Spiritual Slide Shows

In an unrelated post from the recovery of surgery, I’m reminiscing a bit: When my siblings and I were growing up, we used to spend our summer vacations on loooonnnnggg road trips to visit grandparents. To entertain us in the back of the family station wagon, we had a big cloth bag of travel toys. Each new trip usually yielded an addition or two to the bag. Sometimes the "toy" was a children’s storybook cassette tape combo. One trip we got "The Empire Strikes Back." I’ve been looking for this tape for a long time and last week my brother found it hiding in a place at my folk’s house that I never thought to look. 

So I couldn’t resist digitizing it and posting it online for all to listen to/download at their leisure:

The Empire Strikes Back Children's StoryBook Tape [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I asked my dad to be the unofficial photographer for this experience and only recently got a hold of the pictures he’s taken with his camera. (Thanks Dad) since there wasn’t anyone in any sort of position to post the pictures online, I’m now "going back in time" and adding pictures to some of the posts so that readers can have a visual of what things have been like. (more…)

Okay, the title of this post is a lame attempt at making fun of a really old song: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" so I’m only trying to make boring news not so boring. Today I went back to the neurosurgeon’s office so he could check out the progress of my healing of my last surgery for the shunt. Here’s a photo: (more…)

Jesus Christ – Christus Statue,
originally uploaded by midiman.

I was messing around on the blog today composing some thoughts together, and decided to head off to my Flickr.com account only to discover that a picture I had taken of a replica of a famous statue of Jesus Christ had worked its way to the top of my most interesting pictures. For months and months it was this one:

Which was just a lucky shot when I was on a business trip. Flickr’s algorithm (computerized method) for determining interestingness depends on a number of factors; including how many people click on the picture to view it in their browser, comment on it, etc. Part of the appeal of being involved with how people consume media is looking at overall trends, and I’m glad to see that Jesus Christ is among the popular topics in Flickr’s community of users and otherwise general web surfers when in fact there could be a whole lot of other stuff to consume.

Anyway it made for a good reason to post to the blog today. No other news or changes to report, just that I finally got to go back to church today and see the people I regularly associate with on Sunday and other days of the week given the opportunity.

I had a follow up visit with my neuro-oncologist today. She’s been the one assigned to my case since my first diagnosis and resection 5 years ago. I’ve been seeing her about every 3-4 months as needed as part of the original prognosis and treatment which was to be on observation and see what happened as a result of the first tumor resection. Being on observation was a fairly common treatment option at the time. I’ve been told that other forms of treatment such as radiation only get better with time and it’s better to do it only when it’s necessary so I don’t feel gipped in the least bit. However, since observation (as a treatment) has revealed a recurrence, the options have changed: (more…)

This isn’t a big news item, but asking rhetorically, whenever you have something done to your body, aren’t you the least bit curious how your new "enhancements" work? Shunts have been around for a while, but my neurosurgeon really likes the variety that he uses. Here’s why:

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I’m back home from the hospital post-surgery for my shunt. It seems to have started doing its job: draining my head of excess fluid and reducing the pressure that was causing the head pain. I feel better in terms of the major headaches that were coming from that. But at what cost?
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Not a big news item, but in lieu of having my staples removed from my surgical incision (they’re starting to itch), the neurosurgeon declared upon seeing me that I wouldn’t be able to have them out until the fluid buildup issue has been taken care of. Apparently there’s more cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the resection area than needs to be there and is causing swelling on the exterior of my head. This is also likely responsible for the extra pain I’ve been experiencing.

So… (more…)

It’s been 1 week since my surgery and I’m scheduled tomorrow to get the staples removed from the surgical procedure used to get inside my head. The last time I had surgery it was sutures, but this time it was all metal. I’m trying to imagine what it must feel like to be the person responsible for going down a 6-inch insision on someone’s head and line it with staples.

I wonder what they’ll use to take them out?? (more…)

I’m home and comfortable in company (Thanks Mom and Dad!) but not completely. I brought a friend home with me that I’ve been trying to keep under wraps: Pain.

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