Hi Jo55:

No, Alan never had any facial pain or spasms or anything like that.

Only his toes. That's where the PN is. had it for 15 years.

We can only cross our fingers that this new neurosurgeon can help him.


Now you talk about spasms. I've had spasms all my life. I'm kind of a neurotic person, (severe dental phobia). so I worry about everything.

Seven years ago I had bladder spasms that took me to every specialist known. Had every test known too!!!

They found nothing. One day it just went away. I can remember exactly where I was when the spasming stopped. I was taking a hot shower.

Now if that is what the hot shower did, then god bless the hot shower.

I had muscle spasms in my chest starting from when I was 24 (the first one), in my mom's living room in Florida. I was sitting on the couch and BAM!!! hit me like a squeeze in the left side of my chest. Didn't happen again for a long time. Then once I was in the kitchen and I reached for something and I knew I was going to get a spasm and I did.

Didn't happen again for years. As a matter of fact, once in a while I get a rectal spasm. In the middle of the night. Happened exactly twice in my life so I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I have spasms, I'm a nervous person. I took a xanax to relax myself. I sat on a heating pad. I went to sleep, it was gone in 10 minutes.

My son, when he was around 6 (we were in the school playground) and he says "oh, something funny just happened in my chest). I recognized it immediately for what it was. We immediately took him to his doctor who examined him and declared "oh that was a muscle spasm". He never had it again.

We're an odd bunch of ducks, aren't we??

melody

ALL he had to do was open a REAL browser...not the one that came with AOH#LL.

Only one way to truly BLOCK a computer...take off the power cord and keyboard after you've turned it off and hide those under LOCK and KEY and then keep the key around your neck.

If you can't do that, and you have Windows XP, give the child a GUEST account with LIMITS and then passcode your admin account. Also passcode THE admin account. Better yet, upgrade to Vista when it comes out and learn to use those parental controls. NO one is an admin on that except THE ADMIN. Liz

Found a very interesting article on the MSNBC website:


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15163036

Diana

Hi Southern lady.

I absolutely love your avatar picture.

Really doesn't matter about blocking he computer for this particular kid. He's in jail for armed robbery and I don't see him getting out any time soon.

be well.
melody

Who KNEW what would happen when I started this thread?! Okay, so, now there are loads and loads of folk looking at this thread and posting. I'd like to ask all of you---who has pn here? Does everyone? Please, folk, fill out a profile and put some basic information--it helps if you put your major diagnoses, approximate age, sex, and maybe a few other things there. I find when I am reading folks' posts who I don't remember, I look at their profile in the hopes of being reminded what they have and who they are, and rarely is the info there. So, please identify yourself---are you a pn-ner? Did you put something in your profile to summarize your basic medical issues?

Next, I have some good friends who are high-level Aspies. I like geeky people, and some of them are Aspy-ish. I never meant to cast aspersions, if that was believed. Also, I have one good friend who spends a great deal of time on SL. She, too, is a lovely person. I have nothing against second lifers. But I do object to what JL did to us at OBT. He started a community which he handled carelessly; he used us to raise money which he then used for a purpose other than what he said it was for (namely, he used money we gave to protect the OBT server to buy land at SL and to do whatever else he needed to do there). I resent that he has treated us with zero compassion, zero empathy, and zero respect. I resent that he leveraged us into a well-paying job that is not basically about illness or health at all, but is a profit-centered online game (some call it a world, but basically, what you do there is PLAY).

I'm happy that people feel JL has helped them; but it makes me rather nauseated when people advise me to just "get over it". I feel I was ripped off, and everyone else was too. Again, this man who made a neurological community showed zero concern for that community once he'd leveraged it into a well-paying, status-filled, and fun job.

Now, about SL. One thing I wondered was--how do Avatars have sex? I mean how could someone manipulate an avatar well enough for an interaction that specific. It seems that people write mini-programs, called macros, and when you decide to have sex with someone, you basically turn on the macro that does what you want. My friend who spends a lot of time there writes macros and designs objects there.

It's important to remember that SL is NOT a not-for-profit enterprise with any dedication to the welfare of its customers. It just wants customers, wants them to spend real money to buy linden dollars, and wants them to come back. Sex and deviance and porn sell big, and SL has lots of that to offer. It has no particular vested interest in making sure that only adults go to adult areas unless their pocketbooks get hurt by the complaints.

Major investors are investing in it: the list is full of big-time funders, beginning with the guy who wrote Lotus, but extending widely. I can't remember offhand the other folk, but there are many with big bucks. It's all about the linden dollars/real dollars.

Okay, folk, if you don't have pn and have been posting here, I'm curious---what brought you to this thread? What's kept you here? Not that I am disinviting anyone AT ALL. I LOVE THIS THREAD. I love how many people are exploring and talking and joining the talk. It's fabulous. But I'm curious.

Melody---where are you going tomorrow? Can you take pictures for us?

Well, I made one post, does that count? lol
I've been reading in PN for years (on that errr "other board"), but I don't read all the messages. I read a lot of the forums because if I listed all the conditions and symptoms that myself and my children have, we'd cover a lot of them. I do not intend to list them in a profile. I wasn't aware that was needed. ???

I also didn't realize one needed to have a condition in order to post on particular forums. My former ex-father-in-law had Peripheral Neuropathy and I nursed him for years when he got to the stage he couldn't walk at all. I've been experiencing strange symptoms in the past 2 years since a fall. I saw a thread here where people were talking about lack of feeling in the feet and falls. I was very interested because of what's been going on with for me in recent years.

As for putting something in my profile listing conditions. I'm sorry, I have never done that anywhere on the internet and don't intend to start.

Edited to add: BTW, I understand that people are hurt. What I don't understand is that the thread started to sound a little like that game "chinese whispers"... where one person whispers something on to the next person and so forth... in the end the whole meaning and and reality of what happens is lost. e.g. forum users linked to JL purely because they use the other forum, linked to Brigadoon, linked to Second Life, suddenly linked to cybersex. Some of what was said on this thread was shockingly incorrect.

I think some members just notice when a thread is always near the top in the new posts section- so they click to see what is being discussed.
And then decide to join in.

--anyone specifically NEEDS to have peripheral neuropathy to post on this board or in any particular thread in it, but it is true that this thread has little to do with neuropathy. It's become as long as it has because the topic is interesting and hits a nerve with many who post here (and/or at the old Braintalk), and the participants in general are people who have, or know others who have, neuropathy in one form or another.

Still, it does seem this is the type of thread which might be better placed in some other section--not only because the topic ranged far from neuropathy, but also because it would be great if others who don't frequent this section of the board could also join in. Wonder if we could "transplant" it whole onto Forum Feedback or some other appropriate area (suggestions?).

I'm going to be descriptive because once I found out how it's done I was absolutely fascinated.

Let's star with the avatar. When you join for free, you design your own avatar. it's a plain body, male or female, you dress it, you design the clothes, how short, how long, how tight, how loose. You design the shoes, how high the heels, you put on socks or not. You put on skirt or pants.

You design your hair, your face, your nose. To the tips of your ears. When you design your avatar it brings up the various pieces of the body and you have a slide which you slide from left to right, which gives you a short body or a long body, short ears, long ears...............it's the same for clothes or anything on your body. That's how you determine the exact size. By sliding the little thing back and forth. When you have created our body. You click on save and there is your little avatar (a representative of you in SL).

Now if you decide to do the sex thing, you teleport to a place where you can do this. Because you have a free basic account, your avatar looks like a manniquin. Very robotic. There are countless ways to have sexual adventures. Any place; you go you will see blue little balls and pink little balls. If you are female, you click on the pink and your avatar will assume a female position. People date in Second LIfe so people come in as couples and their avatars go on dates, go to dinner, make love etc. But when they are making love, it's not real looking. It's like watching two manniquins make love. You know it's not real because the movements are always the same no matter where you go,

It's fun to look at for a while but then you realize the main thing that these people back at home on their computers are doing is typing in text.
So the main thing about a free account is, it's kind of like text sex chat.. when you look on the screen, you can actually laugh because it's manniquins going at it.

HOWEVER......... and here's where it changes. When you pay for stuff on Second Life. You can pay for a new body. You can customize that body so that it looks completely human. Very tiny, but very human looking. I was standing at a beach on some island having jus teleported to various locations because the graphics are absolutely so amazing, you think you are at an actual beach. As the waves were rolling in, some woman appeard out of nowhere and she was dressed in the flowing outfit, with a tiara, and jewerly and black high heels (she looked absolutely nothing like my avatar). I said Hi, your outfit is gorgeous and she explained that she designs avatars and costumes in second life and she makes a living that way. But people pay many lindens to look like her.

Then I teleported to other place and I saw many many men and women who actually looked like men and women. Then, and this answers Liza Jane's question about how avatars can actually have real sex?. When you look human in second life, you also design your avatar to move like a human.

I saw a blanket on the floor of some beach. I had no idea what this blanket did but there was a sign over the blanket that said 50 lindens for 15 minutes. Now all I saw was an empty blanketg. Well two human looking avatars sat down, laid down and did what two people in love would do. And it was completely human looking. Never saw such a thing in all my life.

I then understood that there are people like myself who go to Second life because we are curious, maybe we want to do the free slots, and we have an avatar that looks like a manniquin. Then there are the others (PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY INTO COMPUTER CODES, MACROS, WHATEVER). and want to look like humans with spectacular costumes and they go to bars and drink, and dance (looks real too), make love like the real thing. I went dancing once, laughed my head off.

So Second Life will be a big hit for the people who actually prefer to live their lives in a virtual world. Fascinating believe me.

Believe me, I just gave you a really good interpretation of Second Life.

be well

Melody