3 ms·
This feels right. Even when he could express himself in a way I could understand, he never expressed himself as frustrated or suffering. The disease at some lev
by eastdakota 7y ago
This feels right. Even when he could express himself in a way I could understand, he never expressed himself as frustrated or suffering. The disease at some level seems to rob its victims from the ability to suffer. It’s hard to comprehend.
- rubicon33 7y agoI'm curious. Before his disease got bad, when he was still working but maybe starting to show some of the first signs... Did he ever express any concern? Or was it entirely other people who noticed his decline, but he was oblivious?
- eastdakota 7y agoHe did not ever express concern. The weird thing about the disease is it’s not like Alzheimer’s where you realize you’re forgetting things. Instead it seems you lose the ability to realize. I think by the time he’d be concerned he had lost the ability to be concerned, if that makes any sense. Lots of people around him did. However, I don’t think any of us thought it was a disease. We just thought he was becoming a jerk or “couldn’t scale” as Cloudflare became a bigger organization. I was angry at him when he left. Felt like he’d abandoned this project we’d started together. I feel incredibly sad and guilty I didn’t even question whether he could be sick until when I heard his diagnosis about 6 months after he’d left the company.
- jgrahamc 7y agoI was walking down a street in London when you called me to tell me about the diagnosis. I stopped on a street corner (corner of Adeline Place and Bedford Avenue) and talked to you. Everything I'd seen Lee do and especially some of the last meetings I had with him at work that were so difficult and I kept wondering why he seemed like such a jerk, all that suddenly made horrifying sense. I felt so awful for my own reaction to him. And guilty.