health

Headed out. Only a little phlegm, and only a bit of vomiting this morning. Luckily I’ve scarcely eaten. My head is clear, my fever is gone, and I’m not coughing at all. My throat is a bit sore.

There was a bomb threat yesterday at work apparently, but I’d really like to get out of the house—so I’ll take my chances with the outside world.

No swimming today though. We’re coming up on a week without swimming.

We have a tiny grapefruit tree in our yard. I’m told the fruit is small and tart.

We have possums in the yard. Leah saw a cat-sized one maybe 2 weeks ago. Yesterday I saw a tinier, cuter one.

We go through so many headphones and earbuds. I think the kids really do eat them. If you have a source for earbuds by the dozen please leave a note in the comments.

Alex liked the Elmo I got her on FreeCycle. Febreeze apparently did the trick.

The next IRS payment is in the chamber, ready to fire on the 15th.

I’ve not delved into Xubuntu as much as I intended to this weekend. Mostly I laid in bed and tried to get well. I also missed Ty’s basketball game this weekend. Tony worked hard on a project yesterday and only occasionally checked in on Star Wars Galaxies to see if his trade had gone through. The TV was off and he took no calls. That counts for some pretty good discipline these days. Lastly on the kid front, I really am finding myself a patriarch. The kids listen to me and ideally I’m expanding their mind to the possibilities and perils of life. Yesterday we talked about resumes and interviews at the dinner table. Big topics like: “what do you include on a resume?” and “can you just leave off jobs that were bad?” and “can you include anything on your resume?” Leah and I did our best and pretty much stuck to what the best advice would be, and I tried to include plenty of my own experiences and difficulties. I find the kids respond best when I simply tell them my story and not try to abstract everything into a general rule that they must follow. It feels good and natural and still bizarre to be a patriarch.

Lastly, I am still sick. Not as much as I was, but not well. Still coughing up phlegm. Still sneezing. My nose is nearly raw. I want a fast-forward button for illness. People would buy it.

Wellness, ahoy? Oi.

This morning, after a fitful 14 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling better. This crud I got—microorganisms all taking over my whole nasopharyngeal area and causing systemic disruption that among other things caused me to miss swimming 3 days in a row. Actually, I shouldn’t go today either, so that’s like 4 days. Teeny tiny jerks! Stop messing with my life!

Leah has been a champ. I even randomly, on Friday went off on her about various stupid stuff around the house that normally we’d have a civilized conversation that would begin “hey, some things around the house are bothering me and I think we need a plan to get them done”—instead I suddenly started doing those random things and muttering that Leah never does anything. This was met with supreme restraint on the part of my partner, who then excused herself from the situation. Meanwhile, after doing 1 and a half of the things that suddenly bothered me, I collapsed in a heap unable to do anything more. I took a long bath and slept fitfully for hours. I woke up apologizing.

It’s a particularly interesting event to me because I see very well the guy who Jenny divorced, and who Leah got fed up with those many years ago. This is the pure “my way or the highway!” id version of Joe that apparently lies dormant. I like to think of it something like Windows crashing and you’re left with DOS. It definitely indicates that the transformation that’s occurred in me in the past two years is not entirely complete. It also indicates, contrary to what some of my co-workers think, that I do have strong opinions occasionally. No longer wishy-washy, I can be a jerk with the best of them.

Of course, the strong-willed version of DOS Joe also has bad judgment, no people skills, and zero patience. If I could harness the jerk part maybe I could be one of those genius-maniac type people who gets shit done. Sadly, I’d be a lonely crank. He’s not the person you want on your team. He might make a good Unabomber though.

This blog post is the second energy intensive thing I’ve done today. The first was cleaning out my nasopharynx in the shower—basically irrigation with water and expulsion—coughing and noseblowing— ith great force and energy. This process grosses out Leah. However, with the new configuration of the new house Leah need not hear it. That’s a nice win for the new place.

Hey kids, onward!

Yesterday I went swimming early, which was great. I was tired after about 15 minutes, but pressed on to do a full 30 minutes. I actually noticed myself getting tired the night before at about 20 minutes, but went 45.

One of the things about exercising (ugh! I despise that word!) is that I’m more aware of signals my body is telling me. I have a baseline for what I’m able to do in the water—how should it feel if I hold my breath all the way across the pool? How should it feel if I go down 12 feet? how should I feel after 10 minutes of laps? The answer is “better than I feel right now”—and I am sick. It started with some extra weakness during swimming. Yesterday it progressed with backache and a nonproductive cough. Now I have the backache + headache + slight fever. I took it easy yesterday night.

I’m a bit resentful that my better judgment is telling me to avoid swimming right now.

In other news, I bought a new hard drive for the Windows box yesterday at Fry’s. Installed without a hitch. I tried out Ubuntu yesterday but the UI really didn’t run very well given the limitations of the video card. I ditched that and went with Xubuntu. So yesterday I spent a little time customizing that. I have a lot of stuff to migrate, and much to learn. I’ve not used any Linux variant as a desktop computer, but Windows 2003 Server is just not cutting it anymore for this machine. Then I think, maybe I just need a new video card, but a nice one is almost as much as a whole new machine, and heck, free software is free, and it’s a great environment to learn new things. That’s very important because as May comes in, this is the last month of my contract with Vivendi, and I want to brush up on my technological skills.

What I’d really like to do is have a new Mac, but financially that’s not a smart plan—not till we get the IRS situation squared away. I tell you kids, if you’re going to contract all year, be putting away those taxes as you go. Yes, it’s nice to have big dollars and put away debt. But the taxman, he will have his due, if not now, then later. Big lesson learned there for Leah and me.

Leah is doing great, the book she’s in is out, and some DW dough has showed up too. Also, any minute now we have our deposit money coming back from the previous place; Leah did a great job taking care of all the loose threads that needed cutting there—from cleaners, the floors, to dealing with the management company. The day before yesterday on the Dave Ramsey podcast Dave said to a person considering moving—I’m paraphrasing—“moving has big costs: financial, emotional, relational.” I agree with that wholeheartedly. April was really packed, and we got through it. Leah has done a great job. She may not think so, but she’s totally taking care of business.

That’s all for now.

So yesterday I worked a short day, then Leah and I did errands, including more last-phase moving from the old house. At the end of the day, Leah went to a blogger meetup thing in Calabasas, and while she was there I went to the great public pool near there.

I swam for longer than usual. Usually when I hit the pool it’s early in the morning and I’ll need to get back so I can start telecommuting. Or it’s at lunchtime and I need to get back to working. Or I’m on my way home after a long day and I’ve decided it’s going to be a solid 30, 35 or 40 minutes then I have to leave because the pool will be closing anyway.

But the hour and change was perfect. I did the same swimming regimen as usual.

Now, regimen is not accurate, really. I do laps with a mix of front crawls, breaststroke, backstroke, with more emphasis on my arms (my strength) and then my legs (my weakness), and occasionally I swim underwater exclusively, as though I were snorkeling, and probably once a session I try the butterfly, but I’m not very good at it. This is not a structured workout, really. It’s more like, “do whatever I want in the water. Perhaps I’m imagining what kind of swimming I would be doing if I had to swim to shore after a shipwreck: perhaps evade sharks (faster swimming); forage for food (underwater); hail a passing rescue helicopter (backstroke). No, I did not think about this, really; I’m retroactively trying to explain my creativity at swimming laps. Like exercise machines, I can’t look at lap swimming as drudgery. I have to turn the repetitions into unique experiences or I get caught up in how similar the experience is to a hamster on a wheel.

So one of the things I’ve been curious about is other pools, what other pool sizes are out there. I heard that the Ventura pool is quite large. The day before yesterday I was looking at website for it and I noted something interesting. It says in their rules: No excessive breath holding or hypoxic training.

Really?

So I wondered if I have maybe been doing this. If inadvertently. I hold my breath during some laps. It’s excellent practice for being out in the big waves. Sometimes a big wave will carry you down and hold you there for a little while, and like military training, I want to be prepared mentally and physically for this dangerous experience. Last year I noted that I like the implications of forceful, big waves:

It takes a great amount of force to move a man who weighs 24 stone. And I love that the waves can do that. Frankly, I enjoy it when the water is so strong I’m forced under for a time. I like being batted around. That means there’s real force happening. More force makes better rides. If I stop to think about the thousands of pounds of water that allow me to move at great speed I might get intimidated. Actually, I do think about it, and there’s a healthy respect that one might call fear. When I do too much I take a break.

So am I engaging in “hypoxic training” or “excessive breath holding?” I think I am, to some extent, but I’m dubious that it’s making me ready to, say, go to Everest. This critical article Taking the Hype Out of Hypoxic has some criticisms and a bit of praise for what it can and can’t do for you. I do it to challenge myself more than anything. And if my heart starts to feel like it’ll explode or I get tingling in my fingers, or I feel like I might pass out, I stop and breathe. This abstract from the Journal of Applied Physiology: “Effect of high-intensity hypoxic training on sea-level swimming performances:” indicates that truly low oxygen/hypoxic training (less than the normal percentage of oxygen in the air)—they used 15.3% O2 instead of 20.9%—well, it had no effect other than what the normal effects of 5 weeks of training would be.

Of course, I’m sure that the Ventura pool would turn away anyone who came in with exotic breathing apparati to swim, so they’re right out.

I’m going to go with common sense here and think that they simply don’t want people to hold their breath too much. But I am interested to hear what prompted the rule.

Over the past weeks I have seen my own ability to get across a pool without taking a breath improve, for a variety of reasons. I’m faster, my breath control is better, and my endurance is better. I’d be interested to see physiologically what’s happening with me as I engage in more swimming. It’s possible I’ve lost weight, but given that the scale is somewhere in a box I don’t really know. I’ve not kept track of my weight regardless. And in my mind, it’s not the point—I like to swim and I like the psychological, physical, and spiritual effects that come with that.

Or maybe I just dig chlorine.

This post by Dave Segovia, who I’ve mentioned before, VINCENT, THOMAS, and ME has been knocking about in my brain for a few weeks. Much as we worry about the toxins and pollutants and sure as they do us damage, science and medicine end up tasked with correcting the wrongs, they sort of do the job. It’s especially moving, somehow, because Dave himself has had a lot of medical procedures.

A quote: “...when living in Modern America caught up with me, after fifty years accumulation of all of the above, and more, and worse, Science and Medicine bailed me out. Psychotropics, organ transplants, blood thinners, beta-blockers, new surgical breakthroughs, and a zillion more advances have and will be there when our naivete’ and ignorance catch up with us. Just do our best and have quiet faith in MAN.”

My nose is a-snifflin’. My head is a-stuffy.

This is not optimal.

I am wishin’ and hopin’ for health, and also mean to get into some fluids and whatnot. Also rest where possible.

But I feel so energetic!

A story about her in the Roanoke Times and World News... Go Mom!

A look at calendar changes her outlook

“God is where the poor are”: Five years ago, Phyllis Crawford, 61, took a class that forced her to examine her life by looking at her calendar. She was told that “what you saw there would show where your love is.”

When she looked at her calendar, there were five tennis games and four afternoons of bridge on the schedule.

“Sometimes he [God] does call you to do fun things,” she said,

“But I thought I’d best do some volunteering.”

Crawford was no stranger to volunteer work. In the past, she had worked with her church, the Christian Women’s Club and the Child Health Investment Partnership.

“But it got so hectic,” she said. They were all worthy causes, but this time around, she needed something that spoke to her soul.

“When you serve the poor, you are serving God,” she said. “God is where the poor are.”

WORKING AT RAM: Crawford heard about Roanoke Area Ministries’ day shelter through her church, Our Lady of Nazareth.

Many of the people who pass through the shelter don’t have identification. Since homeland security measures have been implemented, the amount of documentation needed for an ID card is often all but impossible for RAM’s poor and homeless clientele to get. It can take two to four months to process an ID card.

“It’s time consuming” said Jo-Anne Woody, RAM’s administrative assistant. “But you can’t get a full- or part-time job with out it.”

Money from The Roanoke Times’ Good Neighbors Fund goes toward paying fees associated with getting the ID cards.

On her first day at the shelter, Crawford said she really wanted to cook, but RAM always has a need for people to check guests in at the front desk, and that’s where she found herself.

“The front desk was nice. I like working with people,” she said.

Crawford still tears up when she thinks about the stories she hears from the people who walk through RAM’s front doors.

IN THE KITCHEN: One day, when the cook didn’t show up, Crawford volunteered to go into the kitchen and whip up a chicken dinner for 150 people.

“Otherwise, it would have been peanut butter and jelly,” she said.

She’s been there since, volunteering by herself on Tuesdays, and with her church on Sundays.

COMMON GROUND: Crawford and her husband, Jim, an anesthesiologist, live in an upscale Roanoke County home with breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains.

But Phyllis Crawford is no stranger to the poverty she sees at RAM. As one of seven children of a truck driver in San Diego, “sometimes we didn’t have enough to eat.” She often went to school without breakfast. “But I didn’t know we were poor,” she said.

Her father “always had a second job,” and even though the family had very little, her mother didn’t hesitate to help others.

“Why do the poor always make sure that if someone needs something, they get it?” she said.

Jim Crawford became a physician the hard way—starting as a medic during the Vietnam War and becoming a registered nurse and a physician assistant along the way. While he was in medical school, the tiny trailer they lived in seemed luxurious, Phyllis Crawford said.

When Jim Crawford was offered a job in Roanoke, he took it.

“We loved it here,” Crawford said. “It was the homeyness of the people.”

A SUDDEN ILLNESS: On June 6, Crawford felt ill and was taken to the emergency room. There they discovered she had suffered a stroke, which paralyzed her left side. She amazed her doctors by recovering almost completely in four weeks.

She credits her recovery to the hundreds of people who heard about her condition and prayed for her. In her living room is a basket filled with the 200 cards and letters that she’s received so far.

“I even have the people at McDonald’s praying for me,” she said.

But when her doctors told her what had caused the stroke, the news was grim. They found tumors in her brain, her lungs and her kidneys. In June, she went through surgery to remove the bulk of the brain tumor, then followed up with a round of chemotherapy.

Despite her troubles, Crawford is not one to sit around and feel sorry for herself.

“I’m a go-getter,” she said. Within days of the operation, she went to a wedding, where she slow-danced with her husband.

She traveled to visit her family in San Diego, and she has battled the pain and nausea to take her place in RAM’s kitchen.

Since her illness, Crawford said she has been enjoying life more than ever.

“Everything is more intense. Before, I was giving 90 percent to God, now I’m giving 100 percent.”

In October, Crawford underwent an operation to remove one of her cancerous kidneys and is at home recovering from the surgery.

Previously Mom’s Magazine Article

So I mentioned yesterday, ever-so-briefly, that there was some news about the pathology report from my Mom’s kidney, which was removed. This morning my father sent me an updated and elaborated diagnosis, and more information. This may prove useful to someone, and is definitely useful to family and friends who would like an update.

First off, a link about staging Kidney Cancer from the American Cancer Society: Detailed Guide: How Is Kidney Cancer (Renal Cell Carcinoma) Staged?.

Next, here’s the deal on my Mom’s cancer, straight from my Dad this morning. My annotations are enclosed in (((triple-parentheses))):

Mom is Stage 4—based on the fact she has mets to lung and brain. Under TNM system (((American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC), sometimes also known as the TNM system))) she is T1B (((Tumor is larger than 4 cm but smaller than 7 cm (about 2¾ inches) and is limited to the kidney))), NX (((Regional lymph nodes cannot be assessed (information not available).))), M1 (((Distant metastasis present; includes metastasis to nonregional (not near the kidney) lymph nodes and/or to other organs (such as the lungs, bones, or brain).)))—which means the tumor was not locally invasive, that the nodes (N) are unknown, and M1 which means metastasis has occurred. Her Karnovsky score (((More about Karnovsky Performance Status))) is perfect—her overall health, and her Furhman grade (((The most widely used and most predictive grading system for renal cell cancer is the “Fuhrman Nuclear Grade”. Your pathology report should use the Fuhrman Grade. Fuhrman grade is on a scale of I-IV, where grade I carries the best prognosis and grade IV the worst. Nuclear grade means that the system is based on just the appearance of the nuclei of the cancer cells, rather than the appearance or structure of the cells as a whole. Nuclear characteristics used in the Fuhrman Grade particularly indicate how actively the cells are making protein. Source.)))—how aggressive tumor looks microscopically—number of mitotic figures, is grade 2—putting it all together survival should be 80% or better for 5 years. Of course new chemo drugs may improve on this. Dad

From October/November 2007 in www.ourhealthswva.com (their website does not have the article).

In the article it has my Grandfather, Jesus Arthur Silva (where I get my middle name from, by the way) saying “No, Mia”—which is a typo of “No, Mija”—basically “mi hija” or my daughter.”

Other than that it was great to get this in the mail today.

If you want to read it, view the large version.