Wednesday, October 7, 2009

More Vertigo

Bay City, Texas

Weather: low 82 degrees, high 92 degrees, heavy rain in the morning, partly cloudy skies in the afternoon

The main focus at work is getting everything ready to start refueling the reactor. That process involves removing the reactor head from the reactor vessel, moving the fuel in the reactor to the spent fuel pool, performing inspections of the fuel, then placing fuel back in the reactor, and putting the reactor head back on the reactor vessel. Of course, it’s not that simple, but those are the major steps. While all of that’s going on, the project to replace the reactor head, which I am part of, will be performing their activities. In about two weeks or less, everything will start being put back together. It’s amazing the amount of work and activities that go into an outage like this.

Carolyn suffers from time to time with her vertigo, and she is having problems with it now. She has been performing the exercises that were prescribed to help control the vertigo, but this relapse seems a little worse than normal. Folks, thank your lucky stars if you’ve never had a problem with vertigo. It almost incapacitates Carolyn, and the only reason she can keep going is because she refuses to give up. Can you imagine feeling dizzy and halfway sick to your stomach most of the time? She cherishes each day that the symptoms are not present.

Carolyn has noticed that her vertigo seems to be worse when a change in the weather is coming. If a storm front is approaching with lower barometric pressure and higher humidity, she feels worse. When the barometric pressure is higher and steady, with lower humidity, she feels better. We are considering spending some time in a more arid climate to see if that helps her. If it does, we’ll make future plans based on that. That doesn’t mean we’re ready to buy a house.

Having said what I have about Carolyn's problems with her balance, it is amazing how she keeps plugging away, trying to maintain a semblance of a normal life. She's my heroine.

More later, be safe.

Today's Town - Toledo, Ohio: Corn City

Not all who wander are lost.

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