4069 Bloody attack by a dragon!

Sunday, July 12, 2015

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; 

it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

--Sidney J. Harris--

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I am trying to be very careful about caring for my 1.5 kidneys, drinking lots of water, watching carbs and protein, and avoiding excesses of minerals.

This morning, as usual, when I got up I went straight to the bathroom to piddle.

I was horrified to find the toilet full of blood!  Scared me half to death!

Then I remembered that the evening before I had eaten a half a dragon fruit, the red kind.  I went straight downstairs and looked it up on the internet.  Yeah, it's known to color your urine.

So, maybe the red was a good thing.  Maybe it shows my kidneys are doing their job.

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That was my first dragon fruit.  I'd heard people rave about them.  I dunno, maybe I got a stale one or something, 'cause it didn't taste like anything, very blah.  Less flavorful even than watermelon.  I ate only half because they have a lot of calcium and potassium, which I need to be careful of, so the other half is still sitting in the refrigerator.  

Ever try dragon fruit?  Did I get a flavorless one?  Or is this blahness a usual taste reaction? 

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3488 Catching up on medical

Friday, March 16, 2012

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

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I was trying to remember when I had the last urine culture, and realized that this journal is where I go to quickly find out when I did what, and I haven't been putting stuff in here.

So, to catch up. In the past month I've had a urine culture (but the doctor doesn't seem to have received the results, and that's why I was trying to remember the date), a blood panel which showed good kidney function and within-limits blood glucose, an abdominal x-ray that shows the same stone in the same position and it hasn't grown, ultrasound of the kidneys which looked good except that it showed mild hydronephrosis on the right and moderate hydronephosis on the left.

Hydronephrosis is kind of like an enlargement or swelling caused by urine having been retained in the kidneys. It's not a very serious thing in itself, but may indicate another problem.

So last Tuesday I had a spiral CT scan of the abdomen, NO contrast, thank you. My next urologist appointment is April 7.

3349 Frustration

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The two rules for success: 1) Figure out exactly what you want to do. 2) Do it.
-- Mario Cuomo's mother --

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The mid-Hudson Valley seems to have had it worse than here from Irene. Lots of flooding, trees down, bridges out. The Hairless Hunk says my old house is fine, some branches down but no major tree loss, and so on, but --- he can see only the exterior. I'm anxious to get up there.

But things keep popping up, keeping me here! I can't even get the stuff I need to do here done. I'm getting very upset.

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Two years ago I flunked the bone density test (mildly) and my GP told me to increase my calcium. Last February I had high blood calcium, so my GP told me increase vitamin D.

Two years ago my blood sugar was fluctuating wildly (and I wanted to lose weight), so the nutritionist taught me how to balance carbs and protein. Too much meat is not good, I hate beans, nuts are fine but too high in fat to use too much, so she told me to up my no-fat/low-fat dairy.

Saw the urologist yesterday. He says that my 24-hour (actually 48, but who's counting) urine collection shows I'm passing a lot of calcium, and since the stones are calcium oxalate, I should reduce dairy products in my diet, and reduce the vitamin D.

Hmmmm.

So, what do I do now?

Three years ago my THS (thyroid stimulating hormone) was high, so my GP put me on thyroid supplements. Last February the THS was fine, so they took the thyroid supplements away from me.

The parathyroid regulates calcium.

One of the results of parathyroid disfunction is --- I forget now what it's called --- but nodules form in the lungs, heart, other organs. The nodules in the lungs cause rales (the rattling/bubbling in the lungs like with pneumonia). Two weeks ago, my new GP heard rales. I've always had rales to some degree because of the structure of my lungs, but not enough that anyone worried about them. She was worried.

Hmmm. Maybe I should get my parathyroid checked.

Why has no doctor suggested that?

Probably for the same reason that my signs of raging kidney infection were ignored. Nobody really thinks any more.
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3264 Moving forward, but slowly

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

“The deeper insanity becomes, the more consistent it becomes,
until it wraps around and looks like sanity.”
-- Silk, August 9, 2008 --

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It was a beautiful day today, sunny and warm with a gentle breeze, the first nice day in the past week and a half. And I spent most of the best part of the day, from 10:30 am until almost 4 pm, in the doctor's office or the hospital.

I admit I was worried when the doctor, to all appearances, was in no hurry to look at my scans, and then once he did look at them he wanted to see me immediately. That's almost never a good sign.

Last night I ran through all the bad scenarios, what he could say, end-stage renal failure, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, etc. etc., and pretty much came to terms with it all.

When I got there, the nurse put me in an examining room, and then later the doctor stuck his head in the door and asked me to come to his office. You know, with the big desk, and the two chairs in front, and the box of tissues on the corner. Another bad sign.

That made his news a relief. The most recent scans do not confirm either the first set which implied one collection chamber and one ureter on the left, or the second scan which says two collection chambers and two ureters. This latest set says two collection chambers, with the stent in the upper, and the obstructing stone and a few smaller ones in the lower, but neither the x-ray (IVP) nor CT confirm a second ureter, because I've got really good kidney function apparently, and the upper chamber cleared the contrast solution so quickly that it never even reached the second chamber or ureter (which is blocked anyway, remember?). So we still don't know exactly what we've got in there. But at least it is pretty clear where the stone is.

So we're going to smash the stone(s).

Not this week, because of the holiday coming up, but probably the end of next week. The procedure is Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL), described here: http://www.healtheast.org/st-joes/programs-services/kidney-stone/treating-stones/shock-wave-lithotripsy-eswl.html.

I told him how the stent is now causing bleeding after physical activity, it's irritating the bladder, and how I can feel it poking and it is getting worse, to the point where the seat belt hurts, and the urinary urgency is getting worse, so will we be removing the stent at the same time? He said no, because we're not sure where and how the second chamber drains, and the worst case is only one ureter, and some piece of the smashed stone gets stuck in it, blocking the entire left kidney. So no, the stent stays until we know what's going on.

Crap. I can lessen the bleeding and poking and irritation by avoiding physical activity. No lifting, raking, mowing, walking far, dancing, driving long distances, etc. etc. etc., anything that makes the stent move. Crap crap crap. I want this damn thing OUT! NOW!

So when I got home I read up a bit on ESWL. Two possible negative consequences are damage to the pancreas leading to diabetes, and damage to the capillaries in the kidney, leading to renal failure. The pancreas thing is unlikely because we're working only on the left kidney. The capillary thing worries me a little. I have fragile capillaries. I'll have to tell him about that. However, my stone isn't very big, so it (I hope) won't require much to break it up, and it's localized, and my clotting abilities are ok, so maybe that will be ok.

[My theory of what's in there is different from his, I think. I do think there's a second ureter, which the larger stone is blocking, because there are also a few much smaller stones in that chamber which, if that chamber connects with the chamber with the stent, seems to me that I should have passed those stones by now through the stent. A few other details argue for the second ureter joining the first somewhere north of the bladder. So the stent could actually CAUSE the moving stones to get jammed at the joining point. But at least then the second ureter would show up on a contrast x-ray for the length that it's open, and the blockade could be eased by pulling the stent. So I'm not going to argue with him.]

I just want this DONE!

After I left his office I went to the hospital to pick up my personal copies of the scan and x-ray done elsewhere a few weeks ago, that they had asked for for comparison, and to get copies of the recent scan and x-rays with contrast. There were at least three misunderstandings. It was three and a half hours before they managed to get it all together. About every 40 minutes or so they'd bring out part of it, and I'd have to ask again for the rest. And then wait. (At one point they actually insisted that I had NOT had the CT scan.)

When I first arrived at the hospital, at about noonish, as I was putting the top up on Hal, I got a call from Piper. We had a lot to talk about, and about 20 minutes in I mentioned that I had a bone to pick with The Angel, and told Piper about the IRS and NYS letters. Piper said he was worried about The Angel. He's had some kind of serious medical problem for the past few weeks or months, and Piper had called him twice yesterday and again this morning, "...and he always returns my calls immediately", but he hadn't heard from him. Piper was afraid The Angel was in the hospital, and if so, it was bad because otherwise The Angel would have contacted him.

Piper said if he hadn't heard from The Angel by this evening, he'd call his parents. He'll let me know.

So. Onward. Fred's tire is still flat. Sigh.
.

3255 Thoughts on stones and emotional reactions.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton --

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Don't know that I agree with the green quote above, but it is interesting, especially coming from such an accomplished and experienced man. Worth thinking about, anyway.

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The hospital folks told me that the doctor would have the results of last Friday's tests on Monday, and I was anxious to find out what happens next. I called the doctor's office, and surprise, he's "out of the office until Thursday". Great. "The reports are on his desk, and he'll look at them Thursday."

So I'll wait until mid-afternoon today, and if he hasn't called by then, I'll call him.

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On the trembling Friday, after the IV trauma: There was another instance of the same kind of trembling, two years ago, at about this time of year. I received an email that I thought was from a close friend. Turns out it was a fake id made to look like it came from the friend. I never did find out who sent it, but perhaps they knew me well enough to know that I probably wouldn't open an email, and absolutely wouldn't follow a link in an email, unless I knew and trusted the sender.

Anyway, I opened it, followed the link in it, and got a huge emotional shock. It was so bad I couldn't stop shaking for almost an hour. My head shook so badly my eyes couldn't focus. Arms and hands couldn't grip. Legs couldn't support me. I think I have an idea of what the later stages of Parkinson's might feel like. It scared me because I couldn't control it, and I was afraid something had broken in my nervous system and maybe it would never stop, that maybe I'd had some kind of stroke. Or something. At least fear of what was happening to my body took my mind off the message I'd just received and gave me time to absorb it.

That's what happened to me after the IV trauma Friday. The same kind of trembling. So I think maybe the nurse was correct, that it wasn't the contrast, or the cold in the room, but an emotional reaction. The trembling two years ago had the same effect on my body, too, in that it completely wiped me out. It took me a few days to physically recover then, too.

-------------------------------------

I had vowed two weeks ago that phlebotomists would henceforth listen to me, that they would try my hand before the arm, or I would walk out. I have since discovered that all along I had been using the wrong words - that talking mainly about the pain, the fire, the branding iron, doesn't work. That just gets "Oh, you won't feel this", especially from those who think they're experts, followed by the pain, the fire, the branding iron, and "Oh, you must have a lot of nerves there". Yeah, that's what I said.

What DOES work is the words "thin walls, collapse, blowout", all of which are also true. They actually listen to and think about that.

And now I have another vow. If I ever have to have anything involving both an IV and dehydration, I will go in and get the IV whatchmacallit installed THE DAY BEFORE!, when I can be fully hydrated. I'll have to talk to someone and find out if that's possible.

--------------------------------

I've been reading up on what causes kidney stones and how to prevent them. It depends on the composition of the stones, but for the most common types it seems like everything I eat is bad. Especially the diet the nutritionist put me on last year, that was working so well for me.

In my darker moments I want to blame the stones on the diet, but I don't really think that was the cause. I think it's that I've had an undiagnosed untreated kidney infection for at least the past year.

Oddly, people who live near large bodies of water and those who drink soft water are also more prone to kidney stones. No reason given, just apparently an observation, a statistical correlation. I have moved from high ground in the woods, a half mile from a river, with well water measuring 13 on a 0-15 scale of hardness, to low ground a half block from a saltwater bay, with city water so soft that I can't taste it and drying drops leave no mark. Hmmmm.

--------------------------------

I've got a new peeve.

I've been reading/hearing more and more often "one IN the same".

That makes no sense.

It's "one AND the same".

Another example of people not thinking about what they're saying.

Sheesh.

3240 Ok. I'm weird.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Isaac Asimov --

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Appointment with the urologist today. Last week I had the blood test, x-rays, and CT scan. Also a urine something-or-other, but the doctor hasn't got the report from that yet, so I assume it was a culture. I expected to get some good news, like that we can break up the stones and then remove the stent.

I didn't get good news, or bad news, but certainly unexpected and very annoying news.

Remember how I said CT and MRI scans are slices, and small things can be missed because they might fall between slices?

The CT scan (and the x-rays, too, which I don't understand) from the White Plains hospital a month ago missed something important.

A normal arrangement looks like this:
Inside the middle of the kidney there's a hollow urine collection area. The urine produced by the kidney collects there and then flows through the ureter to the bladder. At White Plains they told me that I had a large stone blocking the ureter at the top, and a smaller stone blocking the same ureter at the bottom. They removed the bottom stone, and put in a stent (a long hollow tube that goes up through the ureter with one curl at the upper end in the kidney collection hollow, and another curl at the bottom in the bladder) to bypass the larger stone and allow urine to pass and drain. The larger stone could be handled later, after the infection was under control, and then the stent could be removed.

Last Thursday's scans and x-rays say something different.

Look at the kidney on the left side of this sketch:

Two ureters. Turns out I have two ureters on and two separate collection areas in my left kidney. This is not rare, something like 15% of the population has it. Apparently mine is slightly different from the sketch, in that the two ureters must join just above the bladder, and the smaller stone that was removed was therefore blocking both ureters. When that stone was removed, it allowed ONE of the two collection areas to drain. The other was still blocked by the larger stone at the top.

Here comes the annoying part.

They put the stent into the collection area that DOESN'T have a stone. They didn't realize I had a double kidney. The stone is still blocking the OTHER (hitherto unknown) collection area. Translation - the stent isn't doing a damn thing! It's totally useless! I still have the blockage. We don't know why I don't have any pain, and that must be what the x-ray technician noticed last Thursday, and why he asked if I was in pain.

So the urologist wants another CT scan, this one with contrast dye, so he knows exactly what he's got there. But I can't have the contrast dye without first ensuring that my kidney function is good. (They told me in White Plains that my kidney function was good, but that was then, this is now, with another month of blockage.) So I had to have another blood test today, and then call on Tuesday to find out if we can schedule the CT scan.

This time I was very clear with the phlebotomist that my arms were absolutely off limits unless it could be proven to me that the blood absolutely could not come from my hand. This time they listened to me. It took three tries, and I now have a huge purple knot on the back of my right hand, but it was still easier and much less painful.

So, this isn't finished yet. And I don't know when I'll get back to the old house.

This is ridiculous.
.

3239 Situational Summary

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Divorce is tortious, tortuous, and torturous.
-- Silk --

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I had the blood draw last week. As usual, I told the phlebotomist about my problem with sticks in the arm, that the hand works better, as usual she blew me off and went for the arm, "Oh, this won't hurt at all", as usual it felt like a branding iron and the nails on my other hand gripped the armrest so hard I punctured the fabric-backed vinyl upholstery. She seemed surprised. That's absolutely the last time I will be ignored. It will never happen again. That is a vow. I'll refuse and walk out if they don't listen to me.

The next day, Friday, I went in for the CT scan and x-rays. The X-ray technician took a several shots, then came out of his little room and asked if I was in pain. I was perfectly relaxed, lying on the machine bed, eyes closed, silent, almost asleep. I said, "No, should I be?" He didn't answer, went back behind his partition and took several more, moving me a little now and then. So now I'm worried. What might he have seen that would prompt him to ask if I was in pain? Why did he take so many more pictures than were necessary?

I hope I'll find out tomorrow at the urologist's appointment. I've had no calls, so I suppose there's nothing too very exciting. Probably just another stone on the right side.

I've got a few things bothering me right now (not the health stuff, that's just annoying) and I have no one I can talk with about it. It's big, family-type things that have been growing for thirty years and coming to a head now. It's a little depressing, because I don't know what to do about it.

I'd really like to talk with The Man, but he's being a bit distant right now. He's got his reasons, but it's still another bothersome thing, but not the biggest.

Another bothersome thing is a cash flow problem. I sold stock from portfolios in my own name, not the investment portfolio Piper manages, to buy this house, and what Piper doesn't seem to realize is that much of my income was dividend checks from that stock. So my income is down by 25%, but I'm paying utilities and taxes on two houses now. I'm not going to starve, but I'm scrambling to pay the bills without selling more stock and cutting my income even more.

I canceled the house phone at the old house. The monthly bill for that phone was less than $30, but I don't need it anymore. So I freaked when I got the final bill, and it was $280! They charged me $250 for "Tier 1 Auto Renewal Termination Fee"! What!? What the hell is that!?

So I called. They said I had agreed to some special low-cost plan that had an early termination fee. I asked when this plan was supposed to end. The guy said "In five weeks." I said, that makes it the first week in May? He said yes. I freaked. "That means I signed up for it last May? Last May I was aware I would be moving. At that time I thought I'd be moving in the fall. There's no way on this God's earth a) that I would sign up for ANY plan with an early termination fee if there's any other option, b) that I would agree to that when I knew I'd be moving. There's something very wrong here."

So he checked. Turns out that I'd agreed to the plan several years ago (and I'm positive no "termination fee" had been mentioned), and the plan is automatically renewed every year. I pointed out that after the first contract term, you can no longer charge a termination fee without active renewal of the agreement. Automatic renewal changes the terms to monthly. Plus, even if the fee still existed, when I called to terminate service, the rep should have mentioned it. She didn't. There's no way I am going to pay $250 for 5 weeks of non-service when I could have just paid the $40 five more weeks would have cost!

So he forgave the $250.

I wonder how many people would go ahead and pay it? That's a complete ripoff.

[Update: Wow! I found this article dated October 2009, that says the NY Attorney General went after Frontier and told them they couldn't charge the termination fee without telling customers it existed, and they couldn't charge it on auto-renewals, and they had to refund all those fees they had collected! Wow! And they're STILL DOING IT!!! I think maybe I'll write a letter to the NY Attorney General.]

The Hairless Hunk is taking a class about 25 minutes north of here this week, and Monday of next week. We got together for dinner on Monday. That was kind of a mess. We went to a Thai place near his hotel. I like Thai, and they had some really interesting things on the menu, but the table was very wide, and the place was very crowded and noisy, and I couldn't hear him, and I wasn't there for interesting food, I was there to talk, so we left and went looking for someplace else, and since neither of us knew anyplace we ended up at a truly yucky diner-but-not-a-diner with blah food. But at least the place was empty, and quiet.

I didn't mention any of the stuff that's been depressing me, but simply being able to be with someone who does care and would and could sympathize and offer advice if I asked for it, was enough. I feel a little better, although I still don't know what to do.

We had originally sort of planned that some evening he'd come down here and see the house. I figured it might be difficult because he'd probably have classwork in the evenings. Yesterday he called and said, yeah, stuff to read and memorize. Sad. I was looking forward to showing him the vehicle buried in the backyard (his comment was that I may have found Jimmy Hoffa).

Suzy the Suzuki is still at the old house. On a visit in February, I think, the first time all winter that she wasn't buried in snow, The Hunk and I started her. I was pleased that she started right up with no hesitation, but then she started blowing gray smoke out of the vents, something was burning, so I turned her off. We checked for beasty nests in the engine compartment, but didn't find anything obvious. I need to get her down here. My cars still all have NY plates. I've got to get them inspected and registered here, but I don't want to do that until they're all here, because otherwise it will complicate the insurance. BUT, Hal is due for inspection this month! Ack.

The Hunk and I had discussed my going back with him on Friday evening, then I can spend two days working at the old house and get Suzy into the shop on Monday, and then bring her back. BUT, that doesn't work because that leaves me stranded at the old house with no car until Suzy is fixed, and there's no guarantee on that. Plus, Hercules goes back to work on Monday, and I had promised Daughter I'd be here to help when she's suddenly alone with the baby.

It would be best if I could drive myself up there this week and arrange for Suzy's fixing now, and then, assuming she's ready to go by Tuesday, I could go back with The Hunk after his class on Monday, and drive Suzy back here Tuesday. BUT I have the urologist's appointment tomorrow, and I don't know what will happen then.

If I don't go back with The Hunk on Monday, I won't be able to bring Suzy down until Piper and his daughter visit and I can go back up with them.

I've got a feeling that somehow this is going to end up involving either a rental car or an insurance mess.

Seems like nothing is going smoothly these days. All these nit-pickin' minnow nibbles --- and I still have the big "unmentioned" problem that's going nowhere.
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3226 Blood

Friday, April 22, 2011

That which one man receives without working for,
another man works for without receiving.
-- Kenneth W. Sollitt --

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When I was in the hospital, they took blood several times a day, and I had the stupid IV in constantly.

I don't do well with holes poked in me.

I and my siblings have a problem. It's a little bit different for each of us, and to a different degree for each, but we three girls and two boys all have it. We bruise very easily. When we were small, the doctors thought it was a clotting problem, some type of hemophilia.**

For me, it manifested itself as nose bleeds. My nose bled constantly. Literally constantly. Getting hit by the father didn't help, but even when there was no hitting it bled. Sometimes heavily, but mostly it just seeped blood, which would dry and clot as it seeped. I'd wake every morning with obstructing clots and huge dried scabs in my nose, and I'd have to clean them out just to breathe.

By the time I started high school I had a hole clear through the septum. In high school we lived on the base and I was addicted to APCs, and that certainly didn't help.

Cleaning out my nose every morning for the past 55 years, and flaring them to breathe when I couldn't clean them, might explain why my nostrils are so large.

Until my daughter was born when I was thirty-one, my menstrual periods were what is now known to be hemorrhagic. Ten days minimum with tea-cup sized clots. I don't know why her birth changed that - I'd had three miscarriages and a stillbirth prior with no effect. Maybe a full term delivery "cauterized" the uterus?

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I got a more reasonable answer. I have fragile capillaries. They break and leak at the slightest provocation. The nose is loaded with fine capillaries, and that's why it bled. I constantly have mysterious bruises on my thighs and hips, which is one reason why my legs from the ankle up never see the light of day. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I'd often get huge bruises behind my knees, just from crossing my legs or sitting in a too-high or too-deep chair that put pressure behind my knees.

In my late twenties I discovered another problem. When someone pokes a hole in a vein, like to draw blood or put in an IV, sometimes, but not always, my veins go into spasm. When they do, it burns literally like fire until the IV or whatever is removed. The worst part is that the phlebotomist doesn't believe me that it hurts that bad. One time I woke up after surgery with an IV that had been put in while I was "out", and I woke to my right arm being held in a fire. I cried and cried, begged and begged, but they wouldn't remove it. Imagine a white-hot branding iron being held to your skin for two hours. That's really what it felt like.

When the vein goes into spasm, you can't draw blood. Not enough, anyway. And often when it spasms and rolls, the poke goes all the way through the vein. The only place that consistently works for drawing blood is the back of my hand, with a pediatric butterfly. And I get very annoyed with nurses who don't believe me, and have to stick my arm painfully three or four times before they give up and listen to me. The bruises from those abortive sticks wrap all the way around my arm and are spectacular, but they don't appear until two or three days later, so the perpetrator rarely gets to see them.

There's another almost-but-not-quite amusing side effect. When doctors look in my nose, they assume I'd been using cocaine. Cocaine use will erode the septum, exactly as mine is eroded. A few have asked, but most don't - I just notice an immediate change in attitude when they look in my nose. I have to bring it up and explain that I have never touched cocaine, it's fragile capillaries, and I think some don't believe me.

So. Now the urologist wants more blood.

Sigh. Why does everyone assume it's so easy? Not a big deal? I'd rather have a baby out in the fields.

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**It's weird that doctors decided that for my brothers it was a mild form of hemophilia - without, by the way, doing any testing - but said it was impossible for us girls to have hemophilia, because only boys get it. Well, they were wrong on all counts. Of course it isn't hemophilia that we have. But even if it was, girls can have it! There are many clotting factors, and a few are not sex linked, and a lack of any one of them can cause the problem. Secondly, even if it is the classic sex-linked form, factors VIII and/or IX, girls can still have it if the mother is a carrier, and the father is too! It's rare, but rare doesn't mean impossible. And it's only rare because in the past hemophiliac males didn't generally live long enough to become fathers. It's becoming more common.
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3163 Sistine and blood

Sunday, February 13, 2011

“Unquestioned answers are more dangerous than unanswered questions.” Put another way, “Unanswered questions may be frustrating, but unquestioned answers are dangerous.”

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When you hear "Sistine Chapel", you think of the panel wherein the finger of God is reaching to Adam. And that's about all.

You can see the entire Sistine Chapel at http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html, a Vatican website. Wow!

It's a bit difficult to navigate at first. The controls are down in the lower left corner, but they don't explain what the cursor controls get you. You have to play with it a bit. Moving around isn't intuitive. It took me a half hour to get the snake and the apple right-side-up.

The painting around the sides seem to come from a much later date. They have a more Flemish look.

See if you can find the copyright mark on the floor.

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I don't know about Michelangelo, folks. His men all look like overblown bodybuilders, and his women look like male bodybuilders with globes glued to their chests. Don't real (natural) breasts kind of slope out from the collar bones? Does anyone have creases above as well as below? Even the babies are overdeveloped.

Yeah, I know people, including women, did more physical labor then, and were likely well muscled, but women sans steroids just don't get the same structure as men. That much definition requires more testosterone. Women's layer of fat under the skin softens the "cut". Also, the average woman was probably perpetually either pregnant or nursing, but that still doesn't explain those breasts.

I saw the real Pieta once. My first reaction* was that Mary was HUGE! If Jesus had been standing, he'd have been half her height, and maybe a quarter her weight. (*Well, second reaction. The first was, "That's one honkin' huge hunk of marble!")

It all makes me wonder if maybe old Mikey had some issue with women.

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Daughter and I got into a discussion of infectious waste (that which carries pathogens, as opposed to hazardous waste which is poisonous or otherwise harmful but not necessarily infectious) the other day, while she was waiting out her three-hour glucose test at the vampire's office, when I saw someone drop a blood-spotted bandaid in the waste paper basket.

She said it wasn't enough blood to be considered infectious. She does therapeutic massage in an acupuncture office, and she often works on people right after their acupuncture session. She says they sometimes are covered with little spots of blood. She does the massage with her bare hands.

I was horrified! Viruses are tiny, all it takes is ONE, just ONE, to infect you with hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, whatever, and a single speck of blood can carry a zillion of the hungry little bastards. All it takes is one! How can ANY amount of blood not be considered potentially infectious!

When I was riding the ambulance, we were serious about it. Even a speck went into the red box.

I don't understand.

When I got home I looked up the rules/laws, and yeah, infectious waste requiring special handling is defined as "pourable or drippable amounts of blood or body fluids, or items saturated with blood or body fluids". Saturated being defined as capable of dripping if squeezed.

They have to be kidding me. That makes no sense. All it takes is one viral body, and you don't need to be able to pour it to get that.

I am horrified. I wonder why they bother having any rule at all.

(Oh, yeah. Reading further, the answer is money, of course. Regular waste costs x to dispose of. Non-infectious medical waste costs 3x for disposal. Infectious waste costs 15x for disposal. So the definition is to limit costs while looking like you're making some attempt at controlling infection and protecting other patients and medical workers.)
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3255 Tests - Medical and Turing

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

"When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies."
-- Catherine Orenstein, on the fact that only 13% of Wikipedia's contributors are female --

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I got a call from the doctor's office. The blood and urine results are back.

• I do have a UTI, and they'll phone a prescription to my local CVS.
• Glucose was 100 mg/dL, but since I was not fasting, that's ok, I guess.
• Vitamin D was low, so I'm to add a D supplement, twice a day.
• Total cholesterol was a bit high, so I'm to add flax seed oil. (but the ratio is low - in the very good range. The medical community differs on what that means, but it's been like that with me for ages, so I figure it must be ok. Besides, I don't know how I can possibly cut any more fats from my diet.) I was taking flax seed oil for a while, back when, but it makes me burp. Oh, well. I'll try again.
  
• Triglyceride is 99.
• And the real shocker - thyroid stimulating hormone is normal. Huh?

Sigh.

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I was reading an essay on the Turing test (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/mind-vs-machine/8386/3/). That's the dealy where a tester converses with a human and/or with a computer, and attempts to determine whether what he's conversing with is human or machine. The author participated in a test, and began to wonder what makes someone recognizably human.

An interesting observation was in the area of arguments. Humans, when arguing, tend to devolve into verbal abuse, and to begin simply reacting to the last statement, without regard to the full context of the argument, ignoring previous statements.

That kicked off thoughts. I hate arguing with people, precisely because with most people, that happens. They want to turn it into a sniping match, and I just won't do that. For that reason - that I keep going back to the initial disagreement, and ignore and won't react to sniping - they seem to feel that I don't argue fairly. I don't get it.

Think about the last argument you've had. Did you get off track, and just snipe?

To quote from the essay:

...argument is stateless—that is, unanchored from all context, a kind of Markov chain of riposte, meta-riposte, meta-meta-riposte. Each remark after the first is only about the previous remark. If a program can induce us to sink to this level, of course it can pass the Turing Test.

Once again, the question of what types of human behavior computers can imitate shines light on how we conduct our own, human lives. Verbal abuse is simply less complex than other forms of conversation. In fact, since reading the papers on MGonz, and transcripts of its conversations, I find myself much more able to constructively manage heated conversations. Aware of the stateless, knee-jerk character of the terse remark I want to blurt out, I recognize that that remark has far more to do with a reflex reaction to the very last sentence of the conversation than with either the issue at hand or the person I’m talking to. All of a sudden, the absurdity and ridiculousness of this kind of escalation become quantitatively clear, and, contemptuously unwilling to act like a bot, I steer myself toward a more “stateful” response: better living through science.

A slimmed-down version of the "most human" computer winner of 2010 is online, and you can chat with "him" at http://www.cleverbot.com/. I've had a few conversations, and very often felt like I was talking to a human. Warning - Cleverbot can get a bit naughty.

From the Cleverbot site:

A special version of the Cleverbot application has won the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition 2010, after taking part in a quick-fire Turing Test.

Cleverbot was running with notably more power behind it than is possible for the online version, with 24 separate instances conferring on their answer.

10 volunteers talked for 2 minutes each using a plain text interface, and the whole of the event audience voted on 'how human' each conversation appeared to be.

Cleverbot achieved an average rating of 42.1% human!

I believe that means 42.1% of the testers thought Cleverbot was human (as opposed to the real human competing against Cleverbot), and that means it actually passed the Turing test.
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2589 Aging in classic hippie style?

Friday, September 18, 2009

Frank Pittman, MD: Infidelity isn't about whom you lie with.
It's whom you lie to.

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The blood test today is to determine whether the thyroid supplement I've been taking for the past seven weeks is sufficient, or needs to be increased. That's got me thinking.

Jay had severe sleep apnea. In 1993 we got the CPAP machine, and he was finally able to sleep at night. The oxygen level in his brain also went up at night. This was supposed to be good. Five years later the brain tumor appeared. The doctors said there seemed to be an old injury in the area of the tumor (probably from a childhood fall he'd had from a table to a cement floor).

For many years I've wondered, if we had never raised his brain oxygen, would the tumor not have grown? Was the sleep apnea's depressed nighttime oxygen starving the injured area? Did the apnea cure feed the tumor?

When we get older it's normal for the thyroid to slow down. The thyroid controls metabolism, so when it slows down we slow down. It's not just whole body metabolism that's slowed - it's also individual cell metabolism.

So, is it possible that the slowing of the thyroid is a natural defense against aging and cancer?

I'm not sure I want to fix this too well.

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I took HomeGoods' Style Scope quiz to determine my decorating style. I think my results are pretty accurate (except that I don't care for symmetrical arrangements, I find them too tense, too confining). I like antiques, carved wood, Asian fabrics and brightly painted furniture. I like Victorian clutter. I like thinking about the "life" my antiques may have had before they came to me, the people they may have known, the places they've been, the hands that did the embroidery, carved the wood, wore down the corners. New is so sterile.

Silk, you are a Bohemian Classic

You have a refined sensibility and bring a sense of history and tradition into your decor. You appreciate how symmetrical arrangements and beautiful, well-crafted pieces create a solid foundation to a room. But you like to shake up this restraint with objects and accessories that express your personality and your love of other cultures. When traveling, you seek out unique objects that reflect what you love, and you use them in a sophisticated way. You want people to feel comfortable in your home, and cozy chairs, ethnic fabrics, unique pieces, and even a little touch of quirk or humor give your house a laid-back, Bohemian flair.
You value creativity. You are stylish and fun loving, and can be an inspiration to others. You have a natural sense of drama, and you know you have to be willing to take risks—whether with colors, finishes, furniture choices, or ideas—for your home to stand out. Your home can be happy and lively and the place all of your friends want to be.

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