Home

Welcome to my site!

My name is PDJ and I am a young surgeon trying to create a happier, more meaningful life with financial independence after hitting rock bottom.  Follow along as I share personal finance tips, health and fitness advice, and life lessons learned along the way.

My Story:  After thirteen years of personal sacrifice in a surgical training program, I graduated in 2015 — at the age of 30 — eager to start work, make money, get fit, find a partner, get married, travel, have a family, and generally live my best life.  None of this, however, actually happened — or at least, not for long.

In March 2016, I was the happiest I had ever been.  I was in the best shape of my life, training two hours a day in preparation for a fitness competition. My career was taking off and I finally had money to shop and buy nice clothes, freedom to travel and take vacation, time to date and to go out with friends, and energy to hang out with my dog.  However, I had been having headaches and left sided ear and facial pain for about a month or so; I assumed this was simply the result of too many long walks with my dog in icy cold winter winds.

One day, the pain in my left ear was so bad that I couldn’t take it any longer and went to see my primary care physician, wondering if I perhaps had an ear infection.  I was shocked when my blood pressure at the doctor’s office was an alarming 175/125 or almost 1.5x the normal range for healthy adults.  What was even scarier was that when I wore a monitor and went about my day to day activities, we learned that my blood pressure went up to 240/140 (it’s a miracle I didn’t have a stroke or heart attack).

From that point onwards, I cut my working hours to half time and put my personal life on hold while I underwent what would be 2.5 years of invasive tests and investigations, waiting for the correct diagnosis, while my health was ever-deteriorating.  Despite healthy living, new problems kept cropping up and it felt like I was being diagnosed with a new disease every three months.

I was initially told that I had an adrenal tumour and would require surgery.  I underwent two invasive adrenal sampling procedures only to learn that there was no tumour.  I was then diagnosed with hyperactive adrenal glands and put on high dose medications (mineralocorticoid antagonists) which made me feel absolutely awful.  Despite the medications and my careful adherence to healthy diet and exercise recommendations, I kept deteriorating: I developed diabetes, dyslipidemia, metabolic syndrome, osteopenia, an osteochondral cyst in my ankle requiring surgery, joint effusions, dental problems, and skin inflammation.

I couldn’t understand what was happening and sought second, third, and fourth opinions.  Finally, after seeing doctors in Japan and the U.S., I learned that I had been terribly misdiagnosed and mismanaged.  There was no tumour, there were no overactive adrenal glands.  I had been given the wrong medication for over two years and it was making me even sicker.  In September 2018,  I finally got my diagnosis: I learned that I had chronic kidney disease.

My right kidney was severely scarred and damaged from an infection when I was 26 (long story — you can read about it here).  Not only did I have reduced kidney function, my poor right kidney — in it’s misguided attempts to heal – was actually misfiring and causing high blood pressure, inflammation, and metabolic derangements throughout my body.  I was started on the appropriate treatment regimen and, slowly, my body began to respond.

When I learned that I had chronic kidney disease, I had mixed emotions.  I was happy to finally know what was wrong so that I could start trying to fix it but I was simultaneously (obviously) very unhappy to have kidney disease.  I vacillated between acceptance, anger at having lost the last 2.5 years, and resentment at the sheer amount of bad luck I had had to get to this point.  While I was spending my time and money in hospital gowns and on doctor’s appointments, my friends were getting on with their lives: advancing in their careers, picking up ancillary degrees, starting fintech companies, getting engaged, planning weddings, raising children, buying houses, moving to Singapore or London, snapping up vacation homes in the South of France, and even retiring early!

From my years of medical and surgical training, I knew that I still had it a lot better than many others and had no grounds to complain.  I had seen dozens of children — from neonates to toddlers to school age children – struggling with far worse and bearing it with grace despite the interminable needles, lines, oxygen tubes, and surgeries.  These children were happy and positive and joyous despite a difficult lot in life.

I decided to snap out of it and to try to change my luck.  With the diagnosis of kidney disease, I knew that my life would look very different than what I had imagined.  Health was no longer something I could take for granted nor was a long working career with a lucrative salary.  Family life presented new and unique challenges.  This blog is about my attempts to optimize my financial situation to protect against a potential shortened career, to optimize my health to preserve as much kidney function as possible for as long as possible, and the pursuit of happiness today in the face of a potentially shortened life span.  Buddhist philosophy has long been an integral part of my life, and faced with new challenges, I found myself once again turning to Buddhism in my quest for peace, happiness, and enlightenment — which is why the blog is called The Online Buddha.  To quote Buddha: No one saves us but ourselves.

As such, the blog posts are a smattering of ideas about spirituality, personal finance, health and wellness, interpersonal relationships, travel, organization, and style — observations about life that I hope will be as helpful to you as they were to me.