Saturday, March 30, 2013
I was a youngster, in the early 1960’s, when we moved
from North Carolina to Allison Iowa where my father was going to be the pastor
to one of the churches there. As I
remember it for a short period of time the telephone was a box mounted on the
wall by the front door. The box had a
crank that you turned in order to get the operator’s attention so you could
tell her what number you wanted to call.
However shortly after we arrived there that phone box was removed and
replace with a rotary dial phone.
Then in March of 1965 Dad accepted a church in western
Kansas. The phone was a black rotary
dial phone and we were on a Party
Line. However unlike most rotary phones that had
numbers 0 through 9 on the dial this phone had no numbers and you would turn
the dial through its entire range in order to reach the operator in Prairie
View, Kansas the small western Kansas town.
You would tell the operator what phone number you wanted and she would
ring the phone in that person’s house. If
memory serves me corretly phone number was 8F7 and our party line ring was two
long rings and one short ring. Of course
being a party line anyone could pick up their phone and listen in to our
conversation.
In 1970, I was going to a techincal school in Chicago,
when I wanted to call home I would have to dial the operator and have her place
the phone call for me. I would hear the
operator ring and route the phone call through Kansas City who would ring and
route the phone call through Hays Kansas.
The operator in Hays Kansas would route my phone call to the Prairie
View operator who would ring the correct number of rings on the farm party line
and someone in our home would answer the phone and now I would be talking to my
family.
That was then and this is now. Now we have satellites making international
phone calls in a matter of seconds. Now
there are computers allowing a person to go around the world almost instantly. Yesterday I was working a Sudoku puzzle on my
computer and as I always do, I had my Instant Messaging program running. All of a sudden, I see Britt-Arnhild of Britt
Arnhild’s House in the Woods on Instant Messaging. I have been reading her Blog for many many
years, maybe for as long as she has been Blogging. I use her Blog as a way for me to get out of
my bedroom and experience, through her, some of the world. She and I had a pleasant conversation,
however a short one because my Home Aid came and I had to say bye to
Britt-Arnhild. For a number of years, I
have used Instant Messaging to talk to my cousin in the Netherlands and now I
feel that I have reached another friend around the world.
Just as the telephone has changed and changed the way we
communicate to each other, the Personal Computer has changed how we communicate
with each other. I hope that
Britt-Arnhild and I will have many more pleasant times talking to each other.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Eye Doctor Visit
Yesterday P and I went for my eye
doctor visit. I am now seeing a Neuro
Ophthalmologist specialist because the Spinal Cerebellar Degeneration has now progressed to affecting my eyes causing me to have double vision. I still don’t understand much of what the
doctor said about my eyes and disease, so I an including what P. wrote for our
family.
It was a VERY long visit spent
mostly waiting to see the doctor.
The double vision is progressing. If it had been stable he would have gotten a new RX for lenses with a prism built in. Since it is not stable, they increased his prism from 5 to 10 in his reading glasses and added a 12 prism to his computer glasses. The hope is that things may stabilize here. In that case, instead of having a temporary prism in 2 pairs of glasses, he would get it ground into the lenses.
What the doctor had hoped was that his brain would compensate for half of the correction he needed but it isn't. Most likely that is because of the disease. If it progresses beyond a prism of 20, he would need eye muscle surgery. I'm not sure that is even an option for him.
We go back in 4 months for a followup. If things are stable then, it is new lenses for his glasses and 6 months before we go back. If not, it is new temporary prisms (which cost $50 each and is not covered by insurance). Pray that things stabilize. Dr. Mizen said there is no predicting if it will stabilize or not. It will probably be like all things with this disease, plateaus & progression of the symptoms.
The double vision is progressing. If it had been stable he would have gotten a new RX for lenses with a prism built in. Since it is not stable, they increased his prism from 5 to 10 in his reading glasses and added a 12 prism to his computer glasses. The hope is that things may stabilize here. In that case, instead of having a temporary prism in 2 pairs of glasses, he would get it ground into the lenses.
What the doctor had hoped was that his brain would compensate for half of the correction he needed but it isn't. Most likely that is because of the disease. If it progresses beyond a prism of 20, he would need eye muscle surgery. I'm not sure that is even an option for him.
We go back in 4 months for a followup. If things are stable then, it is new lenses for his glasses and 6 months before we go back. If not, it is new temporary prisms (which cost $50 each and is not covered by insurance). Pray that things stabilize. Dr. Mizen said there is no predicting if it will stabilize or not. It will probably be like all things with this disease, plateaus & progression of the symptoms.