Wanted to be a heart surgeon when I was a kid. Gave up on that in high school when the anxiety hit and I started shaking any time I was even slightly stressed. Figured that wasn’t the career path for me.
I’m doing really well. Married, setting up to take over the family business with my partner. I still love heart-related medical stuff and read/watch things to scratch the itch.
Still anxious, still very shaky. I made the right choice.
Are you a cardiologist now? Anything you can say to scare nicotine addicts from smoking or vaping lol?
I’m manufacturing heart & lung support devices for a living. Look up the symptoms for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). It’s now the 4th most common cause of death worldwide (after cancer, strokes and coronary issues).
Basically, your lung dies a little bit over time, and loses its potential to remove CO2 from your blood. The biggest problem is the creeping progress. If you’re not running marathons regularly, you wouldn’t even notice if your lung capacity drops by 20%. 30, you’re a bit short of breath when climbing stairs. Most people would assume they are just unfit.
But once you hit 40% and notice something’s wrong, it’s almost too late. Mind you, that can take 10-15 years, and usually only starts in your 30s, so you’ll be 40-50 before noticeable symptoms begin.
But then the decline is increasing exponentially. You have trouble breathing - try sucking air through a wet tablecloth. That’s how strenuous breathing will be (no joke, try it!!!). Additionally, the amount of CO2 in your blood will change its pH value, making your blood slightly acidic. The acidity kills your kidneys and affects your liver, and also decreases the elasticity of your blood vessels, increasing the risk of organ damage even more, contributes to formation of brain aneurysms, and also increases the risk of strokes.
Think that’s all? Once your lung capacity is below 50%, you’ll need mechanical ventilation - permanently. So they’ll cut a hole into your airways and install one of those nifty adapters to hook you up to an oxygen bottle. Kinky, right? Comes with the downside of not being able to speak. And you’ll have to drag 30lbs of equipment behind you wherever you go… On top of being in a weakened state that hardly permits you to carry 10lbs.
Consequently, you’ll spend 95% of your remaining time on earth in bed, getting sores everywhere, needing help to take a shit for the rest of your life, all the while you can’t communicate properly, feel like being continuously choked, and hurting all over.
Fun times ahead? Smoking/vaping is the leading cause of COPD. You probably just didn’t hear about it because it’s not an imminent killer. Cancer or stroke have better PR.
Oh, and there’s no cure. You can’t restore dead tissue. With lots of luck and care you can stop the progress where you’re at. But you’ll never, ever, recover a single percent of lung capacity unless you get a transplant (and elderly smokers usually don’t make the cut…). And even if you did, transplant recipients often have a shortened lifespan due to complications resulting from the immunosuppressive medicine they have to take for the rest of their lives.
Good luck.
I do not have the knowledge to doubt your points here, but there are countless people who smoke and do not end up on artificial breathing apparatus in their later years.
I do not like being around smokers and understand it is not good for you, but your text here sounds very extreme.
My dream was to live in a log cabin in the wilderness somewhere in Canada.
I’ve then spent one year living that lifestyle, as a hunting and hiking guide in Northern BC.
After that I gave up that dream, or rather I realized all the downsides of it in the real world.
Now I work as an IT sysadmin in Southern Germany, and am pretty happy with my life.
And I earn enough to retire in a log cabin in Canada, but with more comfort.
I was going to build some kind of long lasting software that improves everyone’s lives.
I’ve built some genuinely impactful stuff. Some of my work has saved lives.
But that long term worthwhile project hasn’t materialized. Everything I’ve built is now either tossed out and forgotten, or has long overstayed it’s welcome.
I take it as a zen lesson about the ephemeral nature of all things. All we are is dust in the wind - including the stuff we make.
Now I mostly make whatever someone is willing to pay for, and just however well they’re willing to pay for. (Edit: Lately I have the privilege to select employers that I think do some genuine good. That helps how I feel about it. I did a lot of ‘meh’ work on my way to where I am.)
I do make a few handy little things on the side, but I’m no longer burdened with my past delusions of grandeur.
10/10. Would give up the dream again.
On the film set, I look at each lighting setup as a mandala. We meticulously craft the look only to quickly brush it away in an instant.
I feel this. So many projects I have built for companies, to their specs, that they considered a success, only to have them simply be thrown away years later rather than improved. So many projects I have built for myself only to have them eclipsed by VC driven companies with larger feature sets and deeper pockets. Unfortunately I have yet to reach your level of zen.
I disagree. Humans are temporary. Physical things are temporary. But concepts are made until destroyed.
Nations built by people thousands of years ago still stand.
I"ve never met Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know anyone who has met Abraham Lincoln. Yet for his personal role in destroying the concept of slavery, he will always be remembered.
If your software can save lives, I guarantee the people whos lives you saved didn’t forget you.
You can still use your powers for good, and become a hero. Which is more important than being paid.
If your software can save lives, I guarantee the people whos lives you saved didn’t forget you.
I appreciate that thought. I don’t believe it. But I appreciate it.
A lot (if not all) of the lives my work saved don’t know anything about the part I played, or even that my software had anything to do with it.
I’m okay with that. I know that there’s families out there that are more whole today, thanks to my work. That’s more valuable to me than any footnote in a history book.
Someday those families will be just as dead as if I had done nothing. But I did do something. Millions of extra moments happened with family members who could have died.
Beautiful things that are eventually forgetten are still beautiful things. To me, that’s enough.
I’ve been on the other side of this, too.
I have no way to thank all the people whose medical engineering work extended my grandfather’s life by decades. I don’t know any of their names.
But, I hope they know that people like me revere their efforts as sacred. (I’ve made some effort on that front, but I know I’ll never thank everyone who deserves my thanks.)
I was never particularly good at applying myself to anything, I blame the undiagnosed ADHD. But for the last few years I found that Im very interested in fitness, nutrition and exercise science. So I’m in the best shape of my life while approaching 40. Im also building a 4 bedroom family home with a mortgage I can afford and I have a stable career earning good money in a union protected government job.
So what if I’m not a race car driver.
Sounds like a golden opportunity to stealth in a race car bed frame to the master bedroom!
And if potential partners don’t like it? This guy/gal got a house, good secure job and fit AF - you ain’t doing any better!!!
I mean if you have monies you could get into spec miata racing. You’re in it for like $10k with car and track fees and stuff, but you don’t have to be a professional to compete and driving a gutted miata around a track is a lot of fun. Or go karts, though if you wanted to compete, the miata is cheaper.
My dream was to work as a game developer. This was nearly 20 years ago. I actually got an offer in that field at one point, and the salary was like $20k less than what I was already being paid. I was the main bread-winner in what was a (mostly) single-income household at that time, with my partner pursuing her PhD. Gave up the dream, and I’m glad I did based on what I later learned about that industry. If I went into the game industry I’d be making far less money and have far less free time to do the things I enjoy, like playing the games other people make.
