Change of Plan, Day 1

So, the direction of this blog will change and there will be more postings, at least for a while.

Knowing the approximate date of your death changes your perspective, and being a writer, I have to send dispatches from every perspective I get.

Last Monday I went in to PeakMed, a direct-pay medical service (80 bucks a month and you don't pay to see a doc for a sinus infection, etc.).  I had noticed my speech was mushy and difficult.  I didn't know exactly why.  I was doing boot camp vocal  dills every morning, with all my opera vocal warmups and Jabberwocky 10 times as fast as possible (had to be hilarious if you were in the car next to me at the stoplight).  But still, I struggled all day.  I even had to hold up my left cheek to speak clearly.

Dr Chow at Peakmed gave me his long, deep, thoughtful look.  He's got one.

He tested my neurological responses ("Touch your nose, then my finger...again over here and here...") then he said, "I'm concerned that you may have had a stroke."  He dialed up the side effects for my migrain medication on his phone and pointed to Stroke.  He ordered me an MRI and then Peakmed (well, Sarah), made all the prearrangement for me to get an MRI.  All I had to do was show up.

After 30 minutes in the same plastic coffin tube Deadpool languished in (Except wearing a football helmet and being subjected to a chorus of helpful jackhammers offering a sampling of  Industrial music effects:  NnngAAAA  NngAAA NNNGAAA-pause-GINGGINGGINGGING!-pause, etc.) "If your doctor does not call you within the hour, " the chirpy front desk attendant said, and then her voice got more serious, "Call him,"

An hour and a half later I called Dr Chow, who said something like, "I've been on the phone to the radiologist and the neurosurgeon and I don't like to give this kind of news on the phone,"

Ever seen the mushroom cloud films from Hiroshima?  It's like that.  But all contained in your gut.

I persuaded him that, since I write horror, it was most compassionate to just tell me on the phone.  "It's a a mass the size of a golf ball sitting behind your right neurocortex.  It's got an edema around it.  It looks like a glioblastoma,"  he sighed.  He was genuinely distressed.

OH.

Same kind Neil Peart had.  So, Rock Star cancer.  I thought.

Then the storm started.  God, what would this be like for my Amazing Loving, Wonderful boyfriend and best friend Jim?  For my Mom?  For my friends?  It's always been one of my fears to lose a friend, and I was about to do that to them.  It does something to you every time you lose someone.  I don't want to do that shit.  But here we go.

FUCK.

Care Bears

Tardigrades, aka "water bears", are one of my inspirations for how we will adapt our future generations to live on Mars.  Humans in our current state can't do it, and even though we have some terrestrial superpowered human genes (for instance, Tibetan sherpas are adapted to ferociously cold, low pressure and low oxygen environments) we still couldn't do it.

But tardigrades can survive in space.  Even more amazingly, they can reproduce in space.  You might assume that a cave on Mars would be a picnic compared to open space, so might we find them there?  But tardigrades live on moss and lichens - they have to have something to feed on.  A cave on Mars would probably need to house, protect and feed complex colonies of plants and animals in order to harbor an organism like a tardigrade.

It's entirely possible that there are colonies of lichens, bacteria or other organisms (which may be far outside our experience, or ALIEN) that tardigrades or a cousin species of tardigrades could live on.

If we find a species adapted to Mars to pull DNA from, potentially we've got some ideal genes for a human-Martian edit.  I imagine that they would fair better if they were much smaller than us.  Mars gravity is 1/3 of Earth's, so humans on Mars might be weaker and less vigorous if they were oversized for the conditions.

On another note, Mars, without the blanket of radiation reflecting atmo we have on Earth, would be a blast zone for solar radiation and all manner of space weather effects, so Marsers (do NOT call them Martians, they would be very offended by that) would have to have genetic adaptations that enabled them to cope with that much radiation.  Again, DNA from those lovable water bears might come in very handy.

Tardigrades can form glass around cell walls to cope with extreme dehydration, they can party in open space and they shed their skins, which to me seems like a brilliant way to consolidate cell turnover to slough radiation toxicity from the body.  Elephants get much less cancer than we do, because their cells die more frequently.  Doctors tell us to exercise to help prevent illness, one of the reasons being the benefits of accelerated cell turnover.

I believe Marsers will need genetic adaptations beyond the human gene pool, and water bears look like they've got at least some of the right stuff.

They're also kinda cute.  In an I-am-so-glad-you-are-microscopic-and-not-eight-feet-high kinda way...

Makin' Atmo

Just in case you never saw Total Recall, I'll spare you some very lame special effects of people's blood boiling and their eyeballs exploding.

The reason your blood would boil and you'd suffocate on Mars is the lack of atmosphere.  The problem is worse than lack of breathable air; it's lack of enough air.  Without a nice soggy Earth-weight blanket of atmo squeezing down on you, your blood would explode out of your body.  The atmo on Mars is about 1% the thickness of our own.  To survive on Mars we'll need to do more than change the mere composition of the atmosphere - (which right now is whisker-thin and mostly carbon dioxide) - it's even more crucial that we get some heft.
 
The easiest way, according to me, is to smack Mars with a couple small, icy NEAs, or near earth asteroids.  If we can guide at least one into Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system, we might get a bit of volcanic activity (it looks as if there's still a bit of geothermic activity in the Mars core) which could add heat, a dust cloud to hold in the heat, and even more water.  With a strike or two you could get lots of atmo and if you're ready to build on that you might be able to start creating a true atmosphere - or a portion of one.  It doesn't need to be Earth-sized.

Mt. Everest on Earth has about 1/3 the atmo of sea level, and sherpas can breathe there.  But 33% is a lot more than 1%.  

According to Nat Geo, Sherpas (well, Tibetans) "...have at least three genes that are different than the rest of us on the planet, giving them a unique ability to adapt to hypoxic environments. They don’t have bigger lungs, they don’t breathe harder, they don’t have more oxygen in the bloodstream, they just appear to have a more efficient engine—and oxygen that gets to the muscles is more readily used," And these are just plain old human genes, which are relatively easy to build into a population.

Beyond that, other gene edits could adapt us even better to conditions on Mars.  But even then, we're going to need a much heavier atmo blanket.

How much atmo can a 'steroid at if an atmo aster'ed at?

Sorry.

This is the part where I chase astrophysicists around.  I've got a lead on one, and I'll post the interview with him in a week or two.

A Swarm of Devils

The main character in my novel "The Wind Spindle" would be flipping out right now....

It's a dust devil swarm on Mars!