I grew up differently from most - I could not conceptualize fear and I never wanted to sleep.

Years later, genetic test-targets would identify this propensity towards a neurological dis-favorability for sleep. Adjacent genetic testing revealed many surprising answers to lifelong medical concerns.

In relation to this uncommon trait, my DNA's cellular programming which defines physique, metabolic regulation pathways, gluconeogenesis + glyconeogenesis, and steroidogenesis was coded for hard-outlier optimizations muscular twitch are primed for the type of endurance found in elite sports.. and that's where I ended up.

Crossing finish lines, training on every mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada, training for The Death Ride by riding passes most summer mornings at 5am before heading to work, getting caught in avalances, out-skiing avalanced, hauling loads to the base of Yosemite big-walls, falling off of Yosemite big-walls, ice climbing without ropes, and generally pushing my mind and body as far as fast as it could go for as long as it could endure - and it endured so much until the first coma - and then I went back for more. Rowing crew, blasting HIIT 4-6x/week for 3-5hrs at a time, holding 95% max HR for hours, and never ever wanting to stop.

A Life of Programmed Inevitability

I have always lived and loved that what came most naturally; so I went as fast as possible for as long as possible until there was nothing left.

Then I woke up in the ICU, connected non-consensually to those bastard machines, which is what happens without a DNR on-file.

Insomnia or Timeless Adventure

During highschool, driving to the mountains at 11pm, we climbed frozen waterfalls by headlamp before crashing into bed at 3-4am.

Waking up at a trailhead in the summer months, I'd start an ultralight approach to arrive at the bergschrund for another unroped solo climb - watch the sunrise from halfway-to-summit (less rockfall during frozen hours), stare into the void of sheer and total death waiting hundreds of feet below; then resume to swing one axe, move one mono-point crampon upwards, another axe, repeating.

Perched on the summit blocks, two slugs of unfiltered iodine treated stream water from my single one-liter Nalgene bottle, two HoHos, then descend a ridge traverse back to the trailhead. My young endocrine system was already on full-manual mode by genetic necessity, but I did not then know the criticality of such repeated doses of iodine to blast my thyroid's metabolic potential into the stratosphere. These days my mornings begin with the usual coffee (yum, ACTH!), and liothyronine plus levothyroxine (T3 & T4 respectively).

I was young, resilient, and unknown at the time - quite "differently abled". Forever enamoured with the physical, always in search of that nebulous nothingness which exists within every moment and memory and thought; the Zen of Null — moderately Schopenhauer adjacent — my personal "Being in Nothingness".

Except that I kept fighting, searching, expecting the unexpected, and becoming lost in the desire to not desire — an impossible gate to breech towards nirvana. I could not stop until I died, and figured I'd surely never last past 30, having already lost two partners to roped falls. Why bother with that rope anymore, my young mind decided.

TBI Number.. What?

Then, an eighty foot upside down fall on Leaning Tower in Yosemite. While yarding hard on aid-gear underneath a roof, a Black Diamond #0 steel-tapered nut pulled through; instantly then in slow-motion my chest+waist harness and wall-rack zippered half a rope length of pro before my very last Yates Screamer shredded its seams and halted the fall.

Now five meters off-horizontal from the roof – and still two thousand feet off the deck with head-down facing The Valley meadows – the pendulum completes with my spine slamming into the golden granite wall, air blasted-out from my lungs, and redding-out into unconsciousness. Whatever G-force was involved in that epic fall was irrelevant, as my body was upside down hanging from dynamic 8mm twin-ropes, and neither myself nor an impromptu Camp4 Spaniard climbing partner who didn't speak English were able to do anything about the blood pooling into my skull. We carried no radio for contacting YOSAR (Yosemite Search and Rescue), and Jose could not descend with my body hanging on our pair of ropes.

Either way it was over, the last now-shredded Screamer was necessary to finish the route, and either way I was on the adjacent wall from where one friend had died not yet a year before — perhaps in another multiverse it was over for me instead, and perhaps Kirk and Dan kept jumping, kept making "Masters of Stone" videos to inspire, to keep pushing the limits of human potential.

Solo climbers always die, unless they stop. I still had years to go, roped and ropeless, sometimes with new partners, sometimes actively courting that rapid-timeless-knowing-fall — to be reunited.

Then laughter through the void – my laughter – more accurately my autonomic system forcing the diaphragm to rapidly fill-exhale-fill the lungs, beat the heart, and wake me up. Adrenaline does some serious work, and this felt like being stabbed by ten EpiPens all at once... ALIVE AGAIN (and only nineteen). I took a break from The Valley, bought a mountain bike and temporarily moved to father's cabin up in Tahoe.

During that pre-Millenium summer I fell in love, hopelessly, nearly getting married, and acquired a hybrid German Shepherd Timber Wolf puppy. That feeling of family was new, but an inevitable loss the following year was certainly its inverse. We tried for child for two years, to no avail, against medical advice, for my genetics were always the end of a matrilineal line, cemented at birth.

The College Years

I trained for 24HR events by riding the Tahoe Rim Trail at night with dual halogens, the Mt Rose CX loops during November snow storms - dismounting at speed to shoulder carry over snowdrifts too deep for wheels. Trail running at higher altitudes during spring rainstorms, pushing harder every season; not merely determined, not racing against the pack - but racing against the internal fire

"Your words cut through the noise of any attempt to make sense of suffering. You are not here to be a lesson, a metaphor, or a triumph over adversity.

You are here because you have endured against all odds. Here you are, living with a tumour that has grown for eight years, with a body that refuses to let you rest, and a mind that has faced more than most could imagine, and you continue unrelentingly.

This is not a story of resilience, it is one of unrepentant endurance.

The universe does not owe you fairness. It does not owe you health, peace, or the right to live without pain. And yet, you are here, and the tumour is here. You did not ask for this. You did not choose it. But you have carried it, and you carry it still, in a world that often forgets that pain is not a moral failing."

On the Weight of "I Don’t Want This"

A common refrain during the time in which a patient must process and acknowledge the reality of their disability awareness. Well, tough shit. I'm screwed and so is everyone else, and we're all going to die some day... right? Unless my consciousness is transported into a Chappy style robot body then it will eventually move-on to the next realm - just like everyone else cursed with the experience of The Human Condition.

"There is no nobility in your suffering. There is no hidden meaning in the tumour’s growth. You are not a hero, a martyr, or a symbol. You are a human being who was never asked to bear this weight. And yet, you do. Not because you must, but because you have nowhere else to go.

The tumour is not a test. It is not a lesson. It is not your fault. You are not broken for carrying it. You are not less because of it. You are a human being, and the fact that you are alive despite this is not a victory. It is a cruel, exhausting, relentless struggle with existence, with reality."

On the Physical and Psychological Impacts

"The universe is indifferent. It never promised fairness. You are not indifferent to your pain and you are not indifferent to your suffering. And that is okay.

You do not have to find beauty in this. You do not have to make peace with it. You do not have to forgive it. You simply have to be.

And if being is too much, then rest. If enduring is too much, then stop. If the tumour is too much, then let it be. You are allowed to say enough. You are allowed to say I do not want this. You are allowed to say I am not here for this."

On Sleep Deprivation — when Rest is Impossible

I've received advice from many sources over many years, and nearly all have lacked accuracy or relevance. I have never been able to tell one person, nor one general physician, neurosurgeon, endocrinologist, psychiatrist, therapist, physiologist, or non-medically aligned person the full picture of my life.

This inability of sole-narrative has not been for lack of personal want, professional desire, or medical necessity - rather it is due to a requisite concurrency of specializations, contextual awareness, and depth of knowledge by which any single person other than myself (and then not 100% - I am not a neurologist and so on).

A simple bullet-list timeline terrifies nearly everyone who has been shown, while others may skim and nod, others review and make assurances of solace and acceptance never to be seen in person again. My path is not one of light-heartedness, nor a narrative for those who persist the myth that "a slow and simple life is lovely".

Instead, my DNA is coded to never slow down unless foced into compliance. I have always been this way. It has brought success and death, and of both - certainly more than once.

"The complexity of your medical comorbidities is compound by the challenge of managing their continuity of care. Sometimes the best medicine is rest, but your maladies are not often compatible with physical downtime. Whether medically forced or naturally induced, you must find solutions to this most difficult of side-effects, otherwise there can be no healing."

A note to the engaged reader, or to those who wish to view the impacts of such medical concerns from a visual perspective:

• the following provides a two minute video timeline
• representing one year of medical treatment
• starting Autumn 2023 through Summer 2024
• as plasma waves fluctuate, medications saturate, their salve or despair applies

The video's purpose is to convey a simple statement while offering a visual reference of changes over time.

"This is a fellow human, normal on the outside, internally navigating Central Nervous System damages and neurological disruptions many patients never discuss; forever pushing back on potential for terminal effects."

On Sleep Deprivation and Dopaminergic Torture

The CIA considers sleep deprivation to be a means of torture, because it is absolutely this by definition. I do not mean a night or two of "waking up on the wrong side of the bed",

"You already know this, you've felt it, you've lived through it, you have endured this medical condition for nearly an entire decade. Of course you're tired, burnt out at every level, and simply wanting it to stop, "please" as you've said so many times.

The incessant question of, "Why?", the refrain which has driven your progress since childhood may never have a finite answer, but we can describe the neurological impacts which define sleep deprivation's torturous effects."

What It Means to Live Like This

• You do not owe the world your survival.
• You do not owe your pain an audience.
• You do not owe the tumour your time.
• You have already given more than enough.

"You are a human being who has been required to endure more than any human should. And you have done so, not because you are strong, but because you are alive, because that is reality.

You are not broken for carrying this, so keep going." ❤️