User:Heimdallen

Greetings fellow Wikipedians, I am Mike Plouffe, aka Heimdallen in many online communities.

I was born in 1980, and for many years I led a wonderful and full life until I ultimately became disabled in 2007, after suffering from unexplained abdominal pain and feeling generally ill on and off for about 10 years, at which point I found myself in so much pain and feeling so sick I was no longer able to work. After a year of being unable to function with any real normality, I was finally diagnosed in 2008 with a very rare and little understood illness called either Sclerosing Mesenteritis or Mesenteric Panniculitis, an idiopathic necrosis of mesenteric tissue known to be some sort of auto-immune disorder. Only several hundred people worldwide have received this diagnosis, however, it's likely that there are many more hundreds or thousands who have suffered from, or are today still suffering from this disease, without ever definitively having received a diagnosis and knowing what ails them, a stroke of luck which I have been fortunate enough to receive myself. In addition to causing chronic, relentless, consistent sharp pain in my lower left abdominal quadrant, severe enough to very seriously interfere with sleep and every day life, it has caused my immune system to occasionally viciously attack other parts of my body, and also to less severely just slowly chip away at other parts like my joints. A sudden attack caused me to nearly lose my eyesight permanently in my left eye in January of 2016, due to a lengthy amount of time before it was finally treated, a delay which was caused by a lack of understanding with what was causing such incredible swelling in the eye, and the inability of the first several different doctors I saw to figure out the issue. Fortunately, it was figured out just in time by my now favorite ophthalmologist, and I suffer from no permanent loss of vision, only experiencing occasional swelling, which causes temporary blurred sight and pain in that eyeball.

Despite my condition and low quality of life, I am very thankful for the life I was so fortunate to have lived in the years prior to the permanent onset of my illness at age 27. I truly feel that I got to see and experience so many wonderful things in those years that it was like living an entire lifetime, 27 years so jam packed with amazing things that it was more than many people might see in their full 70 or 80 years on this beautiful planet. I also try to remain as grateful as I should be for what I still have in my life, as it obviously could always be a lot worse! Each day is a struggle, some better than others, some worse, but who's life is without struggle? No one's! I just try and take it one day at a time, all that anyone can do.

Prior to becoming disabled with the crippling pain and GI problems associated with SM/MP, I attended Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA, where I studied computer science. I worked in the IT field while in school, employed by a subcontractor for Harvard Medical School where I did IT work. At the age of 16, I become an EMT, and at 18, a volunteer firefighter, in my home state of CT. I volunteered in my home town heavily during high school and summers home from college. I passionately enjoyed giving my time freely to help my community, and enjoyed my volunteer work more than my paid work and studies in computer science and IT work. During my third year in college I worked nearly full time as an assistant manager for an outdoor gear shop in Boston, where I got to indulge in my other passion of the great outdoors. I was an avid skier, hiker, rock climber, kayaker, and having obtained a Wilderness EMT upgrade a couple years prior, I was given the chance to lead groups of customers from the store on weekend mini-adventures, spending time a couple hours north in New Hampshire in the forests of the beautiful White Mountains. Finally realizing that I really did not want to make a career out of IT, I quit school halfway through my third year in order to take a break and decide what field I really wanted to earn a degree in, ostensibly in preparation for a career path I'd take for the rest of my life.

I continued working at the outdoor gear store in management for a while, briefly considering a career with the company, which was and wanted to continue grooming me for advancement to running my own store somewhere at a new location (as it was an expanding chain with over 150 stores at that time), but then jumped on an opportunity to work full time as an EMT back in my home town, allowing me to take a month long, incredible, life changing trip across the country visiting many state and national parks all over the western half of the country. My home town's volunteer EMS department were switching from a 2 ambulance all volunteer service to a partially paid service, hiring a single 2 person crew to staff one ambulance during the daytime from 6 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday when it was hardest to get volunteers to respond. I worked there as an EMT for a couple years while I saved money, planning to return to school to finish a degree in a totally different field from computer science, to earn a Bachelor's degree in nursing to become a Registered Nurse. I also moonlighted at the time in a local band on guitar and keyboard, playing gigs at local bars for some extra money. I also made a little more extra money as an amateur photographer, a passionate hobby of mine, occasionally selling a piece at a local art gallery. I loved to take nature landscape and wildlife photos.

About the time I was getting ready to return to college to solidify a career in my true passion of emergency medicine, my abdominal pain and GI issues got worse, and I was forced to seek medical attention for it but was left without any solutions or answers as to what was wrong with me. It was hinted at by several doctors that it might well be in my head, and so I struggled to continue to work for another year until I was finally forced to take a medical leave of absence. Seven months later, I had the exploratory abdominal surgery which finally gave me a diagnosis of Sclerosing Mesenteritis/Mesenteric Panniculitis, obtained by biopsies done on samples taken from ill-looking mesenteric tissues my surgeon noticed while looking around inside for the source of my problems. Despite finally getting a diagnosis, validating something WAS wrong with me, there were and still are only a few somewhat experimental treatments with off-label use of medications that have had limited success with some patients, and none proved to help me in any way. My leave of absence became permanent as I continued to get worse and was finally awarded disability, which leaves me where I am today, still trying to find a way to get back to living as normal a life as I can ever possibly live. That being where I am in life, next is what I want to say to anyone who may be reading this.

I wholeheartedly believe in the concept of Wikipedia, and frequently use it for information and learning. I take a particular fascination in articles in those areas in which I have experience, interest, and great passion in. I find that I typically make simple edits regarding spelling, grammar, and structure, but I occasionally change incorrect information and cite my sources, or contribute to an article lacking in some area which I think is appropriate and important factual information to add. I don't spend much time scanning articles looking for mistakes or lacking in information, I just contribute when I come across it, and as such, I am not in any way a significant contributor to Wikipedia. However, for the whole idea of Wikipedia to function as it should, it requires all of us to be constantly seeking to improve the accuracy and written structure and content of every article we come across.

Wikipedia is so important to the world, in my opinion, in that it is a single location to archive and gather all of our collective human knowledge in one place. It's amazing in it's scope and size and continues to grow and improve every second of every day, and is one of the greatest uses of the internet and the power of every individual to come together and help provide accurate, quality, unbiased factual knowledge with no single person or corporate entity overseeing and having the final say on the content accumulated here. It's a marvel of human ingenuity and an incredible accomplishment and I'd like to thank each and every single person who has contributed in any way no matter how small or large. I applaud all of our efforts to continue to increase and improve Wikipedia!! Thank you all!

Heimdallen (talk) 05:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)