End of the season

Well, it might not feel like the seasons are changing, but it is upon us. Just this morning, the final irrigation of the season was complete along the entire stream in my area. The lambs are now big enough to take in for slaughter and we need to start thinking about finishing up this year's projects. I think the animal feeder needs to be the #1 project to be careful with the hay we feed the girls over the Winter. I'll start cutting barrels tonight...

Attack!

The other evening it was around 2330 and I was sitting in my chair watching my DVD player. (It was Stargate SG-1 if you must know!) When I heard a dog barking. Now a dog barking is no big deal out where I live, but this dog was obviously too close. I always worry for my critters and this sound was too close to them. Off I trot to the vault to get the shotgun, the closet for a flashlight and to let my wife know not to worry about any small arms fire she may hear in the next 30 minutes. I step out the door and within the first two steps or so I hear a dog cry as if hit and nothing else. So I began the search. Scanning the flash across the pasture, shotgun at the ready. At night, animals eyes shine back at you, but the only shines I were able to see was the llama (who may have done his job and kicked the dog causing the whelp) and the sheep. No dogs to be found. The good news is we have not had a repeat of the attack yet.

The first week of school

Oh, what a wonderful week it has been! I'm not sure who was more excited Tuesday morning (why not Monday?), my wife or my children. It was the first day of school and everybody was up early to primp and prep for the new school year. I think as I look back on this week my wife is the one who has enjoyed it the most. Next week, the pre-schooler will be gone for a couple of hours a couple of days during the week. Those will be the best!

The ride

I woke up early this morning to go on a bike ride. One of the guys in church is used to waking up around 0330 so meeting for a ride at 0730 on a Saturday is okay to him. He's wrong. This is wrong. Saturdays are meants to sleep in and not leave the house until at least 1000!!! *SIGH* I need my coffee...

Opinions

I guess I should start this entry with a touch of background. My back hurts. Not the soreness of mowing the lawn and playing golf in the same day, but rather more of a please remove the red hot poker from directly on my spine kind of hurt. This has been going on for a bit over two years now and an entire team of doctors and scientists have tried to put me back together again and so far have failed. There are other entries somewhere in this blog.

With that intro, yesterday was my appointment with my pain doctor. This is the person who has inserted around nine catheters into my back to inject lidocaine, phenol and ablate my nerve with radio waves...oh, and he also tries to give me some quality to my life by dispensing narcotic pain meds. I have a love-hate relationship with the pain meds. On one hand I love them because I can actually function in the world with their help. On the other hand, I live in a brain fog and try to function and do my job through it. Anyway, yesterday was my meeting and I had a bunch of things to discuss and get their opinions on prior to my meeting in about three weeks with my neurosurgeon.


So I was ushered into a room to meet with Beth, my nurse-helper-person. She has APRN after here name, but I really don't know what all that means...she's like a nurse-plus I think. Anyway, I ran my options by here as I see them. She then took my three options to doctors Chen and Oakey to get their takes on it and they all conferenced Doctor Rosenthal (the main dude) in to give his opinion on the various options.

Rhizotomy
This is a big word that mean cut the stinking nerve out! This option would be removal of the one nerve that is bothering me and not having it any longer. On the plus side, my pain is so specific that we could easily identify the bad nerve and yank the sucker out. On the down side I could feel phantom pain from the nerve being gone forever. The pain was described to me as horrific burning and electrical shocking sensation that is there always. I informed Beth that this is the pain I experience daily and there's no big difference there, but the team didn't care. To a doctor, they are horrified at the thought oft his option. My bringing it up seemed to be a very bad thing.

Spinal Cord Stimulator
This thing is so neat! You get a little paddle implanted in your back. They do have to remove a tiny slab of bone from a vertebrae, but after that you get this paddle that connects to a tiny computer that is implanted under your skin. This tiny computer then sends signals to the paddle that interrupt the pain signal traveling up your spine! Rather than pain, you get a tingle and that's it! It's really a neat technology. And, unfortunately, I am not a candidate for it. My pain is in my thorasic spine. Okay, quick lesson on anatomy, doctors have split your spine into four parts. The cervical spine is basically your neck. Your lumbar spine is your lower back which gets sore lifting things and all. Your sacrum is your tailbone. Your thorasic spine is between your cervical and lumbar. That's the part that connects the two others. Typically people have problems in their neck or lumbar regions but not me...I want to be different! I have problems in the middle of my back so the stimulator cannot interrupt the pain signals there very well and all the thorasic patients who have tried are still not happy with the results.

Intrathecal pump
This one was my least favorite option. I mean, I want to get off all the stinking meds I'm on not be on them permanently! But, of course, this is the one the three doctors at the pain clinic are really excited about. This one is where a catheter is permanently installed in the body with the end positioned right at the nerve that is sending pain signals. It then slowly and constantly drips morphine directly on the nerve causing all the problems. The bad news is of course I'm still on narcotics with the morphine drip going on and there is a computer and reservoir implanted in the body that needs to be refilled. The up side is rather than oral or transdermal delivery of the medicine, it is being placed right on the affected spot so the amount of medicine used would be very very small hopefully clearing my head. Now my insurance requires that I jam some other medicine into myself to see if it clears my head prior to being a candidate for this expensive goody, so we're trying that now.

The next step is to run all these various ideas past my neurosurgeon and get his take on it. The stimulator was looking like a real option when my wife spoke with the rep from the company. I guess he was just excited at the prospect of selling another system because after we started pursuing it further and asking more questions he's wasn't so adamant that it would solve all my problems. Three more weeks until I meet with doctor Gardner then some decisions will need to be made.

helpful.......sometimes

What is it about kids? You work hard to teach them to do the right things. Heck, you give up stuff to teach them right and not be a hypocrite! And sometimes it works....and sometimes it doesn't. There are days when I cannot imagine how I could have accomplished a task or finished some batch of work without my oldest boy's help. Then there are some days when the whining and moaning over doing a 20 minute job are enough to make me do it myself. Which, by the way, I have been informed is the wrong way to handle it and I should hand the boy off to the other parental unit to handle it. I had a 365 pound 55 gallon drum filled with flammable liquid to get out of the truck the other day. With my boy's help, we got a ramp into place, got out the crane, rigged it up and removed the barrel from the truck. Without his help, I don't think I could have done it...the job required four hands at times. Then, the other day I ask for the lawn to be mowed. And so the battle begins...Dad, I can't start the mower...Dad, I think it's out of gas...Dad, do I have to move the lights...Dad, it is going slow...Dad, do I have to empty the bag myself...Dad--GAH! That is when I usually do it myself...or in my new and improved world tag my bride and have her deal with him. What I don't understand is sometimes mowing the lawn is the nothing chore it is and 20 minutes after being asked, it is done and we're all happy. Heck, sometimes he actually blows the clippings off the driveway without being asked! So what is the secret to making more of those sometimes?

There I was on the side of the road

wondering what I had done wrong now! You see, I recently put a new carburetor on my motorcycle. Those of you uninterested in vehicles can just tune out now and click on something else that may interest you. The new carb required some fine tuning to get right and I've been changing main jets. After all of that work things are running smoothly and I have had enjoyable rides with no problems.

Until Monday.

I'm riding to work on the freeway around 65-70 mph when the bike starts missing. Now there is only one cylinder so when it misses all the power goes away! I find that if I keep the throttle only barely cracked it runs. So I made it to work, shut down and go about my day. That evening before leaving I unscrew the bottom of the float bowl thinking some dirt or material had gotten in there to clog the jet and cause it to not run properly. Things appear to be okay, so off I go for home. I'm 5 miles along the trip taking the back roads because of my concern for the problem to resurface when it did...in spades! I was shut down on the side of the road. It would not restart for a bit, then I got it going again. I found that at high rpm the machine would stop but at low rpm it would run fine. After verifying the fuel valve was supplying enough fuel, I guessed this to be a problem with fuel filling the float bowl. It wasn't getting in there fast enough so when I ran at a high speed for a while it drained the bowl and after sitting for a bit it refilled. So I putzed about with my new carb for a while...moving the overflow tube so it can't interfere with the float itself. I took the bowl and went after it with a Dremel to clean up all the casting bits left in there that the float could get scratched on. I then adjusted the float level. All for naught...still didn't work properly. So then I got out the original carb and put that on.
Same problem. So if fuel isn't the problem what is? Must be fire. The points are severely pitted, so I'm hoping that is the problem and I'm headed to the parts store this afternoon to try and fix it!

Opportunities

Well, the bike is now providing me with an opportunity. It isn't working properly. At medium to high rpms it is not getting enough fuel. I've checked the fuel lines and petcock and they are working properly. Last night I tore into the carb thinking the needle valve was probably stuck closed with a piece of gunk...no such luck. It sure appears to be a carb issue, but I was unable to fix it last night...maybe we'll tear into it again tonight and see what is going on.

Made the paper

I had a reporter from the Deseret News come out because he wanted to do a story about selling products directly from our farm. We had an interesting interview, and he got most of it right in the report found here
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,695196257,00.html
I'm not really used to everything going right, but there it is! It was fun meeting Rodger, the reporter, and Jason, the photographer