Summary of me…hmmm. The short version is not that short and I don’t type as fast as I talk, but I’ll give it a shot.

Born and raised in Calgary, he went to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont at too young an age and had too much fun, so was sent home to grow up after 5 years.  Oh, and there may have been some ‘mental illness’ stuff messing with him in here as well ,but he didn’t know that till later.

By the grace of his father’s contacts, he got a job with a small consulting firm and grew up enough to get letters saying “let him back, he’ll do better” from his new colleagues, to the university. He managed to scrap through by the thinnest of margins (special dispensation of the University Senate thin) and went back to that small consulting firm. Spent a bunch of time doing cool things cleaning up contamination that mostly dated to before the Environment was invented.

That small firm got bigger, so he took the opportunity to live and work in England for a while in 1998. Did all sorts of cool, cleaning up messes stuff from WAY BEFORE the environment was invented, and learned lots of cool stuff. Because the world has a weird sense of humour, he ended up helping to design a Contaminated Land Masters level course for Imperial College in London.

During this period, one of the professor’s pointed out that he didn’t have a Masters and that he should take one. He pointed out that his undergrad marks were less than sterling. The Professor pointed out that he was at a table with 4 Professors and they could probably get him in. It turns out they could! So again, by lucky personal connections, as opposed to any personal ability, he could advance past the limitations his youthful indiscretions had set for him.

As he was finishing his Master’s degree he found his energy levels draining and was struggling to keep up and suddenly lost feeling in his hands (suddenly over about two weeks).  He figured that was carpal tunnel stuff for his hands and over-work for his energy, and didn’t connect it all up. He soon found out that it was more his neurological system wasn’t playing nice with the rest him.  Doctors did a bunch of tests and then a bunch more and ended up with top neurologists from 3 countries agreeing there was something wrong.  None of them had any idea what.

Taking this as a sign, he semi-retired back to Canada.  It turns out living in Calgary on a part time salary was a bit easier than London.  He plugged away working part time and life continued, like it does.  As mentioned in the 1st blog, depression was, unrecognized by him, trying to make his life more interesting…or less interesting I guess, and by the grace of good friends and great family, failing to make much ground.  Some, but not enough to derail things.

He continued living life, like you do, when on July 4, 2011 he failed to cross the street in front of his house for the second time in 2 years.  The first time had resulted in a broken nose and a delayed meeting at work.  This one resulted in a large number of delayed meetings, some delayed awareness, two very broken legs (tib fib on both legs), a bit of a brain bleed and lots of ouch.

It turns out that somewhere between the brain bleed and the morphine, he decided he was an international spy and was stringing together all sorts of interesting stories of what was going on – but nobody recorded any of it!!  My memories of this time range from ‘nothing at all’ for the first bit, to ‘not sure if it was a hallucination or real’ toward the end. Had some weird hallucinations, for sure. His family claimed they were worried he might not get better, and he is a bit miffed, to this day, that they didn’t record any of it, for future amusement, in case he did.  It turns out he did – or at least mostly did.

A month into his three month stay at medical facilities, his brain began to spin a bit more within his control and he started to remember stuff and became far less exciting.  After a bunch of physio and grimacing and stuff, he went home with somewhat functional legs that only hurt when he used them…or only hurt much when he used them.

Shortly after re-engaging with the world it appeared that the previous neurological thing was beginning to evolve again following 10 years of not changing very much.  Progressive neurological degradation is not generally a good thing…at all.  Around this time he realized what depression was and saw its stamps all over the place in his life.  Turns out it’s more  a withdrawal from the world, than a sadness thing, and he’d been lucky in how his life had set up, and the general awesomeness of his friends and family, to make it hard for the black dog to get a firm grip.  More – way more, in the blogs.

So here he was, with ever increasing amounts of pain and the resulting fatigue beginning to really mess his life up.  He finally stopped his stubborn attempt to avoid pharmaceutical assistance and began to experiment with various cocktails of drugs to deal with the pain -without getting zonked out and unable to work/function.  Progress was made with an evolving mix and he continued his life trying hard not to pay much attention to additional neurological symptoms that would make themselves known from time to time and show that neurological degradation was continuing apace.

Somewhere in here he had his quint-annual MRI done.  As he sat down with his neurologist, the doctor said, while reading the notes “brain atrophy, well lets take a look”.  Now brain atrophy is a just an ugly pairing of words even when it’s not your brain under discussion, but he managed to recover and take a look.

It seems that after bleeding as a result of trying to open the front windshield of a car with his head, some of the brain decided that there was just too much brain around, and stopped being.  As these pictures had been taken every five-ish years, he was aware of how his brain used to be fairly symmetrical.  Now it wasn’t.  The doctor was saying something about how usually there would be cognitive effects with that missing grey matter, but that he had somehow avoided that.

His GP said that “your  IQ goes from 190 to 180, who’s going to notice” and he liked that, so he decided that was true.  Now the funny part here, I mean the jokes just write themselves, was that brain damage was good news!!  It meant the neurological progression wasn’t progressing, it was just that the brain, in rewiring itself around the damage, had done some things like sliding a signal that didn’t belong into the part of his brain that did skin pain.  Silly brain.

If you get to a place where brain damage is good news, there were probably points in your life that could’ve gone a bit better – but good news is good news so he carried on.  In addition to the skin pain, he had gathered a auditory hallucination somewhat connected to movement that provided a “puffing” sound into his ear periodically, but hadn’t yet resolved into voices telling him the lottery numbers for the next week, although he held out hope.

He continued plugging away in a secure job, as first natural gas, and then oil prices collapsed and the city of Calgary fully embraced it’s first bust, in it’s history of boom and bust, for some time.  He felt that it wasn’t really fair that he had a fairly secure job when so many around him did not, so he quit his job with no real plans on what came next.  That brings us to present day, as he winds down his final days at Advisian and looks to what comes next.

He has now realized that the internets have got new ways of doing things, since the last webpage he made in 1997-ish, and is struggling to catch-up…

For the long version, read the blogs…