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What Happened to Lee

wired.com

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Re: What Happened to Lee

#31

Post by eastdakota »

jamestimmins wrote: post #14
eastdakota wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was incredibly sad to watch. The last time I saw him while he was still speaking — he is still alive but doesn’t speak or seem to recognize me anymore — he would repeat the same questions from the same conversation in the same order on a 30-minute loop. Over and over. I’ve really struggled to wrap my mind around his condition. I don’t think it’s frustrating for him. He seems to have lost the emotion to be frustrat…

I'm sorry for the loss you and his other friends/loved ones have experienced. Do you feel like the article was accurate and fair to the people involved?

Yes. Very. It was important to me and Michelle that it be a tribute to Lee’s genius and contribution to Cloudflare. We spent a long time looking for the right reporter and publication. Wired seemed appropriate given Lee’s love of technology. And Sandra was a total class act. We opened up fully to her, spending nearly a year letting her get to know us. Lee’s family was incredibly giving of their time. It takes a really talented and empathetic writer to have people feel safe and to open up to such a personal story like they did.

I got the advance copy of the article last night and it’s been an emotional 12 hours reliving a lot of the last 18 years I’ve known Lee. But I’m happy we helped create something Lee’s two sons will be able to read and see a little bit of what an incredible person their dad was.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#32

Post by cryptica »

billti wrote: post #25

> The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia—known by the shorthand FTD Oh man, was that a kick in the guts when I got to that bit. My Dad was diagnosed with that in the past year, (after obviously struggling for a while), and declined rapidly. He had a different variant, and indeed the one thing that DIDN'T change was his personality. In fact, that's what…

>> It was interesting to see for Lee how this seemed amplified after heart surgery. My Dad had really bad "post-operative delirium" for about a month after major heart surgery, and while he recovered somewhat, that was definitely the start of his major decline.

That is a strange coincidence. Could changes in bloodflow have an impact on brain cells?

Re: What Happened to Lee

#33

Post by PNWChris »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

Perhaps this is too philosophical, but for anyone who has dealt with someone with a long decline into dementia, it's very difficult for me to understand a belief in God after going through that (I certainly understand some people have the exact opposite reaction, so I'm in no way saying this belief is correct). It's just difficult for me to envision a crueler God if that is indeed the case. A person who has died long…

I have no wisdom to share, and certainly no opinion on higher power that I would consider profound. What you describe is an unbelievably trying experience.

If you are hoping to make some sense of it all, I found Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl really altered how I see suffering and my place in the world. It's a very concrete book, and outlines a way to live with meaning without needing God (though totally compatible with faith).

Stay strong friend, I believe in a tragic optimism[0] like that outlined in Frankl's 1984 postscript.

[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6807951-i-speak-of-a-tragic...

edit: corrected the quote and added a link

Re: What Happened to Lee

#34

Post by DFHippie »

cryptica wrote: post #32
billti wrote: post #25

> The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia—known by the shorthand FTD Oh man, was that a kick in the guts when I got to that bit. My Dad was diagnosed with that in the past year, (after obviously struggling for a while), and declined rapidly. He had a different variant, and indeed the one thing that DIDN'T change was his personality. In fact, that's what…

>> It was interesting to see for Lee how this seemed amplified after heart surgery. My Dad had really bad "post-operative delirium" for about a month after major heart surgery, and while he recovered somewhat, that was definitely the start of his major decline. That is a strange coincidence. Could changes in bloodflow have an impact on brain cells?

It might be the anesthetic.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#35

Post by jamestimmins »

eastdakota wrote: post #31
jamestimmins wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry for the loss you and his other friends/loved ones have experienced. Do you feel like the article was accurate and fair to the people involved?

Yes. Very. It was important to me and Michelle that it be a tribute to Lee’s genius and contribution to Cloudflare. We spent a long time looking for the right reporter and publication. Wired seemed appropriate given Lee’s love of technology. And Sandra was a total class act. We opened up fully to her, spending nearly a year letting her get to know us. Lee’s family was incredibly giving of their time. It takes a reall…

Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like first and foremost, everyone wanted to do right by their friend. That alone is touching, and I'm glad that the final article was the tribute you all hoped for. It was heartbreaking and beautiful, and was an honor to be let into the lives of everyone involved.

My prayer is that while this time is emotional, the process and article also provide a degree of healing as well. Again, thanks for sharing.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#37

Post by billti »

cryptica wrote: post #32
billti wrote: post #25

> The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia—known by the shorthand FTD Oh man, was that a kick in the guts when I got to that bit. My Dad was diagnosed with that in the past year, (after obviously struggling for a while), and declined rapidly. He had a different variant, and indeed the one thing that DIDN'T change was his personality. In fact, that's what…

>> It was interesting to see for Lee how this seemed amplified after heart surgery. My Dad had really bad "post-operative delirium" for about a month after major heart surgery, and while he recovered somewhat, that was definitely the start of his major decline. That is a strange coincidence. Could changes in bloodflow have an impact on brain cells?

I researched it at the time (I'd not heard of it when it occurred) and it is apparently quite common.

A quick search finds a few hits, e.g. from https://perioperativemedicinejournal.biomedcentral.com/artic...

> Delirium is associated with negative hospital outcomes including a tenfold increased risk of death, a fivefold increased risk of nosocomial complications (Inouye 2006), poor 1-year functional recovery, and postoperative cognitive decline (Saczynski et al. 2012). The long-term cognitive decline seen in some patients after the development of delirium is similar to that of Alzheimer’s patients (Pandharipande et al. 2013). With reports of up to 50 % of patients over 60 years old developing postoperative delirium following cardiac surgery (Rudolph et al. 2009), this patient population poses a major burden for healthcare.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#38

Post by radicalbyte »

eastdakota wrote: post #9
kick wrote: post #7

This is horrifying. Conversations soon became impossible. Lee started chattering in repetitive, unceasing loops. He would tell Kristin: “We met at Cloudflare. We got engaged in Rome. We got married in Maui, Hawaii.” He repeated it hundreds of times a day. Then the loops got shorter, more cryptic. He spoke fewer sentences, instead muttering sequences of numbers or letters. At the same time, given the flashes of lucidi…

It was incredibly sad to watch. The last time I saw him while he was still speaking — he is still alive but doesn’t speak or seem to recognize me anymore — he would repeat the same questions from the same conversation in the same order on a 30-minute loop. Over and over. I’ve really struggled to wrap my mind around his condition. I don’t think it’s frustrating for him. He seems to have lost the emotion to be frustrat…

The thought of someone I love (in the broadest sense of the word) being affected by this is horrific. I'm really sorry for his family and friends :(

I think that you're kind of right: I know one engineer who is like that and he it's his autism which makes him brilliant. He could operate in deep-thought mode all the time - he is extremely intelligent and extremely focused. There are other people who can hit it for patches - I could do it for 3-4 weeks at a time when I was 21. At 39 I struggle to do it for an hour a month (kids change you more than anything else).

We really know so little about how our minds and bodies work and that's something we need to change. We should be able to identify and fix conditions like this.

Makes me think that some of us here are wasting our abilities on start-ups and systems when we could be working on fixing much more complex systems.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#39

Post by adamc »

hwc wrote: post #29
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

Perhaps this is too philosophical, but for anyone who has dealt with someone with a long decline into dementia, it's very difficult for me to understand a belief in God after going through that (I certainly understand some people have the exact opposite reaction, so I'm in no way saying this belief is correct). It's just difficult for me to envision a crueler God if that is indeed the case. A person who has died long…

If God exists, they are cruel and uncaring.

Unproven. Maybe just not micro-managing. Maybe they enable life, and watch to see where it goes.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#40

Post by meowface »

cryptica wrote: post #32
billti wrote: post #25

> The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia—known by the shorthand FTD Oh man, was that a kick in the guts when I got to that bit. My Dad was diagnosed with that in the past year, (after obviously struggling for a while), and declined rapidly. He had a different variant, and indeed the one thing that DIDN'T change was his personality. In fact, that's what…

>> It was interesting to see for Lee how this seemed amplified after heart surgery. My Dad had really bad "post-operative delirium" for about a month after major heart surgery, and while he recovered somewhat, that was definitely the start of his major decline. That is a strange coincidence. Could changes in bloodflow have an impact on brain cells?

My suspicion would be that the general anesthetic is the primary cause.
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