It's getting difficult to stay level headed.

Well there in the distance, it appears to be yet another flicker of light that is physio. Yeah it's a pain in the a$$ to get out to Toronto, risk getting a ticket on the side of the road and actually get my mom to her physio appointments. But at the same time, when she's there I know she's stable and doing well. It's almost two weeks since we have been to physio. After my battle with a cold ended hers began. one and a half weeks later she's on Meropenum administered by an IV pump at home and she's miserable. The dangers here do not come from just merely having a cold. We all get colds, and we cough and we wheeze etc. The problem is when your a person who has 25% lung function remaining and you literally don't have the strength to blast the snotty little bastards out of your lungs. I say only by pure witness that unlike you and I who will continually cough until the shit comes out of you and into a kleenex, a person with end stage Alpha1 has about three coughs (not even decent ones) before they become seriously endangered. I witness her over and over begin to panic because there is a glob of phlem stuck in her airways. So for the past week I have been by her side, always within earshot to listen for when she coughs. We make sure that her BIPAP device is always next to her so I could quickly put it over her face if she gets to a point where she can no longer breath on her own.

So, with her on antibiotics as of Friday, I am hoping that she is well enough to at least partially participate at physio on Tuesday. I have always accepted the fact that things will get worse before they get better. But just like everything else, when you actually get there and put that pair of shoes on you never quite walk the way you thought you would.

Still waiting, I hope vivian is doing well with his new lungs. I hope to see him in physio soon or at least get the chance to visit him...

Keeping my head up but my spending down...
Cheers!

Excuse me, your phone is buzzing...

I was taking a nap this afternoon when the phone wrang... In a stooper I jumped to my feet and started walking to the phone when I realized my mother had already answered it. So I rushed downstairs, she handed me the phone saying she could not understand the caller.

The lady on the other end could not speak very good English. And her phone was buzzing very loudly like she was calling me with one hand touching a high voltage terminal.

She said "Excuse me sir but would you like to save up to 40% on your electric bill?" Still in a stooper I answered "Oh well, actually I don't pay anything for my electricity because I steal it from my neighbor via a long extension cord."

HAHAHAHA I could hear the panic in her voice as she tried to reconstruct what I had said. She could tell I was serious enough that perhaps she just mis understood me. so she then began repeating the deal to me explaining that it is a fantastic savings. At this point I politely interupted and said "But tell me!, why would I pay when I get it for free now. I could sell you some if you live close, I have another long extension cord here. Do you live close to me?"

I felt like cracking up at this point but held my composure.

It was at the point where she asked me if I could speak hindi or punjabi, she apologized again but said she could "not speak very well English" I replied "Well since your having trouble understanding me i'm willing to throw in a 10% discount" and I appologized for my broken English and how it was because I had just been woken up from a nap by the telephone. Some lady on the other end trying to sell me electricity.

Politely but broken up with laughter I said good bye and hung up the phone.

Then I lost it and started whailing.

reminicient of my past.

I like everyone else on the planet sometimes think about various adventures in my past. When I was a teenager I had the chance to visit the Yukon and I remember a man who would tell all kinds of stories while we were on the trip. During the hikes etc he had fantastic stories about the days of the gold rush etc. Of course we were not old enough to partake in the bar but I was lucky enough to witness first hand one of the oldest yukon traditions. Since 1973 in fact, when captain Dick discovered the toe of Louie Liken, a trapper and placer miner, who amputated it in the 1920's.

The rules: Put the toe in any drink you like, and drink it. The drinker's lips must touch the toe. " You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow-- But the lips have gotta touch the toe."

After captain Dick apporved your attempt you get a certificate.

There were other aspects of this trip I adored and some I hated. For example I came down with the flu a day before we were suppose to actually hike through the Chilcoot pass so I was unable to do that but pretty much everything else brought fond memories. I remember so clearly the aurora borialis and the night that never came. 24 hours of daylight with the sun just circling the earth in the sky. It made for an awsome party up on that hill...

Some day I plan to return, with my pan in hand I will look for gold once again...

BTW I did actually get a vial full of real gold, had it appraised and everything it was only worth about 30 dollars but it was the experience, oh what an experience...

:) Cheers!

I am but a whore...

An EBay whore... Well that is what it seems these days, I have been auctioning off some of the rare items I have in my possession. I am not doing this to get rich, you'd have to be some kind of unique nut to get rich from ebay. No this is a hobby that I picked up recently and I'm really enjoying it. As I sit here right now there is 20 minutes left on an auction for one of those german beer stein's. There's four bids on it and 5 watchers so it's just the excitement of it all watching people think it over and the smart ones really wait until they can't wait anymore. Last week I sold a pair of pearl handeled opera glasses that looked like they were only going to fetch a few bucks for, within the last two minutes of the auction 2 people bid on it and it sold for over 10 dollars US, add shipping and a small handling fee and that's a decent profit for something that was sitting in the bottom of my desk drawer.

I will be auctioning off a 1916 penny, the exact one I watched sell for 255US on EBay but I am not expecting to get even close to this much. I won't do it until I'm ready but last night while sitting in bed I had this crazy idea. I'm certainly not going to clean the dirty penny because that would almost destroy it's value i'm sure. It has character and I think someone might give it a good home. Either way I think at some point it will be auctioned off and I will use the money to purchase something for my kids. Mabey take them to a movie if there is enough profit that would be great fun!

My mother's health hasn't been very good in the past week. I shouldn't be surprised really, I fought my way through a horrible cold and even now my voice is a bit rough. I was over the infection in two days, I know because the symptoms of the original cold dissapeared quickly, it's the after effects that always get to me. Sinuses etc Sometimes in fact I end up with horrible bronchitis but that didin't happen this time I think because secretly i've been using the salbutamol inhaler that my doctor prescribed the last time I was deathly ill. hahahaha Deathly ill.. that rings in a strange octave when I say it because compared to some in my life I have only a scraped knee... Anyhow, back to my mother. Mother had a bit of an emotional episode yesterday, I could tell something had been bothering her. I think she feels guilty that my employment hasn't been up to snuff and it's putting a bit of a strain on us but it really isn't because of her. The economy's slow right now, that's to be expected and I've really limited the type of work that I am willing to do because I want to take care of my kids during the day time. Send them off to school, pick them up after. Not to mention the appointments I have had to keep with my oldest son (String Bean). My mother began to cry, said she felt like she was losing hope etc. People are getting their gift of life left right and centre, all around us there is hope and yet at times it overwhelms a person. I completely understand... I hugged her and reminded her that if our comedian friend at the physio room can recieve his after 9 months or so of waiting, then she can too! Sadly though, a lot of people don't make it to their transplant. I was told around 20% in fact... That is a rather high number when you think about it.

Ohhh, 9 minutes left in the auction... I'm watching it on a very cool utility I found under the linux software repos called JBidwatcher. I highly recommend it to anyone. And I believe it's java software so it will run for anyone with java on their comp...

So now with 5 minutes left on the auction and the snow piling up on my sidewalk I am sure I know what I'll be doing this after noon. I have one ebay package waiting to go out and if the last bidder on this stein foots the bill quick enough i'll get that package out at the same time.

Fun Fun Fun...

I won't tell you the final price on the auction, I think you should just become a watcher of my items to have that luxury, the link is up at the top and it costs nothing to watch :)

Have a great day, I know I will!~

Graduation...

OK so I am just about to go have a hot shower then nap on the couch or something until the rest of the family wakes... I always wake up early and I'm highly anticipating one of my son's to bug the crap out of me to upgrade his online gaming account to that of... ummmm "Guardian" I think was the status.

I am known by my friends to often hit them up with an URL that is unfinished so that they can test parts of it. Feedback for what's working for people and what's lame etc... I get the sense sometimes that it can get a bit annoying... I pop into chat and say "Hey how's it going" then a few minutes or seconds later I say "Can you check something for me?" This is simply because from my seat, where the site is designed I can not always account for links that are pointing to local files on my drive and not a world accessable one. Or that read write permissions are set correctly for the world... You know "Chmod -R 755 /var/www" or the likes... Bah too geeky for ya? Movin' right along...
I have just confirmed that the advert program I joined a few months ago has finally issued a cheque to me. For an impressive amount albeit not enough to pay the mortgage. So now that I am sure it's not all a scam and that the cheque is real I am going to put a little more effort into what I was doing with it. It actually only took two months to earn the money but then when a cheque wasn't issued I pulled back on the reigns a little and the clicks stopped happening for a while. I now see this was kind of a mistake because it will take me just as long to get it back up to the traffic it was getting before but I also understand it a whole lot better and feel that I can really make it sing this time. So on that note I feel I have graduated at least on one financial level. Gonna use the money to make a payment on my credit card. You know what though? I really wish I was not alone in making this work... I mean I have the server equipment and the knowhow to keep it running 24/7, I have an abundant amount of time in front of a laptop while waiting for my mother's appointments etc to actually put effort into it.. But it really really sucks that I am the only one working on it... I think if someone could just see the vision in it, see that there is huge potential earnings in it. If only they could suck up the fact that they aren't gonna make a penny out of it until it actually starts snowballing... It could work in a big way and generate a lot of revenue.

'nuff said, I'll just keep movin' on it alone and if some day any of you wish to join me in it then that would be great but until then. "No tire kickers please"

Now on to some other stuff...

Copious amounts of snot! Yeah that's right, last week was complete and utter HELL for me, I was unable to take my mother to Toronto for her physio for all but one day because I was so sick. And then the last day I had to squeeze in a psychiatric visit for my son "string bean" which went superbly well, he now will be recieving some much needed care and hopefully he'll be able to do well in school and with his friends in the playground etc... All of last week I was stuffed up and weilding snot everywhere I went because of a nasty cold I caught from a sneezing woman in the A&P last weekend... My mother on the other hand was able to avoid it until Friday... I fear her getting sick, especially when it involves sinuses and respiratory infections, I will make a judgement call today if she is to go to the emerg or not. The fear of course is that if your nose is all plugged up how can you breat the oxygen supplied by a tube in your nose. The common cold may not seem like a dangerous thing to most people but when your in end stage Alpha1 Antitrypsin Deficiency you can bet that it's a sure fire way to get yourself intubated if you don't take care of your symptoms early enough. We fully plan to take care of the symptoms early enough so I'm not so much worried as I am watchful.

Ahhhh... I can't wait to hug my kids today...
Sappy I know but I spent part of last night thinking how I had completely ignored them last week in my selfish little snotty world...

Oh that hot steamy shower is calling my sore achy body... I can already smell the irish spring soap I love so much!

Cheers!

Morning Sickness...

Hmmm, ok what the fark... I'm experiencing morning sickness? I go to sleep all stuffed up and I wake up so plugged that I cough and cough until I throw up... I always hate this phase of my colds... They always seem to hit me hard although I really only get sick about twice a year max, that's not bad for a guy who eats lots of fatty foods and washes all things down with coke or pepsi. Truth be told the cola part is true but being a celiac I eat a lot of whole foods.. Not processed...

Last week, I was proud of myself. Made gluten free Lasagna one day and it was delicious... Well my wife said there wasn't enough tomato sauce, but I loved it...

Tomorrow in the early AM I am off with my son (string bean) and mother to Toronto. My mother has been away from the physio room all week because of me. My cold is a scary thing when we are talking about people with end stage lung disease. Imagine the horror if I were to walk in sniffling and sneezing into the room ... I would be attacked by all the support people spraying their lysol and wiping me down with disinfectant wipes as they hurl me out of the room... hahahaha Anyhow my son had a hernia a little over a year ago... and a few months back he came screaming to me saying his hernia had come back. There was definetly a lump there so we took him to the Brampton Civic hospital where after a 9 hour wait they decided he was ok and sent him home. Told us to take him to the family doctor... So we did, after a few ultrasounds they told us they wanted Toronto Sick Kids hospital to deal with this one... As odd as we found it we thought... ok, he'll be in the best hands possible for sure... So a few ultra sounds later at sick kids the doctor informs me that my son does not have a reoccuring hernia but instead what looks like a very small fatty tumor on the femoral artery right side... Whoa Eh? Yeah so now here we are, going to a post operative appointment to sign all the "yeah we know it's risky" crap and get prepared for the surgery which they tell us will be rushed within two weeks... WOW I thought people were waiting for years for this kind of thing but the doctor wants to get to it quickly so ...

That's my rant for tonight, gonna finish wrapping up Ebay items to be sent out... Selling things is so rewarding, I just love it!

Cheers!

Gotta Digg the Geeks...

No that's not a spelling error.. Your not a true geek unless you've known the biggest geek of them all... I first talked to Chris way back when I still owned my Amiga 3000T, long before he was television famous... None the less I think instead of my turtle cam which will appropriately have it's own place to live 24/7 soon instead of the intermittent way it behaves now. I will put Chris's live stream up on the right, hopefully you get some use out of it...

Keep an eye out for this exciting transition :)

Oh, and yes my cold is improving, I now have the use of my left nostril. Oh Joy of Joy!

Ebay Whore...

OK so the past two days have been miserable... Got a cold and it's horrible... Can't sleep properly etc...

So I find myself tip toeing around my mother because if she gets sick then it's a sure fire trip to the emerg room where she will be admitted and be on more antibiotics etc... I'm not really in the mood to sit around a hospital waiting for her to get better but hey, at least there's free wifi there.

During my miserable moments I find some joy... Like how people for some odd reason purchase rather strange objects from me on Ebay. I guess it's sort of a hobby now, but who the heck would pay 2 bucks plus shipping for a scottish terrier doggie bottle opener? Well aparently someone's willing...

Not sure if THIS LINK works but give it a try!

It is suppose to bring you to my list of ebay items not so you can purchase them. Unless you want to But more to amuse you in how people pay for such silly things...

Cheers!

I've earned my wings... Ok actually just a Red Cross Pin...

Since energy is in short supply today I will blog as briefly as possible to avoid losing consciousness and hitting my head on the glass table that is directly beneath my keyboard... None of this is in Chronological order, I'll spew it out onto the keys as it enters my mind.

I took String bean with me today to Toronto General to have a good heart to heart talk with him, he's been doing some pretty strange things as of late. At his pediatrician's appointment today I expressed with sincerity how I felt he needs to talk to someone. The incident with the rat, the strange experiments he conducts with the food in our fridge etc... And of course his trouble concentrating in school. The Doctor agrees and is moving forward with visits to a child psychiatrist. I am relieved... So we return home with great expectations that he will get some help soon. My wife and I decide after fumbling around with some tax forms that we need to go pick up supper. So off to the local MacRaunchies we go for them and to Wendy's for me... Upon our return to the house with the food, as I walk in the door I smell the strong smell of smoke! Something had been on fire. I enter the kitchen and find my mother speaking in a soft voice to string bean. I am notified that he has just lit some paper towels on fire and they got it out quickly, he is sorry and promises never to use the bbq lighter again to amuse himself...

Yeah, my stress is quite high today!

On a brighter note, I donated whole blood for the first time in my life today. Felt good to give, and I will continue to give as long as they are willing to take :) I am even considering donating platelets, which I hear is extremely important to some cancer patients. I guess I figure if my mother is getting all this expensive treatment I can give something back to the world of medical science. And since I'm at the hospital 90% of the time It seems fitting to donate once in a while... It was a really simple and painless experience and I recommend anyone to donate blood. Takes very little time, less than 30 minutes including all the scary personal questions about being in contact with African monkey's in the past 60 days and or have I ever slept with a man, do I knowingly have AIDS etc...

I know to someone on the outside, it may look like I have a serial killer for a son. But he has been tested for psychopathic tendencies and he couldn't be farther from such scariness. He's a kind hearted boy who likes to experiment, but something is bothering him. And I am beginning to suspect that something has something to do with all the medical illness and death we are surrounded by in our family... So I believe having someone to talk to will help him to deal with it all rather than have him burn paper towels in my kitchen :)

Wow, I had more to say than I realized... Still have more to say but I'm going to refrain since I'm going to bed now... really really tired, Bah Humbug!

Escalators N Other Lucidity...

One of the things I almost never talk about is how hard it has been to raise a developmentally challenged child. While my string bean has not officially been diagnosed with anything. He has been tested for many things up to and including fragile X syndrome. For which he came back negative in the genetic testing department. I am not even sure where to begin with this except to say that String Bean has always been presented with challenges that my other two kids found easy. I am not sure if my wife and I were in denial but we have tried not to discuss any of the hurdles with others. This it would seem is not a good way to work things out with others who care about you and with String Bean himself, but it is how we handled it and we can only hope that it did not cause more harm than good.

As far as extended family goes we rarely talk about it. I wonder at family functions etc if my family members sense that he is different in some way but I can never be sure because no one speaks to us about it. No one has come to us and said, "Hey Don... Does your oldest boy ummmm... well is he.... Ummmmmm it's just that... well he's pulled his pants down and has a circle of people around him..." I have discussed his behavioral problems with his pediatrician but so far we are kind of spinning our wheels... Meanwhile the teachers keep telling me that he is getting farther and farther behind...

I am quite frustrated.

I love him so very much...

And I really just need to know he will be ok when I'm gone...

So I periodically refer to a dream that I had as a teenager... Yeah that is right, I had a lucid dream as a teenager that stuck in my head all these years... At the time I never understood it. Thought I was a bit nuts for carrying it with me for all these years but let me describe the dream and you will see why it was so eerie to me...

In the dream, I was with some people in a large shopping mall type place, something like Eatons center downtown Calgary with all the glass windows above. One escalator was going up, the other was going down... I do not know who the people were that I was with, nor can I be sure of exactly where I was. As I was going up the escalator I remember carrying a child. Now keep in mind I was only a teenager and this was long before my wife so it had placed me into a bit of a confusion... The child looked and felt normal to me, but as I was going up I remember the people on the other escalator, the one heading down were laughing, pointing and making fun of the child I had in my arms. I felt horrible, it rattled my guts. And when I awoke I just remember feeling so terrible for that child even though I had no idea who this child was.

Today, as I reflect on the many dysfunctions my son has had to deal with including rejection from some of his own Aunts and uncles. I realize that I am feeling that exact same feeling of hurt for him. I am a parent now, and now I understand that strange compassionate pain I felt when I awoke from that dream.

Does the dream really mean anything? Probably not. I was a messed up teenager and probably just felt sorry for myself. Some kind of Freudian message in my head that the shrinks would love to get their hands around...

Anyhow to make a long story even longer... I have a lot to say about mistakes I have made with my son being different from the others. But I can not possibly squeeze it all into one session. Your hour is up, I'll see you at next session...

Daddy's proud...

My blonde haired, blue eyed, baby gurl has joined a bollywood dance club... :) Those songs are all so catchy and rhythmic...

Ohhhh, what will she do to surprise me next :)

Rump Roast...

Was gonna blog at the end of the day yesterday but was so exhausted and cranky from the way the kids were behaving that I thought I'd much rather be in my soft cozy bed...

I was all prepared to go on a rampage with my words, telling you how horrible my kids were being to me but instead I have decided that they were just being kids and it was me that was over reacting...

Now with that said, I have a friend who writes a blog and occasionally she mentions her kids too in her blogs. But like the smart girl that she is she does not refer to them by their real names.. Stalkers, freaks etc you get the point... So I will now follow the same train of thought.

String Bean (Oldest Boy), Baby Gurl (Girl in da middle), and Dozer (always my little baby boy)...

So String Bean and Dozer were in the basement getting their usual online gaming fix. I had given them permission to use my main comp, the one with the 37 inch LCD monitor so it's a bit of a dream for a kid. And my laptop so that they can play against each other... I believe the lingo these days is "Verse". Well being my office there would be stacks of important papers etc beside the laptop, not unusual as you can imagine by any means. In that very stack of papers was some important tax information for my home business. Stuff that needs to be filed soon, never in a million years did I dream of what I would see on the floor when I came downstairs to check on them... My oldest boy, scissors in hand had crafted not one but one dozen perfect little paper air planes. All about the size of a butterfly, and all out of the tax papers that I now have to phone and have re issued...

Remember the steam whistle on "The Flintstones" when Fred was done work in the quarry? Well that sound emanated from my ears, and so did the steam!

So after screaming at them (over reacting) like I usually do, I had them clean up, then I went upstairs. My wife consoling me as I mulled over how I would deal with the Canada Revenue Agency... Then I returned about 15 minutes later to discover that he had also taken one of the gold fish out of mom's aquarium and fed it to our hungry looking turtle, yeah the one you see in this blog. And if that wasn't enough he and his brother Dozer had decided to check out what was inside an etch a sketch... SMASH, there goes the plastic cover on the front... I walked into the bathroom where my son stood in front of the sink with a worried look on his face, and silver stuff all over his hands...

All I could say was... You know that belongs to your sister right?

UGHHH...

Calgon, take me away!

I did over react, and I guess the other stresses in my life really guided me away from the correct way to act which would have been to give them a hug, giggle a little and explain to them that tax information is very important and that blank paper makes the same quality paper airplanes etc...

Oh well, one more for the books. I just hope that this one leaves only a small hole in my children's psyche.

Do I have too much time on my hands or what?

So last night, I'm sitting at my computer... I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do financially next month... I've got taxes to do and no energy to do it, Business paperwork to tidy up too but all I could concentrate on was how the hell I was gonna waterproof one of the cameras I had layin' around so that it could broadcast my roughly 250 gallon turtle aquarium.

So high temp silicone in hand, you know the red stuff. And a camera in the other I started to dab onto threads, and into the holes of the metal outdoor camera. It's already half ass weather proof but it was not fully water proof.

Well it is now, and if your not one of the paranoid people who has every java applet and pop up disabled you can see it on the right column of this blog.

It is also available at a direct URL http://mousecrash.com/tuckercam.html for those of you who would rather just disable java blocking on one page instead of this entire page...

Let me know if it does not work for you, I know that three people who tested it for me today said it worked fine, one of them could even see me in there scrubbing algae off the glass and ultimately flipping them the bird. But one tester from a large corporation in Ottawa wasn't able to view it, I think his company's firewall had a little somethin' to do with that..

Anywhooo!
Check it out, and send me some feed back on it for god sakes...

Nice Security Measures...

In Ontario, 2009 you would seriously think that your medical records should be kept safe... Well let me tell you a quick story...

My son, is awaiting surgery at a Toronto hospital, the surgeon asked me to obtain the post operative report from another hospital where he had surgery a year prior. So I walked into said hospital to the records department and said "Hi, my son had surgery a year ago here and he is in another hospital awaiting a different kind of surgery the surgeon asked me to come get his post op report..." She asked me his name, I gave her the name and within 30 seconds a printout was handed to me. I looked at her and said... "Ummmm do I need to sign anything?" "NOPE!, that's it..."

WTF?

You can bet I'll be sending a message to the Onbudsman of that hospital now...

I also wanted to tell you about Nibbles the rat, we got him around the same time we got Gord... well since the day we brought nibbles home he sneezed and coughed.. WTF we got another patient in the house with respiratory illness? Ok so anyhow waited a few weeks and it wasn't going away so I broke down after my teary eyed son came and told me that if his best friend dies he's gonna feel pretty rotten...

$110.00 later, Nibbles and his bottle of antibiotics are home, I've got pure oxygen piped into the cage "Thankfully that is in large supply in our house" and if he gets worse I'll be working out a way to use my mom's nebilizer to stablize Nibble's breathing...

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps my head needs a shake!

Or perhaps I just care to damn much!

Cheers!

TGH is world class...

Without a doubt, TGH is world class, I've always believed that and I know that my mom's in good hands there. We have forged friendships with dozens of people over the past 6 months and have seen many successes come from the transplants. I have heard of a couple of failures, didn't know them personally but overall it has been amazing. In today's meeting we listened to two people from a small city 36 miles outside of London England. They came to observe the way Toronto General Hospital handles transplants. Their professional position would be equal to that of our two transplant coordinators. It was a really great experience to hear how things are done in England, then to quickly lend praise once again to our amazing transplant team.

All in all, the day was good though I could have done without the 3 hour wait for clinic today. We ultimately left the clinic at 4:30pm not even being able to rebook an appointment for 2 months from now because they had already shut down the computer at the front desk. We were the last ones to leave the clinic it seemed...

Since I am a hardcore geek, and one who does not often follow rules I took the liberty to poke around at the doctor's terminal while they were off doing something to entertain themselves in another room. Each time they left us there and forgot to lock their workstation I would fumble through the various tabs and files that is my mother. And I learned a few things through reading... First and most disturbing, I am referred to in a few of the texts as "the husband" hahahaha something I quickly pointed out to the doctor the next time she entered the room, I know who made the error and I plan on correcting this the next chance I can get her into a corner to talk... Secondly I learned that my mother is listed as "status 1" which basically means she is stable and not expected to die anytime soon. So this puts her into a situation where the donor lungs must not be a good match for anyone else but her before she is to recieve them. She will be chosen second for them. How do I know this? Because when the doctor returned I begun to explain to her how I had been reading the screen and so she explained, and confirmed this fact to me. If you are listed as a "Status 2" then they consider your condition to be deteriorating and thus you are put much higher on their agenda for getting transplanted.

I am quite pleased that she is stable, but I still hope a good solid pair of lungs becomes available as I am mentally ready to move onto the next step in her care.

Since my mother has diabetes, currently controlled with pills, they have told us that post transplant she will almost certainly become insulin dependant. "Did anyone ever tell you this before?" the good doctor said to us...

Well all in all, some things were confirmed in my mind, and with her latest deep seeded infection out of the way we are ready for the next step...

I am also finding that a lot of you are asking me for status updates. In emails, on facebook etc... I hope you understand that it is far more efficient for me to blog when things change. And if I do not have any recent blogs about my mother's condition then it purely means that she is the same and that there is nothing to worry about...

You can bet your arse that I will blog my brains out when situations change, I can't wait more than a few hours before I let it all out in type...

Cheers!

Things to come...

I hope it was an indication of things to come, we spoke with someone who works "In the loop" so to speak. Can't mention her name cause she will be in trouble but she has become a good friend of ours over the past 6 months, she sees all and knows all in the transplant world and she has informed us without details that there were 9 successful transplants in the month of December.

Today of course, after a long two week break we returned to the treadmill room. Found many of our friends still breathing heavy but moving forward in good spirits. And there were a few miracles, people who had previously been strapped with all the none sense involved with being sick with respiratory hellishness. Tubeless and scarred they now walk through the tread mill room with their heads held high.

When oh when will we get the call?

Now I guess that we have made progress ourselves though, gotten the infection under control and they will make my mom a higher priority I guess. I have to trust that our good coordinator will make the right decisions and proceed with efforts for my mom's survival through more of their superior care. But yet I am still somewhat frustrated... Extremely happy for the people who we have befriended but frustrated that it was not yet our turn...

I am, effectively... Financially strapped... Very little work is accomplished in between and my search for new work during the hours that I am available has been intense...

Enough of that for now,

I must not mention anyone's name here with my next frustration because this particular person is not well and I certainly don't want to contribute to their delusions. I've worked with him at more than one job location, witnessed more than one delusional event myself in fact. Pondered why he's heating his trailer with a hair dryer etc... Enjoyed the joys of being left without a work partner while he was fixated on his drug fixes... And I've even had to work a double shift because he didin't show up for work a few times... but hey... he's a friend, and someone who oddly enough I have things in common with!

I don't expect you to get it, it's a bit of a mess. None the less I am a bit frustrated that he left his comfortable and "safe" place. Suddenly he gets a bit of money in his pocket and then poof he moves to a place still over a day away from me. ARGHHHHHH

Well enough of that, this blog is more of a frustration release for me and when he reads this he will understand it but as I said before, with his paranoia I don't want to freak him out... I just wish he would have communicated with me a bit more about this because now I'm worried he may not be prepared for the cross Canada trek... I know for me at least it was very expensive to move my entire family, for one person and a few duffle bags perhaps it will be less...

Confuzzled yet?

New Look...

OK so I was a bad boy, I took a free template and modified the heck out of it :) So what eh?

That image of me on the post it note, yeah that's my self portrait done in GIMP... Does it look like me?

Anyhow, I really need to get some sleep it's 4:39am and I have to go to Toronto in a few hours with my mom, first day back at the physio therapy room... YAY!

Check out the videos on the video list displayed in the right hand column... You'll really get a kick out of them!

Cheers!

Head Spinning, Exorcist style!

So I thought this might be a quiet day, started off quiet... Picked up the Tim Hortons for the addicts in the house etc... Drove my wife to work.. you know da deal...

Then, the kids wanted to go skating so we found ourselves at Gage park... Fun FUn FUn... for the kids that is, they had a good time but I stood around for 2 hours talking to people and freezing my A$$ off... Ughh...

Once we returned home the neighborhood kids started piling into the house one by one we introduced them to our german sheppard doggie and now I have 9 neighborhood kids in the house playing rock band, internet gaming, television, and a synthesizer keyboard...

ALL AT THE LOUDEST VOLUME POSSIBLE so they can hear their own songs...

Fun Fun Fun...

Hmmmm, do you smell something burning?
I gotta go!

Cheers!

New Years Chuckle...

I am a proud member of the geeks community, on new years eve Chris Pirillo was taking in donations for the IRC network responsible for the excellent chat experience found at Chris's site. Anyhow in exchange for donations Chris was doing some rather silly things. I have posted a video blog of Chris singing "King of Spain" as per my request on Christmas eve... Totally hilarious!

Check it out at http://terminalgeek.blogspot.com
Cheers!

Happy New Year!!!

As usual, my family and I did the quiet new year. We don't celebrate it really... Never have... But the kids had a chance to sneak over to our neighbor's house where they were greeted by dozens of neighborly people and a fireworks show. I'm not talkin' about corner convenience store type fireworks, my neighbor goes all out. I would have taken photos but I was watching "The bucket list" with my wife...

Yes, I had to fight back the tears. It was a good movie...

There was no drinking this year. Not even a glass, cause low and behold I have a person on a transplant list who can get called at any time. So I spent the better part of the new years online chatting with some of my friends, including Chris Pirillo who isn't a direct friend per say but I've known him since his ICQ days Ohhhhhhhh must have been a half century ago when he wasn't famous, way before all his television stardome. Somehow he had forgotten those days when I hadn't. A true sign of becoming famous must be that you forget the conversations you had earlier on in life. Anyhow he's got an awsome little geek hideout at http://geeks.pirillo.com you should check it out...

Installed ventrilo on my laptop, and ubuntu server edition on a PIII 600Mhz miniHP pc so I can spark up the ol' mail server again... I may be taking a new shift on the whole internet monopoly thing here pretty soon and I want to be damn sure that my business maintains it's ability to send/recieve email...

New years resolutions? Hmmm I don't do that sort of thing but I do have personal goals. I always follow through on my personal goals, in fact I can honestly say that I have never faultered on one yet in my 37 years of existance... That should do just nicely, not really in a proper blogging mood at 7:54am.

Off I go to make sure my son, who just left the bathroom, didin't pee on the seat. Knuckle heads sometimes they are...

CHeers!