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When the Repair Crew Cannot Finish the Job: More About Biological Misfires (Parts Three And Four)

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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.

The Miracles We Never Notice Within Our Bodies: Misfires Part Two

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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.