Blue Skies and Rain

We may have blue skies today but it also is raining at the same time. We've had a couple of good rainbows but generally its dreary and cold. Azra is cuddled up with Sai and Chad and is trying to keep warm.

I took Tamara to see the gastrologist today. This was at the insistence of the locum GP who wouldn't continue to give her Losec for her gastric reflux without an expert having a look to see what was going on. We saw Dr Alan Fraser at the parking nightmare that is Mercy hospital and having seen a lot of specialists over the years for many things, he is good value. We have a very educational and informative hour consultation where we learned an awful lot about the effects of diet on digestive issues. It looks like Tamara probably has both a hiatus hernia causing the gastric reflux and IBS causing the issues lower down and she is having a gastrocopy next week to confirm the hiatus hernia. Of real interest is that our recent suspicions that Tamara's bowel issues where considerably made worse by lactose are probably correct, they recommend trying an exclusion diet with no dairy and wheat (and other things) to see if it improves things. Tamara's been trying a lactose free diet for a couple of months now and the bloating and pain have reduced considerably. Dr Fraser says it possible that the resulting exclusion of bread from the diet (it is impossible to find mainstream bread without milk powder in NZ) may also have benefited her. There is a website that details this.

Vik found a RepRap bug yesterday the hard way. The Y motor bracket was nearly done when it hit a bug where if a build was too high the software went into negative, resulting it the RepRap trying to force the extrusion head down through the recently built item. The new Y motor bracket had the corner burnt off by the process, the noise was terrible but the extruder head survived the experience with only a light unbending needed.