Dog, Coffee Spill, Nerve Tests, and Mindfulness: David Watts on Managing Autoimmune Disorders

Oh, once again, good morning. Well, for me, it's good morning. Hello. And as I juggle a bit closer in my seat, welcome. Another edition of What's Involved.

Been an interesting while. I say that all the time, don't I? The reason it's a little maybe darker, sort of that side of the room is all of the fish tanks, shrimp tanks, none of the lights have come. So they're all still asleep. Rest of the house is still asleep. I thought maybe good time for me to have a chat and give you a bit of a catch up. So the first thing is, are we supposed to be in hospital yesterday for my next polygame treatment? That didn't happen due to a few bureaucratic errors. One, I think, on my part, to be honest, because when they say it's approved for six months, you kind of go, OK, well, you know, it's January, February, March, April, you know. Not five treatments, because you fit five treatments into six months. So the approval and authorization had expired, like three days before I tried to get a polygame, because we have to go through a bit of a process. We get it through the medical aids, medical postage service, and then they send it to a doctor. And then we go and collect it. And then we take it with us when I go into hospital. Anyway, none of that happened. So there was much frantic running around yesterday. And I had to have-- I can never remember what it's called.

I think it's EMG. Anyway, what they do is they test your nerve conduction. So they shock you. And it's little tingly shocks, too. Quite nice ones. We flop around. You've heard the story. But hey, my poor neurologist has taken a very bad fall of a teeny, tiny step. And with the latest scars and dirty, great gash on my leg, I felt like saying to her, welcome to our world. But I didn't, because despite that, she spent two weeks doing her hospital rounds, 24 patients, in a wheelchair, and she now got a moon boot on. And I believe tomorrow she's flying to Mauritius to do a presentation on this kind of stuff at a conference. So I suppose that's one way of spending tomorrow. Yeah, in South Africa. Tomorrow is election day, where we get to vote our new government in. So we'll see what changes, if anything. Just an update on me, though. I've decided-- mindset, I've been talking about mindset. And I've been trying to keep mine as positive as possible. So it was two weeks ago. We did a training, a sales training and coaching for a large beverage company, an alcoholic beverage company, at the Endoba Hotel in Jobeg. So I set them up, and they were doing this exercise that I needed them to do. And I decided to go down and go to the bathroom.

And in the bathroom, on the toilet, and reached over to get some toilet paper. And the next second, all down my back and my side, the most intense cramp-- I get cramps all the time now. I've told you, this has been happening since December. But one of those killer, murderer cramps. And I thought to myself, that's it, that's the legacy I want. Yep, that's what I'm going to be up to. I am going to either die from this pain, or I'm going to have to somehow call for help. Downstairs, in the bathroom, pants around my ankles. Anyway, I need this to say, after about five minutes, I managed to get that under control. And we sorted that out. But the cramps are still a problem. I'm getting all sorts of marks on my legs, and yada, yada, yada. And that's how I said, we did the tests yesterday. Now they re-motivate. Then I see when I can go back to hospital. But mindset's something that's easy to talk about. You can say, be positive. What is positive? How do you be positive or see optimistic and the power of the mind? What is that all about when you're in pain 24/7? For me, it's trying to focus on the good. And it's trying to focus on the stuff that we need. And it's also not getting myself worked up when things mess with my OCD.

Now when I can hear the rest of the house waking up and doggies in a security gate about to be open. Normally, I would freak out. Today, I'm not. Today, I'm just going to let myself be attacked by a staffie while I am talking to you. How's that for control and trying to keep your mind dropped? Can you hear them? They're approaching. She's here. She's now hooked onto my headphones. So there we go. Very happy to see me this morning. As she is every morning, her name is Shadow. Maybe one day I'll get her on TV in the background. That's our old girl. That's Daisy. I have a problem. I keep thinking she's 13. And I refuse to accept that she's ever got any older. Although my fiance said to me the other day that she was more likely to be in the region of 18, 19, maybe even 20. So there we go. Shadow, do you want to come and say hello to everybody? Do you think they can see you?

If you wonder what the crap is about, I'm going to have to pause this because we just threw coffee all over my laptop. OK, I'll be back with you shortly. So I'm not back with you at the moment, purely because we're still cleaning up coffee. No major damage, really, except the camera's now lying on the floor. I'll be back. Right, and we're all back. Interesting that I talk about mindset and discussing mindset and how important that is when you're in pain and all of those things. And then the dogs come down. And Shadow, who is the staffie, you saw I was saying hello to. And then she just decided to jump a bit higher because she wanted to be by dad. And I had a cup of coffee on the desk next to me. And it splashed all over my computer. In fact, I'm still not 100% happy and convinced that everything is working as it should. But I dried it up, and it says it's recording. So there we go. Something like that in the past would have sent me off the edge, like leaping off the edge. You would have seen just horrible, horrible stuff and horrible words. And dogs would have been chased outside. And anybody that was in a 50-foot radius would have got screamed at for not thinking about things like this.

What's helped me is this whole concept of meditation. I've been studying meditation. There goes the staffie, by the way. A lot for a number of years, and hypnosis, hypnotic speech patterns, and mindfulness, and those kind of things. And I practice that now at least two or three times a day. Because in the morning when I get up, I have some time. Ideally, I should be writing as well, keeping my little journal so I can remember what happens. But I don't. And then I just have some quiet time and just sort of try and close-- not close, but not let anything run through your mind. Because my mind normally runs around a drunken monkey on crack at the best of times. So it's just to calm that. And I do that with the breathing sort of thing that I do. And it's really easy in terms of I first needed to know how the whole mechanism of meditation and all this kind of thing worked. And eventually, I just said, OK, we'll start with something simple. So I do six. I breathe into the count of six. I hold for three. Breathe out for the count of six. That's it. That's what I do. And I try and focus just on that breathing rhythm and trying to be present. And just not let anything run through my mind. And even during the course of the day, I just try and be in the now.

Because with any disease, autoimmune like I have, your mind will run around that. And you will get stuck on this idea of disease. You'll get stuck on the idea of pain. And it just, for me at least, it just makes it worse. It makes me miserable and not a very good person to be around. So what I've decided to do is to make-- I mentioned some sort of guided visualization tracks of my own and some mindfulness meditation things. And that's good and well because of the stuff I've learned, I can do the scripts and everything. But that was not enough for me. So in typical overreaching David's style, I decided I wanted to create my own backing tracks because I want to include all the different healing frequencies and the binaural beats in the whole lot. So I got my hot little hands onto something called FL Studio. I used a little bit in the old days when it was called Fruity Loops, but now they're professional. So it's FL Studio, which if you come from my decade, also makes you want to laugh. But I've been tunneling that for-- or start learning that for the last two days. And that's been an exercise in patients. All I've managed to do is make a drone. No, not a flying one, just like a-- that's it.

So I think being early in the morning and having had this chat with you and then having had my computer incident, as I look down at it, there's some backlots that look really good and others that do not look backlit at all. Don't know if we should worry about that. I'm going to have to ask the significant other. Does insurance cover laptop destroyed by dog knocking coffee over it? It's a bit like the dog ate my homework, isn't it? This is my dumb ass idea to put the coffee on the side of the desk there. Anyway, so this has been a mildly, I think, inspirational one. But I still have to hear your stories, OK? I really do, I want to hear from you, so comment. You can send me a message on my website, which is www.whatsinvolved.com. You can leave me a voice note there. Comments below, that's even better. Like and comment and make the little bell ring and do all of those things. I must say I am exceptionally grateful. In a fairly short period of time, I've managed to get, I think, just over 600 subscribers. So at least I know 600 people might sort of see something pop up and go, oh, it's him again. But I'm very, very grateful for that. I still, the idea is let's form a community. Let's talk about this.

Yes, it is primarily aimed at people that have autoimmune diseases or conditions or whatever. There's still a lot of stuff I want to get into. And I need your help because I need to know what's important to you so I can try and figure some of that out so we can talk about it. I want to get some guests on the show, that kind of thing. Grow it, make it a community and can support each other. So if you're having a really bad day, then reach out and we can have a chat. I think I'm going to mitigate the circumstances of my day by drinking lots of tequila. I'm just saying, I don't advocate it. This is my personal choice. I'm kidding. Because we'd probably have one shot of tequila and just feel awful and want to go and lie down. But I might go and lie on the bed in the fetal position and listen to some appropriately depressing music. Maybe Alanis Morissette, jagged little pull. Anyway, from me to you, look after yourselves. Take care. Be kind to each other. If somebody is living with autoimmune disease, be kind. It's just a little extra kindness. That's what we've lost. We've lost our human touch, our human caring and our compassion. And I'm all in favor of bringing that back. So until next time, take care.

And thank you so much for joining me.