Jason’s Random Thoughts

When we’re young, we have this incredible sense that nothing can stop us, especially some disease.  So we’re sick for a day or two, these things happen, right?  But at what point do we say to ourselves ‘I’m not as young as I used to be’?

For me, the answer is ‘this week’.  For the last seven days I’ve been fighting the flu, followed immediately by a cold.  All in all, I’ve managed to miss only three days of work, too.  Alas, my body is not quite as young as it used to be, and my careless actions have actually caused much more damage than expected.

Yesterday morning I was not feeling too hot.  My stomach said it wanted to vomit, but I rarely let myself do that.  So off to work I went … kinda.  The train seemed to have a very quick reaction with my stomach.  After 15 minutes I knew that making a mess was inevitable, it was just a matter of where.  I got off at the next stop (Inuyamayuen, for those concerned) and tried to make my way to the bathrooms.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get that far and left a terrible little mess right next to the station master’s office
Talk about embarassing.

Reiko and her father came to pick me up and from there we went straight to a medical clinic here in Kakamigahara.  The doctor said that my esophagus was in terrible shape and that I shouldn’t even be speaking for the next few days.  For a person that relies on his voice to work, this is terrible news.  To make matters worse, Reiko has her own medical conditions to worry about … anything I add is only extra stress.

Gomen ne, Reiko.

So here I am, at home for the next week, with nothing to do but recover.  I can’t help but think how improbable this would have been 10 years ago.  A flu, cold and anything short of a brain tumor would have been easily handled by whatever magical element in our body that staves off disease.  So why is it so weak now?

It’s true that we’re always getting older, but isn’t there a better way for us to age with dignity?  I’d rather look old but have a strong immune system than the inverse

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Ah, what fun it is to be sick.  I’ve been battling a multitude of Japanese illnesses since Sunday, and it’s leaving my body incredibly exhausted.  I don’t know what kind of instruction set these Asian viruses have in their DNA, but it’s insanely strong, whatever it is.

Saturday night the first sympoms appeared, where my throat was a little scratchy after getting home and I was developing a little bit of a headache, which is nothing new.  The next morning was awful, and I had difficulty eating and even getting out of bed.  Luckily, Reiko was there to take care of me, but it really put a dent into our Sunday plans.  Monday I had to call in sick to work, and Tuesday was also written off.  Not wanting to miss too much work, I forced myself to go in on Wednesday and was greeted with a lovely deep voice that required way too much energy to use.  On top of that, I was having a problem with saying vowels and they would often disappear into a squeak.  Although Reiko asked if I would take Thursday off, I said that I would go in.  I have a few responsibilities to some students and I had made a promise to never miss a particular person’s lesson.  Unfortunately, I had already missed the Tuesday class with them, so I could not miss the next.  On the way to the office, I managed to get my voice to work relatively decently, even though it was quite a bit lower than normal.  That said, 10 minutes into the 3-hour conversation, my voice started to disappear again.  By the end of the day, it was almost completely gone.

Fun?  Wow!

So it came as no surprise when, last night, I started coughing uncontrollably.  The throat had been stripped almost raw, and now I was succeptable to any infection that might find its way past the double-protection of my scarf and face mask.  Getting to sleep was a bit of a chore, and I managed to wake everyone in the house while I was at it.  Luckily, both Reiko and her mother are quite skilled when it comes to medicine and what to do, so they looked after me.  Of course, I would have preferred if they didn’t have to wake up and take care of me, a grown man.

Now, today, we went to the hospital again and had a bunch of things checked.  It looks like I’ll live, which is a good thing, and that I’m in the final stages of the Flu/Cold/Whatever-Else.  I can’t wait to feel healthy again … I feed bad not only for Reiko and her family, but also for my co-workers.  I’m still rather new at this place, but have had to take 3 days off already.  The worst part about this is that it makes me look unreliable.

Alright, on that note, I think I’ll take a short nap.  This doesn’t seem to be making much sense on the re-read, so perhaps I’ll update it a little later.

Being sick sucks.

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It’s a question that many of us ask from time to time, and one that has no right or wrong answer.  History tells us that we are now living two and three times longer than our ancestors did only centuries ago.  Living to be over 100, while incredible to family members, no longer gets a second glance from the general public or the newspapers.  As it stands, the oldest known human on Earth is a 114 year young woman named Edna Parker in Indiana, USA.  But what if 114 could become the next 30?

Researchers at Kyoto University have recently discovered how to create biologically compatible stemcells from our skin.  This process, while incredibly exciting, could lead to a drastic change in the human condition and create lasting repercussions on our societies, cultures and social structures.  For all the ethical dilemmas this process has solved, it opens the doors to so many more.

Professor Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University explains that the procedure that converts our healthy epidermal cells to those that mimic the incredibly dynamic stem cells is both painless and quick.  For the moment, this is limited only to creating neurons and heart tissues (both very important), but this limitation won’t last long.  Once the cells are cultivated, they can be given specific instructions and injected back into our bodies.  This could also potentially provide cures to various cancers, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and many other debilitating diseases and conditions.  Once perfected, we will have the ability to repair damaged organs, joints, muscles and any other tissue.  Heck, it might even be possible to regrow limbs under the right conditions.  With applications like this, what’s going to stop us from finding ways to increase our limited lifetimes to something a little less finite?

It’s no secret that we fear our own death, and many also worry about losing those close to us.  So wouldn’t life be so much more enjoyable if we could live for five or six centuries?  If we can repair hideously debilitating diseases, what’s to stop us from reversing the aging process?  Given the resources, our parents and grandparents could regain some of the things age has taken away.  I don’t know about you, but if I could live for a few centuries with the same levels of mobility and health as I have now, then I’d be hard pressed not to sign up.

There are some problems, though.  If nobody is dying, then we will have a serious resource problem on our hands.  Little issues like whether we should exploit national preservation parks or untamed continents will become moot as we scramble to accommodate a hyper actively growing population.  Retirement would become a thing of the past as everyone could essentially stay at a company for centuries, making it impossible for new recruits to rise through the ranks to leadership and breeding contempt for our elders.  Land values would skyrocket further as there would be no inherited properties unless an accident occurred.  Transportation systems would become overloaded as never before in the space of one generation.

It would be a massive logistics headache that would not only change our existing relationship with the Earth, but the very foundations of our societies.

One area I’m not too sure about, though, is how well something like a 500-year lifespan would be received by the religious communities.  Would extending our life cross the line between medicine and playing God?  As it is, humans are playing God everyday as we search to unlock the mysteries of the universe and everything contained within.  This could be the very thing that makes or breaks the massive legions of religious followers.  “God promises eternal life.  Science promises a few centuries in exchange for a good chunk of money.  Make your choice.”

Will any god accept us if we modify our bodies to escape the unescapable?  Can reincarnation occur if we never die?  Of course, if time is not a factor in the reincarnation process, then this is not an issue.
Of course, much of this is just speculation.  I’ve read far too many science fiction books that have used a modified cure for cancer and AIDS as the precursor to semi-immortal humans.  We wouldn’t be impervious to death, of course.  But we would be biologically capable of living hundreds of years before growing tired of life.

Personally, I don’t want to live forever.  One or two hundred years max, and that’s only if I remain mobile.  I refuse to spend the last of my days in an old-age home.  How about you?  How long is ‘long enough’?

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November is in full swing here in Japan.  Stores are almost done getting all the Christmas displays up.  The Sun is visible only for a pidly 10 hours.  The weather is cooling off.  And, unfortunately, smokers are disabling the safety mechanisms in the bathroom in order to avoid going outside.

Yay …
I work with a person that seems to excel at smoking in the bathroom.  We’ve both been assigned to work at the same school a few times in the last few weeks and it seems that every time I go into the bathroom, there is that unwelcome scent of cigarette smoke.  I can normally handle the smell of second hand smoke, but when it’s thick as pea soup in a confined space, it tends to make my lungs react in an unwelcome way.

So how is it that someone can light up in the bathroom and not set off the smoke detectors?  Good question.

I’ve examined the fire systems and, as far as I can tell, they’re temporarily disabled whenever someone wants to avoid going outside for a drag.  There are fingerprints on the sides that interrupt the regular dust pattern.  While I have no proof that this person is smoking in the bathroom, nor evidence of smoke detector tampering (I wonder what the law is for that in Japan), it’s interesting that the smoke is always heaviest after this one person leaves.

Smoking in non-smoking places is nothing new, and it happens in a large number of places all over Canada, but it’s still annoying as heck for us non-smokers.  We don’t piss in your shoes, so please don’t put cancer in our lungs.

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It’s one of the most important questions we can ask, but often the one we ask the least:  what makes you happy?

On the way to work today, I happened to overhear two men talking about how they weren’t happy at work or with their marriages.  While this is something I would occasionally hear in Canada, this was the first time I had heard such things in Japan.  Unfortunately, my Japanese is very basic so I could only understand snippets, but the situations were universal in nature:  one man had a consistently angry boss and a wife who was too buy with her personal life to care, and the other guy … well, I won’t mention his issue.  Suffice to say it’s something that most married men face at least once in their lives.

Listening to these two got me thinking about a number of things, one of which being ‘Cool, my comprehension is way up‘.   But more importantly, I asked myself if Iwas happy and whether I could remain so for at least the next five years.

I’ve talked quite a bit about how much I enjoy being married to my Reiko as well as this new life we’re starting together, so I won’t rehash it all in this post.  Instead, I’d rather turn the question back to you.  Are you happy?  Why?  What can you do to change the things you’re not happy with?

We’re all given the gift of life only once (as far as we know) and it would suck if we were miserable for most of our time here.  While it’s not always easy to make the big changes we sometimes need (moving somewhere better, changing jobs, working out problems in a relationship, etc), we owe it to ourselves and the people around us to make the best of what we have.

Hopefully those two Japanese men from this morning can make the changes in their lives necessary to enjoy the next 40+ years.

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