The Day I Found Out My Life Was Hanging by a Thread (2017)

This story is in the same vein as that of the CloudFlare cofounder[1] who suffers from a rare neurodegenerative disease and has had his life pretty much taken from him at far too young an age.<p>This quote in particular gnaws at me: &quot;We had promised each other that in a few years, when the girls headed off to college, we’d work less and travel more. Amy didn’t deserve to lose those dreams, or her companion, just as we were on the brink.&quot; I, presumably like many others here, have spent a lot of time on my career, perhaps to the detriment of other aspects of my life. Is it worth it? That seems like an impossible question to answer.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;lee-holloway-devastating-decline...</a>

I remember this article when it first came out. It was like a gut punch. Things like this are so scary and you can do everything right and still die early. When I read he died a few months later it was just horrible to me. I still think about this story often and it scared me to my core that I could have undiagnosed cancer and be dead in months.

<i>So it was weird when my primary care doctor put me on a cocktail of pain killers, nerve blockers, and cortisone shots. I even tried acupuncture. But as my back began to improve in late June, I started to feel off. Sick to my stomach. Weak. Couldn’t sleep. I lost more than 10 pounds. [...] My doctor said I was fit and healthy and that there was no need to run any blood tests. He wondered aloud if this was all in my head.</i><p>It never stops shocking me how different the American health care system is...

Do we just never hear the other side (because there&#x27;s too many of them and they&#x27;re too poor to get published)?<p>There&#x27;s a lot of people who say their parents wished they &quot;left a mark&quot; or did something in this world besides enjoying living.<p>My uncle died of cancer, it took all of 8 months (he likely had it for a while by the time they found it). It was horrible for him.<p>By now, I have about 5 people I knew who just died suddenly or very fast, including one who killed themselves. Life is short and unfair, there&#x27;s no time for negative emotions like hate, feeling sorry for yourself, regretting stuff imo. Just enjoy whatever life you have.

I almost wish stuff like this had something like a content warning. Reading this made me quite sad.

I didn&#x27;t see the &quot;(2017)&quot; when reading this and wasn&#x27;t aware of the news at the time, so at the end I wondered about how things concluded.<p>Unfortunately Matt passed in 2017 [1] [2] and the company reportedly acquired by Uber in 2019 [3] [4].<p>My take-away from this is to not waste the precious time we may or may not have, to not have regrets, to have my friends and family know how much they mean to me.<p>A side note: It&#x27;s a shame that the record of his death by his company only exists through a web archive link. It feels like the passing of a person should be more permanently recorded. It&#x27;s a single marker that says &quot;this person existed and they mattered&quot;. Of course this means a lot to those who knew him directly, but it also means a lot to those in the future trying to understand their family history or the history of our society.<p>For example, the people who were killed during the witch trials - although their deaths were tragic, at least there is some recording of the injustice done against them [5].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;mighty-ai-co-founder-matt-bencke-dies-45-battle-pancreatic-cancer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;mighty-ai-co-founder-matt-benc...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20171020053826&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mty.ai&#x2F;blog&#x2F;in-our-hearts-always&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20171020053826&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mty.ai&#x2F;bl...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mty.ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mty.ai&#x2F;</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;uber-acquires-seattle-startup-mighty-ai-fuel-push-self-driving-cars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;uber-acquires-seattle-startup-...</a><p>[5] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.witchtrials.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.witchtrials.co.uk&#x2F;</a>

I laughingly went into the cardiac clinic to have a routine angiogram that wouldn&#x27;t find anything. I even made a play on my surname that I was going to have a &quot;strangiogram&quot;.<p>A bit later, the doctors said &quot;We&#x27;re not sure if we&#x27;ll let you go home or not.&quot;<p>I had plaques closing off my main cardiac artery just where it branches. If I got a full blockage there it would be curtains immediately, with no chance whatever.<p>Stents were no good, if they put a stent in one arm of the fork it would close off the other and vice-versa.<p>I was literally a walking time-bomb. They eventually said I could go home. Two weeks later I had a triple bypass.

Man that ending was very brunt. I did not expect to just see &quot;he died a few months later&quot; as a footnote at the end.

Pancreatic cancer is almost always asymptomatic, until far too late for anything but palliative treatment. And it&#x27;s extremely coagulogenic, so clots are often the initial symptom.

&gt; My doctor said I was fit and healthy and that there was no need to run any blood tests. He wondered aloud if this was all in my head.<p>I&#x27;m seeing a different doctor.

The length of one&#x27;s life is uncertain.<p>Death is certain.<p>The Buddha recommended that both lay and monastic followers perform the following recollections on a daily basis:<p>1. I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid ageing.<p>2. I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness.<p>3. I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death.<p>4. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.<p>5. I am the owner of my actions, heir of my actions. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, of these I shall become the heir.<p>The first four recollections require no faith and can be perceived in the here and now.<p>I find that regularly contemplating the above recollections are helpful in reminding me of my own mortality.<p>They also prompt me to question my direction in life and what I&#x27;m working on. It&#x27;s often easier to make frequent but smaller course corrections than really big changes.<p>With all that said, I still find myself falling into the illusion that I can control what happens in my life and that I&#x27;m building something permanent. We can certainly <i>influence</i> aspects of our lives, but at the end of the day it&#x27;s all impermanent, beyond our absolute control, and will pass away.

The gut punch that keeps on punching...<p>A bit of web searching yields:<p>YouTube video from Matt&#x27;s family and friends about Matt Bencke: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AbgVvCnvrAk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AbgVvCnvrAk</a><p>Matt&#x27;s wife and friends post to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;benckeupdates&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;benckeupdates&#x2F;</a> (most content viewable w&#x2F;o login)<p>Here&#x27;s a covid19-related post - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;benckeupdates&#x2F;permalink&#x2F;650190082226412&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;benckeupdates&#x2F;permalink&#x2F;6501...</a><p>One sad thing is that the domain registration for Matt&#x27;s personal website has expired. So the web has recycled the website a couple of times.<p>Now the website content is NSFW. :(

One of my previous bosses and then my client for +10 years, have cancer and is very close to the end. He also spent his life in work and also have regrets. He was fit and healthy, at his peak in life and then have it all taken away. Cancer sucks do damn much..

Much like others I found the no blood test thing wild.<p>Personally I&#x27;ve just resorted to doing annual blood test in a 3rd world country. There the doctors will run whatever you like basically - it&#x27;s paid at commercial (3rd world) rates so they don&#x27;t give AF.<p>Ironically in a &quot;european&quot; healthcare system the doctors are much more reluctant given that they need to fairly allocate public funds.

<i>My doctor ... wondered aloud if this was all in my head.</i><p>Just as a PSA: This is all too common with obscure conditions.<p>Before I finally got a proper diagsnosis, I spent months on antibiotics with doctors unsure what to do and when I expressed my concern with them having no answers and being unable to fix me that this could kill me, I was asked if I wanted to speak with a psychiatrist.<p>I wish medical doctors would be trained to never, ever dismiss anything as &quot;all in your head.&quot;

I&#x27;m going to go out on a limb and request that people not post this sort of thing here. HNers, I believe, have a higher-than-average rate of anxiety and psychosomaticism (myself included). Articles like this that don&#x27;t include any real hopeful message or interesting takeaway just cause pointless distress for many of us.