Legacy - July 2022

For those who read this blog for the first time, a short recap.

In 2021 I was diagnosed with a very aggressive (9.2 on a scale of 10) cancer, which had already spread through the body. Classified as stage 4, there’s no possibility for a cure (yet), meaning that the diagnoses directly stated a palliative stage of life. 

There’s a therapy till end of life, with huge side-affects and major impact on the person you are, that was initiated immediately. It should slow down the process at an average of 3 years. 

After 3 months the blood values showed that the therapy was successful. A wave of happiness and relief through all around me, for a short time. With an insane speed the cancer adapted to the new circumstances, regrouped and came back more aggressive. 

In the last blog called “Spring”, the cancer was referred to the growing season of the year. Metastasis's all over the place and progressing fast, very fast. 

Despite the increasing amount of metastasis's the blood tumor markers didn’t spike at all. It means that the cancer had mutated in way that it is barely recognizable and research showed that it was mutated to a Neuro Endocrine carcinoma.

With not much standard long lasting (Healthcare insured) options left, an appointment was made in a, this type of cancer, specialized University Hospital.

Looking for options, trials, that needle in the haystack.

For so far the recap and this is where Legacy started. 

Legacy

There’s something in live called opportunism and reality. Both are on a scale and in the end, reality will always prevail. 

For those who know me well, they know that opportunism is floating through my vein's. 

Opportunism is like hope. It gives the mind and body strength to hold in bad times. I think opportunism is revealing one’s most important secret weapon: ‘the power of the will’. It is astonishing what one can achieve when you believe in yourself and really really want to achieve it. That said, no it isn’t a walk in the park by any means.

But to be opportunistic one should be realistic too, because it will prevail. 

Being opportunistic I am convinced that surviving the first years, with all the research which is going on on global scale on this disease, the life expectancy could be extended with an another 5 years. 

Therefor my task to the hospital is: life expectancy before quality of life. 

As mentioned earlier, one should be realistic too. Not to mention or saying, but in mind and in decision making. 

Enjoying life to the max a ripple appeared earlier this year. The metastasis's where incredible progressive and started destroying the body on several places. 

In the meanwhile the University hospital was stepping up the pace doing necessary research in order to find an option to slow the progression again. 

And they did! A very experimental double immunotherapy for this type of cancer, which has been tested yet for only a few hundred patients worldwide. It's said to be a potential breakthrough!

Of course there's a but…this is financed by a pharmaceutical industry. They need more participants in order to learn the right amount of medicals. So in order to opportunistic survive one has to become a Guinea pig.

In order to participate you sign for: heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure etc etc. 

Thereby you are told that you will get very very ill due to the high amount of medicals. Stepwise it will be brought back to a acceptable level. 

In any case, it will help other patients after me. Opportunistic, it will give me at least an additional 22 months life expectancy.

While waiting on the results if I am suited for this double immunotherapy treatment, suddenly the balance of the scale opportunism and realism was tipped violently. Having already a hard time handling the damage of the metastasis's, on a night in hotel far from home and my always supporting wife, a tumor in the lower spine got hold on the nerve of the right leg. Already for many weeks bothered with sleepless nights for the first time, just for a moment an indescribable feeling appeared…a complete loss of faith! 

It might be my toughest night in live. And then it's a very long time until breakfast time, opportunistic hoping on distractions in order to repack myself. 

Back again in a wheelchair but surrounded and supported by my loving sister (who works also at Plieger) and colleagues. 

After intervention of the emergency department of the University hospital life got better. One might say this could be due to the morphine, causing the world to be a strawberry.

 Even on such moments one could think the bottom has been reached.

But as later appears, two times more a sinkhole appeared in the apparent bottom.

It reflects the volatility of this disease. One moment one is jumping around with happiness, next moment could be totally different.

These are moments where realism dominates the mind. Still being opportunistic, one could think “what is my legacy?”, “What do I leave behind?”, “Did my life matter?”, “Was I able to make a positive change in some peoples life?”

Opportunistic there’s many years to go, realistic…my last summer? Life is depending now on “if’s”, “might's”, “probability calculations” and “experiments”. 

But that said, life is life. Make every day count and do what you think is important. 

And there, again, Plieger group stepped up, giving a major chance to create legacy in work. 

In Nepal there are 8 University's, having 11.000 graduates on yearly basis. Highly driven and well educated people. But in Nepal there’s only work for 25% of them. 

Because the absence of any social security system in Nepal, one only get about 20 euros at the age of 70, most graduates don't have any choice to leave the country. But what choices you have with a Nepalese nationality? One of the more difficult nationality’s to move around the world?

In order to find work, thousands of young Nepalese graduates end up in jobs in India and Middle East. One might ask about the living and working circumstances in that places for Nepalese graduates. 

Plieger group gave the opportunity to setup a second BI (Business Intelligence/ Information) location (as part of BI Netherlands) in Kathmandu Nepal. Goal is to start with a team of about 20 employees, which get training on the job with the tasks for BI Netherlands.

Working and learning on a data landscape and tools fitting to the demands of tomorrow like Azure cloud, Jupyterhub, Power BI and a huge amount of the newest SAS Viya 4.0 software, they will become specialists within a year or more. 

In this “breeding pond” new graduates will enter as old (experienced) will move to “Four Symmetrons Innovations Pvt Ltd”.

Speaking with Dutch consultancy bureaus, chairman’s of business associations, we will try to find remote BI / Analytical / Al / Mendix / reporting jobs for Four Symmetrons Innovations Pvt Ltd. 

Creating a loop in order to create valuable jobs in good working circumstances and giving them a chance to develop as real experts in their field of work. 

The different fields of work are: data architecture, data engineering, data science, data visualization, system management, project management and scrum master. 

In the Netherlands we have already an expert level BI team of 8 employees, supporting and mentoring the expanding Nepalese team. 

Because we are 1 team, it doesn't matter where somebody is seated. All projects and tasks will be executed without borders. Because “Data is without borders”. 

From my experience till now I can say that the Nepalese does have an excellent English pronunciation, do have a high work ethic, are curious and continuously willing to learn. They are smart and service minded, excellent characteristics for the BI working field. 

Crawling up out of a very dark place, this venture seems the start of a significant change in my current life.

While the disease and metastasis's where increasing the University hospital mentioned that they need approximately 2 months for preparing the double immunotherapy trial for me. And in the light of the progression, it was time we didn't have.

A decision was made to add a next therapy, which is temporary and regarding to the current mutation might not be successful.

Also several major hotspots in the body where radiated to ease the pain quickly and prevent further damage.

At first the body was over reacting on the new treatment. But after a week the feeling started to change completely!

Within weeks, I transformed from a very ill man to seemingly very healthy. 

Pain vanished, sleep returned, energy back on level (like a child who felt in a kettle of Redbull, at the age of 2) and able to rebuild the condition. 

The 3 times a week swimming and 2 times a week medical fitness never was paused, but now the exercises can be intensified again. 

The treatment is working excellent and the cancer is pushed back in the corner again. 

This blog is written at the pool in Bulgaria, enjoying with family like nothing ever happened, running and jumping around like a young deer. All able to fully forget there’s a disease hiding below the shallows.

Even the right shoulder, which got very damaged seems to recover bit by bit again, although in the best case it still will takes months to fully (hopefully) recover.

One might lose faith on a moment and realism should be the foundation of decision making. But when opportunism has the upper hand, one is able (at least to a higher degree) to exceed one’s own expectations.

Further what else then “hope” can be better in a situation like this. 

Referring to the high volatility and very unpredictable behavior of cancer, we don’t know how long this sailing on smooth waters will last. Opportunistic might be one year, realistic two months?

But does it matter? 

Living each day to the max, enjoying moments with family, traveling to places we really like to be and creating legacy with full support of Plieger while developing a sophisticated BI department with driven experts on each field of the data lifecycle working with the tools of tomorrow and being able to make Plieger the digital market leader in the technical wholesale market.

Opportunistic being able to completely achieve all the goals in life regarding to family and legacy, I will do everything in my power to extend realism to the time of opportunism. 

But what ever happens: one can say “We where there”.