Whig Hill

Quick Dad update.

So last week my mom and dad were in New Hampshire for the annual Graham brothers vacation in North Conway and they're all hiking and kayaking and sliding down zip lines (for real) and on the way back home everything crashed. They stopped at a hospital in Scranton friggin Pennsylvania were he was laid up with fever, infections, pain, and breathing problems. Seems just like last October with him going into respiratory distress and all.

Strange thing is my mom and everyone else with him in the hospital says the hospital is wonderful and the staff went out of their way to make them all comfortable. And the doctors seem to have a better idea of what is going on that at the usual hospital. At least they act like they do. But, still... Scranton.

He's got pneumonia again. His immunity has dried up. (He was scheduled for more chemo last Monday.) And get this... apparently he now has emphysema. Since he's got just about everything at this point, the new diagnosis doesn't concern me all that much.

Good news is they got him stabilized enough to medevac him to Walter Reed. He's there now and my mom has had to make the drive alone. I don't know what will happen next. Maybe he'll get better. Maybe this is it. Sad thing is...I've become accustomed to typing that.

Some new things on the internet

I'm jetting off to 1864-land for the weekend but I'm leaving the following to keep you entertained.

Flickr page for the North State Rifles.

Facebook.

My Last.fm (added to the sidebar and also accessible through my facebook page).

My del.icio.us

Help!

Can anyone possibly come over to my house Sunday morning and feed Lizzie and let her out? And possibly Saturday night?

Who knew?

  Durham Hebrew Cemetary 
  Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

Alright, raise your hands if you knew Durham had a Hebrew Cemetery?            Not so fast, Graham.

It's in the southeast corner of Mapleview Cemetery. This gate is on Morehead Avenue.

Also, here is tonite's playlist.

Lucky you

Lucky you, I decided not to bore everyone with the details of my diabetes boot camp. I did plan on writing a big post about it once I get my glucose numbers into the normal range, but that is proving more difficult than anticipated. I’m still hovering in the mid-to-high-100s and in the last two days have broken 200 a couple of times. Not good, but I’m adjusting the medicine to make it right.

Oh, hell, I’ll just bullet point some things in random order:

• To loose weight, I’ve been eating small portions of well-balanced meals. Thin sliced turkey, whole-wheat English muffins, strawberries, spinach, broccoli, milk, and water. And lots of coffee. I haven’t eaten out yet except for going to the C&H Cafeteria where I can get a grilled chicken breast, plain, and lima beans and greens.

• That cafeteria isn’t the only place I’ve been hanging out around old people. I’ve been going to the YMCA at American Tobacco three times a week for the low-tone/cardio/stretching class. It’s me, the instructor(s) and about a dozen, ahem, retirees and I’m this big, tall, awkward guy and the old people are so way ahead of me on all the aerobics steps. Funny stuff…and good for me; this old body hasn’t lifted a weight in it’s life or done any serious sustained exercise so these baby steps are a good way to send the message to my muscles and bones to wake up and stretch out ‘cause they’re getting ready to go to work.

• All this diet and calorie burning isn’t working as fast as I’d hoped. When I lost thirty pounds back in 2001, it came off fast. That’s not happening this time. I blame age and Paxil, the later well known to cause weight gain. I started out at 221 pounds and I’m only down to 216 after almost three weeks. Kind of disappointing. But we’ll get there.

• For those interested, I’m up to 20 units of Lantus a day.

• You remember when I was on Seroquel last year? Yeah. A number of you told me about that drug’s tendency to contribute to diabetes. I asked the doctor about this and she basically said… “yeah… might have.” Pretty much nothing anyone can do about it now.

• When the glucose in my blood started dropping I started having really bad blurred vision. So I called that in and they sent me to the eye doctor who determined it wasn’t glaucoma or diabetes in the eye (yikes!). Doctor said that when glucose levels fluctuate, this happens and that it would stop when they level off. Didn’t solve the problem of not being able to see anything in front of me so he recommended some cheap reading glasses from the drug store and I got some.

• I put two and two together and asked the eye doctor about some blurred vision problems I had last December (for which I went to the eye doctor, who found nothing) and he confirmed that’s likely when the diabetes set in.

Alright, that’s it for now.

Washington Duke

  Washington Duke 
  Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It is a previously unknown photograph of Washington Duke, discovered by Steve Massengill. Read about it here.