Death by TomatoEs

The human body is a frail thing. My sister has not yet received confirmation of kidney stones. However, she did have a bout of e-coli and a bladder infection. The doctors think that the bladder infection may have led kidney stones because she dawdled too long in getting it looked at. Apparently kidney stones the result of bladder infections tend to be bigger than other ones, and usually require surgical procedures to remove. I was under the impression that the doctors just blast them to smithereens with lasers, and then they pass on out. Anyway, she got a CAT scan today that should hopefully be illuminating (ha, I'm witty). Speaking of which when I was in the eigth grade I did a science fair project to determine if dandelion root could inhibit the growth of e-coli better than commonly prescribed antibotics like penecilin and tetracycline. The answer was mixed. Those capsules you buy at the health food store didn't do a thing. The capsules contain dry dandelion root. For those cases the e-coli took over. But if you use fresh dandelion root (which I grew for my experiment), right from the ground, it completely obliterated the e-coli. Only tetracycline showed as much promise.

Now my Mom on the other hand continues to shock-and-awe with her number of problems. She just won't quit, I can't tell you how many exotic diseases she's had in the past. Like the double dose of cancer was barely worth noticing. Right now each of her feet has a separate problem associated with them. Something to do with the joints that occurs from overuse. The thing is the two problems are different. Having the same problem in both feet would be too easy for Mom. Just recently she also sprained a muscle in her chest somehow. Not really sure how that happened. One day she's has the incredibly intense chest pain, goes to the doctor, and they say she's pulled a muscle. Nevertheless she just got a "thorough" physical and stress test performed. For the first time in my conscious life her blood work came out normal. There were no elevated or delevated levels. That alone was worrying. For Mom to be normal means something is going wrong. And not too surprisingly she passed her stress test in spades. They had her walk on a tread mill set to an up hill terrain. The point is for her to get her heart rate up to over 120 beats/minute and her usual at rest beat is 60. The doctors say two minutes is bad. Mom went for 10 at a jog. The doctors asked her if she works out. She doesn't. She just doesn't stop working or moving until her body drops her dead late in the evening. But even still, next week she was asked to go see the city's heart doctor. That's a bit worrying. And of course those idiot doctors don't give any indications as to why such an appointment is necessary. They should start the conversation with "there is no cause for alarm". Clearly there is a cause for concern or she wouldn't have to go in the first place. It's not like you make an appointment with a cardiologist just to have him give you a gold star. Oh, and I almost forgot. The other day she was in the ktichen drying a bowl. But she wanted to reach for something with one her right hand. Thinking the wet bowl might slip if she only held it with one hand she grabbed a towl to get a better grip on it. So holding it tight with the towl in her left hand she grabbed whatever it was she wanted with her right. But as she was doing this she felt an intense pain in her middle finger on her left hand. At first she thought she broke it, but the finger appeared fine. Then she figured the pain would go away eventually. A few hours later she looked down at that finger and found it to be black-and-blue. She managed to significantly bruise her finger from doing nothing more than keeping a tight grip on a bowl! So please keep both these two, Mom and sis, in your prayers.

Yesterday I made spaghetti sauce. It came out much better than the last batch I made. The chief problem this time is that I found out I'm not a big fan of Rosemary. It's a bit too strong which tends to masks the other flavors and I'm just not too keen on the taste of it. I added it because I thought it sounded like a sophisticated ingredient and read that it does go with tomato sauces. I've been bottling my sauce in a previously used Ragu glass jar. But while I have been rinsing out this glass jar I haven't really been doing anything other than pouring some water into it, shaking it around some, and then pouring it out. I talked to Mom and Dad last night in order to let them know I made the batch and it came out great. Talking about food is about the only thing they and I can have a normal conversation about so I like to make them happy by asking for their opinions and approval on these matter. Their opinion is that they think I'm going to die of botulism. I thought that would be pretty amusing. Both their kids could die less than a month apart from food poisoning simply because we're too lazy to cook properly.