The New Cycle

Just imagine your life being regulated by the following hours, five o'clock in the morning, eleven o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the afternoon, eleven o'clock at night, then the cycle starts all over again.

On each of these occasions Leanne has to provide me with, different forms of medication and of course, water. Since getting into a situation where it is 'nil by mouth' all of my food and all of my liquids come via the 'peg tube'. This of course applies to both food and liquids into the duodenum. Since this is smaller than the stomach, the provision of both food and liquids has to be done slowly and gently and preferably in a state which is neither too cold nor too hot.

I think that we've started to get this cycle into gear, but of course every so often things go awry. One of us is not feeling at our best, or the bodily functions do not permit easy collaborative activity. Take this morning as an example. I have no idea why, but the provision of liquids and food this morning resulted in my feeling nauseous. So I had to be provided with drugs that would counter the nausea. Alas, these do not work all the time.I sometimes wonder what it would be like closer to the end?

I suspect that I will be drugged out of my brain, and lying listlessly in a state of sleeplessness just staring at the ceiling or with my eyes closed.

If you have ever visited the hospice here in the ACT or indeed anywhere else in world, I suspect you'll find people who have drips in their arms, tubes up their noses and God knows where else. It is sad, but it's true that dying is often an unpleasant experience I'm not sure I want to experience that, but I'm not sure I have a choice. To go to sleep, wake up to go to sleep and ------------

Plagues on Peter 2

To those of you have read my plaint, thank you for your comments and thank you for your interest. I am currently using version 10 of Dragon Speaking Naturally Preferred. I forked out for the product. Can you all believe that? It's that good.

What's more, I am once again using Pete's Place as my blog of choice as this new software permits me to type quite serious and lengthy notes without too much effort.

What is interesting in this program, apart from the ability to train it to my voice and my accent is the ability to do so using its own toys. For example at present I am using a dictation box that enables me to place all of my comments quickly into a box that is most effective within the program and is most receptive to various changes in accent and volume. Then, using a simple verbal command 'transfer' it does take the text to the program I want it placed in. Generally this is a computer program that is less receptive or tuned into collaborative mode interaction with Dragon Speaking.

There is in addition a thing called 'Dragon Pad', this appears to be a light word processing program into which you can type more serious efforts and then use the command structure within the program to bold, capitalise, italicise, create dot points etc.

All in all this is more than I would normally need however I have found that this is not enough for this program. What it also seems to be able to do is to utilise some of the cheapest merchandise around for example a shareware post-it note package for the production of extremely efficient basic text and of course the word processing, while it does not do a good job in open office it certainly does a good job in Word Pro from Lotus. I wonder if this is because the Nuance people are in bed with Lotus Notes production as well as MS products?

Please note that I'm taking my general blog writing out of the oesophageal cancer space to Pete's Place again now that there is more to say and more to say it with.

I am also using my Skype and Google talk programs to chat with people, face to face if they have time to chat.

And just for good measure - my best wishes to all over the holiday season. May you all be well and then have a healthy and happy new year.

The Plagues on Peter

I have been inflicted with yet another sign which tells me to shut up. I have been deprived of the use of my right hand and instead been inflicted with pain where there was none.

The loss of a right hand to a typist is monumental and since I have also lost the use of most of my vocal cords as well I need to try out the very best of those programs that convert sound into text to see if my now sibilant offerings will do the trick and enable me to type again. If not, then this is the end of my blogging days as well. I simply cannot afford to lose the use of my other hand to typing when I need it desperately for other purposes like dressing myself.

I would now like to ask all of those who are computer literate to an extent I will never be able to reach, to help me with information.

What is currently the very best of those programs that convert conversation into typed English text. At this point I do not much care whether it is 'tuned' to an American accent or indeed any other accent. With the product from my vocal cords I do not expect to be emulating any given accent any time soon.

Advice would be appreciated so that I can give myself a belated Chrissie present or something. However if you have tried it and it works for you then this is the best recommendation if you have not tried it then please do NOT give me the recommendations of the manufacturer, just tell me it's out there and I will try and find someone who has tried it and found it to work and work well.

I do need help of the kind that the choice magazines will not provide, real personal help from people who know, because they have tried to use a product and who as a result are able to tell me all the truths, good bad and ugly.

Thanks in advance to those who make their views known. Thanks to those who will ring me, send an email or a phone message or a reply to this blog via a comment.

I really need the info folks and fast. My lack of ability to communicate is perhaps even more serious than the cancer. It can kill me, the lack of ability to communicate easily just makes the continuation of existence miserable and THAT I think is probably worse than just dying.

Amazing what I value hey?

I wonder what others value and whether being able to reach out and say G'day and then chat is valued by others as much as it appears to be by me? Whether being able to register your thoughts on a daily basis and just get them out either to no one or to a group of people who find some things of value amidst the dross?

Don't really know, but I do want to find out - especially if you are all not too busy to say the magic "G'day."

Garpet