The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
Dialysis Diaries Week 3 & 4:
So I just didn't get round to writing it last week but my machine (let's call her Clara) is still pumping away.
Not much previous week. Went to Belgium again with some friends on a sports multipitch. I led all the pitches, the first one in boots because it was blood cold for cragging at -2 (celcius).
The water retention situation is ongoing so I have begun to cut down on the water/fluid consumption. This is a bit weird. For instance two days ago I didn't drink a single cup. I was still not thirsty because I indeed had excess. Its quaint to be offered tea/water etc and having to refuse it. One really doesn't truly appreciate how much social interaction revolves around drinking things.
One thing that I am very aggressively pursuing is changing my field of work. I work as a postdoc and I am on track towards an assistant professorship. My area is mechanical engineering. But lo and behold, I want to change towards bio. Why? Well I know that my disease will be with me for the rest of my life. Fuck me if I won't try to combat it with every fibre of my being. And the only solutions I see that will make me whole are biological, ie regenerative medicine technologies that rely on expert understanding of cellular biology and methods. Well shucks, I don't have this.
So I am essentially spamming researchers in the field asking for... Anything really. I am not looking for payment, just training, which of course takes up someone's time. But I am sure this would be worth both for them and me in the long run. I have never felt this much motivation before. In any case so far I am getting mixed results. I managed to visit one lab and did some lab work. I felt as though they were treating me as a cancer kid. Which they might have been as today I got the reply that they are looking for experienced postdocs and did not gave PhD funding. Which is fair enough. Regardless, another professor elsewhere seems to be open for an internship. I will talk to him soon. I feel as though if I knock enough doors someone will say yes. If not, I'll have to take the slower approach.
Other than this my mother is being looked at to see if she can donate soon, so fingers crossed for that. I should have a clearer picture of the time line after that.
Also on the topic of donation. I think it was either here, ssc or the EA sub. Someone said they would never donate as it increases the chances of end stage renal disease. Only to someone younger than then and otherwise much fitter.
Now of course I am biased in this but I was thinking about it. And indeed if you think post donation risk of lifetime esrd being order of about 1% is unacceptable I have no logical arguments against it. Then I thought some more. Most of this risk is at a very late age. Say you are 30 now. You probably have 40 years before (low chance of) esrd. Now if we don't singularity our way to whatever you can count on a lot of technological development in 40 years, perhaps and I believe we will based on my research to date, have artificial organs by then. So having this in the calculus I think the assessment becomes more positive towards donation. Thoughts?
This would absolutely depend on the person. In a hypothetical where I could donate to my wife, I would do so unequivocally and mostly disregard relevant risks. The tradeoff is so clear and simple that it would be as easy of a choice as I could ever make. If I had children, I would say the same and it would probably be even more clear and obvious. A parent? Well, I guess I'd want to look at the life expectancy, but with our current ages (me late 30s, them about 60), I would lean towards a yes. Close friend? Probably. Distant friend? Maybe, I would surely consider it. Random person that I've never met? Nope, definitely not, I'm not interested in trading off any of my life expectancy and a significant medical procedure for someone that I don't know.
This is a good example of ways in which I am not a utilitarian.
Yes, the poster that prompted my thought had a much more "extreme" tuning curve which is why I thought they weren't considering potential medical advances in their calculus.
I also often think to myself how close would a friend need to be for me to be cool with a donation of this sort. And I am not sure myself. I would probably consider it for anyone I was already interacting strongly prior to their diagnosis. But that's because I know the disease, making me more sympathetic than I otherwise would have been.
It's actually a pretty good way of thinking about how close you really are to someone. If you're genuinely willing to give them your kidney, you're either quite altruistic or they really mean something to you. I can think of a half dozen people that I'd put just about the in same category as wife and kids above - "yes, without question, that's worth it to me, and if I lose ten years off my life, I can die happily with that choice". After that collection of deeply loved friends, I don't think I'd know until I was in that position. I'd need to do a lot more homework.
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