The x-ray images have been removed due to medical privacy concerns. This is a legal protection measure that me and my father have ordered. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The old post has been edited to remove any content that is of medical privacy concern.

Yay! The x-ray disk arrived today.

The x-ray images have been removed due to medical privacy concerns. This is a legal protection measure that me and my father have ordered. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. This post has been edited to remove any content that is of medical privacy concern.

Hosted by: Alin S
Title: EPISODE5 - Disabilities - Special news about your host/General talk
Time: 12/26/2007 09:00 PM EST
Episode Notes: We are taking a break from the standard topic... Special news about your host! and then general chit chat, about christmas, and then how to remove DRM from iTunes songs. our visitors computer died and so i played music to fill up the rest of the 1 hour window. EPISODE IS G RATED TOTALLY CLEAN

I got some presents today. I will list them off here.
This list does not take into account hanukkah presents. My mothers side of the family does hanukkah and so there are little to no christmas presents from them.

F means its from my fathers side of the family
M means its from my mothers side of the family

$25.00 iTunes card - Santa (Top)
$25.00 JambaJuice (smoothie store) card - Santa (no pic)
$50.00 Check - Grandma Lillian (F) (no pic)
$25.00 iTunes card - Aunt Alicia & Uncle John (F) (blue 1)
$25.00 iTunes card - Aunt Alicia & Uncle John (F) (blue 2)
$25.00 iTunes card - Aunt Bonnie & Uncle Wally (F) (red)
$15.00 iTunes card - Aunt Bonnie & Uncle Wally (F) (orange)

Total Value - $190.00

Merry Christmas everyone. Yes the time above you see is correct. Neurological diseases affect sleep patterns, and Christmas eve affects mine pretty badly too.

Me and mom are staying home today while dad goes to represent us at his mothers/my grandmother’s house. The reason me and mom can’t go is because the house is severely inaccessible being up seven stairs. Even though dad has said, he is capable of carrying me up those stairs I decided to slash attendance this year. Another reason, I decided to slash attendance this year is my pain levels are too high for me to attend any party for that long, especially with the current wheelchair that I use now, the positioning is horrid. I can’t wait to get my powerchair, last Friday during the castings was living proof that most of my pain is caused by bad positioning as while I was in the casting system. The pain levels were nearly non existent! The pain levels will probably be absolutely non existent in my powerchair because I will have the ability to have a deeper tilt and also the custom seating system will have undergone fine tuning at the CNC router along with specialized harnessing. Technically my Christmas does not happen for another 3-4 weeks since that's when my powerchair arrives!

Today at 10:00AM we went to the powerchair dealers office. There they took the casting of my back for the custom seating system. The casting process involves being positioned correctly in a vacuum molder system that uses thousands of tiny beads to create an extremely accurate capture of body/spinal column shape. the entire process takes about two hours, most of the time spent getting a good position as the purpose of custom seating is to support the user in a corrected position. After a good position is acquired an air compressor is turned on and the casting machine begins to take a negative vacuum image of me. after a good negative image is taken i am taken out and put back in my wheelchair while they fill the machine with a special chemical compound which outputted the positive mold shown above. After the positive mold was acquired they brought in the color chart to pick the color of my powerchair. I will let you all find that out when it arrives. The image above is the positive mold which will be sent to Prairie Seating Corp, where they will put it into a special machine that will spit out a finished custom seating system. Today marks the day that the powerchair order is in at Invacare. Induviduals with higher end needs get higher end priority at Invacare and so instead of the 6-8 weeks we were estimating it will be 3-4 weeks, worst case 5 weeks, till arrival.

Check out more photos in the gallery by clicking the picture above!

At 3:07:02PM the website received its 2000th view. Ok technically 2001 because I didn't catch the counter fast enough before it clicked over again.

The site was started July 11th 2007 or 164 days ago. Which equates to approximately 12.1 views per day, 84.7 views per week, 375.1 per month.

As you can see the website is beginning to spread and also receive a higher view rate. This positive impact can be owed to a few things. Increased cross-linking with other websites, Google listing slowly becoming active, domain picking up more traffic by being easier for people to type and

Just because we hit 2000 doesn’t mean you can stop coming to the site, there will continue to be frequent news updates so make sure to check the blog every few days!

Under 24 hours till castings day. even though the castings technically take place at 10:00AM tomorrow its still technically castings day. The reason there is all this hype is that when castings are complete the order process is complete and all the papers and castings can get sent to Invacare where a powerchair will be spit out at us within 4-8 weeks. Figure more around 6-8 weeks due to the high end complexity of my needs.

As i have said earlier i will try to get mom to take some photos so you all can see what the process looks like. I will also explain what the process is like for those of you who are interested.

This weeks episode surprisingly had a new participant named esquared (Erik) who is a C7/T1 spinal cord injury quadriplegic. From what I know I think he will become a returning participant. The podcast seems to be being download semi-widely which shows that it has a lot of potential for future growth. Anyway’s I'm going to shut up now and give you guys the information briefing. Next weeks podcast due to christmas has been rescheduled to wednesday at 8:00PM

Hosted by: Alin S
Title: EPISODE4 - Disabilities - Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD)
Time: 12/18/2007 09:00 PM EST
Episode Notes: This episode is going to mainly have conversation about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and ways of dealing with its effects to maintain longevity and independence through different devices, therapies, and treatments. We spoke a lot about powerchairs vs manual wheelchairs and their different applications for specific needs. NEXT WEEKS EPISODE DUE TO CHRISTMAS HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO WEDNESDAY AT 8:00PM 100% CLEAN EPISODE 100% G RATED.

Make sure to check out the new links page. A bunch of my friends from a website that I am a member of decided that it would be a good idea to create a link page to allow other people to email me and put a link to my site on their site and in return I put a link on mine. This reciprocating links thing will make Google think of my site more and more since more sites link to it, thus forcing Google to index my site more rapidly and list my site in a higher position.

If you wish to have your link here please link to my website and send an email (using the Contact Me) with a direct link to the page my link is on and a direct link to the page or site you want me to create a link for.

We received the call from the powerchair dealer just a few minutes ago. They have us scheduled for the castings, finally! the castings will occur on friday at 10:00AM. the entire casting process takes a few hours. i have been asked several times how do they do it... plaster? no and i am quite glad it is not plaster. The process is similar to taking a vacuum mold of something according to the dealer. Maybe i can get mom to take the camera and you will be able to see what it looks like and everything.

We finally got the x-rays done today. We decided that now having the new health insurance that it is no longer necessary to carry out all medical procedures at Children's Memorial Chicago and in fact we were so satisfied with the way the Yacktman Pavilion radiological imaging team that was assigned to my case today handled things that we do not think we will find it necessary to carry out any procedure at Children's Memorial Chicago. Unlike Children's Memorial Chicago we had a full radiology team of three technicians and one radiologist assigned to us instead of one technician. The reason for having a full radiology team is due to my extremely limited movement abilities and complex medical case a full team of staff needed to be present to collaborate on how positioning during the x-rays would be done and to assist in transferring from wheelchair to x-ray table. The entire series of x-rays took about 45 minutes to complete due to the complexity of transfer, positioning, and medical condition. The way the x-rays had to be taken was unique as the complexity of my condition, and positioning needs required that they create a special x-ray arrangement on the fly.

Looking back in retrospect to the x-rays took at Children's Memorial Chicago, back then I was able to stand up on my own and walk up to 20 feet with assistance. There were no special positioning and transfer needs and nor was the medical condition as severe as it is now. And the ironic thing is that it’s going to continue to worsen!

I will scan the x-ray report and edit out private information and upload the films along with the report if we get them on a disk sometime within the next week or two.

About the picture above. My x-rays were taken on a system that looks exactly like the one that is pictured above...

The X-Rays last Friday were cancelled because I was sick and the weather was not viable for transportation. Tomorrow is going to be partly sunny though frigid, which is fine for transportation. Hopefully, the weather will not change overnight. If we get copies of the X-Rays on a disk tomorrow I will upload them to the picture gallery, although they might have to develop the film first and then digitize it, if that is the case then I will make a blog update explaining the situation and if I will be able to get copies on a disk for me to put on the website. Hopefully, they will be able to give us a disk at some point, maybe not tomorrow but I'm pretty sure they will be able to get a disk to us at some point.

Today we received a phone call from the powerchair dealer. Finally, the powerchair dealer is going to have the casting equipment at the office next week. He said things will be scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday next week. This means the powerchair will be complete and arrive before January 31st 2008! We are all very excited by this great news!

Next week I might be able to get mom to take the camera so I could show you all what getting a casting taken looks like...

Oh boy, sorry about not getting this report of release out to you guys last night. I was extremely burnt and i still am relatively burnt. here it is!!!

Hosted by: Alin S
Title: EPISODE3 - Disabilities - Cerebral Palsy
Time: 12/11/2007 09:00 PM EST
Episode Notes: This episode is going to mainly have conversation about Cerebral Palsy (CP) and ways of dealing with its effects to maintain longevity and independence through different devices, therapies, and treatments. Wheelchair positioning will be discussed. THIS EPISODE IS RATED PG-14 FOR SLIGHTLY "OFF" HUMOR

We had a hanukkah party tonight with a few friends of mom and dad. We had fish and caviar as one of the big main dishes along with mom’s lovely potato pancakes served with apple sauce. Other smaller dishes included salad, cheese cake, and brie and crackers. I was only able to eat potato pancakes and fish and caviar because of my swallowing issues. Let me tell you the fish and caviar were the best! We also had Martenelli’s sparkling non alcoholic apple cider which was also very tasty. Check out more photos in the gallery by clicking the picture above!

The X-Rays today have been canceled. This time it is not because i am sick but because the weather is not good enough for transportation to the Yacktman Pavilion which is about a 30 minute drive. It would be a very hard task to transport me in this weather in what wheelchair and what situation we are in right now as i have to be manually taken out to the car, transferred into the car and so on. Reason we had to cancel is its too icey for safe transfer and transport!

As of today i am no longer identifying myself as sick. The symptoms are extremely minimal now and only include slightly stuffy nose and thats it. Tomorrow hopefully as long as the weather is not bad we will be going to the Yacktman Pavilion for the X-Rays on my spine and cervical spine. Hopefully the weather should be ok otherwise it will have to be moved to another day yet again!

Tonights episode went very well aside from being delayed on getting started due to a lack of callers. The callers all showed up a little later than usual but it all worked out. Audio quality may be slightly lower than usual as i didnt have my head phones which resulted in some bad echoing of things. Things around the end got a little dirty so this episode is rated PG-14 for slight sexual innuendo and profanity.

Hosted by: Alin S
Title: EPISODE2 - Disabilities - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Time: 12/04/2007 09:52 PM EST
Episode Notes: This episode is going to mainly have conversation about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and ways of dealing with its effects to maintain longevity and independence through different devices, therapies, and treatments. Tonight we discussed what is ALS, stem cells, AAC (alternative augmentative communication), powerchair control methods. THIS EPISODE IS RATED PG-14 FOR SLIGHT SEXUAL INNUENDO AND PROFANITY

Tonight I was looking through my site doing a checksum which is computer speak for making sure everything works ok, and I found a major integrity error in the About Me page. You see early in life I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS and Sensory Integration Disorder. I had never remembered to put these up on the website until now “wow what a dumb-ass I am! ” this integrity error is fixed as of now!