Derek went in for his second epidural this afternoon. The doctor used a little more local anaesthetic, and Derek said it was much less painful.
There was not much (if any) improvement in his back pain after the first shot two weeks ago, but the Doctor said this shot was a different steroid that works in conjunction with the first shot. He said it would take about 10 days to feel an improvement, but he sounded optimistic that it would definitely help.
I finally decided to give Linux a try. I took an old computer and installed Linux on it (Ubuntu 7.04 if you’re curious), then added a “KVM Switch” so I could share my single monitor, keyboard and mouse between that computer and my existing Windows 2000 computer.
Without going into a lot of detail, I can say that it is a qualified success. I find myself using it for most of my daily web browsing and email, word processing, etc. Most of the things I usually use Windows for I can do just as easily in Linux.
The success is qualified because there are still a couple of programs I can’t find good replacements for. One of them is my PHP coding program that has a built-in FTP client. I haven’t found anything as good in Linux yet, though it probably exists. It’s probably not fair to Linux that I haven’t immediately found suitable replacements for programs that I have accumulated over years.
The other major thing is that I occasionally write programs for Windows users, and those have to be compiled on a Windows machine.
Otherwise, I think most people could switch to Linux as easily as they could to an Apple. In fact, I’m sure there is lots more software available for Linux than for Apples. Apples may be slightly more user friendly, but the Ubuntu version of Linux is pretty darn good. I don’t think it’s less friendly than Windows, just different.
And I don’t have to worry about picking up a virus by going to the wrong website. Viruses (Viri?) are rare in the Linux world.
Anyway, I’m going to keep using Linux, for now, but I will also have to keep my other computer available, for now.
Not me — Derek.
He’s been complaining about lower back pain for a while now, and finally it got bad enough that he went to see the doctor. An MRI shows that he has a prolapsed disc in his lower back.
You can see the prolapsed disk below the center of the picture, where the spinal cord is obscured.
He has an appointment next Monday for an epidural, a mixture of anaesthetic and steroids that sometimes help this kind of problem. If that doesn’t help, we’ll have to take it from there. Maybe he should get a rolling backpack to take his books to school. They’re not cool, but might be worthwhile…
Richard, it seems more reasonable to have back problems at 60, but he seems awfully young at 19. Hopefully his age will mean a quick recovery.
Powered by WordPress