Live Tracking Coronavirus on a Map

I wrote this 3 weeks ago. Since then almost 80,000 people have contracted the virus, 2,130 people have died from it and whilst some say it is reaching a plateau, the cruise ship in Yokohama and increasing spread in Asia is growing dramatically.

I continue to be most disappointed with the racist behaviour all over the world, including my home country of New Zealand. Most of us said that the mosque shooting in Christchurch had changed us and that we would call out inappropriate behaviour when we saw it.

Well, I’m calling it out. There is plenty of racism in this country and when we stand proud of what makes us Kiwis. We need to embrace the multiculturalism. Yes, this started in China. That does not make people of Chinese ethnicity bad people, or people to be afraid of. I’m sure many of them are far more afraid of each other, but not because of their ethnicity, simply because of where they have been.

Come on Kiwis, pull up your grown-ups pants and set the example! If and when we get Coronavirus, wouldn’t it be ironic if ‘patient one’ is of European or Polynesian ethnicity. Imagine if people were afraid of us?

I know if you read my blogs that you are not racist. I also know we have to call out this scourge when you see it. I’m horrified by news stories of people asking why Asians are allowed on buses, or in our swimming pools, yelling at school children! We need to be careful, sure, but we are damaging relationships with our own people here, which will take longer for some to recover from, than the virus.

SoLoMo Consulting

Johns Hopkins CSSE has developed and published a GIS web map tool, whereby you can live track the spread of Coronavirus on a map. I feel the pedigree is important, because when I listen to my Alexa news brief each day, no two news broadcasters have the same numbers.

Like you I want to know how serious this is, especially now that WHO declared Coronavirus as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and today as a Global Emergency.

You can view the map in detail, zooming into any part of the map and see the geographic spread inasmuch as ‘facts’ have been reported. I suspect given the pedigree and resources, this will be as good information as any.

Adding a glimmer of hope, it not only shows the number of deaths and where they occured, but also the number of people who have recovered and where…

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Prostate Cancer. No Pressure. Need Help for Relay For Life 2018.

So when my GP told me that my PSA levels had increased every test over the last couple of years when they should fluctuate, he said there was a risk that I might have cancer. He told me to lie up on the bed in his surgery, pull my pants down and my legs up and before I had a chance to ask, “is this necessary?”, his gloved finger went where the sun don’t shine. To say that it was unpleasant was an understatement, but I barely had time to feel embarrassed.

We wasted no time in making an appointment with a urologist and off I reluctantly went. I’m not sure what I was dreading most, being told I had cancer (If I did) or having yet more insult and injury to my dignity.

A sign on the track at Relay For Life

He was a very nice, gentleman who explained to me what was going to next and asked if I had any questions. I was feeling pretty much in shock and bewildered and was barely taking in what he said.

He asked me what my flow pressure was like when I peed. I thought it was OK most of the time. They told me on the phone that I had to arrive with a full bladder for a urine pressure test, so I was ready to relieve the pressure.

I had to pee in a basin that had a sensor in it and I thought I did pretty well, as he stood in the next room, watching the gauge. He then burst my bubble and said that my flow was well below average and asked, would I like a script for something that would make it flow faster.

I declined. Up on the bed and he started prodding my stomach and then asked me to pull my pants off, lie on my side with my knees hard up against my chest.

Now dear reader, you may be feeling squeamish, you might be feeling embarrassed, you might be thinking, I’m pulling out of this story.

You might be thinking, why is he telling me this? Is it necessary?

No it isn’t, but I want your help and if I get some donations for our next Relay for Life, I won’t share the next step with you and I won’t tell you graphically how I felt.

People ask why I share my story. I’ll tell you why. All around me people are either battling or losing the fight to cancer. One in 3 people in New Zealand will get cancer and we have to do something about it. We can do something about it. The numbers are pretty similar in the western world.

Relay For Life isn’t just for raising money for cancer research, it is about remembering the people we love, work with, our friends and family who are affected by cancer. It is as much a celebration of life as a sharing of loss.

We walk for 18 hours in relay, and the number 18 on our singlets if you zoom in, you will see it is made up of the names the 13 of us are walking for. Some have passed away in the last few months, some are battling, some have been gone for some time and some are in remission like me.

When you walk around the track and you see an 11 year old in front of you and on the back of his shirt it says ‘I miss you Mummy’, you know why you are there.

So to stop me sharing the rest of this visit to the urologist, how about going to the Relay For Life website here and making a small donation. $5 is tax deductible if you are in New Zealand and it would mean a lot to me to have your support. If you’re overseas, maybe you won’t get a tax rebate for it, but I’d still be very grateful if you could share the cost of a coffee.

These are the bags we put our clothes in, when we go in for radiation treatment. Each one of these bags represents a person being treated for cancer at any given time, just in this clinic

I hate asking for money, but it isn’t for me. It may will help you or someone you care about. Remember that number. 1 person in 3 in New Zealand will get cancer at some stage in their lives. Draw up a little list of people in your family and then separate one third of the names on that list. Imagine if those people got cancer. This is personal folks.

This year Relay is on the 10th and 11th of March. We got through the night to symbolise the cancer journey. You don’t have to walk the whole time, it’s a relay, but many of us like to do as much as we feel able. Our team is quite small this year. So far only 13 people. If you feel you would like to join us please head to the Team Early Birds page and let me or one of the team know.

Will you join us in person or in your thoughts?

Life List Item 1 of 150 – Go for 2,082 walks over 10 years.

Yesterday I wrote about being in remission and starting a Life List of 150 things to achieve in the next 10 years. 

Item 1 is something I have wanted for years and even considered developing myself. It is a GPS based solution that will allow me to track all the places I have walked  and motivate me to constantly find places I haven’t walked before by logging them on a map, preferably automatically from my iPhone.

I used to do ocean kayaking and used a paper map book. Every time I went out, I did a new stretch of coastline and marked it with a highlighter. Easy to do for sea and tidal estuaries, but not for roads.

So the List Item is ‘Track everywhere I walk and aim to walk somewhere at least 4 days a week over the next 10 years’ That works out to 2,082 walks. I entered it into my iPad app called Make It Happen 2012, which doesn’t seem to exist anywhere or I would send you a link. It looks like this: 

I woke up yesterday thinking maybe I should start a crowdfund and get something built and then spent an hour or so searching for apps and eventually found Move which I installed on my iPhone. It tracks all sorts of things including walking, cycling and driving automatically. So that motivated me to do walk number one which was to the local grocer and back with my wife. We did just over 6,000 steps. The app showed where we had walked, not super accurately, but good enough. 

I then had to find a way to upload it onto a website so that I could see where I have been and plan new walks, because the app only show each individual link. I found MOVE-O-SCOPE which is now owned by Facebook and connected the two. I thought I had finally found my solution, but now I’m not sure.

I connected them as per the instructions and found loads of driving data from 3-4 years ago and also walking data from 2013 and 2014 but not the walk I did yesterday, so I’m hoping this does actually work, or I will be very disappointed. There is a huge market of people that want this functionality and it seems like it is all here. Maybe it needs a week of data before it shows anything, but even the slide only goes to 2014.

So I have the app on my mobile, but it’s no use to me without the visualisation because I can’t see on it where I have and haven’t been since 2014. Hopefully this will get sorted because that was still the key.

Meanwhile I do have my first values based item on my Life List, which is to exercise and look after my body, whilst also enjoying being outside and part of my surroundings. I’ve sent them a PM on Facebook and hopefully they can sort me out because there doesn’t appear to be anything on their website.

If anyone reading this can help or point me to any other service that does what I need, I’m keen to hear from you.

 

 

We all need more kindness in this world

Watching all the solidarity after the London apartment building fire and all the terrorist events that seem to be occurring almost daily, it makes me wonder about what unites us.

We hear statements from leaders about how the adversity makes communities stronger, but it makes me wonder about what we can do to avoid these situations.

Can we make a difference simply by moving some muscles on our face and smiling or greeting strangers as we walk past them?

There seem to be a lot of people who become radicalized possibly because of their general state of mind. We are now hearing about so many people suffering from depression and anxiety, it is even now a significant problem for children in first world schools.

I note how it makes me feel when I make positive contact with strangers on the street, it feels good. A simple act of kindness could make the difference for someone who is feeling stressed, depressed or bitter and could stop them from doing something that could have horrific  consequences for themselves and others.

Smile and say hi to a stranger today.

Humor is the Best Medicine

Check out the great guitar playing on this video. As to the song, it reminds me of the week when I read the definitive book on prostate cancer. I had to but wish I hadn’t. Great lyrics though.

Remember Reader’s Digest’s Humor is the Best Medicine? Yesterday at work a guy came up to me and said, I can’t help you with your cancer, but I can make you laugh, would you like that. I said I would and he proceeded to tell me some corny jokes and I felt better for it.

I’ve written a couple of songs about my cancer journey so far. I haven’t got the energy to record them yet, but watch this space. Music is very much a way of dealing with issues, whether you are a listener, a songwriter or composer. It is cathartic.

As to my journey, in short, I had to stop taking my drugs because I stopped producing enough cortisol which along with the cancer drugs caused fatigue which has had me sleeping very long hours and having to take time off work. I am now also anaemic and they can’t tell me why. It’s not iron, it’s to do with my red blood cells. I also became intolerant of fructose and lactose, which doesn’t give you a great number of tasty diet options.

Anyway, my oncologist told me around Christmas to stop taking the cancer drugs until we figure out what else is going on and referred me to an endocrinologist. When they didn’t ring me, I rang them and they said “The soonest we can see you is 10th of March!”. So I’m thinking, no cancer drugs, all I am really good at right now is sleeping and I feel even more tired when I wake up than when I lay down and I have to wait nearly 3 months to see someone while those tumors could start growing again. So I rang the clinic every day or two and yesterday managed to get a cancellation.

So on Monday I will go and fill another bunch of bottles with blood and wait for Greenlane Hospital to ring me to arrange a test that sounds a bit like hooking me up to a line and shooting adrenaline down it to see what happens, because my fight or flight has become sleep or creep.

I’m very grateful that something is happening and hoping for some answers and feeling embarrassed and humbled when people far worse off than I am give me words of encouragement .

Meanwhile I am also looking forward to Relay For Life in March. I don’t know how much energy I will have, but I’ll be doing as much of the 18 hour walk with team Early Birds as I can at the Millennium Centre on the North Shore on 25th and 26th of March. I am so grateful to my family and friends for organising the team, tents, clothing and everything because I don’t have the energy for it. Of course they aren’t just doing it for me, we all have friends and family that are fighting or lost the battle with cancer and each person in the team is there for a bunch of people. We wear their names on our clothing.

This is raising funds for cancer research (and NZ is a world leader) where every single cent goes to the research, nothing goes to administration and everyone involved volunteers or pays for the privilege of being there. Buddy, if you can spare a dime, maybe $5, please go to this page. If you live in New Zealand, even your $5 is tax deductible, so the charity gets the lot and you get some back. That’s pretty cool right?

So here’s the thing. One in three people in New Zealand will get cancer in their lives.

Let’s try a little game:

Take everyone in your office or flat or home and line them up. Get each person to call out a number, 1, 2 and 3. Then get all the 3’s to stand on one side of the room and the others to face them.

Stand there for 3 minutes and look at each other and think about what it would be like if those 3 people had to battle cancer and how that would make you feel. Then put yourselves on their side of the room and think about how it felt when the doctor said “You have cancer”.

Then think about what if you could help reduce that number. Relay For Life is helping fund some leading edge research such as treating cancer like a virus. Imagine being able to take something like an antibiotic and the tumors just magically get flushed out of your system. Those people are being financially supported by you encouraging us to walk in circles throughout the night.

 

I got Chastised for Owning a V8 Last Week

I felt like I was being made out to be a bad person and it shocked me. I’ve always considered myself a green person. I have planted tens of thousands of trees, lobbied for feed-in tariffs to make it attractive and economical to get the masses to install solar power. I’ve encouraged ride-share systems and spend a lot of my working time encouraging people to use public transport and to reduce the impact of congestion. I point out to people when their car or truck is blowing soot from the exhaust pipe and if I pick up rubbish that others have thoughtlessly discarded.

Since I was little I always loved Corvettes. As a boy i would watch them on TV and see the odd one in real life. As an adult I had a business associate who owned one while I just had a replica model.

The colleague who castigated me used to work for a car manufacturer and has a passion for motor vehicles and motor sport and maybe he was just envious of me that I have a sports car, but it made me feel bad. It shook me, perhaps because the car is an indulgence.

I didn’t bother telling him that I have cancer and that it made me decide to do a few things for myself and my family that were on my bucket list, things that like most of the people I know, I never expected to achieve. Anyway, now when I drive my 350 Chevrolet, people give me the thumbs up, kids stop and look at it as  drive past as I did so many times when I was little and I see big grins light up on their faces, just like I did. People compliment it and I feel like they feel happy for me in gas stations. They don’t know my circumstances and might think I’m rich. I’m not. The only new vehicle I have owned in my entire life was a no gear pushbike.

I have my dream car and I spend as much time cleaning it as driving it, which I find therapeutic (it helps me take my mind off my next lot of tests), while listening to business coaching, self improvement and music podcasts. It’s in great condition, doesn’t blow smoke (and neither do I), I never deliberately speed (in fact I am helping to test a green driving app) and  so the engine is never working hard, it is in fine tune so there is very little pollution, in fact I think it drives much cleaner on high octane petrol than the average car let alone the diesel soot smeared black smoke spewing trucks I see delivering frozen food to retailers.

I have spent half of my life working in voluntary unpaid positions after work, from boards and committees including as a Civil Defence Rescue Team Leader, Chair and committee member of boards including a music centre that has taught thousands of children to play music on instruments they couldn’t afford to own, volunteered in a food centre providing vegetables at farm cost to people who couldn’t afford to pay retail, fund a guide dog, support charities and worked hard all my life.

I indulge myself a little when it comes to my guitars and continuing to lean music and have done some travel (most of it on business with very little time for myself) and I consider myself to be a good citizen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from perfect and have room to be a better person, but I do care about my community and my environment.

But I do have cancer and I do have a bucket list. I thought I’d wait until I retired before I went and had a but more fun and I’ve recently been pointed out that I am no longer insurable for health and life. Obviously they consider I have a long life span ahead! I haven’t given up on that myself.

I do my best not to judge other people and I’d like to suggest that people who are quick to judge or try to make me feel bad for finally owning my (second hand) dream car should have a close look in the mirror. I hope they never find themselves in a similar situation to me.

 

 

 

Support for Cancer Sufferers and their Families

unI want to say a huge thanks to everyone for their wonderful ongoing support. It has meant the world to me. The cards, text messages, messages on social media from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, phone calls, offers of driving me to and from treatment, somewhere to stay and recover (had an awesome three days with dear friends in Mangawhai over New Year’s when I had 3 days off treatment) have been amazing.

One of the things that took a bit of getting my head around was my family and how my cancer affects them. We have lost some of our closest family members and friends to cancer and I didn’t always appreciate how everyone else in my family was feeling. It’s something I noticed at the hospital that it was often the partners that were really struggling. We patients are more focused on how we are feeling and how to cope with side effects, keeping up at work and on my part feeling guilty for falling asleep at 7PM or earlier every night and going to bed early, leaving my wife on her own, evening after evening for months. I’m still doing that and could be for a little while yet.

After I left the radiation clinic for the last time, with instructions from the nurse, not to come back, which I was happy to agree to, I went to the cafe for my last coffee and cheese scone, staple diet to keep me moving.

Then off to the car to head to work for business as usual. I was feeling disoriented.

For 2 months my life had been focused on getting up around 5:30AM every morning and heading across the bridge for treatment and now it was over. The card from the staff may have been a factor, because it was like leaving your job, something that had become routinely normal. I wandered around a little bit as I headed to the car. I sat there for a little while, looking at the card, looking at the smiley face stamps on my appointment. Thinking about the PSA test in 3 weeks time and wondering what the oncologist would have to say to me when we catch up in a month, especially given that my PSA tests had never shown me to have abnormal levels, despite the tumors. Will I be clear or will I need more biopsies. I don’t like the idea of more biopsies because each one increases the risk, even slightly, that cancer material if there is any left, could then be passed into my bloodstream.

Anyway, got to work and got busy, then when I got home, I found a wonderful message on the front door from 7 year old Madison, which cheered me up immensely.

Mads (and all my family) has been tremendous, she is very empathetic but also great and grounding me.

Then it was off for a family dinner at Genghys Mongolian Restaurant with my family. I took it easy on the food, but the taste sensation  was amazing, even though I stayed away from the garlic and spices as instructed.

The piece de resistance was a cake, totally unexpected given that it wasn’t my birthday, which neighboring diners probably assumed. This brought tears to my eyes after a long two months and long day.

So now we wait and life gets a little back to normal. I still woke up at 5 this morning, but i was able to doze off again. They say its all about attitude and I have always felt that I am a survivor. I have also also felt that I have a guardian angel, my Oma, who had a 20 year battle with cancer (after she was told she would probably not live past the first year).

You don’t get through these things on your own. I’m a bit of a loner when it comes to dealing with stressful situations. Cancer has certainly changed that. I now gratefully accept the good wishes, the offers of support, the prayers and constant goodwill from colleagues, friends, family, acquaintances and total strangers. I’m also extremely aware that I am lucky, there are so many people worse off than me that have amazing strength and great attitudes.

I am focusing a little more on what matters. Family, lifestyle, maybe a little self indulgence to come, because you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labors when you are gone.

My immediate focus beyond my next oncologist appointment is the Auckand Relay For Life. As you may know, my daughters have set up a team called Early Birds, which recognizes that if I hadn’t had those PSA tests, we wouldn’t have known I had cancer. My prognosis would be very different.

I don’t know if I will be able to do the marathon distance I did last time, but I will do what I can and have a great team behind me. Our team isn’t just about me, although it is what I asked for when my daughters asked what they could do to help me. It’s about all the people that we and our friends have lost to cancer and those who like me are battling it still. It is to fund raise for the NZ Cancer Society that only survives through donations, sponsors and events like this.

If you would like to help and support us, you can:

1. Join the team. There are no limits and it really is an awesome 24 hour event.
2. You can make a tax deductible donation. If all my friends donated only $5 (the minimum amount that allows you to claim back against income tax) we would be giving the society a real boost in supporting cancer research as well as facilities like Daffodil House, where some of the patients I met in the clinic were staying for free, and the many other free services they provide like booklets, a library, free counseling and much more, without Government support.
3. Come along for a visit. Especially the survivors laps at the beginning and end of the event. I can promise you a very moving experience with hardly a dry eye in sight.

Thanks again to all of you for your amazing support. I can’t tell you what it means, even just to have a ‘like’ or comment on my blogs and my social media.

I’m Very Thankyou

Yesterday I asked a colleague how she was doing, she replied that she was doing well. I said that I was pleased to hear it and asked after he partner who had been unwell.

She then asked me how I was doing and I replied “I’m very thanks”. She said that was great and then continued into a conversation.

If I ask you, I’m actually asking. What about you? Is it a platitude or friendly greeting, or is someone engaging with you and really cares. My response is one way of finding out if the other person is really listening. I would expect someone who is listening to either laugh (because they know me) or respond with a “very what?”

It doesn’t take much to engage a little with people, even a smile from a perfect stranger, with no more meaning than acknowledgement of your existence from a fellow human being, matters. I’d really welcome some comments here because this interests me.

Next time someone asks you how you are, whether or not you respond with a platitude, if you have a moment, ask them how they are, in reply. Listen to their answer and show that you listened with empathy. Ask a question or offer a positive response relevant to their response. Show them you care and try to make it a habit. Then please come back to this blog and tell me how it went.

I’d really like to know.

 

Pharmac funds flavoured condoms

A couple of nights ago I was in an urgent chemist with my daughter to fill a prescription who was suffering an allergic reaction to something. We were discussing generic drugs.

In New Zealand, many drugs are subsidised by Pharmac who are a government agency. we were talking about Zyrtec which is an antihystamine which works very well for sinusitis and related allergies. This drug used to be subsidised but has been replaced with a cheaper generic drug, which according to Pharmac is identical.

The chemist said that he himself suffers from the condition and has tried the generic, which didn’t work for him and Zyrtec which does. he further went on to say that he spoke to people who work for the generic drug manufacturer at an international coference and they told him that the majority of the factory staff will not use the generic drugs they manufacture themselves, and favour the original manufacturers product.

It’s all about money and I understand that many asthma sufferers in New Zealand also had major problems when their Ventolin inhalers were replaced with another generic. I wonder how much it costs the taxpayer when people get prescribed cheaper drugs which are ineffective or less effective and end up in hospital.

So to the story today, I just received a tweet from the NZ Herald to say that Pharmac is now funding flavored, ribbed and otherwise enhanced condoms. I am all for free condoms to reduce unwanted pregnancies, STD’s and any other consequences of unprotected sex, but if they can cough up for fancy prophylactics, surely they could also fund effective drugs and help patients access what their doctors want them to take?

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)

GPS Tracking and Navigation for Elderly People

The other day I read about a new invention, which is a GPS enabled walker for elderly patients. Apparently this is a student research product and being tested in Nursing Centres. It uses Wi-Fi communication and helps guide people around a complex such as a hospital or retirement centre. My first reaction was that this was a joke, but the more I think about this navigation for zimmer frames, the more it makes me think about solutions we will see soon.

Firstly, people do get lost in hospitals and large complexes, and the people most likely to lose their way will be elderly patients, perhaps with dementia or simply struggling with stress, pain or under influence of medication that makes them a little dopey and disoriented. If they are in a wheelchair or using some other aid, a mapping or navigation device could well be useful. Hospitals will in future have WiFi networks for their and this could be a device that is supported by it.

I often hear stories about elderly people with dementia getting lost when they go for walks and understand this is quite common. If they remember that they do live in a village or rest home and have a navigation device, it could guide them safely back home.

The other side is far more likely in the near future and that is tracking of people. I had a discussion today with someone from a New Zealand hospital about tracking of staff who visit mental health patients in their homes and the value of being able to locate them if they haven’t checked in within a pre-aranged time. Small pocket GPS tracking devices with GPRS connectivity already exist commercially and some of them also have ‘panic buttons’ that send an urgent alert together with the current GPS co-ordinates. These are typically still quite expensive, i.e. over $500 but with volume the prices will come down.

St Johns and other organisations have solutions such as LifeLink which is a great solution for in and around the home, but what happens when people go further from home. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a solution that would allow you to locate your elderly or ill relative if they don’t return from shopping or a quiet walk. What if they just want to walk a few houses down the road to visit a friend? I would have gladly paid a rental for a service like that for my late grandmother who had a fall one evening and wasn’t found until the following day with a broken hip.

Although it’s not aimed at  elderly people, you will soon find walking directions on portable navigation devices (PND’s). You will be able to download a map that tells you where to park your car and then how to find your way around shopping malls, hospitals and unversity campuses, through parks and arcades. Maps of this nature will be commerically available within the next 12 months. They will also be available on map web sites in the very near future.

Most countries will also very soon have sophisticated navigation software and maps available to run on mobile phones, which will be as impressive as the portable Navigation Devices that are so popular today. Many phones have GPS built in and Bluetooth GPS Receivers abound for much less than $50.

It’s not a big stretch to see software being added that allow your location to be sent to other people on demand (with your permission of course). This isn’t Sci-Fi I’m talking about, it’s 2008 technology.

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)