Sondrak has moved....

 ...that is all.

A Quick Thanks...

...to those who found their way here via Gerard to wish me well. I get so few comments that I rarely check them, and just happened to do so the other day.

Getting better after the relatively minor setback. (Below)

Just takes time.

Getting Better All The Time

Spent half of last month in the hospital because of yet another bladder infection. IV fluids and antibiotics did the trick. Back to home PT for a while, Best news is no catheter, which greatly reduces the risk of bladder infection.

Which I'm all for. Two is enough.

(In other news, I decided the site needed a change, so a new look.)

I Am A Neurological Mess...

...according to one medical professional familiar with what I've been through in the last three months.

The short version is thus:

• Total knee replacement
• Go home
• Start falling down
• Fall down hard enough to squish the dressing hard enough to make Hitchcockian spatter
• Get re-admitted
• Surgery to repair the open wound (looked like a watermelon with a big wedge cut out of it - I have pictures!)
• Go to the nursing home I think fondly of as Bedlam
• Develop a UTI and sepsis - hold at a LaGrange point for about 5 days (no memory except 3 little snippets) until getting back to low-Earth orbit, then touching down five days later.
• Lost 25 pounds
• After a month at Bedlam, off to the surgery center to release pressure on my cervical spinal cord.
• Weakness, numbness, and lack of range of motion, endurance, strength, and sense of touch slowly returning with physical and occupational therapy. 
• Lots and lots of physical and occupational therapy. 

Three surgeries in two months. 

Neurosurgeon says 18 months of healing. And I may not get everything back, but we stopped the continuing damage.

It wasa scary to wake up every morning, wondering what I won't be able to do today.  Now, it's kinda fun to wake up and find out what I can do today.

Friends remark that I seem  to be in good spirits in the middle of all this. I try not to worry about the things I can't do.

I also think about the man I saw in therapy, who was re-learning to correctly say the names of a fork and a spoon.

I got no problems.

Just For Fun...

...found at American Digest.

...and another one

A Little Light Reading

 

The really interesting part (to me) is the data from Israel. Starts at the bottom of the third page.

Go, RTWT!

Listen To The Man

Go and listen:  

If you happen to try to get there from Twitter, you will see this first:

Click thru and listen.

Ivermectin for the Win!!

 A new study finds a very high degree of effectiveness using Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

Article is here.

OTC Covid Killer

Diphenhydramine (Benadryl), and a protein in milk. Link to article below.

Two Common Over-the-Counter Compounds Reduce COVID-19 Virus Replication by 99% in Early Testing

Covid Vaccine Fail

Well, this is interesting. According to this paper, vax effectiveness starts to drop off after about 90 days.

Click on the image to read el gato malo's summary, click on the link at the bottom of the page to read the Lancet pre-print.

 

Read the Lancet pre-print here.

Thing is, we kinda knew this already, given the re-infection rate of the vaccinated. 

I'm sticking with gin and orange juice.

Omicron Covid

Here's a rollup on Twitter of the South African Medical Association Covid statement:

Covid Vaccination In A Nutshell

 Update (This one is scary! More to think about!):

OMG! On this clip.

This doctor trained at the Mayo Clinic and runs the largest independent testing laboratory in Idaho.

Listen to what his lab testing is showing. pic.twitter.com/WmX7N3qKHK

— Jangled Nerves (@ToriaMart) November 14, 2021

Two articles I've come across give good reason to pause and think hard about the Covid vaccine.

With no further comment, here they are.

Article here.

Article here.

World Covid Map

From Johns Hopkins University, the Covid dashboard. Click the image to open a new window:

(Amazes the heck out of me that China has so few cases!)

I suspect that Gerard is anti-pumpkin. 

In fact, based on his post about it, I'm pretty sure:

I couldn't leave it alone:

To be contrarian, pumpkin pie is one of my favorites, along with lemon creme pie.

So. On All Saints' Day, cut the pumpkin into chunks, and steam said chunks until the inside part ('guts') is soft. Scrape said guts into a mixing bowl, add pumpkin pie spice (or cinnamon & nutmeg), and sugar as appropriate for the volume of guts or taste. 

Pour into pie crust(s), and bake at 475 deg F for 15 minutes, then 375 deg for about 45 min. Done when nothing sticks to a knife stuck into the middle when pulled out.

Serve with cream, whipped cream, or home made vanilla ice cream. (Recipe for *that* at the above listed blog.)

As promised. vanilla ice cream, below the fold.

We Need 'Demo Day' Now!!

Demo day. Unleashing the power of a sun, here on the face of the earth. We need one today, just to remind the unwashed Over There not to fuck with us.

Go, RTWT:

From Gerard's American Digest.

Billionaire Space Race

 So Branson beat Bezos.

But neither has hidden a body.

Link List: Wuhan Virus Articles

(Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

This is a collection of links to articles on the various aspects of the Wuhan Lab leak issues (newest at the top).

I'll pin this, and update it as I find new stories.

6.7.2021:

Daily Mail, Genome Sequencing Proves Virus Man-made 

Hudson Institute, A Just Response

As of 6.6.2021:

Daily Mail. Patient Zero

New York Post, Fed Money for Bat Study  

Vanity Fair, Lab Leak Theory

The Bulletin, Virus Origin, People or Nature 

Memorial Day

As I've gotten older, I've dabbled in family history, mostly my Dad's. I have copies of the pictures below, but they are in the original monochrome.  

One of my cousin's sons has taken up the colorizing bug, I got copies.

Dad and Uncle Jordan survived the war, which I guess makes their holiday Veterans' Day, but they are both gone, so I think Memorial Day is fitting.

Thank you to my Dad, all of my uncles, and everyone who served.

SSG George Webber

CPT Jordan Webber

Jordan and Dad

I did a little mental math to get a swag on when these may have been taken. Jordan didn't enlist until '43, so I'm guessing '44 at the earliest, maybe '45.

That would make Dad about 26 or 27, Jordan about 19 or 20.

Dad was a supply sergeant somewhere in the Pacific Theater, Jordan trained to fly P-38 Lightnings for areal reconnaissance in Europe.

No guns. The idea was the P-38 was faster than anything the Germans could put up.

The war was over before he completed training.

Thumper (and Me)

 Just before Jen left for home last month, we noticed Thumper was limping. Our working theory was that, in digging into the compost bin and bouncing it up and down with his snout, he had managed to guillotine his paw and injure it. I got him some doggo aspirin, which seemed to take care of the issue. 

He would go for a few days without limping, then start again. Give him aspirin, limping stopped. Lather, rinse, repeat until this past Monday.

He suddenly became a tripod dog, not using the injured paw to walk on at all.  Aspirin did nothing. So, Friday (yesterday), we went to the 24 hour emergency vet (our regular one was booked up and waitlisted). We did the intake, a tech came out to the car and got Thumper, and home I went. 

Calls back and forth, talked with the vet. Basically, the x-rays showed no breaks, but one of the bones in the 'elbow' looked fuzzy. We didn't get the radiology report, so the vet released him, along with doggo Ibuprophen and gabapentin. I was instructed to get some Pepsid to make sure he wouldn't get an upset stomach from the ibuprofen. I was chuckling during his lecture, and finally told him that I've been on nsaids and gabapentin for quite a while, and was confident I could handle this. 

Thumper was pretty well stoned when we got home. The idea is to give him 10 days of rest, followed by 10 days of slowly bringing him back up to speed, assuming the limp is gone. The 10 days of rest is what the gabapentin is for.

So, that is Thumper, in a nutshell. 

I wound up not sleeping in this morning. In fact, I think I was awake at about 6:30 - 7:00. I gave up and got up, and started the day. Got Thump out to the back yard for a bit, then took him around the corner early afternoon. At about 2:30, I decided to go up for a nap.

When I woke up, it looked like early morning light. My phone said it was about 5:30, so I was expecting to get up and face the new day, in a while. Read my mail fiddled around on my dating site, and decided to get up.

So here I'm thinking it's Sunday AM. My phone told me it was still Saturday evening. And down the rabbit hole I went. I honestly was worried that something had happened to the internet clock, but the timeline as I remembered it didn't make sense either. I was confused. 

I bounced around with it for a while, until I realized that it was way too dark for 8:30 in the morning, even with the rain clouds overhead. It slowly dawned on me that I had taken a nap at 2:30, and a) either I'd slept for almost 30 hours, or b) it was in fact 8:30 on Saturday night.

Occam's razor prevailed, and so here I am, sharing this at (now) 9:30 Saturday evening.

I'm pretty sure this is another reminder that I don't have as much stamina as I did before my surgery. 

And, as any IFR pilot will tell you, "You gotta trust your instruments."

Fauci Knows

 He always did.

Wade leaves it to the reader to draw conclusions. 

The case for 'escaped virus from the lab' is certainly more presuasiven the 'it came from the jungle.'  It has a couple of particular features that haven't been found in the wild, that can partricularly target humans.

Yes, Fauci knew they were doing 'gain of function  work' (making new, more virulent virii). It was the whole point of our funding.

We've been using cheap chinese labs to do our virus research. Not up to standards, and cutting corners.

He's covering his tuchus.

Don't believe me - here's the whole thing.