um, dois, três

As you've probably noticed, I tend to regurgitate dates here, and today is actually one to remember. Way back on 11 April 2008, a giant pile of doctors off in a faraway land routed out my nasal cavities, hacked my neck open, and traded some tissue.

That's right: three years ago, I had a stem cell transplant.

Crazy! Since then, it's been a wild ride. I'm obviously not skipping down the sidewalk and typing 100 wpm again yet, but my life is drastically improved compared to the pre-surgery days. Remember, my spinal cord injury is C4-C5 level. I "should" barely be able to move my arms. Now I have at least minimal voluntary muscle control down to the abdominal/gluteal level. I haven't used the power chair since 2009. I used to have only enough lung power and breath control to whistle for about three seconds; now I can consistently hit and sustain that elusive low C. So much dreamlike stuff is unbelievably happening.

So, yes, progress is agonizingly slow. Feeling "lucky to be alive" is often a stretch. However, the progress seems to be unstoppable. Weekly, even daily, new and weird advancements come out of nowhere. Relative to how I was... Wow.

Woohoo.

genetically, a little birdy told me...

Osteoporosis is a bother. I'll tell you more when I'm a few standard deviations closer to menopause (laugh it up, DXA techs and rheumatologists).

coding one

Hello, strangers! Here, have some words.

I can't say I've been up to much, which is a pretty poor excuse for not writing. Exercise options are a bit limited in the land of rural coldness. I mostly lounge around stretching muscles as much as possible, occasionally turning off the power-assist on my wheels and attempting to push in circles around my room. That, uh, obviously doesn't last very long. I think the whole place is uphill...

I guess I'm halfway proud to say I made it through "the holidays" on mere Vicodin? I don't remember if I mentioned earlier - I'm not looking back in the logs, so I'll just tell you again - over the summer I switched pain meds from oxycodone (the magic in OxyContin) to hydrocodone+acetaminophen, a.k.a. The Big V. Those of you who are for whatever reason familiar with this stuff gather that for me, after taking oxycodone for 5.5 years, dropping down to hydrocodone is akin to replacing morphine with baby aspirin. Aaaanyway, going through all those wintertime rendezvous while relying on a medicine that only cuts about 80% of the pain mustard was neither particularly palatable nor reflexively expected, but somehow it happened. Okay, I guess that was the whole story. Woohoo.

Ha, I know what I can use as paper-thin excuses for blogsilence! First, I recently upped to Windows 7 (and switched back to openSUSE; tough luck, Ubuntu et al), and I fiiinally got my grimy little mitts on a new and compatible version of Dragon. Ignore the part where I can't remember writing a single blog post using dictation/voice-recog software, and that excuse will fly... I won't extol the virtues of typing instead of talking at the moment; for now, just notice how poorly written this post is. Further, I only recently picked up a mic that is actually decent enough for regular use. In fact, I've updated quite a few of my audio toys to the point of overkill, but again, I'll save those details for another day.

My other excuse? One acronym: RSS. It owns my soul.

Speaking of, I have articles to read. Rocket.

"here's a happy one"

...and six years of the nightmare.

thick skulls

So, just posting links is weak sauce, but...



Why do people oppose this???

$\surd$ in

Hey! Still here. Promise. I've been "busy" "doing" "stuff", but I'll come up with something in [over]due time...



Until then, check in with The Doctor!



(PS: I'm sure I could ramble aimlessly; but, any specific topic requests?)


(PPS: No, \surd is not actually a check. Deal.)

Katze is the name of the cat

Merry pagan rituals to all. Be nice to your RA...

And beware the Lap Guardian!





Also known as the Washcloth Bin Guardian if the lap is taken. She's sooo evil. Mwa ha ha ha!








Bonus points for getting the band reference in the post title. Rocket.