shabbat shalom 31.01.08

Hi everyone,

Jerusalem continues to get snow, and this morning my mountaintop village at Har Gilo has accumulated at least a foot of the white stuff.

Now that the wind has stopped howling, it is really beautiful, and when I've had breakfast, I'll go out with the camera and take some pictures. Of course since we are a warm, subtropical Mediterranean country (haha) we find the easiest solution to snow is to leave the car parked and stay home until it melts, which will probably be tomorrow (Friday, 1 Feb).

This is my second day snowbound. Not too bad, although I did have to find where the outdoor cats were hiding so that I could bring them food. So far all present and accounted for, and very glad to see me and the kibble.

These concrete houses are poorly insulated for cold weather. (Somebody mentioned drywall to me and I will make a note to check that out at least for the main room of my house). I've been burning wood in the woodstove at a great rate, and it looks like winter and my woodpile will come out about even this year.

I am well, fortuately. Managed to make my last appointment with my hematologist before the snow started falling. We reviewed this last year of testing and concluded my situation is stable. The anemia was caused by autoimmune gastritis, possibly triggered by an infection of Heliobacter pylori, which mimics the mucosal cells of the stomach lining, so when the immune system attacks, it may also attack the mucosal lining. "Innocent bystanders", as my doctor puts it. He ought to know; he does research on this problem and I have some of his journal publications. Well, if I gotta have a problem, might as well be an interesting one. The doctor is a nice man and he's pleased I can track his research--that is probably not typical of the guinea pigs he gets in his research.

So, I'll probably need regular checks every five years (gastroscopy) to make sure I haven't developed stomach cancer, which is danger for gastritis, but only a 4% chance. I can live with that. And I have learned to live with the side effects of the iron I have to take for the anemia. So it's just one more part of aging. The hematologist agrees with me that it seems like my overachiever immune system is running around attacking different systems, so I am getting an accumulation of problems. Western medicine cannot treat autoimmune disorders, so I have used acupuncture for the last few years, and it seems to be working. Chinese medicine does recognize treaments for autoimmune problems, and that's what I'm doing now.

Other than that, it is a quiet season. I have to teach a workshop in two weeks time, so am in the midst of preparing for it. I've done enough to no longer panic. It will be all right, although seven hours of straight teaching will be rather daunting, and I am sure I'll be pretty tired at the end of it. But I have spent so much time teaching analytical tools to people one by one that I finally decided to teach a whole bunch at one time.

My boss is off to India for a 2-week vacation, and I envy him. Southern India--it is tropical there and he will visit jungles. I did the "looking for tigers from elephant back" in Nepal and it was fun. Ah well, I do have this European project and will be in Holland in April. No tropical rainforest, but I have good friends to visit there, and I will probably be back there again in the autumn for more meetings. That is enough thi year; China is on the agenda for next year.

Guess that is all for now.

shabbat shalom,

Linda

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