Scattered Thoughts . . .

I've been using an old Olympus telephoto lens on my Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera bodies for wildlife photography.  Well, I also use my Sony camera bodies at times but I'm lacking fast-focusing long lenses for my Sony bodies so I lean toward the micro four thirds bodies for this purpose.  These micro four thirds cameras and lenses are indeed "micro" sized and that is one of the major reasons I have this Panasonic gear.  Relatively small and lightweight is a very good thing when it comes to my extensive spinal injuries. I've used this long Olympus telephoto lens quite often when in my kayak shooting loons, ducks, hawks and eagles but this old lens is just a little too large and a little too long for easy handholding for such a fast moving type of photography.   Of course, when I'm sitting in a small kayak, I don't have much of a choice but to handhold this lens.  It is a challenge to keep such a long lens trained on my subject especially when in a roll

I've never been one to be a follower.  I definitely will not follow the masses in purchasing popular products by inexplicably popular manufacturers.  I am no lemming, I am no blind follower.  As such, for this reason as well as others, I'll never promote anything made by Canon, Nikon, (cr)Apple, Tesla/Musk (jeez...  I don't even like writing these two names), or similar manufacturers just to name a few that come to mind first.   (I have to point out that my negative feelings and opinions of Musk go far deeper than simply not following the masses after decades of giving lectures on the evils of this lying, dishonest, rapist of our Earth...  and it is a topic I have beaten to death in professional lectures touching upon, unfortunately, only deaf ears.  In time, unfortunately when it is too late, people will understand what I had been warning about decades earlier.)  I don't just blindly dislike these manufacturers.  I do research these manufacturers and try some products

Today was Valentine's Day so I stopped to pick up a dozen roses, some candy and a card for Sheila as I was driving back home from another medical appointment.  Sheila seemed to be pleasantly surprised by the gifts when I arrived home.   My health has been so lousy with COVID since before Christmas that we sort of skipped Christmas, our anniversary, New Year's, and even a long weekend out of town with friends.  It has been a period of nothingness, overwhelming fatigue, pain and lousy health.   I had a medical appointment this morning while Sheila worked from home which provided me with an ideal opportunity to get a few things to show my love and appreciation for Sheila.  As I said, I believe she was pleasantly surprised and thankful! My health...  uggg...  COVID is a miserable, debilitating and highly contagious virus and, at this point, I seriously wonder whether I will ever get in front of it.  It has been over a year now of being well behind it and struggling to get in front

W e had planned to go to a rather unique diner after skating at Bryant Park during our trip to Manhattan at Christmastime.  Actually, we had each of our meals planned for our entire trip, even our breakfasts.  After skating at Bryant park, we walked the few blocks to this diner on Broadway only to find that the line to get into the diner was wrapped around the building and then, as we peered around the corner, we noticed the line was more than a block long!  Instead of waiting on that very long line in the brutal wind and frigid temperatures, we headed to Junior's diner one or two blocks closer to Times Square.  We had only a 10 minute wait there so we had breakfast there.   Skating at Bryant Park was later than our skating reservation at Rockefeller Center so, by the time we left Bryant Park, we were well into the busy time for breakfast.  I was hoping we would still be early enough to avoid the big crowds but we were not!  Fortunately, I had a few restaurants in mind as backups t

W e were supposed to head out of town this past weekend for one of the largest train shows in the US but I have still been struggling with this latest and very long bout of COVID as well as a secondary infection and other secondary health issues.  My health had been slowly improving over the past week (finally) but I was still not feeling well enough for a trip out of town.  Actually, it was not even a close call.  I definitely was still not feeling well enough to do anything other that a few minutes of household chores. Truthfully, due to contracting COVID yet again during our first trip out of town since the before the pandemic, I have no desire to risk going out of town for the foreseeable future.  This virus is far too contagious and far too debilitating especially when combined with my primary illness.  Besides, every time I get this insidious virus, I'm sick for months and things get dangerously bad every time.  It seems like whenever I let my guard down slightly and venture

I 'm five weeks into this bout with COVID and I'm still experiencing fevers every day.  Every evening my temperature rises into the triple digits range.  I was feeling "fair" this morning when I got up so that was a nice change.  It was pretty short-lived though. I have been ignoring snow removal due to struggling with the virus and daily fevers so, since I was feeling pretty good this morning (relatively speaking), I headed outside to clear out snow from around the house and off the roof.  By the time I came back inside a couple of hours later, I was feeling pretty lousy again.   Every evening, my sinus headache returns along with the fever but the sinus headache this evening is quite painful.  This sinus headache came back with a vengeance after all the heavy work outside.  Of course, my spinal injuries were screaming at me too while I was moving snow and since then.  I took quite a few breaks while working outside in an attempt to get past the excruciating pain.  I

I 'm going to keep this blog entry short since I'm writing on my Kindle in bed.   I had a fever again last night.  Although I felt mediocre this morning (eh...  well, I still felt rather lousy but better than I have been feeling for the past month), I slept most of the afternoon and then developed a fever again tonight.   I have inflamed lymph nodes in my neck, underarms and around my upper torso and swollen glands in my neck.  I've had this problem since developing COVID a month ago.  My sinuses are still hurting consistently.  I simply feel lousy.  The COVID virus seems to continue to incite mast cell issues with my primary illness too. Anyway, I wanted to document the continuing waves of fever.  The virus just doesn't seem to be loosening its grip on me.

T his evening, I was notified of my latest test results...  all results were negative and, when it comes to test results, negative is a good thing. PSA - my numbers were low which is a good thing since high numbers are a possible indication of prostate cancer...  so, no indications of prostate cancer...   good news. Metabolic Panel - all results were in normal range which means no signs of kidney infection.  This is a good indication that I don't have a far more involved strep infection...  good news.   Urinalysis - all results were normal here as well.  No blood in urine...  all characteristics of the urine was normal...  good news. The only remaining possibility that is left is that perhaps I passed a small kidney stone and that caused a fast healing abrasion in my urinary tract that bled only shortly after passing the stone. The doctor said if I see bleeding again, then I will be referred to a urologist.  In the meantime, I need to keep drinking plenty of fluids which I've

I 've been waking up pretty hungry lately.  I'm not sure why but it may have to do with taking so many extra H1 blockers.  Those class of medications tend to make people very hungry.  Whatever the reason, I've been hungry in the morning so I have been making larger breakfasts for myself. This morning, I made some French Toast with fresh raspberries and some bacon on the side... Breakfast was delicious but this wears me out.  I slept for two hours or more after cleaning up all the dishes from breakfast.  This caused me to miss lunch. The other problem with these big breakfasts is they won't be helping my cholesterol levels at all!  It hit the spot this morning though.

A s if having the COVID virus for a month now isn't enough, I'm also developing various secondary health problems. First, I developed a sinus infection.  Since I was still struggling with active COVID including fever, I needed to stay in quarantine so that I wouldn't infect my whole primary care practice.  This meant that when I thought I was developing a sinus infection, I had to resort to a televisit meeting with my doctor.  Since I was just video chatting with my doctor this meant that she couldn't examine me for additional problems and only had my descriptive assessment of symptoms to form a diagnosis and prescribe a treatment plan.   There was no doubt that she was right in that I was suffering from a sinus infection.  That was obvious by the symptoms.  Unfortunately, we are now thinking there were more serious underlying problems as well that had yet to show any symptoms. I got up yesterday morning at around 5am.  I hardly slept through the night mostly due to bei