Stoics would encourage all of us to internalize our own mortality, not for morbidity’s sake, but because it helps live in the moment. The wake up call stories like this should be simulated by everyone. Imagine if this were you? Live with a fraction of that pain in your heart and try to internalize it. How does it impact our choices? Things like fingers and walking become amazing. I am always happy people share their stories, it helps us all remember our mortality and make good choices every day. Also, I wish the author a speedy and continued recovery in their journey.
> and I would be fully present for all the moments that mattered.<p>This quote stood out, because as a promise to your family, it really sucks. We never know what the moments that matter to other people are going to be. Big events are nice. But when you think back on your life, how many important moments were from small events? Just having a nice talk, doing a chore with your dad, telling your mom about your day? How many idle comments from friends ended up having a large impact on you?<p>When dealing with family, you need to be there enough that moments happen, because the scope of their impact on the lives of those around you are not predictable.
I was going to say “I recall when I had sepsis in my teens”, but the truth of it is that I don’t - there’s a six week hole in my memory, that skips straight from lying in a pool of blood and puss on the floor of the kitchen at school, having a mop thrust in my face, to lying in a bed in hospital with tubes snaking out of me.<p>The weird thing is, despite being unconscious for over a month, I woke up feeling like I hadn’t missed anything, and even now I look back at this with slight disbelief - surely you’re thinking of someone else, surely it wasn’t that long. I felt like I’d been out longer after a general for surgery a few years ago.<p>They did run a whole battery of neurological tests on me once I was conscious and eating - they were pretty surprised I had no obvious brain damage - I had maintained a fever over 108 for several days, despite ice baths and the, what, 20g of daily antibiotics? I do wonder if there was some, but rather more subtle than what was being looked for.<p>Re-integrating was weird. For everyone else I’d been as good as dead - they’d seen me carted off in an ambulance, and then a few weeks later term had ended. I on the other hand basically went straight from the end of one school term to the beginning of the next with zero intervening time, and nobody could figure out why I was pissed off. They kept asking me about what had happened - and I answered honestly that they probably knew more than I did.<p>It also sucked that I had no soft landing back into classes, and in the time I’d been unconscious they’d started calculus - I came back and had to differentiate and integrate and had no frigging idea what I was actually doing - I remember sitting in an A-level maths exam a year later and <i>finally</i> having the revelation that it was about curves and rates of change.<p>All this because I had what looked like a zit on my knee. It grew until I couldn’t fit trousers over my leg, school offered me a sticking plaster, and said I wasn’t getting out of sport that easily. Then my leg opened up one night fetching water in the kitchen, and I lost consciousness. I’ll never forget the sight of custard in crude oil swirling over the linoleum - perhaps that’s one side effect of the coma - my last conscious moment is vivid in the extreme.<p>Anyway, that brush with death didn’t change my outlook one bit, but then again I was an invincible 16 year old. The ones since then have definitely left their mark.
for some reason I assumed that he would write about how this trauma would give him a new perspective on what was really important in life, but at the end it sounded like the experience didn’t really change his perspective on desiring to work all the time on his startup and that he was only stepping down because he couldn’t perform 100% and not because this experience changed anything about how he prioritized work/career?
A high temperature like 104, combined with pain, definitely warrants a doctor visit. Which doctor (GP, urgent care, ER/A&E)? Let the time, day, and how you feel be your guide.<p>In the case of one of my relatives, the result was confirmation they had the flu (and too late for Tamiflu or the like to be effective). In my case, it was intestinal perforation that (six months later) led to part of my large intestine being taken out.<p>Big congrats to this guy for getting through it.
Considering the bills for a condition like this, I'd be wondering if it's even worth it to go to the doctor. My life isn't worth the destitution visited on everyone I know necessary to keep me alive, and I can't imagine the moral calculus his family had to go through.<p>I'm glad this guy could get the care needed to survive, and I wish him the very best in his recovery.
A friend of mine had her young brother suddenly developing a narrow line on the skin, growing quickly; 24 hours later both his arms and legs were amputated to keep him alive.<p>I am wondering if having allowed emergency wide-spectrum antibiotics freely for such cases would help? Time seems to be extremely critical in such cases.
Wow. Mark was the CEO of one of the first startups that I worked at in Toronto. I recall him being very driven and focused. It seems like these qualities helped him overcome this enormous challenge.<p>Wishing you the best, Mark.
Terrifying. Could it be that stress caused the Streptococcus pyogenes infection? It would be the most sensible explanation. I imagine being a CEO of a startup is a very stressful role, causing suppression of the immune system and thereby S pyogenes had a chance to proliferate. I have no idea, just speculation.
I am disturbed that he was almost sent away from the hospital if it weren’t for the persistence of his business partner that it was something that needed further investigation.
I'm not up-to-date on these bacteria. It's shocking to me that at this day and age we still don't have good treatments.<p>Would bacteriophage have helped?
This reminds me of the time that science fiction writer Peter Watts got necrotising fasciitis, and wrote a series of sardonic blog posts with gruesome photos (seriously - <i>gruesome</i>) about it:<p><a href="https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41" rel="nofollow">https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41</a><p>He was never in a coma, though, so got to be a bit more chipper about the whole thing.
PathFactory received $15M in funding:<p><a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/lookbookhq" rel="nofollow">https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...</a><p>Amount of traffic to pathfactory.com is negligible:<p><a href="https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/</a>
It's a sign of what it's like to be an American that the following stood out to me:<p>The timing of his illness is rather unfortunate, as it caught him in New York, rather than Toronto, which probably cost him a lot of money.