Research: Just Do It! Find Your Voice!

 Friday, October 2, 2020 at 11:51AM

 

Research: Just Do It! Find Your Voice!

 

From 1970 until I retired in 1999 I taught a semester course twice a year titled, "Writing a Research Paper" at Roosevelt High School in Kent, Ohio. I took students on field trips to Kent State University library. In the 1980's Dialog offered a low priced dial up data base called Knowledge Index. I offered database Knowledge Index searches to my research paper students. My students wrote two research papers. 

 

Since elementary school, I have researched topics of interest, collected sources, made notes and written short essays. As a history and English major at Kent State University from 1962 to 1966 and from 1966 to 1968 in graduate school I wrote research papers.  I researched my challenged high school students from 1968 through 1999. I researched my challenged students when I went back to teaching in 2006. I researched my challenged students when I started my own school, Marketplace Mission Learning Center, in 2011 through 2018. But a bigger research challenge came when a routine endoscopy led to a biopsy which revealed Amyloidosis AL. On June 18, 2018 I received the news in a phone call. On June 25th I met my GI doctor, who had never seen amyloidosis before, to receive the official diagnosis. From June 18th to June 25th I had researched the disease and researched possible treatment centers. Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital, the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and the Mayo Clinics in Rochester, MN, and Phoenix and Jacksonville offered doctors with the most experience treating this rare, 9 cases per million, and incurable disease. On June 26th, one day after receiving the official diagnosis,  I called the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, a six hour drive from my home on Marco Island, and asked for an appointment (you do not need a doctor's referral to ask for an appointment at the Mayo Clinics).

 

I began my treatment journey at the Jacksonville Mayo Clinic with Dr. Taimur Sher on July 30, 2018. Go to https://www.mayoclinic.org/biographies/sher-taimur-m-b-b-s-m-d/bio-20055521 to read Dr. Sher's Mayo Clinic biography. Scroll down to "Publication" and click "See my publications." Dr. Sher has co authored 71 scholarly articles. What does that mean? Dr. Sher reads as well as writes scholarly articles. Every doctor at the Mayo Clinics has a biography page. Every doctor that sees patients at the Mayo Clinics has a "Request an appointment" button on their biography page. Do your research. 

 

Amyloidosis Al and 16 weekly chemo treatments of dexamethasone and Velcade from September 2018 through January 2019 and chemo caused peripheral neuropathy from December of 2018 to today have focused my mind. I decided I had things to say, and I better get started. To reinforce the need to say things I need to say, Dr. Sher at my September 2, 2020 appointment told me he was happy to see me doing so well because fifty percent of patients with amyloidosis are dead in one year, and I am still here after first seeing him first July 30, 2018. So I present the following books available on Amazon.  

 

Freedom and Existence: A Collection of Essays: Drugs, Age of Anxiety, Obesity and Food  (January 7, 2020 and 99 pages and 1075 KB)

 

My Journey From Amyloidosis AL to Chemo to Peripheral Neuropathy and How I Used Mindfulness Learning Tools to Improve My Quality of Life (February 17, 2020 and 118 pages and 317 KB )

 

Mindfulness vs Disease and Debilitating Symptoms Such As Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Coordination (September 23, 2020 and 153 pages and 3359 KB)

 

Do you have things to say? Yes! Yes you do. Start a journal. Say it in words. Say it in pictures. Say it in music. Just say it. You have a voice. 

 

Do not go gentle into that good night 

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

 

Do not go gentle into that good night, 

Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

 

 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

Because their words had forked no lightning they 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

 

 

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

 

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

 

 

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

 

 

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.