For the past week or so, I have been experiencing pretty bad leg cramps at night. Bad enough they wake me up, and on more than one occasion, I have to get up and walk around. Obviously, this is not a good thing.
The HDX team tends to call me every week or so to check in on how it’s going. I received such a call yesterday and related the leg cramp issue. It was suggested that I turn down the power/intensity of the treatment at night and see how it goes. This is easy enough to do using the iPhone app, which I did last night and experienced no cramps. While one night does not make a trend, it is a start in the right direction.
I spent about five hours yesterday troubleshooting my wife’s email issues. Recall, I have her set up using Thunderbird. It worked fine for years, then all of a sudden did not. I previously had her set up on a Gmail account, which she does not use. I set this account up to also use the account previously on Thunderbird, and got it to send and receive both accounts. The last thing I am working on is migrating all of her Thunderbird emails and contacts over to Gmail. I’m attempting to accomplish this with a piece of software, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet either. Good thing I have time on my hands.
One of our son’s business partners, who runs a construction company, is to stop by today and look at repairing our front door. Standby
I’m having one of those two steps back days when all around me things are breaking or need fixing. Some examples: I’m trying to intake more protein, so last night I started to cook hamburgers on the grill outside. The grill has never presented any problems, but last night, while it was lit, it was not heating up enough to cook the burgers. I was tired and it was late, so I brought them inside where we finished cooking them in our little oven. Luckily, they were precooked Angus burgers so all we had to do was essentially reheat them. I tore the grill down after checking for gas, which was ok, fired it up again, and it was good to go.
I’m keeping a log of all food intake for three days in prep for our dialysis team meeting on Thursday. During this meeting, the subject of discontinuing IPN will be at the forefront, and what to do in its demise. The team dietitian has requested the data on meals and provided me with a rich source of protein-rich foods for those of us on dialysis. This listing is provided below in PDF format.
My wife’s email stopped working all of a sudden. We use a source named bananic.com and “own” the domain names feeser.net, along with feeser.me. Our email addresses are our first names followed by feeser.net. Mine, running off of Gmail as a front end, never has any problems. I’m running hers out of Thunderbird, and therein lies the problem. I finally got the server settings tweaked so that she can receive emails, but not send them. I’ll keep plugging away at it.
My wife has several projects that she has brought to the fore as follows:
Our front door leaks air around the top. We had a replacement door estimate, and it was $29,906. Ha to that. We have a builder friend of our son coming in tomorrow to do a look-see and possibly rehang the door or replace it.
Our front porch is developing small cracks, and our driveway has several large ones. We are still seeking estimates to recoat both of these.
We have funkey gates across the front of our single garage roll-up door because HOA restrictions in Pecan don’t allow garage doors to be seen from the street. The gates are sagging and need to be replaced.
We have a brick extension installed off our back patio, which is starting to settle in places. We have the guy who installed them under contract to come back, remove the brick and necessary materials, and relevel the entire extension.
Here in North Texas, we tend to have warm weather well into the Fall. I first planted tomato plants outside on Feb 28, and we had our first ripe tomato in May. The last of these tomatoes ripened in September, and I then pulled the plants.
About the sixth of September, I planted two new plant starts of the Roma variety. As I write this one month later, we have a nice-sized tomato on one of the plants that also has several additional blossoms.
It appears that we can safely double-crop tomatoes here in Pecan Plantation.
My health continues on the upswing. Pretty soon, at this rate, I will be as normal as can be expected given the condition my condition is in. Got all that on board?
My lab visit this morning consisted of recalling all my biometrics for the technician, covering my hands with a special ointment, then washing them, and finally examining them under a black light to identify any missed areas. There were a few places, especially around the wrinkles in my knuckles, but no biggies. Then a blood draw, and lastly a flu shot of this season’s expected variety.
Stopped on the way home at a Chinese place we frequent and brought home hot and sour soup for lunch. It was too much on the hot side, so did’t eat much of it.
Our former dog walker’s last day was Monday, but luckily, we found another, and she walked Dickens yesterday morning for us. I will take him for a golf cart ride this evening, so he will have two “outings” per our plan to do this at least three times a week.
Going to chill out to ride time. Meanwhile, Let The Good Times Roll!
Today, we are to host our dialysis nurse visiting our humble abode for an annual home check. Not certain what’s involved, but we are what we are. Not expecting any trials and tribulations from the visit. Will advise tomorrow when we have completed the visit. It’s annual BTW.
Keep hearing from the Spinal Cord people. I get frequent calls from their tech reps asking me how it’s going. They outfitted me with an iPhone SE with their app on it, which I update how I’m doing. The app also informs me how much battery I have left in the battery pack embedded in my back. It was activated on 9/17/25, and so far, after 12 days, it shows three of four bars. Regardless, I’m going to recharge it on Wednesday. It has an inductive recharger that looks like a small ping pong paddle, and a battery pack for juice. The HFX (what the device is named) has a video link on its web page that is very easy to follow.
Our new domestic showed up today as planned. My wife and I split up her five hours allotted time. I had her do yard work for me, and my wife has her busy with household chores.
We are rolling along, getting stronger each day. Rationalizing meds has helped me gobs and now I wake up with a clear mind and ready to rumble.
Before I even got out of bed Sunday, my wife informed me that we were making a “To Do List” first thing. That generally does not bode well for me, as often as not, she has some task in mind that I’d rather pass on. So this morning I beat her to the punch and made up my own To Do list as follows:
Massague Linda’s legs – this was added first thing, and I didn’t mind.
Take Dickens, our Golden Retriever, for a golf cart ride. On days when our dog walker is not scheduled, I generally take Dickens for a 20-minute cart ride around Pecan Plantation, which he really enjoys, in the mornings and evenings.
After the ride, fuel the golf cart. I do that once a week. Takes 5.5 gal and topped up today.
Check tire pressures on wife’s car. We recently had new tires installed, and according to the car’s tire pressure monitor system, all pressures were off. Not now.
My wife has a stick vacuum cleaner; she does out tile floors with a Golden Retriever that produces gobs of hair. The brush was not going around was reported. I ran it on my workbench for some time without any difficulty, and also vacuumed floors, also no problem. So this one ended up as an open item.
We have a local gal coming in today to work in the house and do some yard work for me, which I had to get ready for. I filled our wheelbarrow with bark mulch – 2 1/2 bags, and loaded a cart up with 2 bags of mulch/compost for use tomorrow. We’re going to place bark mulch around three new trees we have recently planted in the front yard and replace the mulch that has floated away in the rainstorms we have here in North Texas.
We have a thornless rose that grows very, very rapidly and needs trimming almost weekly. I got the big Ryobi 40-volt trimmer out that we have and gave the bush a trimming.
The last thing on my list is to watch the Ravens-Chiefs game at 3:25 PM. I’ll be ready to sit by then.
Meanwhile, I’m going out and clean the front bumper on our truck that I recently backed into and left a little evidence behind. Keep in mind, all of this was accomplished before lunch by an 86-year-old on dialysis with heart conditions, a spinal cord stimulator, and diabetes. Not too shabby, I would say. Now to the ball game and Dickens’ evening golf cart ride.
You would think that a central piece of equipment for dependable peritoneal dialysis would be the Liberty Cycler from Fresenius. I have not found this to be the case. In this regard, the Cycler, often as not, has a mind of its own. It does what it wants to do rather than what it’s supposed to do.
Last night was a case in point. I had two bags on the cycler, a six-liter IPN bag on the heater tray, and a 5-liter bag hanging on the left of the cart connected to the first “White” bag lead. I went through a normal setup until the Cycler ran checks for bags and repeatedly informed me it found no heater bag. Usually, this is caused by not having cracked the cone enough, and over and over again, I checked the cone being broken on both bags to no avail. I had to shut the cycler down, replace the bags and cassette, and start over. Of course, this was happening on a night when I had to get up early to go to Fort Worth for an appointment regarding my spinal cord stimulator.
After the reboot and replacement of bags and the cassette, everything worked as advertised. I’m pretty certain the cassette was to blame, as this has occurred before. It is from a freshly delivered box, and the first one out. This is one of those instances where a call to tech support would only have consumed precious time and not have resulted in a more harmonious result. In this regard, Fresensisus’ “tech support” is an oxymoron.
Typically, one has a love/hate relationship. Not here, only hate. What’s to love about an inanimate piece of junk that lets you down?
And yes, my visit to the doc about how my SCS is doing went well. Got “See you in a month!” guidance.
Since the installation of the Spinal Cord Stimulator, I have been placed on six new drugs. Yesterday, after taking the appetite-enhancing drug Mirtazapine for the first time, I felt groggy and lacking in clarity for most of the day, which is why I’m posting this blog later than usual. I stopped taking it to see if my mind would then clear.
I woke up Thursday morning wanting to vomit, which is also not good. I had dry heaves, but nothing of consequence was expelled. So I just accomplished a review of where I stand on all the new drugs, concluding that one or more of them, in addition to the appetite drug, may be causing problems.
I was prescribed Ondansetron Tab 4MG for Nausea. Since this is intended to help prevent nausea, I don’t think it is causing any problems.
The antibiotic prescribed is Doxycycline Hyc Cap 100MG which I have completed taking. It was twice a day, for seven days, so I have excluded it.
Hydrocod/Apap 5-325 was prescribed for pain. I only took this for the first three days after surgery, switched to Tylenol for a couple of days, and have been off pain meds for at least three days, so not a problem here.
The last medication is Methocarbamol 750 MG, prescribed three times a day AS NEEDED for 30 days for muscle spasms. I think this is the culprit, along with Mirtazapine, so since it’s “as needed,” I’m knocking it off also.
IN summary, I’m back to the baseline drugs I was taking before installation of the spinal cord stimulator, and we’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck.
With each passing day, the site of insertion of the Spinal Cord Stimulator is becoming less and less bothersome. At this rate, in a week or so, I should be as good as new. Have a checkup in Fort Worth this Friday. During this visit, I’m certain they will look at the area on my back, ask if I have any questions, and send us on our way—no big deal.
When we visited my dialysis nurse to unplug my stopped-up catheter, which I previously reported on, she suggested getting our GP to issue a script for meds to increase my appetite. I was at a routine dental appointment yesterday and took the opportunity to go a couple of blocks up the street to our GP’s office, where I requested a call from him to discuss getting prescribed such a med. He is scheduled to call me at 4:40 PM on 9/22. We’ll see what he comes up with. This suggestion is because the IPN is NOT increasing my albumin, while a significant cost and inconvenience to us.
I quizzed Perplexity about such appetite-increasing drugs and received the following information:
Here is a table listing the most common drugs prescribed or used to increase appetite, ordered roughly by how widely they are used or recommended as of 2025:goodrx+7
Psychosis, bipolar, depression, off-label for appetite loss
Strong side effect of weight gain & increased appetitegoodrx+2
Megestrol acetate and dronabinol are the only appetite stimulant drugs approved by the FDA, especially for severe disease-related appetite loss.healthline+2
Mirtazapine is increasingly used off-label because it reliably increases appetite and weight.buzzrx+2
Cyproheptadine is often used for children/adolescents with appetite loss.droracle+2
Oxandrolone is now uncommon in the US due to safety issues, but is still used elsewhere.goodrx+1
Corticosteroids and most antipsychotics commonly cause increased appetite as a side effect, which is sometimes exploited clinically, but significant side effects may limit long-term use.webmd+2
Appetite stimulants are primarily prescribed for disease-related appetite loss (cancer, HIV/AIDS, or cachexia) rather than general weight gain.
This table provides an up-to-date, ranked overview for clinicians and patients interested in medically supported appetite increase.rxlist+7
We started Tuesday with a call from a nurse at the surgical facility we will be going to tomorrow to have the permanent spinal cord stimulator installed. Everything was boilerplate until she mentioned the timing; we had previously been informed that the procedure was to take place at 1400. We were now told that we had to be there at 10:30 for the procedure at 11:30. My wife had set up our dog walker to take care of him in our absence, and we had worked out when we had to get up and leave for the drive to Eulis. Now, all of this planning, in one fell swoop, was out the window, and we had to regroup. Additionally, the nurse informed us that the doctor’s office had no idea when the surgery would be scheduled and just put a number in their computer as a placeholder. This folks is the epitome of medical curve balls that seem to happen frequently. As patients, we are merely objects for doctors and their schedulers to toss around at will. In this regard, we are, as patients, rarely, if ever, asked about scheduling but are told. At this point, there seems to be no recourse, but once the fat lady sings, it will be over. Have the follow-up on Friday, and we will be rid of this stage short of complications.
By my nature, I dig words. I have been an avid reader since, like forever, even as a small boy. In the news about the Kirk saga, I ran across the words “stochastic terrorist act,” which were new to me. I understand stochastic from my advanced statistics courses at Purdue University, and terrorist acts from my military course on terrorism. But putting them together is a new discourse for me, so I did some digging with the following results:
A “stochastic terrorist act” refers to an act of violence that is statistically predictable but individually unpredictable, incited indirectly by public rhetoric rather than explicit instructions or direct coordination. Unlike traditional terrorism, stochastic terrorism involves the use of mass communication or media to demonize or vilify a group or individual in such a way that it motivates random, lone actors to commit violence.
Definition and Characteristics
Stochastic terrorism describes a process where influencers or leaders use hostile, inflammatory, or coded language in mass media to incite others to commit violent acts against targeted groups, but the specific acts, perpetrators, and timing remain unpredictable.
The perpetrators—often “lone wolves” without formal links to terrorist groups—are inspired by repeated public rhetoric, not direct orders.
The link between the rhetoric and the act is statistical: increased hostile campaigns raise the probability of violent incidents, even though no particular event can be predicted in advance.
Real-World Examples
Instances such as the 2021 US Capitol attack or hate-motivated lone wolf assaults are often analyzed as likely outcomes of stochastic terrorism: the rhetoric by influential figures creates an environment where violence is statistically probable, though each specific act is random.
The term is frequently used in contexts involving demonization and dehumanization on social or traditional media, where “virtual incitement” is intended to provoke action, creating legal and ethical dilemmas for free speech and accountability.
Key Points
A stochastic terrorist act is triggered not by direct command, but by the public environment of hatred and suggestion, which statistically increases the odds of violence.
Actions can range from threats and harassment to physical violence, all provoked without explicit incitement, making perpetrators and instigators legally disconnected but causally related.
In summary, stochastic terrorism describes how public demonization or coded rhetoric by influential figures can lead to unpredictable but statistically probable acts of violence, offering the instigator plausible deniability while fostering real-world terrorism.
So now you too know what stochastic terrorism means. Hot dog!
