Tag Archives: medical

Early warning systems

I received word last night that a retired colleague and friend died yesterday. Cancer sucks. I know there will be a time in the future when we will be able to beat cancer consistently. Even before that, I think we will develop very early methods of detecting it. We might prick our fingers once a month and hundreds of health concerns might be detected early on, or maybe we just go to the bathroom and the toilet itself will detect concerns by doing a daily water test of our waste.

Essentially, early detection will help us detect the cancer early and we can knock it out before it kicks the hell out of us. This will likely happen before we actually beat cancer altogether… we just become really good at detecting it early. “Kill a snake when it is small,” my grandfather used to say.

My wife has an Apple Watch. In a decade or so, most of us will have a device like this that will monitor our health and do daily diagnostics for us. It will monitor our heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, sleep patterns, and a whole series of other biometrics that will create a baseline for us, and let us know when things aren’t at homeostasis. We will get medical feedback that will become an early warning system for us when our readings are off.

Imagine getting a little warning from a wearable device that tells us that our heart is doing something that has been detected in thousands of people a month or so before they got a heart attack, and suggesting you go for a checkup… and sharing this data with your doctor. Imagine learning that you have the flu before feeling the symptoms, and this device tells you to stay home and not spread your contagion.

We aren’t there yet, but I look forward to the day when we can count on an early detection device saving our lives, and extending the lives of those we love and care for.

Colourblind discovery

A few years ago I developed Central Serous Retinopathy in my left eye. It sounds scarier than it is. Basically, a small bubble forms on the back of your retina, blurring your vision but only at your focal point. This is extremely annoying. Imagine trying to read something and the only word that is blurry is the one you are trying to read.

It can be stress and insomnia related, among other things, and happens mostly to males 40+. It is also something that goes away over time and seldom needs treatment. For me it was extra annoying because I’m left I dominant, and that’s the eye that wants to focus on things close to your nose… like a computer screen. Eventually it went away, but my focus is definitely a little softer for things like reading, and when I’m fatigued, I find it hard to read, and will put on readers with a low, but necessary magnification.

Yesterday I was out in the sun for a while and had suntan lotion on my face. Later, I was lying on the couch, playing a mindless pop-the-bubbles game in my phone that I sometimes play. I like it because a round is really short and I don’t find myself wanting to play too long… a quick break that doesn’t become a large distraction. I’ll play it when my wife is watching the news. I can listen in and don’t need to watch him the screen.

So I was playing this game where I have to have to shoot a coloured bubble and hit at least 2 more of the same colour to pop them. I think I rubbed my right eye and some suntan lotion got in it. It was streaming tears a bit and I didn’t realize I was only looking through my left eye. Then I pointed a blue bubble at two green and one blue one, thinking they were all blue and that they would all pop. They didn’t. I thought there was a glitch in the game.

I looked again with both eyes and suddenly I saw the green. That’s when I realized that I’m blue/green colourblind, but only in the focal area of my left eye. I shut my right eye and any green that I looked at became just a slightly lighter version of the blue, but only where I focused, the other green dots in my peripheral vision stayed green.

I found this test online, and sure enough, I can’t read it with my left eye, but the blue numbers don’t completely disappear, parts of it fade out depending on where I look.

I wonder if this is something I’ve had my whole life or if it was brought on by the Central Serous Retinopathy? A Google search hasn’t led me to believe these are connected yet they both have affected only the focal area of my left eye. Also, this seems like a weird thing to not know about myself for 53 years of my life.

It is a weird experience shifting my focal point and watching coloured shapes morph or disappear right before my eye. It makes me think about all the things we go through life not seeing, not being aware of. We don’t see the same ranges of colour as other animals. What do we miss that our eyes aren’t capable of seeing… and what are we missing simply because we are oblivious?