My mom and dad met with the doctor today to discuss the results of the MRI; it apparently showed that my dad has a calcified brain lesion. Based on travel questions my parents answered, the doctor thinks the most likely cause of this is a trip to Mexico my parents took 8 years ago. He said that cases like my dad's are common in Mexico and are generally caused by a tapeworm (Taenia solium) found in undercooked pork that enters the bloodstream and lodges in the brain. When the tapeworms dies (sometimes years after the initial infection), calcium deposits build up around it, which in turn tends to cause seizures. His blood sugar and cholesterol levels didn't help much, either.

The good news is that the doctors have only found one lesion thus far. Depending on the exact location and how long it takes for the calcium deposit to break down, it may or may not present an ongoing danger to his health. He has to endure another round of tests to make sure there aren't any others. If they found more, it would significantly increase his risk of more seizures (or worse). That's something I definitely don't want to hear.

As far as his vision goes, it appeared to be improving for a few days. Unfortunately, it's now starting to get worse again. He told me he was having difficulty seeing people's faces until they were almost at arms length, which really worries me. He's scheduled to see the optometrist this week, so hopefully they can diagnose and treat his vision problems. I was reading that the calcium deposit and the vision problems could be related, but I'm in no position to draw medical conclusions based on articles I find on the internet. Helps me understand the problem a little better, though.

We'll get through this, Dad.

As I stated in my Damn You, Captain Crunch! post, I listen to talk radio while driving to and from work. As an independent voter, I listen to Republican talk radio not to have someone tell me what my opinion should be (hello Rush Limbaugh dittoheads), but to listen to the opinions of other people FOR ENTERTAINMENT and to hear points of view you wouldn't normally hear on the news. Don't get me wrong, sometimes some very good points are made and I nod my head in agreement, but most of the time it's just angry extreme right Republican yelling and fist pumping and I get a good chuckle out of it.

With the passage of the health care bill over the weekend, I braced myself for a higher than normal onslaught of angry people calling in to the Mark, Ed & Sgt Sam morning show, but wow, all the nuts really fell off the tree this morning. There was a person hinting that he was so upset he could fly a plane into a key federal building a la Joseph Stack (someone please call the FBI on this guy), another person calling Obama a fascist, socialist, communist idiot (this guy needs to look these words up before he uses them instead of regurgitating words he hears like a parrot -- maybe then he'd see that they basically contradict each other), another congratulated Obama on making the first move towards being the next Hitler in his quest for world domination (seriously?) and yet another claimed he had proof that Obama and Hugo Chavez were plotting to bring down the global economy. I mean, these people were literally YELLING into the phone the whole time. Genuinely insane if you ask me.

You know, I don't like the way the bill was passed via reconciliation and there were some shady deals made under the table that we won't find out about until later. I'm a little worried about the effects on small businesses and whether or not they will just drop their current coverage for the employees in favor of paying the fine because it would be "better for the bottom line". I also don't like the part that REQUIRES you (under penalty of law) to have health insurance, but it's not something that I'm going to start threatening people (especially the president) or making wild accusations that have no basis in fact let alone common sense. There is a major difference in being upset with the government and being just plain crazy.

My company's 4th Annual March Madness basketball tournament is coming up next Saturday and I have a feeling that I'm ill-prepared for this one. February ended and March came in with me getting absolutely no basketball practice in during lunch because I was too busy dealing with our company websites taking nosedives. Then I took a week of vacation, which included our trip to Vegas (lots of fun, by the way). I came back to work this past Monday only to hear that the gym was closed the whole week while they replaced the roof. So as you can see, I've been sans practice for almost a month now. I was hoping to be able to at least get some leg work done in front of the house today, but it's like 44 degrees outside with a stiff 30mph wind blowing out of the north. Um, no thanks; I'd rather stay inside today.

I guess if anyone wouldn't mind if my team made an early exit this year, it would be Selina. The less games I play, the less she has to worry about me injuring myself.

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, my father was taken to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, March 13th because he had a seizure. He'd never had one before, so it was really scary (especially for my mom, who was home when it happened, and my brother, who ran home and had to hold my dad down while the medics worked to stop the seizure). Tests revealed that he had undiagnosed diabetes (he hadn't seen a doctor in 9 years) and his blood glucose level was very high. After pumping him with insulin (among other things), they were able to get his blood glucose level back down to normal. Unfortunately now he's having to go through a battery of neurological and optical tests to (a) make sure nothing more serious caused the seizure and (b) figure out why he's still seeing spots from time to time. We'll have a better idea of what he's facing sometime next week when the test results come in. Sigh, my poor dad...I've always thought of him as the Superman in my life and it really unnerved me to see him in the hospital like that.

While it's scary enough that I could have lost my dad, this could directly affect my health as well since I now have both parents and a grandparent on each side of the family who have diabetes. This puts me at slightly higher risk to develop diabetes myself. Dang, as if I didn't already have enough things to worry about. Well, I definitely eat better and exercise more than my parents, so I'm hoping that my lifestyle will overcome my genetics.

Get better soon, dad - I need my Superman back.

Judging by what Google Analytics is telling me, people are still trying to hit my old posts (particularly the one about the polygamist woman with the wicked unibrow). I finally sat down last night for an hour and worked out the conversion for getting my old posts moved to the new blog. I'm going to start stepping backwards through my old posts and updating the v5.0 code so that it will display properly in the v6.0 site. As I update the code, you'll start to see older months appear in the navigation bar.

So fear not, wicked unibrow lovers -- your posting will return shortly.