be broached and discussed are avoided in case of social awkwardness occurring.

Fear of loss of face {FOLOF} is almost as big as fear of missing out {FOMO}.

Even though I am very introverted I have good interpersonal skills as a part of my chameleon toolkit. Strangely the most important social skill of all is being able to listen. It puts people at ease.

Is being uncomfortable with BS a clinically diagnostic malady? This is a social discomfort but not one of awkwardness of embarrassment, simply preference

Is there a DSM-5 criteria list for the Avoidance of Bull Shit Personality Disorder?

Do we need to train people to better accept tolerate and otherwise believe bull shit?

………………….

Anthropology Research – Non Starter?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Following on from a thread raised by yesterday’s dream I have been looking at the theme of Anthropology. Carlos Castaneda was awarded a Ph.D. at University of California Los Angeles in Anthropology. If I understand it correctly viewing his thesis requires and in-person visit. {I have checked.}

A while back I applied for a Ph.D. position in Branching Space-Time as per Belnap at a Dutch university. I was genuine in that application; I would have enjoyed it but was not eligible for funding as I already had a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics. Another philosophy academic who was looking into quantum told me that I was not a trained “philosopher” and he wanted such. I doubt he had ever played with high resolution or ultrafast lasers. He had no personal hands on experience of quantum effects.

I found today that at Social Anthropology Cambridge University a Tibetan Buddhist monk got a Ph.D. there.

Applicants for Ph.D. research are encouraged to approach staff members to elicit supervision and then to make a formal application. I suspect that an application from me would be non-standard. It might raise an eyebrow or two. It would probably cause social discomfort.

Unfortunately my university personal tutor is now dead and I have not spoken with my Ph.D. supervisor in over two decades. So I do not meet the referee criteria outlined on the university web site:

——————–

Academic referees

An academic referee will be someone who has guided and assessed your academic work. 

For example:

  • your personal tutor
  • your tutor for a dissertation, extended essay or piece of project work
  • the teaching lead on a module of particular relevance to your proposed postgraduate course
  • your tutor from an academic internship at your current or another institution

At least one of your academic references should be a tutor or supervisor from your current or most recent degree course. If you have just started a one-year Master’s course and staff do not know your work well yet, you may prefer to choose a referee from your previous degree course.

PhD students should not be nominated as referees. If you have been taught by a PhD student and they know your work well, you can encourage your referee to talk to them.

Your referee will not normally be your proposed Cambridge supervisor unless they fulfil the requirements above and no others are available.

Professional referees

A professional referee will normally be someone who has had responsibility for your appraisal and delivery of work.

For example:

  • your current or previous line manager
  • a senior colleague who knows your work well, such as a director
  • a project manager for a project on which you’ve worked

—————————–

There is a part of me tempted to open up a dialogue. It could be fun but probably predictable in outcome. Rules are rules after all.

Maybe I should approach the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford or look at the Open University. Is there a French equivalent?

Access beyond pay wall for journals could be handy…

A journal recently wanted to charge me $40 dollars for an article I wrote…

It is only a couple of pages long…

If operated on I am going to have few months out of the garden…

The Repair Theme and Technology

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

There is a reasonable chance that I may be able to have two total hip replacements. Hopefully if that goes ahead it will be under a general anaesthetic. When I had my Titanium pin fitted, I was conscious, if drowsy as they had given me a spine injection. That was a bit PTSD.  I can still feel the reverberation in my skeleton as a memory.

I will be hooked up to technology.

Last night before dinner I was able to watch a short version of a total hip replacement operation on video on YouTube. It looked pretty gory and they use a mechanical hemispherical reamer to shape the hip socket. It was attached to a common or garden battery style drill. They also did extensive work with muscle and flesh retractors. There was the sound of mallet on metal and it looked pretty barbaric. Not an easy watch.

Technology has come a long way and any joint should last perhaps a couple of decades. They will see me out before clog-popping time, should they be fit-able and fitted.

–

–

In a real sense my incarnation may be prolonged by modern technology. Maybe I should stop complaining about ‘phone use….

It brings to mind a whole new raft of karma, due to our success in medical technology. On a philosophical level I have some reservations about overly prolonging life. I am more convinced that so called cosmetic surgery for vanity is karmically bad. It is a form of self-harm and obsession. It is a way of reinforcing the folly and illusion of obsession with appearance and form. People pay to have others cut them in order to look more sexually attractive. This is not the behaviour of well-balanced people.

I am not sure that the surgeons are free of karma in this transaction. They do something for money which is not demanded by health requirements.

If people need to find out for themselves, that is their business.

I am due {perhaps} a repair.

Today we took a laptop to get a new screen and our 2005 vintage sit-on mower needs a new drive belt. It is not a good design if it needs repair after at most twenty mows. It is wearing out.

The theme of being beat-up and in need of repair is active today.

I really cannot believe what the “Statesman” in the Whitehouse is alleged to have said about finding and killing the leader of a sovereign country. This is a new low in the personal and the petty. It is hard to imagine. Things are getting very toddlers in the sand-pit like. Unfortunately, one of these is armed with vast deadly ordnance

It occurred to me that I may be being operated on just as things really kick off. I may be vulnerable and incapable when the shit hits the fan. We have a fixed price propane tariff which is looking like a good thing today. Maybe we need to order some more wood, soon.

Maybe we will have a working mower, laptop and a partially improved repaired me. I don’t think that the Whitehouse or Tel Aviv can repair their damaged relationships easily. The seed of unreliability has been sown.

It is very sad, if people are shooting those queueing for food. Barbaric, uncivilised, retrogressive. Vlad the Impaler of lore would be happy, maybe we need to bring back mass crucifixions along the Appian way.

More brutal power and cruelty seem to be on the cards. Maybe we are back to the old Bush chestnut of WMD in Iraq…

Any excuse to kill, to maim and to explode…

Death and brutal maiming by “clean” modern technology takes the humanity out of murder. It turns it into a first person shooter video game. There is no blood spatter, no acrid cordite, no sweat, no smell of putrid wounds. No entrails to trip over. The dead are put in a white sheet and buried in a mass grave by some other bugger. TV and video is not in smell-o-vision.

It is inhumane….

… and very sad.

Speculations on Dreaming Themes

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I have become increasingly concerned for Israel. Not in the sense of the outcome of war, rather in the sense of the karma it is sowing for itself to be harvested in the decades and centuries to come. Netanyahu may want regime change in Tehran; it could happen in Tel Aviv too. The pot perennially calls the kettle black. Internal unrest is a bigger risk than any external threat.

There are a lot of loud threats and bellicose rhetoric abounds these days. Putin and Xi are probably enjoying Fox news and Herr Shouty.

The Tibetan / monastic themed dreams of early May have given way to health and history dreams. There is a recurring technology science ideas theme. For whatever reason people from my now distant London UK past keep cropping up. I don’t feel, from my perspective, any emotional detritus attached. I have no axe to grind. My working notion is that there is some weird unresolved karma there and among them. From time to time, I get “Toltec flavour” dreams which is not surprising given the effort and time I dedicated thereto. There is nothing I can or may do with the science dreams other than to note them and then park them.

The Buddhism themed dreams fading suggests that it may currently be a nonstarter, a path in the wood which peters out, a run through.  They came around Vesak and may return next year.

It seems to me entirely natural, given my health situation, that I am having health dreams. My working notion here is that my poor health is a reminder not to be so keen on reincarnating.

“Look it hurts! Don’t bother doing it again.”

What is and has been very noticeable is the relative absence of French themed dreams. We have lived here six years and aside from a few Macron dreams and a couple of a local lucid dreamer; there have been very few. The interaction here has been largely detached and non-personal. There is no “entanglement” so no need for dreams.

My horizons are dependent upon if I can get operated upon and what may or may not happen during and after. If the answer is no, then that idea can be parked, we can move on and we need to figure out how to live. At the moment it hangs. If the answer is yes then the process starts and will dominate for months.

The world can erupt and I will be here recuperating {hopefully}.

What happens with the irate and the bellicose may impact here. The fuel prices will rise. Provided it does not go global-ballistic, life here will go on.

I may have a new “lease” of life post-operation, I may not. What that might look like I have no idea.

The world “out there” seems far away. It does not seem happy. It is divided and people point stiletto fingers at each other.

“It is OK for us to bomb the fuck out of you but don’t you dare bomb us back you terrorist bastards!!”

This seems to be the current logic, the PR gist.

That is the hymn sheet for us all to sing from…

Outside it is sunny and the lotuses are starting to open in the morning sun…soon there will be a nice display. The Hirondelles must fledge soon. We can then power wash the guano under the nest…