Scattered Thoughts . . .

In the couple of weeks that we've been back home, I have had some time while recovering to put together a few online photo albums.  I think I shot well over 1000 photos during this trip but chose just a couple of hundred to show online. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip! My only regret is that, although we spent more time in San Antonio than most families do for graduation, I am left feeling as though we rushed through this trip and didn't take enough time to just sit and enjoy. Spending an evening in a couple of pubs on the Riverwalk would have been really nice. Spending more time walking through San Antonio would have been nice. Spending more time learning and experiencing the rich history of this city would have been really nice. It appears as though Adam is about to get jumped on by his Instructor! In the end, we came home with a lot of really nice photos and some really nice memories. The memories we created also sparked memories of my own history in this city. I wa

Riding Coach on The Lakeshore LImited to Chicago Traveling is difficult with my health problems. Airline travel is something I avoid like the plague since procuring this illness for many reasons and the train has many benefits for me when it comes to managing my health. I could write a novel on why airline travel is horrendous for my health and yet train travel is much more friendly for my situation but this blog entry isn't about explaining any of this so I need to try to avoid getting sidetracked! I just wanted to write a few words about our cross country train journey... First, let me say that if you want to just view some photos and a short video of our journey with Amtrak rather than reading through all of this, skip to the links at the bottom of this blog entry.   For the most part, our experiences with Amtrak were good and I would definitely do it again. Some parts were outstanding, some parts were okay, some parts were fair, some parts were simply dumb luck, and, as

As expected, I am still struggling with my health after our long journey to and from San Antonio. What we didn't expect is for Sheila to be joining me this week! Sheila is home sick with a lousy cold... mostly sore throat, runny nose, stuffy head... and, some fatigue as well.  I'm still struggling with overwhelming fatigue, debilitating deep bone pain, and bouts with instantaneous dizziness so bad it knocks me over even when I am seated! This dizziness is actually a bit violent... Even when this dizziness hits me while seated, in an instant, I am trying to catch myself from hitting the floor. When I am standing, I stumble like my world has been instantly tilted to a 45 degree angle trying to grab ahold of something to keep me from losing to gravity.... gravity applying force in a very different direction from which my brain thinks.  What is really odd is that I am constantly falling to my right. In the past, I always fell to the left when these bouts would hit me. This

Sometimes a lousy night of health like I had last night continues on into the following day. Today is one such day. It is almost 24 hours since my latest transient health problems began last night and I am feeling just as lousy... extreme nausea, gurgling intestines, stomach pain, weakness, overwhelming fatigue (I slept all afternoon), and I am just feeling miserable.  I took some extra medications last night that target the gastrointestinal tract as well as a medication to help minimize the nausea. I added more extra medications today...  some extra mast cell stabilizers, more medications to target the gastrointestinal tract, and I'm about to add more anti-nausea medications.  Systemic Mastocytosis is unpredictable but after using up precious energy as I did during our trip to San Antonio, I know I should expect some lousy health. The problem is that I just cannot predict which problems I will experience...  which symptoms... how many symptoms... the severity of symptoms... 

I've never really been a big fan of poultry even before my illness. In fact, you would often find me in the backyard at the grill with a thick, juicy steak on Thanksgiving Day while my family was inside waiting for some tasteless bird to come out of the oven. Don't get me wrong, I love tasty grilled chicken... deep fried chicken... chicken parmesan...  chicken curry... and even chicken cacciatore... but I'm really someone who loves beef and pork. Poultry is rarely something I would order in a nice restaurant (and never something I order in a less-than-nice restaurant if I feel I may get bad poultry).  Even when I was healthy, before this insidious illness, chicken would make me feel slimey and I would be hungry again within an hour. Fish would affect me the same way. I always just figured that I am more of a hearty meat and potatoes sort of guy. And, let's be honest, I am, always have been, and always will be a meat and potatoes sort of guy. It turns out that perhap

St Louis Gateway Arch One of our many stops on our trek to San Antonio was in St Louis. We approached St Louis after dark and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the iconic Gateway Arch through our sleeper car windows.  This was not the start of our trip but I thought I would start with my most difficult photos from the trip. (I really want to get these problematic photos behind me so I can move on to the much more beautiful photos.) These nighttime photos are so poor that I have been hemming and hawing for the past 24 hours hours trying to decide if I should even share them at all. Needless to say, I decided to show a few of the best of these lousy nighttime photos. As we had hoped, we did see the arch as we entered the city but getting a nice photo of this sight was difficult at best. The arch itself was not illuminated so that posed some problems in the dark of night. The only illumination was ambient and reflected light from surrounding buildings. The city itself is rathe

Sheila celebrated another birthday yesterday albeit a rather subdued, quiet celebration. It was a nice evening though! We're still trying to renew our energy levels since our trip to San Antonio so we had no plans whatsoever for Sheila's birthday. I suppose that if we had a plan, our plan was to watch a little television and sleep as much as possible so we really had no plans for Sheila's birthday.  We did, however, manage to stop at Sheila's parents' house for a small birthday celebration with the grandchildren. Sheila's mom was kind enough to make some brownies... although, she was on the same trip with us so I don't know where she found the energy... so we visited for a couple of hours so we could see the kids and sing Happy Birthday to Sheila. Before we left the house, I had already given Sheila some of her favorite chocolates...  a box coconut and dark chocolate truffles... a Macy's gift card (her favorite gift card), and a Lila Mystique Or

We've been out of town for an extended cross-country vacation by rail and just arrived back home a bit exhausted, a little heavier (great food!), and happy about all our scheduled stops as well as our unscheduled stops. We had a great time in all the cities we visited and we especially enjoyed our five days in San Antonio. Adam graduated from Air Force Basic Military Training and we were fortunate enough to have been a part of this traditional military ceremony. We spent some time on the base and I had an opportunity to re-familiarize myself with this base as well as see many new facilities since my stay more than 30 years ago.  This is one of those bases I vowed to never return to again but I have to say it was an interesting visit. I should point out that all Air Force trainees make this same vow and we all look forward to seeing Lackland in the rear-view mirror. That being said, seeing Adam graduate was worth returning to Lackland and San Antonio.  Adam is happy... he ac

I regularly struggle with vision issues as a result of my Systemic Mastocytosis illness. Actually, not a week goes by which does not include some sort of vision issues which demand a change in plans. This past week I struggled with quite a few symptoms at the whim of angry mast cells some of which made me sick as a dying, mangy dog but I also struggled with vision issues such as blurriness, some double vision and a slight loss of color saturation. For the most part, my vision was rather poor all the time this past week but as my overwhelming fatigue would worsen, my eyesight worsened exponentially. There is no doubt that fatigue plays a role in the severity of my symptoms and these problems with my vision are impacted in the same way. The loss of color isn't too annoying and typically affects reds the most but the blurriness really gets on my nerves. The only time the loss of color saturation is annoying is when one eye is different than the other. Of course, the blurriness is

Whenever we travel, we like to bring some entertainment with us in the form of music, movies, magazines and books. Our Kindles are capable of holding almost all of this media plus they save so much space and weight! Typically, what we can't fit physically on the Kindle's drive, we can access in our Amazon Cloud... if we always have internet/wifi access.  Our next trip, which is a cross-country Amtrak excursion in a sleeper car, promises to have spotty service throughout most of the trip so we needed to prepare. I never know when my miserable health will appear so I like to ensure I always have something to do to keep my mind off of my health. Plus, if my health is so poor that I am stuck behind while everyone is out and about sightseeing and celebrating, I really need something to entertain myself. This is where the HD movies, music, magazines and books come into play. I downloaded music to my Kindle Fire... no problem with that because I have more than enough space for tha