Immunesystem's Quarterly Review

Immunesystem is like a big loudmouthed bouncer at a trendy club who makes a habit of turning away just about everyone and for different reasons.  He parades up and down the sidewalk outside the club ogling potential patrons for defects or weaknesses or any trace of impurity or shopping network.

“Hey you, starchy pilaf, where do you think you’re going? Not in my club smelling like curry … get the fuck-outa-hee.”

“And you, Belvita … get your tryna-be ethnic too-big-to-dip-ass off this line ok?”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me Oatmeal? Again? Does this look like a club for old people man? No it does not Oatmeal, we’ve been over this … “

And Immunesystem is really distractible …

“Oh My God! Processedmeats … you mind-erasing piece of shit get off my STREET … 100 feet Processedmeats!”

“Shellfish? Dude, I let you in last time and your girlfriend Mayo used up all the Kleenex in the BUILDING … wth?? I don’t know man … and those shoes, damn. “

“And Bubble-tea girl, I love you but the boss said you and your cosplay anime-nerdies are bad for business …” (Thick condescension) “I’m SO sorry.” FSF (fake sad face) 😞

The way Immunesystem acts you’d think he’d be beyond reproach ... 

“Keylimepie! OH NO! Not again, get your raging reflux big-ass gluten load from my … (Keylimepie slips Immunesystem some white chocolate lime-zest shavings).

“But I tell you what, just this once maybe ok?“

Anyway. As owner of the establishment I’ve given Immunesystem a lot of gruff over the years. I’ve even threatened to fire him and let lymphatic system take over his duties (I know it wouldn’t work but he doesn’t know that). I mean I like that he takes his job seriously, really I do, there’s a lot of riff-raff out there. There are syndicates and mobsters always trying to muscle in and Immunesystem packs quite a wallop at the door, but did he really have to turn away that hot Greek chick Melomakarouna?

To Immunesystem’s defense, it’s not an easy job, like that time with Phil.

“Look, Phil-o, I know you’re the big guy’s cousin and all, but your not on the list … what am I supposed to do? I’m sorry Phil.”

Sometimes, even good loyal customers like Cream-of-wheat get crossed off the list for good -- DEAD to us ... So yeah it’s not a walk in the park with a waffle-cone.  

But then there are all the new customers … good paying new customers, who’ve lodged TONS of complaints about Immunesystem. And he wonders why he doesn’t get a holiday bonus? LOL! He punched flaxseed the other night because Immunesystem thought he was assaulting Yogurt when flaxseed and Yogurt have been together for months. Oh and just yesterday he completely mistook Avocado for Butter, walked right past him.

And why does Immune system have to dress like the butcher from Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I get casual Fridays and all but the gauntlet and mace-club are a bit much.

I think overall I’d have to give Immunesystem an M grade, for “a mediocre meddlesome maybe ok job considering we are even still alive after letting Processedmeats in …” And no bonus, not after the Keylimepie fiasco.

Preseason final: Mets 3 Red Sox 2
Chechinni and Conforto go deep. Lugo with 2 innings for the W.

Pigeon Droppings

Trying to delineate, systemically, the impact of a single complex compound across a vast web of interfaces in the body’s metabolic pathway system, becomes, especially in it’s more diffuse trace reaches,  almost impossible to demonstrate in broad comprehensible terms. There may simply be too many variables and too much variability over time. You might be able to if you could conduct a study across a really big and diverse sample with really controlled and specific dietary guidelines with almost constant blood-work, but good luck finding volunteers. Touching one spot on a web, targeting it and blocking it the way statins block cholesterol, doesn’t preclude that reaction from having other chains of effects in other pathways -- and to a remarkable degree individuals can be remarkably different in these pathways. I’d wager we are as individual in our body chemistry as we are in our fingerprints.

So summer comes around and it is now a year and a half ago. We took a vacation to South Dakota. Climbed Bear Butte with my son. I ran out of my statin medication and by the time I finally got more a month had gone by. I was also diagnosed with Sarcoidosis, which is a bummer because no one seems to know what it is or what causes it. Maybe mold? Spores? Alien radio transmissions? With my latest batch of rib fractures they noticed nodules in my lungs, an inordinate number of them. They are scar tissue caused, usually, by “irritants.” Maybe whiny youtube gamer videos? Also during this time they scheduled me for a CT scan with contrast dye which they pumped … into my blood.  What the fuck … This stuff gives me a Paris Island CS gas chamber flashback bigtime, snot everywhere. They had to "monitor" me.

The Judo (indirectly) reinvigorated by the trip to South Dakota, found another weakness – the sarcoidosis, more indication that I am allergic to A LOT of stuff. Bird droppings maybe … there was the war (and eventual sad departure) of the pigeons. But that’s definitely another blog entry. It may have something to do with a fungus that lives a few inches under the earth's surface in the great plains. So sarcoidosis can sometimes kill you or it can just go away. It's like Kafka's The Trial only instead of some nebulous charges brought by a secretive government bureaucracy it's nondescript scarring on your lungs where some unkown irritant met with your raving lunatic immune system ... Symptoms which, like bill collectors or Kafka's inquisitors, can leave and never return. Go figure.

Long story short, they finally refilled my Statin prescription. 

I was feeling pretty good, surprisingly so considering I had lungs full of nodules, but I chalked it up to it being summer and having just returned from South Dakota. Boy was I wrong. I started taking the statin again ... and wouldn't you know it I reacted to it. At first I thought I had the flu, then I realized ... the joint pain, the aches, the muscle weakness, this was winter me ... and it dawned on me, without the statin it was all gone, poof. More significantly I noticed my hand injuries (a constant annoyance in Judo) were healing in almost half the time. So I told my doctor, we tried another statin which was even worse then he advised a trial without any medication. 

Over the past two years I've dropped 65 pounds but half of that is since I came off statins. I’m running 3 miles in mid 24 minute range, I'm doing 1 punch man once a week, got my yellow belt, oy. I've gotten better at avoiding getting my ass kicked and avoiding pain. Wife came home ... Made it through a Minnesota winter depression free.

My therapist keeps asking me how I did it. 

My response? 

I don't really know. 

Matts(Modified)OnePunchManDesperateToFigureOutWhatWentRightSelfDiagnosisMetsJudoBlog

Teamwork

My immune system is paranoid and confused. It doesn't understand the concept of "this is oatmeal, oatmeal is a friend, we like oatmeal ..." No sir, if I eat oatmeal my immune system will attack it like it's a salmonella-bar. My immune system thinks this is funny. It will wink knowingly at me as I ingest a slice of key-lime pie (forgetting there is gluten in the graham cracker crust!) and then reject it like some poorly grafted gangrenous limb coming out of my shoulder. Oh, that immune system of mine ... The stories I could tell you. 

When I was a kid my parents took me to visit the homeland -- Greece, in all her sunny glory. To a kid from Queens, it was a dream come true. When we returned to NY I got sick, then I got sick again and I didn't get better … permanently sick. So the parents took me to some doctors and in the end they put this plastic box about the size of a hot dog -- whose push-down inner housing was lined with tiny needles dipped in potential toxins -- on my arm and pushed the needles down and guess what? 10 minutes later I had a rash. I was "allergic" to stuff like cat dander that lots of people are allergic to, but also things that are hard to avoid, like dust and leaves and tomatoes and corn and new world vegetation ... I had to take shots. On Saturdays I'd walk down to the doctor's office for my shot of stuff my immune system was confused about. Somehow they'd rendered irritants via injection "tolerable" and would slowly increase the dosage every few months. It reminded me of "mediation" sessions when I was a kid where they'd make you wipe cafeteria tables down (or re-arrange orchestra seats or rinse out frog bins in the science lab) with a kid you just had a fistfight with. You don't want to be their friend, you don't even like them, you were just in a fistfight with them for crying out loud! 

Anyway, what does this have to do with joint pain abatement during illness? Well, I've always wondered, what if my immune system was right all along? Some of this stuff that I'm allergic to has strange properties. Like wheat, which is like wood pulp, if you try to eat it. It tastes like plywood. If you have to grind something, powder it, mix it with far more palatable substances to create a blob of dough, induce fermentation and bloating in said blob, then bake it in a stone oven for hours just to make it edible. I mean, that’s an awful lot of trouble when you could just pick a grape. And why do we drink the milk of another species as adults of our own species? And cheese? Really? Do you know how cheese was invented?  Alcohol -- alcohol can clean paint off your hands – it comes in a bottle that’s been sitting around in a cellar for 12 years ... and you're going to drink that and cough and say stuff like "whew, smoooth." 

I guess I question the autoimmune “disorder” designation. It’s hard to pigeonhole broad genetic predispositions as favorable (or not) to current conditions. Where one’s immune system might be a pack of marauder cells attacking their own tissues for lack of external threat (the way the ancient Greeks would just fight among themselves if there weren't any Persians around) in one condition, it could prove beneficial in any number of other conditions, and conditions change. Hyper-vigilance is not necessarily a bad thing if you are being relentlessly attacked by invisible assailants ... that's what I always say.

Jeez I hope this doesn't turn into another desperate self-diagnosis blog. 

NeekerbreekersModifiedOnePunchManDesperateSelfDiagnosisJudoMets.Blog

Mets bullpen

A hidden gem?

LGM!

Mountain Punching

Here's the thing, I've thought about starting a blog for a while and for that while I've thought about how I'm not particularly keen on it. While it might be a good way to keep track of observations on the "One Punch Man" (fitness) side of the spectrum -- with perhaps less emphasis (at least initially) on the "Mets" side -- It is self indulgent drivel of the worst kind. Nevertheless, here goes, and, as life may collude with reality, content will of course be subject to incidental Mets flotsam.  

The One Punch Man thing. Hear me out -- It's not like I'm expecting anyone to read this -- I'm not even sure how this blog thing works. I imagine there’s some secret pipe system like from a church organ with tiny moths flying messages up and down the tubes ... something like that. Anyway, I was rambling to my sons one morning about how after several months I was finally able to do 100 push ups without stopping. So my youngest, the brain of the outfit, is like "hey that's like One Punch Man." I'm like "who is One Punch Man?" He says "Its this anime guy who can defeat any monster with one punch because of this workout he does." Naturally my curiosity was piqued, a guy who can defeat any creature with one punch? Because of a workout? "What about Godzilla?" I ask, "He's physically incapable of losing Dad, that's part of the character." Whatever.

The workout itself is simple, 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and a 10K run, every day, for 10 years. At the conclusion of this plan you should be able to move mountains with one punch. So I figure, what better way for me to prepare for my inevitable confrontation with some former version of myself sent ahead to kill me (besides maybe Judo) than trying the One Punch Man plan? I figure I'll still be fairly young in 10 years and I've already got the 100 pushups ... Who wouldn’t want to chop mountains down with a punch? That’s some Jimi Hendrix voodoo shit right there.

Anyway, some history ... Three years ago I was was obese, smoking, unable to limp/run more than a few hundred feet maybe, I couldn't do a squat because of a bad knee. My Mom had just died … I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, hyperlipidemia, and (eventually) sarcoidosis … My daughter was institutionalized for harming herself, my wife served me with divorce papers. I was depressed, missing time at work, in constant pain, constantly sick, sore throat, colds, on and on. Everyone was like, get used to it, you're old AF ... pretty soon you'll be dead. So I tried to get used to it and it sucked in a major way.

Things are a lot different now. Not sure how things changed but my therapist thinks I should figure it out ... Maybe bottle it. It kind of started with the Judo. After the wife moved out I decided to do something I've always wanted to, I enrolled us in Judo classes at our local Dojo.

Maybe this should be "Neekerbreeker's (Modified) One Punch Man Mets Judo Blog" ??

LETS GO METS!

Welcome home Jerry Blevins.