🤔 morning thoughts The human being is an unfinished creation. If you believe in God, why did he make so ridiculously imperfect? If you don't believe, then why did nature put systems in us that appear to solve problems but actually make them worse and kill us instead of healing us? My own starting bias is that we were created with intention, but I try hitting the problem from all angles. I personally have had two major health events in my life - kidney disease (which I think I've cured, which is a medical first, and I absolutely intend to get famous for), and now this stroke. Both events have yielded insight into how poorly designed humans are. With kidney disease, or CKD, the problem is that scar tissue inhibits the kidney's natural ability to heal. The problem is very multifaceted, but basically the nephrons, which are the large structure containing glomeruli, grow scar tissue where damaged, and the fibrous scar tissue blocks healing and even exacerbates the problem, which causes the inevitable decline in kidney function and ultimately kills the person. The kidney keeps trying to heal, but it can't clear the scar tissue. This is actually related to the other problem... The other problem, which I've found from researching this stroke, is that your body has a natural ability to clear thrombotic masses from arteries, but it doesn't work without help from blood thinners. At all times, you have plasmogen in your blood, and if a clot is discovered, that plasmogen gets activated and turns into plasmin, which attaches to fibrin and pulls off chunks. Fibrin is the building block of the fiber that holds clots together, and it grows over time and makes clots harder and even kind of armored against the plasmin that is made to negate it. Your body can clear a clot, aka a thrombosis, in just a few days if you go on a blood thinner within a couple of hours of the stroke. My stroke occurred days after the clot must have appeared, so really you have potentially several days to get the blood thinner - but after a stroke, you need it fast to be able to clear the clot. This tells me that we have the system that's designed to clear clots, and if it worked properly, no one would ever die from the strokes or heart attacks they cause. But the system doesn't work. Its there, but its malfunctioning in all humans. The common denominator in both scenarios is the fibrin and the scar tissue, which is just configured differently in either case. Also that the system designed for that specific scenario exists but fails to work as intended - either as nature or God intended. And, as impressive as the human body is (wildly and mind blowingly impressive), I am forced to conclude that its either incomplete or degraded, and in need of redesign. Slippery slope. Bad stuff will happen if we begin doing it.... But I think we have to. We're not supposed to die at 80. Or 120, and I don't care if a book says God wants us all dead before 120. Our bodies have the systems to live forever - we were obviously originally designed to be clinically immortal - but they don't work anymore. We have to fix it. #Health #medicine

GM ☀ So there's something that I found noteworthy during my stay in the hospital.... And I have hesitated telling anyone, but being at least somewhat anonymous here, I feel like I can write a bit here. A couple interesting things happened. On the night of May 5th, one full day after the stroke, while sleeping I heard the most amazing classical music... In my dream. It was unlike anything I've ever heard - richer, more complex, and just fucking beautiful. I woke up and went to the best classical music I know - the nutcracker suite - to see if it could be that or based on that... No, the Nutcracker is simple in comparison. I keep trying to get that music back, and it just slips away like a dream. Was it just my imagination, or did I get a peak behind the veil? I keep thinking about it. The other strange occurrence was a dark figure standing by my bed right before surgery, who only I could see, and only from the corner of NY vision. When I turned my head to see better, he disappeared. He seemed to have long hair and wore black clothes, and was tall. No other details, just that. He seemed to be checking something, like maybe a machine monitoring me. There was an aire of expertise about him, like a doctor, but not hurried like the real doctors. He was only there for a few moments, or I could only see him for those moments. Was it my imagination? A hallucination? I mean, a stroke is literally part of your brain dying, so there's no telling what stuff it could generate. Part of why I hesitate to tell people about this is how silly it seems. It's absurd to think I would get a peak at some unseen world, though this is precisely the kind of thing I've been interested in recently. Maybe I simply wanted something like this. Another thing that's possibly noteworthy is the prayer my uncle said over me before the surgery - I wish I could remember it and use it, but I can say that it was a very impressive prayer. The surgery went without any problems, so maybe that prayer worked. The surgeon told me that about 1% of the time, something goes wrong and the patient usually dies if that happens. Whatever, it had to be done. No reason to hesitate, just do it. It wasn't a serious surgery - just a catheter going from femeral artery to brain for imaging - but I think they're obliged to inform patients of the risk. But... What if that prayer really protected me? What if I really did see a man that wasn't there? Or, what if I'm crazy and slowly realizing it? All I can definitively say is that reality is weird. Our perception of reality is weird, and from our own perspective, perception is reality, even though logically it can't be.

Captain's log, stardate blah blah blibbity bloo So... I'm home again. Out of rehab. Very tiring day. I've made a dramatic return to my bed, hobbling and shuffling and pushing off of things. I'm kind of enjoying this. Its so ridiculous, it just makes me laugh. I prefer sleeping on the floor, but I won't be doing that for at least a few months - I have to keep my head elevated to avoid mashing that artery in the back. My cousin called and I felt like it was time to start talking about psychic experiences and the things I've learned about early Christianity. She's one of the few I could be sure wouldn't react judgementally. Turns out we both do the psychic packet trick, and we're both big fans of Mary Magdalene. Quite an enjoyable talk. Tomorrow I'll have to wrangle the VA about paperwork. They've covered almost all of my expenses, and I'm very grateful (my God, it would've ruined me...), but I still just really don't like doing stuff with them. I don't like being reminded of the dumbest thing I've ever done. Well, that's tomorrow's fight. I'm looking forward to reestablishing my morning routine and my nostr habit... If this rain can end tonight, a walk tomorrow would be amazing. I'm gonna have to do an awful lot of walking to regrow the neural paths for walking. I think I might also set up a punching bag somewhere to work on coordination. And there's an Aikido gym near the college, I wanna check that out. GN 🌙

🤔 PBS says viewers like me. Idk how they know about me, and I'm also a viewer, but they like me, so cool.

Massie should run for Pres. I know its supposed to be Lisa Simpson next, but she can wait. I still won't vote, though. View quoted note →