Slackware Future

[netrootbg]

Малко лоши новини . Много гадно ми стана след този пост. Една от най - добрите Линукс дистрибуции вече е с неясно бъдеще. Да не говорим за здравословното състояние на създателя и Патрик Волкердинг. Желая му успех в борбата с болестта. След това мнение написано от него останах с впечатление, че е много борбен човек и няма да се откаже лесно. Стискам му палци.

 

Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 10:43

 

"Last post?"

 

Hi folks. If you're reading this, I thank you. Perhaps you'll have a role

to play in bringing about the miracle that I desperately need. First, I'd

like to apologize for the lack of updates lately in Slackware -current and

stable... I know there are a few outstanding issues that need to be

addressed. However, I've been too sick to work for a couple of weeks and

now I am away from my computers and at my parents' house in Fargo, North

Dakota where my only online access is through an AOL dialup. I have told

only a select few people about what's going on thinking that I did not want

the internet at large to know about this, that I'd get it taken care of

and get back on track without a major problem. Now, I'm hoping that this

will get seen by a lot of people and that if it hits Slashdot that some

kind medical geek will help save my life.

 

I've generally been a pretty healthy guy. Nobody I know would characterize

me as a hypochondriac by any stretch, so when I raise an alarm it tends to

be for real. I'm going to give a timeline and run through all the

symptoms I've had (so if that sort of thing grosses you out, you can stop

reading right now). For the rest of you, here goes. This is going to be

long, but hopefully somebody who can help will read it...

 

This all began quite some time ago, perhaps as long ago as May of 2001.

I was preparing Slackware 8.0 for release and working really hard. A pain

developed in my shoulder, and (too busy to do anything about it right

away) I ignored it and continued to keep working. It got to be pretty

bad and one afternoon in early June I was rushed to the emergency room

at a hospital in Concord, California. I was sweating, feverish, with a

weak pulse of around 50, experiencing chills and seeming to be on the

verge of passing out. The doctor who saw me did a chest X-ray and didn't

think it was too unusual. I was told it was probably bronchitis and was

sent home with a prescription for ciprofloxacin which mostly cleared up

the problem. Still the pain in my shoulder seemed to vaguely remain.

By mid October of 2001, I was in bad shape again. My parents asked me

what I wanted for my birthday and I told them some more Cipro. They

found someone who was able to help me out with a 60 day supply (no small

task as this was right after the infamous Anthrax mailings when all the

newspapers were running articles about Cipro and people were trying to

horde it). I finished the two month course of antibiotics and felt

better. Not perfect, but significantly improved. I chalked the events

of 2001 up to stress, but in retrospect I am not so sure. I had

similar problems in 2002 and 2003 that were also knocked back with some

antibiotics, but the pain in my left upper back (and some kind of

"presence" there) never did fully clear up. Tests for TB came back

negative.

 

Fast forward to May of this year. I found myself complaining about "my

usual pain", as I had started to call it, more and more. I was starting

to wonder if I was even going to be able to make my annual camping trip

out in western New York state at the beginning of July, but I did go.

I figured the sun and a little exercise would do me some good, and I

did feel a little less like I was "fixin' to die," but upon my return

to California things started to go downhill for me again. This whole

time I was coughing up some strange stuff. Some of it was white and

reminded me of dental plaque. In spite of being a dentist's son I've

never had the best oral hygiene so I'm familiar with plaque. The

"plaque" I was getting out of my lungs was some nasty stuff and

smelled just like dental floss used after a couple of days without

brushing. Yeah, I know I should be better about that, but tend to

stay up late and if my wife is already asleep don't always turn the

light on and wake her up so I can brush before bed. To help me avoid

more tooth decay my dad bought me one of those fancy rechargable

electric toothbrushes that really powers away the plaque. It also

creates a fine aerosol mist of plaque, and I started to wonder if 4

years of using this brush had caused me to breathe in some of this

plaque mist and moved an infection into my lungs. I inquired with

several physicians about "lung plaque" and most of them had never

heard of such a thing. One told me he had heard of something like

that in people who were exposed to asbestos, though. Searching on

Google didn't turn up any relevant hits on the subject.

 

By early September 2004, I was spending a good portion of the time

I'd normally be working online flat on my back instead. The pain

that had started in my left upper back had moved into my left side

below the ribs, and my right side just under my armpit, too. Being

an ex-smoker, worries of lung cancer were starting to consume my

thoughts. A close friend of my father's had recently died from that

disease, and his initial symptom was also shoulder pain -- in fact,

they treated him for a presumed pulled muscle for many months while

the real problem went undiagnosed. Sometime in October I decided

that it was time to pull my head out of the sand and get in to see

my usual physician who runs a small clinic in Concord, tell him all

of this stuff, and at least try to get cancer ruled out. He ordered

chest X-rays, blood work, ran an EKG, and checked all my usual vital

signs. I told him about the "lung plaque" and reported feeling weak

all the time with no appetite. Being 6'2" and about 145 pounds I

knew I didn't want to be losing any weight. He also listened to my

chest and like all the doctors I've seen this year thought it sounded

mostly clear, like there wasn't anything major going on there. The

X-ray was a little different story though. It was taken on a

Thursday and I was told not to expect to hear anything until sometime

the next week. Well, the next morning the phone rang and it was my

doctor. He told me there was something "suspicious" seen in my left

upper lung (right about where the long-standing pain was), and that

I needed to get some more X-rays at the local hospital instead of

the imaging center I'd gone to before. They weren't going to be able

to get me in there until the next Monday.

 

The next morning I decided that I'd better FedEx some T-shirts that

my friends at the GUS in Brazil had been waiting for (not knowing

how much longer I could procrastinate on that, etc). While driving

back I felt a sharp pain in my left side and felt something in there

pop and drain (maybe into the pleura?), and since cancer was well on

my mind, as well as the fact that this had been going on for way too

long, I headed straight to the nearest ER hoping I wasn't bleeding

internally or something like that. By the time the doctor there saw

me I was holding onto my left side which seemed to help the pain a

bit. He ran a UA (and called it "questionable") and sent me down for

a CT scan. No iodine dye -- just a lower abdominal scan to see if I

had any kidney stones (and yes, I related as much of this other info

as he had time to hear in a busy ER). No stones were found, but he

wrote me a script for Cipro and some pain medication. I showed up

at the hospital the next day (in only slightly better shape) to try

to schedule additional X-rays, but they had misplaced the fax my

doctor had sent in, and they didn't want to schedule additional images

until they had seen the first ones. I never did see those myself,

and the imaging center requires a 48 hour notice to check out films.

It was starting to look like going through this medical center was

going to be a slow process, and I wasn't sure I had that kind of time.

 

So, I made the decision to pack up the car and drive back to North

Dakota from California. My Dad has been part of the medical community

for years there, and knows a lot of people. I figured he would know

who I should be seeing, and could help me set something up. A week

ago Sunday (Nov. 7) my wife Andrea and I set out to make the 1680 mile

drive to Fargo. We made it as far as Monida Pass. This is a mountain

pass on the Idaho/Montana border with an elevation of 6820 feet. On

the way up the grade I knew it wasn't going to be kind to me. I felt

an intense squeezing under my sternum and started to sweat and nearly

passed out. I've never previously had any trouble with high elevations

and have done hiking and mountain biking at much higher ones than this

particular pass. Luckily Andrea was driving at the time! We decided

that we would stop at the next fairly large town with a hospital and

see what they could do for me. This was Butte, Montana, an old mining

town, and home of St. James Hospital. The folks there were absolutely

wonderful to me. They did some more blood work (finding only a slightly

low potassium level), chest X-rays, and a CT with the iodine. They

didn't wait long for the dye to circulate because they said the main

goal there was to insure I didn't have a pulmonary embolism. I did not

have that. The doctor and radiologist also told me my lungs looked

"slightly inflamed" and to stay on the Cipro, but that I was unlikely

to keel over before making it to Fargo, especially as I'd be losing

elevation rapidly upon heading east. They packed the X-rays and CT

scans into a big envelope and told me I could borrow it to take to

my doctor in Fargo, and that they see a lot of people come in from that

pass with similar problems. So, off we went. I was mostly ok getting

back to Fargo, but never lost the feeling that someone was leaning on

my chest pressing on my sternum, and was occasionally short of breath

even after getting down to the 1000 foot elevation.

 

Back in Fargo, I had an appointment with an internal MD on Thursday

morning. By Wednesday night the pressure under my sternum was so

bad that it felt like I was having a heart attack, and was again

taken to an ER (the Slackware 2004 ER tour continues). While there

I started to feel better, and the pressure was letting up, and I

did not want to be a GOMER in their emergency room. The doctor I saw

the next day focused on the possibility of a thyroid or liver problem,

and ran some more tests that came back looking ok. He thought the CT

from Butte looked "within normal limits". That night I again got the

squeeze (pericardis?) but suffered through it because I did not want

to go back to the ER. I've had at least one strong attack every day

since, along with the sensation of "pop and drain" in all the original

pain points and under my sternum. The next day (Saturday, 13th) I went

to a local clinic with an MD in private practice. This guy was/is

great, and has seen me about a half dozen times since. He agreed

that I had signs of serious infection, including a disgusting

garlic/sulfur smell you could detect at 50 paces. He put me on

levaquinone and metronidazole hoping to have a better chance of

covering whatever the responsible bacteria was. Took more X-rays

but couldn't see anything obvious. We discussed getting an

echocardiogram to look for pericardius.

 

Then, I got my Google breakthrough. One of the symptoms I'd

noticed over a year ago was feeling like something hard was stuck

in my throat causing me to cough. Maybe 4 times I was able to

recover was looked like a small (

was light yellow in color. I'm sure I swallowed a bunch of them,

but hadn't seen too many examples and had not remembered to

mention this to any MDs along the way. I googled for "yellow lung

granule" and maybe the third hit mentioned something called

Actinomycosis. There it was, a laundry list of the symptoms I'd

been experiencing. Furthermore, the disease is caused by the

same bacteria that normally lives in the mouth and in dental

plaque. Infections are most common in the jaw, but sometimes

occur in the lungs and spread elsewhere through the body. The

hallmark of the disease is the finding of small granules of

sulfur. Aha, I thought. Now that I know what this is, I should

be able to get some treatment. I tried "sulfur lung granule" on

Google instead and had a ton of hits, all highly relevant to

the situation I was experiencing. I printed out one of the hits

from the Johns Hopkins Microbiology newsletter and raced back to

the clinic to tell Rodney about it. He looked it over and

thanked me for doing so much work for him (whatta guy :-), and

on the basis of what I'd told him felt there was a good chance

that we were looking at the answer right there. None of the

antibiotics I was on would touch this -- they were all too modern.

That was one of the terrible side effects of old antibiotics;

they would kill the natural flora in the mouth and GI tract and

you have all kinds of problems like fungal and yeast infections

as a result. So the newer classes of antibiotics are carefully

chosen to avoid killing those types of bacteria, and this was

probably caused by Actinomyces, the most common bacteria in the

mouth. When found in a lab culture, its presence tends to be

discounted as normal. So, what kills this stuff? Good old

penicillin. Yup, while everything else in the world became

resistant to penicillin and amoxicillin, Actinomyces israelii

never did. Rodney had me quit taking the other antibiotics and

put me on amoxicillin (even though V-cillin-K 1g qid might have

been a better choice). I've been on it for a couple of days and

I'm doing a bit better. I don't stink anymore and the palms of

my hands have quit sweating. He also gave me five days of

prednisone which seems to be lessening the frequency of the

chest attacks, although one did get me out of bed at 03:00 last

night (and I took the opportunity to start working on this report

hoping to save myself). Problem is, things are somewhat

contained, but still appear to be spreading. I'm getting sudden

pressure releases occasionally that seem to be coming from the

pleura or pericardium, and this morning had one that seemed to

be inside my head. This has me more than a little concerned.

- From everything I've read about this, it is a really tough

thing to treat. Oral penicillin generally does not do it. What

is needed is 2 to 6 weeks of IV penicillin G (12 to 24 million

units a day), followed by 12 months of V-cillin-K 1g four times

a day. Amoxicillin 500mg 3 times a day has me in a holding pattern,

but it's probably not going to do the trick. Rodney has no ability

to directly admit me to a hospital without first sending me to an

infectious disease MD there who would have to agree with all of this.

I have an appointment on Friday.

 

There you have it. That's where I am today. If anyone out there

is familiar with this and is able to help, please let me know.

I'll travel anywhere I have to at this point. I can be reached on

my cell phone at (925) 535-9062. Please call only if you can help

get me some high-dose antibiotic treatment. I have been trying to

check email at least once a day at volkerdi@slackware.com as well.

I'll accept whatever you'd like to send me at that address (as

usual :-), but if you're contacting me with an offer of help please

add [HELP] to the subject so that I'll be able to find those emails

more easily. Say prayers, knock on wood, whatever. I need all the

help I can get. Anything sent here will be confidential unless you

say otherwise, too. I also hope if I'm off the job for a couple

more weeks that the Slackware community will still support me when

I can return to the job, which I'm really itching to do ASAP (I'm

not looking for donations though). This experience has changed my

perspective on a lot of things, and I think the future will be

different (and better).

 

Oh, there's this blood test result which I should also mention.

While almost everything looks normal there, the following white

cell counts are (barely) out of the normal range:

Neutrophils 79 (high) NormalRange = 40-75

Lymphocytes 16 (low) = 20-45

Absolute Eosinophil 0.00 (low) = 0.015-0.500

 

BTW, my login quote tonight was "Snow and adolescence are the only

problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough." heh.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

- ---

Patrick J. Volkerding

[JDFU]

 

Въз основа на щаслива случайност и google той успява да определи вероятната причина.

Vijdate kak pravqt nai-dobrite! Zatova: Hora, nauchete se da tyrsite!!!!

Inache dano ozdravee i da prodylji s EDINSTVENIQ i NEPOVTORIM Slackware.

[afx]

Като фен на slackware и мене ме прободе този post

Жалко че няма с какво да помогна, освен да чукна на дърво...

Също така не смятам да се отказвам от slack, не и докато не се появи дистрибуция имаща поне предимствата му. Засега ще стискам палци пък.. каквото сабя покаже..

[sasquatch]

За съжаление май нещата не вървят на добре click

[Rangy]

За съжаление май нещата не вървят на добре click

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Спокойно, бе хора! Винаги има кой да вдигне знамето. Не забравяйте за силата на свободният софтуер, т.е. неговите най-характерни черти - свободен и отворен за всеки. Вярно, че ако някой ключов разработчик престане да работи за делото, проекта леко буксива, ама това изобщо не означава, че "нещата не вървят на добре". Все едно, ако Алан Кокс престане да "тика" ядрото, то Линукс да умре

Не може да стане така, погледнете само колко проекти си вървят и се развиват без основните си фигури.

Жалко, само за здравето на човека..... Абе, като се знам какъв съм инженер и ме е страх да ходя на доктор. А пък си мислех, че американските лекари са по-стока от нашите...

[netrootbg]

Rangy при Слака нещата седят по друг начин. Тука няма много разработчици. Всичко минава през ръцете на Патрик. Не казвам, че други не пишат. Просто той преглежда всичко преди да го пусне и отделно сам прави по - голямата част от нещата. Лично мнение е че за slackware е фатално ако Патрик не се оправи .

[manaPh]

Лошоооо, много лошо...

 

Ако батьо ви Патрик не се оправи, зорлен и без време ще трябва да се закопаваме във FreeBSD, щото не знам коя друга OS или дистрибуция ще е достоен заместник на Slackware. Вашите мнения?

[netrootbg]

Ако батьо ви Патрик не се оправи, зорлен и без време ще трябва да се закопаваме във FreeBSD, щото не знам коя друга OS или дистрибуция ще е достоен заместник на Slackware. Вашите мнения?

Лично аз бих преминал на Debian.

[JDFU]

Dobre de vse pak Slackware ima mnogo fenove (i povecheto ot tqh sa guruta) vse shte ima nqkoi.....prosto trqbva da se otkrie

[netrootbg]

Sat Dec 18 23:22:21 PST 2004

" "

 

Hi folks. Well, I'm back in California and I'm happy to let you all know

that I'm feeling much better. :-) Here are a few updates so you can see

that I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully 10.1 won't

be too far off (I'm still trying to figure out just how far behind we are,

and what other fixes need to get merged in), and then we can look at what

exactly needs to be done to try to switch over to the new kernel series for

11, or sometime later on. I still don't think it's time for that yet (it

will be best to wait until 2.4 can be abandoned). Besides, I should

probably be trying to take it easy as much as I can.

There's no need to try for an encore...

 

I offer my thanks and gratitude to the many people who sent me kind words

and good advice, or indeed anything at all. I figure it was all for a

reason, and that there were always lessons to be learned. Hopefully I'll

learn them now! ;-)

 

Most of these fine people will remain anonymous, however, one of my

doctors was Leonardo Faoro, a medical resident at the Mayo Clinic. He's

running a support site for cancer patients at:

http://www.cancerforums.net

and if you feel his site might be useful for yourself or anyone you know,

please spread the word about it. Leo is a good guy and one heck of a

great doctor, and giving his site a little plug here is the least I can do.

He didn't ask for it, but don't think he'll mind.

 

Very best wishes to all, good luck in 2005, and THANKS AGAIN!,

It's good to be back. :-)

 

I think I've been helped now, so this text file won't hang

around forever, but I'll leave it at

 

http://slackware.com/~volkerdi/PAT-NEEDS-YOUR-HELP.txt

 

for a little while in case anyone is still interested.

It's the closest thing to a blog I've ever done. (ooooo! ;-)

 

Take care,

 

Pat