Hi, Gord!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

GH>  we are looking after an apartment block, and needed
GH>  to clean house literally we had some real noisy and
GH>  ignorant people living in the building, now it is
GH>  reasonably quiet.


           Never a dull moment, eh??  Dallas & I substituted for the
managers of an apartment building we lived in years ago, and that was
enough for us.  Things went fairly smoothly in our case... but we both
realized they don't always.  :-)



AH>  Hmm.  Side effects from chemo and/or radiation, maybe?

GH>  Our thoughts or it might be genetic, his father is not
GH>  the brightest light bulb in the package.


           No comment....  :-/



GH>  We think the result of the chemo and the 38 minutes of
GH>  total body irradiation.


           Yes... although Nora didn't have radiation I understand skin
problems are among the possible side effects.  And I know there is at least
one drug used in treating other forms of cancer which causes progressive
deafness sometimes... that's why I asked about Ryan's hearing.  It can be
difficult to get other folks to take such problems seriously when they
don't show up right away.



GH>  Nope grade 5.


           Okay....



GH>  His hearing is fine, vision seems to be ok even with
GH>  columboma, his pupils are the shape of old skeleton
GH>  key holes.  He does wear glasses though.


           Seems to me I once had a student with coloboma... I understand
it's a congenital condition.  I'm wondering about the headaches.  They can
be caused by eye strain, and one of the things I've noticed recently...
because Nora has been having difficulty with small print... is that the
materials written for students at intermediate level generally have smaller
print with longer paragraphs & more sentences on a page than the
material written for students at primary level.  We found we could improve
her reading level simply by using a larger font and/or by holding a ruler
underneath the line she was supposed to be reading.  This may or may not
help Ryan, but at least the theory can be tested at home....  :-)



GH>  to top it off my step mother has alzheimers and is now
GH>  pretty much house bound, can't remember anything that
GH>  happened yesterday but the sins dad and I did 20 years
GH>  ago look out nelly.


           Hmm... sounds as if this could be tricky to handle!  In regard
to the memories of past events, is her present behaviour an exaggeration
(more or less) of the way she's always been or does it seem out of
character to you?



AH>  And the same goes for your cousin.  :-)

GH>  The sad part here is that some one had to die so she
GH>  could get a new heart.


           Agreed....



GH>  And Nora is a fighter.


           Yup.  Everything takes her a long time... so it's normal to her
& she has a lot more patience than most other people.  She still says
"when I get over my stroke".  Although I think it's unlikely that
she'll make a complete recovery I'm not about to disillusion her.  We've
already pulled off a few minor miracles in regard to Nora's stroke & to
various other things because Nora didn't realize they "couldn't be
done", and Dallas & I plan to continue the tradition....  :-))




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+