My Interview With the Colorado Springs Gazette

The Colorado Springs Gazette came by my office early in the month to do an interview with me about mobile technology, my work with Microsoft, and the work I do on GottaBeMobile.com.

It got published today. Wayne Heilman, the writer who interviewed me, did a great job. I really enjoyed talking with him about a number issues outside of the interview topics.

The Tollbooth

It was pitch black as I made my way to the airport at 5:00 one frigid morning.  Just 15 degrees outside, I couldn’t keep the ice off the windshield. Inside the car, though, it was toasty warm.  The heater was turned up to the max, and those seat warmers were working their magic.

Taking one last gulp from my coffee, I turned on to a toll-road that promised me a quick route to the airport.  My mind was going in a hundred different directions as I navigated the icy roads: am I going to get there in time, did I remember to make the hotel reservation, what airline am I flying, missing Kathi and the kids already, wishing I was still snuggled up in my warm bed, and wondering what in the world I was doing on the interstate in the middle of an ice-storm at 5:00 in the morning.

I don’t like to travel, and mornings like that just reinforced those feelings. As I made my way toward the first tollbooth, though, I wasn’t prepared for what lay just 500 feet in front of me.

I slowly pulled up to the tollbooth and rolled down my window to pay the $1.50 toll. As I reached out my hand to the attendant, my eyes turned to his hands – hands that were well-worn with calluses from years of hard, manual labor; dark from constant exposure to the sun. They were cold and numb from the ice storm now bearing down on them. Each wrinkle could tell the horror stories of war, watching his best friend get blown up, giving away his daughter in marriage, burying his wife, and pushing his grandson in a swing. They were frail, trembling hands that just wanted to rest.

My eyes then locked on his. Grey, wiry eyebrows protected his dark, sullen eyes from the ice blowing in. There were streaks of red surrounding the whites of his eyes – had he been crying, was he sick, had he been up all night with a sick loved one, had he just left the local bar to work the grave yard shift? Deep behind those eyes were the pangs of a hurt soul, full of angry conversations with a God that he still struggled to love. Like the calluses on his hands, there was a hardness in his eyes, with a story longing to be told.

What was a 70+ year-old man doing working the tollbooth so early on a freezing morning? Didn’t he have grandkids to tell stories to or coffee to drink with his buddies at the local doughnut shop? Or, was he facing the twilight of his life alone, with a nary of a person to talk with? Was life in the tollbooth better than the hollow apartment he now called home? Were the tollbooth customers, people on a frantic pace to that ever-critical business meeting, now his reason for waking up every morning?

There is no telling what the true story is behind those hands and eyes; but, as the attendant handed me my change, I looked at him and said “Thank you”. Not in the quick, non-meaningful tone that we normally tell someone “Thank you”, but in a voice that comes from deep within that said “I appreciate you. I hope you are able to find rest and warmth soon. ”

Big Diet Changes Coming For Our Family

To pave way for Maggie’s Ketogenic diet, our entire family will begin the Atkins diet on Monday. We begin with a 2-week induction phase. The kids carb count will not be as low as mine and Kathi’s, but it will represent a major shift in our overall diet.

We are working with a dietician who has a lot of experience with seizure control and ketogenic diets. She’ll be helping us with Maggie’s overall diet plan, which will be somewhat modified from the standard Atkins diet. We hope to see some good changes in Maggie’s overall demeanor just from beginning this first step. She’ll likely stay on a form of the Atkins diet for a good 3 – 4 months, and then transition to the ketogenic diet afterward. The ketogenic phase will require a 3 – 5 day hospital stay in order to get Maggie in state of ketosis.

Christian Missions – Will You Go?

My good friend, Jeffrey Weeks, produced this video using photographs he took during mission trips. The purpose of the video is to encourage young people to serve in missions.

Jeffrey is a wonderful photographer, and has started www.ShowTheStory.com to help tell the story of missions using video and photography.

Finally some word from St. Louis

We finally heard back from St. Louis Children’s for Maggie’s MEG and video EEG tests.

They were able to pick up a lot of abnormal discharges, but even with the MEG and in depth analysis, they were unable to localize them to a particular area in the brain. They are coming from some very deep areas and thus the struggle to localize them.

The doctors and neuroradiologists in St. Louis are in disagreement with the local neuroradiologist about the extent of atrophy in Maggie’s brain. There is atrophy, but there is disagreement on how it is being measured, and thus how much of a problem it is. As I indicated in my last email, time will only tell, and we’ll continue to monitor this issue with regular MRI scanning.

With Maggie’s local doctors and her doctors in St. Louis recommendations, we are proceeding along the following path to bring some level of control to Maggie’s seizures

· Maggie began hormone therapy to limit the interaction between puberty and her seizures. Puberty is definitely causing some bad things with her seizures, which led to her most recent week-long hospital stay.

· Continual adjusting of medicines

· Seriously considering a ketogenic diet, which is a hyper form of the Atkins diet: no sugar, high fat, extremely low carb. This has huge ramifications for her overall diet (and the family), but will only last a couple of years. This diet has been known to be very effective in limiting seizures, even after she goes off the diet in two years. Her local doctors and the ones in St. Louis highly recommend it as a course of action. Should we choose this route, we’ll be going back to St. Louis this summer for a 2 – 3 day hospital stay while the doctors and dieticians get Maggie set up on the diet and ensure her body is entering a state of ketosis.

The bottomline: we don’t know much more than we did before going to St. Louis except that her seizures are originating from some unknown deeper areas of the brain, and that puberty is definitely having an negative impact. With the above recommendations, we hope that her seizures will be better controlled, thus allowing her to think and process much clearer. We are certainly disappointed that we didn’t learn anything more concrete after everything Maggie went through in St. Louis, but we are thankful for what we do know and that there remains some promising treatment options.

As Maggie and the rest of our family has done since this all started, we’ll continue to take each day as it comes and pray that God will continue to bless Maggie and the rest of our family with grace and peace.

Thank you for everything,

Rob and the rest of the Bushway tribe