I was scheduled to have another foot surgery in July, courtesy of sub-acute Achilles' Tendonitis on my left foot. Achilles' Tendonitis is normally seen in professional runners who had to take a break from running, then jumped back into running at their 'normal speed' without giving their body a chance to warm up to that again. This sounds a lot like weasel-speed me (without the professional running part).

I say I *was* scheduled, because my body decided to give me an unwanted adventure that overrode that. Two weeks before the end of spring quarter, I had an acute gall bladder attack. Bad enough that I was in the hospital for 6 days, and they couldn't immediately remove it because it started going septic -- throwing my body into full blown emergency mode, which spiked my blood pressure over 200, my heart rate at 135 and a fever of 101. After many tests and meds that didn't seem to work, they initiated an emergency procedure at 11pm to insert a catheter into my gall bladder and attach it to a port and valve system to a bag to drain the infection. After a week at home with a bulb hanging off me filling with gunk, the infection was drained out so it became safe to go in and remove the darned thing. My body pulled one more stunt and had a full-blown bronchio-spasm asthma attack just as they were removing the breathing tube, sending the surgery team scrambling. I stayed an extra day at the hospital to make sure nothing else went wrong, and I got to see a picture of my removed gall bladder -- I didn't know I could grow golfballs in there! It was impressive even for the experienced surgeon. So after 6 weeks of not being allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds, no swimming, and a change in my diet to deal with the missing organ, I'm back to 'normal' and now waiting for the rescheduled surgical date for my darned foot!

Alas, a few weeks ago I lost my cat Sting to FIV-related lymphoma. Yesterday we picked up his ashes from the vet, and they had placed him in a wooden frame with the wrong last name (after I had corrected the info on their form!) -- the box looks like a wooden gravestone, which sets me off in a bad way, so I'm making him a canopic jar with his face for the lid ornament. I'm posting progress pics in the scrap area if anyone's interested.