PicoBlog

My name is Andrew Michael Zywiec, and this is my story. For better or for worse, I have lived a life that may be worth sharing, and may be worth your attention. Amongst these pages, you will find humanity, raw and unadulterated. I speak in truths rarely exemplified by the inhabitants of a world that appears to be lost. I remain unsure whether it is lost here or there, however, I remain hopeful that what is lost can be found, and that something must indeed be lost before it can become found.

Allow me to briefly introduce myself in temporal fashion; I came from a broken home, but I remain unbroken. I was fed pills for depression and anxiety since I was a child, but it was the Lord that healed my soul and my mind. I am an Army Infantry veteran, but my boots never saw the desert. I am a convict, but my year in prison was not for any violent or drug related charges, but rather a custody charge. I was once an alcoholic, but I was pulled from the depths of Hell and overcame my fears and addictions. Before my years in college, I would work in roofing, at grocery stores, fast food restaurants, bars, cleaning companies, sales firms, and even door to door jobs. One day, I had had enough, I knew that I was wasting my life, so I quit my job, and decided to go back to school. After one perfect academic year at the local community college, I knew I found a path. I was always excellent in school, skipping coursework in primary school, then graduating high school early, and scoring extremely high on the ADSVAB, with a 128 on my general/technical. However, this was different. I found something I was extremely good at: mathematics and chemistry.

I attended and graduated from The Ohio State University, with honors, where I conducted research in thermodynamics, lipidomics, protein biochemistry, cancer, and physics, resulting in several publications and awards. My degree was conferred in biology and chemistry, magna cum laude, and I was part of Sigma Alpha Lambda National Leadership and Honors Organization and Golden Key International Honour Society. I participated in crew club, worked part time at a coffee roasting station, conducted full time research, wrote a novel, and maintained activity in Relay for Life and several other charities, including cold calling for MD Anderson and Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and several others. Upon winning the prestigious Denman Research Forum for my research in protein biochemistry, I was inducted into the elite and invite only research society Sigma Xi, joining the ranks of hundreds of Nobel laureates and scientific giants such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Linus Pauling, Francis Crick, and James Watson. Boasting a perfect, 4.0 GPA for nearly 4 years, I was determined to leave my mark on the world. I had started to study Kurzweil and quantum biophysics, I was rewriting Einstein, Hawking, and Greene, and it appeared that the answer I sought would be written in mathematics.  In my last year I searched my soul for purpose, and I decided to try my hand at medicine: a place where my love of science, and my desire to help mankind, could intersect, or so I thought.

At 27 years old, I wrecked a motorcycle on the highway and nearly died. I remember everything, and I’ll discuss my experience in later pages. Suffice it to say, as I lay dying for nearly two hours on the side of the road, unable to move, perhaps it was then I first time I truly entertained the idea that I was called by God for a purpose unknown. In remarkable fashion, with severe head trauma, broken bones, and road rash so intense that it physically ripped my tattoos out, I lived. No helmet, no leather. The impact was of enough force that it literally blew my shoes off. It merits restating: I remember EVERYTHING. Time, it appears, is more relative than Einstein had laid out, and it appears intimately linked to state of consciousness. 27 days later, with the aid of a cane (specifically, the flames cane from the popular television series House, MD), carefully bandaged wounds, and a great deal of pain killers, I sat for the MCAT. I would score a 31, placing me in the top 15 percent of test takers, who, generally speaking, are already in the top 10 percent of academia. This appeared subpar for me, with a nearly perfect academic record. However, given the circumstances, I grew to find my performance acceptable. The top 15 percent of the top 10 percent, not bad for a guy who just rolled out of a hospital with neurotrauma. I left Ohio with more awards and recognition than I could hang on my wall, and I didn’t hang them. I suppose those little pieces of paper meant more to others than to me.  Into a box they went, along with my Bible.

I would go on to accept scholarship to a dual degree MD/MSc program with St. George’s University, during which time I would be enrolled in both medical school and graduate school, and be held to a fairly rigorous schedule. I never took a summer off in undergrad, so why should this be any different? I have never enjoyed an idle mind or idle hands. I would train part of the time in St. George, Grenada, and part of the time at The University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, conducting neuroalgorithmic assessment of neuroimaging in Alzheimer disease, which is a fancy way of saying I was mapping brains using diffusion tensor imaging, fractional anisotropy, and MRI data. I would become a principal investigator for The Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and go on to publish work that elucidated information critical to the ADNI database. I would go on to win many more awards. It appeared that I continued to garner attention, and I quote:

“I wish to nominate Mr. Andrew Zywiec for the captioned  awards, for which he appears to be eligible. Mr. Zywiec is an MD/MSc dual degree student (Neuroscience Track). Despite a background in biochemistry, Mr. Zywiec accepted my proposal that he pursue computational research into Alzheimer’s disease. He was duly trained at the University of Southern California. His efforts rapidly culminated in the following publications (noting fourth authorship on Publication 2):

1.                   Zywiec, A, Kirkby, RD. Diagnostic consistency of cases from ADNI cohort metadata: Methodological considerations. 2018 Sep; 69: 295-297.

2.                   Jacokes Z, Bhattarai A, Torgerson C, Zywiec A, Abe S, Irimia A, Law M, Hazany S, Van Horn JD. The Neuroimaging Challenges in Hemispherectomy Patients. In: Ashley MJ, Hovda DA. Traumatic Brain Injury: Rehabilitation, Treatment, and Case Management. 4th ed. New York, NY: CRC Press; 2017.

Chiefly through his own initiative, his research most notably demonstrated a ubiquitous methodological confound affecting interpretation of data from a vast neuroimaging database (see Publication 1 above). His work has provoked re-examination of existing findings and will likely impact future methodologies and perhaps even the management of the database itself. It is also noteworthy that his findings had grave potential to ruffle professional feathers. His commitment to the pursuit and reporting of scientific truths ensured that he would choose openness over professional expediency. Yet, in so doing, his reporting of the confound was punctuated with grace and tact.

In short, Mr. Zywiec has not simply added to our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease. Rather, he has changed our approach to the study of a global scourge. I believe that he deserves our recognition, and I am honored to recommend him for consideration.”

My research in cancer had been embargoed, and so I was refreshed to know that I stood among colleagues that would defend truth. By this point in time, I was beginning to feel a bit like one of my heroes: Nikola Tesla. The amount of push back to truth was nearly unbearable. However, I still had work to do, and I had not yet finished my work in relativistic theory and quantum mechanics, and I was getting close to marrying the concepts in a novel way. Perhaps that would afford me that which I was seeking, though I am still a bit unsure of what that was.

Somewhere along the way I would find myself in Prague, Czech Republic, where I studied with their medical doctors in pediatrics, neurology, and surgery. I would climb Mt. Brunni in the Alps and paraglide from the peaks to Engleberg below. I would hike volcanoes off the coast of South America and go bridge diving in canals in Zurich. I would get stranded at sea only to meet the Coast Guard in Sint Maarten and I would find myself at podiums teaching medical students how to accomplish their goals. I would publish books and contribute to medical texts, learn and forget multiple languages and musical instruments. I would have never anticipated the life I would lead. I digress, I graduated in 2019, with honors. I applied to surgical residency, but interestingly, despite being overqualified and deft with a scalpel, was not offered placement. I decided take a year off to rest my tired bones in Jacksonville, teaching, and spending some time near the ocean. I have always been drawn to the sea, perhaps because I was born of water. I went on to gain a medical residency position in Brooklyn, New York, and planned to move there in 2020. Then, something very interesting occurred: COVID 19. Then something even more interesting occurred, transhumanism. My previous studies in biophysics began to creep into the spotlight. I recalled studying renowned MIT physicist Ray Kurzweil, in 2011. One of my chemistry professors was a pioneer of graphene, so I took keen interest in the nanoscience. Kurzweil had begun to achieve the necessary technology to create synthetic red blood cell bots capable of releasing anti-cancer agents at the will of a keystroke, he is now closer than ever.  The World Economic Forum began openly discussing how to achieve immortality, and mass psychosis started to settle into medicine as doctors started to believe that biology could be altered in unnatural ways, such that men could become women, and women could become men, not only in ideology, but in biology. Neither of these is possible, of course, but both serve as stark representations of deeper psychological issues. I would find myself in the middle of Supreme Court lawsuits for my stance against the mandates, against gender affirming care in minors, and eventually blacklisted in the medical community and banished on nearly every platform that exists. Hundreds of thousands would amplify my content, sending me messages and prayers. Interestingly, the threats and opposition were louder, and more fiercely dealt, to the point of activists showing up on my doorstep. Godlessness, something I suppose I never believed in wholly, had arrived at my stoop.

Recall that this is not fiction: you are Alice, and this is not Kansas. For clarity, you are about to climb out of the rabbit hole, Toto isn’t real, and the most important thing you should read in preparation for this, with Biblical exception, is Allegory in a Cave by Plato. Now, what has been done in the dark shall be brought to the light. Perhaps you don’t believe in God and Heaven. Maybe the Word is nothing more to you than a book, written by fictional characters. I am here to tell you, this is not the truth. I do not ask you to follow me. I have nothing to sell you. I have achieved greatness, and greatness is nothing. I was busy healing the body, while I neglected my soul. I stand before you, empty of lies, and full of honesty. I serve a Kingdom that is not of this Earth. One cannot possibly understand life until one is willing to lay down that life for something greater. This is a Hill, and if I must die on this Hill, it will not be in vain. Do not postpone spiritual development, for you know not the day nor the hour…and Jesus will come like a thief in the night. God bless.

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