Nov 21

 Nausea returned yesterday. It was ok. Unpleasant. I ignored it.

Post surgery I had a couple of nausea free days. Which was nice. And makes a big difference. Yesterday evening it returned.

It has made me double think what I've been eating. Not a huge amount to be honest. And perhaps notably, after surgery, I had a couple of home made lasagnes my lovely sister in law sent up with my brother. Which did not trigger any kind of nausea. If its even triggering on stuff I eat ( I suspect not so much, but still ). So. That's. Dairy - cheese, milk. Wheat - pasta. Beef. Onions. Mushrooms. Tomatoes. Garlic. Carrots. All seemingly fine.

On the evening of the surgery, my brother and I just got a takeaway. A chicken shish kebab. Grilled chicken, salad, a wrap. A bare handful of chips. I only ate half of mine. And ate it for "breakfast" the next day.

So what did I eat yesterday ? To be honest I just wanted home cooked food. But. Uh huh. Low energy levels. Makes it difficult to impossible. Instead I ordered in a chicken burger. Which I didn't feel great about. But meh. It did have very mild spicy mayo on it. Maybe it was the spice ? The bread ?? I also ate a single tim tam yesterday. My first bit of sugar / chocolate in... I can't even remember when.

I don't know.

My stomach has remained a little queasy today. And again. When it comes to eat. I am either nauseated by the thought of eating at all. Or when it gets sufficiently overriden, gun shy as to what to eat. For fear of feeling ill.

It's very hard to pin down any kind of pattern in what I eat and issues. I suspect there isn't one. Or it's very very subtle. That being said. There are somethings that have clearly become a no brainer trigger in the last few years. Jalapenos. I love Jalapenos. They have become a real danger trigger to me though. I can't get away with eating them. Even things adjacent is a toss up. If it's a tiny amount. And I'm having a good day. I get away with it.

Sometimes I find that rice dishes, with vegetables, chicken, can have a calming effect. Oddly. Sometimes. A chinese takeout that stays away from idiocy and sticks to the more simple makes me feel better. It crosses my mind whether this is a combination of simple whole foods and a lack of anything irritating. When you get down to it, its just fried rice and vegetables and a bit of meat protein - at least what I eat from a chinese anyway. When you think about it. Depending what you get. Chinese food is probably the closest to pure wholefoods that you can get from a takeout perspective. Maybe Indian too - but that tends to be very high in saturated fat with all the ghee.

Found out last night one of the guys from boardgames had suddenly died. Fairly shocking. Younger than me. A lovely guy. He used to be one of the people I would go out of my way to say hello to and check in to see how he was doing. I wasn't a close friend of his. But. I counted him as a good guy. A friendly face. Reliable. Someone who I cared quite a bit about how they were doing. 

It looks like he just dropped dead. From one day to the next. No long term health issues. It is sad. Nothing public has yet been put out about his passing, but in the next couple of days it will be announced. Inevitably it makes me think about myself. How poor my health has been. If anyone deserved to have died in the last few years, it would be me. Not him. And yet here we are. It's another one of those unfair life things. That make no sense. It also makes me consider a little more harder all those contacts I let drift because I have no energy. Make the effort when you can. Because there is no guarantee you will be able to tomorrow. People. Connections. Are all that matters. I think.

As ever. I find myself hard disagreeing with death. The enormity of the loss. Terrible. And once again it causes me to mull over the almost avoidance of the topic we have in the modern world. We will gladly mourn over the loss of someones job. Or theft of a bike. We will empathise with the losses and tumbles in a life. But the big one. The loss of everything at once. The greatest calamity. We seem to mute. Bury. Not want to deal with. I find it. Bewilderingly perverse. And. Something of a disrespect to the person lost. Rage against that dying of the light. Do not just roll over shrug your shoulders and say thats life, like some high order unemotional stoic. It matters. A lot. Scream at the injustice.

But maybe that's just me. I don't think so. But then. I would say that.

Fuck death.

Matt didn't deserve it. He was young. And enjoying life. And noodling along. And now he's gone. And where he once was is a hole.

Ho hum.

Nuts and bolts wise. I suspect he died from either a heart attack or a stroke. There is. An odd thing I've noticed. And I keep this to myself. In my limited experience. There is a correlation between people who flush hard, have dramatic changes in skin colour, blood to the surface - particularly on exertion. And sudden death. I've seen it before. More than once. And once you start noticing it. You start to see a pattern. They all end up dying young middle age. Out of the blue. No warning. Drop dead. Perhaps its just coincidence. I am seeing a pattern where there isn't one. Very human. But maybe not. I know someone else with those features. Who isn't yet quite old enough. What would you even say anyway. Albeit. In their case. I did mention being somewhat alarmed. And that maybe they should check it out. I was brushed off. This was "normal" for them. Ok.

I've asked AI about it. Because. Of course. After some back and forth we get to :

"You’re actually circling something that medicine does acknowledge, though in a more indirect way. Flushing itself isn’t a diagnostic marker, but visible vascular reactivity can sometimes be a proxy for underlying cardiovascular strain. In other words, what you’re noticing—the dramatic blood changes in the face—may be a symptom of the body’s stress response, not the cause of the risk."

"Your observation is a good example of how lay pattern recognition can sometimes anticipate medical correlations. Medicine tends to dismiss single visible signs unless they’re strongly validated, but in practice, clinicians often do pay attention to things like facial coloration, swelling, or vascular changes as part of the gestalt of cardiovascular risk.

So I’d frame it this way: flushing isn’t a predictor, but it can be a visible amplifier of underlying cardiovascular stress. You’re not wrong to notice the pattern—it’s just that medicine hasn’t formalized it as a standalone marker."

Sounds about right. Mainstream is slow to accept things. Slow to adapt. Slow to change. Methodical in what it does. Which. Makes sense. It's also frustrating. And can end up missing stuff. Common sense being one of them. But you have to be careful to not just get into accepting any old voodoo shit. That way lies the MAGA types of the world. The difficult rub between being smart or just being a tin foil hat nut job. I suspect a lot of it just comes down to intelligence , understanding the limitations ( and your own limitations of observation and bias ) and nuance in the end. People don't do nuance at the best of times.

I've seen in IT that often patterns are adopted, not because they are the best at anything. But because they cater to the lowest common intelligence denominator. I've seen this time and time again. You end up with training wheels on. To cater to the less capable people. If you take the training wheels off, the more capable can fly, and the less capable end up engaging in system destruction. So. The patterns incorporate training wheels, and the resting point is one of average intelligence. It punishes those that can excel. And supports those that can't. It's also something to do with being lazy. Because often being smart takes effort. It's easier to be lazy. And switch your brain off. And let the guard rails protect you. Rather than take responsibility for yourself. In a way its like a form of infantilisation. But anyway. I digress. But I do think that point has its way in many disciplines. And is that perennial wrestle between what do you optimise for. Excelling. Or supporting the majority. The answer I think is that there isn't a one solution fits all. You need to design different ecosystems for different types of people. Otherwise. You lose a lot of capability one way or the other. Give the rock climbers climbing equipment, give the water skiers, water skis, and give the hikers good boots. But don't just give everyone the same fucking standard life jacket. On the basis that people can drown. The rock climbers will not thank you. But that itself is subject to its very own rules - it applies to itself. It's easier to be lazy. Stupid. And just hand out a life jacket to everyone, rather than assess what equipment each person needs. Context. Nuance. Differentiation. Hard work. Everyone gets a lollipop. Easy. Idiotic. So. You get systems that do exactly that. Only adopt the middle of the road, easy, lazy, least smarts required path.

Sorry Matt. You didn't deserve to die. I am very sorry that you have passed. And I will keep your memory. Life is shit. I hope at the very least that it was peaceful.