The Case of the Body Snatchers

Did the title catch your attention?  Of course, it did. The genre of "body snatcher" movies was fodder to a number of Hollywood movie productions from low budget adaptations of one or two popular science fiction novels that go back to the '50s to one or two that actually had named stars with starring roles in them, including Nicole Kidman in one and David Sutherland, etc. in others.

However, the fascination with body snatchers were not just limited to the genre of science fiction but from fantasy platforms including those that were a mix of horror and ultra religious themes that would include "The Exorcist" from a best seller written by William Peter Blatty.

Sorry to disappoint some of you but this will not be about that kind of body snatchers.  It is about the "real thing".  Body snatchers are not only all around us, they are in us.  Hyperbole aside, they made us. 

Whatever  the reader's belief system dictates, whether it is from pure naturalism or faith in the  power of a Creator, this musing is about the wonders of the unseen that makes life possible and the survival of  all living organisms in this planet. It could also be our ultimate protection. H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" drove home that point (spoiler alert for those who are not familiar with the book or movie) towards the end.  The exoplanetary invaders were in the process of extinguishing all of humanity with their superior technological weapons and invincible spacecraft only to succumb to the tiniest, invisible inhabitants of the earth - microbes. The invaders were felled by germs!! The space aliens did not have immunity to bacteria and viruses. One by one, each of them perished from infection.

Fictional accounts and runaway imaginations of many sci-fi authors aside, the idea of body snatchers in our midst - in our innards and all over our entire bodies - that protect and insure our survival is very real. Read below a direct quote from a scientific paper:

"Microbes occupy all of our body surfaces, including the skin, gut, and mucous membranes. In fact, our bodies contain at least 10 times more bacterial cells than human ones, blurring the line between where microbes end and humans begin. Microbes in the human gastrointestinal tract alone comprise at least 10 trillion organisms, representing more than 1,000 species, which are thought to prevent the gut from being colonized by disease-causing organisms. Among their other beneficial roles, microbes synthesize vitamins, break down food into absorbable nutrients, and stimulate our immune systems".

"There is a close connection between microbes and humans. Experts believe about half of all human DNA originated from viruses that infected and embedded their nucleic acid in our ancestors’ egg and sperm cells".

The above two paragraphs explain completely but concisely the compelling dependence of macro organisms to the smallest microbes that are in us and all around the environment in which we live.  The truth of the matter is that microbes preceded us by many millions of years.  Other estimates claim that single celled organisms may date back to as early as 2 billion years ago before we became us.  Those dates don't matter very much because even plant life was here long before the first vertebrate animals and early mammals and hominids that came much later.

Time in this case was on the side of allowing myriad opportunities for organisms, especially those that developed into the more complex ones which would include us, so that today we benefit from how our bodies were able to adapt and actually utilize many microbial agents into helping our physiology to defend against the more harmful of these invading organisms. Today we use vaccines that work because the introduction of weakened microorganisms help train our antibodies into recognizing and eliminating the bad infectious actors. The accidental, albeit serendipitous discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of penicillin - the golden wonder of antibiotics - came about when mold that is ordinarily harmful to us, became a bacterial nemesis that we rely on to this day.  It saved millions of lives and averted all kinds of infections when it was needed the most - during and immediately after WWII.

However, these wonders give problems to those rare individuals who are either allergic to certain microbial medications, such as penicillin or toxins produced by other microbes. I am one of those. Many, many years ago while a freshman in college I had tonsillitis  that warranted antibiotics.  As an out patient, I stopped by the university hospital on my way to ROTC that afternoon.  It was awkward having to get the shot on my behind and taking down the bottom of my uniform.  Immediately, although unbeknownst to me, embarrassment that a female nurse had to give me the shot, witnessed by a  female student nurse, was the least of my problems that early afternoon.  I made it to the lobby on my way to ROTC class and that was the last I remembered until three days later.  I was in a coma from severe reaction to penicillin.  It was anaphylactic shock, a sudden drop in blood pressure made me collapse on the lobby floor. 

That was very rare but indeed microbes can cause us harm.  But for every microbe that can hurt us there are many in our system, inside our bodies, permanent residents in our gut, that are beneficial.  And often we and the micro-colonists benefit mutually from living together.

From the moment of our conception, all throughout the nine months or so of our existence in the womb, microbes of innumerable varieties were already in us.  Our early immune systems were provided for us by our mothers.

"From the moment we are born, microbes begin to colonize our bodies. Each of us has a unique set of microbial communities, which are believed to play an important role in digestion and in protection from disease".

"And though some microbes make us sick and even kill us, in the long run they have a shared interest in our survival. For these tiny invaders, a dead host is a dead end".

In other words our bodies are composed of teeming colonies.  The colonizers are microbes that not only preceded our coming into being but have in fact played a role in our ultimate survival and development. Perhaps these microbes, as we speak, are shaping the future of humanity and other species.  There is no doubt they were there to influence our historical past.

It seems then that the microbe's preeminent status in the bio-world is due to the fact that they were here first and their superior ability to adapt gives them the most advantage.  While humans produce a new generation every twenty to twenty five years, bacteria create a generation every twenty or thirty minutes. That is a critical trait that bacteria sooner or later develop immunity when antibiotics are misused by us.  Packets or colonies of bacteria that survived when the prescribed dosage of antibiotics are not completely taken by the patient will develop immunity to that particular medication. 

Viruses are, of course, impervious to antibiotics because technically they are not "live" organisms. "Viruses are simply packets of nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA, surrounded by a protein shell.." They merely hijack our own cells to make exact copies of themselves. Our cells die in the process while the virus clone will go on to do the same thing over and over again with other cells.  Why then do viruses kill the very host that propagated them? Viruses outside can lay dormant and may survive for periods of time, long enough for a nearby host to come in contact with them.  What a clever if not  a sinister method of adaptation.  That is what makes COVID 19 a really bad snatcher of life for the most vulnerable among us.

A vaccine, however, is like a platoon of special forces, the Green Berets in our bodies that go out to train the native cells to recognize potential invaders and annihilate them with anti-body assassins and booby traps.  The much lauded and oftentimes more effective natural immunity stems from having survived an assault by the virus that left a great number of our antibodies prepared and able to recognize the invaders and preemptively "killing" them before taking a foothold in and among our cells. It's a violent world in there. 

The long and short stories of it all is that tiny microbes outnumber all the living cells in our body by a  huge margin. Of course, that is in number only because where size is concerned, our cells are way far larger and heavier.  There may  be an equal number of bacteria as there are cells in our body but the microbes only weigh less than half a pound in a typical 150 pound man.

In the total analysis, microbes of bacteria and viruses may outnumber the cells in our body but they can never outnumber the trillions and trillions of neurons and the number of synapses the neurons are capable of connecting in the human brain. It is the intelligence of the host organism that makes it possible for humans to not only understand the complexity of the invisible colonists but the ability to find ways to keep the balance undisturbed and find means to alleviate the situation when one side is about to upset the entire apple cart.

We must accept that we are forever hitched to the symbiosis between our body and the body snatchers. Our existence and survival depend on the balance that demands total equilibrium between us and them - the real body snatchers.  The real heroes are our system of antibodies that obviously have retentive, cellular photographic memories of the invaders that once encountered are never forgotten throughout our lifetime.

Y'all Be safe, be well, stay healthy and be always grateful. 

Free Will - A Bargain, or Way Overpriced?

 A philosophy professor stopped a young man on the street and asked, "Young man, do you believe in free will and do you live by it?"

"Yes, I do", replied the young man.

"Prove it."  The professor ordered the young man, sternly.

The young man put down his gym bag, undid his shoelaces and re​-​tied them again. "There, ​it was out of  free will that I did what I just did and will do again if I want to. Happy?"

The professor, touching his chin, stroking his goatee, said, "What you did was prompted by my asking you a question. In other words, I pre-determined that you were going to do something when I asked you a question.  Would you have done that if I didn't? Causation, young man precedes everything we do or why events occur. Something before anything determines what comes next. Free will is an illusion! Determinism is real".

At which point the young man punched the professor on the chin, knocking him down. Lying on his back on the pavement, shocked and confused, the professor asked his assailant, "What made you do that? You'll go to prison and I'll make sure you'll never find employment anywhere". 

The young man, nonchalantly declared, "I am neither criminally nor morally responsible. You predetermined my action. According to what you just said, causation preceded my action. Determinism is real, my free will was an illusion!  You said so yourself".

First of all, that was just a story I made up and I am not espousing  violence to drive a point. It merely exemplified, outrageously if not utterly badly, this huge debate that had gone on since the first time man started to reason. Since Adam and Eve, since Cain and Abel, if you will. Philosophers and neuro-scientists argue about it, theologians and atheists yell at each other, ordinary people discuss it over dinner or drinks, even physicists and mathematicians spend time dissecting it. I bet you are  debating this in your head right now. Books, symposiums, YouTube, TED Talk have all but exhausted the subject.  But it is still going on.

So, which is it? I've thought about it, as you have just now.  Either free will is real, or an illusion as the professor insisted.  But that can't be right, you say.

Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be", was about Hamlet's contemplation of life and death, the decision to end it all or choose life over death or whether to leave it to what fate awaits the undecided. And then it gets convoluted.  

Let's take a look.

(a) Pre-destination and free will are indistinguishable, even interchangeable, from and with each other.

(b) Pre-destination and Free Will are mutually exclusive.  It is either our lives have all been pre-determined from inception to the very end or that our free will shapes everything we do or how we will become. The future is a giant toss up. 

(c) We depend on a mixture of both. For example, a few of the thousands of high school graduates, bright and in excellent physical shape,  are chosen each year to enter the U.S. Military Academies.  Those chosen accepted to do it, and we make an assumption that it was out of their free will. However, once in and after graduation, their lives and career are predetermined for military service for at least six years or longer.  Other high school graduates who choose med school are predetermined towards the Hippocratic oath, and countless others make different choices, etc.

(d) Determinism works in the macro world while free will operates in the micro arena. Example?  The fate of a nation or empire or the trajectory of a society at some point of their development  could end up being predetermined in the large or macro scale. At the micro level of the individual, does one have free will?  Even in a totalitarian state?

Now, you may think, and you're convinced you are allowed to do so, all of the above are hogwash, none of them even makes sense to you, and you say you have the free will to think so and that's it.  Bravo!  Congratulations, you were free to think and so you did.  You're done thinking about it.  You've forgotten about it already.

Honestly now, have you?  Really?  Was the professor right?

Now, you're ready to consider even more free wheeling thoughts.

Is the child born in  middle-class America today predetermined to be many levels better off than the one born in the impoverished neighborhood of Bangladesh, or Tondo in Manila? Is the kid at an English suburb outside of London predetermined to have a better life than the one on the plains of Serengeti, Tanzania, who may never know what a soccer ball is? These kids' fates have been predetermined at birth. 

If you are reading this from your desk top, or laptop or on your phone, whiling away the moments, you belong to just a fraction of the world's population to be able to do so.  There are more people around the globe who are oblivious to even just a fraction of what has been predetermined you will have from the moment you were born.

Think about it. In today's climate of pandemic and other world crisis, we are forced to consider a host of so many things that bombard us daily. You made a decision to get vaccinated, you followed all the rules to keep you and your neighbors safe, there are talks of mandates to do this, to have that, so many it is a plague rather worse than what a plague is really like. On the other hand, the child in a family in the interior of Brazil's rainforest, one of a few villages still undiscovered or isolated from the rest of the world, is oblivious to wearing a mask inside and outside of classrooms as children do in some if not all modern societies, today. Can we still be talking about a better predetermined life of one over the other?  

I think I have enough questions now to cause you to think.  Causation is real, while free will is an illusion?  

Enjoy your day!

Meanwhile, ponder this ..

Anatomy of a Panic Attack .. Your Brain Can't Explain it Either

 

"Panic attacks cause extreme anxiety or fear that lasts a few minutes or as long as an hour or more; the average panic attack lasts 20 to 30 minutes.

These sensations often come on unexpectedly, without an identified cause, though they can also develop in response to certain triggers. In general, a panic attack is not life-threatening, but experts suggest people who regularly experience them learn coping mechanisms and avoid triggers. For an episode to medically qualify as a panic attack, an individual must experience at least four of the numerous physical symptoms the event can produce."

                                           ---FACTY HEALTH, Updated Jan. 18, 2021

I will get back to the above definition in a minute.

September 3, just a little over two weeks ago, was an ordinary day. If there was anything extraordinary at all, it was that my mind was preoccupied with whether to engage the services of a pool maintenance guy to remove and replace a motor pump that was squealing, loud enough for one kindly neighbor to ask  if we had a malfunctioning equipment in our backyard.  I knew it was the  motor because I already ordered a new one which had arrived the day before and I had every intention to do it myself. Not for saving money but because it's a project, just another DIY challenge, a day's time in a retiree's "busy" schedule.  And I've done it before, a while back - meaning at least a decade ago.

Meanwhile that morning I decided to clear some weedy vines away from a sago palm and flowering plants around it. I was reaching up with my right hand when one over protective wasp - a yellow jacket - took issue with my intrusion. It stung me on the arm just below my shoulder. 

For some folks it is just painful. It was my fourth time and pain was the least of my worry. I'm super allergic to wasp venom that I have a prescription epi-pen at home at all times because a few years ago my face puffed up like a Michelin dough boy when on a second episode I was stung on the forehead. The third time, at 6:00 a.m. one morning a nest-building wasp that took exception to my early foray outside our own garage stung me on the back through my shirt.  I drove myself to emergency when I realized the epi-pen I injected myself with was past its expiration date. But I survived.

This fourth time I decided not to use  the epi-pen and went to emergency instead. Apparently there were many others ahead of me with far more serious emergencies that I had to wait for at least two hours. I left and went to my doctor's clinic. He was on vacation and I was a walk-in patient who obviously looked fine to the nurse who told me to wait. After an hour and a half of waiting I left, now believing I was probably okay except for the pink blister that was spreading from the original red pin prick.  It became itchy but I was relieved that that was all it was. No anaphylactic shock for the epi-pen to be unleashed.

I felt fine the rest of the day and afternoon.  After dinner we were watching the U.S. Tennis Open on TV. It was an exciting match but the young player we were rooting for was behind. She was trailing and losing momentum. Then I felt my heartbeat racing and I felt uneasy. I went to check my blood pressure with our home machine.  It was 204/101, my heart rate was 100!  

For the first time ever in my entire life I dialed 911. The first truck with two EMT personnel arrived in four minutes.  A second team of three came shortly thereafter.  They confirmed the elevated vitals - 197/98, HR 95.  They hooked me up to a portable EKG machine and kept my blood pressure readings monitored minute by minute.  To my relief they declared I did not have a heart attack, I did not have a stroke either. My speech was normal, my vision was OK, they told me as I was talking to them the whole time, and short of saying there was nothing wrong with me they did not recommend to take me to the hospital because at that point my vitals returned to normal. The lead EMT told me that it was not likely that my symptoms were from the wasp venom. They typically see in emergency calls that reactions are immediate and had not seen any kind of delayed onset of symptoms, specially after twelve hours. After thirty minutes since they arrived, they left.  But not before I told them that, just out of senseless bravado as if to bolster for my benefit or to simply re-assure them that I was not having a heart attack or stroke, that I swim 1000 meters, non-stop in 24 minutes at the gym. My way of whistling something away.  I can't help it.  Or was I exhibiting denial where it was not asked or required.  Unimpressed, their parting words were, "Just call us if it happens again".

A couple of days later I did remove and replace the new motor. DIY done!

September 14, approximately midnight, I woke up to go to the bathroom. Before going back to bed, after gurgling some water, I noticed blood on my saliva on the sink after spitting. I swished some water in my mouth and the blood was no longer present in my subsequent spit.  At almost that precise moment I felt my heart rate racing again like the last episode. I went to the kitchen to check my blood pressure.  Sure enough it was 169/107, HR 106. The time was 12:40 a.m. I had chills, some tingling in my arms and legs, and I felt light headed.  With the house phone in my hand I went to unlock the front door in case I had to dial 911. I sat down on the sofa to check my blood pressure a few more times. At 12:56 it was 191/102, HR 97.  

With hands trembling I did a Google search on my phone and typed, "elevated blood pressure, heart rate racing, chills and perspiring". 

I read they were four of ten symptoms of a Panic attack!  What?!  

¿Que me entre el pánico? A Spanish caballero might say; or if it were from the nonchalant Frenchman, in two words, "Moi paniquer?

I'm the cool and collected guy, unfazed under fire, I had no fear during job interviews and I had my share of numerous presentations to small and large groups of colleagues and department heads.  I was never bothered by nerves and not once panicked. Once, an orthopedic doctor had to insert a 2-inch long pin through my fractured right thumb (woodworking accident, who hasn't).  I asked if I can watch while he was doing it. He obliged and had a video  monitor set up so I can see what was going on as I was lying down on the operating table. I watched from the time the pin was at its full length to the moment it was way deeply into my thumb, no longer visible. When he took it off three months later, I was sitting down in his office when he took it out with only local anesthesia using an instrument that if it were at my workshop it would have looked like one of my long-nose pliers. I watched the whole time.  So, panic attack? No!  Remember, I drove myself to emergency three times before. Root canal and tooth implants (had a share of them) didn't trigger panic either. "Moi paniquer?

By 1:30 a.m. my blood pressure was 140/92. HR 69. By 6:00 a.m. it was 126/84, HR 62.  My resting heart rate is typically under 60.

In other words, just like that, everything went normal again. No ill effects whatsoever.  So, what about the blood in my spit.  I completely forgot but recalled only later that the night before while eating corn chips I had one with a sharp corner pierce the roof of my mouth as I bit down. Don't deny it, it happened to you too, hasn't it? I felt the pain but ignored it.  The blood that early morning was from that little puncture that must have coagulated and disturbed that early morning by the gurgled water in my mouth.  In fact, I was able to feel with my tongue where the wound was.

Now back to the first two paragraphs above.  Yes, more reading and I am now convinced I did experience two panic attacks. Often, I read, that people on average may experience two episodes of panic attacks in their lifetime under ordinary circumstances.  Often out of the blue, so to speak. Soldiers in combat and first responders under stress experience the same symptoms every time as integral to the body's fight or flight response along with sudden surge of adrenalin.

Apparently, for ordinary people under seemingly ordinary conditions, the panic attack can be triggered for no apparent reason. It is as if the brain acts autonomously though not consciously apparent to the person. Was it subconsciously on my part triggered first by the motor I was worrying about, re-installing it on my own, then followed by the wasp sting and my exasperation with the waiting I did at two clinics?  Was it the blood on the sink that was the culprit the second time around?  

I can't explain it.  Was it my brain acting on its own?  Below is the list of symptoms of panic attack.

1.) Hyperventilation 2.) Dizziness 3.) Tunnel Vision 4.) Chest Pain 5.) Nausea 6.) Hot and Cold Flashes 7.) Sweating 8.) Paresthesia (tingling sensation)  9.) Fight or Flight Response 10.) De-realization

(4.) Chest pain is often mistaken for a heart attack

8.) Paresthesia is a distorted perception or dissociation from the external world or what is going on presently.  There is also a prickling sensation of the skin.

(9.) Fight or flight response is what causes increased heart rate and blood pressure, together with adrenalin, which causes some people to possess more than usual strength or speed, albeit temporarily.

Fear of dying is often felt in a surreal way. I prayed while it was happening during that second episode but I did not wake my wife. I was deeply concerned for her - this is the part where feeling like or fear of dying is also a symptom - that if I were to go before her, she may not cope well.

So, should we be worried?  I meant for this to be a cautionary message to the reader because for some, one or two panic attacks may cause a debilitating effect that can cascade into a lifetime of concern or worry about future onsets.  The worry for future panic attacks has become the trigger instead of only from rare circumstances that normally precede it. Until I had experienced it and read about it, I had no clue what a panic attack is.

That is not to say that we ignore real symptoms of the more serious ailments like a heart attack or stroke.  That is also to say that predisposition to or prior indicators of heart and blood pressure conditions should never be ignored.  It is merely to be mindful that panic can be useful if managed properly.  The extreme opposite of panic response can of course be bad.  Total nonchalance or extreme absence of personal concern or a sustained lack of worry or reasonable apprehension can be just as bad or worse than panic.

Or, if we can, take the edge off a bit with:

My friend Jose suffers from panic attacks. He was recently involved in a car accident.

I don't wanna sound racist, but His panic attacks are getting worse.

I had to give up using the work carpool as I got panic attacks every time we drove through a tunnel.

I have carpool tunnel syndrome.

Y'all take care! Be well, Be good, and don't let the wasps near you!!

The Incredible Number of Miracles to Make You YOU

YOU may have at one time or another referred to someone you regard highly as one in a million. Perhaps, you may also have  ascribed such a state of uniqueness to yourself - setting aside for just one moment your personal outlook of humility.  However, such hubris is actually selling yourself short because you and everyone else for that matter is really one in 70 trillion.  Considering that today's world population is just over 7 billion, it would take ten thousand times the number of people today before the likelihood that there is another one exactly like you.  In other words it is an outright impossibility.  YOU are YOU, and only YOU, and there could never be another one like YOU.

It might seem melodramatic to think in those terms but someone actually did the math. I just finished reading Sean B. Carroll's book, "A Series of Fortunate Events".  In it the author prefaced with what we are already familiar with.  It is that we inherit half of our chromosomes from Mom and Dad, as  they did from their own parents, ad infinitum backwards in time, if you will. We can surmise all the way to when the first chain of cell divisions occurred when life begun but we will not go that far. 

We will skip the detailed processes of how 23 chromosomes from each of our parents combine and recombine.  We will not go through the math either but suffice it to say, if I may condense the thought processes behind the calculation, that since the "number of possible combinations of 23 chromosomes" from one parent to you is 8,388,608 and another 8,388,608 from the other, then 8,388,608 X 8,388,608 = 70,368,744,177,664 "different babies" as potentially probable outcomes. And the odds would be the same even among twins and children from multiple births (triplets, etc.).

As phenomenally mind boggling those numbers are, there is something a lot more incredible.  The conception of you and the path that it took the microorganism from whence you started to its survival in the womb for roughly nine months up to the moment of birth and henceforth from then to where you are now, was and still is fraught with all kinds of danger and assault from untold conditions from within, from outside, from other organisms, even from your own cells, or from any kind of imbalances in your physiological system.  Even as you read this the assault on your system is constantly being waged between your body's defenses and the "bad" elements - living and inanimate - from everywhere to cause harm to your existence. 

Long before we even consider the combination and recombination of the chromosomes from our parents, the path to their pairing is comparable to an epic journey. 

Epic indeed if we consider that in human scale the journey would be comparable to a horde of up to 150 million swimmers crossing the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York.  Only a few thousand will survive the crossing to possibly get a glimpse of the tip of the Statue of Liberty's torch from over the horizon. All will perish before reaching the U.S. international territorial waters except for maybe a hundred or so that will make it to the New York Harbor. Out of these ultra-Olympic-caliber swimmers, only one will be allowed to touch land and entry into Manhattan.  At that precise moment all the rest of the swimmers will be left to tread water where their journey ends into oblivion.  Only one "lucky" swimmer survived.

You might think that is a harsh melodrama but that is actually putting it lightly.  The survival and successful entry of that lone swimmer is by all definition a miracle.  And it doesn't end there because the next nine months will be just as unforgiving for the new organism before it can immerge to meet more challenges. Let us not forget that on the first day of the nine months  a mere molecule was created viewable only through a microscope. 

Even more miraculous is the fact that in that molecule was contained the entire information, the complete blueprint, needed to fashion that organism into a unique individual that is YOU. A one in 70 trillion miracle.

Everyone who is born to take that first gasp of outside air has already gone through the first set of hurdles for nine months that were no less challenging or unforgiving compared to what awaited you to make it through your first helpless year.  You will remain dependently helpless except for the loving care of a mother and from everyone around to help bring you up. Each year that you make it through, birthday after birthday, to where you are today, whether you are seventeen, twenty one, forty seven or seventy, was and still is a yearly miracle.

Your development from a mere fertilized egg, the efforts it took to make it through the Fallopian tube to find a safe haven at a tiny spot along the wall of your mother's uterus was itself a Herculean task. That fertilized egg was unaided and on its own with nothing but a seemingly unconscious will to survive every moment, helped by nothing more than what was printed out of a microscopic parchment co-written by the combined efforts of 46 nearly invisible chromosomes.

Today, whatever your age is, you got up this morning oblivious to what your body's defenses must put up with to ward off every threat from all kinds of bad elements that enter your body with every gulp of air you take, or through countless points through your skin, your eyes and ears, and at every morsel of food or drink you consume.

The struggle continues. Living, or to be alive is a daily calendar of warfare between your body's defenses against anything and everything that will cause you to be ill or suffering, or worse. Worse is when some of these bad actors cause your own cells to stage a coup d'état against your other cells - a self inflicting treason that is cancer.

However, the miracle continues. From the moment you were made YOU, to the moment you woke up this morning, the number of miracles seem endless and enduring.

I mentioned reading Sean B. Carroll's book. He is not to be mistaken for the other Sean Carroll (sans the middle initial), a theoretical physicist, who is also a prolific author and science lecturer. After reading Sean B's book I do have one slight although profound disagreement with his premise.  He believes that the making of you and all living things are merely fortunate events and product of pure chance.  That lone swimmer that made it to fertilize the egg, the survival of the egg, its growth and ultimately its birth and growth to become you were all from random assignments of luck and happenstance.

I believe otherwise. Firmly. Look around you.  Does it look like everything you see came about by chance.  Obviously, or so it seems, you will find many examples of randomness all over.  Now, ask yourself, "Are they really?" That will be for another musing. I think.

I leave you with something about whether life is particularly unique only to this part of the world or is the universe teeming with life of diverse make up and origin?  That will be for another mental provocation.

 Meanwhile, below is a quote from a scientist on SETI - the well funded organization that translates to "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

"Despite all our technological advancements and scientific prowess, we haven't yet found any evidence of life beyond Earth, let alone signs of advanced extra-terrestrial civilizations resembling our own, human breed of intelligent life".

Do you feel lucky or were you a result of an incredible number of miracles?

I am Your Digestive System

Dear You (and You and Anyone who might benefit from reading this),

I am your gut. In your language I can be a noun for the most part, but you've also morphed me into an adjective, a verb, and dare I say, a transitive verb. If the language is in German, that is.

I am writing to acknowledge your compliance for having gone through one of the, if not the most, least liked medical procedure that is yet the most painless of anything you had ever gone through. In fact, you don't even have a memory of the actual procedure itself, do you?  Anyway, thank you for going through it. I am relieved and I must say that although most anyone would rather not talk about it, it is worth going through it.

So, I will do the talking instead. Later, below, we will look at the bad news/good news around the subject.

The truly pragmatic of any of you will say that I am nothing more than a food processor.  I am that, yes.  But unlike any inanimate kitchen appliance that can remain inactive, even unplugged for days and weeks, even months at a time, without having to process anything, I require to be fed and quenched everyday.  You can skip a meal for a day, as you just did for the recent procedure, but you know to never miss a drink. And drink here refers to water.  I know from time to time you'd rather have something other than plain water.  In moderation, you will not likely get any complaints from me. Overdo it and I show my displeasure in many ways that can only be described as regretful.  On your part. For me, I take some, I lose some.  

You've known this drill since you turned 50. Remember when the company you worked for still had a medical department that occupied the entire 7th floor of the 27-floor edifice on Louisiana Avenue?  It had a full medical staff of one chief medical doctor, nurses and full time clerks, a reasonably well equipped medical clinic. Part of what the department did was conduct physical exam for new job applicants while the other part was focused on yearly physical for employees 40-50 years old and older or attend to minor medical and emergency needs of employees working at the downtown facilities. The department also kept medical records for all employees. Since then, even long before you retired, such department was abolished when all of what it did were outsourced due to changes in medical insurance and benefits and federal statutes.

At 50, you had the procedure done for the first time, then ten years after that and three more since at 3-year intervals, including this latest one.  It should have been last year but Covid 19 pushed it a year back. It still begs the question: Why the need to go through it at certain intervals?

Webster's basic definition:

"\ ˈgət  \

DIGESTIVE TRACT

also : part of the digestive tract and especially the intestine or stomach"

As part of your digestive system, after you eat and drink, after each mouthful, past the chewing and the  swallowing, I am where every morsel of food and every drop of liquid goes, to get broken down into nutrients and waste. There are other parts of your body which will claim all kinds of wonders they do for you and I do not begrudge any of them but, modesty aside, it all begins with me. Each one of them will require energy.  I alone can convert the food and drink you consume into useable energy. I am so versatile that I can serve vegetarian and omni dieters and switch hitters without any re-tooling of my system  

From the day you were born, from the moment you were off your mother's umbilical life support system, I was all there was and is, as we speak, to process every piece of food and drink you take.  By now, you should know what the adage meant by "You are what you eat". And drink.

Let me qualify that.  There is heredity, first of all. Culture too, perhaps. The nature of your job, the stresses of the daily grind of life, influences from family and friends in what food you consume and how, all play a role. I can go on and on but in the end you need this procedure once you get past 50 as "preventive screening and health surveillance" of the digestive tract - a euphemism for colorectal cancer screening. It is a mouthful, I know,  no pun intended, but, in  a word - though it would still take five syllables to say it - colonoscopy says it in a nutshell. I remember the first time you heard it said by the company doctor, when you seemed overwhelmed by it but you were told that it was a potential lifesaver if the screening is done at mid-life. Sooner for some, actually, if symptoms materialize that will require it.

People dread it for the "before" and not the "during" nor the "after".  Also, the "prep" drink  is now a far cry from what you used to take which some of you labeled a gallon of pure medical "water torture".  How was it this time? It was a merciful half a gallon at 16-ounce cocktail at split-dosage intervals from early evening before to the early hours prior to the procedure. A lot more forgiving, wasn't it? Restricted diet from three days before remained unchanged from the previous ones. 

The Bad News

Colorectal cancer, based on the chart below, is at the top for mortality rates, second only to lung cancer. While this is from the Finnish Cancer Registry, I realize it is reflective of the world population in relative terms. And this is the best chart I could find. The other bad news is that I am hidden from view 100% of the time, unless through colonoscopy or other internal examination of your body.

The Good News

On the other hand, it has better survival ratio than four other types of cancer.  It is not the best of news but it could be great, if detected early through regular surveillance. 

So, go get it!  It might save your life.

Meanwhile, although I am 100% hidden from view, you have used me in your vocabulary for other non-medical nomenclature, to drive home a point.

I am, from you innermost self, your "gut reaction"; you would only look at the gut issues around a topic or agenda; you've made me part of your instinctual tool, as in, "She knew in her gut that he was lying"; "The fire gutted the building"; "It was gut-wrenching"; "To destroy the essential power of inflation gutting the economy"; to persevere and "Gut it out". And many more.

I am also fully aware of the sad reality that it is for much of the world a very expensive screening procedure that populations at large may not be able to afford.  That is the sad part. The happy part is that for many I am a very formidable fortress.  I can defend myself most of the time. What distresses me though is when those privileged to have the wherewithal to get me checked out with little or no cost and they don't do it.

But I can't leave you with nothing to smile about.  I just heard this:

A kind hearted lady took a wounded duck she found on the side of the road to the local veterinarian.  After a long wait the doctor came out and told her that the duck had died. The lady asked, "Are you sure? I want to see it."  

The doctor brought her inside the examination room. The lady insisted the doc was mistaken, "Are you really, really sure?"

The doctor summoned from the other room a Labrador retriever . The dog sniffed and nudged the duck. With a sad look on its face, the dog shook its head, looked down and walked away. The lady said, "What does it know?"

The doctor called a cat to come in.  The feline went around and looked very closely at the duck from all angles, "meowed" sadly, looked at the lady with those sad eyes and walked away. That convinced the lady and asked how much she owed the clinic.

The doc replied, "That would be $200."

"What? 200 for determining the duck was dead?" 

The doc replied, "It would have been just $20 if you took my word for it early on. But with extra Lab work and a cat scan, that brought the total amount to $200." 

Eat your veggies and fruit and always drink plenty of water.

Sincerely,

Your Gut  

P.S.  Lab analysis of polyps removed during your colonoscopy:

"Polyps are growths in the lining of the colon. The polyp(s) removed from your colon is called a tubular adenoma. This polyp is a benign (non cancerous) growth in your colon. Based on these results, I recommend a repeat colonoscopy in 3years for surveillance. You should receive a letter to remind you of your next colonoscopy".