#YOU WANT ME DELIRIOUS WHILE WORKING ON PEOPLE’S HEALTHCARE???????

[githvyrik]

only covid can make 3 days straight of sleeping feel like nothing happened

[ixellent]

An Account of Chronic Illness

Here’s what I did for the last month while I was waiting for my Crohn’s treatment, which was delayed nearly a month to the day due to a fuck up with insurance. Sometimes I just want people to know what it’s really like for some people to be sick with this disease. This is a non-graphic account of the last month and includes minor medical mentions.

I was getting sick as far back as the week before New Years because my original treatment date was the 4th, so I really haven’t been eating anything substantial since then. The once in awhile I did, I got even more sick, so. And for me with my Crohn’s, what that means is going to the bathroom a lot and being doubled over with abdominal pain, plus fatigue and trouble concentrating, long story short. 

I made/received a lot of phone calls about once a week trying to handle the situation but otherwise I was just waiting to hear back, waiting for paperwork, there’s nothing else I could do about those things - I did leave messages twice a week as well, for those people like “well you can check on your status, you can bug people, you can talk to your doctor” don’t start with me. There was a doctor’s appointment in there as well as part of the things I had to do to get my treatment. I just want you to know that I was doing what I was supposed to do and if there was something else I could do about it, I don’t know what that was and no one would tell me, and there are a lot of times when it’s just an endurance test. You just have to get your scheduled treatment with the paperwork in order or else you are so sick you are going to the ER, those are your options. It’s fucked up and that’s why we need Universal Healthcare god damnit.

At first I was still able to do work, so I finished up a new portfolio piece after the first week of the year, and started a couple things for friends thinking I would finish them up quick, update my portfolio and resume for a couple weeks maybe do a little job hunting, and be opening commissions back up at the end of January. Then I got REALLY sick. The abdominal pain was still intermittent but increasing, and I was already chained to my bathroom every day.

So I just started playing a lot of No Man’s Sky and other games because that’s all I could find the brain power to do, and for about a week all I did was play video games and read and clean my house and get my affairs in order because I knew what was coming. I stocked up on meal replacements and safe foods and tried to work my way through the last of my regular groceries.

Then I was in so much pain that I couldn’t focus on games, and I could barely move at all for the first half of the day. I could only sleep for a few hours at a time and I was always woken up by pain and discomfort every hour. The steroid taper they put me on to help me get to my treatment gave me a few good hours in the afternoon but that was it, and some days I was still so exhausted all I could do was sleep through those few good hours. I was scared that my inflammation might be causing a stricture/blockage at one point so I was drinking Coca Cola once a day because the carbonic acid dissolves most debris-based blockages by itself (that’s a fun fact for you all) and switched to an all liquid diet because I wasn’t taking chances. I can’t go to the hospital during COVID. I just wanted to get to my treatment. I kept myself pretty clean and showered despite it all, and cleaning my house when I could made a huge difference.

There were days I knew I could not drive safely, and when the day of my treatment came my sister had to drive me. There were times I was so bored but so trapped by pain all I could do was scroll through my phone. There was a day I half-deliriously bawled into the phone to my sister because I thought no one cared that I was slowly dying alone in my home. There was a day that the walk down one short flight of stairs to get essential supplies delivered had me out of breath. At my last chemo weigh-in on the 20th of November I was about 134lbs (stable for me). I was weighed again on January 7 at ~129lbs. At this one on the 2nd of February, when I finally got my chemo, I was 117lbs.

I don’t know how long the recovery will be this time. I know it will be more than a week and I am still so sick.

[sinrau]

June 10th, 112K.

June 20th, 120K.

June 26th, 124K.

July 1, 127K.

July 10th, 133K.

That’s 21,000 deaths in the last 30 days in America — thanks to Donald Trump’s catastrophic indifference to a lethal pandemic.

But the worst is yet to come.

Let’s do some basic math together. First, let’s dispel the notion that coronavirus is some mere flu. Three million are infected in America, 135,000 are dead. That’s a mortality rate of 4.5%. If we apply that mortality rate looking forward, the numbers that result are as nightmarish as they are incredible. For example, 4.5% of half the US population is 7,425,000. You can think of that as an upper limit — how many people might die if the virus sweeps across half of the American population.

That’s a huge number. So you can also think about it this way. 60,000 people infected a day is about 2 million a month. Trump will be in office for another six months, that’s 12 million more cases. The mortality from those cases could well be 540,000 over the next six months. Half a million.

Now imagine that Trump manages to stay in office for four more years, and like now, he has no plan to deal with Coronavirus. 4,320,000. Four million, three hundred and twenty thousand. That’s how many people stand to die over 4 years of a future Trump administration that takes as little action as this one.

Of course, I’ve committed a cardinal sin. I’ve made a simple linear extrapolation. The future isn’t going to be nearly so straightforward. But the numbers above should give you some impression of the magnitude of mass death we’re dealing with. The fact that we have to even consider a tragedy as gruesome as mass death at this scale is squarely due to one man: Donald Trump.

See that chart above? There’s a grim and terrible story it tells. America’s death rate is rising back upwards. And this time is going to be worse than last time.

America’s new viral spike of Coronavirus began in earnest about three weeks or so ago. That was when Red States, egged on by a lunatic President, decided to reopen far, far too soon, and in far too simplistic a manner. Instead of cautious, careful, planned, staged reopening, they threw open the doors — before the virus had been made to peak. The result was predictable: a massive explosion.

Coronavirus rose to new heights: from about 16,000 cases a day, to 65,000. It quadrupled.

It’s taken a few weeks, but the tragic consequences of this disastrous mistake are now starting to become even more visible . The death rate is starting to rise again. The Coronavirus death rate lags the case rate — as you might expect. It takes a while for people to get sick and die. Along the way, doctors and nurses fight bravely for their lives. Sometimes, they don’t succeed.

How long is the lag? Exactly about two to three weeks or so. America hit its plateau around April 5th — when 35K cases were recorded. And on April 18th or so, deaths peaked, at around 4K per day. That tallies with data from around the world, roughly. So just as expected, right on time, two to three weeks after Red States opened their doors, America’s death rate is growing again.

But this time is going to be worse. Why? Because there are now many, many more sick people. America has north of 3 million cases of Coronavirus. And all those sick people are spreading it faster and faster.

That means that the healthcare system is now beginning to break . It’s one thing to deal with a pandemic at the level of 20K cases per day. But it’s another thing entirely to deal with north of 65K cases per day. Those different levels require entirely different levels of resources.

Already, for example, in Texas, the Governor — the very American Idiot who fought against people wearing masks, and creating this new surge in deaths — is now asking hospitals to cancel elective surgeries, to focus on Coronavirus entirely.

Because the healthcare system — what little of one there is in America — is now stretched to its limits, this wave of death is going to be worse than last time. It might take a while to show up in the data, because in an overwhelmed system, getting good data isn’t exactly easy. But it’s now eminently predictable to say that America is about to have a tidal wave of death.

As the healthcare system struggles to treat the sick, Trump’s Army of American Idiots is still out there, doing their best to spread the virus . They don’t wear masks, they’re still having pool parties, and they are just as maliciously indifferent as their Dear Leader to infecting their friends, neighbours, and even families.

And then there’s their idiot President — who still doesn’t have a plan for containing the virus, and isn’t interested in ever having one. The Idiot-in-Chief is fighting for the virus — and so is his Idiot Army — not against it.

What else is not having plan, wearing a mask, doing anything remotely sane and sensible at this point called?

The result of those three ruinous trends — an Idiot Army spreading a lethal virus, cheered on by an Idiot-in-Chief who’s on the pandemic’s side, and a healthcare system that can’t cope already…is going to be disastrous. It’s going to make death rate surge upwards, in horrific fashion.

What is this massive wave of death really about? What it’snotabout is disease, really. We know how to beat Coronavirus. There’s by now a global model of best practices, from nations like New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam, and so on. It’s not complicated — it consists of all the things science and common sense suggest, from testing, to tracking and tracing, to isolating, to swift lockdowns. All that needs to be done is to apply it. But that’s not happening in America, thanks to the Idiot-in-Chief, and his Idiot Army. America is one of a handful of rogue nations on planet earth that won’t apply the global model of best practices.

So this massive coming wave of death is not really about the disease at all. It’s about something stranger, darker, much more dangerous: human stupidity. Human folly. Human ugliness.

You see, it’s not Trump’s Idiot Army who are going to die of the virus most. It’s minorities, blacks, indigenous peoples, and so forth.

This massive wave of death is a kind of eugenics, a cleansing by any other name. It’s made of racism and hate . The malice is not lost on the world, though Americans might still be playing dumb about it. The people being left at greatest risk of death to Coronavirus in America are the ones it has always hated most, and wanted to enslave, eliminate, annihilate.

It’s hardly a coincidence that black people, for example, weren’t considered human beings, really, until 1971 or so — and now, just a scant few decades later, a thinly veiled white supremacist President and his fanatical movement is fighting for a pandemic that’s killing off blacks disproportionately.

That’s not to say, of course, this wave of deaths won’t hit Trump’s Idiot Army hard, too. They’re becoming what the followers of authoritarian-fascist demagogues, the hardcore fringe of loyalists, always end up as: martyrs.

Think about it. Trump’s Idiot Army is literally willing to die — to watch their parents, kids, wives, husbands, sons, daughters die — just for the sake of free-dumb. For the inalienable right to…spread a lethal virus. That’s how much Donald Trump has conned them. He’s conned them out of their sanity, and their lives, too. What kind of people are willing to put their own health and that of their loves ones at risk…for the sake of a virus? Idiots, is one answer. Martyrs is a more accurate one.

Trump’s Idiot Army is made of the ones who cheered on every form of malice and stupidity imaginable over the last few years. Concentration camps, bans, raids, purges, and so forth. It was one thing when it was happening to Mexicans and Latinos. What they didn’t understand — what such people, broken in the mind — have never understood is that this is a process of grooming, too. Becoming desensitized to brutality, cruelty, violence, and death is usually a precursor for your own.

That’s what’s happened to Trump’s Idiot Army. The spent the last few years on a kind of delirious high. “Did you see what Trump did to those dirty Mexicans today? Woo-hoo!!! Yeah buddy!!” But getting high on violence and cruelty and rage ends up addling your brain. You can’t think straight anymore. By the end of this process of grooming, you’re even cheering on the deaths of people you should love — because all you’re capable of now is ugliness. That’s the story of every fascist-authoritarian collapse in a nutshell.

Trump’s Idiot Army was expertly groomed. They were desensitized to hardcore violence — kids in cages — by a demagogue, who’s also an abuser. And now they’ve ended up martyrs. They’re happily willing to sacrifice themselves for…a virus.

Now, you might think all that’s theoretical, but let me assure you, it’s not.

If we’re going to talk about America’s coming tidal wave of death seriously, then you have to understand all the above: that the hardcore Trumpist fringe is totally desensitized to death by now. They don’t just go to pool parties in the middle of a lethal pandemic because they don’t get it, or because they don’t care, but for a darker reason still: that’s how they prove they’re strong, fit, worthy. By being the ones the virus doesn’t kill. But to get there, you have to do three things. One, risk getting infected. Two, spread it. Three, accept being a martyr.

No healthcare system in the world will ever be robust enough to cope with all that: somewhere between 30% to 40% of a society who are on the side of the pandemic. So America is about to have something unique and ugly and stupid in the world, like so many other things it has, from school shootings to medical bankruptcy to elderly people working at Walmart. It’s about to have an explosion of death. A needless one. Unlike almost anywhere else on planet earth.

That explosion of death is going to be needless . Americans are still playing dumb about one last fact — the most terrible of all. The vast, vast bulk of all the Corona deaths are needless. How many? Somewhere between 60 and 90 percent. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of deaths that never needed to happen.

This fact isn’t discussed much in America. It’s a shame and a disgrace — but it’s another reason why a wave of death was so predictable, too.

How high will the death toll rise? The answer is: the bottom of the abyss is the limit. 250,000 is now a certainty — the virus still hasn’t peaked and we’re more than halfway there. Now we must talk about even bigger, more horrific numbers. 500,000? Easily, in the end. More? That depends.

What if Trump gets re-elected? What if he doesn’t, and steals the election anyways?

Then, my friends, the death toll will never come to an end . Because Trump is never going to have a plan for a virus. He can’t admit weakness, he can never admit a mistake. He profits from the chaos and the ruin. His cronies get the contracts and his buddies, the bailouts. His ideology is that of a racist, fascist, supremacist, and the virus is killing off the ones he hates most, first and hardest. If his Idiot Army dies off a little too, martyring themselves — so what? Do you really think he cares? Trump doesn’t have a plan to contain the virus — and never has had one — because he’s on its side, not yours. He’s on its side, at the most primal level, because the mind of a fascist is a thing that revels in, delights in, worships violence, brutality, death, as the culling of the weak, impure, and unfit.

And so the death toll will rise, at least, for the next six months, before it peaks. That takes us to easily 250,000 before a long-term peak, which means far more than 500,000, by the end of it all.

Those numbers should give us all pause. Because a society in which mass death is possible is one that has crossed the last line. Of decency, civilization, truth, responsibility, goodness. And maybe hope, too.

Umair

July 2020

Donald Trump’s Wave of Mass Death

[scriptmedic]

Disaster Medicine--Brittany’s Personal Experience

Hey there everybuddy! Aunt Scripty here. Everyone’s favorite Brittany (of previous masterpost fame) is back on the block with a story from working in an ER during a flood!

Keep in mind reading this story that Brittany was a medical student when these events took place, and names have been changed to protect the guilty (I almost just typed “donkey” there; I’m tired. But protect the donkey!!)

Also, this post confirmed a suspicion I’ve had about Brittany for a while.... she doesn’t actually have a tumblr. THat’s why I keep not knowing what her tumblr handle is and scouring Medblrs looking, unsuccessfully, for her.

Clever, Brittany. Very clever.

And now, on to the post!

Hey y’all!  Brittany, back again.  I really do need to bite the bullet and get myself a Tumblr one of these days.  I wanted to do a quick post on something that’s more a personal experience than a medical overview this time, so we’ll see how it goes.  It’s not so much general writing advice as what I saw, but I figure at least parts of it should be universally applicable to a character in a disaster.  Feel free to steal whatever suits your fancy!

Earlier this year, I worked in the ER during a substantial flood that put about ¾ of the city underwater—the kind of thing that made national news, with people getting rescued off of rooftops, the National Guard swooping in, all of that.  I don’t have enough experience to speak to the entire disaster response, but the healthcare side of it was fascinating, so I wanted to write a little bit of that.

Our particular flood was so bad because it was a steady, heavy downpour that lasted for more than a week, rather than one really bad flash flood scenario.  That meant that it started off subtly enough.  That first morning, I kept getting flood warnings on my phone that pushed back later and later, and on my way in to work I saw a puddle on the way to my car, thought it was small enough I’d just splash through it… and before I knew it, I was knee deep, and not even halfway through.  After a quick trip back inside to change scrubs and switch shoes, I headed in in time to start the afternoon shift.

The ER that day was interesting; fewer people came because of the weather, but then, fewer nurses were able to make it in because they were dealing with closed roads and flooded houses. Weirdly, though, you still kind of feel distanced from everything there—no one was coming in for flood-related injuries, so it felt like the flooding got put on hold. Finished up around 10 PM, stepped outside, saw that it was STILL raining, and when I got home, my parking lot was flooded.

The next day was when it really started to hit that we were in trouble.  My hospital already had a minor nursing shortage, and as the weather got worse, there was a risk of them leaving for home, and being unable to come back.  So, right at their shift change, when maximum staff would be present, the hospital called a “Code Grey,” which was where certain personnel (ie nurses) had to stay at the hospital until further notice due to weather.  It was a problem for a lot of them because they had kids at home or in daycare, not to mention it’s not as if their own homes were immune from flooding.  Things settled into a strict structure for them; nurses who were absolutely sure they could make it home and back were allowed to leave briefly to grab an overnight bag and arrange things for their kids, and everyone was put on a regimented schedule of shifts and breaks with mandatory sleep times in the hospital’s auditorium.  “Non-vital” staff, on the other hand, was sent home and told not to come back until things improved.  (Petitions to count the hospital’s coffee shop as ‘vital’ were shot down.)

And from there, we basically had to roll up our sleeves and deal with what came to us.  We started to get more flood-related injuries that second night, with a lot of people who had slipped and fallen in the water, breaking bones/hitting their heads, hypothermia from staying in cold water, car accidents from the driving conditions, that kind of thing. I guess in movies or whatever, it’s always direct drowning, but it’s the indirect injuries that are actually worse/more likely from what I can tell. Even more notably, there was the delay in getting run-of-the-mill patients to us. One guy had your standard chest pain, but the ambulance got stranded in the floodwater—not drowning, just couldn’t move—and it was two hours before they could get a chopper to him and pull him out to the hospital.

I wasn’t sure if I could make it home and back that night, and even though I’m a student and could be excused, I didn’t want to.  It sounds selfish to say but, well, it was great learning for me.  Plus I wanted to help.  I stayed in one of the resident call rooms (think a teeny tiny hotel room for residents who are at the hospital for 24 hours; if their patients are stable at night, they go there to nap), and from there the days start to blur.  The major events I recall include:

—A major hospital near us closed its ER.  It was surrounded by water on three sides, with their ER about to go under.  They started evacuating all their critical patients to us in anticipation of things going south.  I don’t think they actually flooded, but to be safe, they had most of their patients moved to us, plus we were hit by more ER patients because there were fewer places for them to go.

—The National Guard moved in to help.  A friend of mine actually got some really cool pictures of the Blackhawks landing at our hospital, but the main result for us was they were ferrying in patients with a lot less thorough handoffs.  Normally, we get paramedics that will tell us about the patient, what field medicine’s been done, a list of conditions/medications the patient has, and so on.  It’s not until those are all missing and you’re staring at a delirious, blank slate patient that you realize how nice you had it.  And, hey, they were doing what they had to to make sure everyone got to safety, I’m not blaming them, but it did make our job more difficult.

—As time passed, we started to get more sequelae of the flood as well.  Someone who had cut their leg as they walked through dirty flood water on the first day, and came in four days later with a suspected infection.  A lot of dialysis patients who couldn’t get to dialysis and had their electrolytes all out of whack.  Patients whose seizure or heart failure meds had all gotten wet and/or been lost in the water and were now suffering from the lack of them, that kind of thing.

As things eased up a little and I hit a couple of scheduled days off, I decided to volunteer at the shelters as well, where there were medical facilities set up, and that’s a whole other ballgame.  First of all, I should say that the people who figured the whole thing out were awesome.  I think a couple residents who were supposed to be on vacation started the whole thing, basically roping off a couple of side rooms for a makeshift clinic in each of the major Red Cross shelters.  In those first few days, while national medical disaster teams all geared up, it was the local doctors who kept things running, and the response was surprisingly efficient/informal.  They basically all connected through social media, set up shifts, and asked for volunteers.  I know some doctors who didn’t go home for days because they were swinging between the hospital and shelters, but a lot were also outpatient doctors who, with their clinics closed, were able to devote a lot of time to the shelters.

And, as much as the doctors did, the other personnel there did just as much.  We had two teams of paramedics standing by to transport any critical patients to the hospital, pharmacists who were getting in touch with all the local pharmacies to get any meds we might need, nurses on triage, and so on.

About the same time as the rain stopped, the state/national disaster teams arrived—the thing about a flood is it’s hard to get into the area if you’re outside of it.  They definitely provided a lot more manpower, which everyone was very grateful for, but kept a very close working relationship with the local people.  The locals all knew the hospitals, knew which pharmacies were still open, and what the patient population looked like.  The two of them working together was absolutely critical; no heroic swooping in from the outside and taking over, it was a huge joint effort.

And… that’s pretty much it.  As always, I’m up for answering any questions!

(Also, re-reading this, I worry that it’s going to sound like I’m some hero or martyr or something.  No.  I was in a bad place at a bad time.  I’d like to think I responded well, but I was in no way critical to the response.  The actual doctors, nurses, techs, and paramedics—not to mention the search-and-rescue workers—were vital and amazing, but I was more an observer than anything else.)

And here’s your favoritest Aunty again! I hope this post was helpful and useful for all of you about what an ER might look like during a disaster.

I left the last paragraph in to show you all something interesting (I hope Brittany doesn’t mind). Med humans are less likely to give credit for good things happening than we are to take credit, at least in some situations. We often both blame the patient “I can’t get this IV, he’s got terrible veins”) and credit them (”I literally do not know how this guy pulled through”).

Take some credit, Brittany. “All hands on deck” means everyone from environmental to nurse’s aides to pharmacy to, yes, even students, pitching in, doing what they can, and Making Shit Run during the disaster.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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[samuelfields]

Happiness By Age: Stay Away From 35-60 Year Olds

Would you rather be perpetually happy for the rest of your life with no guarantee of great fortune? Or would you rather have great fortune for the rest of your life with no guarantee of ever being perpetually happy? Choosing money is obviously the answer! Just kidding.

Today if I were to rate my happiness on a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being deliriously happy, I would give myself an 8. Historically, I’d say my happiness probably fluctuated between a 5-7 during my high school years, a 7-9 in my college years, and a 6-8 in my 20s and early 30s.

High school was stressful because I knew so much of my future was riding on getting good grades and SAT scores. Combine academic pressure with athletic demands and peer pressure to be “cool,” I wonder why more kids don’t fall into the deep end, especially with absentee parents working all the time.

College was pretty exhilarating due to all the sudden freedom. Food was plentiful and the parties outrageously fun. Being able to date so many people was a blast. Oh yeah, and learning new subjects was a nice benefit too. The only real pressure came from the expectation of finding a good job. Spending four years of time and lots of money only to end up with nothing would be a great disappointment.

The relief of actually getting a full-time job catapulted my happiness to a 9. But the happiness didn’t last due to the 70+ hour work weeks. Getting in before sunrise and leaving after sunset got depressing after a while. My happiness tumbled to a 6 when I realized all my work in college had led to one big endless grind.

Even a generous promotion at age 27 only made me a 9 level happy for a couple months. Then it was back to being a whipping boy for clients and playing corporate politics. By 2011, my happiness again dropped to a 6. The financial crisis had taken its toll and I was tired of doing the same crap.

It was in October 2011 while drinking an overpriced Mythos beer at the top of Santorini, Greece that my happiness rocketed to a 10. I was overlooking the crater on a sunny 78 degree day and had just earned $1,200 via Paypal from an advertising client in the span of 30 minutes. It wasn’t the money that made me happy, it was the realization that I found a way out from prison.

Then Happiness Came Tumbling Down

Ever since I engineered my layoff in 2012 at the age of 34, my happiness level has stayed between 7-8, with only brief moments of 9-10. I attribute my happiness to an incredible wife, the growth of Financial Samurai, good health, and a bull market. But one day my happiness took a tumble, and it stayed around a 5 for about three weeks.

What happened?

During these three weeks, I experienced tremendous lower back pain – pain I hadn’t suffered in over 15 years. Online, I was being judged by non-parents regarding my insurance plan for my son’s future. Offline, I was tired because I stubbornly kept a rigorous posting schedule despite now being a full-time dad between 8am – 10pm every day since birth. Heck, even in the United States working parents get 1-3 months of parental leave.

As any rational person would do, I began to researching whether something was wrong with me. Here are some interesting charts on happiness and age I found. Can you see any patterns?

American Survey

Well what do you know. At the age of 40, I’m in the beginning stages of “the trough of unhappiness.” In America, we experience a dip in happiness between the ages of 35 – 60. Even in the European Union, where many of the happiest countries in the world are located, there’s a trough of happiness between 35 – 60. If you can live past 60, the good thing is that happiness generally improves until death.

The only country where you don’t want to live is Russia, where from birth happiness is on a continuous decline! No wonder why the Russians meddled with the election and now control American politics. They wanted out of the motherland after realizing how good we’ve got it.

What Happens Between The Age Of 35 – 60 To Cause Unhappiness?

You would think that being financially independent at 40, owning a sustainable lifestyle business, receiving regular positive feedback from readers, and having a family would give me maximum happiness. But it has not due to three main reasons:

1) Hedonic adaptation. The beautiful thing about the human spirit is that even in dire situations, we have the ability to keep hope alive. At the same time, even if you have every thing you want, the happiness boost never lasts long. We always revert back to our steady state of happiness over the long term.

Think about all the good things that have happened to you: getting into college, getting a job, getting a promotion, getting a raise, finding a partner, finally feeling rich, buying your dream home, having a baby, making a best friend etc. Each event might give you a 1 or 2 point boost, but sooner or later, the boost will fade as responsibility kicks in. It’s kind of sad really.

2) Sandwiched in the middle. As a new father, I feel the strains of taking care of my little one. His mom and I are his guardian, physical therapist, educator, and caretaker all-in-one. At the same time, our parents are over 70, and they can no longer walk, climb stairs, drive, remember, and think as they once did. Folks between the age of 35 – 60 are dealing with the responsibility of caring for two generations, while usually also managing their careers. Financial strain may come into play due to the cost of healthcare, day care, and assisted-living care.

Our stress comes from being 5+ hours away by plane from both sets of parents. We worry about basic things like whether they’ll be able to safely maneuver the stairs without falling. It would be amazing if they all came to the Bay Area so we can check in on them every week. But they are set in their ways, so it’s up to us to move as soon as our son can become a little more independent.

3) Health. After turning 40 I suffered back pain for the first time since my 20s, sprained my left ankle playing tennis, and tore muscles in both quadriceps playing softball. What the hell? The left ankle sprain happened even though I was wearing an ankle brace. We were 2 hours, 10 minutes into a match when I went the wrong way guessing for an overhead smash. Both quads were strained because I had not properly warmed up. I hadn’t gone from a standing position to a full sprint after hitting a ball in over a decade.

Our bodies rarely keep up with our minds because most of us are no longer manual laborers. My mind is strong because I exercise it every day thanks to this site. But my body is weak because I don’t work out, don’t stretch, and only play a sport at most three times a week. Nothing is worse than being injured or sick, especially when it rarely happens.

Money Is Just One Part Of Happiness

To be a truly holistic site that helps people, going forward, it’s important Financial Samurai focuses more on Relationships and Health instead of just wealth creation. After all, we can have all the money in the world and it will mean nothing if we don’t feel good and have nobody to share it with.

Let’s optimize for happiness by building incredible friendships, staying in great shape, and building passive income so we have the freedom to choose our lives.

The next time a 35 – 60 year old makes you feel bad, give them a pass, including myself. And if you want to really get a happiness boost, find some 70+ year olds to hang out with. They might even teach you a thing or two about living a wonderful life.

Readers, what is your happiness level between 1-10? When were you the happiest and least happiest in your life? For those over the age of 60, has your happiness level improved? Why do you think happiness levels improve the closer we come to death? Thanks to hedonic adaptation, I’ve recovered back to an 8. If you’re interested in audio versions, you can subscribe to my iTunes channel here. 

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[ronaldmrashid]

Happiness By Age: Stay Away From 35-60 Year Olds

Would you rather be perpetually happy for the rest of your life with no guarantee of great fortune? Or would you rather have great fortune for the rest of your life with no guarantee of ever being perpetually happy? Choosing money is obviously the answer! Just kidding.

Today if I were to rate my happiness on a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being deliriously happy, I would give myself an 8. Historically, I’d say my happiness probably fluctuated between a 5-7 during my high school years, a 7-9 in my college years, and a 6-8 in my 20s and early 30s.

High school was stressful because I knew so much of my future was riding on getting good grades and SAT scores. Combine academic pressure with athletic demands and peer pressure to be “cool,” I wonder why more kids don’t fall into the deep end, especially with absentee parents working all the time.

College was pretty exhilarating due to all the sudden freedom. Food was plentiful and the parties outrageously fun. Being able to date so many people was a blast. Oh yeah, and learning new subjects was a nice benefit too. The only real pressure came from the expectation of finding a good job. Spending four years of time and lots of money only to end up with nothing would be a great disappointment.

The relief of actually getting a full-time job catapulted my happiness to a 9. But the happiness didn’t last due to the 70+ hour work weeks. Getting in before sunrise and leaving after sunset got depressing after a while. My happiness tumbled to a 6 when I realized all my work in college had led to one big endless grind.

Even a generous promotion at age 27 only made me a 9 level happy for a couple months. Then it was back to being a whipping boy for clients and playing corporate politics. By 2011, my happiness again dropped to a 6. The financial crisis had taken its toll and I was tired of doing the same crap.

It was in October 2011 while drinking an overpriced Mythos beer at the top of Santorini, Greece that my happiness rocketed to a 10. I was overlooking the crater on a sunny 78 degree day and had just earned $1,200 via Paypal from an advertising client in the span of 30 minutes. It wasn’t the money that made me happy, it was the realization that I found a way out of prison.

Then Happiness Came Tumbling Down

Ever since I engineered my layoff in 2012 at the age of 34, my happiness level has stayed between 7-8, with only brief moments of 9-10. I attribute my happiness to an incredible wife, the growth of Financial Samurai, good health, and a bull market. But one day my happiness took a tumble, and it stayed around a 5 for about three weeks.

What happened?

During these three weeks, I experienced tremendous lower back pain – pain I hadn’t suffered in over 15 years. Online, I was being judged by non-parents regarding my insurance plan for my son’s future. Offline, I was tired because I stubbornly kept a rigorous posting schedule despite now being a full-time dad between 8am – 10pm every day since birth. Heck, even in the United States working parents get 1-3 months of parental leave.

As any rational person would do, I began researching whether something was wrong with me. Here are some interesting charts on happiness and age I found. Can you see any patterns?

American Survey

Well what do you know. At the age of 40, I’m in the beginning stages of “the trough of unhappiness.” In America, we experience a dip in happiness between the ages of 35 – 60. Even in the European Union, where many of the happiest countries in the world are located, there’s a trough of happiness between 35 – 60. If you can live past 60, the good thing is that happiness generally improves until death.

The only country where you don’t want to live is Russia, where from birth happiness is on a continuous decline! No wonder why the Russians meddled with the election and now control American politics. They wanted out of the motherland after realizing how good we’ve got it.

What Happens Between The Age Of 35 – 60 To Cause Unhappiness?

You would think that being financially independent at 40, owning a sustainable lifestyle business, receiving regular positive feedback from readers, and having a family would give me maximum happiness. But it has not due to three main reasons:

1) Hedonic adaptation. The beautiful thing about the human spirit is that even in dire situations, we have the ability to keep hope alive. At the same time, even if you have every thing you want, the happiness boost never lasts long. We always revert back to our steady state of happiness over the long term.

Think about all the good things that have happened to you: getting into college, getting a job, getting a promotion, getting a raise, finding a partner, finally feeling rich, buying your dream home, having a baby, making a best friend etc. Each event might give you a 1 or 2 point boost, but sooner or later, the boost will fade as responsibility kicks in. It’s kind of sad really.

2) Sandwiched in the middle. As a new father, I feel the strains of taking care of my little one. His mom and I are his guardian, physical therapist, educator, and caretaker all-in-one. At the same time, our parents are over 70, and they can no longer walk, climb stairs, drive, remember, and think as they once did. Folks between the age of 35 – 60 are dealing with the responsibility of caring for two generations, while usually also managing their careers. Financial strain may come into play due to the cost of healthcare, day care, and assisted-living care.

Our stress comes from being 5+ hours away by plane from both sets of parents. We worry about basic things like whether they’ll be able to safely maneuver the stairs without falling. It would be amazing if they all came to the Bay Area so we can check in on them every week. But they are set in their ways, so it’s up to us to move as soon as our son can become a little more independent.

3) Health. After turning 40 I suffered back pain for the first time since my 20s, sprained my left ankle playing tennis, and tore muscles in both quadriceps playing softball. What the hell? The left ankle sprain happened even though I was wearing an ankle brace. We were 2 hours, 10 minutes into a match when I went the wrong way guessing for an overhead smash. Both quads were strained because I had not properly warmed up. I hadn’t gone from a standing position to a full sprint after hitting a ball in over a decade.

Our bodies rarely keep up with our minds because most of us are no longer manual laborers. My mind is strong because I exercise it every day thanks to this site. But my body is weak because I don’t work out, don’t stretch, and only play a sport at most three times a week. Nothing is worse than being injured or sick, especially when it rarely happens.

Money Is Just One Part Of Happiness

To be a truly holistic site that helps people, going forward, it’s important Financial Samurai focuses more on Relationships and Health instead of just wealth creation. After all, we can have all the money in the world and it will mean nothing if we don’t feel good and have nobody to share it with.

Let’s optimize for happiness by building incredible friendships, staying in great shape, and building passive income so we have the freedom to choose our lives.

The next time a 35 – 60 year old makes you feel bad, give them a pass, including myself. And if you want to really get a happiness boost, find some 70+ year olds to hang out with. They might even teach you a thing or two about living a wonderful life.

Readers, what is your happiness level between 1-10? When were you the happiest and least happiest in your life? For those over the age of 60, has your happiness level improved? Why do you think happiness levels improve the closer we come to death? Thanks to hedonic adaptation, I’ve recovered back to an 8. If you’re interested in audio versions, you can subscribe to my iTunes channel here. 

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The post Happiness By Age: Stay Away From 35-60 Year Olds appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from https://www.financialsamurai.com/happiness-age-stay-away-people-ages-35-60/

[ronaldmrashid]

How One E-mail Almost Ruined My Severance And My Life

Sometimes an experience is so painful it’s helpful to try and forget it ever happened. But something recently transpired that has allowed me to relive my anxiety with all of you. This post is an important reminder about the dangers of written communication.

In early 2012, after months of negotiating a severance from a day job I held for 11 years, I almost screwed myself out of absolute freedom due to one damn email.

As part of my exit instructions, I was told not to transfer any proprietary work information to my personal accounts. This made sense because taking what didn’t belong to me would be considered theft. Every company’s worst nightmare is having an employee copy sensitive information that can be used against them at a competitor or made public.

My situation was different because part of my severance negotiation strategy of keeping all my deferred compensation, receiving a lump sum severance, and getting six months of fully paid healthcare was predicated on me promising my firm I would NOT join a competitor. They couldn’t enforce this promise, but it was my intention to permanently leave the industry.

Convincing my employer I wasn’t joining a competitor was the only way I could stay on for two months after we agreed I would be laid off. I wanted to stay on for two months to help ensure there would be a smooth transition. I also thought it’d be nice to collect two more months of pay and benefits without any work performance stress.

The E-mail Snafu

After 11 years of working at one place, my work e-mail essentially became partly my personal e-mail. It was just easier corresponding to non-work people while I sat in front of a computer for hours a day instead of trying to type personal responses on a clunky mobile phone. Back then, iPhones and Android phones weren’t as popular.

Anyway, during my last week of work, I started mass e-mailing dozens of old documents to my private e-mail account. I knew the company was monitoring my activities so I quickly screened each e-mail and the attachments before I pressed send.

Sample documents I sent to myself included random things like a bathroom remodeling contract from 2007, pictures of me and clients visiting the Taj Mahal in 2003, years worth of tax documents, team pictures, refinance documents and more. Each e-mail had 10-20 attachments because I was basically mass copying all these documents I had archived on my computer since 2001.

Unfortunately, there was one email that contained client revenue information that I wasn’t supposed to send! It somehow slipped through the cracks, probably because the name of the Excel file was some generic name that belied its true contents.

I didn’t even realize I had sent this document until HR called me the night before my last day telling me what I had done. They said they would be reviewing my activity and getting back to me with a resolution. Oh shit! Did I just screw myself out of a severance package worth six years of living expenses because of one inadvertent attachment?

I quickly reviewed all the e-mails I had sent back to my personal account and found the document. It was indeed an Excel file containing revenue figures broken out by client. Drat! How could I have been so careless as to include this document I did not need?

The client revenue document was now evidence from their perspective that perhaps I was joining a competitor after all. But as I looked more closely at the document, I quickly realized the revenue figures were from five years prior. In other words, the data was practically useless because clients come and go and our business model was all about how we could improve upon last year’s numbers.

I proceeded to write a mea culpa e-mail to my HR manager highlighting the document transfer was inadvertent. I told her that I had no need for a five year old document with stale revenue information. Finally, I reemphasized my desire to get out of the business for good. She acknowledged receipt and told me she’d get back to me.

The Torturous Waiting Game

I showed up to work the next day, a Friday morning like always, but was unceremoniously denied access to my desk due to HR’s continued investigation of my e-mails. What was supposed to be a bittersweet good-bye, turned out to be a lonely time of anxiety, frustration, and worry.

My manager had flown out from NYC to try and ensure the transition went smoothly. He wasn’t someone I looked up to partly because we both had the same title, but he was about seven years older. I respected him as an equal, but not as my superior.

My manager was the one who greeted me at the lobby that morning and barred me from going back to the seat I had sat in for 11 years. It was a very jolting feeling, perhaps similar to having your children ripped away from you by some distant aunt who accuses you of doing wrong without ever being there. Here was this unhealthy looking fella from NYC I hardly ever saw, not letting me leave with dignity. Perhaps he was just the messenger sent by HR, but he didn’t bother to relay any reassurances.

It was embarrassing to explain to the clients I had planned to meet that morning why I could no longer stop by with my manager and subordinate. It was embarrassing not many people showed up to my final goodbye drinks gathering because I couldn’t send a blast e-mail from work.

My storybook ending was in complete disarray. All of this happened on a Friday morning, and I just drove back home and sulked. Can you imagine spending so much time trying to engineer your layoff, thinking everything was going perfectly swell only to realize on your very last day everything you worked so hard for was in jeopardy?

Not one to sit still, I went to a Hastings School of Law community help session to get advice about my case. There were at least 500 other people there seeking help in matters ranging from family law, criminal law, civil law, and employment law. We waited in line for two hours to in order to speak with an employment professor and a law student. I showed them my documents, explained my situation, and asked them what they thought.

After a 15 minute discussion, they essentially said I shouldn’t worry. I felt a little better after the consultation but I still worried because I spoke to other people in line who felt they were being unfairly terminated. All I could do was wait, plan out various scenarios, and hope for the best.

The following Monday passed with still no phone call or e-mail from HR. Then Tuesday came and went. Finally, six days after I was unceremoniously barred from returning to my desk, HR called to say everything would be OK. Her tone had softened tremendously since we spoke the week prior, and she reassured me that all details of the severance package would be executed. Thank goodness!

It was at that moment I made an oath to work as hard as I could on my business so that I would NEVER have to go back to work full-time again! I felt like I had dodged an enormous bullet, even though I didn’t have any nefarious intentions. I felt rich because it felt like I was getting something for free. 100% of my bonus was invested in a 5-year Dow Jones structured note that is finally coming due this summer.

Important Points To Recap

* HR tracks everything you do. They know what e-mails you are sending and what is contained in all e-mails. Be very careful what you send, especially during a period of transition. HR also has e-mail tracking software that can flag e-mails based on particular keywords you use. Be very careful what you say. If you’d feel embarrassed if one of your e-mails was published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, don’t write it.

* Where you go next matters. Emphasizing you aren’t going to a competitor is a huge selling point in severance negotiations. If you can argue that you’re going to a client, even better. There is no way in hell I would have got the severance package that I did if they suspected I was going to a competitor or if I explicitly said I was going to an arch rival. They’d kick me out the door in a nanosecond. In such a hyper-competitive environment, taking trade secrets and going to a competitor is as bad as turning to the internet and writing a nasty tell-all like Susan did against Uber or Penny did against WrkRiot.

* Loose lips sink ships. I was able to successfully develop a good relationship with HR. But then I hurt our relationship by boasting to a co-worker I trusted to keep a secret, how awesome it was to negotiate a severance. I’m sure this co-worker let my secret slip and proceeded to tell other co-workers because someone else decided to go to our HR manager to see if he could negotiate a similar deal shortly after I did! Once this happened, the HR manager was rightfully upset with me. If that didn’t happen, I’m sure she would have told me not to worry about my email snafu the night before my last day at work. Instead, she made me sweat it out for days before telling me everything would be fine. Do not show joy after a great bonus or act deliriously happy after a fantastic severance. Stay stoic. Act like business as usual.

* Speaking in person is always better. Whether it’s rigging a political debate or sharing sensitive information about others, it’s always better to have a face-to-face meeting if you still depend on others to survive. If you feel uncomfortable having your e-mail or text be on the front page of the paper, don’t write it. Alternatively, if you’ve set up a business where any controversy is good for business, then by all means be as reckless as you want.

The Final Severance Payment

I’m sharing with you this e-mail warning story five years later because on March 31, 2017, I finally got the last of my severance package payment in the amount of $65,695.26. Once I do my 2017 taxes next year, the net amount should be closer to $75,000 because they took out a whopping 40% for state and federal taxes. As a writer who coaches high school tennis on the side, this is a significant amount of money to provide for my family.

If I had just quit back on March 8, 2012, not only would I have not received a $65,695.26 final direct deposit, I would have lost much more in deferred stock and cash as well as an actual lump sum severance amount paid in the summer of 2012. This $65,695.26 final payment was from a fund with a 7-year vesting period some employees were forced to participate in during the financial crisis.

No longer do I have to worry about whether my old firm would withhold the final payment due to my activities since departure. I knew there was only a tiny chance they’d screw me over since I didn’t join a competitor and never badmouthed them. But still, you just never know until the money hits your bank account. My old firm honored our agreement, and I’m grateful to them. They acted responsibly during the financial crisis by never accepting a dime of bailout money either. In a weird way, I’m a little sad my firm and I no longer have any ties after 16 years.

Now that I’m completely free, it’s time to figure out what to do over the next five years. For so long I’ve been a proponent of Stealth Wealth, partly due to this fear of not being made whole on my severance. But now, there’s nothing holding me back except for the joy of being left alone.

Readers, anybody have any e-mail blowup stories they’d like to share? I remember replying all saying, “who hired this joker” in jest as a first year analyst. Why do folks continue to incriminate themselves over writing when everything is trackable? Why do people still take the easy route and quit a job when they could negotiate a severance to reduce financial worry? Is it worth being a public figure?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-one-e-mail-almost-ruined-my-severance-and-my-life/