Category Archives: happiness

dog picture, emotion, happiness, happy life, MS, MS stories, perspective, statistics, Uncategorized

Two Views of Same Data on Life Expectancy

A Dog's secret to a long happy life...play hard and find a good teddy bear with whom to sleep. Could it be that simple?
A Dog’s secret to a long happy life…play hard and find a good teddy bear with whom to sleep. Could it be that simple?

Do Numbers Lie or mislead? I suspect we just read into them what we expect “truth” to be.

When I started as a Survey Program Analyst almost 16 years ago, I remember working on some politically sensitive data. My boss said in a somewhat cynical tone, “Tell me what you want to prove, and I can find the statistic to ‘prove’ you correct.” Since then, I have enjoyed running across those statistics which can be used for either side of a disagreement as “proof.”

I was at a healthcare bazaar at my work last week where different supplier came to sell their services. There were insurance companies hoping employees would switch to their insurance or perhaps sign up for the first time. As I walked around, I watched their interest in selling to me predictably fade quickly with the mention of my MS. It was like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld, saying “No long term care insurance for you.”

I get it. Still, I did have some interesting conversations there. It is enlightening to see how caught up in rosy narratives we become when faced with numbers that may say what we want to hear. One of the employee assistance plan workers told me the story of one of his friend being diagnosed with untreatable cancer. The doctor told him and his family to do what they can to make the patient happy because studies show “Happier sick people live longer.” The worker and family took this to mean if they can keep the patient happy he might beat the cancer. This narrative assigned to the facts of less happy people dying quicker gave them power over that truth which they would otherwise be forced to just endure.
I guess I was a Debby Downer, because I pointed out the other “obvious” to me possible explanation for the numbers. Sometimes being really sick and dying is just miserable. Perhaps some of those unhappy people were unhappy because their illness was so miserable to endure, and it was killing them whether they were happy or not? Without knowing what made the people in the study unhappy, it is hard to say why the unhappy people died quicker.

To my, ignorant of the individual facts mind, the narrative where sick unhappy people die sooner than happier ones, suggests a bleaker mindset closer to death. This seems more plausible than healing by positive thinking. I think about the symptoms I am to watch for as a JCV positive patient taking Tysabri. I am supposed to watch for down turns in my mood because they could be a harbinger of PML. Will my happiness ward off PML or is will a darker mood be a canary in the mine?
Maybe I should worry that mind so readily dismisses my mood as a cause of my body worsening. Perhaps I am already doomed.

Of course, I have few objections if my family and friends want to make me happier all the time so I can live longer. Maybe I should start an Emotional Go Fund Me and see how much positive energy is directed my way?

The happier patient population living longer could also be a result of the body having to spend less energy enduring symptoms. I know my symptoms are worse when I am stressed. Of course I also stress over increases in symptoms. I will concede it is plausible that happier patients live longer, but which is the cause and which is the effect in the relationship between happiness and long life is undetermined in my mind.

One happy bear scout
One happy bear scout

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bike, happiness, luck, MS symptoms, riding, running, Success

Happiness Is But a Bike Ride Away

 

Happiness has a way of multiplying every bit as fast as realizing things can go wrong, but it takes training our minds to realize it.  One of my take aways from a collaboration class a couple of weeks ago was to realize the human predisposition is to remember the tragedies and mistakes more often and more vividly than our successes.  Heck, I remember my failures and heart aches far more vividly than my first kiss. It is not as if we have no successes.  We just take them for granted to the point where we have become hard wired to do so.  It is only with training our minds that we can overcome the inclinations to focus on the negative. 

Something as simple as walking was once described to me by a psychologist as “taking a series of control falls towards our destination.”   The moment we start thinking of walking as falling, it no longer seems so easy, and for roughly three quarters of people with MS, it is not.   Have I mentioned how lucky I am?

Still, we can see progress and success if we look for it.  How many of us think about riding a bike as a huge success?  Well, for this week it is the biggest success in our house.  A road roughly a mile and a half without training wheels.  If this seems commonplace, consider two weeks ago one could have eaten a meal off one of her training wheels because it never hit the ground.  She always leaned to one side.  Then consider riding a bike without training wheels is one the first things A has succeeded at doing before her peers.  Who wants to be the last to learn every skill the rest of us take for granted. Of course,  A really wants to show friend how she can ride now and help teach her to do it too.

 (For MS stuff continue to the next page)

From the diagnosis:

 

To the everyday living:

 

Have I mentioned how lucky I am?  I ran across this site last week, and according to their study, roughly three quarters of MS patients have trouble walking.  Now that I am back to running at lunch, I am trying to figure out how and when to try to run another half marathon or even attempt to run a full marathon. Running a full marathon would be another accomplishment to cross off my bucket list made 8 years ago while waiting to hear whether the results of my MRI indicated MS or cancer (probably testicular according to the initial report).

On the scary side, 88.8% of MS patients have health insurance.  Still, even with this, 47.4% of MS patients have used manufacturer-sponsored copay assistance program.  This speaks volumes to me about our healthcare industry where even with insurance; the patients still cannot afford the medications.  I know I would probably not be able to afford Tysabri without the assistance, and I have good medical insurance (probably top 10% of health insurances in the U.S.).    I have thought for a long time the extremes should not dictate how a problem is perceived, but doesn’t this mean the normal practice to maximize profit is to overcharge up to the point where most cannot afford to buy.  Then negotiate down to a price where the patient is thankful to be able to buy the product at a price to which nobody would have otherwise agreed to pay.  When one company with one product does this, then everybody simply goes with an alternative.  The question is how did we get into a situation where most of the treatments for a disease affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans are stuck in this Economic model?  Of course the bigger questions are “is there a way out of it?” and “how do we take it?”  The bigger questions are for both individual patients and society as a whole.

As I start thinking about these questions I realize I would much rather be riding a bike or going for a run.  Anyone remember “V for Victory?”
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