Hi again, James!  Re who else posted this evening, see ENGLISH_TUTOR....  :-)))

AH>  I hadn't planned on learning medical terms such as
AH>  "thrombocytopenia".  Be careful what you wish for.
AH>  You just might get it.  ;-)

JB>  All I can fathom, is it must throb.


        Close, but no horseshoe!  "Thrombo-" has to do with
clotting... you may have seen it used in terms like "coronary
thrombosis", commonly known as "heart attack". 
"Cytopenia" is a deficiency of one or more types of blood cells,
e.g. in leukemia where the proliferation of white blood cells may be so
extreme that other blood cells (including those needed for normal clotting)
are crowded out. Pain in the joints is symptomatic, but AFAIK it's not a
throbbing pain....  :-/



JB>  I've gathered a paltry amount of Latin through plant,
JB>  and disease names mostly.


        Yes, there can be a bewildering variety of common names... and the
same common name is often applied to different things in different places. 
:-)



JB>  When I hear a reporter try to stumble through "A
JB>  beneficial parasite that feeds..."


        It seems the days when reporters specialized are long gone.  I see
many articles in which an issue is clouded by attempts to simplify it
too... (sigh).



JB>  I lost myself! Honest, I thought the comma was called...
JB>  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. LOL!


        Another expression which Dallas & I also use, BTW... [grin].



JB>  


        Like a fish out of water, eh?  Nice use of metaphor....  :-)



JB>  What is a half an umlaut, now that we are on the target?


        You mean a single dot placed over a letter??  I don't know.  Apart
from the letter "i", of course, I've seen it only in dictionaries
as a pronunciation symbol indicating a short vowel.  There's a circle over
a capital letter "A" in my ASCII chart (ALT 143).  I wonder which
language uses it... Ukrainian, maybe?



JB>  How about the French typical apostrophe that sits
JB>  above an "e" like an umlaut.


        If it looks like a peaked roof, as in "table d'h“te" (ALT
147), it is a circumflex.  If it looks like half of a circumflex and goes
upward from left to right, as in "n‚e" (ALT 130), it's an acute
accent.  If it looks like half of a circumflex and goes downward from left
to right, as in "trŠs" and in "blessŠd", (ALT 138) it's
a grave accent.  I notice we're both using IBMPC 2, BTW....  ;-)



JB>  I'd *like* to know what I'm talking about, but so much is
JB>  forgotten as soon as I learn it these days. 


        I can relate.  Stress takes its toll... I noticed that when I was
in my twenties!  When one gets older there's so much stuff inside one's
brain that it may be difficult to retrieve sometimes as well.  I suspect
you do remember what is important to your personal survival, though.  When
Nora was in treatment for leukemia I often forgot what the grownups... who
were quite capable of fetching various items for themselves... had asked
for.  But I never forgot to give Nora her medications on time as
prescribed, because her life depended on it....  :-)



JB>  I'll stay to keep an eye on ya! 


        Delighted to hear it!!  You're doing fine.  Hang in there... [chuckle].




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+