From: David Lubkin (extropy@unreasonable.com)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2001 - 16:05:30 MDT
Natasha wrote:
>Two days after Extro-5, I was told I have bladder cancer. I knew something
>had been wrong for a couple of weeks, but it was a few minutes before my
>presentation at Sunday's afternoon's session that I knew it was serious
>when I saw blood clots in my urine.
Natasha, I read your posting with the same disbelief that I had when first
hearing about the 9/11 attack, and the same dismay when it sank in. I
anticipate that you will be flooded with email and calls of well-deserved
support, concern, and love.
>I can't be certain, but it seems possible that pushing my lower body
>muscles to the limit, that I somehow caused the tumor to bleed more
>aggressively. Because it was bleeding more, I could see clearly see it in
>my urine. Not all cancerous tumors show themselves, but grow in secret
>until reaching a stage 3-4, or metastasizing. Mine was at stage 2.
That's great. I'm delighted by the recent developments in home testing and
automatic monitoring technologies. I can't wait until we can all routinely
monitor key health metrics. (I'd like to see a thread on this: what can
you monitor easily now, and what's worth doing? I might not want the
Japanese analyzing toilet but I think I'd get a watch that monitored your
EKG and warned if you were on the brink of a heart attack.) So many
problems (in life overall, not just in medicine) are trivial if you detect
and deal with them right away and become increasingly severe if you don't.
That segues to the time management thread: one key issue in assessing what
to do on your to-do list is to understand what will happen if you ignore an
item. Will it stay the same, get better or disappear by itself, or will it
get worse?
Natasha's situation and recent squabbling on exi-freedom have reminded me
of something I was going to post right after EXTRO-5. One of you asked me
who my friends were in the extropian community. It struck me as a bizarre
question. There are those of you who I have met or exchanged private
email, who I hit it off with, who might call me 'friend'. But you're all
my friends, my family.
Yes, I (you) have other friends, other family. But there are significant
unifying bonds between us, and we need to hang together. So often we see
fractious factionalizing and fractionating in small groups. Look at how
often behavior in the libertarian and cryonics communities devolve into the
People's Front of Judea vs. The Judean People's Front.
Consider Natasha, Gina, Keith, and Sasha, to name just a few. Or the
private assistance that paid for several people to go to EXTRO-5. I'd like
to see more organized methods for getting help to people who need it. In
science fiction fandom, there are funds to pay for bringing people over to
cons. Actors, SF writers, folk singers, and police have similar mechanisms
to provide financial assistance to their colleagues who have fallen on hard
times.
I'd be happy to investigate how other groups do this and to work with
someone at EXI (Shaun? Greg?) to help set up an equivalent for us if
people like the idea. (I think it should be run through EXI, since it's
already an IRS-approved non-profit.)
-- David Lubkin.
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