Journaling project, Day 18

It’s funny how we outgrow what we once thought we couldn’t live without, and then we fall in love with what we didn’t even know we wanted. Life keeps leading us on journeys we would never go on if it were up to us. Don’t be afraid. Have faith. Find the lessons. Trust the journey.

What’s something you’ve moved on from that once meant the world to you? And, what’s something you love today that you never even knew you needed in your life?

So, this is me, 21st-century digital boy. I love living in the future. Technology and science and progress keep bringing me things that never existed before and I get to pick and choose what I want out of them that make my life better, or more meaningful. I love that I have a magic piece of glass in my pocket that means I never get lost again. I used to get lost ALL the time. I love that I have more real-time connection to people. I used to live on IRC and chat boards just so I could say "hi" to a circle of friends. Now I can touch base with whoever, AND annoy my children all with that same piece of glass.

I used to be a film camera guy. Then I went to DSLR and now my phone takes better pictures because I upgrade my phone every few years and a camera upgrade comes as part of the package. My DSLR has better glass but the body and its technology are old and by the phone-camera's standards, awful. I used to watch a lot of TV and while I miss some of the social aspects of that (gathering at MIT to watch Babylon 5 episodes snatched off satellite downloads before they were locally broadcast) I like streaming and binge-watching. I love that I could learn about Nanette through social media and access it when I wanted, and then be able to pause it and reflect on it or take a step back as needed. There's a great joy for me in going to live music with friends, but there's also a new world to explore now. I used to depend on a girlfriend who got white-label CDs shipped to her from DJs in Goa, India. Today I just put a few words into my magic glass and get new sounds from all over the world.

Medical stuff: used to be western medicine had a pill for a few things and the rest of the time you were shit-out-of-luck. Today you can often expect to get midwives to assist with birthing and doctors who don't know how to help their patients adapt diets are out of touch. Long ago I lost a dear friend and lover to an aggressive form of breast cancer; today that cancer has much higher survival rate, as do almost all forms of cancer. Decades ago I saw people go to endless cycles of funerals for people who died of AIDS. Today there's at least PrEP and maybe there'll be a cure or vaccine.

Of course there's a price for all this and the future is not even vaguely evenly distributed. I got a lucky break on the dice of social birth and location. My country is not immediately going to sink beneath the rising ocean, though more of it will burn faster each year. Today those pieces of glass turned silent fascists and racists into emboldened voters and we might just lose our democracy to them. So, yeah, there's a bill coming due. But just because I don't love everything about this future doesn't mean I want to go back to any of the past I've lived in.

Trivial things, too. I used to be a "never automatic transmission" person. I loved driving and the feel of actually doing the driving. Then I made the choice to get the more economical car (because see carbon footprint) and now I drive an automatic. Or rather I push and hold the pedal and let it decide to drive me. I expect soon I won't even push the pedal for that to happen.

I do miss some of the things I had to let go, mostly to do with the abilities a younger body has, and the freedom that being childless allows. But I didn't get a choice on the first one and the second was made quite deliberately and if you offered me the chance to go back and do it over again I'd make some different choices but I wouldn't undo the big choices themselves. I'm just more knowledgeable now and as we've discussed, knowledge can be used to make better choices.

I think if there's a thing I've "moved on from" that used to mean the world to me it would be specific people. I miss people I used to hang with, party with, debate with, go to cons with, game with. Lots of them live farther away now, lots of them have their own lives doing other things. Some of them are dead, which is sad. Some of them are mad at me because I did or said stupid things, or hurtful things. Or both. I miss them all.

Ultimate (as in, last) Health update

As I mentioned in the last entry, one of the side effects of dusting the stone was that they didn't get enough for a lab sample. That means we don't really know what caused it, so there's no sensible medical intervention. Instead, we get a series of diet recommendations that are generally seen as effective against stones of all kinds. Herewith, in bullet-point form:

• Increase urine volume. A fancy form of "drink more water. No, really, more than that." Some of the associated literature gets very specific, including a suggestion that if you don't have to get up in the middle of the night to go pee you're not drinking enough. That's a hard no for me because although I can do it if need be I definitely get much worse sleep if I'm interrupted and sometimes I can't even get back to sleep at all. My sleep is already bad enough, let's not make it worse. They also suggest one 2-L bottle of water per workday, which is a lot more than I'm currently going through.
  
  Among the tips for increasing water intake are having a glass at "transitional times" like upon waking, before leaving the house, when arriving at work, after using the restroom. Add frozen bits of lemon, lime or orange in place of ice cubes both for flavor and to acidify urine. Choose moist foods over dried - cooked rice, for example, carries water about equal to its grain weight.
  
  Interesting side note - it's suggested to avoid grapefruit juice. Since other citrus is encouraged I'm not sure why this is. Have to look into that.


• Consume adequate calcium. Despite some stones being formed from calcium deposits, it's not advised to avoid or reduce calcium intake from food. Calcium supplements are disrecommended. Considering how many Tums I chew in a given week that's going to be a challenge. One source says if you're going to take them, take with food - the problem is that I take them to control reflux, which causes me not to eat.


• Decrease sodium. Generally good advice, but particularly here excess sodium tends to go out in your urine and it does so by binding to a lot of calcium. If you get calcium stones this is a primary formation pathway. As with other discussions of dietary sodium, it's the hidden sources that get you. Obvious things like salty snacks aren't as problematic as packaged foods, sports drinks, and the like that have tons of sodium we don't recognize.


• Decrease protein intake. I mentioned this early on. The most recent literature I was given differentiates meat protein (which should be limited) from dairy or vegetable protein, which are apparently not sources of stone formation. I don't understand why that is, but there you go.


• Watch out for oxalates. That's mostly spinach, rhubarb, almonds, and miso soup though there are oxalates in lots of things. Spinach is the biggest culprit, by a large margin, which is unfortunate since it's my main source of leafy greens. Bother.