My Electrical Problem

Last Wednesday I meant to post an entry here after my visit to the Radiation Oncologist, but then decided to wait until Thursday to do it. Thursday morning when I tried to turn on a light and the radio in the living room, nothing happened. Then I realized that the ceiling fans were not turning. However, in the kitchen, the clock on the range was on. I went to the breaker box and discovered that one breaker had flipped. I went around turning off light switches and unplugging things, then tried the breaker. It buzzed for a few seconds and flipped again. Everything is OK in my bedroom, bathroom and closet, as well as in the utility closet (washer, dryer, water heater, and the outlet where I plug the lamp under that floor to keep the water pipes brom freezing when the temperature drops into the low teens or below). Perhaps most important, the furnace works!

After fixing my coffee (boiling water on the stove and using my French press pot), I called Alyssa's father-in-law and asked him how he is with figuring out electrical problems. He said he's not very good, but he came over, bring his other son with him. Matthew had a class in electricity when he was studying computer technology, so he knows a bit more than average. They stopped in Fancy Farm and bought a new breaker, but discovered that the breaker was not the problem, so they returned the new one on the way back home. Bobby went around the house with a small lamp checking all the outlets, while I made a diagram of the house and marked them dead or live. They plugged the refrigerator into a different outlet and I later did the same with the microwave. We now have a couple of lamps in strange places, because that's where tha live outlets are. The worst thing is that I can't use the computer. Since my phone service is through the same cable as the Internet service, my house phone is dead. I guess it's good that I have a cellphone, even though I don't like the thing.

I need to call an electrician, but since I'm having radiation therapy every day for the next two weeks, it may have to wait until that is complete. In the meantime, I guess I'll visit the library more to use the Internet.

I had my fourth radiation treatment this morning. When I went last Wednesday, they put marks on both legs to help them position me correctly, and another one on my right leg to show where the radiation meeded to be aimed. They put small, clear, plastic dots over them to keep them from washing away. On Tuesday, they drew a larger box to show the whole area to be irradiated. It encompasses most of my femur, since the insertion of the rod may have pushed some of the myeloma cells further up the bone.