My interests have been my work. Other than a 2 year stint in the Army during WW2 - China/Burma/India theater - my productive life has centered mostly around critters, that is animals, 4 legged or finned. During high school years, I pursued wild mushrooms. Book in hand, I wandered the alluvial terrain of the northern Sacramento Valley and the oak and madrone forests of Sonoma County trying to figure the darn things out. After graduation from the University of California (Berkeley) in Life Sciences, I worked for a year at an experimental range in the San Joaquin Valley in California, part-time studying white footed mice for my Master's thesis and gathering life history data on a population of pocket gophers. I then obtained a General Secondary certificate and taught biology, geometry, and US history for 2 years at a high school in the Sonoma Valley. There, my first history class was mainly about 15 tough guys who had flunked the previous year and in retaliation had hung my predecessor by his feet out the second story classroom window but I made it.
Then I found I was more interested in the biological science content of my work than teaching, so I entered graduate studies in ichthyology (fish studies) at the University of California at Los Angeles. After a wonderful and daunting series of years, which included around 150 hours of scuba studies on the populations of kelp bed fishes in southern California and northern Baja California, I obtained a Ph.D. degree. Then 23 more wonderful challenging years at a government laboratory near Juneau, Alaska, where I researched the classification, ecology and dynamics of Alaska's marine fishes. Most of that time, my wife and I lived in a log cabin with a giant granite fireplace in a 20 by 20 living room; it was half the house. The snows were sometimes so deep they piled to the eaves. In those early years, nearly pristine salmon stocks swarmed the nearby fiords. What memorable fishing!
In addition to the research, I put in a 2 year stint as national scientific editor for a well known fisheries research journal and also several years as chief scientist in governmental environmental studies preparing for oil development and transportation in Alaska. Retirement came in 1983. We chose a city in Oregon because of its small town atmosphere and easy availability to the Pacific Coast and Cascades. Then I bought my first computer (Apple) and continued working up and publishing my data. Over the years, I programmed in Fortran, Basic and C. In 1988 - Wham! - came my first bout with cancer, followed by radiation therapy. Five years later came another bout but this time, the operation was followed by chemotherapy. Five years later came CHF.
Last July (1998), my wife and I returned from a fine fly-fishing trip to several Canadian lakes. After bustling around for several days taking care of our pickup truck and trailer, I became aware of unusual tiredness in the afternoons. Then one morning I played doubles tennis with my buddies. One game was particularly hard fought. I served and we see-sawed through 12 to 14 sets of adds and deuces. Two days later, I noted a serious loss of energy for a light aerobics session. Then in 2 more days, I was making loud wheezing noises at night. A visit to my doctor's office and a chest x-ray and EKG elicited those memorable words, "Jay, you have developed left bundle branch block. You have had a silent heart attack." That day, I started Zestril and furosemide and in 2 days, felt fine. I even contemplated playing tennis again but my doctor urged me to wait until I had an echocardiogram. Now, 2 echcardiograms later, I can say that without a doubt I have dilated cardiomyopathy and an EF somewhere around 33%. After the second test, my GP and I discussed possible causes and he mentioned my cancer chemotherapy. We obtained the list of drugs that were used and "Voila," the smoking gun: doxorubicin, a known generator of "heart problems." On 6 occasions, I had been given 100mg doses intravenously.
So far fate has been kind to me. Except for those initial days last July, I have felt fine. Each morning I do floor exercises, including 30 floor crunches and 20 full pushups. After breakfast, I am usually at the local athletics club doing the treadmill and weight conditioning, or taking light step aerobics. I eat and sleep well and have no shortness of breath. I can't help thinking, "If this is serious heart trouble, it's the way to go," but I know things could take a turn for the worse any day and try not to think about the term's darker meaning. At present, I am on Lasix and the ARB Diovan.
I have long wondered if the tragedy of death for a person is increased or decreased by having experienced such a wonderful life. Do we resist because we cannot bear the thought of consigning those wonderful luminous traces, the unique "me" to eternal darkness? Or are we more accepting because our cup ran over so many times? Perhaps the profound contrast between the 2 realms brings fear. How unfortunate we can't gather all past satisfactions and pleasures into a shield to ward off death. Wasn't that in part, in an oblique sense, their purpose? We are being fooled. The two faces are only opposite sides of the same shield. In words of the African poet, Ben Okri (slightly modified), "We are the miracles God made, To taste the bittersweet fruit of time."
Cats, dogs, and little frogs. Neither of the first 2 are with us at present but we have the delightful spunky damp skinned sprites under our house at times. My active interests include classical music (I gravitate toward chamber stuff written in the 18th and 19th centuries), fly fishing along with my wife, and tying my own flies, building short stories, writing poetry, and very recently the welfare of a DCM heart. Things now permanently on the shelf are lots of scuba work, skiing galore and homicidal tennis. My wife and I have day hiked Switzerland for more years than I can remember. Further in the past, we sailed a Cal20 and I tried sailboarding with a 70lb monster. This summer, I plan to please my wife by hiking the Cascades with her again.
Jay Q -- December 8, 1998
All information on this site is opinion only. All concepts, explanations, trials, and studies have been re-written in plain English and may contain errors. No one here is a doctor. No information on this page should be used by any person to affect their medical, legal, educational, social, or psychological treatment in any way. This web site and all its pages copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Jon C.