This Week's Update [2/22/15] - Congratulations Sarah!

[The Weekly Update is an email that was started in the fall of 2010 to keep family and friends informed of my medical condition and has continued as a review of family activities.  Written by Zelma and edited by Steve. Working on adding past issues to the blog.]

Hi All,

First congratulations to Sarah for passing her nursing exam boards. She is now officially an RN, BSN!

We've continued to deal with winter this week.  It was very cold but at least didn't snow as much as it has the previous weeks.  Today felt pretty balmy with temps reaching 30.

Steve and I have continued to expand our low sodium cooking recipes and have enjoyed making a number of new meals for GJ and my Aunt and Uncle.  GJ is settling in after her first full week at home and continues to improve.  Other than that it has been a quiet and uneventful week.

Miles for the week are 90, miles for 2015 are 614, and total miles are 12,868.

Take care,

Zelma

About Me

Retired manufacturing accountant living and biking on the Erie Canal.

Live with my life partner Zelma in Spencerport, NY

Born and raised in a small town south of Chicago, IL.

Graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Worked in the Chicago area, Mansfield, OH and for 25 years in the Rochester, NY area.  Retired in 2010.

Diagnosed with stage 4 head and neck cancer in the fall of 2010 and had what turned out to be a 14-hour surgery to remove my tongue and replace it with a rotational/regional flap in November 2010.  Also had daily radiation and weekly chemotherapy for five weeks.  Long story, but have scars and missing muscle tissue on my leg, arm and chest from the reconstruction attempts.

Am unable to swallow without aspirating.  Breathe mostly through a trach tube in my throat and all nutrition and hydration is through a PEG feeding tube into my stomach.

Have also gone through two rounds of chemotherapy and one round of radiation therapy for metastatic disease (cancer) of the liver in the last five years.  Currently under control.

In spite of all that, or because of it, we have cycled over 17,000 miles in the six years since the surgery.  Most of those miles are either on the Erie Canal towpath, which we can access from our back yard, or on trainers in the basement during Rochester winters.

Was fortunate and proud to be in my daughter's wedding in 2012 and to be around for my granddaughter's birth in 2013.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but it's who I am and may help to explain what you may see in pictures posted here.

Amazon Customer Reviews and Ratings

Being retired, I have time available to do internet research before buying something new.  Often I will think that I need or want something and after spending time to do the research I will cool off and not buy it.  But I may have learned something or at least been entertained in the process.  The research process can be a hobby without actually buying something.

Amazon customer reviews and ratings can be a good source of entertainment, if not always useful buying information.

The the most useful ratings are those with a lot of reviews.  Ratings based on four or five reviews don't really tell you much about the product unless all the reviews are bad.  The best customer reviews for me are the ones that list Pros and Cons for the product based on that customer's experience.  You can then decide if the positive or negative attributes are important to you for your intended use.

A product with a significant percentage of negative reviews is probably something that is best avoided.  The negative reviews on a product that has mostly four and five star ratings can be a good source of entertainment, if not buying advice.

Examples of the types of reviews I have come across in my Amazon experience:

*****  I haven't opened the package yet, but I'm sure the [whatever] is great.

***      This [blue sweater] is great, but I really wanted a red one.

**        This [six inch ruler] is too short for what I need.

*          Don't waste your money.  This is a piece of junk.
            [If there are several of these, it's best to stay away.  If only one, and most
            of reviews are positive, the reviewer is probably just a crank.]

But the review that prompted this post was for a hitch adapter for my granddaughter's Burley trailer.  Most of the ratings were favorable, but one review was troubling. Paraphrasing:

    "Stay away from this product.  You can hurt or kill your kids.  I am an engineer who has ridden bikes and done my own maintenance for 20 years, and I am 100% sure that I installed the part correctly."

I am not an engineer and have not been riding or doing my own bike maintenance for 20 years.  But I am 99% sure that the potential failure mode that the person described could not happen if the part were used correctly. If the adapter is installed tightly and flush against the dropout, the skewer can not bend and cause a potential problem.

So sometimes even "experts" can be mistaken.  However, maybe it's better that other people who don't know how to use a quick release correctly will stay away from the product and not have an issue.

I plan to occasionally do "reviews" of some of the products I have used.  They will be based on my experience and may not be applicable to your situation, so read them accordingly.  I'm just a retired guy with time on my hands and I may not be the "expert" that I think I am.

Keep Moving



 

This Week's Update [2/15/15] - Brrrr!!!!

[The Weekly Update is an email that was started in the fall of 2010 to keep family and friends informed of my medical condition and has continued as a review of family activities.  Written by Zelma and edited by Steve. Working on adding past issues to the blog.]

Hi All,

It was another busy week.  GJ was finally discharged yesterday and is now home.  Because of the blood clots she had, she will need to take blood-thinning medication for awhile, so it will be monitored as part of her home care.  Jean and John arrived yesterday and will be staying with Mom for the next week or so.   The other big change is being on a low sodium diet.  We, fortunately, got an overview of what that means while she was at St. Ann's (a.k.a. no prepared foods and read all labels), so we have kicked off a cook-from-scratch marathon.  So far we have made bean soup and beef, mushroom, barley soup.  We have some more new recipes to do later in the week.

Steve surprised me with a very sentimental Valentine gift (make from one of our old bike chains) and a box of organic chocolates.  :-)

We are continuing to be punished with very cold and snowy weather. We will be glad when we finally get to ride outside again.  

Miles inside for the week are 66, miles for 2015 are 524, and total miles are 12,778.

Take care,

Zelma

This Week's Update [2/8/15] - GJ's Stay in Rehab Extended

[The Weekly Update is an email that was started in the fall of 2010 to keep family and friends informed of my medical condition and has continued as a review of family activities.  Written by Zelma and edited by Steve. Working on adding past issues to the blog.]

Hi All,

At the beginning of the week, GJ and I had a discharge planning meeting with the staff at her transitional care facility; and because she is doing well with the physical and occupational therapy pieces of the program, she was tentatively targeted for discharge on this past Thursday.  Our concern was whether she was medically ready - which appears to have been a good concern.  The most pressing issue that came up since Monday was swelling in her legs for which the cause was diagnosed as blood clots.  One has been resolved and she is on medication to work to resolve the other...so we are glad that was discovered before she came home.  Other than that she is doing well and knows everyone on her floor and has a regular group she likes to eat her meals with.  I've also been able to stop over for either lunch or dinner with her - it's handy that she is very close to my office.  One night when I showed up this week, they had finished dinner and were waiting for the center's activities coordinator to arrive, because apparently she had promised she would do all the ladies nails. :-)

Other than that - there has been a lot more winter weather and the forecast is to get a good size storm tomorrow.  We are definitely at the point of winter where I am very thankful I have a great snow plow service for the driveway and can't wait until the spring thaw!

Miles for the week are 66, miles for 2015 are 458, and total miles are 12,712.

Take care,

Zelma

This Week's Update [2/1/15] - GJ Continuing to Improve

[The Weekly Update is an email that was started in the fall of 2010 to keep family and friends informed of my medical condition and has continued as a review of family activities.  Written by Zelma and edited by Steve. Working on adding past issues to the blog.]

Hi All,

Mom moved to the cardiac rehab transitional care facility on Monday and has continued to do a bit more each day.  She has a couple of hours of therapy each day so is spending quite a bit of the remaining time resting.  She did make it a priority to find out where the beauty salon was so she could have her hair styled. :-)

Tomorrow we have a meeting to see how she is progressing based on the therapist evaluations.  This will probably give us a better idea of how long her stay will be and help us plan for when she is ready to come home.

We escaped last week's big snow but are expected to get a foot between tonight and tomorrow.  Hopefully, the groundhog decides tomorrow that the rest of winter will be short.  Not sure if he can see his shadow if he is up to his neck in a snow drift.

Miles for the week are 90, miles for 2015 are 392, and total miles are 12,646.

Take care,

Zelma