Catch 22

OK - today I brought my computer to school to have one of my friends who is in the IT dept here take a look at it. I booted it up in my classroom first to see if I could pull up my daily schedule to go over with my assistants and make any modifications. Well, my computer decided to work today. I have a TON of work to do on it to get ready for class here, so I was caught in a quandry as to whether to take it to the tech and then not be able to get that stuff done, or work on it while it was working - saving everything to my flash drive OF COURSE. I chose the latter and will bring my machine home tonight to hopefully use it to write my "dear parents" letter to hand out on Friday. I guess I'll bring it back here tomorrow to have my friend take a look.

Tony - I did run the cmd prompt & it came up with 0.0.0.0 both times. The only disk I got from you was the Microsoft XP Professional disk that I got from you this summer. Last summer I didn't get any disks from you with this machine. So I don't have the Dell diagnostic one. I will ask my IT friend here if he has one.

Peyton - I'm gonna ask my friend to pop the cover off & look at the ribbon since I've never taken a computer apart myself :)

Isabelle - I have Norton anti-virus running on this machine & it updates everytime I'm connected to the internet. I periodically do the entire system scan for viruses, which I will run again tonight if my machine decides to cooperate!

Miss you all!

Sympathy Sleep Loss

When I first moved to South Carolina my sister was pregnant. Whenever she would forget anything we would blame it on Pregnancy Memory Loss. Well, for some reason that year I started developping this crazy forgetfulness which I labeled Sympathy Pregnancy Memory Loss.

My sister is pregnant with number three - he's due to arrive September 18th although he seems to be threatening early arrival. My sister was just bemoaning her lack of sleep yesterday. Well, last night I didn't sleep very well. I'm calling it Sympathy Sleep Loss...

I started a Herbal Anti-Parasite/Amoeba Cleanse last night and I have to take this toxin absorber just before bed with a big glass of organic apple juice followed by a big glass of water. So where am I supposed to find organic apple juice in Africa??? The directions said you could make your own, so I took the four suggested apples and tried to figure out without the directions how to make the juicer thing work on our blender. I was unsuccessful so I just ended up putting the 4 peeled apples in with some bottled water and creating a runny applesauce. I mixed that with the toxin absorber, but that made it really thick, so then mixed in more water, and MORE water. Eventually I drank it, the taste wasnt bad, but some of the powder got a little clumpy. So then I had the plain water. All that ammounted to me getting up 3 times in the night to use the bathroom... Plus, because of the digestive stimulator i took before dinner and then the toxin absorber which pulls the toxins and mucous out of your intestinal lining (yuck!) I had my innerds making all sorts of rummbling noises and felt bloated and uncomfortable. then it was kind of stuffy in my room because i wanted the window/shades closed to keep out the sunlight which wakes me up at 6 regardless of the fact that it's saturday (the sun is so unforgiving!). When I woke up at 5:24 not only did i have to get up to use the toilet but there was also a mosquito buzzing around. So, I turned on the hall light and opened the door for a bit hoping he would exit. As a precaution for my face i tried to sleep with the covers over my head, just in case. Of course that made it even stuffier in my room... I ended up getting up at 8am, which I realize is not early for moms of young whippersnappers, but didn't give me as much sleep as I was hoping for.

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My friend Reta is still in the clinique and I was there Thursday & Friday with her. She had another session of dialysis yesterday afternoon and may be transferred to Paris on Monday. They still do not know the cause of the kidney failure but have several positive signs that her kidneys have started functioning some on their own. Please keep praying!

On Again, Off Again

So, this morning my computer worked long enough for me to do the edits on the paper I finished yesterday. As I was typing an email to my professor, the screen went black. I think that the email with the paper attached went through - but I still have NO IDEA what to do about my screen problem.

Prayers please!

Computers!

So, I am plugging away working on projects for grad classes, trying to get them done before I start teacher orientation on Thursday. Tonight I started having some WEIRD computer problems with my screen. I had left the computer to go do something in the kitchen and when I came back it was in sleep mode & I couldn’t get the screen to come back up. Very faintly in the background I could see what should have been on the screen, but not well enough to figure out where my mouse was. I did control+alt+delete and could vaguely see that screen pop up in the foreground. I finally held the power button to shut down the machine. I waited a few minutes and then rebooted. It booted up fine so I immediately saved my projects to my flash drive. After about an hour I shut down the computer to go run an errand. When I came back I powered it up, but this time I had problems again. I saw the first Windows XP screen come up fine, but then just before the blue “Welcome” screen the back light went dark and I couldn’t see anything on the screen. Eventually I tried running my mouse down so it would be in the START button vicinity and clicked. Faintly I could see the start menu come up, so I guessed at where the shut down button was. I faintly saw the Standby/Shutdown/Restart box come up but couldn’t find my mouse to make a selection, so just ended up shutting down with the power button again. I tried twice more to restart the computer, but each time it came up dark so I manually shut it down with the power button. I waited an hour and tried again. Now it’s working fine. What in the world??? I would think if it was a hardware problem that I would not have seen the first screen clearly every time I rebooted. Plus, it wouldn’t go back to working now. I’m afraid that this is just temporarily working and have no idea what to check or look for.

Any ideas???

Quick Update

I spent most of Friday and Saturday at the clinic with my friend Reta. We went to another clinic where they do all sorts of scans, but specialize in scans of the kidneys. It was amazing to see what they can do with these new scanning devices - wow! Kinda made me want to be doctor. Anyway, they ruled out an obstruction of any veins or arteries into/out of the kidneys, which means they really don't know why her kidneys decided to shut down, but it's bacterial not organic. Her creatin & urea counts were still insanely high, so when they got those back they took her directly back to dialysis and did second round this afternoon. The doctor told us they were at 100 yesterday and at 88 today. I don't know anything about kidneys, so those didn't sound too bad to me, but she looked like I should think they sounded terrible so I asked her what a normal count was. She told me 12. I asked 12? like 1-2? Yes, 8 to 12. Oh, no wonder the first doctor freaked out when she saw the counts after the first set of blood work. So far we have seen 6 doctors - they are all collaborating quite nicely. After every set of blood work, x-rays or scans we are even given the documentation - to keep! The nephrologist seems to be doing an incredible job of keeping everybody on one page and calling the shots. We are now waiting on more blood work to come back to find out what sort of infection has caused the kidney problems.

doctors and more doctors

This week I have spent a good chunk of my time translating. A friend of mine (Reta) got sick about a month ago, apparently from a salad with bad mayonnaise. She saw her doctor and he gave her an antibiotic to get her over the food poisoning. Instead of getting better she has progressively gotten worse over the past month, but couldn't go back to her English speaking doctor because he had left for his month of vacation and is out of the country. So I suggested that I make an appointment for her at my doctor's office and I would go with her to translate.

MONDAY we went to the general practitioner. Her symptoms didn't seem to line up with an amoeba or parasite, so the doctor did an ultrasound and found out she has a problem with her kidneys. Monday was a holiday, so we grabbed some medication from the pharmacy and had a list of bloodwork to get done on Tuesday.

TUESDAY my friend had her bloodwork done and her husband brought it over to the doctors office in the afternoon. He said the doctor freaked out when she saw the levels of something and said they couldn't possibly be right and told him to bring his wife back in the morning.

WEDNESDAY I went with them back to the doctor and they had another set of blood work done in the morning and asked us to return in the afternoon. The doctor called me in the afternoon and asked me to be there for their consultation to translate. I went back with them at 5pm and she said the results showed the same thing and she was afraid Reta's kidneys were shutting down. She ordered some tests from a cardiologist and a nefrologist (kidney specialist), and said that most likely Reta would need dialysis, but the tests needed to be done first so they would know what was going on in there before starting treatment.

THURSDAY my friends picked me up for the 1pm appointment with the cardiologist. He was awesome. He said that there were no concerns in regards to Reta's heart (she had a previous condition they wondered about), but was VERY concerned that she see the kidney specialist immediately. We went from there to the generalist's office and after a brief consultation got sent to a clinic where we saw 3 more doctors (between a lot of waiting). They decided after more blood work and another ultrasound to do a scan this morning. I got home around 9:30pm and am heading over now to translate again today. Please keep these friends in your prayers.

My French medical vocabulary has doubled this week.

Smiles at the Airport

Packing pandemonium!


New Jersey to Paris to Africa...
with smiles to fly by.

Philly Goodbyes

Sisters


African American dress up


Auntie Bec and her first nephew

Year Two

Well, Year Two has officially started. No, I haven't started teaching yet, but I do go back to the office on Monday.

I arrived "home" about an hour ago, so here I am letting you all know that I did make it back - and the BIG news - so did my luggage! I got to the Newark NJ airport early and checked-in in record time, but they couldn't give me boarding passes for the second leg of my trip as those were temporarily suspended for that flight. That didn't sound too good. Just after we got on the plane and got settled we heard the lovely PA system anouncing that we would be delayed for two hours due to thunderstorms. (Um Kim, next time I'll pass on the transferance!) After about an hour of dying in the the non-airconditioned plane, we got the ok to head out to a runway. In Paris I found out where my second flight left from and that it was delayed, so I went to the counter to find out what they had me doing. In the end the printed me a boarding pass and told me to run to the gate. I asked them if there was any possible chance my luggage would make it on the same plane and they assured me it would be there. I told them about my unfortunate luggage experience in January, so they looked up my baggage claim numbers and re-assured me they would be on the flight. Once on the plane we waited FOREVER. Finally a voice came over the loudspeaker explaining that we were late taking off because we were waiting for luggage to get to the plane. It just might have been mine because both suitcases came through the luggage chute at my final destination - ah!!!

My wonderful roommate was there to meet me - she even brought flowers! It was great to see a familiar face. It's funny, now that I'm back I almost feel like I never left. Such a weird feeling!

Anyway, now I'm tired and a little wilted and headed for a good shower!

Later!