Import things first.... at the race last night, we didn't win anything, but finished in the top 1/3 of the competitors. Unfortunately, there was another Mach 5 in the competition, and it was much more detailed that ours was. Had a driver, mirrors and a whole lot of other stuff. That one captured 2nd place in the design category, and he deserved it. He must have been working on it for a month. Speed wise, it was slightly faster than ours as well, and given the wheel base they must have put in a lot of work on the wheels and axles.

I'm happy with the showing, given that I haven't done this in such a long while. Chip was disappointed. At the end of the night, he got wild with the car and broke off the fins of the thing, whipping it along the floor. I tried not to be upset with him.

Appointment this morning with Theresa, the Physician's Assistant at the neurologist's. I was massively impressed with her. She did a full neuro assessment, and picked up tremors in my left arm. So it appears that the problem I experienced after spreading the grass seed was real, and not just a function of my arm being tired. We talked about the depression, and she told me that depression wasn't uncommon, but generally didn't show up until later in the Avonex treatment. When we discussed the dosage, she told me that I should have done a "ramp up". The conclusion was that because I did the full dosage from the start, I got the depression early. She told me to take a break this week, then start with 1/4 dose next week, increasing it by 1/4 each week until I get back to the full dose.

I'm really optomistic about this treatment. I've been feeling better, although today isn't very good for me. Problems with my eyes and fatigue. Really being lazy too with the business. But, I've set Monday, the 23rd as the kick-off date for the new work regimin, and been marking time this week because of the car. Making some progress with the distributable. Today should've been productive, but had the appointment with Theresa this morning, and now we're going to lunch with Bobby, the Fresh Air kid. I'll write more about that later as we're just about ready to walk out the door.

Scale - 10 is worst
Weather - 70 and sunny

Shaking - 5

Neck Pain - 0
Upper Back Pain - 5

Fatigue - 5
Foggy Head - 4

Tinitus - 5
Ears Full - 5
Hand Numb - 0

Spatial Orientation - 4

Gastro - 2

Insomnia = 0

Eye Focus - 4

Sleep Kick - 0

Pain Meds - Yes

Benedryl last night - 0

This is what I've been working on for the last week, and its finally done. Its a rendition of the SpeedRacer Mark 5 for a Pinewood Derby race tonight. It took about a week total to make, and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't think we'll win, but I wanted to give something to Chip that he'd be proud of when with his peers. To tell the truth, I was sick of it at the end, there was too much work for the time I allowed, and it got to be all consuming at the end. There is good news though. Look at the canopy. I tried a dozen times to make one, with no success. Used a couple of water bottles and plastic sheeting, and couldn't get it. I prayed for an hour, and promptly found a bottle (Fornsby Lemon Oil) that had the exact curvature that was required. God is good.

The last time I did this was with Razor, and that was 8 or so years ago. At the time, the internet wasn't as well developed as it is today with forums and information. In researching making a car, I found that the guys that are "into" it, are into it from the engineering side. CG, CM, Camber, Toe-In, Rail-Running are all topics I've been exposed to in this exercise. What ever happened to the kid's experience? Ah, and I'm guilty too, I did most of the fabrication on this one, pulling in Chip for the paint sanding and the wheel/axle prep. But I can't imagine that the kids associated with the posts I've been reading have a lot to do with the construction or tuning, its over my head as a software engineer. We'll take a break from this for a couple of months, then Chip and I will make a Mark 6, and he'll do most of it with me. I'll have the luxury of doing it as there will be no deadline. From what I read, this car won't win.. the wheelbase is too short, the distribution of weight isn't right between front and back and it pulls too much to one side. But its ours, and its done, and it looks really good.

Starting to feel pretty good physically, relatively speaking. I'm tired right now (2:30pm) and will rest for an hour after this post, but only because of the event tonight. Been getting through the days all this week with little problem. I've come up with a priority of work for the business - one third each of web site, distributable and local business. Target is Monday to start. Wifey is off work right now, so she's handling the homeschool stuff for me. I should be able to make progress over the next 30 days on the distributable. In the schedule, I'm going to take 1 day a week to drive around trying to get label business.

Why is Wifey off? Basically it comes down to the degradation of nursing care. She started on a new case and ended up doing all the work for them. When she pointed out problems, management told her that she was "controlling" and that she wasn't right for the agency! This after she said she wouldn't work the case any more because of the liability. She knew more than anyone working it, did more work than anyone (20% unpaid) and found things that were life threatening and overlooked by management and the folks that should have caught it. She's in a difficult place now, with only 1 major agency left in the area. Basically, her experiences have taught her to treat her job as a way to make money only....not as a vocation. We've both observed that something has changed in society....people aren't concientious anymore. They don't care.

Appointment tomorrow with the neuroligist, to see about depression meds. As I mentioned before, the Avonex is giving me an exquisite depression. The Doc offered anxiety meds before, so I thought I'd nip this problem in the bud and try something to see if it made me feel better. I'll let you know.


Scale - 10 is worst
Weather - 60 and sunny

Shaking - 4

Neck Pain - 0
Upper Back Pain - 3

Fatigue - 4
Foggy Head - 3

Tinitus - 4
Ears Full - 4
Hand Numb - 0

Spatial Orientation - 2

Gastro - 2

Insomnia = 0

Eye Focus - 4

Sleep Kick - 0

Pain Meds - Yes

Benedryl last night - 0

Been working with Chip on Pinewood Derby stuff. Two weeks ago, we made a SuperBird. The body was OK, but just OK. Then we decided to make a replica of the SpeedRacer Mach 5. Yikes. We've got the body done, but its been a tremendous amount of work. I'm tired of it already. The race is on Wednesday night, and we still have the wheels and axles to prep, the detail to paint on the car, and the windshield to fashion and attach. It looks great, but I don't know if I'm going to sign up to do anything like this again. Looking on the web for information, it appears that some folks are really into it. They have a bunch of variables identified: center-of-gravity, center-of-mass, rail-riding, camber and the like. I can't imagine how you could get so technical with your son and have him understand it all. At this point, I'm going to be happy enough to get this car finished, wheeled and weighted and in the race. To make it, I'm going to have to spend some significant time on it over the next couple of days. Sigh. Chip is worth it though. Since we've started home schooling him, and I'm spending time with him, I'm starting to recognise just what a blessing he is. Now the key is going to be using our relationship to teach him. So that he can do some of the "handyman" stuff himself.

Since Friday, I've been experiencing some wierdness of symptoms. Friday, I felt reasonably well, but got deathly tired at the end of the day. Saturday, I got the Avonex dosage (and approached it with dread), but did OK through the day. Sunday, I worked all through the day on the Pinewood Car, again getting deathly tired at around 4:30. Around mid-day, I spread some grass seed. Shortly after, I had tremors in my left arm, the one where I held the 15lb bag. Ugh. Getting old is not very fun.

Bottom line is that I'm feeling marginally better, but still have the fatigue, ringing in the ears and head fullness. Its sort of like being "woozy" all the time. Yesterday, I substituded motrin for Vicodin, and it seemed to give me some relief. I'm going to try it each day this week and see if I can do without the pain meds.

Scale - 10 is worst
Weather - 50 and rainy, the past 3 days

Shaking - 5

Neck Pain - 2
Upper Back Pain - 6

Fatigue - 6
Foggy Head - 5

Tinitus - 6
Ears Full - 6
Hand Numb - 0

Spatial Orientation - 4

Gastro - 5

Insomnia = 1

Eye Focus - 6

Sleep Kick - 0

Pain Meds - No

Benedryl last night - 2

Felt much better yesterday, but had already decided to get taxes and a client call done and that would be it for the week. Had the "gripping intestinal bug" that we've been passing around here for around 6 weeks. Wifey just finished it, and it was my turn. I got tired at the end of the day, but I made it through. Still working through a plan of action associated with what I should do. Honestly, I'm contented to finish the thought process and home school Chip as Wifey works. Financially, that doesn't work over the long term, but her working extends us at the current spending levels for 30-36 months.

The client call went OK, but I'm still only about 75-85% effective. Part of it is practice, but the other part of it is the MS. Having to watch my verbal presentation. Hearing wavering in my voice. Slipping into monologuing every once in a while. UGH. Given the performance yesterday I still doubt I have the energy or the capacity to build a local business. Probably, the only way to figure it out is to work 3 days a week at it and see what happens.

Still having problems with cognitive stuff. Head full, ears full. No problems with balance, but still not feeling sharp. I'm still getting over the shock that I might be disabled, that I might not be able to work and that is keeping me from commiting mentally and physically to any business prospects. Yesterday I started to come out of it a bit. Today, I'm back in the same place. The weather is turning to rain, and I'm seeing an increase in the symptoms. Overall, still better than before the IV, but not what I expected. And part of it is motivation. Another part is schedule, with me having major responsibilities with Chip the next couple of days.

So it is. I wish it were better news. Good news is that I have time. The bad news is that I don't have a lot of it.


Scale - 10 is worst
Weather - 50 and overcase, rain tomorrow

Shaking - 4

Neck Pain - 0
Upper Back Pain - 5

Fatigue - 4
Foggy Head - 6

Tinitus - 5
Ears Full - 6
Hand Numb - 0

Spatial Orientation - 3

Gastro - 7

Insomnia = 0

Eye Focus - 4

Sleep Kick - 0

Pain Meds - Yes (none yesterday)

Benedryl last night - 0

To bring things up to date.....

I had IV steroid treatments last week for 3 days - March 2nd, 3rd and 4th. I didn't feel that badly, but now that I'm 3 weeks in on the Avonex, I wanted to get to a base line and move from there. My thought was that if I could get to base line with the Avonex, using the steroids to push down the inflammation, I could guage the "best" that it could be, and I could predict whether in the long run I had a chance of being able to do things to make revenue come in.

Before the IV treatments, I was doing OK with work, but still had the fatigue toward the end of the day. BUT, there wasn't a lot of problems with full ears and full head and problems with comprehension. Because I didn't feel that badly, the steroid treatments really made me feel bad.... for the first time. And I still have the intense back pain, full ears and head.

And the Avonex gives you the ability to enjoy a near exquisite depression. The last couple of days have been really bad for me, making me come to grips with the reality of the situation. In fact, I may not be able to get a revenue stream up and running in the time I have left. If my work performance is going to be sustained at the level I've experienced over the last week, its time to give up and look at trying to get disability. Basically, I'm grappling with the fact that there may not be any thing that I can do. That I'm going to fail and that I'm just fooling myself thinking that I can build a business.

Granted, there are a lot of things wrong right now, but they're never as bad as they seem. Here's the thought process I've been going through the last 3 days or so....

1) Problems with the publishing product site - Its being delisted from Google for the primary keywords. I have no idea what's happening, other than the site is going off line every once in a while. I put a pinger on it this morning to try to figure it out. The bottom line is that google rankings are all over the place, and sales are consistently in the toilet. The product has a lot of potential, but the site itself needs work to get it ranked, and the product needs to be better described.

2) The Sales distributable requires more work, has less income potential and more competition than I originally thought. It really needs to be put on the internet, and the skill base required is a stretch for me. I have potential clients, but don't feel good enough to contact them, and don't know if I can handle the pressure to make milestones that new clients are going to require. I think that I over-stated the income potential. I know I under stated the competition - there's at least 1 guy out there that has everything that I'd put in the thing, and his price base is much less than I would like to charge.

3) I have no local business and doubt whether I'll have the level of energy required to build one. This is self-explainatory.

4) The web retailing portion of the business is a long way off, and I can't see how I'm going to be able to compete in that business again. I know the publishing product site has good bones, but I need to be adding content all the time. With how I've been feeling, I have doubts that I'll be able to get on a program where I add content every week. But I need to work on it continually over the next 3 years to be able to "make it" with revenue from that business when my waiting time is up.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. I haven't figured out finances lately because its too depressing to think about. Wifey is starting to kick in revenue, and that should give me 30 months from today, if I can "break even" on business expenses every month. Now, here's where the depression thing and not feeling good kick in.......

The nature of Multiple Sclerosis is unpredictability. For the last week, I've felt like I can't start, complete or work on anything. I know that's not true. I know I can accomplish SOMETHING. Today, I'm not as depressed, so I'm thinking its not as bad as I envisioned it yesterday. So today, I'm in the mode of hanging in there for another week to see how I feel. I've thought about an alternative plan though.....

1) File for disability (takes up to 2 years)
2) Shut down all aspects of the business (but I lose the health insurance)
3) Sell the car and maybe the house to get extension and complete the disability petition
4) Give up and act like an invalid for the rest of my life!

I don't like the alternative plan too much, but I have to start getting myself used to the idea. The major problem I'm having is that its been 9 months, and I'm not on a baseline that I can predict how I'll feel or what I can accomplish every day. Tomorrow, I'm going to start keeping a time clock again, and whittling at the work load to see if I can get something accomplished. In the near term it will be better than giving up.

I won't leave go of the alternate plan, but try to guage if its viable over the next 3 months, with a deadline of the end of June.

Scale - 10 is worst
Weather - 70 and Sunny

Shaking - 6

Neck Pain - 0
Upper Back Pain - 8

Fatigue - 4
Foggy Head - 7

Tinitus - 7
Ears Full - 7
Hand Numb - 0

Spatial Orientation -

Gastro - 9

Insomnia = 0

Eye Focus - 5

Sleep Kick - 0

Pain Meds - Yes

Benedryl last night - 0