Doctor Karen and Me

Doctor Karen and Me
I went to see Doctor Karen for my once every three weeks visit with her. I asked her if I could take her photo so I could include in the blog. Dr. Karen declined but thanked me for asking for her permission.

I will ask Doug to see if he can find me an appropriate avatar. I am confident that he can.

The visit with Dr. Karen was fairly normal. All of my tests with her were fine. She was pleased with my diabetes and cholesterol test results from my regular doctor.

Peripheral Neuropathy
I have a form of peripheral neuropathy. This is the medical term for the continued tingling that I feel in my finger tips and feet. Dr. Karen said it was the result of the Oxaliplatin that was still in my system after five month snow since the last infusion.

It will go away eventually so that is good for me. I just wonder how much longer the residue will remain.

In the meantime, Dr. Karen suggested that I use some had lotion to help keep my fingers from drying out too much. I can do this.

Mental Ramblings
I was going to put a posting up on Wednesday after I finished with the tests. I was tired so I took a nap and didn’t make a posting.

Then on Thursday morning, I went blogger.com to type in a posting. Blogger was not available.

I had automatically downloaded a Microsoft security update. I click on the install, restart, and then shut-off button since I was on my way to school.

On Friday, when I returned home from my visit with Dr. Karen, I tried to log onto the web and pickup my email. All that I got was a 404 Error, page not found. I couldn’t pick up my email either.

Well, the Microsoft update was a security one. It was working very well. I couldn’t go online and therefore pick up any viruses or any other bad things.

I couldn’t pick up any good things either spent most of Friday and part of Saturday trying to figure out what went wrong. I had tried to go to a restore point in case the download was the cause. None of those attempts worked.

I finally tried a power cycling of the modem. This solved my problem. I would have tried this approach sooner but the modem activity lights were all blinking in a normal manner. The modem looked like it was operating fine from the outside. I had called my DSL service provider. They tested the phone line and found the line was working normally.

I learned that there are about 540,000 words in the English language. I never thought there would be so many words. I think I might be able to build a vocabulary of maybe a couple of thousand words.

Visitors
The blog achieved a milestone of sorts this week. We recorded our 25,000th visitor. When I started out blogging, I never thought that I would reach this many visitors.

We had about 425 visitors to the blog last week. I think with the removal of the Aiko Tanaka photos the traffic will start to decline beginning this week. Traffic was about evenly balanced between foreign and domestic visitors.

Lara
Lara is my oldest Internet acquaintance. We have been friends and chat partners for the better part of thirteen years. We met at the old Empire magazine film bulletin board. It was a forerunner of modern chatting and instant messaging.

Lara and I reconnected this week when our online paths crossed. Lara lives in South Africa so we have a nine hour time difference. Between our schedules, it is difficult to meet online now. She is the owner of two video rental stores in Johannesburg; actually, they are in a suburb if you want to be correct.

Lara worries about me too much. She thinks I am not taking the cancer seriously and that I am too light headed about it. I tried to explain to hear that I do take the cancer seriously but that I have a happy positive attitude to my treatment and I know I am going to win.

While I was talking with her, I made some tentative plans to visit her in March 2010, before the World Cup. It will be her start of Fall and my end of Winter. Lara wanted me to come earlier in 2009 during her Summer. That won’t work for me because I ought to be having my operation then to reconnect my colon. Also, I will have more time available to travel in early 2010 because of my teaching schedule.

I told Lara that she had to be the tour and entertainment director for when I am there. Lara said the ocean wouldn’t be very good for swimming then. We could do other things instead. I figure that with eighteen months or so to plan the arrangements Lara will do just fine.


That was most of my weekend. I hope your weekend was better than mine.


Be well and stay happy.