Conversations over Dinner

I’ve been busy. Guess that’s good — but not always. Some things suffer. Like this blog.

So, rather than leave a stagnant blog sitting on the net, Mandy and I decided to integrate our two blogs.

All my posts have been copied over to Mandy’s blog which has been renamed to simply, “Conversations Over Dinner”.

You can get to the new blog here.

Caregiver. Maybe you need one. Maybe you are one. This blog is written from the perspective of someone who found himself in the position of making a choice to become a caregiver. You’ll note that when talking about being a caregiver, I said that I chose to become one. That’s because Mandy, my wife, was not my wife when she was first diagnosed. We were living together, but not married. Now I won’t say that I didn’t give marrying Mandy a second’s thought because of the MS, because I did. I may have been foolish and in love, but I’m not stupid. Continue Reading…

Multiple sclerosis should come with a warning label. “Caution: MS may cause presumptuousness in strangers. Use patience and wear thick skin.” Continue Reading…

Two things happened upon hearing her neurologist at Johns Hopkins utter the words “This is MS” while examining the MRI films of her brain. First, there was a feeling of exoneration. We weren’t crazy. All the inexplicable on-and-off-again symptoms that were plaguing Mandy had their roots in an actual, true-to-life disease. Then the other shoe dropped and we froze. Though we were afraid to say it aloud, we each thought the same thing – ‘what now?’

Read Full Story at Multiple Sclerosis Central…

Detective Ferguson climbs tentatively to the top of the step-ladder. Nervous and perspiring, he is completely overwhelmed when he reaches the third step. His fear of heights manifests itself in the form of dizziness and he collapses in a near-faint. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic thriller, “Vertigo,” starring James Stewart, uses unique camera angles and imagery to capture the fear of heights as never before. There is one small problem with that. Vertigo is NOT fear of heights. Until recently, I, along with many other people, drew my knowledge of the subject from that movie. Just further proof that life does not imitate art.

Read Full Story at Multiple Sclerosis Central…

We had some friends over for dinner last night. Had a very nice time, too. They had recently taken a two-week sailing and island-hopping vacation down in the Caribbean and so we watched a DVD slideshow that they had made. Now normally if your dinner guests are bringing a slideshow of their vacation you try to think of places to run and hide. But in actuality, I had asked Mandy to call them to request that they bring the CD. They’re nice folks and they’re very animated when describing each place they visit. Lots of fun.

Something else they spoke of that put a bug up my rear to emulate was their newly purchased bicycles and what fun they’re having on weekends taking them here and there for long (20-30) mile bike rides. My ears perked up because I used to love riding my bike. Still got it too — it’s in the shed, rusting away. But never mind that, now I want a bike. But — there’s always a but, right — there’s Mandy’s MS. Truthfully, when MS flares up, Mandy has no balance. None. Asking her to ride a bike would be like asking her to commit suicide. But — another but — there may be a solution.

Tandem bikes. Yep, those bicycles built for two.

So today we went to the store to inquire about tandems. Par for the course around here, they didn’t have any in stock. But they were nice guys and they did take the time to pull down a catalog for us to look through. We’ve decided that next weekend we’re going to go find a place where we can rent a tandem to see if that type of bike will be a solution to the problem. I can do the grunt work and Mandy, so long as she’s able to at least balance herself, can just kind of go along for the ride. Her legs will have to move with the pedals, but I’ll be doing the work. I’ll let you know how we make out in a future post.

Other than that, not much has been happening. I just finished a big web design project for a Canadian company. The site went live this week and everyone is quite thrilled with the results. With a little luck, that job will begat future jobs. Meanwhile, I’m still involved with trying to teach myself some programming languages so that I can start designing using some of the newer technologies like Air, Flex, etc. It’s coming along pretty good.

So that’s it for now. Sorry for the long time between posts. I’ll try to do better.

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My purpose in taking you through the process of MS… from initial symptoms to eventual diagnosis is simple — I want you to buy into the life. I want you to consider, on a gut level, not my life, but yours… and how it can be turned completely inside out when either you or someone you love says simply, “Hmm, my arm feels funny.”

Read: Part III, The Rabbit Hole

Spring, with its spirit of renewal, uplifts the heart and mind. Not far behind spring come the hot, humid days of summer. We all know the rules of summer. Limit exposure to the sun, drink plenty of fluids, wear sunglasses and use a high SPF sunblock. Multiple sclerosis patients have one additional thing to keep in mind. The heat.

Read: Don’t Lose Your Cool in the Summer Heat!

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging lately. No excuses. Just haven’t had much to say. The few things that did warrant a blog were more suited for one of Mandy and my other blogs called BetweenTheBlogs.com.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working. Not making a nickel, mind you… but working nonetheless. I’ve got two projects that have taken up a lot of time. One is for a Canadian company whose website I’m redoing. The other is for a trade association. That one is just about done… and just about beginning. I was asked to create a site that will act as an umbrella to a whole host of sites that will be offered to their member companies. It works great and should be rolling out fairly soon. I’m excited to see what happens with it.

In between the other two projects, I’ve been trying to teach myself scripting languages. I don’t have much occasion to program, but certainly see the obvious benefits to knowing how to do so… at least for smaller projects. I learned ActionScript last year and now I’m working on JavaScript. They are both object oriented programming languages, so the similarities are great. I imagine that will be the case with many others.

Mandy and I have been carefully watching the goings-on in the presidential race. So far, I have to give it to Obama. I like the way he’s handled the flap with his minister and certain remarks made that created discomfort among, mostly, America’s non-African American population. Personally, I read the minister’s remarks and found very little with which to take issue. You may not like what he had to say, but that doesn’t dispel the underlying truth. Ah, but that’s another matter altogether, isn’t it?

I would like you to know that our dinner conversation is pretty much like it has been. We sit down every single night to a nice, home-cooked meal… Mandy’s cooking, not mine… and talk about the day. We’ll cover a host of topics, ranging from Mandy’s work, to mine, to politics, family, the cats… dead and alive… and pretty much whatever else we can think of in 30 minutes or so. I wouldn’t trade those 30 minutes for the world.

Oh… here’s a tip for anyone who might be reading this. About two weeks ago we started having problems with the water pressure in our home. It was not low pressure from the town’s side (had it checked,) but something from within the home. Well, I tried best I could to figure out what it was. Bought new low pressure shower heads, flushed out the water heater, pretty much did whatever I thought might help. Nothing did.

So I called a plumber.

At $180 per hour.

Should’ve been a plumber. Ah… but that’s another story too.

So in comes the plumber. And, as expected, he can’t find a thing wrong. He’s about to give up and leave when I remember that when I was changing one of those shower heads, I noticed that we had white chalky stuff building up within the shower head. I chalked it off (no pun intended) to calcium, or lime, or just lousy water. As a last ditch effort, I mentioned this to him (because I had just remembered it!) He took a look and thought it might be from the water heater. It turns out that towards the later part of the 90’s there was a big effort made by some company in Utah (or Ohio) to notify consumer of faulty dip rods in a bunch of water heaters…. all different brands. The plastic dip rods basically started to corrode and fall apart. When that happens, you see these little plastic white pieces (plastic!) getting stuck in your fixtures. They get stuck and… guess what… clog up the fixtures and cause… guess what… LOW water pressure.

$1,100 and 3 hours later we’ve got a new water heater and couldn’t be happier. This morning’s shower just about blasted me through the wall!

Something to remember if you ever run into the same problem.

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From Multiple Sclerosis Central, How MS Came Into Our Home, Part II:

Into the Maze

From In The Trenches Productions, Politics and Sexism: Hold the ‘B’ Word, Please

MS Awareness Month:

Every Day Role Models

The Monster Wakes: How MS Came Into Our Home

It was a nice weekend. Mandy and I went up north to visit family and to take my father out to dinner for his 80th birthday. We stayed with him at his home which is something we haven’t done for the past couple of years. It was nice; something we should do more often when he head up that way.

We took the opportunity of being up there to call my daughter Mary. She and her husband drove up from where they live to meet us and have dinner with my Dad, his wife, Mandy, and I. It was really nice too. We all had a great time.

So that’s that. Tomorrow, it’s back to work… so to speak.