Skiing Downhill

89

By the Summer of Nineteen Ninety-One, my brain was working at its peak. Like a long dried out sponge it completely soaked in every bit of every moment. I had never experienced life like this. I did all of the same things I always did, but I could now see how each nuance added up to the end of each day in complete detail. When Daina and I would make errand runs for her and she wasn't sure where she had seen something, I could recount to her in complete detail all of the stores we had been to each day, each item she had looked at and which location of the store it had been at. Hours after the drive from the stores to my apartment, I could recall which lights had been green and which ones we had to wait at. I could work on my computer while watching the the cable news and keep complete track of them both without pause. One time Daina called and I placed the television on mute and continued working on my computer project, watched the silent picture and discussed the next day's plans with Daina and never lost track of any of them. Daina openly wondered if I was transcribing our conversion as we talked given my typing and I assured her I wasn't but instead working on something else as we spoke. She expressed annoyance at that and asked that I not do it anymore. So I stopped my typing but continued to think of the code I needed to do next while following the television and talking about the next day's plans.

I was running Daina ragged with frequent hikes now that she was on summer break from teaching. Never wanting to take the same trail twice too closely together, we had started to scrounge for trail maps and seek more obscure parks just to continue with the variety my mind desired. On one of these hikes, Daina just couldn't continue to the peak and wanted to turn around but still zested by my regained health I wanted to continue and she reluctantly agreed to wait where we were and I could finish on my own. I thought it would take me fifteen more minutes, it ended up taking just under an hour and Daina was very angry with me for keeping her waiting that long. I apologized and then suggested a faster way down rather than using the trail.

In the southern rocky mountains there are spillways of little crumbled rock which form a relatively smooth slope. One time when we had to cross one, I realized my feet would sink in if we took slow steps, but they would slide along the top downhill when one moved quickly. I recommended that we 'ski down' the straight spillway rather than take the serpentine trail back to the bottom. Daina was game after I showed her how to start and watched as the tumbling little rocks rolled beneath my feet as I slid down the first tens of feet quickly in large steps, then tilted my heels back to let my feet sink into the slope and bring me to a stop. Daina gave it a try, but more often came to a stop than slid along. I presumed it was from my past experience skiing where she just needed some practice and continued my way down, quickly descending a few hundred feet in little over a minute. Yet Daina kept sinking in and thus had to pull her feet out of the slope of little broken rocks more often. When she finally caught up to me a few minutes later, she wanted to return to the path for the rest of the descent and I agreed. We sat briefly on a large rock to pull off our shoes and pour out the jagged little bits that had fallen inside before we continued.

One time we reached the bottom of a path and her car was in sight, she suddenly cried out. Turning to look, she had been paying attention to the sight of her car, not the branches of the tree she was passing, and one jabbed her in the eye. Her eye swelling up and painful, she swore for a bit and then debated what we were going to do and then asked if I could drive her to the emergency room. I noted that I didn't have a drivers' license as I gave it up due to my declining health, but as I was now feeling great again and fully able to pay attention while driving, I was game for it as long as it was all right with her. I remembered in New England that a kid without a license could practice driving when an adult was in the car, so I assumed the same would be true for Colorado.

It was great being behind the wheel again and the emergency room doctor found that Daina's eye was just bruised, not punctured, and would be fine with some time to heal. He put a gauze cover over it and I drove Daina back to her condo where we visited for a bit, and caught up on previously taped shows. When it was time for me to go home, though, she didn't feel up to driving and told me I could just take her car. I agreed, but with some trepidation as this time I knew there wouldn't be a legal fig leaf for my driving without a license. Especially as it meant I'd also have to drive back the next day to return Daina's car. Still, I made sure to drive home perfectly and then flawlessly back so as to not gain the interest of any police cars.

For my birthday this year I decided to get a fresh driver's license. The bureau had moved in the six years since I had gotten my last drivers' license, but while in a bigger space handling more people, they still had the same driving test evaluator as my last time. I hoped I could just renew my old expired license and thus avoid dealing with him again given how our last experience had gone, but after my photo was taken I was told I'd need to have my driving re-evaluated given the number of years since I was last licensed to drive. This meant joining the long line of people waiting for driving tests and given the estimated wait time, Daina left to run some errands while I waited there. A half hour later, only having moved about a third of the way down the line, my name was called to the front desk. Arriving there, they handed me my license. Did this mean I didn't have to take the driving test after all? I decided not to ask and left the building. I figured I could always say I didn't know better if they came after me, or called me at home about why I hadn't stayed for the driving test. But they never did.

I realized how much writing computer code was like skiing downhill. The computer was the skis, the user was the skier and the computer program you wrote was the ski slope. If you wrote the code correctly, the program reached the end and the user was happy. If the code wasn't well written, the user had some surprising bumps along the way and, at the worst, crashed and had to get up and start over again. As I coded, I thought of the ski trail, the side paths one could take as an alternative to the main slope, add program checks to make sure the process wasn't going too fast or losing control, and then the satisfying crescent moon stop to bring the experience to a close.

Knowing I was cognitively back and raring to code something, Jeff put me in touch with the head of the 'Front Range Firefighters Association'. While fire fighters & stations could dial into Jeff's online site and stay abreast of the Fire Fighting message forums, there were too many of them jostling for a chance to connect to one of Jeff's incoming land lines. The solution was to create a point-to-point message system which would allow the various fire fighters to download the forum mail straight to their own computers, read and reply at their leisure, and then have their computers upload their messages back to Jeff's site for inclusion and distribution. Checking into the process, I found there were quite a few shareware pieces already available to do this, but each piece had its own configuration file format and they had to be laced together to get it all done: One program to handle the dialing, one program to perform the eMail exchange, one program to allow the end user to read and respond to the messages, and then a chain program to run all of them in sequence and trap errors between them.

I told him I could do it and agreed to in return for a pizza once I was done. Rather than write everything from scratch, I just wrote an installation program and a configuration manager. The installation program ensured all of the shareware pieces were properly placed on the destination computer and then the configuration program asked for and managed all of the configuration info each program might need and wrote it out in their specific file formats once it was entered or updated. For this, I used the FlexBase system I had developed seven years earlier as a universal online site hosting system. It allowed the user to define the appearance they wanted through a simple type-it-the-way-you-want-it-to-look system and let the code handle all of the behind the scenes work to make it happen. By using this preexisting code library of mine, I was able to just give it the template for the user screens and the templates for the various output configuration files and the FlexBase system handled the rest. Ultimately the most work I had to do was code up the 'download now' or 'read messages' choice screen and repeatedly test the system to ensure it wouldn't crash on the various types of IBM PCs and clones it might be installed on. Given that Jeff's machines and my own made a varied lot, it gave me plenty of chances to make the package fail and learn how to improve it.

After only a couple of weeks, the combined installation package was done and I uploaded it to the head of the association to distribute to his members. While I stayed in touch with him for the subsequent few months in case there was a problem to address, there never was and the package became quite popular and I even made variations of it for other online sites in town. It was my first major coding project since my health had returned and I was thrilled with the result!

Though I forgot to take up that pizza... Probably too late to ask for it now?

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Wanting To Work

88

With my health suddenly restored in a matter of months after six years of decline, I could have just found the first grocery store job in town. But as the experience had massively derailed my life, I felt I deserved a more thoughtful return to the employment pool. Talking about this with my counselor, Jude, he too agreed that it made sense and recommended I go to the state's Vocational Rehabilitation office and let them manage my return to work. When I mentioned misgivings based on my experience with them three years earlier, he noted that they had probably forgotten about me since then and let's see what a fresh intake evaluation would find. As VocRehab was just three blocks from my apartment, anyhow, I thought I might as well go and see.

Arriving at their office, it seemed unchanged by the years gone by and I introduced myself to the receptionist. This one didn't burst out laughing at my stutter. Fearing I might be assigned to the same counselor who had vehemently rejected me the first time, I was luckily assigned to a different counselor. I actually walked passed the earlier counselor a few times in the office, but he didn't seem to recognize me. This new counselor, I'll call 'Cindy', was a middle aged woman who lead me to her office and sat me down for a chat. I noted my health history and recent improvement and desired to finish my college degree. She thought we should wait with that option and first look for jobs that I could do today. What was I interested in? I told her of my extensive history in computer programming and while I didn't have a degree at it, she thought she still might be able to find me a job in the field. But first I'd have to be evaluated by their on-site psychologist. Fearing that they had the same disturbed psychologist as before, I noted that I could possibly provide a report for them. She then pointed out that if I told her I was receiving psychological counseling it would probably mean I couldn't be accepted by them for help under their rules. Did I want to say I was seeing a psychological counselor? ''I guess not,'' I said, message received.

''Good,'' she said and left the room to set up the evaluation appointment with their own guy as I remained and looked around her office. I noticed a photo of what I guessed to be her daughter. A head-shot placed prominently in the room, it showed her mouth in the shape of a smile, but her eyes looked very hurt and haunted. It reminded me of the photo my mother had me pose for, despite my not wanting to, after my high school graduation. Cindy returned and the evaluation appointment was all set.

When I returned the following week, their on-site psychologist was indeed the same guy as my previous evaluation, but he didn't recognize me either. I guessed given the number of faces flowing through the office each year for the past three years, he had long since forgotten me. This time, rather than the giant bubble test to evaluate my psychological fitness, he had changed to what I guessed he thought was a better method of cracking people's psyches: A hand writing evaluation. I was to write a couple pages about myself for him to review. When I noted my problems writing by hand, he gave me an extra fifteen minutes to work on it in his office. He then went on break and I spent the next half hour writing something up. Given the need for speed, I resorted to my old two handed technique where my primary hand formed the printed letters while my other hand's fingers helped to steady the painful tremors.

When he returned and saw the results, he barked at me because I was supposed to have done the sample in cursive, not print! But as he hadn't told me that and he didn't have more time to have me do it all over again, he deiced to work with what I had written and had me next see his assistant for a fresh I.Q. test. A friendly girl, I think this was the highest I.Q. score I had ever received, though in reflection that might have been in part because I had just had my I.Q. evaluated by the neuro-psychologist a few months earlier and it seemed to be the exact same test. Once the I.Q. test was done, and a career aptitude test which showed I should either find a job in computers or writing, I was sent back to the psychologist's office where he glared at me and said he couldn't conclude anything about me from my hand writing sample and suspected I had intentionally disguised my writing in order to hide something. At my blank returned look, he decided not to worry about it and I was deemed fit for Vocational Rehabilitation Services to help me.

With my return visit to Cindy, she was happy with the evaluation results and said she had the perfect job for me! It was a start-up company Data Acquisition Systems and they needed computer knowledgeable people to help get the company going. Cindy told me that the way things worked was they would hire me, and after my first two weeks, VocRehab would reimburse them for my initial paycheck. When I arrived at their office, it was actually the management office of a neglected shopping center and of the three people there, two were in their early twenties and brothers who were 'forming' the business and the third man was another self taught computer professional about ten years older than me. We talked at length about what they wanted to do with the company but beyond picking out the name they really didn't want to define it. It would have something to do with computers because they saw that as the future of business, but what precisely they weren't quite sure. The other computer guy and I were to return the following week when they had things sorted out.

Returning the second week, the other computer guy had decided not to come back. The two brothers explained that ''He didn't get the vision of the company.'' So the three of us spent the day still trying to figure it out and finally concluded that what we needed was to come up with a good motto for the company and from that the two brothers would better know what the company would be doing. I offered ''DAS ist gut'', I think it was a common phase from the old Hogan's Heroes television show, regardless of where I got it from the two brother's got the reference and burst out laughing. By noontime they still hadn't settled on a motto and they broke for lunch. Given that I didn't have spare cash to buy myself lunch based on my income level, I roamed the sidewalked front of the long shopping strip and glanced in its mostly vacant store fronts. An hour later, we reconvened and the brothers had decided we needed to put the motto debate aside and work on the dress code, next. They felt we should all be in suits & ties from now on; given my history of feeling like a cross dresser when in formal clothing, I noted that computer people worked in the back room and so dress style wouldn't make an impact on potential customers... But the brothers agreed amongst themselves that a 'professional look' resulted in 'professional work'. That topic using up half of the afternoon, the older of the two brothers pulled me aside to let me know that I was to report to VocRehab that they had paid me for these two weeks so they could get the state check 'reimbursing them' for it. When I noted that they hadn't paid me yet, and we even hadn't met for two full work weeks either, he knew what I meant but how were they going to be able to pay me without first getting reimbursed for it? So I was told to let VocRehab know they had paid me for these first two weeks and then the brothers would pay me from the reimbursement check, afterwards.

I'd like to say it was this dishonesty which lead me to report them to VocRehab, but in reality it was the dress code and the insistence I lie to VocRehab was an extra reason to end 'the job'. I went home and wrote Cindy a detailed letter about my time with them and what they wanted me to do and dropped it off at the VocRehab office the following day as I walked to get my daily soda. She called me in and, though eying me suspiciously, thanked me for letting her know and told me I didn't need to continue with DAS. She had instead decided to find me a job in data entry and then I could work my way up from there. When I noted the problems I had using my fingers on small repetitive tasks, she was sure it wouldn't be a problem and gave me an appointment with a data entry firm to have me evaluated. When I arrived there the next week, they had me do a half hour 'sample run' which their computer would use to give them my data entry skill level. Once done, they found that I had a surprisingly low error rate, but I only entered in half the minimum data they would need in the testing time frame to consider me for a job. Sorry. I was sent back to the VocRehab office to show Cindy my results sheet.

Cindy didn't know what else she could do for me and I again offered the idea of me completing College then I'd have a degree that would get me into the many computer jobs available in town. She didn't think that was a good idea and placed me on hold and would keep me in mind when the next job prospects came up. I was sent home and didn't hear back from her for four months... At least they were issuing me free monthly bus passes in the meantime!

Then she called me sounding very excited. I was given a date & time and arrived at their equivalent of a cattle call where we were all clients that VocRehab was 'helping to find a job' and we were brought to a large conference room and told to take a seat. There we were introduced to a bespectacled man who told us he was forming a business with his partner who we may have heard of, Frederic Neal also known as 'Curly', recently retired from the Harlem Globetrotters. He was co-founding a business with this new man and they needed to hire people fast. And they wanted us! When asked, he explained that 'Curly' was a very busy man and couldn't be here himself to talk to us, but he truly was a partner in this new business and we'd meet him in a month after we signed on. One of us here for the presentation stood up and told us that she had heard of this guy and he was a fraud with whom Frederic Neal had publicly disavowed any business relationship. She picked up her things and left the room, the rest of us looked to the VocRehab counselors standing by the walls. They seemed momentarily rattled, but Cindy vouched for him and so the man was allowed to continue his sales pitch. Once he was done and asked for who wanted to sign on, the counselors were very insistent that we all do. So I gave my name as did most everyone else and he then decided to pick about fifteen from the pile of names. Cindy intervened and thought it'd be better if I joined later and so he said he'd get back to the rest of us and bring us into the business once it was established.

A month later I saw Cindy again and heard that the guy turned out not to have any connection with Frederic 'Curly' Neal and after having the fifteen clients sit in an apartment with next to nothing to do for two weeks, he had pressured them all into reporting that he had paid them for those two weeks so he could get the reimbursement for them and then, he told them, he would pay them after the fact. Most of them did as they were told and VocRehab cut him a check and when they returned for the third week, they found the apartment was now vacant and available to rent. The people who had fallen for his request to falsely state 'he had already paid them' were kicked out of the program for lying. Wasn't it good that I hadn't fallen for that? Cindy said after she told me this story. I agreed it was, but kept to myself my opinion that VocRehab seemed to be, at least, partially at fault as well.

The state seemed to agree after this and many other incidents and changed the rules so VocRehab would have to be shown a paycheck stub from the business itself, so the client was no longer on the hook and the 'business' would have to explicitly commit fraud rather than coerce the clients into doing it for them.

Raring to go back to work after my health was restored, by going through the state's Vocational Rehabilitation Services, I would spend the year job free without getting a step closer to my goals...

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resolution

v

And so the worse is over, at least for this volume. Now all that lays ahead is my ultimate 'professional' destiny and the revelation of what my 'situation' truly is.

Over my years I've come up with a simple phrase that denotes how I feel about my place in life. Given my unusual experiences, I find that I will often identify with bits of other people's lives while most people identify with how much of other peoples' lives corresponds with their own. Thus I coined: ''I identify with everyone and in return no one identifies with me.''

Generally I hate such definitive statements, for there is always an exception and I am one of them.

Typically when you hear 'no one' or 'nobody' in a definitive statement, it so often seems people are talking about me. ''No one has dreams that don't feature themselves.'' ''Nobody would stick their finger into a light socket!'' ''No one is allergic to rice.'' ''Nobody's going to open that jar of old peaches.'' ''No one can remember things that well from that long ago!'' When I hear these my response has become, ''Please don't refer to me as a nobody/no one.'' But, in real life, it seems that's exactly what some people have actively tried to make me through their machinations. The irony is, it's their very own actions which I feel has made me somebody...

The question is: Am I 'somebody' you'd want to meet late at night on a street corner...?

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The Simple Answer Is...

87

There is no simple answer. What had caused my weight loss? And why did antibiotics help it while I was taking them but I would begin to decline when they were stopped? I would like to say it was 'X' caused by 'Y', but the reality is all I have is a fist full of theories based on guesses. Before the doctor who helped me, Betsey, left the state, here's the theory we came up with...

When I had walking pneumonia in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was treated with a strong course of antibiotics. Now we know that when antibiotics are taken, they often damage the balance of intestinal flora that we all have. By 'flora' I mean the community of bacteria that live in our guts and help keep 'bad' bacteria from taking hold while helping us to digest and absorb the food that we eat. So as I experienced my first strange health symptoms in the Summer of that same year, the guess is that the course of antibiotics for my walking pneumonia had caused an imbalance with those little bacteria in my intestines. This resulted in issues impacting which nutrients I could absorb as the years continued.

Of this imbalance, I had likely become allergic to a strain of 'normal' intestinal bacteria that we otherwise all have. I say this based on the fact that what I had, and caused me so much trouble, didn't seem to spread to those around me. Otherwise many of my friends would have been suffering from unexplained weight loss as well and bathroom bouts. As it was only me, then the reason it affected me and not my friends was because there was something unique to me involved in the problem. Given my now known catalog of allergies and intolerances to other common things in peoples' lives, it seems most likely in retrospect that I had become allergic to one or more strains of benign intestinal flora.

Next, this strain I was allergic to loved simple sugars such as fructose, in the most common form of corn syrup, as when I had them I would have a worse reaction in my gut. Is it possible that when I drank a corn syrup soda within a few hours the bacteria I was allergic too soaked it up and multiplied in my intestines to the point that it was plentiful enough for me to have that allergic reaction to it? The first symptoms of it being an escalating blood pressure and a sudden headache? And when the level of that bacteria had grown too large for my body to handle, it would flush it out through those painful bathroom bouts? One thing I can confirm here is that, while on the antibiotics, I could eat all the fructose and corn syrup I wanted to without ill effect. So much so that I became a huge pie fan during the early nineteen nineties!

Yet, once I knew I needed to avoid corn syrup and other sources of fructose such as fruit in the late nineteen eighties, why was I still having bathroom bouts? As it turns out, even table sugar has some fructose in it, though it is mostly sucrose a more complex sugar that many if not most bacteria can't use. So over the course of a few days, the bacteria I was allergic to would still get a small bit of fructose and slowly grow until three or four days later there was enough in my gut to cause the allergic reaction and result in another one of my prolonged bathroom bouts. Further, while I had been avoiding food with corn syrup as one of its main ingredients, I hadn't realized that it could still be in processed foods as its tenth or fiftieth additive. Once my full brain power returned, I realized this and made sure to avoid even these minor amounts of corn syrup laced food less they feed my intestinal problems.

With this theory of 'an intestinal bacteria I was allergic to', it nicely explains why the initial dose of oral antibiotics I had gotten from the joint doctor seemed to help, while the injection of penicillin didn't. But then, why hadn't the two courses of oral antibiotics I had received from the emergency room in the first few months of Nineteen Eighty-Nine not helped me? Had they been of too low a dose to effect the flora I was allergic too? Or had they been prescribed for too short a period to effect it? Or had I actually felt a little bit better at the time, but assumed it was just a periodic fluctuation in my condition that soon dissipated once those few days of antibiotics were finished? I did experience that switching me from Cephalexin for one month to Anaprox had reduced my improvement for that month. Could it simply be a case of the Cephalexin worked against the particular strain of bacteria I was having the bad reaction to while the Anaprox had less of an impact on it? Could it also have been a case that the two short batches of antibiotics I had gotten in early Nineteen Eighty-Nine had also been of a type that didn't affect the bacteria?

It would have been nice to have had these questions answered so I could then spend the rest of my days letting medical professionals know I was allergic to flora 'X' and thus needed to make sure I kept it out of my gut. Instead I'm stuck with the story of how, after years of weight loss and suffering, taking a long course of antibiotics cured it. What was it? They'd ask. I dunno, the but theory is...

Now in this era, there is scientific evidence that an imbalance of intestinal flora between twins can cause one to lose weight & have intestinal problems while his or her sibling is doing fine on the same diet. Further, doctors now know to have their patients take a course of probiotics after a course of heavy oral antibiotics to insure their intestinal tract is quickly restored to an appropriate balance of flora.

In the past, it was easier for doctors to label someone as mentally ill rather than face the possibility that there was a medical condition that they didn't understand or know how to treat. Remember when impotence was a psychological problem? Not any more. Remember when stomach ulcers were a physical manifestation of too much psychological stress in someone's life? Now we know ulcers are caused by harmful bacteria and sometimes too much of a type of medication. But back then these conditions were simply labeled a 'psychological condition' and those patients discarded by the medical profession because those doctors didn't want to admit they hadn't a clue.

Actually, perhaps that tactic is still in use today...

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