mild heart disease

I'm a little nervous about going to class, knowing I have a heart condition (again, WTF), but I'm guessing it's minor (no word from docs on lab report yet), and exercise may be the best way to fight it, since I already eat well. My home workouts don't push cardio the same way. So, I finally did a full double class tonight. Boxing and BJJ. My ribs were fine, no nausea, no chest pain. 

Whatever the cause of the atherosclerosis, it seems to be at it's worst, when I first start working out hard again, after being forced to take a break from it. After a few classes the symptoms go away.. but that doesn't mean it's not still concerning, possibly still getting worse, and maybe even dangerous. Looking forward to talking to my doctors. Hoping they say it's minor enough that I don't need to see a cardiologist now, but afraid that's too optimistic. I mostly just want to talk to my GP about all this. I'm getting really tired of hospitals.

I'm feeling really fortunate to have public healthcare covering all of it. I can only imagine how much worse this could have gone, had I been worrying about all the ways private insurance doesn't even fully cover people. Healthcare is still catastrophically expensive for a lot of people in this country. Tens of thousands die in the US every year because they don't get it. Hundreds of thousands go bankrupt trying to get it. 

I feel fortunate, but at the same time, I should be able to take it for granted, because we all get healthcare. I'd rather feel fortunate for living in a decent country that provides for all of its people. It's a little weird feeling fortunate to be on disability, but it seems like the poor working class have it worse. There shouldn't even be a poor working class.

I don't bother going on about this anymore though. Jimmy Dore is a lot more optimistic and positive than I am. 

cyber sloth

Every day, for decades, I'd wake up, sit down at the computer. Often sitting there until it's time for bed. Getting up to take care of one thing or another, but always back to the computer. Maybe I eat, water my plants, or even have to go buy groceries, then back to the computer, immediately.

From some angles, this doesn't seem like a big deal. I thought of myself as a character like Serenity's Mr. Universe for years. What do other people do? Sit in office chairs, sit on couches, sit in their cars? I sit here for like fourteen hours a day, every day, though. I've been doing so my entire life. I don't know what other people do, but that seems bad to me.

These days, I do take extra long breaks from my computer to work out. I've had this idea that working out so much compensates for spending every other waking moment being a vegetable. This may be true in terms of fitness, but that isn't the only consideration here. For one thing, it's a lousy way to live. 

Problems like this arise as a way of coping. I was depressed, and the computer at least got me out of bed. All my interests developed around what I could do on a computer, because it's all I had the energy for, and it made hiding from the world easier. I've been arguing with people online all my life. It's the only way I know how to socialize, but I don't want to socialize this way anymore. Twenty years later, it's become more problem than solution, but I don't know how else to live. 

Another problem though is that it may be a cause of cancer. Cancer cases like mine have been on the rise for decades, and being sedentary is one of the main risk factors. I tend to think that exercise thoroughly offsets that, but this presumes too much. We don't know if it has to do with fitness, if there could be a more direct correlation to spending too much time without moving, or whatever else.

I think about how TotalBiscuit was a gamer for a living. That's what we had in common, aside from the size of our tumors; spending all day at our computers for many years. Growing numbers of people do, but gamers in particular can take sedentary to a whole other level. I was less inclined to worry about any of that, when I still enjoyed it. I'd use the computer for all different things, but I don't want to do any of it anymore. Taking a step back, I realize spending my whole life like this seems like a bad idea, but I don't know what else to do with myself.

CT scan in Montpelier went well. No signs of tumors anywhere else. Just some coronary atherosclerosis; build-up (or inflammation?) in the arteries of my heart. Again, I'm a vegan who hasn't had a donut in months. I don't eat fast food ever. I make my own sugarless granola for fucks sake. I'll be hearing from my surgeon and/or gastroenterologist soon, but I'm thinking they'll be referring me to someone else now. 

I have a follow-up with my GP in two weeks. I'm in Burlington Vermont, so of course it's a naturopathic practice. Real doctors with doctor degrees and everything, but with a specialty in preventative measures like diet and nutrition. At least, that's a positive way to spin it. I'm not entirely sure, but they seem good. In this case, it sounds like exactly what I need, regardless. This all seems like stuff that I should be able to address by eating better and spending less time sitting at the computer. Now that the surgery and CT scans are out of the way.

The way I live is killing me though. As I've been saying.

still kicking

My ribs seem almost better, maybe just in time for the park spar this Saturday. I've missed all the sparring classes leading up to it, for various medical reasons. I have an appointment on Wednesday, right when next class starts, for a CT scan. One last test (for now) to make sure I don't have any other cancers lurking anywhere. That they can readily detect anyway. Fingers crossed.

I haven't been getting to class much, since June. My mood's been reflecting that. I went tonight, but ended up leaving after kickboxing, before BJJ, again. I was struggling with the hot weather cardio again, I was feeling indecisive, when I realized I'd forgotten my belt. I wish it were no-gi, especially this time of year. I could have borrowed a belt, but at the last minute, decided to give my ribs a few more days. Still, a bit depressing.

I don't want to reinjure anything, and on Wednesday, I want to make sure the thing being injured isn't another concerning mass. I guess this is standard. One cancer does raise the risk of others, as I understand it. Not so much that they find anything, most of the time, but enough to make the precaution worthwhile. Not that the precise math really matters. It's hard not to worry about it and who the hell knows.

After class. the instructor was talking about new classes that sound appealing to me. Something to look forward to, if all goes well these next few days. Which I'm afraid means I might as well expect to be hit by lightning on the way to the hospital. Which is all the way in Montpelier, because hackers broke our hospital's computers again.

do nothing

I keep hashing over issues of escapism, distraction, and motivation. I was doing so well for a while, feeling like I was striving for something. Then I fucked up my knee and everything went to hell. I could blame it all on the pandemic, but as it falls behind us, I'm still back to doing nothing. I don't know what I should do. 

I don't see anything I can do, anymore. I can't see anything worth doing. I have no confidence in my ability to get anywhere. I don't know how much of this is a matter of perspective and how much is just being realistic.

I'm back to living each day, one at a time and all the same, not working towards anything in particular, not expecting or hoping anything will change. Except for the worse, as things periodically fall apart, leave, end, collapse, or die. That sounds like such glass-half-empty thinking, but the inverse isn't really true. The world doesn't periodically drop good things on us. Not if we're sitting around doing nothing, and that's what I'm back to doing. I know it doesn't go well.

Going out into the world and doing stuff though, holy shit, that was like walking into a woodchipper. Suicide, cancer, plague, death, more cancer, injuries, and politics. Fuck it, I'm wrecked. As I sat outside in the sun this afternoon, listening to music on my headphones, admiring my pepper plants, the nature of my angst came into focus. 

I thought that I was finally getting somewhere, and all pandemic, I put that on hold, uncertain I'd have anything to go back to. I was clawing and scrabbling my way through school, finally getting out of the chasm I've been trying to climb out of my entire life. Without covid to blame for it, I'm left with these voids where major parts of my life used to be. These things I cared about and fought for are just memories now. My fears largely realized, but at least I don't have colon cancer anymore.

Even Bernie's run was a factor. I thought school might be on it's way to becoming more affordable. I was feeling more optimistic about my prospects and the world. There are a number of ways life's beaten all that out of me, but growing up just doesn't make sense anymore. I desperately miss thinking that it did. I've been trying to cling to something that's already gone. 

I remember writing about trajectories, and how I'd need a good one. I was having doubts before all of this, but once I was on track, I could just stay the course. The path of least resistance would be to just keep going. I was freaking out all pandemic, because I had no idea how I'd make that leap all over again. How can I, when it doesn't even make sense to me anymore.

I guess I should be trying to better appreciate sitting in the sun, listening to music with my pepper plants. Apparently, I could have a lot less time ahead of me than I thought anyhow.

this is the world

Many lifetimes ago and a million miles away, I found my music on the radio. Finding radio stations that played any kind of punk or metal was a feat in itself, but there was this one, out of South Orange University, in NJ. 89.5 WSOU "Pirate Radio" because the school mascot's a pirate. Using a Black Sabbath song to seed my latest Spotify playlist, it gave me one a lot like the sort of music they'd play. Some of it's a little cringe, but I even liked the hair bands, if their lyrics were relatable. 

I was never a fan of this band, but this one song struck me as anthemic. I had a thing for songs about how shit the world is, and wishing it were different, wishing we could go somewhere else, wishing there were a better world to go to. There must be, right? 

I think that was such a fundamental misstep in worldview. The world is what it is, and whether we realize it or not, we all want to make the most of what we have, while we can. Dreaming about how much better things could be is a turning away from that. Instead of facing all the trauma and adversity, I retreated into a world of blaming all the wrongs in the world. 'You can keep the world, with all its sin. It's not fit for living in.' 

Even in my politics, it's all about making the world better. Trying to make the world better is great, of course. How much of it was more akin to dreaming about it though? A shared dream, with all the leftists of the world. This isn't to knock activism. It was online activism that brought the surge of mainstream popularity that Bernie rode in on, back in 2015. But this is also why they've clamped down on how their algorithms work, and who gets boosted and who gets quietly suppressed. Under the guise of Russiagate or stopping misinformation, they've completely wrecked the framework that made Bernie possible.

I suppose you might say that I'm discouraged, but in retrospect, I realize that I fixated to such a degree, more as an escape. I was too busy raging about the rest of the world, to face my own life. I've been doing that all my life, everything I do, an escape. I dreaded going to middle school, for the same reason I dread going to the gym, or really anywhere ever. It cuts me off from all my distractions. I wanted to be free, to read sci-fi, play video games, or just fall asleep listening to music.

None of that sounds so bad. The problem is that I desperately want to do such things all the time. I've been avoiding life, all my life, and making excuses for it doesn't matter. I don't care whose fault it is. I've been trying to change, but progress has been slow. Avoidance has been so deeply ingrained in my behavior. Every day is a struggle to overcome that, and the recent hurdles of additional trauma haven't helped.

When all we want out of life is to be free of pain, it's tragic. That is what addiction is all about, and there are good reasons addiction so often follows trauma. Pain can be too much, especially during childhood, crippling neurological development, building who we become on how to escape, rather than how to get the most out of life. 

Forgivable, but far from ideal. It rarely ends well.

achiever explorer socializer killer

The Bartle taxonomy of player types is a classification of game players based on a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle^[1] according to their preferred actions within the game. The classification originally described players of multiplayer games (including MUDs and MMORPGs)

I wonder if it would take much to adapt that to classify the motivations of people in the real world, too. Gaming and fantasy more broadly play on normal every day motivations. Even the "killer" designation has more to do with being competitive and adrenaline seeking than the oft used but incidental themes of killing everything.

I think that it was training in martial arts fifteen years ago that first started to undercut my interest in fantasy. I'd spend months or even years levelling up in a video game, only to get bored and never play it again. Training felt like levelling up in real life. That hadn't felt possible for me. Games make achievement accessible.

I was there for the earliest days of multiplayer games and online worlds for players to socialize in. It was an interesting phenomenon to be a part of, for a while. Our achievements were no longer sequestered within our own private games, but shared socially. I could see and interact, cooperate with or be killed by, other players levels above or below, in newbie rags, or decked out in epic raid gear.

Gaming tends to be the most addictive to people who feel unable to get anywhere in real life. Unable to earn the respect and companionship of others, gaming can be rewarding in ways that feel valuable. Maybe it is valuable. We might debate whether "real life" is all its chalked up to be anyhow, but I no longer think it's all that debatable. 

We're not evolved to sit on our butts all day having pretend interactions. It doesn't fulfill biological needs for socialization, but papers over all that with momentary feelings of sating those needs. We quit game after game, never to play them again, we read novel after novel, or watch movie after movie, but only get one life. 

Real achievement is hard though. Thwarted at almost every turn, it can take so long to get anywhere, in a world that isn't designed to be fair. We can be gimped by bad choices and worse luck, and there's no rerolling a new character. All we can do is keep pressing forward.

Or say fuck it, and get lost in escapism. Maybe at some point, that is the rational choice. What difference does any of it really make anyhow? I don't know how to answer that, but feeling like I was getting somewhere for a change made it feel like a dumb question. The benefits to my well being have been substantial, such that I've come to hate escapism as little more than a means to throw my life away instead.

Exploring a world of fantasy is not the same. Socializing between digital avatars is not the same. Kicking someone's ass in a video game is not the same. A lot of my reasons for choosing escapism are still relevant though. I'm still not having much luck getting anywhere, aside from sparring, but I can't seem to find the motivation to do much else. 

Not much else has gone all that well, but my constant injuries would suggest that training isn't going all that well, either. Somehow it feels natural to keep pressing forward with that, while everything else just sucks. I guess this is just a dark twist on the growth mindset I went on about before everything went to hell. A focus on self-improvement, when nothing else proves motivating. Now, a tortured skeletal framework of the same idea.

a mild case of cancer

Had a follow-up exam of sorts today with a surgeon. She doesn't think I'll need surgery, but now we're waiting for more biopsy results to be sure. So I'm feeling optimistic, but it's strange getting Cancer.. and it can be this inconsequential? It feels almost too good to be true. I'm deeply concerned finding out that I'm prone to this, but I even went to class tonight. I had to leave after kickboxing, without taking BJJ, not because of the cancer, but my ribs still hurt. I'm thinking it might be a pulled muscle.

If anyone were to wonder where I've been the past few weeks, I might tell them I've been getting over a mild case of cancer. I don't think anyone's wondering though. It's even possible no one's noticed. As far as social outlets go, it helps, but I'm not exactly hitting it off with these people. There's another park spar coming up though, and it is nice to know I probably won't be recovering from surgery for it.

Or dying of cancer, because I'd waited another few months to see a doctor. Early detection is so important, and now I understand how early it has to be. Even stage two is too late. That can be early, but it's already metastasized, and that becomes so much harder to deal with. They've got to come up with better ways to just test everyone regularly.

In the meantime, I need to change my lifestyle somehow. I'm just not sure what the culprit is. I'll eat more broccoli, and I'm not in the middle of a pandemic anymore, so that should help. I should probably try to spend a lot less time sitting around feeling stressed out and unhappy too.

[edit for biopsy results: negative for adenoma or malignancy, no significant diagnostic abnormalities. Officially cancer-free now.]

processing

Best case scenario, I still had fucking cancer. There's a chance I still do, but that aside, why the hell am I getting cancer at all. This is so fucked up. I'm only 46. I don't smoke, or drink, eat meat or processed foods. I don't even eat sugar. I exercise every day. I have no family history of this. I've been intermittent fasting every day for years, which is supposed to help prevent cancer.

The one risk category I'm in is that I'm miserable and lonely, and I've been living this way for a long time. Weathering all this, alone in my dismal apartment all day every day, year after year. Now I've got to fend off cancer alone like this? That'll be a straight up death sentence.

Even if I get through this, and if I caught it early enough, it's now something I'll have to worry about for the rest of my life. Once your body grows a cancer, you can't really trust it ever again. Some might think of it as entirely medical, something that inexplicably happens to us. That we're helpless to prevent it, aside from treatment; don't think about it, just deal with it.

Others churn endlessly, trying to figure out why cancer happens. We know that all sorts of lifestyle and environmental factors contribute. Being a GI cancer, diet is especially likely to matter. Despite all the things I don't eat, I still manage to eat almost no fresh fruits or vegetables. I buy them occasionally, but not regularly. I don't shop often enough to keep a regular stock of fresh produce. I eat lots of legumes; beans, chickpeas, lentils, and rice every day. Lots of nuts, seeds, and oats. Actual vegetables though, uncooked? Almost never.

I think it's probably better to think there's something I can do to improve my chances going forward, than to think this is just how random cancer is. Even if I'm wrong, it's beneficial to think I'm maybe doing something to help myself, instead of feeling helpless. Now that I'm saying it out loud, I'm realizing that not eating vegetables is actually quite glaring. They rot so fast, and shopping without a vehicle is such a hassle, but that can't be good for me.

As long as this doesn't stop me from doing BJJ, I'll be ok.

2020 gave me cancer

Just got the biopsy results. Adenocarcinoma. Still waiting to hear from the doctor, my only question being whether I'm in the clear now that the malignant tumor has been removed. Guess I'm officially a cancer survivor.

. . .

Doctor says he probably got all of it, but it was invasive so he can't be sure, and I'll need another colonoscopy in 3-6 months to see if the cancer has taken root in the lining. If so, I'll need surgery to remove part of my colon. He wants me to talk to a surgeon about possibly doing that anyhow, just to be sure.

Except I'll never be sure, because now that we know my body is prone to doing this, we know it's likely to keep happening. They tell people with depression to hang in there, that it will get better. I've spent my whole life waiting, trying, failing to make it any better. It just keeps getting worse.

disabled

Growing up Hasbulla-tiny, I was always being treated as if I were younger than I actually was. I grew up feeling beneath my peers, constantly trying to prove that I wasn't. As this segued into mental health problems and disability, I became stuck in this way of thinking of myself. I grew from one situation that reinforced my feelings of inferiority to another. It doesn't help that this is largely predicated on what seems to be accurate assessments of how people feel about me. Just as when I was little, people don't think bad of me, per se..

I thought I could get there. Finally grow up, get my shit together, go through school, get a career. I'm not sure where that would have gone, had it gone better and been less besieged by tragedy. I didn't do so well though. I really thought I'd be acing everything. It's just community college. Basic classes, and I was barely scraping by. I still had no idea where I was going. I didn't think failure was even a real possibility, once I got over all the hurdles of getting started. 

I needed life to go better than it did, but such is life, I guess? I didn't expect to prove them all right. Trying to hold a crap job would be even worse. I don't know how the hell you people do any of it.

All of that was part of the process that got me started in martial arts again. The one thing that's been enduring throughout all this. I'm not taking it for granted. Not that I made it to class tonight. My side's been hurting again. When I haven't done BJJ in a while, my ribs always get fucked for a bit, as I adjust to having 200 pounds trying to pin me down and twist my arm. I'll be fine, probably, eventually.. and then it will be something else. 

Or it's more cancer. Maybe it's behind the ribs. I can't tell and I guess I really do have to worry about that now. My mother didn't seem to understand the nature of the biopsy. Usually, it means they take a sample, and it tells us whether the thing they're sampling is cancerous. In this case, they removed the entire thing already, because that's what they do regardless. So what they're sampling has already been removed. 

It freaked me out that she interpreted the situation to mean we're waiting to find out if I have cancer. Present tense. That would be unlikely enough that I hadn't been worrying about it.. until she starts talking about how treatable colon cancer is. What, no, that's not.. I mean, probably not.. I can't rule it out entirely, no. 

Maybe some cancer cells were left behind. Or maybe the polyp wasn't the source of the cancer, which would be especially bad. If I understand this all correctly, those are the risks, and they're fairly slim. If it's cancer, I caught it super early. Course, there's also the chance I've misunderstood something entirely. After all, I'm not even a competent adult, let alone a coloncologist.

I was all drugged up when the doctor explained, so who the hell knows. To clear it up, I'm just waiting for my own biopsy results now. This is the best excuse I have, for feeling especially broken and incompetent these past few days.  It's something or other making me feel broken and incompetent an awful lot. Especially lately. It's great that I'm still training, but I was aiming a lot higher. I've been having trouble watching that hope fade ever further into memory.

I can't see a lot of hope in it and to be honest. I can't handle jumping back into all that again. I miss the days when my biggest concern was remembering to walk MC. Life isn't just going to keep throwing this shit at me one thing after another until I'm dead, right?

medical update

Just had an awful few days preparing for an invasive medical procedure, but the sedatives are wearing off and I'm finally allowed to eat again. They found two polyps, one of concerning size. Now I'm waiting for biopsy results on that. Even if it's cancerous, that would hopefully mean it was removed so early that I'm already cancer-free again. Still, it would also mean I'm at an elevated risk for this sort of thing, so I should start getting screened regularly. Which is unfortunate, because I'd really like to never go through that again.

The sedation was odd. I was told I'd be out cold for the whole thing, but instead I dreamily watched the monitor showing my insides.  I was super relaxed but alert. My memory is spotty, even the ride home is a bit of a blur. The nurses remarked that I'd recovered extra fast. I was a little wobbly, but a wheel chair? No, just get me the hell out of here.

I'm so glad it's over. Well, mostly. Still waiting on those biopsy results.