Continuation from the last post...

My father was admitted to St. Lukes on January 29, 2008. He went immediately to the ICU. Within five minutes of him arriving in the ICU, members of Dr. Coselli's team arrived to gather information. Since he had apparently had a complete blockage in his GI system, the doctors wanted to get a tube down his nose to pump out whatever fluids had been collecting in his stomach, so there would be room for him to take medicine to improve the CAT scan pictures, and also to keep him from vommiting any more. This had been attempted in Fort Worth, but since my dad has had several broken noses (he grew up in a rough area of town) they were unable to get one in. Somehow a doctor from Dr. Coselli's team was able to get a tube in, and at least four liters of fluid were removed immediately, with more to follow as the day wore on.

Dr. Coselli wanted to get a CAT scan done to see what they were working with as far as the aneurysm was concerned, and to see about the blockage. So he was put in line to have the scan done. Apparently the CAT scan was heavily booked, and it was not until the next day that the CAT scan was done. My dad was resting much better now that the fluid was not accumulating, although he did not like the tube in his nose much.

Once they had done the CAT scan, the doctors could tell that the aneurysm was not as large as was first believed, however they found a mass in his pancreas, and also found where the blockage was in his intestines. Since the priority of the aneurysm declined as it was not as large, the doctors began concentrating on the blockage. His care was transfered over to a team headed up by Dr. William Fisher, who is an expert in dealing with such issues.

Gotta go now...more later...

More on my Dad

So at that point, the cardiac surgeon in Fort Worth felt that the aneurysm was too tricky for him to work on, and he refered us to Dr. Coselli, a world renowned vascular surgeon, at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, down in Houston. Before we could get him down there, he had to go again to the All Saints emergency room, as the nausea and vomiting had come back, and he had become dehydrated. The hospitalist at All Saints said that they could not find a blockage in my father's GI tract, and that he was considering exploratory surgery to attempt to find the problem. This would delay any potential repair on the anuerysm so we decided that it would be best for him to try and get down to St. Lukes to see Dr. Coselli, in order for him to coordinate any treatment. It was aranged for him to have a hospital to hospital transfer down to St. Lukes.

More later....

Updates and stuff

It's been a while since I have posted here...not sure if any body is actually reading this at all, but there you go.

Back on December 31, 2007, my father was taken to the All Saints emergency room in Fort Worth, TX. He had been having some trouble with nausea and throwing up, mainly late at night for a few weeks, but it had gotten to be a concern by December 31. They did some x-rays and a CAT scan and observed that there was an aortic aneurysm just above and adjacent to the one that was repaired in May, 2006. They said that it measured 5.7cm (which is in the range of great concern), so all focus of treatment went towards finding out about the aneurysm.

Gotta go now, more later....

Speaker Repair Complete!

So, over the course of two weeks, I managed to finish installing the new speaker surrounds onto the woofers of my thrift store purchased Dahlquist DQ-10s. Upon removal of the woofers, and handling them, it amazed me how _old_ they smelled. They reminded me of an old (army surplus?) canvas tent my father had. The smell stuck to my fingers for the rest of the day, no matter how much I washed them.

Anyhow, I re-soldered the speaker leads back on to the woofers, screwed them back into the cabinet, vacuumed off the 1/4 inch of dust that had accumulated inside the back of the speaker, and tried to carefully clean the dust off of the crossover components, re-attached an inductor and capacitor back to the cabinet...luckily I didn't have to solder that, just stick them back down.

I put the speaker grills and the expanded metal screens that protect the components back on. I carried my old Nakamichi TA-2A reciever downstairs to where the speakers were sitting (I didn't want to carry the speakers all the way up to the media room if they weren't going to work), hooked up an FM dipole antenna to the Nak, and fired it up.

The speakers sound great now!!

Later I did some research on the DQ-10 and learned that somwhere in thier life, the super-tweeter horns have been removed. Apparently this was/is a common mod for them, and smooths out the highs. I have not yet tried to eq the new rig in the media room, and will be interested to see how much tweaking will be needed to get a flat response, especially with the super-tweeter removal mod.

Thanks again to the folks at Simply Speakers, y'all make a good product. The new surrounds fit well, the provided glue worked well, and the instructions were clear and easy to follow.

Speaker Repair!!!

So, last year before we moved, I bought a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10 speakers from a thrift store for $40. Well, after we moved I tried them out and they sounded like there was something wrong with them. They sat in our media room, unused and unhooked up. When we got our TV for the media room, I had to do some re-arranging, and figured I'd just post them to craigslist or something. I got to thinking about it, wondering if they could be repaired, and for how much.
I found some places on the internet that sold new hinges (the foam or cloth rings that are around the edge of the speaker horn. The sound they described when the hinges are broken is similar to what I heard. Last night I decided to figure out how to remove the speaker grilles and inspect the individual drivers, so see maybe if it was just the hinges. When I got the grille of one off, the hinge around the woofer was completed rotted away. I decided to go ahead and order a do-it-yourself repair kit from Simply Speakers and try that out. Hopefully that will work.

p.s. I also saw that they have replacement passive radiators for the Infinity speakers that I sold in a garage sale years ago. Wish I'd known that then....never would have let them go.

New Adoption Agency

I've just been nominated to be the webmaster of a new adoption agency, Adopt for the Love of a Child, the design is somewhat '90s, but I'm planning on changing that. Go check it out, they do both domestic and international adoptions.

Fort Worth Airshow

The kids had fun watching the Thunderbirds at the Fort Worth Airshow.