We Have Got To Get Off Fossil Fuel

Energy, Environment, Garden, Global

DSC01338  Parsley bigger than it was.

      DSC01191  Our winter garden before the days started to noticably lengthen.

DSC01624 Some food, only the green of which was grown in our garden.

We are using fossil fuels to take the stored sunlight out of the ground to burn for quick and convenient energy right now.  Every form of fossil fuel that is being burned is putting CO2 into the  atmosphere, and contributing to global warming.  Furthermore the methane that  gets released, and is getting increasingly released as the methane ices in the Arctic thaw, are adding to the effect.

The only way we will be safe is to switch off fossil fuels immediately, and go to sustainable energy sources, such as solar and wind.  We have to adhere to the energy budget we are given by the sun.  Wind energy comes from the sun due to the differential heating and cooling, which causes air pressure differences, and the wind is the air movement to equalize these pressures.

It is common knowledge that it took millions of years to form those fuels which we are burning up in a blink of the eye.  The green from out garden is a small part of what we eat.  I do not want to have to depend on fossil fuels to get the rest of what I have to eat.

 

 

Journey Into Open Heart Surgery- Background

Surgery, ,

Joe resting the day before surgery DSC01408 As 2014 began, this man’s rest was becoming increasingly frequent.    He had just been scheduled to have an open heart surgery to replace a narrowed aortic valve, due to aortic valve stenosis.  We had known about this condition for over two and  a half years, because his routine health check up had revealed a heart murmur for the  first time.

The aortic valve prevents the blood pumped from the left ventricle from slipping backwards to where it came from, and is necessary for an efficiently working heart.   Over time some people’s aortic valves become hardened, usually with a calcified, bone-like material, and narrowed.  When this happens, the amount of blood which the heart can pump out per beat is diminished.

When a new heart murmur develops,  it can be due to aortic stenosis.  The next step that the medical system recommends, is to get an echo-cardiogram  This  yields information about the cross sectional area of the aortic valve,  any ventricular enlargement to deal with a harder job to pump the blood out to the body, the pressure gradient that occurs in this pumping, and the total amount of blood  pumped to the  body per beat.  

This man’s first echo-cardiogram two and a half years ago showed that his murmur was indeed due to aortic valve stenosis which was at the time, categorized as moderate to severe, with a cross-sectional area of 0.8 square centimeters.  A normal cross-sectional area is about 2.5 square centimeters, and anything over 2 square centimeters is considered normal.  There is no known medical or dietary prevention or intervention which can alter or slow the development of this condition.  The only treatment is open heart surgery to replace the defective valve with an artificial valve or a treated tissue valve.   The condition progresses relentlessly, if not steadily.

Usually, the person waits to have surgery  until after this heart condition causes symptoms of pain, dizziness, or breathlessness.  They say that if the valve area becomes so small that the condition is critical, the valve should be replaced even if one does not have symptoms.  If a symptomatic or critical aortic stenotic person does not undergo the valve replacement surgery, the person is will likely die within a couple of years.

The reason that it is recommended to wait until symptoms appear is that the valve replacement surgery itself carries perhaps a 1% chance of death due to the surgery, and perhaps a 5% chance of stroke associated with the surgery.

This man’s valve condition was checked periodically with an echo-cardiogram, until it became severe, and had a cross-sectional valve area equal to about one fourth that of a normal valve.  He did not experience symptoms, except for a reduced amount of time each day in which he could do every day things, and an increasingly lower amount to be accomplished in a day, and increasingly more resting, shown above.

His cardiologist recommended at the beginning of December that he see a cardiothoracic surgeon.  So he saw the surgeon in mid-December, who, after reviewing his brand new echo-cardiogram, which showed that his aortic cross-sectional area had shrunk further to 0.6 square centimeters, recommended surgery within three weeks of that time, early in 2014.   Thus continued this open heart surgical experience.

 

My Bargain Tulle

Crochet, Useful stuff,

DSC01602 On a recent trip to a large store, I found this tulle, or net-like material for only $3.77.  It was 50 feet by 6 inches or half a foot, and this translates into 8 and 1/3 square yards of tulle.  At a little less than$0.50  per yard, this seemed to be a bargain.  And it was already in a long, continuous strip, perfect for crocheting some little scrubbies, a couple of which I got for Christmas, and found perfect for cleaning non-stick pans.

So I crocheted six scrubbies, directly from the spool with a size I crochet hook.  Each took about one  and one third yards of the tulle, and took the better part of an hour to do.  I did not find that my own creations were as good as the ones I had been given, though about the same size, because the texture was too fine, and the number of stitches required was higher.  I put them all together, with the leftover scraps, and weighed the total on my kitchen scale.  The whole amount of tulle weighed 2.15 ounces.  The type of material of which the tulle was made was not given.   Two and fifteen hundredths of an ounce for $3.77 is not inexpensive as far as yarns go.

I decided that this is definitely not an income producer for me, and that tulle is better used other ways than as a yarn.  I am glad that I only got three, instead of all ten that I had placed into my basket in different colors, initially.