Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

Seven emergency room visits. Five days in the hospital. Seven days recovering in bed so far – mostly because of this damned upper respiratory infection, not the surgery. Likely three more days in bed to go. Four weeks more to recover fully. And then probably two to four years of being generous to the liver. At 53 I’m already down two organs. 🙂

Lessons learned?

1) Um. Don’t man up to pain. Get problems fixed early. The whole alpha male instinct is wrong on pain. I have an incredibly high pain tolerance. And that’s a bad thing. … Well, outside of business anyway. 🙂

2) Oh, and the one I keep learning all over again: You cannot count on the medical community to get it right. Ever. Especially if you’re on the right of the curve. I had a concierge doctor with cellphone access 24/7, but was absolutely useless, and the only way I got a diagnosis was to tell the ER docs I had no PCP, and needed their help. The only person interested in working hard at curing you early is you. You are your own primary care physician.

OUT OF HOSPITAL – AT HOTEL – THANKS FOR LOVE AND SUPPORT

Thanks for all the kind words. They matter. ( I do have a heart despite what people seem to think. 🙂 Feeling dramatically better. It’s like walking around in a completely different body. It’s awesome. Still pretty high levels on my liver tests. Gotta have a few more. I’m betting it’s just a reflection of how bad it was in there.

I’ll venture that 20 years from now, some doctor in some lab will show why all these gall bladders started failing. (I say this with no knowledge of the current statistics.) And like Ulcers and Cervical Cancer I’ll bet this one is also driven by an infection we just don’t know of yet. Just seems to fit the profile.

The awful chemistry we eat doesn’t help any either, I’m sure. I still cannot find that great work that revisits the Chinese nutritional data, and shows that it doesn’t matter what combination of foods we eat. It just matters that they aren’t processed foods. But I’m glad this is becoming something we’re more aware of. A century of faulty nutritional information is the real culprit.

ONE OF THE FIVE WORST GALL BLADDERS HE’S SEEN

Given that its dinner time here, I won’t go into too much detail. But the surgeon said it was in his “top five”. The top five worst gall bladders he’s removed. Fully infected. Everything he touched bled.

The second surgeon came in and did another procedure that used a basket of some sort to clear the duct between the liver and intestine. So I had a six hour surgery and recovery instead of a one hour surgery and recovery.

I tell people that I have a high pain tolerance. And that’s not a good thing. I should have gotten this out last January.

http://www.capitalismv3.com/2011/08/21/envy/This week has been moving for me. Seeing people I’ve influenced.

This is from a post by a young man who worked for me, and the quote is something I say all the time. I got it from Durant. Not sure the original source. He just paid off his car, early, and with savings. He writes:

“Those tagged have positively shaped/influenced/inspired my financial life in one way or another over the years. …. ‘No man is a hero to his debtors.’

— http://bit.ly/RewOy9 “

And points to one of my posts on envy. 🙂

I beat myself up all the time. I believe that no one ever understands but a tenth of what it is that I’m saying. But I guess that some of time. It works. And I think it makes me happier than anything else in my life.

I love the gentle people best.

I must have worn out my welcome in Seattle because I haven’t got anyone to go to dinner and talk nonsense with tonight. 🙂

So many startup conversations going on that i didn’t expect this lull.

I haven’t hit up the libertarian circuit. Maybe I’ll give that a shot.

🙂