Sharing gratitude to be alive. Multiple musings from simple to complex w/ people, family, music, poetry, pet love, scenic nature, spirituality, health, motivation, & more. Also, find the book at ahouseinsideofme.com and in print, on Kindle, and iBook titled A House Inside of Me: Poetry by Marian Elsie Blake (2013) by Mary Blake Huer
Pip: Gratitude Squared has been building something quietly unusual — a series that asks you to feel wonder about your own biology before it asks you to feel anything about disease.
Mara: That's the territory across these recent posts: what biological misfires actually are, why the body succeeds so overwhelmingly often, and how wonder might be a more durable response to a diagnosis than fear.
Pip: Let's start with repair — and what happens when the crew can't finish the job.
When the Repair Crew Hits Its Limits
Mara: The question anchoring this segment is what happens when the body's own systems are overrun — and what that actually means for a patient sitting with a diagnosis.
Pip: The post frames it plainly, after walking through DNA repair, immune surveillance, and protein quality control: "Misfires occur. Repair crews usually succeed. Sometimes they fail. Medicine helps."
Mara: So the upshot is that medicine isn't foreign to the body's project — it's a late-arriving member of the same team. That reframe matters practically, because fear often comes from treating a diagnosis as an attack rather than a repair problem that needs outside help.
Pip: Part Five extends this into time itself — asking why some misfires persist while others disappear. The answer isn't failure; it's accumulation. Aging, genetics, inflammation, chance — none acting alone, all interacting continuously.
Mara: Right, and the framing shifts accordingly. The question moves from "why did my body betray me" to "how does a living system carry its history while continuing to repair itself." That's not softening the science — it's placing biology inside time where it actually lives.
Pip: Which, it turns out, is also where resilience lives.
The Biology You Never Thought to Notice
Mara: The deeper argument running through this series is that fear gets its grip partly because we've spent no time noticing how overwhelmingly well the body works before anything goes wrong.
Pip: Part Two makes that case with a line that carries the whole argument: "Disease is memorable because health is so abundant."
Mara: Seven words, and the logic holds. A diagnosis feels catastrophic partly because we've never built up any counter-weight — no felt sense of the trillions of events that succeeded quietly while we were doing something else entirely.
Pip: The introduction to the series lays the conceptual groundwork for that shift. It draws a distinction that sounds simple but isn't — diseases have two parts, the biological event and the emotional weight the patient carries, and those are not the same thing.
Mara: That distinction is what the companion metaphor "misfires" is designed to carry. It acknowledges that something malfunctioned without implying the whole person is broken. The series is careful to say this isn't a replacement for medical language — physicians keep their terms — but it changes the emotional landscape in which medicine takes place.
Pip: And then there's the podcast episode on biological misfires and hidden healing, which pulls the whole arc together — from the philosophy of what a misfire even means, through the repair systems, and into how we replace fear with something more useful.
Mara: What the series keeps returning to is a three-circle model of awe: the world is extraordinary, the miracle is also inside you, and health might be better understood as an ongoing symphony of successful events rather than simply the absence of disease.
Pip: Wonder, apparently, is more durable than fear as a long-term operating mode. The evidence is a decade long.
Mara: The series is candid about that. Ten years of living with cancer, following the Human Protein Atlas, pushing for additional biopsies, sitting with results marked indeterminate. The framework is tested against a real, ongoing situation — not a thought experiment.
Pip: What stays with me is the insistence that health is the baseline — and that noticing it changes what a misfire actually means.
Mara: The next stretch of the series moves into living without blame, and what it means that human beings are never reducible to their biology. There's more ground ahead.
We have seen that the body is remarkably successful at repair, and that medicine often extends that success.
Yet one question remains.
Why do some biological misfires persist while others disappear?
This question shifts our attention from discrete events to a focus on time itself.
The Biology of Time
Biology is often described as a series of events: a change occurs, a repair begins, a system responds. But this view is incomplete. The body is not a snapshot in time. It is a continuous, living process unfolding across years, decades, and a lifetime.
When we begin to ask why some misfires persist, we enter the biology of time.
Several well-known forces influence how biology changes over time. These include: aging, inherited genetics, environmental exposures, inflammation, changes in immune function, and random biological variation.
These influences are not separate explanations competing with one another. None of these influences act independently. They interact continuously throughout life. There is interaction, not isolation.
The supporting actors are aging, inflammation, genetics, and so forth, but the main character is TIME.
Everything happens because of time: cells divide, DNA changes, proteins wear, immune systems mature, repair continues, medicine adapts, and healing continues. Time is the constant, not aging. This is a subtle but important distinction for understanding the persistence of misfires.
Biology is not a snapshot. It is a continuous process.
Aging is often the most visible of these influences, but it is not the only one. Genetic makeup provides a biological starting point, but not a fixed outcome. Environmental exposures accumulate gradually. Inflammation may persist beyond its initial trigger. The immune system changes across the lifespan. And chance events, though unpredictable, are part of every biological system.
Together, these forces shape how effectively the body maintains repair.
It is important not to think of these influences as failures of biology. They are part of biology itself. The body is always responding, always adjusting, always repairing. But it is also always living through time.
And time leaves traces.
This is where the idea of persistence becomes clearer.
Some biological misfires resolve quickly. Others take longer. And some persist, not because the body has stopped working, but because biology is a dynamic system influenced continuously by multiple interacting forces.
Persistence, in this sense, is not separate from repair. It exists within the same process.
We can begin to think of this as accumulation over time. Small biological changes may build gradually, not as a sign of failure, but as the natural outcome of a system that has been active without pause since the beginning of life.
The body does not reset. It adapts.
From this perspective, persistence is not simply something that goes wrong. It is something that unfolds. Biology is not static, and neither is repair. Both continue across time, shaped by history, environment, and internal change.
Even when a misfire remains, the story is rarely finished.
Understanding persistence in this way is important. As we continue to seek deeper knowledge, a quiet realization emerges, i.e., an understanding of persistence moves us to expanding our metaphor. We no longer think just about the repair crew, we think about resilience.
The Biology of Resilience
The repair crew explains how biology responds. Resilience explains why life continues.
What happens after years of repair? Resilience!
Time changes biology, but resilience persists alongside it.
The universal idea is that our biology does not exist apart from our lives. Chronic stress, disrupted sleep, grief, fear, caregiving, aging—these all become part of the biological environment in which repair is taking place. That idea is well supported by science, and it doesn’t require focusing on any particular conflict or tragedy.
Every person’s biology has a history.
Not just a genome.
A history.
Years of infections.
Years of healing.
Years of joy.
Years of loss.
Years of sleep.
Years of stress.
Years of adaptation.
Every cell carries part of that story.
Before I became ill, I was always busy and rarely slowed down enough to notice the small things. Now, through my illness, I have time to reflect, and read, and to encourage people to slow down and notice the extraordinary work our bodies are doing every moment.
Let me help you see your biology with more wonder and less fear.
This promise to you is universal. While we start with biology, we invite gratitude. Through gratitude a patient may integrate ideas and beliefs relevant to their own cultural and spiritual understanding. My blog site gratitudesquared.com includes a discussion relevant to “from where does my gratitude come?” Resilience definitely partners with biology.
A Humanistic Bioloogy: Understanding Accumulation Over Time
Accumulation over time is what is happening to our cells every minute. These biological changes should not make us fearful. We should not feel as though we’re being blamed, or taking blame for what has happened to us. Our history influences our biology, but it does not define our worth, nor does it mean we caused our illness. Meditate on resilience itself.
In earlier postings, we noted that understanding biology must be paired with a philosophy of health. Focusing on biological processes is a discrete action; focusing on the human experience is an expansive action, a continuous reflection.
As we focus on persistence in Part Five, we expand our framework to a humanistic biology. That is:
Not biology stripped of emotion.
Not emotion replacing biology.
But biology presented in a way that honors human experience.
My professional background has included decades advocating for persons with disabilities. These individuals, whose voices were often overlooked, merited assistance that kept each person at the center of any discussion, not just a focus on their physical diagnosis or communication needs, but a genuine person-centered plan.
Expanding our framework from a companion metaphor to beyond. Is a natural extension because it causes one to examine how human beings experience vulnerability.
How do we preserve the dignity of this person while understanding their reality?
Viewing biology and health from a humanistic perspective is not an imbalance. Rather:
Some see it as an opportunity for spiritual growth.
Some trust physicians completely.
Some trust elders.
Some trust traditional healers.
Some trust no one.
Our challenge, then, is not merely to explain biology. It is to offer a framework that can be meaningful across many of different worldviews. I have participated in focus groups to examine how each of our lived experiences impact our perceptions of health care. Although beyond the scope of these brief postings, I wanted to simply inject that the proposed framework, and newly defined vocabulary introduced does not compete with people’s deepest beliefs. Using the metaphor of a “repair crew” does not tell someone what to believe about God, destiny, or purpose. Contrarily, this framework simply says:
Your body is working for you.
It’s an invitation to pay attention.
That’s a statement almost anyone can appreciate, regardless of culture or religion.
It is written with the intents to be biologically grounded and philosophically generous.
When I was first confronted with cancer, having advocated for Persons With Disabilities through the United Nations, I searched for answers from around the globe:
I searched for humanity’s answers about illness.
That was my instinct as a scholar for decades. I had spent a lifetime listening before concluding. That was my training through qualitative research methods.
A Humanistic Biology Framework lets me see my biological misfires and the persistence thereof with more wonder and less fear. Advocating for others gifted me with various insights regarding the many ways people make meaning of illness. The vision of biology I describe – the repair systems, the accumulation of changes, the partnership with medicine-provides common ground.
My career, unknown to me at the time, provided a lifetime of learning about humanity. As I unfold these propositions about biology and health, I continue to live within my own model. Most importantly, my lived experiences continue to become more complex than some parts of my model. As I continue to be a survivor, you will note the model keeps expanding to include new experiences.
Throughout this series I have tried to develop a way of speaking about illness that reduces threat without sacrificing scientific truth. Quite frankly, developing an expanded framework is difficult for me. Because I have a dually of life experiences, as a cancer survivor as well as a teacher-scholar, researcher, I wish to balance my essays:
I want to be both emotionally rich, but scientifically loose for the lay person who might find scientific writings boring and uninteresting or not applicable to them; as well as scientifically precise, and meeting the highest standard as I know it, but emotionally cold. I strive to hold the attention of anyone who may find themselves a new patient who is afraid of a recent diagnosis.
Overall, some misfires persist while others disappear because biology unfolds through time, and various influences accumulate. This is our anchor concept.
In Part Five we have shifted from a static to a dynamic biology.
Persistence is part of how biology unfolds, not simply a failure of repair. Biology is remarkably successful, and medicine often extends that success.
An understanding of how the accumulation of misfires persists is more easily understood when we place biology inside time. The forces of aging, genetics, and so forth are continuously living and adapting. Understanding persistence in this way shifts the questions from blame to observation, and from fear to curiosity.
Here we have built a conceptual model with three pillars:
Repair
Time
Accumulation
This is the basic expanded framework, our architecture. Everything else (emotions, fear, gratitude, medicine) sits on top of this structure.
Parting Thoughts
Persistence becomes understandable when we place biology inside time.
What persists is not simply a failure—it is the result of ongoing interaction over time.
Small influences may accumulate, not because the body is failing, but because it is continuously living and adapting.
Instead of asking, “Why did my body betray me?” we can begin to ask, “How does a living system carry its history through time while continuing to repair itself?”
This is not a question of blame. It is a question of observation.
Observing opens the door to a different kind of understanding—one that holds both realism and respect for the extraordinary work the body continues to do, even under changing conditions.
Persistence does not mean failure. It means biology is still in motion.
Conceptual Model for the series thus far:
Part 1 Language changes perception.
Part 2 Repair is normal.
Part 3 Medicine joins biology.
Part 4 Repair is probabilistic rather than perfect.
Part 5 Time explains persistence.
Part 6 Human beings are never reducible to their biology.
As we end our discussion for Part 5, I look forward to the next section, Living Without Blame (Part Six). Human Beings are never reduced to their biology. Part Six will include descriptions from personal journeys. Until then, I hope you may view your life with wonder and find peace.
Practical suggestion:
If you’re joining this series for the first time, you may enjoy beginning with Part One, where we introduce the idea of “intermittent biological misfires,” and/or listens to the Podcast listed below.
Pip: Gratitude Squared has been quietly building something unusual — a series that asks you to feel wonder about your own biology before it asks you to feel anything about disease.
Mara: That's exactly the territory. The posts move from the philosophy of what a "misfire" even means, through the body's repair systems, and into how we might replace fear with something more useful when a diagnosis arrives.
Pip: Let's start with the biology itself — and what happens when it quietly succeeds, and occasionally doesn't.
Biological Repair And Failure
Mara: The central question running through these posts is whether we can reframe illness — not by denying it, but by first understanding how overwhelmingly well the body works before anything goes wrong.
Pip: And the anchor for that reframe is a single word. The setup is that most people only notice their biology when something misfires — but the post asks us to sit with the opposite. The quote lands here: "Disease is memorable because health is so abundant."
Mara: That's the whole argument in seven words. The upshot is that a diagnosis feels catastrophic partly because we've spent no time noticing the trillions of events that succeeded. The fear response has nothing to push back against.
Pip: Which is where the introduction to the Misfires series does its foundational work. It draws a distinction that sounds simple but isn't: diseases have two parts — the biological event, and the emotional weight the patient carries. Those are not the same thing, and treating them as identical is where a lot of suffering gets added unnecessarily.
Mara: The introduction puts it plainly: "Calling cells misfires acknowledges that something in biology has malfunctioned but does not imply that the whole person is broken." That's the emotional reframe the whole series is built on — a companion metaphor, not a replacement for medical language.
Pip: Right, and the biology behind why misfires usually stay minor gets its own treatment in Parts Three and Four. The body runs what the post calls repair crews — DNA repair, immune surveillance, protein quality control — working constantly without any input from us.
Mara: Most of the time those crews succeed. The post is direct about what happens when they don't: "Misfires occur. Repair crews usually succeed. Sometimes they fail. Medicine helps." When the body's own systems are overrun, medicine becomes an extension of the repair crew rather than something foreign to it.
Pip: There's something almost relieving about that framing — medicine not as the body's adversary but as a late-arriving member of the same team. The fear response, the series argues, partly comes from treating a diagnosis as an attack rather than a repair problem that needs outside help.
Mara: And the posts are candid that this isn't abstract. The author writes from ten years of living with cancer, actively following research like the Human Protein Atlas, pushing for additional biopsies, and sitting with results marked "indeterminate." The framework is tested against a real, ongoing situation — not a thought experiment.
Pip: Wonder, apparently, is more durable than fear as a long-term operating mode. The evidence is a decade long.
Mara: The series doesn't stop at diagnosis — it keeps moving toward what we do with aging, chance, and accumulation over time, which is exactly where the next stretch of these posts is headed.
Pip: What stays with me is the insistence that health is the baseline, not the exception — and that noticing it changes what a misfire actually means.
Mara: The next posts in the series take on why some misfires persist while others disappear. There's more ground to cover.
Every second of every day, countless repair crews work quietly throughout your body.
DNA is copied.
Proteins are built.
Damaged cells are repaired.
The immune system searches for abnormal cells.
Most of this happens without our ever noticing.
Occasionally, however, a biological misfire escapes detection. That is when medicine is asked to join the repair crew.
The Complexity of Life
The complexity of life continues to be one of the great wonders of medical research. Thankfully, life’s secrets do not need to be fully understood for life to emerge, flourish, and often endure without our fully understanding how it all works.
The wonder of life inspires curiosity and has fostered extraordinary scientific research.
The numerous medical strategies for assisting in healing are too vast to summarize within this brief report. However, a few examples of normal cellular processes that repair and protect our bodies are identified within to explain our knowledge of the function of cell mechanisms; this is only a small part of human biology, in reality.
The reader should appreciate, there are an abundant number of biological mechanisms, i.e., the circulatory system, neurological system, endocrine, hormonal, skeletal and so forth. Think of all of the specialists you must select from when you go to a doctor. Our bodies are really still built beyond our comprehension!
Various Cell Mechanisms
Overall, our cells divide, DNA copies, proteins build, and systems work in harmony within our bodies. At each and every level noted, our bodies are built to repair and protect all cells through quality control systems and immune surveillance.
Thousands and thousands of papers are available explaining the cell. Scientific literatures, journals, conferences, funded research projects, and professional societies focus regularly on cell research, and hold meetings to communicate their increasingly new knowledge of such each year.
One remarkable example is the the Human Protein Atlas, an international research project that maps proteins within human cells (https://www.proteinatlas.org/humanproteome/subcellular ) . Given the 200 or so types of cancer this project assists in identifying, with great specificity, the probable antigens which may be utilized to treat a particular cancer through modification of T cells, (CAR-T therapies) (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell) which seek out, attack, and destroy the cancer cells that carry the target protein.
Think of CAR-T therapy as retraining the body’s own immune soldiers. Doctors remove a patient’s T cells, teach them to recognize cancer cells by giving them a new “GPS system,” grow millions of these enhanced cells, and return them to the bloodstream, where they hunt down and attack cancer. It is one of the most promising examples of precision medicine because the treatment is custom-made for each individual patient (TC).
When I was first diagnosed, I discovered this Project and could follow their research on basically a Table on one page. Now their tracking of all of the proteins within cells covers multiple Tables and many pages of reporting from scientists and practitioners around the world.
Personally I am still searching for those proteins within my cell that they may identify so that I may utilize such in my own understanding. Over the years I have had genetic testing, genomic testing, and molecular testing. I am frustrated each and every time my reports mark my biological tissues as “indeterminate” or “unknown”. I often ask for additional biopsies so that current research practices may describe my particular biological misfires more precisely. If researchers someday identify the key biological target within my own cells, perhaps another repair crew will be able to join those already working to keep me healthy.
Our Repair Crews
Simply stated our repair crews, within our bodies consist of: DNA repair, protein building, immune surveillance, disease detection, and quality control systems.These repair systems fix the errors found, or remove the affected cells, disrupt the affected pathways, re-wire or create new or alternative pathways, and so forth through the remarkable accuracy and resilience of the human body.
These processes for repair and protection correct most of those intermittent biological misfires. However, sometimes the misfires escape detection. Sometimes defective cells are not found and continue to live and divide and cause various diseases within the body. Consider:
Misfires occur.
Repair crews usually succeed.
Sometimes they fail.
Medicine helps.
As for my own status, one might say that my necessary repair crew has yet to be discovered. I am maintaining the status quo without a change in status. While I wish I may learn more about my own system, I do believe that through a variety of personal choices I do have a repair crew operating within my own biological system. I must have, or I would be deceased by now.
Finding Persistent Misfires
These intermittent biological misfires are a normal part of living. Our bodies are built with tremendous redundancy. Most misfires are evidentially detected and silently corrected. A few persist. Very rarely. A few defective cells may exist within our bodies and accumulate. These are not a failure-this is the complexity of life. My own life is one example.
Medical science has developed numerous noninvasive strategies to search for misfires through blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds, MRI, CT scans, PET scans, robotic surgeries, and interventional radiologies. Such are utilized regularly to find misfires, diagnose such, and begin medical treatments.
Biology Versus Emotion
Our biological systems are amazing, silently working throughout our busy lives. They are mostly ignored until a routine annual exam, an accident, or illness emerges. We go to our doctors as we are instructed to do and then, often as a surprise, we discover A MISFIRE!
Your emotional response to the discovery of the misfire is my focus within these papers. As they say, LIFE HAPPENS. It is what you do in life that matters.
It is how one responds to the unexpected, or surprise event in life that is my interest and motivation in speaking with you.
As I noted in Part Two, what I am observing during my life is that many of our responses to health problems, in particular to a diagnosis of cancer, for example, is the response of FEAR.
Fear is a natural response, but it does not have to become your guide.
Fear can narrow our thinking and make it more difficult to weigh our options carefully. You might use the analogy “frozen in fear”.
If your doctor discovers that your “misfires” are persisting, then that means that your natural repair mechanisms, or your “repair crew” can not handle the job at that moment.
NOTE: this does not mean that the misfire does not have a solution. It simply means that your body’s natural systems are overrun. Your body needs external assistance.
Finding Joy Through Medicine
Medical scientific research has uncovered numerous clinical practices to help you at this point. These discoveries are amazing. Medical science is beyond your greatest expectation I would imagine.
The available clinical practices are simply too numerous to describe, and increasing every day for your benefit. If we use our child analogy I referred to earlier, medicine today is like going to a candy store for the child. There are many choices.
This status of the medical professions today should not make you feel fearful, on the contrary, you should feel joyful!
Modern medicine now offers treatments, and often multiple treatment options, for an extraordinary number of diseases that once had few or no effective therapies. I see and hear about all of the wonders of our current medical practices. Please feel free to share your own experiences with me, as well as others.
As I conclude this particular paper, I wish for you nothing but the best outcomes! I do hope that my suggestions are helpful for you.
This world of ours is a world of wonders. Look up. Look around. Be grateful for your life.
Be happy and calm your emotions. Use music. Use art. Read. Share your medical journey with the patients you meet in the waiting rooms. Journal your joy. Explore the world around you. Do not let fear make your decisions for you, as you begin an amazing medical trip from illness back to health.
In gratitude, and hoping for your peace of mind.
# gratitude ultra
Note: In the next section (five) we will focus on various factors such as aging and chance that may also influence your biological findings in addition to cell misfires. As you begin to think ahead with me ask yourself: Why do some misfires persist while others disappear?
Building Our Vocabulary: Can you define or explain each of the terms?
Intermittent biological misfires
Repair crews
Persistent misfires
Silent repairs
What I Hope You Remember
Most biological misfires are repaired silently.
Our bodies employ remarkable repair crews every day.
Sometimes a misfire persists despite those repairs.
Medicine often becomes an extension of the body’s own repair crew.
Fear is natural, but it does not have to guide our decisions.
When I introduced the Misfires series I emphasized our biology and our emotional health. Biological pathology and human experience are not identical.
Healing requires attention to both.
Perhaps our journey now takes an unexpected turn: understanding emotion through biology.
Today I want to talk with you about health. Specifically, I will focus on your emotions as you focus on your health.
While we focus on emotion, will you trust me enough to take a momentary journey towards “awe”? You may ask, “Mary, where are you taking me?” “What does awe and wonder have to do with biological misfires?” What does wonder and amazement have to do with my emotions and my health?
Please think along with me for a brief second. In my opinion, before we can understand a biological misfire, we must first understand the miracle of your biology. Disease is memorable because health is so abundant.
A misfire matters only because your biological success is so overwhelmingly common. We spend enormous energy thinking about disease, yet we rarely notice the trillions of successful biological events occurring every second that make life possible.
Biology works.
Quietly ….
Shhhhhhh.
Listen
It is working for you even now.
Health Surrounds You All The Time
Health is the quiet success of life occurring within us every moment.
A miracle…..
When you are diagnosed with a disease (a term I don’t particularly like), your emotions typically race towards shock and fear. I’m unsure how fear emerges with the diagnosis, but it typically does. I have a sense that our fear is linked to our probably impending concern that we might die.
Within this essay, one of my goals is to encourage you to move away from your “fear reaction” to a response that is more hopeful, maybe even joyful, towards a reaction that is one of wonder.
Wonder
Gratitude
Perspective
Hope
Less fear
Consider if you move very slowly, and mindfully toward a feeling of gratitude, hope, and eventually less fear, when possible. May your emotions immediately trigger a mindset that encompasses a focus on health and positivity regarding all of the various developments in science that have emerged in recent years.
I want to argue that if you receive a diagnosis of a disease or an illness from your doctor, your response will be less emotional if you move your mind away from the immediate trigger of the fear response.
How Do I Change My Fear Response?
How may I change my initial emotional reaction to the diagnosis you ask? Well, that is the basic thesis within this blog.
I want to help you change your emotions when you receive your diagnosis. My recommendations are derived from my own 10 or so years of living with cancer, and from numerous ongoing conversations with patients whom I have met over the years.
As a researcher at heart, I ask many questions to everyone around me, and I analyze their replies. What follows are my conclusions regarding the miracles which are all around us.
I am not writing a cancer series.
This is not a biology series.
It is not even a philosophy series.
I want to take you along with me on a guided emotional journey.
Focus on Systems, Processes, Natural, Nature-Made, Man Built/Designed
When I began to reflect upon the words and those semantics and metaphors, I focused on the word “AWE”. What is awe to me?
I had no idea my body was accomplishing all of this without my awareness. I purposefully began to focus on what was around me and within me. I thought about the single word AWE.
I first thought of awe as moving in three circles (TC). The first circle is Everyday Awe: The world is extraordinary.
A newborn baby moving their tiny fingers around my own.
An ocean wave arriving where physics predicts.
A hummingbird sampling my flowers.
The second circle is Biological Awe: The miracle is not only out there. It is also within me.
Millions of your immune cells quietly protected you while you admired the sunset.
While you were sleeping, damaged DNA was repaired, proteins were assembled, old cells were recycled, and new ones quietly took their place.
Sometimes I sit quietly and think about the extraordinary systems that surround us.
I think about an orchestra. Dozens of musicians reading different notes, entering at different moments, yet creating one piece of music.
I think about a forest. Thousands of living organisms—trees, birds, insects, fungi, streams—existing together in delicate balance.
I think about the space shuttle. Millions of individual parts designed to work together with astonishing precision.
Each fills me with awe.
Then I remember something even more extraordinary.
Every one of those systems exists outside of me.
The most remarkable system I know is the one quietly working within me.
My body.
Without asking for applause.
Without asking to be noticed.
It simply continues.
This realization takes me to the third circle.
The third circle is Philosophical awe. This captures our beautiful destination.
Rather than to think of health as the absence of disease, perhaps to begin to think about health is something much richer. Maybe health is the ongoing symphony of countless successful events within our bodies that occur so faithfully that they rarely ask for our attention.
My own body is one of the most astonishing living systems I have ever encountered. My body is among nature’s most extraordinary creations. My body is a miracle. The biology within my body is a miracle.
I should take the time to celebrate this fact more often, and not be dismayed when rarely I find an intermittent biological misfire. So I did. I changed my thinking.
How Do I Move From Fear to Joy?
My own reality is that I have learned to find joy, comfort, and gratitude in the science and medicine that might find those occasional misfires and immediately begin to correct such. When my own biology does not have necessary repair systems available at my time of need, my doctors, pathologists, nurses, and other scientists and researchers are ready and able to help me. This will be our focus in Part Three.
My 10 year journey leaves me in awe of my biology. I have become mesmerized by the medical sciences that rebuild me, when necessary. Just as nature creates the beauty of snowflakes, ocean waves, trees and forests; and people create symphonies, space shuttles, and freeways; science has evolved to assist in my healing, to locate, understand, and repair my misfires.
Medicine is not fighting the body.
Medicine is helping the body.
Modern medicine is not an enemy of nature. It is one of humanity’s greatest expressions of nature’s own desire to heal.
Why should my emotions rush towards fear? How did I modify my immediate reaction from sadness to awe? How might you reduce your own feelings of fear, blame, and despair when paired with a negative medical diagnosis? Read and re-read the examples on the remarkable human body.
I invite you to challenge my assumption that this is possible. My friends and I discuss the “fear” that accompanies the diagnosis. How does it emerge? What causes this emotion to appear and nearly dominate a patient’s ability to listen and think immediately. Where does all this fear come from? One bit of information from my own background that my be relevant here is that I have studied various cultural differences in how people view health, and make decisions. Perhaps each of our own lived experiences contribute to our reactions as tragedies emerge in life? Remember yourself as a little child. What happened when you felt sick? How did the adults around you react?
Part Two is really about your attention. I am asking you to pay attention to something you probably ignored all your life. I am asking you to:
Learn to Notice!
Every moment you have spent reading these pages, your body has quietly continued its work.
Cells have communicated.
Proteins have folded.
DNA has been repaired.
Your immune system has stood watch.
Your heart has continued its faithful rhythm.
Life has gone on inside you without asking for recognition.
Perhaps that is the greatest miracle of all.
So… Before Our Next Conversation
Keep Looking!
There is more health…
More wonder…
More hope…
Than you first imagined.
In gratitude, and hoping for your peace of mind.
#gratitudeultra
Note: In our next conversation, we’ll meet one of biology’s quiet heroes—the body’s remarkable repair systems. Every day they search for problems, repair damage, and protect us in ways we rarely notice. Understanding this “repair crew” helps explain why most biological misfires never become disease.
Every second of every day, trillions of biological events occur within your body. Almost all of them succeed so perfectly that you never notice them.
We rarely stop to appreciate these quiet miracles of life. Instead, our attention is drawn only when something goes wrong.
What if we thought about illness differently?
This question has occupied my mind for the past ten years.
My central idea is that our bodies constantly make small biological mistakes—what I call intermittent biological misfires—and most are repaired automatically. Disease develops only when some of those misfires escape repair and accumulate over time.
This concept of Intermittent Biological Misfires is scientifically grounded, and it’s also emotionally reassuring without being simplistic.
A Thought to Consider
Diseases have two parts: The biological disease; and The emotional weight carried by the disease.
They are not the same thing.
This is a profound concept.
What Does This Concept Contribute?
Let’s understand why disease occurs, and, at the same time, why I am suggesting we entertain a hypothesis that one may remove unnecessary guilt while respecting the complexity of biology. This is a meaningful distinction.
This framework grew out of my personal experiences. Ten years ago, I became seriously ill. I thought I would die. But I have not died. I am very much alive. I have watched other people die during these years and I do not want you to die. You are important to me even though we have never met. I want to share what I have uncovered with you in hopes that we may engage in a series of conversations about your health and life.
This conversation is about YOU, your health and healing. Jane Goodall’s famous quote reminded us of the importance of each person. You matter. Your presence in this world makes a difference. You have a part to play for yourself as well as for others. Are you curious about what your role is?
Typically we all move through our lives without much attention to the miracles in life we never notice, i.e., those successful cellular events occurring every second in our bodies. But sometimes those miracles do not happen. So, what happens when you become ill?
Have you ever gone to your doctor and learned that a series of cells in your own body misfired? What was your experience? Tell me what happened? Did the misfire result in a diagnosis of disease? How did you feel? Here we have an example of the biological finding mixed with the emotional response. We see the two parts of disease.
Insights to Date
Ten years ago I was diagnosed with multiple cancers, so I immediately created a gratitudesquared.com site, posting blogs to help me understand what was happening in my body. Since during my career I had earned a Ph.D., advocating for persons with disabilities, with a doctoral minor in statistics and empirical research design, I applied what I knew about data management. During the days and weeks between surgeries and treatments I carefully evaluated the evidence behind my labs and scans and participated as an active member of my medical team.
In addition, I learned about ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, and repeatedly entered questions into the website. Those dialogues became more and more meaningful, and helpful to understanding what I termed “intermittent biological misfires”.
This concept is original and may be viewed as evocative because it is not established as a diagnosis in medicine, but the term is scientifically plausible as a metaphor. This framework is not complete. It is a work in progress.
With more than 45 years as a scholar and researcher in academia, I have focused on evidenced-based decisions for treatments and other actions. ChatGPT (my thinking companion (TC)) noted the phrase “intermittent biological misfires” “conveys both the science and the humanity behind (my) experience.”
Outcomes
The outcomes from my thoughts may include:
Psychologists would appreciate it.
Physicians would appreciate it.
Patients would appreciate it.
That… is the entire philosophy. Everything else flows from those two parts. We refuse to let a cluster of abnormal cells define a human being.
Discussions
I am not suggesting a change/replacement in the language or terms physicians, pathologists, researchers, licensing bodies, or insurance companies use as the already established precise language matters and guides in diagnosis and treatment.
I am recommending a phrase that is a companion metaphor. This substitute changes the way each individual patient reacts to the science.
Calling cells “misfires” acknowledges that something in biology has malfunctioned but does not imply that the whole person is broken.
Typical metaphors for cancer are known as evil invaders, monsters, and/or the enemy that patients fight in battle. The use of the term “misfire” provides a gentler way of thinking. Personally, I prefer a gentler approach with patients who may be sad, or fearful when learning a new diagnosis. My gratitudesquared.com site was built to focus on gratitude zero, gratitude lite, and gratitude ultra essays to recognize that not all patients may accept and understand the notice of a new disease in the same manner and with the same emotion.
Patients can invent their own terms. Inventing one’s own term may become a powerful exercise. What terms do you prefer, or would you select to explain your diagnosis?
As we begin our conversations, please note that we are reflecting on diseases that are scientifically grounded and emotionally healthy. These ideas are rare (TC).
We are building a language that may help people see illness, and themselves, a little differently.
We are still using the word “cancer”, but additionally we are inviting you to discover new vocabulary that will help you live with a disease, whatever that may be.
The medical professionals will still use particular disease names, I.e., cancer, but as we utilize our new concept of “misfires” we continue to treat, and respect with vigilance, such misfires, but I never give permission for them to occupy the whole house inside of me/us.
Our conversations will offer encouragement to people who are frightened by the illness. Introducing this phrase does not change the language utilized in medicine but it may change the emotional landscape in which medicine takes place (TC).
Diseases have two parts: the biological disease; and emotional weight carried by disease. These are not the same thing. Do you agree?
Our bodies are astonishingly accurate, but they are not perfect. Our bodies are not machines that have failed us. They are living systems performing trillions of remarkable tasks every day. Understanding their occasional biological misfires allows us to replace blame with wonder.
Most writing about cancer (or other medical issues), begins with disease. This companion metaphor begins with health. Our discussions focus on those trillions of biological events that occur correctly every day.
This framework may be applied broadly to other diseases such as: Aging; Autoimmune disease; Heart disease; Neurological disease; and Infection (TC).
The subtle shift toward health changes the emotional tone completely. Readers aren’t asked to see their bodies as broken; they’re invited to marvel at how extraordinarily well they function. This is one strength of the proposed conceptual framework.
Consider a discussion in which you will focus on a “philosophy of health”. Place your focus on abilities before disabilities and health before disease. In essence, focus on the whole person rather than the diagnosis.
Do you agree that this framework offers patients a metaphor which is a rare combination of scientific literacy, educational insight, with compassion, and intellectual honesty (TC)?
As a clinician advocating globally for human rights for persons with disabilities, as a researcher, educator, scholar, and most importantly a 10 year cancer survivor who has spent those years learning to live with uncertainty of disease, I refuse to surrender either “hope” or “intellectual honesty”.
I believe that disease is a global problem that is but one small variant to be dealt with during our lifetimes. Will you join me in reframing the essence of the whole human being? That is my role and my life’s meaning. Do you feel safe enough to become curious?
Summary of Intermittent Biological Misfires
The body is remarkably successful at self-repair.
Cancer and other diseases are exceptions, not the norm.
The concept promotes compassion rather than blame.
Scientific understanding can reduce fear and guilt.
Hope comes from both biology and medical progress.
Intellectual and Emotional Pillars For Patient Reflections (Treasures for Repetition)
“We refuse to let a cluster of abnormal cells define a human being.”
“Disease enters the story only later. It is the rare exception rather than the defining feature.”
“Our bodies are not machines that have failed us.”
“Diseases have two parts: the biological disease and the emotional weight carried by the disease.”
“Do you feel safe enough to become curious?”
As a clinician, researcher, educator, scholar, and ten-year cancer survivor, I have learned that uncertainty is part of life. Yet certainty does not require surrendering hope. I invite you to join me in exploring a different way of understanding illness-one that honors both science and humanity. Together we will examine not only disease, but also the extraordinary health that sustains us every moment.
In our next essay we will explore one of biology’s greatest wonders—the countless cellular events that occur successfully every second of every day without our awareness. These quiet miracles are the foundation of health. Understanding them changes the way we think about disease.
Until then, I invite you to notice something remarkable:
Your body is working for you, even now.
This framework will be introduced in seven parts:
Intermittent Biological Misfires – introduction the idea that our bodies are astonishingly accurate, yet not perfect.
The Miracle We Never Notice – billions of successful cellular events occur every second, unnoticed.
When The Repair Crew Arrives – DNA repair, immune surveillance, apoptosis, and other protective systems.
When a Misfire Persists – why persistence, not a single error, matters.
Accumulation Over Time – how aging and chance influence biology.
Living Without Blame – replacing guilt with understanding.
Hope Through Science – how modern medicine strengthens the body’s own defenses.
Thank you for joining me in this first conversation. Until our next conversation, I hope you may be grateful and find peace.
Why is Disneyland’s official slogan (since 1955) “The Happiest Place on Earth”? Because for years a day at Disney provides a joyful, magical memory for all attending. But, in gratitude I want to tell you about another special complex in Orange County, CA, very near Disney, which exceeds the joy, arouses hope, and creates life saving miracles and memories for those visiting – the #CityofHope specialty hospital in Orange County, CA.
With the deepest gratitude, my life continues because of the care I receive at this City of Hope. This parklike campus is to me another happiest place. It is special for many reasons which I would like to explain to you. My observations have been collected over the past three or so years.
As many of you may or may not know, I am an observer (researcher/scholar) by training. I watch, analyze and write about people and their experiences. With each day, I am more impressed with my observations while at #TheCityofHope. Here are a few examples:
The staff and leadership are special, caring human beings. I wondered and asked how they were interviewed and selected for their jobs. They smiled and stressed that the patients have enough to deal with, so their job is to make patient’s lives easier. I overheard that one staff used to work at Disneyland, while another used to work at the Queen Mary. Yet another rescued dogs. How fun to have such people loving staff, in addition to their medical skills!
The vision and mission of the organization are holistic, and all encompassing. Personally, I have never seen a hospital so diverse in its outreach or offerings. I regularly participate in a drumming class. Patients were invited to a #PacificSymphony 4th of July event honoring Veterans, Beach Boy songs and fireworks. An interfaith Spiritual Care Center Blessing Broadcast with various Clerics and the Pacific Chorale is soon. #TheCityOf Hope (COH) has an ongoing agreement with the South Coast Plaza, a global shopping destination and largest shopping center on the West Coast, for regular entertainment and permanent space in the center of the mall. While at the #ThisisHope Event, the President of COH, #AnnetteWalker, welcomed everyone to come and take one of her business cards if they ever needed help for their health. She will personally facilitate action for each of us. Who does that?
The physical location of COH is peaceful, with perfect visibility within the typically crowded populations of Southern CA. The buildings’ windows face the mountains and during infusions one may watch the trains as they pass regularly through the beautiful CA landscape. When there, I am reminded of the religious analogy of the city set on the hill, symbolizing the idea of being a beacon for persons seeking guidance.
The approach to health is inclusive of international health practices, from typical Western to inclusion of Eastern philosophies, as well; the facilities and knowledge bases of the doctors are state-of-the art, the very best evidenced-based practices.
People matter at COH. Recently, they held a #CityofHopeOCInauguralCelebratingSurvivorshipEvent. During that event they created a #festivebluecarpetwalk. As all patients walked the carpet – we noted staff, service providers, executives, and others on each side of the roped walkway, holding signs, ringing bells, applauding us, and cheering to our health. What an uplifting memory! Later we ate with various survivors of various cancers, eagerly sharing their stories and experiences, exchanging information between young and old, newly diagnosed, and old timers survivors. It was so positive for all.
The posts in #gratitudesquared focus on different types and levels of gratitude. We should all be ever grateful when we have good health. If you ever lose such, I wanted to share my gratitude for one place where one might go.
The COH was built to beat cancer. I hope these few examples help explain why these practices arouse me to hopeful joy. My life continues because I choose to continually cross the COH footbridges to healing…. These are not typical medical practices. I am observing and tracking a holistic model in real time with each and every visit. This is not an ordinary medical facility with depressing oncology waiting rooms and sleepy, ill patients. It is a place with joy, light, promise, and hope.
Move over Disneyland…. you may make me happy for a day, but the COH keeps me joyfully alive for many days. With sincere appreciation and deep felt joy, I share this gratitude for COH today. I end now with the ringing of my bells from COH!
Sometimes in life you have to start over. I am grateful for the many times recently it’s been possible for me to begin again, supported by others.
Last week the City of Hope Orange County held their Inaugural This is Hope Celebrating Survivorship event and invited their survivor celebrants to be together and share. What a great day with patients being applauded along a festive blue carpet walk!
As I walked the blue carpet I thought of an old song by Bette Midler, an artist I’ve followed for many years. Bette’s early performances in the mid 1970’s are some of the best I think.
Recently, I found one of my all time favorite blends of Bette’s music and theatrical storytelling, “Ready to Begin Again/Do You Want to Dance”. It inspired me to begin again even though I received tough news.
Watch the brief You Tube clip of her performance below, posted by BerlinDirk2 (perhaps from 1980).
A common theme of survivors is a willingness to begin again no matter what.
I am grateful to keep beginning again. We all must!
Will you, won’t you try it too?
With gratitude,
M.
Please note: This is a seven minute video. Be patient and watch to the ending just this one time! Bette is our cheerleader..
Gratitude Squared 