Thursday, August 06, 2015

Freecell in Windows 10 has added a “Try Again” button, at least in certain circumstances, so I tried composing a couple of paragraphs over there and pasting them into Blogger. No luck. In they went as HTML, as before, with no provision for escape.

So I mailed them to myself, and here they are, over on the Mac:

My INR was up yesterday: 3.2. “1” means your blood clots normally. Higher readings indicate degrees of thinness, non-clotting-ness. They are aiming at something between 2 and 3 for me, perhaps for everyone, with 2.5 the ideal. So far, I have been bumping along at the bottom, 2, 2.1, 2.2, no more. I was even thinking of adding the allowed 2 units of alcohol a day to my diet, in the form of half a bottle of Westons Vintage Cider with my supper. It might improve appetite – I've lost half a stone.

But alcohol, in moderation, augments the effects of rat poison, so I don't think I'll try that just now. What I will do, in moderation, is to eat a bit more of the delicious foods with Vitamin K in them. Avocados, hummus, ripe cheese. They encourage blood to clot, i.e. they counteract rat poison. Drs have reduced my daily dose, but only very slightly, and I won't have another blood test for a fortnight. I'm not entirely happy, but at least I don't have any of the alarming symptoms listed in the leaflet that comes in the Warfarin box — yet.

Many thanks for all your help with feliculture yesterday.  A friend sent a link to this interesting article. Perdita understands spoken English perfectly — she is just pretending, like any toddler, when she affects not to recognise “no”. I have tried reinforcing it with a sharp hand-clap, as the article suggests, and am having some success. I think she wants to please me, and is trying to understand how.

She has got many of the toys you suggest, including a laser which she adores. If there is no one to play with her, she is quite happy to use the instrument itself as a toy. 

When we lived in Birmingham, a cat lived nearby named George Smith, a big ginger tom. He would often sit on his gatepost, at a convenient height for conversation, and engage passers-by. As the conversation developed, one might try to scratch George behind the ear in a friendly fashion. Then he would bite. He thought it was funny. I don’t want Perdita to grow up to be like George.

Knitting

Very little to report, yet again. I haven’t quite finished the current broad stripe of the Tokyo shawl — i.e., am not much advanced on where I was yesterday.

I looked up the article in IK that I mentioned yesterday. It’s about what might be called scientific knitting, but doesn’t say anything about Fibonacci as Loop-d-Loop implied it would. I googled “Fibonacci knitting” but found only articles about stripes, nothing about swirls. I think I’ll give up. It’s too difficult for me, anyway.


The article started off with an account of a PhD student who worked out a rather ingenious pattern for knitting the double helix onto a scarf. The pattern is in IK, elsewhere in the issue.  It had a certain vogue in the scientific community for a while, and someone wrote to the designer to say that she had knit it for her boyfriend’s father —  James Watson. It doesn’t get better than that.

9 comments:

  1. This reminded me of an article many years ago in New Scientist (I am fairly sure I have the page saved somewhere but, lets face it, google finds it much faster.
    The pattern is a random number generator (or table) and instructions for each of the 10 digits (0-9). Here is a link, the article is called "wear your own theory".
    I never knitted it but I still find it an intriguing idea.
    http://tinyurl.com/nmlbja7

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  2. For those looking for the double helix scarf, the original designer (whose blog I also follow) has it on her website. :)

    http://www.twosheep.com/helix/

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  3. Jean, I am worried about the erratic results of Warfarin on your body. Is the U.S. We have a medication called Eliquis that is more stable than Warfarin, does not have the food side effects, and is more gentle on the body. Perhaps it is time to speak to your health persons about a better medication option for you.
    Thank you Jasmin for the lovely double helix scarf pattern. It will be perfect for my son for Christmas

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    1. Eliquis is what I am on (called Apixaban on my Rx) and it does seem to be the one to cause the least oppressive side effects - and no need for regular tests.

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  4. Maybe not too difficult, but just requires too much concentration. If I have to pay too much attention to the knitting, I set it aside for something more relaxing, then it never gets done.

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  5. Knitsiam5:55 PM

    Try googling Fibonacci sequence, rather than Fibonacci knitting. Described as the golden ratio found in nature to describe stripes and spirals, formula is fairly simple. Each new number is the sum of the prior two - 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3 =5, and so on.

    Hope you and yours continuing to be on the mend; take care.

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  6. Rebecca7:40 PM

    My husband has been on Warfarin for sixteen years with no problems. His doctors have never suggested a change, perhaps with good reason:

    http://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/slipperyslope/52867

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  7. Don't fret about your INR. The therapeutic range is actually 1.8 to 3.2. We say 2 to 3 as it's easier for the lay person to remember.
    If one of my patients had a result of 3.2, I would shave back their warfarin dose a tiny bit and retest in about 10 days. Especially if there are no signs of adverse effects - nose bleed, bleeding gums when brushing teeth, tar coloured stools, etc.
    Please don't alter your diet. Eat as you normally would and let the warfarin dose be adjusted to you, rather than you adjusting to the dose. The only time I would recommend eating foods to alter INR is if you were having adverse effects and couldn't reach medical care in a reasonable time frame.
    It can take 4 to 6 weeks to find the correct dose for you, so don't worry about changes.
    Some hints:
    1. Take warfarin with your evening meal. This allows it time to come to a balanced level in your blood so that tests done in the morning or afternoon aren't affected.
    2. The INR you get today is reflective of the warfarin/ food your had THREE DAYS ago. And the dose/ food you have today will show up as your INR in 3 days.
    3. Altering diet based on INR will put you in a continuing state of chasing your INR of 3 days ago.

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