Tag Archives: pacemaker

Round Two

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Well I have a new Doctor now and on first blush I like her.  I actively chose to have a female DOctor because, well in truth I think they might actually give a damn more than a male one.  In my personal life the male Doctors I have had have been very much about ego.  They always seemed RUSHED when I was finally able to get an appointment to see them, and when it came down to it after months of waiting to ask questions I was treated to platitudes and what appeared to be a general lack of concern for anything other than making sure they got to the next patient appointment, like CHP officers chasing (what they sy is…) a mythical “quota” of patients per day.  YES I know this is the shape of the healthcare industry as we have painted it today but that  doesn’t mean that I have to either like it or sanction it.

Add to this that I have been working with Doctors on a project for the last year and that has given me a whole new perspective on the medical profession.  First of all, as unsettling as it might be, I I have found out that Doctors are not so much scientists as artists. I learned that there is NO standardized national testing to sanction a Doctor to practice medicine and, as such, you really SHOULD pay attention to what school your Doctor graduated from as it really makes a difference.

Another thing I have discovered is that, in my recent experience, young male Doctors have a tendency to style themselves after Jon Hamm in Mad Men rather than as Marcus Welby. Young female Doctors, on the other hand, perceive that they are still fighting an uphill battle (which, sadly in the 21st century, they still are) and as such the ones I have encountered are more professional and more dedicated.

With that sort of knowledge in hand can there be any doubt as to what decisions I might make.

In my first meeting with my new Doctor we did something that I have not had any Doctor do since the advent of HMOs…we went over our time getting to know each other. In the end I left with one mild prescription to help me breathe better and two referrals to other doctors.  One actually is to Check my Pacemaker, which is a good thing as Max need to be kept better tabs on.  That one is today and requires a trip out of town to San Rafael.  Tomorrow I meet with a cardiologist to discuss my fears about things that have been going on with my breathing and my heart.  I am afraid that I have gotten in such bad shape that I am on my way to being one of those sad guys who has an oxygen bottle.  Between you and me I am not sure I could handle that.

Quantifying my health

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….and this is Mr & Mrs Consumer electronic device, they just bought the house down the street.

OK so I have ascertained that I have been depressed because of sleep deprivation.  I have been sleep deprived because I have been stressed. I have been stressed because I have not been able to sleep.

Are you keeping up?

Over the years I have always loved toys…all you have to do is look at my studio which looks like a Ghetto Mission control to understand that. That led me to buying all sorts of fitness gadgets to “qualify” my health.  I haven’t been using them of late, like most people don’t use the health related toys (how many treadmills have you seen used as towel racks after all?).  But it occured to me that one of them, my fitbit, might help me get a handle on my sleep problems.  See a Fitbit can track your sleep. I figure that if I start changing my habits and as I do I track my sleep it will tell me what is working and what is not.

Additionally I added a bunch of friends to my list of fitbit pals and that adds something else, motivation.  Nobody gets as obsessed with cars and racing as I am without a healthy dose of competitive spirit.

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…not the kind of cuff I usually like to use.

Finally, since I have been angsting about my heart and such I figured it was time to blow the dust off my blood pressure cuff.  I got this little gem when I was at Totally Games and fighting high blood pressure.  Considering I have had little energy of late I was more worried about LOW blood pressure, which could be a signal that my Pacemaker (Max) was letting me down.  A quick set of batteries and a quick check and if anything my BP was A LITTLE high, but not bad.

Last night was my first night checking my sleep cycle.  I cut off coffee and tea by mid afternoon, drank a lot of water, avoided the evening cocktail (difficult as I have a nice bottle of Bombay) and was able to fall asleep without any sort of aid.  Didn’t do much good, I only slept 5 hours, but at least now I KNOW THAT.

The Soup: Take Two Ricky Recardos and call me in the morning

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First of all, I see we have a couple new subscribers.  Welcome, please feel free to comment.  In fact I am going to put in place a policy that if you do not comment you do not get to subscribe, just ‘cuz…

I have heard it all about  ”old habits die hard” and the like and never really had cause to question it until of late.  I have been timid about physical activity ever since I got my “Engineer” (pacemaker) MAX installed, so much so that I am probably in the worst shape of my life just as things are turning around.  As the WETFALIA starts to come together and I can actually start doing the stuff I want to do with it (Camping, mobile astronomy etc) all of which involve hiking I am huffing and puffing.  That includes at times you LEAST want to seem uncool.

To undo this I bought myself a new FITBIT pedometer and started walking. As the mileage went up I have started to feel better.  When I felt better I started going out with artist pals again to be with people, talk about work away from the studio.  Usually this involves beer, which I haven’t participated in for awhile.  See I had a problem with hooch, or rather have, and bad habits tend to be like Boomerangs.  You toss them and eventually they come back, if you have had too much to drink they might come back with unfortunate results.  The past couple of days at work have been pretty stressful.  Politics, deadlines, missing artists and the omnipresent search for new clients for the rue base of a potent gumbo guaranteed to take the paint off your stomach lining.Like a good ‘Merican when given the choice of going to the gym or knocking back a couple I surrendered to the one most familiar to FOX NEWS viewers (the lowest common denominator.

Over the years I have developed an almost unhealthy level of detachment.  This is bad if you are trying to have any sort of relationship but great f you want to take a step back and assess the situation.  I can do this up to an even when I am under the influence of “demon rum” (believe it or not) and since I am familiar with the environment that comes with living in this skin here is my personal environmental impact report.

• When I exercise regularly I am still short of breath, but nowhere near as much as when I have gotten into the roller coaster ride of liquid self medicating. I can also tell that, day by day, I am getting better.  The scale tell mes the same thing, albeit not as easily as it has in the past.

• When I exercise I have more energy, if I take a drink my knees turn to jello and al I want to do is watch ONDEMAND

• When I exercise I sleep longer, deeper and get more rest.  When I have a few drinks I wake up in the dead of night, have to pee and cannot drink enough of any sort of anything to slake my thirst.  I also wake up sweatier which means my sleep apnea is worse. I have witnesses to this as I rolled over on my phone the night and “sleep dialed” my friend Jennifer at Midnight.  She thought a snuffalupagus was making crank calls.

So these are just observations and I make no shattering “resolutions” about how I am GOING TO CHANGE TODAY.  The quickest way to guarantee you WON’T do something is to tell the world you will.  I will just say that the Universe sent me a message and it HAS BEEN RECEIVED…

 

Ahll ees vell…

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Just a quick note after yesterday’s post.  I saw the Tech yesterday about my Pacemaker and we spoke at length about how MAX was set “wrong” for 15 months.  She was surprisingly open and honest and it turned into more of a puzzling session trying to figure out how the settings related to my heart and mind in general, the physical reactions they caused. In the end I was told that all the signs that I was reporting to her that day were indications that my heart is settling in and getting acquainted with the device, and the the process is going well. She was able to lower the intensity of the pulses, which are initially set high because of the healing process that accompanies the body getting use to bionic assistance. Practical upshot is that it went great, I found out what I needed to know and the technician was open and helpful.

What WASN’T open and helpful was the weather, which turned chilly on me and the ride south to San Francisco was a real weenie shrinker.  Additionally I hadn’t slept really well the night before, I never do in my old house for obvious reasons, so I had to simply concentrate harder on traffic.  When I crossed the Golden Gate though things changed.  The sky turned blue just South of the Toll Plaza and when I stopped at Land’s end to stretch it was another spectacular coastal day.  Additionally the Great Highway was open again (it was closed Sunday for a run) and so it was visor up, headphones in and life was good.

In fact that is pretty much how I feel these days, life is good for the most part.  I mean, sure I need to expand the income base of the studio and I do get lonely at times but things are improving.  My health is getting better, albeit I am working on that everyday, and my focus is finally returning.

OK so I am off to VICTORY LANE for the day, tomorrow I start on the MAY issue of THE WHEEL and file my tax extension.  Friday I head North again and Sunday is open, as I always leave it unless there is an event.

Sorry this was not a clever post put I do have to fulfill my “Pinkwater commitment” no matter what. Keep the shiny side down!

Epic Doctor Fail changes my thoughts on gaming

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I have a pacemaker, his name is Max. I got him when I was working at Critical Mass Interactive in Austin Texas. NO, it was not part of an employee incentive plan, rather it was the end result of years of stressing out while I was helping create a new industry, commuting hundreds of miles a day to earn more money than I needed and generally trying to do what my parents taught me was the right thing. Turns out out it wasn’t the right MODEL for me, or any of us now in the world we live in, but I will talk about that more later.
So I was laying in my private hospital bed with plastic paddles glued to my skin attached to a defibrillator that Nurses could trigger from the other end of the hall in case my heart stopped. They said they didn’t need to be there but they were a PRECAUTION. I saw them as a precaution in the same way a bulletproof vest is a precaution you take even if the guy you are chasing has Teflon coated armor piercing rounds.
At the time all this happened I was deeply in love with a woman who lived in New York. I had met her initially playing WORLD OF WARCRAFT, as odd as that might have seem. My marriage in California had hit the rock and was going down at the bow. I had gone to Texas for the promise of a well paying job as an Art Director for a subcontractor of Disney. The problem was that while I was in Transit the economy had gone tits up and when I landed in Austin there was no work, no money and no place to live. Everything I needed was either in transit or in my backpack. My son, Nicholas, the center of my life, was living with his Mom back home in California. My girl friend was in New York. I was in Austin, alone, in a dark room with a bad heart.
Because of my condition Austin Heart regularly sent in cardiologists to check on me. The attending this night was a Woman Cardiologist originally form Indian who had a comforting voice and the most intense dark eyes. Around Midnight she came into my room, checked my pulse and reset the “machine-that-goes-ping” and made some notes on my chart. While she was reading my information she stopped and her gaze swiveled my way like a Praying Mantis.

…

“It says here that you work in the computer games industry” she said matter of factly.

…

After 25 years in the industry I was used to people making comment on my profession, especially if they know that I used to work at Lucasfilm. Even in a jaded world such as ours if you have touched the magic of that place people want to know. I nodded shyly, I don’t usually like to talk about my work because even though I am proud of what I have done my father was an old “Brown shoe air force” sergeant and he taught me not to brag.

…
“How can you live with yourself considering what you are doing to the minds of the children of the world?” she said in a monotone.

…

I was floored. Drugged as I was I still tried to say that whereas the industry isn’t perfect it isn’t that bad and that as a working professional I had to admit that I also had concerns about the direction it took at times. She was unswayed and it was obvious. She went about her task as if I wasn’t there and left me in the dark.

I left the games industry for awhile because I had concerns about the direction it was going. After the on set of the first person shooter it all became formulaic and disturbing. In Austin I was getting back into the industry, an industry that has changed. I still had my doubts but at the same time I saw reason for hope. I did in Austin and, a year later in the Silicon Valley, I see even more reasons.

The hope comes in the shape of a generation of gamers who have grown up in a world where the work that we, my colleagues and myself who were there at the beginning,  had found so exotic is now ubiquitous. The initial models of interactivity we labored long and hard to construct are now woven into the very fabric of their being. Along with them come a new generation of designers who don’t just see games as an electronic babysitter their parents used on them, a view my Doctor friend I am sure shared. Rather these new gamers see a new tool for social interactivity and to help human being deal with the world in new ways, ways that those who have gone before us could not have even imagined.  A new medium that not only entertains but also helps us to better understand and define what it is to be human.

In that dark hospital room I had sputtered about my industry in the face of a critical eye. I wish I hadn’t. The truth is there was nothing for me to sputter about, rather there was a gap in understanding that needed to be filled.

I’m going to try and find that Doctor and engage her more deeply about this, maybe I will be able to and maybe I won’t, but there is some thing my Dad used to tell me that I will say to her here.

“Make sure your brain is going full RPM before you put your mouth in gear.”
By that I mean make sure you have all the facts before you pass judgement.

So how DO I live with myself these days, I do just fine thank you.  Also YOU should REALLY work on your bedside manner!