Abridged narrative of my life, failed studies and ill health symptoms

In honour of hitting the big four-oh, overnight, I felt like turning this excessively long reddit comment reply of mine into an impromptu blog post. Maybe it could kick off writing up more health history, for useful proposes...

I hit all the normal infant development milestones. But was a late starter in some academic respects; last in class to move from pencil to pen, at the start of middle school. But by the end I was getting top grades and passed the entrance exam for our selective grammar (high) school. Where I was basically on mostly As until age 16, except for chemistry and languages (dyslexia spoiler warning).

Starting secondary school.

Over the two years of sixth form, I really started struggling with DSPD (delayed sleep phase). To get to school on time, be exhausted when getting home and then still not sleeping until late. Also with executive function to do homework and revise maths, in particular. The first casualty of my abstraction limit and/or cognitive dysfunction. I dropped Further Maths down to a half A-level and ultimately scraped a D grade. B on the main math course, physics and computing, missing out on my conditional offer of a place at Oxford. Which I didn't really regret, to be honest, heh.

Health Revolution - Part 1 - Diving into Intolerances

I originally intended this as an all inclusive, one parter, covering all my recent health research:

• To explain to people, as fully as possible, where I'm at and where I've been, personally.
• To raise awareness of my core discoveries (much of this may apply to many people).
• Possibly help others take short-cuts (I've already spoken to a few with similar issues).
• To review what I've looked at so far, reminding myself and reappraising with a critical eye.

The grey sections contain stand alone information, e.g.:

• Food intolerance may affect 45% of the population, causing a surprisingly wide variety of easily fixable, idiopathic symptoms, throughout the body (headaches, rashes, itching, diarrhoea, and vomiting...).
• Histamine intolerance may affect as many as 1 in 10 (1 in 100 at lowest estimate). Almost always co-morbid with another food intolerance/disease [source].

As usual, I became a little mired in detail. Perhaps I was guided by a previous whim to make an all-encompassing 'cheat sheet' type resource for 'histamine intolerance' (a complex issues with even greater uncertainties than other similar problems). It is almost entirely unrecognised by GPs in the UK.

+ A Poor Boy, So Sorry for Himself:

Back in 2007, with Cybernetics degree slipping my grasp, due to deteriorating mental energy and my milieu of inter-related problems (see my 'Illness CV'), I said to myself:

• 5 years from now I will definitely have found something to give me significant relief from my problems. I had something like an Orexin nasal spray in mind, to aid waking and wakefulness (but despite amazing results in monkeys, the safety trials don't seem to have been happening, since both compound and delivery mechanism are non-patentable).
• By the 10 year mark I was betting I'd be effectively cured! I am a disciple of the gods of accelerating change, after all.

Out of juice crossing the room (Jan 2008), or that other frequent trap - having to
bend down for something. There happened to be a camera to hand in this instance.

...Well, come 2013 things were only looking more desolate, with NHS appointments having strung out for 4 years before commissioning authority changes abruptly halted them altogether, the best 'progress' I had managed was successfully appealing against the result of an ATOS assessment, thus gaining a modicum of financial stability from ESA payments. I was settling deeper into my strange kind of living coma.... Until an unlikely aid came to me: IBS! 

IBS-D, to be precise.

+ Food Intolerances and Testing

I had already been chatting with an interesting guy in Los Angeles (one of my alliance co-leaders in Lord of Ultima) about the naturopathic (i.e. non medical) treatments he claimed are helping his ADHD, currently treating for chronic yeast infection with traditional remedies including ACV (apple cider vinegar). I was naturally sceptical of his reasoning (with no conventional evidence in support), but the wheat and dairy exclusions were familiar, so after only 2 days of urgent WC visits I made the necessary changes and the GI problems stopped!

I previously attempted going dairy free back around the time I launched this blog (and it's two companions - short lived): "This week I shall mostly be avoiding dairy!" (2006-12-05). But I barely gave it any time before: "So the cow milk related product embargo lead nowhere and I blatantly couldn't be arsed avoiding wheat! I have sent off for a £20 finger prick type testing kit,.."

Although I did try wheat free the following year (2007-05-13), but again:
"Well i started a follow up of wheat free (just in case my negative blood test for Coeliac the other month wasn't up to scratch) which lasted til after breakfast when i nearly fell asleep (and i'd only had bacon, scrambled egg, mushroom and baked beans!)."

My mistake is now obvious: I didn't give it nearly long enough to kick in! Also, the food reactions, which I've carefully observed this time, are not specific to what I have just eaten: eating seems to move digestion along causing the 'bad' food from 16-24 hours ago to reach the point where it actually causes trouble (presumably the large intestine). Delayed reaction.

This time around the threat of IBS was sufficient to continue exclusions for a couple of weeks. Soon after this point I was scrabbling around the loft (a long crawl space under the sloped roof, waist high at it's tallest, stuffed with heavy boxes), looking through everything (twice) to find old school reports ready for my upcoming ADHD assessment (2013-04-05)... and I realised how much better I was!: previous attempts at such confined exertions quickly transitioned into laying down, on the job, for a couple dozen minutes until I could summon the strength for a gruelling tactical retreat. What's more, I actually found what I was looking for, eventually, inefficiently, but triumphantly!

A Run of Mediocre British Sci-fi?

Did I hit a somewhat unlucky run of reading or am I just bored of sci-fi?? To get these out the way, and out of mind ASAP, I'm going to try and round all 3 up together here.

I became page-jammed, with the top two books (as pictured) over a year ago, stuck mid chapter, a few dozen pages into each. With blog posts having dried up about the same time, that may have been down to a dip in cognitive function with most remaining resources sunk into co-leading an alliance to a #2 crown on World 75 of Lord of Ultima). But with miraculously improved health (more on that later), dust was blown off and determined reading resumed... and then continued on through another novel that had been entirely self-locked for years. Since I finisihed Reynolds just this morning, I'll start with him.

House of Suns (Alastair Reynolds):

By the numbers, hard sci-fi, space-opera, second star to the right and straight on until morning. That is to say, it certainly wasn't unpleasant (in the way that Divergence had me staring at the page in aggrieved disbelief, sometimes), but there was little omph. No real surprises...
[But still, spoilers after the page-break are greyed out (please highligh to read easily).]

The End of the Cornetto (Trillogy)

Having (re)watched all three Wright/Pegg/Frost films within the same 24 hours, I will venture that:

1. Shaun of the Dead has the most classic lines and references.
2. Hot Fuzz was the funniest and most generally enjoyable to watch.
3. The World's End seemed the highest budget with the most action:...

Their self proclaimed "Pub-Fu" stylings lend original flavour to the carnage, with enjoyable moments, but there's so much smashing of blue robot/aliens that it gets very tiring to watch by the end. Overall it's in danger of crossing the line from being a Garden City subversion of the action/sci-fi genre, to embodying typical Hollywood production values - where fight scenes are as bread-and-butter as big dance numbers in  Bollywood flicks.

Aside from fleeting cameos from conical iced cream lollies, The World's End imported little from it's predecessors, beyond the falling over a fence gag and the cast (notably Bill Nighy as the authority figure who Pegg's lead rebels against). Apparently there was a deliberate exclusion of external references and influences in production, so be warned, this is not a Spaced style geek-out.

I might have found more delight by entering the cinema totally plot naive; while the trailer did a very faithful job of portraying the nature of the film, it did so at the expense of telling most of the jokes and the entire story, baring the stilted conclusion, which I found dull - too earnest to swallow as satire.