Wow, Kat, this book sounds like a real downer.  How old is this fellow now?  What was his wife's overall reaction to his degrading health (I'm assuming, of course, that he was married through a large part of his 20s 'til now).

Thanks for thinking of Ken & me.

Actually, things have hit a plateau for me lately, if not downright improved.  I've found some relief with new hardware:  new AFO and a thingy called an "S/I belt".  The AFO was a real bitch to get adjusted, but now that it's all tweaked out my gait has improved exponentially.  The S/I belt is simply a belt that surrounds the hips (below the iliac crest, above the femoral heads) with a hard pad that puts pressure directly on the S/I joint.  The belt itself sorta just squeezes the pelvic girdle very tightly and stabilizes the whole works.

I've combined that with weight training and testosterone therapy to build muscle mass.  No "Ahh-nold", mind you, but what little "middle-age spread" I had has pretty much disappeared.

As far as your cable modem goes...did the techs freak over Linux?  We use the local Time-Warner "Road Runner" service and they expressed the opinion that anything outside the Mac/Windows realm was unsupported.  It's easiest for them to direct Customer Service to the lowest common denominator, I guess.

Kyle

----- Original Message -----
From: Kathy <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, March 6, 2004 10:43 am
Subject: A Book Recommendation

> I've been awfully busy, and my cable connection has been wonky,
> going off and
> on at will (I'm having a cable tech support person coming over
> today to look
> at my setup, although I'm not sure how they'll react to the fact
> that I'm
> using Linux and not Windows or MacOX).
>
> In any case, I have found the time to read a book one of my
> workmates got for
> me - "Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness - A Reluctant
> Memoir", by
> Richard M. Cohen.  Mr. Cohen is a former journalist whose life has
> beendominated by having MS since his 20s, and the pains of
> watching his children
> deal with his deteriorating condtion.  His condition has worsened
> such that
> he is now legally blind, needs a cane to walk, and has cognitive
> problems.This has all been complicated by the fact that he was
> diagnosed with colon
> cancer, and has had to deal with the realities of that, as well.
>
> I particularly recommend it to Kyle and Ken, as I thought of you
> two whilst
> reading it.
>
> Kat
>