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Tuesday,  May 23^rd 2000

I've been doing some of the vestibular rehabilation exercises from the AN Archive's webpage.  The vertigo is weird; I'll be doing fine and then it just suddenly shows up without any warning.  I bought some more travel tubes of Dramamine pills to carry in my jacket and car just in case I need them.

I used some Refresh eyedrops before I went to bed, just to be on the safe side, and was pleased to find myself sleepy at a reasonable bedtime.  As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the horrorifying sensation of a thin, watery fluid trickling in my nose - an abnormal sensation quite unlike hay fever or a cold.  Oh, crap, not a CSF leak!

Trying not to let the drip escape the nasal cavity, I hunted through my bags for the plastic jar of chemical test strips the nurse gave me in the hospital.  I got the drip onto the strip and ... it didn't change color.  I finally realized the Refresh eyedrop fluid had overfilled my eye and trickled down the tear drainage duct into my nasal cavity.  Well, golly!  Didn't know that could happen.  Learn something new every day.

Finally getting close to a normal sleep schedule - slept 7 hours straight.  Feeling great today.  No vertigo at all, and I made it through the whole day without an irresistable need for a nap.  I did lie down to read a book in the afternoon, but that's all.  I should mention, for fellow patients, that I get a moderate headache about once every three days - nothing a few ibuprofin can't handle.

Got a headache this morning, but I don't think that has anything to do with recovery - I've read three Harry Potter books in four days, which can have an affect on your head.  I really have to screw my face up into bizarre shapes to see any paresis on the left side now.  Almost back to 100%.  Definitely at H-B level I.

Tinnitus is unchanged, as is hearing.  It really is surprising how rarely I notice the apparently total loss of hearing on the left side.  But in crowded or noisy areas, it can be hard to understand what people say.  I've read that most people see better with both eyes open, perhaps because best of the two images is combined into one image.  The same is true for hearing - the brain combines the two signals into one and the result is more than the sum of its parts.

The biggest annoyance is trying to figure out where a sound is coming from.  Some sounds are easy to locate, others darned near impossible.  Hard to figure out why they fall into whichever category.  Music, of course, is affected.  For example, Fanfare for the Common Man seems to have less "depth" in mono than it did in stereo.

The vertigo is still unpredictable.  Most of the time it's not noticable, and then suddenly, I've got so much headspin it tires me out to walk.  I appear to be over the nausea while riding or driving a car, but I have had to stop and rest a few times when the vertigo got really bad.  The loss of stamina is similar:  it's not noticable most of the time, but a lot of walking of standing up can suddenly, without warning, become exhausting.  I'm going to have to start exercising to get my strength back.

Monday, June 19^th 2000

Right after surgery, I was always hungry.  I'd eat as much as I could at dinner, and then just a few hours later I'd be hungry again.  Something to do with healing, I'm sure.  My appetite appears to have returned to normal now, although I'm sure it will pick up when I start exercising to get my strength back.

Despite having no real hearing in my AN ear, I still have fairly bad tinitus.  It is so sensitive to external sound that just typing this page out on the keyboard causes a ringing sound with each keystroke.  (Although I DID once get a "loudest typest" award from my coworkers)  This is not, as I used to think, evidence that my hearing is returning in the AN ear.  An earplug in the AN ear does not prevent the tintitus from responding to noise, but putting an earplug in the normal ear completely prevents it.  Not sure what that means for recovery.

I mentioned one of the reasons I chose surgery over radiation was that I was a worry-wart (just who you want for an engineer) who knew he would be constantly bothered by the tumor.  I should also mention that I knew I was headed for a catch-22:  Worry about the tumor after radiosurgery, or worry about losing the hearing in the good ear if the AN ear was deaf after microsurgery.  Got an earache in my right ear (the good ear) and worried I was going completely deaf.  Bah!

When I moved back into my place 3 months after the fire, I was never able to find my clocks.  I have a little room upstairs I use for storage - if you had an infant in a crib you might call it a bedroom.  Today I walked in late at night, when the street noise was gone, and I heard a very faint tick - tick - tick.  I felt like it was a cruel joke - watch the guy with no directional hearing try to find the ticking clock in one of the 50 or so boxes in the room.  With one ear, I often have to play "hotter - colder" with a sound until I find it.  Some sounds can be located front-to-back or up-and-down if they're on my good side, but a ticking clock apparently isn't one of those sounds.  It took half an hour, but I finally found it:  three quartz clocks, one still running.  I hung them up and the battery on the only running clock died by morning!

Helped my landlord, Clark, fix the front porch lights.  I'm begining to figure out this fatigue thing - I can work almost as hard as I used to until suddenly:   WHAM!   I'm exhausted.  Clark had to stop partway through the job to run an errand and I was asleep soon after.  A few hours later, he returned and we finished the job.  When I packed up my tools I suddenly realized I was almost too tired to move.  I think if I keep getting more exercise, my energy reserves will keep increasing.

Another comment - people with intermittant vertigo should be VERY CAREFUL on ladders, even itty-bitty short ladders.  Nearly cracked my head open just 2 feet off the ground when gravity suddenly seemed to go sideways for five or ten seconds.

Went the whole day without the shooting pain in my left ear, but then I sat down at the computer to do my e-mail, update this page, fix errors I keep finding in the website, etc.  After two hours on the computer, I had a couple dozen zaps.  I blame it more on fatigue than anything else.  I was out like a light when I finally trundled off to bed.

Exercise definitely helps - slept eight (almost) uninterrupted hours for the first time since surgery.  Opened my eyes twice and just went right back to sleep.

On the other hand, I've been exhausted ALL DAY.  I think yesterday I used up all of today's energy.  Fell asleep as soon as I got home after an errand.

And here's MORE evidence that some powerful force in the universe hates my guts!  My car just started making an unpleasant grinding and clunking noise, apparently in the steering mechanism.  Sounds like a failing CV joint.  Let's play "Locate and identify the source of the weird sound coming from the car!"  This game is tough enough when you've got TWO working ears.

OK.  It turned out to be wheel bearings instead of a CV joint.  My pocketbook only hurts when I laugh
(More. More. Still more.  That helped, didn't it?)

My vertigo seems to be improving - I still get periods of dizzyness, but they seems to be getting less intense and less frequent.  Tinnitus is awful today - it changes like the wind.  Right now it sounds like a dental phaser * set on "molar eradication."        * source

Today the Mariners kicked Baltimore's butt in at Safeco Field and I was there.  What a great game!  0-2 in the eighth and Baltimore actually went through four pitchers in one inning as the Mariners load the bases, and then win 4-2 with a grand slam.  Safeco is an amazing, wonderful, ballpark, but at half a billion dollars, I guess it better be.  My 3 1/2  year old niece made it through 5 innings and then collapsed into angelic sleep on her father's lap.

The screaming crowd was hard on my remaining ear, but I just wadded up a little tissue to make an emergency earplug and I was fine.  I got separated from my family on the way out of the stadium, and I discovered another delimma of the "half-deaf."  When someone shouts my name, I may or may not be able to hear it or determine where the shout came from.

I was fine otherwise.  I just made sure I sat to the left of everyone else, and walked on the left side to and from the game, and I had no problems conversing.  I drove myself on the freeway today for the fourth time since surgery, if anybody is counting.

Saw Dr. Mangham again today.  Astonishingly, a teensey bit of gelfoam managed to remain undissolved in my outer ear, which he removed.  Audiograms show no measureable hearing in the left ear.  The audiologist cranked up the sound so loud it rattled my head, but there was nothing but tinnitus in my left ear.  As I had previously noted, the tinnitus in my left ear reacts only to sounds heard by my right ear.

During these tests, I kept hearing the loud left side tones in my right ear.  The audiologist told me I had "one of those skulls" that transmits sounds very well.  Hey!  Is she telling me my head is made of rock?

Dr. Mangham says that since my eighth nerve is anatomically intact, the most likely cause of my hearing loss is the interuption or reduction of blood flow to the cochlea, the hearing portion of the inner ear.  This results in damage to the Organ of Corti, specifically the delicate hair cells that turn vibrations in the inner ear into the electrical signals the nerves transmit to the brain.

This means that if I ever lose hearing in my remaining ear, there's a good chance a cochlear implant would restore some hearing in my deaf left ear.  Dr. Mangham also told me about some bleeding-edge research started in the early 1990's to regenerate hair cells, which continues to progress today.  (more,more)  Some of the research is being done right here in Seattle.  So there is some hope that, in just 5 or 10 years, some portion of my natural hearing might be restored.  I don't intend to rely on the research working out, but it is always nice to have hope.

I'm apparently getting my balance back more slowly than most of Dr. Mangham's patients, but not so slowly as to be cause for alarm.  He gave me some exercises which should help.

And my difficulties with machines and electonics continue - now my downstairs phone line doesn't work.  A friend with a really fun sense of humor suggested the plate in my head is emitting a "murphy" field which makes things break.  Gee, thanks!  And don't go trying to stick refrigerator magnets on my head when I get back to work - the plate is titanium and they won't stick.

Got some exercise walking 1.5 miles around Bellevue's beautiful DowntownPark today with plenty of stops.

Sometimes my knees wobble while walking.  There's an automatic system that adjusts the legs to keep a person upright based partly on input from their inner ears.  I think my problem is the damaged inner ear on the left side is feeding garbage data into this automatic posture system.  The wobble may or may not be visible to anybody else, but it definitely increases the effort of walking.  I can usually force myself to relax and stop the wobble, but it's hard to do when fatigued.  Uneven ground takes more effort to negotiate than it used to, and quickly turning my head can sometimes make me stumble.

Went to the Sovren historic car meet with my brother-in-law.  Lots of fun seeing ancient Bugattis and Porsches battling it out on the racetrack at Seattle International Raceway (SIR).  There was a LOT of walking, though, and it really left me exhausted even if it is good for me.  I finally had to sit and watch the races while my brother-in-law walked around and looked at the classic cars.

Helped pick up a bed for my 3 year old niece.  Again, I have most of my strength back, but my stamina is still limited.  It's like owning a car with no gas gage - it runs great until suddenly, whoops!  No gas!  But the exercise seems to be helping my balance improve.  And of course, the fireworks were fun, too.

My stamina is still slowly improving:  actually felt "perky" for a little while on Wednesday!  But I've been mostly run down with hay fever since then.

Yesterday I took my first trip to the movie theater since surgery, and had a great time.  I've been getting a little more exercise every day, fixing stuff around the house.  Unfortunately, I've been having trouble with pushing myself too hard which exhausts me, and can even leave me pooped out the following day.  I don't know if that means I'm getting too much exercise or not enough.

Had a few bad bouts of vertigo in the last few days, but it has been generally improving otherwise.  Abrupt motions of my head can make the world spin around, as can looking upward or running.  Got some shampoo in my eyes in the shower and nearly fell over because I couldn't see to stay upright!

Discovered a marvelous new show on TV, a Brtish import called: JUNKYARD WARS.  I love it!

I've been telling people I've got most of my strength back but so far I've only got a fraction of my stamina.  Wrongola!  My supervisor suggested I lift weights to build my stamina back up, and when I tried it I discovered a nice, light ten pound bar was pretty darned heavy!

I think my problem isn't too much or too little exercise - it's the wrong kind of exercise.  I've been working around the house or yard until I drop, and then taking a day or two to recover.  I should instead be doing lighter work more often.  What I've been doing is akin to lifting a 200 pound weight once and calling it a day's workout, as opposed to lifting a ten pound weight 20 times.

<;font size=+1>Dr. Mangham says it is common to have sound in the hearing ear affect tinnitus in the deaf ear.  Who would have thunk it?  I've had a few nasty shooting pains in my left cheek, which may be a trigeminal nerve problem (my tumor was also adhered to this nerve) or it may just be a toothache!  This side effect is fairly rare, and will most likely just go away.

Did my exercises today: 15 sit-ups 
5 pushups

Three reps of:    10 dumbell curls, 10# each side    10 lat pulls, 10#    10 vertical presses, 10#

Yes, those embarassingly tiny weights feel just about right, except for the lat pull, which could be more.  The sit-ups really ignite the vertigo and the pushups are almost too tough to complete.  I wish I'd started doing these sorts of exercises earlier, instead of just trying to make do with long walks.  I'd probably have a lot more of strength back by now.  I'm not only fighting the loss of energy from surgery - I also have the atrophy of weeks of minimal exercise to overcome.

I really enjoyed seeing the new X-Men movie yesterday with two of my friends from work.  Lots of fun.  It turns out both of these talented younger engineers are leaving Boeing for better jobs elsewhere with significant raises.  There is a major brain drain going on at Boeing and nobody in upper management seems to care.

Fell over for the very first time.  Some of my "outlaws" (ex-in-laws) were in town to visit and we all got together at my parents' place for a fun day.  I was swatting down in my parent's back yard to talk to my adorable 3 year old niece, and whoops!  Right over backwards.  My balance will probably never be as good as it was last year (it started failing a few months before surgery) but I don't think I'll have too much to worry about if I made this far without anything worse than a few stumbles.

Read the fourth Harry Potter book Sunday & Monday.  What a clever writer J.K. Rowlings is!  I started reading the book during my visit to my parents, and I kept cracking up laughing.

Last week I had some intermittant trigeminal pain, and this week it seems to be fading away.  Good!  At the worst it was a sudden stabbing pain in the cheekbone that would make take my breath away.  It only lasted a few seconds, and hit 4 or 5 times a day.  Living with the sharp pain for just a few seconds was awful - I feel sorry for the people who get full-blown trigeminal neuropathy - it must be agony!  Sometimes there was a dull ache like a week-old bruise, but that also seems to be fading away.

10#  for a one-handed curl isn't as awful as I thought it was:  I only used to do 20#, and the most I've ever done was 35#.  I'm not all that big a guy, after all.  It's the two-handed lifts that are embarrasing.  I used to do half my weight for occasional curls, lat pulls, presses, etc, and two-thirds my weight when I was really in shape.

I'm up to 20 sit-ups, 10 pushups, and 20# for the two-handed lifts.  With these light weights, I should be able to lift every single day, but either through laziness or exhaustion, I have only been able to manage every other day or so.  Did a little too much yardwork Thursday and was suddenly so rundown I felt sick.  I hate this part:  I don't seem to feel tired until just before I'm ready to drop from exhaustion, and once I've over-done things it can takes hours or even days to recover.  Actually, although I'm able to exert myself more than I was a few weeks back, I was tired more often this week.  Oh, bother!

Had a more energy this past week than the one before it, mostly.  One Tuesday I saw the remake of "Gone in 60 Seconds" with Jason, yet another friend who is leaving Boeing for better job.  Lots of good mindless, fun.

On Wednesday I went to see the Mariners with a bunch of other Boeing folks - somebody in the company got a clue (just for an instant) and decided to reward two years of crushing work to meet a nearly impossible schedule (for the 767-400ER) with a free trip to see the Mariners on company time.  Cool!  We lost the game but it was still fun.

Going to the stadium involved parking over a mile away and walking in near-80 degree weather.  That was a bit much - I had to stop three times.  I realized that since I started my other exercises, I neglected walking completely.  Walking back wasn't so bad - maybe it's just the heat.

I must be getting better:  On Saturday I actually tossed the frisbee in the shade with my brother-in-law and my little niece.  20 minutes of jogging after bad throws and I had to sit down with a weird headache (trigeminal pain?) and an aching back, but that's a lot more work than walking in the hot sun.  Saw another Mariners game on TV - we won after 13 innings!  Wow!

No real exercise for a week while my back recovered.

Bursts of energy are OK, but even mild sustained activity wears me out.  It's Seafair in Seattle, and the traffic on the I-90 floating bridge is shut down whenever the Blue Angels are flying.  I made a date with a friend to walk out onto the bridge to watch the Blue Angels perform.  I drove out there late Friday afternoon to check out the parking.  I hiked down half a mile from the parking area to the bridge, and I was exhausted!  I waited almost an hour before hiking back up the hill, and even though it had cooled off, I was drenched with sweat when I got back to my car.  I had to cancel the trip on Saturday, because I just couldn't handle walking that far on a hill.  How embarassing!  We went to go see "The Perfect Storm" instead.

Definitely some intermittant trigeminal pain.  Sort of a faint but persistant soreness in the left cheekbone which lasts for a few hours every so often.  I suppose I should mention that the vertigo is almost completely gone expect for occasional "surprises."

Another friend asked why my updates were getting less frequent.  Well, first, I forgot to upload what I wrote last week.  And second, I'm getting a little bored with "Well, I'm feeling a little (more/less) lousy this week."  My health isn't improving as fast as it was right after surgery.  The doctor warned me this would happen, but it's still frustrating.  I think high-energy people, like my friend Dave, get a lot more of their zip back before they hit this flat spot where recovery slows down.

Did a lot of walking today while shopping.  I still have the "car with no gas gauge" problem.  I flopped into a desk chair on display at Office Depot, and salespeople kept dropping by and asking if I wanted to buy a chair!

Had a wicked burst of pain late tonight in the left ear.  I'm beginning to suspect that my unusual symptoms prior to surgery (rapid loss of hearing, frequent unilateral headaches, stabbing pain in the ear) are related to some of my unusual symptoms after surgery. (pain in the cheek and stabbing pain in ear)  The slower than average recovery of stamina and balance are probably just chance.

What a doofus!  I decided my back was feeling good enough to start lifting weights again.  So I picked up the puny little barbells I've been using and started working out.  I even increased the curl weight from 10 to 15#.  Still puny, but improving.  I even did a few butterflies with 10#.  Then I turned on the soundtrack from "Gone in 60 Seconds."  Something about rock music makes you do stupid things.  I went too fast and lifted too much and 30 minutes later I was lying down exhausted with an aching head and back.

Did a house cleaning on top of the over-work-out on Thursday, and was tired for almost three days afterwards.  This is just unbelieveably frustrating.  Became one of the last two people in Seattle to see "Mission: Impossible II" yesterday.  Lots of fun, but don't even get me started on the technical improbabilities in the film.

I noticed something really interesting yesterday.  I found this very slight ridge on my fingernails running perpendicular to the length of the nail.  I once got a fingernail closed in a door, but didn't damage the nail badly enough to get a bruise - it just made a shallow ripple running across the nail.

But I have this ripple on every single nail on both hands and both feet.  Weird!  I figure it corresponds to my body slowing down the nail growth after surgery, or some such similar.  ( Maybe a change in diet? )  It takes absolutely perfect lighting conditions to see the ripples, but I'll try to get a photograph posted here.

A huge truck was drove down my little culdesac today.  There's a big colorful logo on the side reading, "Microsoft Dining Services."  Oh my gosh, what else is Redmond going to try to take over now?  About two hours later, the street was jammed with bimmers and Mercedes and the like as some sort of world domination meeting was held in the fancy condos next door.

Been a fun week.  Left the window down on my car one night - then we got the first rain in weeks.  Torrential rain!  I sucessfully dried out the car with a halogen light and the heater fan, but I also sucessfully ran the battery down to zip.  Undaunted, I made a trickle-charger from an old laptop power supply!  When the domelight still looked dim ten hours later, I made arrangements to use a real battery charger.  The instructions had a nice Amps vs. Hours charge table.  Turns out my home-made trickle charger would have worked, but it would have taken 66 hours to charge the battery!

Tinitus has been awful for days.  No idea why it's gotten bad again after having been so quiet for weeks.

Today was Boeing Family day in Everett.  My brother-in-law really wanted to take the kids to see where the BIG airplanes get made.  I was a little worried, because I poop out after a couple of miles of walking and the factory is, after all, the largest building on Earth.  I made it from the parking lot to the end of the 747 line (where the kids watched a bubble show!) before I had to get out my little folding chair sit down.  That's only a mile, but with two little kids, (1 and 3.5 years old) it was a very energetic mile!

We ate at a restaurant at the end of the runway where my little niece pointed enthusiastically to every little plane that went by, but ate almost nothing.  (Do these kids live on air?)  All the walking just about did me in.  (I suppose playing with the kids might have had an effect, too)  I had to take a nap in my car before I could drive home.

A club I belong to had a guest from Italy over Tuesday & Wednesday.  Slept almost 14 hours on Thursday recovering.  Discovered this morning that I still dream in stereo - while half-awake, I clearly heard birdsong in my deaf ear.  Cool!

If you are reading this and you DON'T have a cold, then you suck.

Yuck-ola.  Been sick for a week.  Sunday, I took a friend to see the Ballard locks, and then took Mom & Dad to Cirque du Soleil's "Saltimbanco" for their 57th wedding anniversary.  (WOW!  What a show.)  That added up to about 2 miles of walking and 2 hours of standing up.  I slept for 11 hours Monday recovering, although I'm sure having a cold didn't help.  The cold has eaten up all the energy I had left.

Happy birthday to me, etc.  Had a GREAT birthday, thanks everybody.

The cold may be screwing up the function in my remaining ear.  I nearly took a tumble several times climbing some uneven steps in the dark, and my hearing seems to be a tad bit worse right now.

FINALLY feeling better after two weeks with a cold.  Bagh!  I don't know how much energy I've got back, but at least I feel up to a little exercise.

Saw "The Tao of Steve" - lots of fun!  And here is a funny article about all the bad advice Hollywood gives us about dating.

Saw my GP and it seems that my mild weight-lifting has given me bursitis in my left shoulder.  Dr. McAfee gave me an anti-inflamatory and the pain vanished.  He had told me in August that exercise produces "cumulative improvements in stamina," much like compounding interest at the bank, and he predicted I'd experience an upswing in stamina about this time.  I have been feeling perky lately.

Although I did have to make a concious effort to pace myself, I survived ten hours of walking around the Puyallup Fair with my Mom, Sister, and two darling nieces.  I sat down more than I might have in the past, (and fell asleep when I sat down in the photo exhibit!) but I'm definitely getting my energy back.

Had a nystagmus test yesterday, followed by a Mariner's game (yay!).  Got home very late and then couldn't sleep because my gut was full of hot dogs, beer, peanuts, and Cracker Jack.  Was it worth it?  Yeah!

Saw Dr. Mangham about yesterday's nystagmus test.  He says my eyes sweep ~6 degrees/sec without any stimulus.  He said this was, "...on the edge of symptomatic," meaning if it was any worse I might notice a slight balance problem while walking.  This probably explains the energy-sapping "wobble" I had in my knees soon after surgery, when my balance was worse.

I remember that about a month after surgery the doctor told me that my balance was returning more slowly than average for his patients,  (I remember he sounded a little disappointed) but my brain should continue to adapt and my balance should continue to improve.  Right now I only have balance problems on uneven ground in very dim light, and he said that would match his expectations from the test results.

Saw these interesting reports in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

• Technology helps a young deaf woman break the silence
• Wired for sound: How cochlear implants work
• Not everyone is sold on the cochlear implant

It is interesting to consider that in just a generation or two, "deaf culture" will be dead.  All the many languages based on guestures will die out as advances in science steadily reduces the number of deaf people.

I bought an unfinished bedroom set two months back and haven't had the poop to build it until now.  Every piece has to be rough sanded, finish sanded, painted with wood conditioner, stained, sanded, varnished, sanded again, varnished with a top coat, and THEN assembled to make my two dressers and bedstands.  Sanding must use muscles I haven't been exercising, because I feel exhausted and wimpy again.

Put first coat on the exposed side of the pieces of the dressers today, while I watched the Mariners playoff with my girlfriend.  Very romantic!  Paint fumes and baseball!

Finally returned to work.  I could have returned earlier, but Boeing's temporary disability plan is fairly lenient (if not especially generous).  Last month when I called to set up a return to work I was actually told, "You've had a brain tumor!  No need to hurry back!"

After I was healthy enough to return, I took over a month of unpaid personal leave because I hadn't much enjoyed the previous time I'd had off.  I finally returned not because I was getting low on money, but because I didn't want my managers to forget who I was when it came time to pass out raises!

Did I mention that I hate the NY Yankees?

Remember, if you don't vote, you give up the right to complain about who gets elected.

How amusing.  During my absence, an automatic computer program at Boeing apparently fired me.  It seems that if you've been on leave for 90 days, Computing Security changes your status from "inactive" to "terminated" as some sort of deeply misguided cost-saving measure.  I've been spending 50% of my time at work on the telephone trying to restore deleted computer and business accounts.  I figure this cost-savings will set the company back a few grand by the time I'm done.

More amusement:  During my absence they moved my desk and gave me an upgraded computer.  Instead of backing up my hard drive, they kept the old computer.  But it was somebody else's computer!  I lost some the exotic analysis software I was developing and most of the notes on how everything worked.  The last backup I'd made was two months old.  Poop!

Had a bachelor party this evening for my friend Wil.  Congratulations, Wil - I see Lynn finally made you an honest man!

Drove to Eastern Washington for my Aunt Lydia's 93rd birthday!  I got to see a bunch of my relatives who all commented that I didn't look like a guy who'd just had a brain tumor removed.  I was honored to hear that the parishoners in Dayton had prayed for me, even though they only see me perhaps twice a year.  Special thanks to my nephew Matt who drove half the way.  (I can't get over the fact that I have a nephew who is in college.  Weird!)

Returning to work has caused a huge drop in my health and stamina.  I guess it's mostly the stress of being back in the Boeing grind.  I love my coworkers and the department I work in, but I had somehow managed to forget what a mess Boeing as  whole is.  It is depressing to that a company with such a wonderful history continues to swing from one management fad to another, unable to stabilize its core philosophies and retain vital talent.  The lay-off, hire, lay-off cycle has become shorter and shorter, as corporate announces a new lay-off every time the stock price slips, hiring everybody back a few months later.  Hello?!  Who is running this show anyway, and do they have a clue?

0;font size=+1>Got my first emergency task since I returned to Boeing which I dispatched quite successfully.  I'm beginning to feel better about being back at work.

;I finally got my status corrected so that I'm a real employee, but not in time to get a paycheck this week.  I'm just glad my badge opens the gate again.  I'm pleased to say that my main job is a new esoteric technical adventure.  This time I'm decoding some very powerful and very ancient software we still use.  The first subroutines were written in the early 1960's, and the development continued into the mid-1970's.  The goal is to figure out how it does what it does and to rewrite it to run on a PC.  Get this:  The user's manual explains how to prepare punch cards to run the program!

I love Halloween!  I made this costume two years ago.  Pretty cool, eh?

Today, I had my first meeting since returning to work.  We all crowded into one of the tiny conference rooms in Boeing's Everett site.  (they're so small we call them conference closets)  I made an effort to sit all the way to the left of everyone else, so my deaf ear would face the wall.  Two guys showed up late and sat to my left, and one of them was a "low talker."  I'm normally a easy-going guy, slow to anger.  I'm embarrassed to say I snapped at this guy for giving the silent treatment to someone with impaired hearing.

These rooms have lousy sound-proofing, and the overhead projector makes an appalling racket that bounces off the walls.  It was a struggle to figure out what was being said, and I was depressed about it for a few days afterwards.

My girlfriend helped me carry the assembled dressers and end tables up the stairs to the bedroom.  They look great, but I don't think I'd do it again.  It's just too much work, even if I did get a four-piece set for the equivalent price of one dresser.

Well, it's finally time to vote.  I like the election logo on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."  It says, "Indecision 2000: You choose, you lose!"

So who will win,  the doofus or the bore?  Oh, bog!  What a choice.

Well, at least we can say with some confidence that Ralph Nader lost the election.

I had a skeptic's meeting today, and the topic was, "The Occult and Politics!"  How appropriate.  Maybe we can find out who is president using a Ouija board.

Since I missed the wedding of my friend Wil and his unusually significant other, Lynn, I was going to take them out for dinner on the Space Needle today.  Lynn was especially eager to see me again, because I am the only person she knows who has been trepanned.

I showed up with my girlfriend at Wil & Lynn's peculiar house on Queen Anne hill, but no one was home.  (Their home is stuck to the side of a cliff like a barnacle.)  Wil drives up, and tells us that one of their cats went into a seizure just a hour earlier, and they will have to reschedule.  Twarted by a spastic cat!

Sorry I've been so remiss in updating this website.  Life goes on - No, I haven't died of delayed side-effects of surgery, as the pro-radiation camp might suggest.

My stamina is worse than it was a month ago.  I blame this on more stress and less exercise.  I can't get exercise before going to work because I can't work if I get tired.  And after a long stressful day, I sure don't feel like exercising.  Over all, my pep goes up and down.  I figure this is just a temporary set-back.  (I envy fellow patient Dave, who was back at work virtually unimpaired after two months.)

I recently noticed something interesting about my tinitus:  The high-pitched whine become a higher-pitched whine when I turn my eyes sharply to the left or right, and the sound changes momentarily when I blink.  Weird!
 

Went in for my first MRI post-surgery. I was scared to death, but I came out clean. Have to be careful around MRI machines!

I'm sorry if you've written me and haven't gotten a response. I've been very busy over the past three years: I've been promoted and re-assigned to product development, working first on the Sonic Cruiser, and now on the 7E7. Boeing has seen fit to patent two of my inventions with several more possibly on the way. And most importantly, I met a wonderful girl, got married, and bought a nice house on a hill! Now I work all day at Boeing, and work on the house all weekend. Bother! Not much time to respond to e-mail.

And how's my health? About the same - getting a little older, but not getting down about it. I miss the hearing in my left ear, but not as often as you'd think. The tinitus isn't any better or worse, and I have no other noticeable health symptoms. Sometimes I still wish I had been the kind of person who was comfortable with radiation, but then I remember all the reasons why I wasn't and still am not. And I also understand that a few of the first FSR patients have had to go back for more radiation when their tumors. But then some surgery patients need repeat work, too.

So good luck to those of you with AN, and good luck to those with family members who have the disease! Let's all hope for better treatments someday soon!

More updating - I've passed another MRI. The first one had a "punctate focus" that the tester couldn't identify, so he gave me an all-clear, but recommended I get re-scanned a few years later to see if it grew. It disappeared instead. Yah-hoo! Probably a left-over bit of scar tissue or a glitch in the machine.

No other real changes to my conditions. Still deaf in the left ear, still annoyed by tinitus in both ears, still haven't bothered to get a hearing aid. Really thinking about the hearing aid thing, though - I have better than average hearing in my right ear, but a hearing aid would help filter out the background noise that sets my tinitus off. But the fact that I haven't done it yet shows how little I really need it.

My wife and I have been married almost 3 years, and have lived the whole time in "that 70's house." We're slowly updating everything - the dance floor and deep shag carpeting in the family room just got deep-sixed, but we decided to keep the disco ball. After all, it has it's own light switch and everything!

All this remodeling requires ladders. Thankfully, I rarely notice any balance problems anymore, and the ones I do notice are mild.

When I first returned to work I felt kind of "slow" for a while. You can chalk this up to a side effect of brain retraction (which is not unlike a concussion when you think about it), or you can chalk it up to being away from a very technical job for 4 months. Either way, I think it's gone: I've inventor or co-inventor on nearly 2 dozen patents Boeing has applied for. So either I've gotten smart again, or I've gotten good at fooling the Boeing patent attorneys!

None of this stuff is rocket science, but it is fun to see your name in print.

One other thought - I have a coworker battling cancer right now, and this makes me feel better about having chosen surgery over radiation.

So, good luck, and hang in there! It'll all come out fine!

Wow, haven't been over here in a long time. Sorry.

The biggest update is the birth of my son, Leo, on Oct 3rd, 2006. He was 7 lbs 5 oz, which doesn't sound all that impressive until you realize his mom is 4' 9" tall and weighed 85 lbs before she got preggers!

Leo has been growing like a weed since then, and is now over 15 lbs. He's a funny kid. Yesterday he learned how to make raspberry sounds with his lips. He doesn't like being on his tummy, like many kids his age, but he will happily stand while holding onto a couch or something. About a month ago his hands slipped and my wife was surprised when he stood by himself, unsupported for about 5 or 10 seconds. She said he gave her a worried look and then plopped down on his tush. I'm told one of my brothers walked before crawling, and Leo might take after his uncle.

The house is looking much better. A month before Leo was born, we (1) removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room, (2) had an enormous window added in the dining room wall, (3) added hardwood floors in the now-combined dining room and kitchen, and (4) replaced the god-awful stained white carpeting in the rest of the upstairs and replaced it with nice grey stain-resistant carpet that you can see in the photo. My wife, eight months preggers, helped pull down wall out and rip up the old flooring!

The theory behind all this work was that the baby shouldn't be crawling on the god-awful carpeting, and it would be hard to do all this work with an infant around. Now it looks like he skip the whole crawling thing entirely, so it just goes to show that even the best laid plans can fail.

The whole one ear thing is still a nuisance. It's funny how many people aren't aware that I'm deaf in one ear until I tell them. But the lack of directional hearing has an unexpected negative side-effect. I find it much more difficult to "tune in" on a particular speaker in a crowd. I recently learned from one of Boeing's researchers that directionality is one of the key factors in the ability to follow multiple simultaneous conversations. Bother. Last time I checked, stem cell research for hearing remains stalled, so I think I'm going to have to put up with this for quite a while longer.

The only other effect is that I worry about stumbling when walking in the dark carrying Leo, usually after rocking him to sleep. Of course, my sub-miniature wife leaves stuff all over in the way of her much-larger husband, so maybe it's not my impaired balance that is at fault here.

Once more, good luck and keep hoping for the future!

Not much time to write. Leo is doing great - he's started walking 3 days before his first birthday, and six weeks after that he is running all over the shopping malls with us and climbing on top of things. He goes up stairs fine, but going down is kind of a challenge. He's very smart, figuring out baby locks and such. He can say a dozen or so words, like "Stuck", "Dada", "Mamamamama....", "nite-nite", etc. But his all-time favorite is "Cat!" Which is funny because we don't have any pets.

My wife had this conversation with Leo a little before his first birthday:

Wife: "The doggie goes woof-woof."

Leo: "Cat!"

Wife: "The doggie goes woof-woof."

Leo: "Cat!"

Wife: "The doggie goes woof-woof."

Leo: "Cat!"

Wife: "OK, the cat goes meow."

Leo: "dogg-ghee."

One year old and he's already screwing with us. This bodes ill for the future.

His speaking vocabulary may be small right now, but he understands fairly complicated sentences like, "Can you put that bucket on your head like a helmet and go show your mommy how silly you look?"

Right now he has a cold, and when his drippy nose bothered him, he stopped playing and walked to me, dug a tissue out of my breast pocket, wiped his nose, and then very carefully put the tissue back into my pocket. He is definitely the cutest kid in town, too.

Leo is unfortunately intensely allergic to dairy products, strongly allergic to eggs, and mildly allergic to peanuts. We eat Vegan food and meat.

Word is that he is highly likely (>80%) to outgrow the milk and egg allergies by age 5, but the peanut allergy is probably permanent. Good thing that's the mildest allergy. We found out about his dairy allergy after a baby nutrition class when he was 6 months old. The instructor said, "The advice that you can't give your baby cow's milk until he's a year old is just a myth." The very next day Leo was in the emergency room. He seems happy enough, though.

My health is about the same: working too much, eating too much junk food, not getting enough exercise or sleep, and deaf in one ear. As I always tell everyone, it's a whole lot better than being dead. My father, however, has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and is doing quite poorly. Repeat after me: all men should get a PSA test annually after age 50. My dentist does all sort of scheduled preventative care and checks on my teeth, but our doctors don't do anything like that for our bodies. We're supposed to know we need these tests and ask for them. Stupid.

I continue to get email praising the work of Doctor Mangham. Good luck to everyone with this illness. I'll write again soon - uh, maybe next year.

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