I am not sure how many people read my blog, and it may be presumptive to assume anyone noticed my absence from Nature-Network…but I wanted to put up an explanation for why it has been more than a month since I posted a blog.
A year ago I was diagnosed with and Atrial-Septal Defect. This hole in my heart was asymptomatic for the most-part. I had some skipped heart beats-but I was working on my dissertation and was constantly stressed, so those were not out of the ordinary.
The ASD never really affected me in my youth (I played baseball and basketball pretty seriously in high-school and before)…but I started to get really tired this past year. I am a young guy, so this was out of the ordinary.
After the ASD was discovered, I had to delay the repair until after my marriage and graduation. Then I started a new job at the NIH, and being a new post-doc-I wanted to get off to a good start, so I delayed it further.
Finally, I realized that health must come before my career (a very difficult realization especially for a young post-doc) and I had an Amplatzer device inserted into my heart subcutaneously.
The amazing doctors at Johns Hopkins University (where I turned down a post-doc position-darn!) were able to implant this device in my heart without resorting to open-heart surgery this month. The surgery does have some residual risks, but my recovery time was short…
I am so thankful for this. I am getting my life back to normal-and that means more blog posts in the future!
These type of things, especially when you are as young as I am, make you really take stock.
We need to stop trying to kill our postdocs in this country. I know we are all racing for the answer- and the zero-sum game of science leaves many lives broken…but to loose the quality of life in the process may render that answer, whatever it is, meaningless.
We must teach our postdocs how to have lab AND life. Both will benefit.
This duty lies with you and only you-our mentors.
Congratulations on facing up to this and having the treatment, Michael. As a workaholic myself I know only too well how easy it is to put off such things. In your case you made a very brave decision.
I had noticed your blog has gone quiet because I subscribe to Nature Network blogs in my RSS reader – so welcome back. The place will be more stimulating with you around.
And hoping your recovery is speedy. You are right about how hard it is to prioritise, and also about what our priorities are, compared with the pressures of the moment, which can seem overwhelmingly important but in fact are not, compared with being alive at all!
What Maxine wrote – and welcome back, indeed. You must have been frightened. I just wrote a lot of inane phrases and erased them. Good on you for taking your health seriously – and now, your quality of life and assessing how to best intercalate other experiences in among those you already know.
Thank you both for your warm words…I am so thankful to have the opportunity to fix this problem when I am still young, and am excited to get back at it.
In my anesthetized stupor, I thought of a few more great topics!
Mike, I hadn’t read your blog before seeing it today on my facebook. I’m so glad you’ve had your surgery done and it went well! (This is Tara – KB’s girlfriend, in case you weren’t sure.)
I’ll be sure to check your blog out more in the future. I agree with your comments on postdocs. I work at the NIH some right now and all the postdocs I meet seem incredibly stressed and overworked all the time.