Ramping up the training
So for the past month I have been at 4-5hrs of cardio. I do 1hr long run and a 5k interval session, going hard, per week. Then, most of the time is spent going up a 20 floor building with 12kg pack and taking the elevator down followed by some cycling. This needs to build to around 7hrs a week by May. Yesterday I did around 700m vert in an hour, today I am aiming for at least 400m. Though during the night I had very bad cramps. Every time I get them, I am scared for the kidney. Because leading up to my kidney failure cramps were a painful constant.
I am also climbing more and more outdoors now. There I really want to be able to onsight (sport) a couple of 6bs before May 15th. I also want to comfortably trad 5a/5b on limestone. Limestone is a traitorous mistress, gear that you would be bomber on any other rock can and will pull. My friends partner took a ground fall when two of his cams popped. You need deep placements and ideally nuts work best. Overall, I think this would put me in a good place to start the Climb Against Time.
Finding time for everything is a huge issue. So during the days there is obviously the daily lab stuff. On the weekends and nights there is the promotional stuff, improvements to the website, as well as attracting participants for their own challenge. I have to do these otherwise you are just 'Another fucker climbing' as per a mountain guide I met last September. Then there is finding the partners for the climbs I will be doing, which given the volume, is a bit of an ordeal of its own. All of this does strain my relationship with my wife, the time we can spend together is reduced by quiet a bit. Feeling a bit drawn.
Speaking of promotion the social media business is weird. I have now had some experience with Instagram and YouTube. I hugely favor Youtube. You need to spend a lot more effort, your reach is smaller, but you can actually post long-form content, saying somewhat meaningful things or actually being able to tell a story. And I also feel like with investment in to quality you can really take off. There are a crap tonne of accounts on instagram and the competition is fierce because the effort is less. On Instagram 3 second retention is like 30%. You can't really tell a story there, its more like, hey look at this thing real quick! Then bam on to the next thing. If I look at my own viewing habbits this all makes quiet a lot of sense. I think taking this brief foray in to the content creation world has made me a tiny bit more conscious of how I engage with it also.
Training for a charity event I am organising, basically the prime aim is to help change the culture around dialysis. I think there are a lot of misconceptions that have made us converge on solution that is by far sub-optimal.
I will do 41 Alpine peaks above 4000m through hard routes. So it requires a whole season of just climbing and not dying (o1 calculated about 20 millimorts!, will have to check but sounds reasonable given my near misses).
I view plans of giving humans GOD mode (but not really) via AI as fundamentally removing all sort of meaning from life.
Things are easier now than they were, yes, but we still suffer. Suffering is, in my opinion, a core pillar of what it means to be human.
I am not so certain that school itself is the cause of our woes here.
I think even without school, if you take the type of demographic that attend them and put them in to some sort of a job, they will still
delay children until their late 20s early 30s just because the responsibility of having a child would detract from the benefits incurred from having disposable income to travel to world and consume things.
Dialysis Diaries Week 2:
Last week was pretty okay. I went trad climbing in Belgium. Which is an odd statement. Because Belgium is not known for its trad climbing (ie placing your own protection). Belgium has some work class limestone sport climbing. But currently I am very careful about taking sport falls. The reason being that the catheder that is placed in to my abdomen is somewhat low down. So upon a lead fall the climbing harness tugs up on to it which causes some pain. It's also not a great idea to disturb the region as it is essentially an open wound in to my body. So the name of the game is to not fall, which is the perfect motto for trad climbing on sketchy limestone anyways! So had a cold day out over marginal gear which as a beginner felt quite close to soloing at times. But it did make me feel somewhat whole again. On the 3rd pitch may hands started cramping in protest, this is quite common for me right now, any endurance exercise quite closely pushes my very poorly regulated body out of bounds. Regardless I could bond a bit with my old PhD friend, I hope to take him to the Alps after my surgery.
Last week I said it was pretty big that I could still urinate. Well I still can but I think the flow is getting less which is concerning. My blood pressure this evening was 170/110 I will call the dialysis clinic tomorrow. This is probably because I am "too wet". I feel like I have limited my fluid intake these past few days but perhaps I am not a reliable narrator of my own fluid consumption, a bit like a fat person on a diet of kellogs and whipped cream. In either case it is somewhat concerning.
As for my releationship that is going well. The disease does place unique burden on things. For instance I used to sleep round her house which is 5 minutes down the road. But right now the machine is in my house, so I cannot. A part of me does not even want to with the machine pumping away. But that part is small, generally I enjoy the company. She spends some night at mine, but a lot, particularly weekdays at hers. She says that she does not enjoy having things part here and there and her morning feels rushed when she has slept at my place. I understand this. Yet I feel at times she is dictating the cadence of things. But then again I think she is also making a lot of sacrifices and I know that she cares. I guess the situation is just a bit hard that's all. I also feel a bit more sensitive about things than I would normally be.
There is a thread of narrative that is constantly running through my mind. Its a little devil that says, just stop the dialysis. There is a psychological burden associated with being dependent on a machine and a whole logistics network, to have the mark of disease follow you at all times. The little voice says, just stop, pass away and perhaps you'll roll again and be more fortunate. Ofcourse I don't know whether I will roll again, or that I will be more fortunate, there are plenty a worse lives. Regardless I don't head this voice right now, I still feel like I have much to explore and to do. I pray the voice never becomes too commanding.
To add reference, my life expectancy on dialysis would be like 15 years. So the expected life-years for me doing this now (were I 100% healthy) is still fair bit longer than were I to go back to dialysis. I'll take the odds.
A biological male who goes through male puberty has an insurmountable advantage over any person whatsoever who hasn't gone through male puberty. Unironically, If I were forced to bet on a no-holds barred brawl between a barely-trained 70 year old male and a heavily trained mid-twenties female in the same weight class, I am picking gramps for the win. Cardio will 100% be a factor here, but also, old man strength is REAL. (Oh I'm prepared to lose my money, but absent actual medical problems a 70 year old is not as fragile as you think.) I wonder why such a matchup hasn't been done before. Hmmmm.
I honestly don't agree with this. I went to BJJ for a couple of months just prior to starting dialysis. I was strong, not super strong but pulling 1 rep-max of 50kg over my 75kg body weight on a pullup kind of strong. I had no technique just strength and the technique was developing, but only enough to resist tapping to white belts for the 5 minute hard sparing periods. And for some of the novice white belts I was pretty comfortably in top position against (just had no idea how to submit anyone). I went up against a judo girl about the same size and weight as me. Absolute utter domination. She had been doing this since she was very young. I think I got tapped out like 3 times in the span of 3 minutes. This was in the first week of my short bjj bout, but still.
I am thinking about the aesthetics of technology. Certain technologies seem deeply aesthetic to me and really appeal to my soul. So for instance, SpaceX capturing the booster, that really speaks to me, to be honest pretty much anything space related does. I would class this as 'real' engineering, as would I class building a bridge for instance, but that doesn't have the same frontier pushing edge. Whereas anything related to sensors and artificial intelligence, though can be cool, doesn't evoke the same feelings. I am trying to pin down why this is. I think maybe because I see the electrical technologies as more homogenizing, or more liable to the centralization of power and control? Mobile phones during COVID come to mind for instance. Does anyone else get where I am coming from?
Do you reckon Zafer Party will be able to come to some kind of agreement with KK?
Dialysis Diaries Week 3 & 4:
So I just didn't get round to writing it last week but my machine (let's call her Clara) is still pumping away.
Not much previous week. Went to Belgium again with some friends on a sports multipitch. I led all the pitches, the first one in boots because it was blood cold for cragging at -2 (celcius).
The water retention situation is ongoing so I have begun to cut down on the water/fluid consumption. This is a bit weird. For instance two days ago I didn't drink a single cup. I was still not thirsty because I indeed had excess. Its quaint to be offered tea/water etc and having to refuse it. One really doesn't truly appreciate how much social interaction revolves around drinking things.
One thing that I am very aggressively pursuing is changing my field of work. I work as a postdoc and I am on track towards an assistant professorship. My area is mechanical engineering. But lo and behold, I want to change towards bio. Why? Well I know that my disease will be with me for the rest of my life. Fuck me if I won't try to combat it with every fibre of my being. And the only solutions I see that will make me whole are biological, ie regenerative medicine technologies that rely on expert understanding of cellular biology and methods. Well shucks, I don't have this.
So I am essentially spamming researchers in the field asking for... Anything really. I am not looking for payment, just training, which of course takes up someone's time. But I am sure this would be worth both for them and me in the long run. I have never felt this much motivation before. In any case so far I am getting mixed results. I managed to visit one lab and did some lab work. I felt as though they were treating me as a cancer kid. Which they might have been as today I got the reply that they are looking for experienced postdocs and did not gave PhD funding. Which is fair enough. Regardless, another professor elsewhere seems to be open for an internship. I will talk to him soon. I feel as though if I knock enough doors someone will say yes. If not, I'll have to take the slower approach.
Other than this my mother is being looked at to see if she can donate soon, so fingers crossed for that. I should have a clearer picture of the time line after that.
Also on the topic of donation. I think it was either here, ssc or the EA sub. Someone said they would never donate as it increases the chances of end stage renal disease. Only to someone younger than then and otherwise much fitter.
Now of course I am biased in this but I was thinking about it. And indeed if you think post donation risk of lifetime esrd being order of about 1% is unacceptable I have no logical arguments against it. Then I thought some more. Most of this risk is at a very late age. Say you are 30 now. You probably have 40 years before (low chance of) esrd. Now if we don't singularity our way to whatever you can count on a lot of technological development in 40 years, perhaps and I believe we will based on my research to date, have artificial organs by then. So having this in the calculus I think the assessment becomes more positive towards donation. Thoughts?
Pure self interest, yes that was me
A lot of things happening. So if some of you remember I was on dialysis (kidney failure) for like 10 months, decided to change career from vehicle engineering to basically finding a solution. Now I am in University Medical Center Utrecht, started a day after the transplant, trying to do just that. Its hard of course, creating a bio-artificial/engineered kidney. Harder still when you are so resource constrained, money being sprayed around in consortia with all sorts of other different ambitions and capabilities. But I feel like we are at a position to give a good crack at it. I say bio-engineered because there will always be some degree of bio-engineering, currently that might be simple, but in the future, maybe more extensive.
The current aim for me is an implantable hemodialyser, so something that can be implanted that will dialyse the patient without the need for an external blood circuit and so without the need for needles. This is like an intermediate point, half way line. If we can get this, patient mobility will increase, treatment quality also. More patients will be able to dialyse at home for instance, which is good given how pressed the nursing situation is!
I want to develop a minimal prototype by May 1st. So a lot of hours in the lab, I feel like with the printers and resins we have, we are in a good place to do this. But it requires a shit tonne of optimization and bashing ones skull in to the printer casing I feel. Just the other day I moved the printers in to another room, and physics stopped working. I had prints come out good at first, then wonky later. Turns out that I was not in the grips of delirium, but the lights in this room were emitting too much UV and poisoning the resin. Took quiet a while to figure that one out, now I am mainly in the dark :D
This is all happening in the background of a fundraiser/awareness campaign I am planning for the summer (May 15- October 15). Where I will be doing 41, 4000m peaks through hard routes. I have also invited other people to do their own challenge, hike, climb, walk, cycle, whatever it may be. The idea is inspired by my own experiences in the mountains and the National Donor Monument, which is called 'The Climb' the website is www.climbagainsttime.org. In any case, naked advertising aside, it took quiet some time to knock this together, not on the code side (gpt helped a tonne), but the communication side. Its very hard to communicate things via the web form I find. Presentations I can do, but web, its hard to give enough information but not too much. In any case, now comes to hard part of getting people involved, networking, social media presence etc. So quiet a lot of stuff, because in the end, I at least want to make some noise, money is nice, but not essential.
And also, if I am putting my neck on the line (or spine in this case), I want it to have some pay off, high-risk low gain isn't too desirable. But I do remind myself of the Scottish song 'Will ye no come back again' from Alastair McDonald, he says 'although the cause was ill fated and hopeless, the sentiment is noble and chivalrous and self-sacrificing ' referencing the Jacobite uprising. So I take some solice in that!
I will try to keep updating here on the progress and other details. I said I would keep a dialysis diary here but only managed like 3 weeks, so lets see how far this one goes
Isn't the problem here mass marketing? The same regulations basically seem to apply across the board, irrespective of the amount of data, nature of the data , or the usage of the data (non-commercial, research). The nature of the data in our case is very clear. Data obtained during human experiment, under informed consent, with a very real physical signature of said consent document.
Going under the knife, is never good. There are reports of prolonged chronic pain after vasectomy, both in the literature and on reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/postvasectomypain/
Now of course, any surgery can have bad side-effets. Which is why going under the knife should be last resort. Use condoms.
Yes, the poster that prompted my thought had a much more "extreme" tuning curve which is why I thought they weren't considering potential medical advances in their calculus.
I also often think to myself how close would a friend need to be for me to be cool with a donation of this sort. And I am not sure myself. I would probably consider it for anyone I was already interacting strongly prior to their diagnosis. But that's because I know the disease, making me more sympathetic than I otherwise would have been.
I suppose your suffering really needs to be great to make that leap of faith. That or your priors on one thing or another must be quite high and that thing quiet preferrable. For instance, I would rate inexistence to somewhere between neutral to positive.
I find it hard to formulate but intuitively one can be out of existence for eons until at the very least, some different universe births the right configuration of atoms that is you. In which case those eons might as well have not passed.
What are the maintenance costs of tunnels as compared to above road infrastructure? They are obviously less susceptible to weathering. I guess this would also factor in to reduce or increase the opportunity cost.
In a previous Wellness Wednesday I talked about my summer challange to climb 41 4000ers, and promised there some trip reports. So here I go!
Prelude
The Climb Against Time, my summer challenge to climb 41 4000ers in one season and raise funds to develop an Implantable Artificial Kidney, started with disappointment. Here, after a good warmup stage of preparing both my body and mind in May, I was hit by terrible snow conditions.
In early June I attempted Allalinhorn through the Hohlaubgrat, mainly a snow route with a little bit of rock scrambling at the summit block. This attempt proved futile as we were bogged down by slushy snow straight from the hut all the way to 3600m where we turned around. This futility was followed by heavy bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, having contracted some stomach bug from the water or the fellow inhabitants of the dingy winter room at the Britannia hutte. Between trying to keep my immunosuppressants down and running to the toilet, days passed, and the snow that had plagued us on the approach had long since vanished in the raging rays of the early summer heat wave.
The week after, I was again in the Alps, this time to try Les Droites or the Aiguille Verte. Neither was in condition; the mixed routes were too soft and prone to rockfall, and the rock routes were too wet and filled with rotten snow. Instead, we did Aiguille du Moine as a workup climb. I was getting incredibly frustrated. I had 41 4000ers to go and here I was, grounded, without any so far. I needed a win, and I needed it fast.
Under these conditions, I accepted Freddy’s offer to try our luck at Dent du Geant. I met him in a cafe just next to the telepherique going up to the Midi. He seemed somewhat out of it, tired and hazy. He had just been up the normal route to Mont Blanc and had come down that night, slightly dazed from the exhaustion. In all likelihood, I had a similar daze, having just come down from my ‘emergency bivvy’ that I had set for myself by the Courvecle refuge at ~2700m to get a bit more acclimatization in and catch the train from Montenvers at 1800m, saving my legs almost 2000m of vertical. Two men, at two different sides of the massif, yet the same cold, sleepless night.
We went over the plan and agreed to meet in two days. We drove across to Italy over the Mont-Blanc tunnel in Freddy’s van. Here we promptly got the lift to Pointe Helbronner at 3462m to make our bivouac. The Italian side of Mont Blanc is steeper and wilder. Layers and layers of rock buttresses rise abruptly from the earth to meet the gently sweeping glaciers coming from the French side at the high summits. It amazed me that there was a path straight down almost from Helbronner to Courmayeur, a sickening amount of vertical on mostly loose rock. Dent du Geant The Bivvy
We got off the lift and could immediately see our objective, Dent du Geant or, Dente del Gigante as Italians would call it. The Giant's Tooth did indeed look like a tooth. I was used to the view of it from the French side; from there, with its sweeping North Face and its cloud perpetually lingering under it, it looked impressive. Now, with us so high up, it looked small and, importantly, attainable.
We moved slowly up the glacier towards our mountain and settled on its shoulder, off the glacier at 3600m. It was an impressive bivvy location. Only 400m below our summit, with the entirety of the Mont Blanc massif to let our eyes gorge upon. Here I started with the ritual of collecting, melting, and boiling snow.
It always amazes me how long it takes to melt and boil snow. For the subsequent bivvies with easy lift access, I decided I would bring water up from the valley and save the time and hassle. Yet the time spent over the Jet Boil was not in boredom, for there was tomorrow's route behind us, and the routes for later, in front of us, to admire.
I had met my partner Freddy on a belay at Pointe Lachenal just a month prior. I didn’t know him well, aside from the coffee shop chat, and we had never climbed together either. Yet from the get-go, I was at ease; things were just meshing well without trouble. So we lay feet to head, as two wide-shouldered men could only lie in this tent, and slept soundly.
Until we were woken up around 2 am by the sound of metal and the flash of headlamps. I opened the zip of my tent and looked up; lo and behold, a train of lights heading up the approach gully. "What the hell? It's 2 am, are these people mad?" I asked rhetorically. This was not a long climb, and I certainly did not expect people to start at the hut at 1 am, yet here they were, clambering up the mountain in our backyard. I suppose it makes some sense to be the first on route for such a popular climb, yet the thought of leaving the tent at such an early hour and doing most of the climbing in darkness did not appeal to me at all.
Let them, we thought. We will get going at dawn. No need to rush; let the rock warm up. As I got back inside the tent, I looked up at the Kuffner, the mythical route of my desire. It cut so steeply up the side of Mont Maudit, intimidating at this time of day, with the deathly skirts of the Cursed mountain dropping steeply to either side. It, too, had a train of lights moving up it. I hoped and dreaded for it in the coming weeks.
In our tent, we brewed up, ate, and slowly but steadily got ready. At 5:40, just on the tick of dawn, we joined the light train going up the approach gully. The Climb
The first part of the climb was about 250m of steepish snow mixed with some rocks and rock passages. It was not too difficult, and we had a good clear night and so a refreeze. We moved past these sections to the start of the technical climbing slowly and easily in about 1hr 30 minutes.
We looked up to see that even the first pitch had fixed ropes aiding the way. We decided to simul climb this (climb while moving together). I remember this being the hardest pitch of the whole climb. Perhaps because I was still cold and not in the climbing mindset, but tugging on the fixed line in boots, it all felt very powerful. In either case, we made it up the first pitch to the second. I led the second pitch fairly easily placing a few pieces here and there, mostly just to place something, rather than a strict absolute need to place something.
The last move of this pitch was interesting, a mantle move using huge shipping ropes to help on to a massive terrace, at the beginning of the Burgener slabs. Freddy soon joined me on the belay.
The Burgener slabs, though on every photo I have seen look intense and hard, were far from it. Massive cracks go up the rock with good places for both foot and hand. The climb is only marred by the massive shipping rope yarding up the face, detracting from the seriousness of such an objective and its beauty. Yet the ropes were there and so Tug, started to tug, all the way up the slabs to the steepening just before the summit ridge.
Here it got a bit powerful as I entered the chimney, without the ropes I would definitely need my rock shoes but in this case there was no need. The climb was also as well protected as a multi-pitch sport route. So it all felt quiet breezy. I quickly led the remaining pitch on the summit ridge to the Maddona and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
We had made it, my 1st of the 41 4000ers. There was a huge welling of relief. Finally, at-least one was done.
Soon after this I took my immune suppressants. There is always one set at 10am and one set at 10pm, summit or valley, sleep or climb, this was the 10am set.
After summiting there was only the 7 or so rappels down the south face to do. These rappels were quiet fun (when expertly done as Freddy did so) with large overhanging sections which suspended you mid air.
All in all it was a glorious start a very long adventure, where good partnership met good conditions to give a beautiful outing.
[I am a few weeks delayed with all the write ups by the way but they are coming!]
I am not at the point of muscular failure. The cramps happen nocturnally after the training, honestly in this case I think I sweated a bit too much and not enough electrolyte to counter balance. But this tight rope between injury and gain is a fine one to balance. I find that given the nature of the challenge 72,000m cumulative vertical, long days etc I need to push now, but not too much.
The guy on dialysis was me, so I am doing this of course out of self-interest but also because I think this is a fairly atypical disease that doesn't get the spotlight much.
Videos and reports! I want to document everything. The thing I really want to do is keep an alpine diary but its always hard to write while you are on 'tour' because you are one of: tired, eating, sleeping, or climbing and nothing else :D
Perhaps, depending on how the space capabilities are used. But space technology so far has given me very little to be suspicious. Spy satellites etc are of course a thing, but compared to the thing in your pocket, they almost seem like old technology. I fear more the cars of the glorified military contractor than I do his rockets right now.
nobody is calling for a return of Constantinople to the Christians
I honestly wouldn't say nobody. There are plenty of people larping as crusaders. Just mostly they aren't taken too seriously.
It depends whether it is a suicide pact or not. If you are climbing a long unprotectable hard snow at high angle for hundreds of meters, than perhaps its good to put away the rope. But most of the time it is not like this. You are moving through a very large amount of terrain of varying complexity. You do not have the time to mess around with the rope. You should move together when possible, using terrain belays when possible and soloing if you cannot. This is the only way to really move in the Alpine. Otherwise you get benighted. Just last week I was listening to some French mountain rescue guys talk about a pair of British climbers who were stranded enroute on the Peuterey Integral having made it just past the technical difficulties. Its an astounding route, very serious but most parties complete it 2-3 days. These guys were on it for 5 days. Likely because the terrain requires a lot of efficient moving together. The subsequent rescue was quiet legendary and put a hell lot of people at risk with a storm nipping at their heels (helicopter could not be used due to visibility).
As for the milli and micromort strategy I think its a function of ability. Ueli Steck could jog up the Matterhorn and down before you got to the Hornli. It would also mean that during an Alpine season your chances of dying should decrease. But I find the approach interesting and I will use it for my next year fundraiser which will be 41 Alpine Peaks above 4000m through technical routes. I am curious what my chances of dying is.
Yea I am always kind of at two places with 'safe' outdoor route climbing. I generally think there should be a variety. Because usually things that are too safe or too gym like also become like a gym where you lose a lot of the outdoor element and there is a lot of traffic. Some sort of gating based on ability and risk tolerance is I think nice, also gives an additional sense of progression and accomplishment. I generally don't think having bolts but coloring them etc makes sense, not having the bolt there, and experiencing the real sketch is what makes the route the route. So overall I think a variety of climbs of differing boldness is good.
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Does your significant other know about your use of The motte, and if so, what do they think about it?
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