HeadphoneAddict

Feeling a little better to follow up here. Still hospitalized, after being ill for 6 weeks. Since my last log in Thursday I've had two more bronchoscopy and spent 6 hours on a ventilator in the ICU, had an echocardiogram, a CAT Scan with pulmonary vein mapping, and 3 days of IV antibiotics and steroids. I've only coughed up old blood for the past 3 days, but nothing fresh. The CAT Scan shows that over the past 12 years the pulmonary veins went from 80% obstructed to 100% obstructed, so now the left lung isn't functioning at all. And now that the fibrosis in my chest has calcified the chances for successful surgery to remove the bad lung are much worse, because they can't tie off any blood vessels they cut. And I'd have certain heart damage because the fibrosing mediastinitis is encasing the pulmonary veins right up to where they join the heart. In 1998 they only gave me a 50% chance of surviving the surgery - I voted no but it actually would have been much easier back then. So, my surgical options are slim. If they embolize the bleeding high pressure bronchial arteries in the cath lab again it could cause severe ischemia or infarction in the bad lung, killing it but it's not safe to remove it. If I get to the point in the future where my lung is bleeding and won't stop, a heart lung transplant might be the only thing to keep me going. Life expectancy with lung transplants is about half that of a heart, but they might not offer me just the heart if I only have one good original lung to go with it. Regardless, if I made it this far without the surgery or more embolizations then I figure that maybe I can go on several more years, if I can avoid situations that make me bleed (too high altitude, or infections, too strenuous exercise). I'm not sure I feel comfortable taking the risk of any kind of surgery until they just can't stop the bleeding. I'll go home in a day or two, likely with outpatient IV antibiotics. But this episode has changed my outlook a bit. I'm quickly loosing my interest in spending time online to read forums. I'm so far behind on reading head-fi that I'll never catch up. I need to focus more on my health, the kid's college plans, time with family, and maybe a possible move to sea level. But we don't want to move while we have one kid in college at CU Boulder for the next 4 years. My wife has a great job here and if we move she needs a similar level of job for 7 more years until the last kid is done with college, because of my early retirement. She wants to travel more and see the world, but flying is troublesome for me because I have to rent oxygen every time, and still risk a pulmonary hemorrhage on the plane. So, maybe we'd sell the house for a giant motorhome...

Thanks everyone, got me all teary eyed. Back to napping...

In the hospital right now for pulmonary hemorrhage due to my fibrosing mediastinitis and pulmonary hypertension. May have to go to cath lab for bronchial artery embolization. Bronchoscopy doesn't look good, in recovery now. Need another bronchoscopy tomorrow under anesthesia before deciding. Prayers would be appreciated... On iPhone but may not have freq access.

Thanks everyone, I didn't get to post much here the past few weeks so I missed this. I've been sick for the past 5 weeks, but I felt a lot better in the four days surrounding my birthday so I got to go to a nice fondue place for dinner and the next day took my wife and daughter to a welcome reception for the daughter getting into CU Boulder, then watched the movie "Flight" together, and then got to go shooting with my son - "pew pew pew" love it. So overall a nice 3-day long break for birthday weekend before things got worse again. My big Bday present was a 500 round case of 147 grain 9mm Ranger Talon ammo and a 250 round case of double aught buck shot, although my wife would rather I wanted something normal like a wrist watch or a TV.

Sorry to hear that. I was in a similar situation where an accident ruined my chances of being a surgeon. I was a 3rd year med student riding my motorcycle around the Texas Medical Center and a car changed lanes across a solid white line and pushed me off the road, where I totally shattered my left wrist. That happened less than an hour after I was cutting 10-0 sutures on eyeballs in the operating room while using that left hand, and the damage ruined my chances at being an ophthalmology surgeon (which I really enjoyed). I was quite ambidextrous up to that point, before the permanent nerve damage such, and that is very helpful in a surgical career. I've got good range of motion back, but the left hand/arm has been weaker and arthritis is setting in, and the sensation has never been normal in that hand afterwards. Interestingly, while I still had external fixation pins in my wrist and wearing a brace I was able to do a spinal tap on a small child, which eventually led me down the path of pediatrics instead. Surgery was more exiting and more lucrative, but pediatrics was very rewarding too - kids bounce back to health a lot better than adults do.

No I don't know, sorry - but it cuts the bass down a little bit, bumps the mids up a bit, and removes a small lower treble peak I think. Without EQ both phones (Nuforce Sony) have a V-shaped curve with recessed mids, but the HP-800 bass quantity is several dB above that of the MDR-V6. It's not an upper bass boost that bleeds too much into the mids. Somehow the Nuforce HD player beta reduces the cupped hands mid a little too, which I didn't think EQ could help with before. I might dig out the MDR-V6 and they them with the HP-800 setting on the HD player. But I'm not feeling good and it's too much trouble right now.

I forgot to mention that a lot of my listening was with the beta tester Nuforce HD player that has an EQ optimized for the HP-800, and it makes them a lot better. Without the EQ they are closer to the MDR-V6.

When I lived in Houston I was on the Livestock Show Safety Committee during my residency, and volunteered my time in the 1st aid rooms. I'd get to enjoy many of the shows for free when I was done but I may have loved the food a little more, especially those big fat sticks of peppered jerky! Any chance I could pay you double ship ship me a bunch of those fat jerky meat sticks?

Hi-Res http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8365/8544354812_347182053d_o.jpg

My wife took this beautiful photo, but she did it with the iPhone messaging app so it's only 1024x768 instead of 5 mpx (EDIT - strange, iPhoto says it was taken with her Nikon Coolpix camera, so why such a low res?)

Happy Belated Birthday

Was hoping to see a post that you were better now.

Happy Birthday!

Good motivating thread! I was 200 lbs in 1999 but I was up to 265 lbs after 12 years of disability. 18 months ago I did the 3 week SP Cleanse diet, and then continued eating better with mild exercise. I got down to 225 lbs by Xmax, and 215 lbs by March 2012. It just got very hard to lose weight past that number, and I could only hit 213 if I was dehydrated. Diet did make a big difference for me with blood pressure, where I dropped from 160/90 to 130/80 after the first 4 weeks of mostly fruit/veggie diet with a little meat and even fewer carbs. Processed foods seemed to push my pressures up. A year later I'm at 219 lbs now, but I've been too sick for a couple of months to exercise. I'm hoping I'll be able start riding the stationary and regular bike in a couple of weeks. I'd like to be back down to 200 lbs if I can, maybe by the end of the year? I previously found that orange and spice hot tea, and cinnamon flavored gum would curb my appetite, but I never got over cravings for food. I'm always getting into battles over wanting to keep the high carb food out of the house, but we've caved into the kids preferences for prepared meals and it's hard to maintain our weight that way.

I switched to SuperDuper years ago when CCC was still having issues with stealing huge chunks of hard drive space if you aborted a clone, and haven't gone back. It's nice because you can create all kinds of bootable clones, some with all the files or some with only certain files that you want to put on a new machine. So you can clone a 750GB Mac onto a 500GB drive by de-selecting the iTunes Media Folder or some of the users that you don't need. I also like that I can do a really fast incremental clone of my 3TB iTunes external drive onto a 3TB backup to keep off-site. When I used CCC years ago I could not clone a non-bootup drive.

What is up with this? Some kinda scam? Edit for better image.

Happy Birthday Nate!

Another option is I can provide an SRD-7 Pro or an SRD-7 Mk2 SB if you want.

Happy Belated Birthday! I'd miss less of these birthdays if I came every day, but then I'd miss life instead...

Tyler's ECD-1 sounded pretty damn good

Thanks for that info!

Mine used to be called, "Free Porn Access"

Didn't Vicky complain that the Apogee One had a bit of hiss?

What about the build to order?

Sorry about your Heidi