A Thanksgiving Special

Happy American Thanksgiving, and before I begin with the story, let me just say that this is a happy one for me. What’s missing, of course, is I won’t be there with the family, and that will hold for Christmas upcoming. I’m used to it. I’ve always loved living abroad and have spent lots of holidays away from home going back to my first Thanksgiving and Christmas alone in 1984, at 23 years old when I’d moved to Japan a month earlier—where I’d miss the next 5 consecutive holiday seasons.

But you know what? I didn’t really. Because I knew exactly what was going on at home and that’s because my family created an institution around it all, and it did not change. It never changed. As kids, we could count on the same delight every year—which we had enthusiastically embraced—that our parents and grandparents had crafted and the only thing that changes over years and decades is the new arrivals by birth, and the departures by death. We were especially blessed with many years of stability in the latter.

… I know what my immediate family and I would be celebrating, were I home. I’ll sum it up for you.

So.

… As a prelude to the whole story, it has been suggested to me that I need to come clean and account for my errant ways that led to my cardiac event last week when I suffered moderate chest pain for a couple of hours and subsequently learned via blood test that something had definitely happened. There are three previous posts. The initial report, the post about side effects, and then the relief in coming off the drug regimen.

Until something else happens, this will be the last report or treatment of the issue. Overall, people got more good from this reporting than bad. Perhaps I upped games of various peeps vicariously, or so I’m told. There will be a footnote to this post you can’t miss.

For a proper recap, however, I have to go back to the beginning for a bit. Many of you have known me that long, so let’s do a refresher.

That was taken out on a hike on the Pacific coast, probably in Big Sur, somewhere like within a year of taking up Paleo, gym, and fasting in late 2007, and the rest is history. We’re at 17 years ago, already, my how time flies.

Notably, I didn’t go grab a book by Caldwell Esselstyn (or any other dismissible plant-based wanker who doesn’t seem to care about manliness). These vermin are the epitome of weak-ass, pathetic little males prattling around with the audacity to lay claim to the character. Can you imagine sitting across a dinner-date table with a hot chick and her getting aroused as you order a salad with no oil? The 1 pound ribeye might not arouse her, but at least she might figure you march to your own drummer.

What I did back then was start connecting dots. I was already blogging, and the way I connected dots seemed to appeal to a lot of folks. I fell accidentally into being a “Paleo” influencer as I was doing it myself, being transparent about it, and massively self-experimenting. Perhaps one thing is that I was a known whiskey drinker and smoker.

THIS should be interesting.

So many people getting into the space tried to portray a certain kind of puritanism. I was familiar with the “separate from the dirty world” ethic growing up fundamentalist Baptist, and while I have my affinities and understandings of that in a religious and cultural context, I just have agency. I do what the fuck I want. I literally do not give a fuck what anyone thinks or judges. It’s irrelevant to me.

I do like it when people like me, though. Also, when they hate me.

… Things were going well. I was dropping weight, gaining muscle, and gaining shit tons of knowledge both by reading studies (read them until you know what you’re doing) and by interacting with others…some way more knowledgeable than I. I seemed to fill this sort of void where I would get unwarranted numbers of respected and credentialed people paying attention to me. I chalk it up to me being able to say a lot of stuff they can’t and especially, in ways they can’t.

I heard “I wish I could say that” more times than I can count.

… Here’s what many don’t know because it was only a blip in a post in early 2009, 16 years ago.

I used to take the very thing Weston Price used, butter oil, from grass fed cows. The butter fat is clarified and then centrifuged, and it’s only a certain portion that has the K2. This is the Green Pastures product I used up until just a few weeks ago. The “Activator X” is the K2, as explained by Chris Masterjohn. The problem is that I don’t know the dose, and nobody seems to, so I’ve gone to a synthetic, by Thorne Research. Each drop is 1 mg. I was taking one, but I’ve gone to two as I found that two made my skin baby soft overnight. That’s quite a bit more than you would get from diet unless you eat a lot of foie gras (huge content), but I’m just going with that, for now. I do have a small bit of calcification in one of my coronary arteries, according to a recent heart scan, so I’m taking this as a therapeutic measure. In another six months I’ll have another scan. If you want to simulate how you might get it from diet and don’t want to eat a lot of fish eggs and beef (or venison) liver, then you could put a drop of the Thorne product in something that you consume over 3-4 days.

So I knew I had calcification way back when I was 48 years old. I was a year or two into my journey by then. It was a single data point >1. Was it greater before and already reducing? Was what I had estimated bullshit, and it would progress? I never knew.

It has been a nagging thing all these years because I’m not a chick and I don’t obsess. I’m happier to die earlier, hoping to chalk it up to “death by nagging.”

For the most part, I kept to my Vitamin D3 and K2 regimen over the years and still touted it. I’m glad I touted it. Years later, just in 2021, I got this report:

So.

Unpack that.

The essence? Little old me is a bit more regarded than all the cardiologists, to a guy with a cardiologist dad, three heart attacks, a triple bypass, and 8 stents.

I don’t give a single fuck or runny shit about credentials or even touted “science.” I look at what makes fucking sense and what makes no fucking sense.

… Thing is, once I wasn’t really that active in the diet and health so much as a blogger, I slacked way off on my regimen (but not my whiskey and smokes!). So in later years, it was hit-and-miss and since moving to Thailand nearly 5 years ago, mostly miss. Last time I remember taking K2 was over a year ago.

But…

There’s still the lingering question. I had arterial plaque 16 years ago. I didn’t consult Caldwell Esselstyn. I’ve been lax in my regime, especially lately and to be transparent, since taking up booze again after 2 years abstinence, I’ve had “moments.” (that means days)

Let’s data dive.

According to the good, gentle cardiologist doc, the red arrow is the only problem. It was the problem. It’s why I had chest pain for a couple of hours.

Seeing this on the big screen as you’re laying on the table, the contrast is much higher. The veins or arteries or whatever were stark black. Everywhere. It was eerie. Plus, they’re pulsating, and I had the sense, “how does all this shit hold itself together, and for a whole human lifespan?” It made me think: how fragile we are.

So he points at the place where my red arrow points to, and it’s this off-white area with little black pinholes.

“See the black dots? That means it’s a blood clot. It has already cleared itself.”

Calcified plaque shows up as stark white, he tells me.

But I’d already paid a $10,000 deposit in case they had to do a stent right then and there. I’d pretty much figured that was spent money…they’ll do a stent no matter what.

Nope. Just some drugs for a week.

The real reason for the drugs?

“We don’t know what else may be out there.”

I asked about plaques and calcium and such, said that I showed calcium many years ago.

“No, you’re clean. No calcified plaque.”

“But I didn’t follow Caldwell Esselstyn, and I ate a million pounds of fatty meats, drank a million gallons of whiskey, and smoked a million cigarettes!!! How can I not have advanced heart disease? How can I be better off—except for this blip on the radar—15 years later!!!???”

(I jest. I didn’t ask that.)

… Here’s the report and I’ll take you through the terms.

NSTEMI: Non-ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (the electricity is good, it’s a blockage). It’s high risk because no knowing what’s still out there.

Stenosis: It’s a narrowing or compression, estimated at 50% after the blood clot blew through on its own, before any treatment.

Intraluminal thrombus: It’s a blood clot kind of stenosis. Not exactly exactly, but I don’t want to write 3 paragraphs. These docs, LOL.

TIMI 3 (III) Flow: In spite of the previously blocked now partially cleared blockage, it’s flowing just fine.

LMWH: Send him home and give him Heparin for 5 days.

Done!

Thanks! Caldwell Esselstyn!

… Oh, after the gig where the biggest part is that you have to wait while the huge wound to the vein on your wrist settles down under pressure, and they flush the contrast fluid from you (about 4 hours), the doc came in to do an echocardiogram at bedside.

Doc Somrantin (hugely nice gentleman and excellent English) used the words good and strong, many times. Good fucking strong heart at 63, almost 64

One can only imagine how much better, had I been following Caldwell Esselstyn!!! all this time, eating plants and wanking off to vegan feel-superior folklore….rather than devouring a steak and chasing chicks half my age and less in Pattaya Thailand, making their hip regions quiver once I tossed them on my shoulder and brought them back to my den.

… Anyway, as I reported in the last, I’m off the drugs and now, 2 going on three days later, feeling better than ever. I’m making some changes, which mostly involve tempering the alcohol and sticking to the small supplement regimen because I NOW have very strong confidence they do work.

And take real pause about my own experience here that I have been happy to share all these years. I have not denied odds. I simply thought for myself, tried for myself what made sense, embraced and discarded as appropriate, and I’ve done a fuck of a good job. Given that I had calcification already, where would I typically be right now on the standard “health advice?” You know very well.

Instead, I said fuck the fuck off, and I figured it out, connecting dots and 1st and foremost, not being fucking stupid. When someone says to me, “but [insert authority] says,” I know I am not dealing with a brain. I’m dealing with a regurgitator. Of zero interest. Nothing to offer.

So where did the little blood clot come from? Who the fuck knows? I did the week of meds as prescribed precisely because “who the fuck knows?” and, “are there more?” I trusted that was the best protocol known to deal with that unknown. It’s quite like military thinking, and I understand that. Military thinking is battle tested.

It worked out, so far.

Footnote: You might have guessed that the above references to Caldwell Esselstyn!!! were born of dork inputs I’ve been getting via email since the outset. Give yourselves gold stars. Since only paying members can comment on posts—and what sort of putrid shit who lays in wait to pop up giddy about your personal problems would pay—I’m getting them via email. I’ve been living rent-free in their minds for a long time, apparently. Anyway, as I have utterly ignored them, the emails became more and more insistent that I must heed Caldwell Esselstyn. If not, I’ll die, and it will serve me right!

(I block all the emails, which means they go directly to the spam folder.)

Have a FANTASTIC DAY and Lord knows, you Americans of good hearts, mind, and conscience deserve it. Keep the faith. I must admit, I was pretty deficient in it, but you guys pulled it through. I did vote for Trump in Washoe County, Nevada, though!

It’s not going to be perfect. Be firm in your principles, patient in your actions.

… I enjoy feeling full of joy and love. Especially at Thanksgiving Time.