When I found about the tumor on my neck, I knew it was serious because of how serious the Docs were. By every measure of medical history, the surgery was a success, the tumor was completely removed, the patient made home from the hospital without complications, etc. But operating on a tumor embedded around your spinal column and en-snarled among the nerve branches exiting the column toward your left arm, all this being done with a laser knife and a microscope under the hands of a skilled neuro-surgeon. it is not an easy surgery. Plus the fact that the tumor and nerve are very similar in color and texture makes it particularly hard.

Well my doctor told me, “I have good news and bad news.” I was able to save all of the motor neurons, the ones that drive your muscles. But I had to sacrifice a number of sensory neurons in your left arm and I don’t know where on your arm that will affect you. Well, turns out it has affected the sense of touch in the tips of my fingers…my typing fingers. I was anxious to get home to try things out with these new pair of gloves I am wearing. I can feel pin pricks but not much else. So far it has been very annoying to have to use the backspace key so much. Little things you take for granted like knowing which keys your fingers are on come from touch, edges of keys and the little detants on the f and j keys. Also knowing whether I have actually typed the key or now just because I stabbed at something is no guarantee.

I may have to get very familiar with CodeRush. even though till now I have just found some of the functionally interesting and other parts annoying.

There is more good news. Nerve cells grow back very, very slowly.

DSC_0964Here’s my setup. It is a reclining chair with a perfectly neutral position for your back, That is a Toshiba Satellite P26 running a Pentium 4 CPU at 3.2Ghz with 1.00 GB of RAM with an 80 GB harddrive. The notebook is sitting on a lapdesk whiich is adjustable to tilt (normally for holding books) but perfect for the reclined developer position. The rest of the hardware, that white and black ugly thing around my neck only server aa temorary purpose to annoy me and keep my from seeing my keyboard through my glasses. Maybe that is another thing that may help with the typing someday?

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