:. Father Hurts Best

So, my father's dentist took him to visit an oral surgeon today. This is the latest in a seemingly unending string of complications from the radiation Dad received as part of his treatment for cancer 2 years ago.

Here's what he found out today:
When you radiate your mouth, it changes the nature of your teeth, which can make your teeth crumble. This explains why Dad has been spitting out tiny pieces of his teeth for the last few weeks.

The other thing that occurs when you radiate your mouth is your blood vessels shrink and eventually die away. So it's not only that Dad's saliva glands were taken out, but that his blood vessels are shrinking which means that his jaw is dying. Yep, his jaw bone is slowly dying and needs to be replaced.

The worst part of the whole thing is that any one of the doctors before or after his radiation could have warned him that this would happen, or told him about what signs to look for, but not a single one did - even when Dad complained about the very symptoms that would point to this. And apparently this is a run of the mill occurrence for someone who's been through radiation.

So, what now? Well, beginning Monday Dad will drive down to St. Luke's and spend 2 hours in a hyperbolic chamber. He will do this every day for 20 days and then will have surgery to replace his jaw. They've talked about taking a piece of his hip to replace it or getting a donated one, or a synthetic one.

Why the hyperbolic chamber? Well, the hyperbolic chamber forces oxygen into your body which forces your body to create new blood vessels. These blood vessels are not as large, strong or good as the original ones were, but there will be more of them.

So the hope is that these blood vessels will be up and going before all of Dad's original ones finish dying and that these new ones will be able to take over. If they do, then the surgery should go off without a hitch and my Dad will be the proud owner of a new jaw and complete set of dentures.

Does this make any kind of sense? Has anyone ever heard anything about radiation causing this kind of thing before? This is just nuts.

:. Surprise, Surprise

I was back in the classroom today (and will return Thursday and Friday as well) teaching summer school at Truman Elementary. Today I taught science for a blended 2nd & 3rd grade classroom. tomorrow and Friday I will be filling in for the MR room teacher.

It came as a bit of a surprise. I thought I was done subbing. It will be noce to get one more paycheck before we go from the district.

I'm sending letters to churches to raise money for the move. Our moving estimate came in just under $3000. I've got a lot to do.

:. Packing Up & a Legacy Continues

When we moved from Kirksville, we moved a lot of stuff that we "couldn't live without.” After a year of living without 90% of it (as it was packed up in the garage, basement and attic) we decided to revisit our stuff.

Now, we have three categories: 1 - Take to Tucson (the essentials), 2 - Leave in the Clouse house attic (the somedays - mostly kids books and books Rachael will need when she becomes a prof), and 3 - Sell & give away (the organ we used as a headboard in K'ville, about 400 books).

We're making progress, but it's getting stressful and sad. Neither of us likes moving. Everything about it stresses us out. Especially this time.

We're selling the car (anyone interested?) and planned on retiring the van, until it got a last minute reprieve.

That's right, for all of you who decried the end of the van; you may rest assured that it will live on in its unstoppable glory as we pass it on to my brother-in-law Jarred. All he has to do is get his license, learn the "put it in neutral and coast, while turning it off and back on" trick to fix the transmission when it's not working, remember the combination to open the doors and learn how to gauge his speed by the traffic around him ('cause the broken speedometer certainly won't help).

And the kicker - according to Blue Book, it's still worth twice as much as the car! (Even in the shape it’s in!)

I'll admit it - I'm going to miss it.

That’ll do van, that’ll do.

:. Playing with Fire

Rachael and I spend part of the recent holiday weekend camping with friends from Lakeland.

Jason and Twila Lahey invited us for an evening of guitar playing, song singing, and fire breathing fun.

It was a warm night at Lake Jacomo, but a fun time was had by all.

Jason's sister brought her boyfriend with her to visit the family and together they delighted the campground (if not the authorities) with a performance of their fire breathing and fire dancing skill.

It was an awesome display and sparked the interest of other campers who joined us to watch.

As they performed they explained how they learned their techniques and what safety precautions they were taking.

They capped the performance off by teaching Jason how to breathe fire. While he wasn't as accomplished as our professionals, he did manage to get the hang of it rather quickly.

As Jason has a new trick in his repertoire, we're sure this will somehow work its way into a Lakeland youth event in the future.

:. End of the School Year

Well,
It’s the end of the school year and I’m sitting in a classroom at Smith-Hale Junior High School for what might be the last time. I’m so excited.

It’s been a long year and over the next 6 weeks Rachael and I have a lot to get done. We’ll be selling both of our vehicles (yes, the van will be no more), buying a new one, having a huge garage sale, repacking our things and saying goodbye to friends and family.

We’ll be leaving KC on July 5th in our new vehicle and fly back after finding a place to live a week later. We’ll then pack our moving truck & trailer and make the trip again.

We’re still looking for more support during this time so if you’re reading this, support what we do and waste $10 ore more a month on things you don’t really need. Please consider supporting this ministry each month and help us get a new church off the ground that will reach people in Tucson.

E-mail me at timsuddarth@yahoo.com and I will be happy to send you all the information you need to join our support team.

:. Keep the Internet Free

"What? The Net's not free (unless I can find a hot spot). I have to drop my $20 every month for access. And my parent's are paying more than that for dial-up. The Net's never been free (except for those freeridin' days of college) - what are you talking about?"

Well, I'm talking about a little thing called net neutrality. Jeffery Chester explains what's at stake in his article Save the Internet:

Will the internet in the United States become, in the words of AT&T (SBC) CEO, their company's private "pipes"? Or will it remain, as the Supreme Court cited in 1997, "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed"? These two very different perspectives reflect what's at stake in the growing fight now in Congress over the internet's future.

The basic question: Should Internet service providers be allowed to charge extra for preferential treatment of web pages? (i.e. ABC.com loads way faster than Craig's List because ABC pays SBC/Yahoo DSL [or whoever] more money to carry it's website faster) Congress is just beginning to debate this as they start the process of overhauling telecommunicaation regulations for the first time since 1996.

Alyssa Milano (yes, that Alyssa Milano) paints a picture of what it might be like without net nuetrality:

Imagine, wanting to donate money to a charity and not being able to open the nonprofit's web page because of the charity's inability to afford the dominant internet provider's fees required to make the page efficient? Imagine the millions of life-saving dollars these charities will lose if lobbyists get their way? What if your child is sick, and you can't gain access to a support group's page because the support group can't afford the fees? Or even scarier, imagine not gaining speedy access to a politician's views because the specific provider is against his or her ideology?

In an L. A. Times article, Jim Puzzanghera explains the motivation for internet service providers to push for an end to net neutrality:

As more people use the Internet for data-heavy applications like video and music, the copper wires and fiber-optic lines that whisk information from computer to computer can get crowded. Big ... companies led by AT&T Inc. want to charge extra to guarantee fast and reliable delivery.

Simply put, the internet will change completely for us if congress passes the proposed telecom bill. This would be a bad thing. We didn't let telephone companies charge a premium and provide more reliable service to those who paid as that technology spread across the country and we shouldn't let ISPs do it with the internet.

In an article for the New Yorker, James Surowiecki describes what it might have been like if we'd allowed telephone companies to act in the way ISPs are pushing for today:

In the first decades of the twentieth century, as a national telephone network spread across the United States, A.T. & T. adopted a policy of “tiered access” for businesses. Companies that paid an extra fee got better service: their customers’ calls went through immediately, were rarely disconnected, and sounded crystal-clear. Those who didn’t pony up had a harder time making calls out, and people calling them sometimes got an “all circuits busy” response. Over time, customers gravitated toward the higher-tier companies and away from the ones that were more difficult to reach. In effect, A.T. & T.’s policy turned it into a corporate kingmaker.

If you’ve never heard about this bit of business history, there’s a good reason: it never happened. Instead, A.T. & T. had to abide by a “common carriage” rule: it provided the same quality of service to all, and could not favor one customer over another.

Take just a moment and go to Save The Internet and sign the petition to speak out against this abuse of the internet.