Tag: health

Leaving the Palace and Miscellaneous

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Nirmāṇakāya (Chinese: 應身; pinyin: yīngshēn; Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་, tulku, Wylie: sprul sku) is the third aspect of the trikāya and the physical manifestation of a Buddha in time and space.

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Nearly ten years ago I tried to explain to the anaesthetist that because of the very large amount of meditation I had done there might be some anomalies in how I responded to medication – anaesthetic. They completely ignored me and did not take me in any way seriously. A few days subsequent to the operation I had strong recall of being above the operating table watching the “vultures” around my corpse operating. On going into theatre, I was chatting about the clean room conditions of the operating theatre. The same night after ~ six hours of surgery to remove a colon cancer, I stood on my own two feet. Which freaked out the nurse in recovery.

I am pretty sure that something weird transpired during the operation and that it was not spoken about.

There is no way that a modern medical professional would countenance the notion of a nirmāṇakāya or janmanirmāṇakāya; སྐྱེ་བ་སྤྲུལ་སྐུ, skye ba sprul sku. Nor that they might be biologically different to a regular human being.

If one takes the dreaming “evidence” in this blog, then there is a hint of non-standard reincarnations plural stemming back lifetimes. It could be a Soul reincarnating or it could simply be some kind of emanation. In the latter case the emanation body or nirmāṇakāya may not clothe itself in meat in a standard way. I have not read of any different approach to the medical treatment of Tibetan tulkus. But there is a vast amount of stuff which is kept away from prying eyes. My guess is that Tibetan Vajrayana etc. is like an iceberg, with only a tiny bit showing.

The body may be similar but the “mind” very different. Tulkus may be very different to normal people though looking the same. The manifestation, the emanation, need not be that of a full buddha.

On the horizon for me are up to three more major surgeries. In 2019 they put my titanium pin into the left femoral neck/head whist under the influence of a spinal injection and some other drugs. I can remember the bone shaking pneumatic drill. They would not let me watch even though I asked. It was enough to induce PTSD…I was conscious if drugged.

It can be said or observed that I left / renounced the Imperial palace, when I walked out of my job as a senior lecturer at Imperial College in London. I was a strict vegan for a long time, close to nine years. I walked out of a relationship with a wife, a home and a very young female child. I renounced my family later. I meditated extensively away from the madding crowd. I learned science sport and martial arts. There are some of the twelve acts attributed to Siddartha.

At a very long stretch one could say I share these, have them in common.

There is a part of me that wonders if the medical approach to me needs to take other factors into consideration. This adds a little reticence to the notion of drastic orthopaedic surgery. Somehow, I need to understand better…

Hmmn..

The Proliferation of Syndromes and Deterioration in Mental Health

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In my life time I have seen a marked proliferation in so-called mental health or developmental syndromes and those diagnosed therewith. They are quite trendy. Unsurprisingly the number of people qualified to make said diagnoses has also increased. There is a demand for diagnoses hence a growing supply of those qualified to diagnose. There is money in it, several grand per diagnosis.

Is this a real phenomenon or a market created one?

I heard the other day that some people were giving fluoxetine to pet dogs, FFS.

Anything which strays from the peer defined normal is at risk of being labelled a syndrome conferring fame upon the person who “discovered” it.

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We can lock up the weird and abnormal. Give ‘em loads of drugs and excuse them from the workplace in case they disturb the humdrum predictable mediocrity of petty power struggles and cock waving. Give them some unemployment benefits and teach them how to weave baskets and package wellness products that do not work but smell nice.

Is ADHD real or are people just bored fucking rigid with the way school is taught, controlled and examined?

Discuss…

I have tutored quite a few people diagnosed with ADHD, 1:1. I had no problem keeping their sharp attention for an hour or more. One just has to invent and teach better, to stimulate instead or bore.

I have a hypothesis. It says:

The apparent mental health crisis is simply tens of thousands of minds rejecting the way “normal” society is and the societal compulsion to conform therewith. It is not a mental health crisis rather an increasing failure of society.

It is not going to get better. There are no fairy godmothers.

The average, normal fearfully compliant people, don’t like this.

What percentage of people need to be treated for mental health “problems” until it is the so-called normal who are diagnosed as having a syndrome?

The human mundane-obligatory-compliance syndrome, FOMO for short. There are hordes who already suffer and can be diagnosed therewith. It is a social media pandemic.

There will come a time when those with so-called mental health problems are the majority. This will flip the entire notion of sanity, whether polite or otherwise.

I’ll wager that if I had to sit “A” level physics and chemistry as they are currently examined in the UK, I would not do well. I would get frustrated at the intransigence and tick box, mark by template mentality. I would not be happy having to adhere to verbatim parrot dogma.

I have an honours degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in chemical physics.

I would probably join the Royal Marines instead of going to university if I was 18 now. I would certainly not have written ~60 science based publications.

People don’t like to face reality; they tend to prefer increasing the number of exceptions and justifying new extensions to rules and theories. They tend to keep ideas and notions, long after their sell by and use by dates.

If it does not fit, make it a syndrome, a special case, an exception. Write several theses about why it errs or strays from the norm. Refer to multiple other authors who are doing the same things. Make a career out of it…

But whatever you do, you must not question the societal norms… that is heresy.

I have Aspergillus fumigatus-specific IgG Antibodies

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As part of the ongoing medial investigation my lab results have come back to test for aspergillus fumigatus antibodies. I have a value of 45 mgA/L which is apparently significant. My IgE antibodies are normal-ish which means that I am not in the throws of an allergic reaction.

Aspergillus fumigatus is implicated in farmer’s lung disease. There are some esoteric linkages with arthritis. There is some kind of immune thing going on, my HLA-B27 test was negative. But there are IgGs in my blood, some for Aspergillus flavus too.

So, I have the fungal pathogen aspergillus fumigatus somewhere in my body and have made antibodies which are circulating in my blood. It is possible to grow a colony in a petri dish. Yuck.

I am a fungi to be with.

This little blighter may play a role in my asthma and “COPD”.

I am exposed to compost and rotting grass cuttings, it is damp here. Best guess is lungs, I am due a pulmonary CT scan on the 7th of April. Which is soon.

If you type the first few letters into Google, AI predict diagnoses Asperger’s …

If it is serious I anticipate that the lung doctor or GP will give me a call this evening. It seems a chronic, long term thing at first pass.

Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle….

Replacement Hip CAD – Prostate Exam Dream – 21-02-2025

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Here is last night’s dream it has contextual relevance to life circumstance.

The dream starts with people discussing me behind my back. They are concerned about my health and longevity. They are trying to figure out if I can have a replacement hip fitted on the left hand side of my body. They are looking at X-rays and various, multiple, auto-CAD designs which may be possible without extracting the Titanium nail which is in it.

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They are calling up various designs and the discussion continues without my involvement. They are unsure as to whether it is possible and suggest that if they are going to do a staged bilateral hip replacement it might be better to start with the difficult one first.

Finally, someone comes to talk with me about it. They are unaware that I have been privy to their discussions behind my back.

My principle concern is that if both hips have severe osteo-arthritis it seems unbalancing to do only one hip. If they fix one hip the other one will only get worse and the wear on the fixed hip will be accelerated.

I awake.

I drift back off.

I know that there are widespread concerns about my health and longevity. I am being taken for a “compulsory” prostate exam even though I have had one recently. They are doing a Bilan or full blown health screen.

I am dressed in a blue hospital gown laid on my back and a woman is between my legs about to do a sneak sudden prostate exam. I say that would be stupid. Let me know and I will relax. I say to her that this is unnecessary as I already know it to be gonflé enlarged. They have made detailed high resolution MRI measurements of it.

Nevertheless, they want to press ahead and do their own full health audit. I relax. She proceeds to do a prostate exam and concludes “enlarged”.

I say, “I told you so!

The dream ends.

Impossible Conversations – No Context

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One might say that I am an initiate of a certain degree in the church of physical sciences. I have a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate from a kosher university, I was at one time a member of two professional learned societies and they even let me teach for a decade or so. I have an albeit rusty context of how UK academia works. I was able to write and secure a quantum optics patent whilst “retired” and well away from the hurly burly. There is no chance that I could teach at undergraduate level these days, I might still be able to do some fancy-schmancy laser experiments. Were I to encounter someone from that world I could at least have a go at conversation, even though I no longer share the ambition or goals. There would be at least a partial context in common.

That background was held in suspicion on various courses such as foundation shamanic and I Ching. When I stayed up all night and kept the camp fire going in the middle of a wood, the would be shamans accepted me more freely. I was perhaps more rigorous and less angel-reiki-fairy. Perhaps more American Indian than they from the home counties. If you have never been in a drumming circle you have no idea what goes on there.

As a thought experiment imagine me sitting down with a university professor who had a reputation for top end molecular spectroscopy and the use of ab initio quantum calculations to elucidate intermolecular interactions and bonding. This was something that we once shared.

“Well, it has been a long while. From time to time, I see your articles. Since we last met at lot has happened to me. I have learned of a number of my previous incarnations and all the evidence points at me being a three pronged dreaming nagal of the elephant dreaming class, I am a dreamer by prediction and have been doubly severed.”

I suspect that I would have lost the professor in and around the previous incarnations bit. He was a Christian and fairly devout. It would be impossible to convey to this intelligent man what the last sentence means. I remember him as being philosophical and open minded. He could take it at face value being polite.

But where would you begin? If you read these books about Toltecs, I can visit you again in a couple of years and try to explain.

The chances are that there would be not much purpose in trying to explain. That sentence is of a different world and next to impossible to verbally contextualize. His eyes might glaze over.

So, I might change the subject and say I really enjoyed his paper on mass resolved rotational coherence stimulated Raman ion dip spectroscopy for large molecules without an absorption transition dipole moment. I would be back in context and even though I am rusty we could have an intelligent conversation which would be above the heads of many people who have never even heard of these things. I would be talking arcane chemical physics with a world expert. I still have residual arcane spectroscopy knowledge.

There are some conversations which are impossible if there is no shared context. Two ships might pass in the night oblivious of each other. Sure in their world, convinced of their reality and unaware that there are more than one reality.

Bern – 90GHz­—UBS Dream 02-07-2021

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I woke up this morning at 6AM and was pretty sure that I would not go back to sleep. I did and had this dream. When I tried to wake up my right eye was difficult to open it been sealed with sleep. As an aside since I stopped smoking, I have had much more gummy eyes with loads of sleep. Here is the dream.

I am in a vast laboratory. It is filled with optical benches upon which are optical components and lasers. I know this laboratory to be in Bern Switzerland. Unusually for this kind of laboratory one can see out of the windows and to the town below. W is excited he has received a parcel and is busy unwrapping it. It is a new slim, top of the range, Tektronix digital storage oscilloscope. It has all of the functions of the bulkier models but is slimmed down. I say to W that I can help him understand how to use it because all of the experiments at the lab of S used one of these. All we need first is a square wave waveform generator so that we can have a play. Ben C says that he thinks there is one in the store. I go with him to the store and there is a pile of instrumentation. I see one with the name GR on it and note that it is odd that it should be here in Bern. BC finds a square wave generator and hands it to me. He says that it starts at 90GHz. I comment that it might be a bit too high frequency for the oscilloscope. He says that probably not, the scope may not capture all of the waveform but should be Ok for us to play with. I go over to W.

Next, we are back in the flat. It is full of youngish men who all work at the laboratory. We are all sleeping in one bed. It is somehow on a veranda outside the house. I wake up and decide to go shopping. I look across the valley where this is a night club called Bodhisattva. We all sometimes go there. I think that it will be nice to look at Migros again. As I go into the shop there is a queue for baskets, and I am behind an old Swiss man. He unpacks the baskets and hands me one. I go into the store and am at the fruit counter. It is immaculately laid out with very high-quality produce from around the world. It is even better than I remembered it. I get some groceries and take them back to the flat. Where I put them in a bag in the pantry. I explain to W that it is very nice to see high quality Swiss produce as things here are not so consistent.

In the dream I have paid with a UK credit card but to my surprise my UBS bank card is also in my wallet.

We are back in the laboratory, and I know that I have a job there. It has been easy to set up because my Swiss Bank account at UBS is still active {in reality this is not the case}. We play with the oscilloscope for a while.

Next, I am back in the flat asleep in the big bed with a whole bunch of other people. The wife is there next to me. I am on the extreme edge of the bed, and she is nestled in my left arm. I kiss her on the brow, and everybody wakes up. I ask what time it is. Close to midday. I comment that is late. Not if you were up drinking and smoking {implied cannabis}.

I had better rush to get to the bank before it closes. I rush of down hill concerned that I will fall because of my left hip. I am a bit awkward running down the hill. I need to get to the bank to ask them for a new PIN number for my bank card. I know that all I have to do is ask because they will recognise me. I could ask in English or German or even French. As I am running down the hill, I rehearse what words I would need first in Hoch Deutsch and second in French. In my mind I know that the language I will choose depends upon who I meet at the bank counter.

Dream ends.

The Waking Dream

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On the 7th of July I had a passive nocturnal dream in which an unknown cat cuddled up to my thigh. On the 8th of July a new stray cat appeared through the fence and he has been with us on and off since. I have named him Gandalf because he is grey and white. {Viz Lord of the Rings}

We have posted news of his arrival to various pet lost and found channels.

A while back a woman from a local hamlet knocked on our door asking if we had seen her cat. The local knowledge says that all stray cats end up here. We have had quite a few. The local knowledge is good.

Another uncanny dream prediction has pointed at something unexpected which thematically may be true. I could realistically accidentally bump into the person in question now. It has gone from highly improbable to possible. I will be in the ‘hood tomorrow at a nodal place, a hospital, where people often meet. I will be only 17km away from where they live.

Our local internet and phone provider had an incident around easter and for two months we had no ‘phone signal nor internet. Neither did we have any external appointments, we were cut off from the world, more than usual.

I saw this as a sign to look into our/my connections. We changed internet and ‘phone provider, I reached out to the world via LinkedIn and this blog. It has been very interesting for me who has accepted my invitations and who has visited my profile following on from me visiting theirs. Take up is not good.

Let’s say there has not been a rush to connect with me in public. My leper’s bell seems to be working, though not all hear its dulcet tones.

Maybe the universe, the dream, is telling me to do another disappearing act?

The “connections” theme was perhaps a red herring.

We have one chronic problem that sooner or later needs to be solved. I have osteoarthritis in my hips and lower back. It is there in my cervical spine. I have disc herniation which causes symptoms c5c6 and c7 in my left and right fingers. The nerves are impinged upon.

It is unwise for me to do heavy labour; we have 0.8 hectare of garden.

One solution to the problem is for me to get an income stream of around 500-1000€ a month. I could then pay someone to do the heavy work.

We are on a very tight budget and live well below minimum wage levels of income.

It is not a big ask, a few hundred euros a month, but that would suffice.

The idea of scientific English editing looks to be a no-go. The market is crowded and the price per word low. The work is perhaps drying up due to AI.

The purpose behind the LinkedIn account was to try to get this off the ground.

The alternative is to downsize houses.

It costs roughly 50 grand in fees to move house here. The housing market is severely constipated.

Having an offer made on this house would be a real problem because they are not used to chain sales and they have some quaint customs about signing. There is little we would like to move into, especially at that level of cost.

Move somewhere you don’t like and spend 50 grand….does not sound ideal or appetizing.

I have had numerous dreams pointing at doorways, gates and the deep unknown. So far not a lot has materialised.

We are in the time of year where the crop ripens and heads towards harvest later in summer or early autumn. Whatever it is I have sown, I will reap.

The firewood store is full. I have just power washed the propane tank, if we get it filled, we are good until end of January 2025.

The wife had a breast lump biopsy taken and sent off on Friday. I am due an MRI scan of my prostate tomorrow morning, because my Prostate Specific Antigen {PSA} test was elevated.

If there are any lesions in the prostate I will have a prostate biopsy on my dance card in the near future.

A further episode of medical-merry-go-round might be incoming. This could be bilateral.

The USA is now further destabilized. Adamant hot heads and automatic weapons are not a good mix.

How did an “advanced” country get to a geriatric presidency race?

I could finish my work up of dreams and then repurpose this blog.

I could leave social media.

To try to write another hobby-vanity patent would cost around £500 to get to the stage of grant. I have proved I can do it once; not sure I need to do it again.

There is no real incentive.

Things could change PDQ over the next few weeks or they will stay roughly the same.

We shall see…