The Great NetXperiment!

– Shawn Telford

“Do we dance or do we riot?” is the question that seems to drive the new album from Seattle’s Ms. Led. At the center of the band is Lesli Wood, a spunky singer with a keen ability to howl, growl or snarl — and just as easily lure listeners to the bedroom, occasionally in the same song. Her dexterity is matched only by her capacity to turn a phrase, which tend to be straightforward, politically charged and largely feminist pangs that would be didactic in the hands of a lesser wordsmith.

….

Some of the CD’s finest moments, however, are also its most personal.
“Fools,” a gorgeous, complicated swan song, which closes out the
record, appears to be about relationships. But when you listen closer,
it’s about inevitability, or in Lesli Wood’s case, her fight with
multiple sclerosis.

Read more of the review here

BY MARK VIERAOf The Patriot-News

Inside the VIP room yesterday, there were two velvet ropes that lined the path to a man in a sharp pin-stripe suit and a lavender paisley tie. People inside the room could come up, meet the man and snap a photo with him.

Robbie Gould, the man at the end of that path, has come a long way since his days as Penn State’s place kicker.Gould, a Pro Bowl NFL kicker with the Chicago Bears, was in Hershey yesterday for the 35th Multiple Sclerosis Dinner of Champions, which is put on by the central Pennsylvania chapter of the National MS Society.

Read more here

Yes i am back.

Had some pretty intense family issues that I won’t go into here, but they were completely and utterly unexpected. They were also so important that I dropped everything to concentrate on them.

So news.

I have been promoted at work both in my job role and through a couple of newsletter articles. Several people are now running some events to raise some moeny and I am feeling more positive about kicking this all off again.

For those people in Sydney Australia there is a MS drug trial (oral!) looking for candidates. I will post details as soon as my ISP starts behaving again.

Many Hispanics Believe Myths About Multiple Sclerosis, In Part Because of Lack of Information[Apr 18, 2007]

Many Hispanics believe that multiple sclerosis is a disease that primarily affects non-Hispanic whites, in part because of a lack of good information about the disease’s prevalence among Hispanics, the San Jose Mercury News reports. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 of the 400,000 U.S. residents with MS are Hispanic, according the Mercury News. However, the misconception that the disease does not affect minorities is a “very common notion among the public and even for the medical establishment,” according to Janet Sutton, a University of Chicago research scientist who has studied the state of MS treatment in blacks and Hispanics. “There’s so little information about MS and Latinos, it’s amazing,” Sutton added. MS patients commonly have some loss of vision, memory, hearing, balance and comprehension skills and are easily tired and can lose control of bladder and bowel movements, among other symptoms.

There also is a possibility that MS is more aggressive in blacks and Hispanics, even though it is less prevalent in the groups, Sutton said. In addition, some Hispanic immigrants do not follow the proper medical treatments for MS and depend on Hispanic customs or advice from relatives to relieve symptoms, according to the Mercury News. Nicholas LaRocca, director of health care delivery and policy research for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said support groups can address myths and issues that affect Hispanic MS patients. “What makes a group work is cohesiveness. When you add sociocultural values, you add more to the feeling of one-ness,” LaRocca said (Rodriguez, San Jose Mercury News, 4/17).

Coverage, Access and Quality | Many Hispanics Believe Myths About Multiple Sclerosis, In Part Because of Lack of Information - Kaisernetwork.org

Who am I kidding!

The return to work has been a hard slog I must say. The office is awash with resignations and machinations as one of those strange conjunctions that occassionally take place when everyone decides they want to do something new and move on to fresh or greener pastures.

I spent time getting my head down getting used to the bright lights, noise and annoyance of people just not taking ownership for stuff and came home dog tired every day. Still going to the gym every morning has definately improved my mood and my fitness and my self esteem. I don’t know about you but having a health setback knocks my self esteem about and it takes a while (and lots of over-achieving) to get it back.

The blog took a back seat and I apologise for that. But I double-dare promise I will make it part of my daily routine again now that I feel that I am almost back on top of things. This will be a difficult promise to keep due to the fact that one of the managerial roles that was made vacant by a resignation has been seconded to me and the current manager is putting in 14 hour days (don’t worry, I have no intention of flogging myself to death like that).

So onward and upward….

‘By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff WriterMarch 28, 2007

Physicist Paul C. Lauterbur, who received a 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for giving physicians the ability to look inside the human body without using harmful radiation, died Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill.He was 77 and had been suffering from kidney disease.

Lauterbur played a key role in the development of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, which produces highly detailed images of soft tissues and organs without using X-rays.

Although the first MRI instruments did not become available until the early 1980s, their use has exploded to the point that more than 60 million MRI examinations are performed every year.

The technique is particularly valuable for imaging the brain and spinal cord, monitoring the progress of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and assessing damage to knees and other joints.

Read more here - Los Angeles Times

I have been a bit quiet for a while due to a couple of reasons. Summer has ended here in Australia but the temperatures are still quite high, couple that with some disgusting weeks-in-a-row of 100% humidity and you find me languishing with MS symptoms galore.

On top of that my daughter discoevered Skype and has been chatting to her boyfriend non-stop. My internet access allows 10gig of up/down traffic before the service gets throttled to 64k a sec. Just over dial-up speeds. Divide that between three people fighting for bandwidth and you have…no internet basically! Usually this will happen in the last days of the month, but the new Skype chat traffic meant that it has been since the 20th!

Good news though, is the article I wrote for the departmental newsletter at work was published. It didn’t generate any questions as yet so i will do some face-to-face promotion, and see if I can get it pushed to higher/wider audiences outside of the country.

Also I have been hitting the gym every morning from 6am and am slowly getting back the fitness I was developing before my head exploded late last year. I am looking forward to feeling strong again and the loss of the aerobic fitness was a big blow (terrible pun!).

THE television reporter Elizabeth Quigley yesterday described the moment she was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis as “unreal”.

Speaking publicly for the first time about her condition, the BBC
journalist and wife of former SNP leader John Swinney said she was told
she had MS seven years ago.

“I was 28, living in Glasgow and preparing to buy my first flat. I had
just started a fantastic new job as BBC Scotland’s political
correspondent. And my life was about to take a turning I could never
have expected,” she said. Unconcerned about the tingling sensation in
the left side of her face, Quigley eventually visited her GP, convinced
that she was “a complete time-wasting fraud”.

ALICE WYLLIE

Read More -Scotsman.com News - Scotland

MS Stuff

A new photographic exhibit, called “The Image of MS” has been unveiled at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome to dispel myths about multiple sclerosis (MS), challenge public perceptions about the disease, and encourage those with symptoms to seek treatment as early as possible. According to a recent worldwide survey to gauge public awareness about the disease, nearly 60 percent of respondents incorrectly believe that most people with MS are either paralyzed or bound to a wheelchair, and 61 percent said one of their biggest fears about MS is that it will prevent them from living active lives. (1, 2)

Read More