Jordon Cooper, Canadian blogger extraordinaire is not doing well.

He has been recently diagnosed with diabetes, suffered a near heart attack and is not dealing with an excruciating condition called neuropathic pain. It appears he has polyneuropathic pain which affects the extremities, limbs, hands and feet.

It’s chronic and often a side effect of diabetes. Treatment includes weight loss and drugs such as amitriptyline and maprotiline. Diabetics find the pain most severe at night. Topiramate, an anti-epileptic drug has also been found effective. It can take four weeks before patients experience relief.

Diabetics also experience three kinds of eye problems which exhibit similar symptoms Treatment varies.

Keep Jordon, Wendy and Mark in your prayers. Jordon describes the exceptional pain and we need to pray medication, weight loss, and blood sugar management kick in quickly.

Bird Flu
Funky Dung asks a very pertinent question:

Why aren’t more people concerned about bird flu? I see news stories about it from time to time, but they don’t seem to generate much buzz. This is a scary bug and the world isn’t ready to deal with it.

This article has a timeline and pertinent information on H5NI, mutatants, cross species transmission and what is being done.

A Canadian has set up a Flu wiki that will:

The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies. Our goal is to be:

a reliable source of information, as neutral as possible, about important facts useful for a public health approach to pandemic influenza

a venue for anticipating the vast range of problems that may arise if a pandemic does occur

a venue for thinking about implementable solutions to foreseeable problems

Degus
The Dash House recently acquired 2 degus (a popular new pet, more social than hamsters) and they were female. 12 young degus later, Darryl and his family are scrambling to find the new additions homes. Degus thrive best in pairs.