Illustrations & Figures | 10,000 Days of Sickness

Illustrations from 10,000 Days of Sickness: A Job Story for Today

This page contains selected colored illustrations from the book, presented as supplementary material.

The sequence of illustrations also gives a road map of my journey through the decades-long Abyss of disease, debilitation, and deconstruction into the most unlikely of victories through Christ.

**Figure 1:** A photograph of my back at age 32. (2007)

70% of my body was a landscape of burn-like sores—near erythrodermic atopic dermatitis. A combination of broken skin, hives and viral and bacterial infection. The physical suffering was mercurial: sometimes a relentless itch, other times the searing bites of a hundred ants, often the blistering, weeping of first- to second-degree burns. Showers became torturous rituals where water felt like acid on my open wounds. Without maximum-dose immunosuppressants—which carried their own life-shortening risks, doctors warned me that I’d face hospitalization within weeks.

This snapshot was a picture of my typical state, not my worst. I spent more than a decade at this level of severity, crippling the ability to focus on any endeavors for more than 20 minutes or go out for more than 2 hours (after which the inflammation will likely increase). At this level, I could do only 30% of what a normal person could do physically.

Figure 1a: A photograph of my thigh at age 32.

**Figure 2:**
Mid-2000. Age 25. A slowly decreasing monthly sinusoidal graph of my quality of life (10 is no inflammation, 0 is full-blown inflammation) vs Time (months). The peaks are caused by temporary relief from immunosuppression; the troughs occur when the immunosuppression wears off. Regardless of the swings, the long-term baseline trend is down, and life was torturous with reasons for hope slowly evaporating. (Ch 5)

**Figure 3:** My liberal religious studies professor’s comments on my final paper, “History and Her Jesus,” Cornell University (1998).
Written as a pushback against the liberal scholars’ skeptical approach to the Bible during a season of incurable illness, family death, and disappointment with the church—pressures that were pulling me toward atheism and nihilism. Despite being a STEM student with no seminary background and little time beyond my chemical engineering workload, this proved my most difficult project at Cornell. I received an A; she later remarked it might have been the only A+ had the grammar been flawless and free of typos. I considered this the most important piece of work I did in my time at Cornell (Ch. 11).

**Figure 4.**
**January 2012 (Age 37).** This is a graph of my quality of life, which was inversely related to my levels of inflammation and infection. After seminary, the long-term decline of my eczema unexpectedly flattened—the first quiet “miracle” of sorts, where the downward momentum was arrested. Yet I remained at a painful bottom: inflammation fluctuated within a narrow, sinusoidal range rather than improving. Whatever I attempted, every task required roughly 70% more effort than for a healthy person and I could only be 30% as productive as a healthy person. (Y-axis: State of inflammation, 0 = full inflammation, 10 = normal. X-axis: months.) (Ch. 24)

**Figure 5.**
After getting my first chance to start again as a sell-side financial analyst at the late age of 40 (2015), this was my first stock report at a major brokerage, in which I raised the target price of this particular stock to 43 cents per share. The market price moved from roughly 30 cents to the target almost exactly, then consolidated—an outcome rare for rookie analysts, whose forecasts typically miss by wide margins. See Lee, Y.-I., Hsieh, W.-L., & Miao, D. W.-C. (2024), International Review of Economics & Finance. (Ch. 24, p. 223)

**Figure 6.**
My second sell-side report, in which I raised the target price further—from 40 cents to 59.5 cents per share. Once again, the stock reached the target almost exactly before retreating. After a subsequent collapse into the 30-cent range, I issued a new target of 50 cents, which the price again met with striking precision—**for the third consecutive time.** The odds of this happening are almost zero by natural means alone.This was a sign that God was not finished with me after decades of suffering, revealing His presence through improbable precision. (Ch. 24, p. 223)

**Figure 7.**
Results from my quantitative strategy model for silver, developed in **2016 (age 41).** The indicator identified major market bottoms without relying on technical analysis or conventional methods available at the time. Built independently—without the support of quant funds or expert guidance—it emerged from six months of weekend work during one of the most tumultuous periods of my life, marked by health struggles, professional strain, and divorce. Its superior precision compared to what was publically available reopened career doors after many had closed—the first of many steps through which God began redeeming the broken parts of my life. This tangible gift of wisdom from God came after He revealed himself through allowing me to call exact price targets a few months before. When God gives signs, tangible redemption tend to follow, but it may take weeks, months or years. (Ch. 28)

**Figure 8.**
**Six months in 2015 (age 40),** when—after two decades living in Singapore—my eczema began a sustained improvement for the first time, without significant changes in medication, climate, or diet. (Y-axis: State of inflammation, 0 = full inflammation, 10 = normal. X-axis: months.)
After nearly twenty years of downward and then sideways health due to incurable eczema, my condition finally began a slow upward turn—a miracle to me. **Yet it is striking that God rebuilt other parts of my life first, and my health only later, even though in my flesh I longed for healing above all else.** His ways are higher than ours. By granting accomplishment while I was still crippled, He revealed deeper truths about Himself by subverting my expectations. (Ch. 28)

Figure 9.
Mid-2015 (age 40). An email from the founder of a prominent financial market-intelligence firm exploring the licensing of my quantitative ReVAL silver model—an external validation of its rarity and value. With no formal training in quantitative finance, having begun by studying books alone in my bedroom, struggling even to secure internships, and entering professional finance late as a sell-side analyst without a quant role, this outcome defied every expectation. Once again, God showed me that He can break the odds. He only asked that we seek and explore Christ. (Ch. 29)