You know how it is. Sometimes you don’t know how bad things were until you’re past them and get a little perspective. It seems like this is what I’ve been going through with the respiratory infection I mentioned the other day. After a week’s worth of horse-pill sized antibiotics (that image is almost actual size – I swear!) it seems like I am resolving several low-grade stubborn infections I’ve been fighting on my own for weeks if not months. As I told a friend earlier:
Do feel better this morning, though a bit of a sore throat. I think what is happening is as each layer of the infection is dealt with (to some extent), the next deeper layer emerges. What I have been thinking was allergies may have been nothing more than low-grade, entrenched infections for the last several months.
So that’s how it’s been. I am feeling better, though I still am worn ragged by the end of the day. I would like to have something like my old energy levels back – I have a lot of stuff I’d like to do. I suppose that alone is a good sign.
Jim Downey
*Certainly you recognize the quote, right?
Filed under: Health
I’m feeling a bit like the stock market – deflated. Thanks to the lung gak I mentioned the other day. There’s a reason that they put you on a 10-day course of antibiotics for these things, it seems. So I haven’t been feeling particularly inspired or energetic the last couple of days, and I’ll apologize for no new content here.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Health, Hospice, Preparedness, Sleep, Survival
I mentioned in a comment on UTI yesterday that I had a doctor’s appointment, and expected to find there that I had a respiratory infection that needed treatment. Well, I did, and I do, and now I’ve started a 10-day regimen of antibiotics.
But that’s not the reason why I made the appointment two weeks ago.
* * * * * * *
Almost a year ago I wrote a very raw and painful post titled “Beats having a heart attack.” Here’s the crucial passage:
And as I stood there at the sink, washing the dishes, thinking favorably on the option of having a heart attack, it sunk in that I was done. I mean, I’d been considering that a heart attack might be the best solution to my problems. Yeah, a heart attack. Hell, at 49, I’d probably survive it. It’d come as no surprise to anyone, given the kind of physiological and psychological stress I’m under. No one could blame me for no longer being a care-provider for someone with Alzheimer’s.
Well, I didn’t have a heart attack. And I wasn’t done. We made it through six months of hospice care for Martha Sr – easily the most demanding period of care providing. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a cost to me, physically.
* * * * * * *
I sat in the exam room, waiting to meet the new doctor. My face was flushed, my heart racing. I was having a low-grade anxiety attack.
No big deal, right? Lots of people get nervous around doctors.
But I don’t. Hell, I put myself through grad school working in an outpatient surgery unit. Because it was a remote location far from the central supply facility for the hospital, they had established a large sterile storage area adjacent to the 8 surgical theatres. For five years I manned that storage area, keeping the surgical teams supplied. And I was in an out of operations constantly, bringing necessary sterile supplies to the surgical teams. Even my designated break room was shared with the surgical staff. In that five years I got to see and know a lot of doctors in almost every imaginable medical situation, as well as personally. I’ve never been nervous around doctors since.
The doctor knocked and then came into the room. I was sitting on the exam table, still fully clothed. I hadn’t been told to undress or anything by the aide who had parked me there half an hour earlier, so there was no modesty issue connected with my anxiety.
“Hi, I’m Dr —.”
“Jim Downey. Pleased to meet you.”
She held out a hand, relaxed. “Likewise. What can we help you with today?”
I shook her hand, then passed to her a book I had been browsing through. One I had seen on the shelf there in the exam room. “This was my life for the last 5 years.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve talked about the stress of care-giving before, and how I am now in a detox period from a prolonged norepinephrine saturation. As I wrote in June:
The problem is, those stress hormones come with a price – they exact a toll on the body. For most people, occasional jolts of this stuff isn’t really dangerous, but for someone with a heart condition or an aneurysm waiting blow, such an event can kill. That’s why you see those warning signs on roller coasters.
And consider what happens to someone who slowly ramps up their stress hormone levels over a prolonged period. That’s me. My formerly excellent blood pressure and heart rate is now scary bad, and has been for a while. I’m lucky that I started this in good condition – but think back to this episode last year, and you’ll see what kind of effect the excessive stress hormone levels had. In the final year of care giving, my system became saturated with stress hormones – my ‘fight or flight’ reflex changed from being related to a sudden threat to being an ongoing condition. I adapted.
That was why I made the doctor’s appointment. And the reason I was nervous was because I was afraid of what the cost I had imposed on my body actually was.
* * * * * * *
Dr — took the book, looked at it. She nodded, then looked at me. “Tell me about it.”
We talked.
We talked about the care-giving, when it ended, what I had tried to do to care for myself during and since. She looked over my records, asked a few questions, did a few of the typical exam things doctors do to confirm their innate understanding.
“Well, let’s treat this respiratory infection.” She paused, looked at me. “You know, your blood pressure is quite high.”
Actually, my blood pressure was scary bad. When the aide took it earlier, she was startled by how high it was. Let’s put it this way – it’s in the range where if it were just a bit higher, hospitalization would be indicated in most cases. If I walked into an ER with that blood pressure, people would start rushing around.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised.” I told the doctor what I’ve said in those post cited above.
She nodded, realized that I knew what I was talking about. “How would you feel about starting a drug therapy to get it under control?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Beta blocker.” She looked at me. “You may not need to be on it forever. The other things you are doing and recovery from the care providing might be sufficient – later. But for now, I think it would be wise.”
It was the right call. Beta blockers act specifically to counter the effects of stress hormones, especially norepinephrine.
“Sure. Let’s do it.”
* * * * * * *
So, that’s part of the cost of care-providing, documented by medical authority. It’s too early to say whether this drug therapy will be sufficient. I do still need to shed weight (though I’m now only about 20 pounds over what was my ‘normal’ weight about ten years ago), and keep an eye on diet and exercise, control stress, get plenty of sleep. And there’s no way to say how much long-term damage I did to my system by my period of high blood pressure (which increases the risk of stroke, dementia, heart disease and kidney damage). There’s no indication yet that there’s been any long-term damage, but . . .
I’m still glad I did it.
Jim Downey
My wife teared-up as we went over the statement from the auction house.
* * * * * * *
I’ve mentioned previously the chaos of the last few months, as we went through distributing Martha Sr’s household items between family members and then packed things up to go to a local auction. Well, things are starting to get sorted out and put away now. And we gave away my old computer on Freecycle to someone who needed it. So, while it still feels like we’re knee-deep in boxes, we’ve been making real progress.
But as I said, it has come at a price: tapping into my energy reserves. Another component of that is that I think I have developed a respiratory infection. I’ve had awful problems with allergies all this year, but in the last couple of weeks things have compounded. I’m scheduled to see a doctor tomorrow for a general check-up (since I just turned 50 and haven’t had one for a while), so we’ll see if there is something else going on.
* * * * * * *
I charge $100 per hour for my conservation services. Oh, I usually don’t bill for all my time – there’s prep, and clean-up, and distractions, and breaks – but that is my rate. So I use that as a rough rule-of-thumb when considering whether it makes economic sense for me to do this or that thing myself (like working on my car). Now, a lot of times I do decide to do things like yardwork or gardening, because they get me out of the house or give me pleasure. But still, that calculation is there, running in the background.
And so it was as we packed up things for the auction last week. I knew that it would probably be more financially sensible to let someone else do it (the auction house will have their people wrap, box, and load things at a flat rate less than mine), or just not bother taking the time to individually wrap up glasses and old dinnerware. I knew that it was unlikely that most of the stuff we were sending to auction would generate much. But I just hate to waste things, to see them damaged, when they are perfectly good and serviceable.
* * * * * * *
My wife teared-up as we went over the statement from the auction house. After all the costs were factored in, and the split with her siblings, our share would come to less than one hour’s worth of my time doing conservation work or her doing architecture work.
But that wasn’t why she was ready to cry. The money didn’t matter, not really. It was because the memories associated with those things were still so strong. Yeah, even the silly chipped dishes and the aging salmon-colored loveseat. And holding the statement and check from the auction house in her hand, it was one more bit of her mom she had lost, along with all the others which had slipped away over the years.
Letting go is hard.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Book Conservation, General Musings, Health, Sleep, Weather
I’m afraid that Hillary will need to continue to cope with chaos here on the homefront. This morning we did have the people from the auction company come and haul away the better part of a truckload of furniture and boxes – boxes which we’d been working the last couple of days to fill with various kitchen items, dishes, silverware, china and glass. The place is a lot less piled high with boxes, but now we need to move into the next phase of rearranging furniture into its more-or-less final configuration.
Gods, I am so ready to be done with this. Between moving my wife’s office here home and getting things ready for the auction, I’ve not accomplished any conservation work in too long. And I’ve tapped into my reserves too much – now I am feeling tired, worn out. It shows in my uninspired writing, too. In spite of the desire to just get things done, I may well take a long nap today. With the remnants of Gustav rolling through here for the next couple of days, it feels like a good time to nap.
So, more, later. Hopefully stuff more interesting than reports on how chaotic my life is.
Jim Downey
There are times in your adult life when you just hunker down, get stubborn, and see to the end whatever unpleasantness you are experiencing. The last few weeks have sort of felt that way. Hell, the last few years have *been* that way. And a reasonable argument could be made that my entire life would qualify. It’s like that old paraphrase of the laws of thermodynamics: “You can’t win. You can’t even break even. And they won’t let you quit.”
Anyway, back to the present. I mentioned the beginning of last month that we were engaged in some moving chaos. Well, it’s gotten worse since. We’ve been getting things ready for the auction house to haul stuff away for an auction next month. And my wife is now moving her architecture practice home. This latter had been the long-term plan all along, once Martha Sr was gone, but for various reasons it has become necessary for this to take place now. Meaning more boxes, more moving of furniture, more crowding of space as things are shifted and re-shifted, juggling this and that in such a manner that the three-dimensional puzzle all works out the way it needs to. But at least I’m getting regular exercise.
Oh, that other thing I mentioned in moving chaos, about having just delivered the first big batch of books? Well, I still haven’t been paid for that work. Some kind of screw-up in the business office, people on vacation, yada yada. Which is a problem. Because unlike my private clients, who have to put down a 50% deposit on work, my institutional clients get billed when the work is completed. Meaning that I am effectively out about 4 months of pay (because I first did a batch of work for Special Collections, and then got started on the next round of books for the seminary). If there’s one thing worse than being unemployed, it is working but not getting paid for it. What should be the start of getting back on my feet financially, after years of minimal income due to care-giving, has become an unexpected crunch, thanks to the ineptitude of whoever was responsible for processing my invoice. Thanks, buddy – I owe you one.
*sigh*
Anyway, soon my wife will be out of her office, and the auction house will collect things. Eventually I’ll get paid by my clients. Things will get better. But for now, it’s just a matter of hunkering down, getting through this. As always.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Feedback, Guns, Health, Migraine, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Writing stuff
As I have noted, I have been fairly busy of late. And in looking back over the last couple of months, I can see a real change in both my energy level and my ability to focus – it’s no longer the case that I want to nap most of the time. Yeah, I am still going through a detox process, still finding my way back to something akin to normalcy – but there has been a decided improvement. Fewer migraines. More energy. A willingness to take on some additional obligations.
So I had to debate a long time when I was recently contacted by a site wanting to expand their scope and impact. These folks. They were wanting me to do a column every two weeks, more-or-less related to Science Fiction (giving me a lot of latitude to define the scope of the column as I saw fit). They have a lot of good ideas, and seem to have a pretty good handle on where they want to go in the future. And the invitation was a real compliment to me – not only did they say nice things about my writing, but they have a good energy and attitude which is appealing.
But I declined the invitation. Why? Well, to a certain extent it’s like Bradbury says: “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
I may come to regret this decision. It could possibly have helped my writing career, at least in terms of landing a conventional publishing contract. And I know from writing my newspaper column that the discipline can do good things for me – forcing me to address a specific topic rather than the more general musings I post here and at UTI. But I really do have a lot on my plate right now, and they are all things I want to do well, rather than just get done. Blogging here (which is really quite important to me). Participating at UTI. Crafting this book about being a care provider. Getting the ballistics project website up and running. All the book conservation work waiting for me. Eventually getting to work on St. Cybi’s Well again. And enjoying life. There’s been precious little of that these last few years.
So, I declined. But if you perhaps would be interested in the gig, they have contact info on their homepage.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
One of the difficulties facing computer engineers/scientists with developing expert systems and true Artificial Intelligence is the paradigm they use. Simply, working from structures analogous to the human brain, there has been a tendency to isolate functions and have them work independently. Even in modern computer science such things as adaptive neural networks are understood to analogous to biological neural networks in the brain, which serve a specific function:
Biological neural networks are made up of real biological neurons that are connected or functionally-related in the peripheral nervous system or the central nervous system. In the field of neuroscience, they are often identified as groups of neurons that perform a specific physiological function in laboratory analysis.
But what if the neuroscience on which these theories are based has been wrong?
Here’s the basics of what was Neuroscience 101: The auditory system records sound, while the visual system focuses, well, on the visuals, and never do they meet. Instead, a “higher cognitive” producer, like the brain’s superior colliculus, uses these separate inputs to create our cinematic experiences.
The textbook rewrite: The brain can, if it must, directly use sound to see and light to hear.
* * *
Researchers trained monkeys to locate a light flashed on a screen. When the light was very bright, they easily found it; when it was dim, it took a long time. But if a dim light made a brief sound, the monkeys found it in no time – too quickly, in fact, than can be explained by the old theories.
Recordings from 49 neurons responsible for the earliest stages of visual processing, researchers found activation that mirrored the behavior. That is, when the sound was played, the neurons reacted as if there had been a stronger light, at a speed that can only be explained by a direct connection between the ear and eye brain regions, said researcher Ye Wang of the University of Texas in Houston.
The implication is that there is a great deal more flexibility – or ‘plasticity’ – in the structure of the brain than had been previously understood.
Well, yeah. Just consider how someone who has been blind since birth will have heightened awareness of other senses. Some have argued that this is simply a matter of such a person learning to make the greatest use of the senses they have. But others have suspected that they actually learn to use those structures in the brain normally associated with visual processing to boost the ability to process other sensory data. And that’s what the above research shows.
OK, two things. One, this is why I have speculated in Communion of Dreams that synesthesia is more than just the confusion of sensory input – it is using our existing senses to construct not a simple linear view of the world, but a matrix in three dimensions (with the five senses on each axis of such a ‘cube’ structure). In other words, synesthesia is more akin to a meta-cognitive function. That is why (as I mentioned a few days ago) the use of accelerator drugs in the novel allows users to take a step-up in cognition and creativity, though at the cost of burning up the brain’s available store of neurotransmitters.
And two, this is also why I created the ‘tholin gel’ found on Titan to be a superior material as the basis of computers, and even specify that the threshold limit for a gel burr in such use is about the size of the human brain. Why? Well, because such a superconducting superfluid would not function as a simple neural network – rather, the entire burr of gel would function as a single structure, with enormous flexibility and plasticity. In other words, much more like the way the human brain functions as is now coming to be understood.
So, perhaps in letting go of the inaccurate model for the way the brain works, we’ll take a big step closer to creating true artificial intelligence. Like in my book. It pays to be flexible, in our theories, in our thinking, and in how we see the world.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to ML for the news link.
To a man I never met, and whose life I would not pretend to understand.
Larry Sievers has died from the cancer about which he blogged and reported the last several years. He was an exceptional writer, and brought us insight into his battle with a brutal honesty and grace. More than that, he built an online community of which he was justifiably proud. As he said in the farewell piece on NPR this morning:
But I am at peace because I have done my best to make a difference. I hope when the real time comes, someone says that about each of us.
No worries, Larry. Thank you for all you did in sharing your humanity with us all.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Sleep, University of Missouri, Writing stuff, YouTube
I took some books back to Special Collections yesterday afternoon. As I was unpacking items, one of the staff members asked how I was doing.
“Pretty well. Been busy.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
* * * * * * *
On Wednesday, in response to a friend who asked what I had going on, I sent this email reply:
Need to do some blogging this morning, then get settled into the next batch of books for a client. Print out some invoices. Also need to track down some camera software and get it loaded onto this machine, and finish tweaking things here so I can shift over the last of the data from the old system and send it on its way. Need to work on learning some video editing, and start uploading clips from our ballistics testing project to YouTube. Then I can get going on creating the rest of the content for *that* website. Play with the dog. Should touch base with my collaborator on the Alz book, see where he is on some transcriptions he is working on. And then prep dinner. In other words, mostly routine. Yeah, I lead an odd life.
An odd life, indeed.
But here’s a taste of some of the documentation about the ballistics project that I have been working on:
That’s me wearing the blue flannel overshirt. Man, I’m heavy. I hope video of me now would look better.
* * * * * * *
The chaos continues. Yeah, we’re still in the process of completely re-arranging the house, and of seeing to the distribution of Martha Sr’s things. Looks like there’ll be an estate auction in our future sometime next month. But that’s good – it means that things are moving forward, heading towards some kind of resolution.
As mentioned in passing in the email cited above, I’ve been shifting over to a new computer system I got last week. My old system was starting to lose components, and was becoming increasingly incapable of doing things I need to be able to do. Well, hell, it was 7 years old, and was at least one iteration behind the cutting edge at the time I bought it. Thanks to the help of my good lady wife, this has been a relatively painless transition – though one which has still taken a lot of work and time to see through.
And one more complication, just to keep things interesting: My wife is moving her business practice home. This had been the tentative plan all along, once Martha Sr was gone, and for a variety of reasons it made sense to take this step now. She’ll be able to devote more of her energy to seeing to her mom’s estate, hastening that process. And she’s going to take on the task of shopping my book around agencies and publishers. Now that there have been over 10,000 downloads (actually, over 11,000 and moving towards 12,000), it would seem to be a good time to make a devoted push to getting the thing conventionally published, in spite of the problems in the industry. We’re hoping that she’ll be better able to weather the multiple rejections that it will take, and I’ll have more time and energy for working on the next book (and blogging, and the ballistics project, and – oh, yeah – earning money for a change).
* * * * * * *
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
“Thanks!”
It says something that with all I’ve been doing (as described above has been fairly typical, recently), I look more rested now than I have in years.
Actually, it says a lot.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 