September 11: The Odd Nature of Being Low on Blood

It's September 11, 2011. It's the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I'm not sure what to say about that except that I hope the good things that came from 9/11 won't go away. Those good things are what we have to mitigate the bad.

View over the apartment complex this morning

I saw an email from the founder of meetup.com, an online service that helps people spend time together offline, saying that meetup.com was a product of 9/11. It was used to help people get together in the real world after the traumatic events and to continue to meet and provide activity and strength for one another.

Did you get a little close to someone because of 9/11? Did you think a little differently about the world?

It's not just churches that need revivals. We all need them. Precious and important moments in our lives just slip into oblivion, becoming nothing but nostalgia with no current impact on our behavior.

I like to schedule the occasional pep rally, with just me attending, so I don't forget every good lesson I've ever learned. Holding on to a few of them helps me live my life better today.

Well, that's sufficient for a blog, but I don't think I'll be able to write about this morning's "run" as well tomorrow as I hope to be able to this morning.

Just another picture at the apartment complex

The Odd Nature of Being Low on Blood

"Jogging" this morning was very rough. (For those of you who think jogging's impossible for you, let me recommend my web page on how to start jogging, on a web site I hardly every maintain.)

I felt really energetic when I woke up. I felt light, my head was clear, and I could picture my arms and legs pumping as I ran down the street.

Then I got out of bed.

I still felt clear and light, but now my body felt clear and my head felt light. It was a very pleasant feeling, really, surely aroused by a slight shortage of oxygen to the brain.

I went walking anyway. I canceled all ideas of running.

Not a bad walking spot, huh?

The weird part was how good I felt. I just didn't feel like putting any energy into my walk. I forced myself to anyway, doing a low-effort version of power walking for a half mile down to one end of the apartment complex.

At that point, I turned around and ran a little over halfway back, which would be about a quarter mile. It was very hard to get my legs going at first, but then I trotted comfortably, my breathing coming rapidly faster, and my legs feeling limper and limper with each step.

Finally, I couldn't keep going, and I slowed to a walk, still gasping for breath.

These cars sit at the end of the complex. Maybe the last apartment is for rich folks only.

What's funny about being low on blood, though, is that the problem is not your breath. Breathe all you want. It doesn't change anything because there's not enough blood to transport all the oxygen you're breathing in. So even though everything in me was saying, "Breathe hard, breathe hard," I could slow down to almost normal breathing and feel exactly the same.

On top of that, my legs, which were not sore or overwhelmed by a half-mile walk and a quarter-mile run, were nonetheless oxygen-starved. They weren't sore. They were slightly limp.

This may all sound scary, but you get used to this after just a few days. Simply slowing down to a slower walk let my blood catch up, while I breathed barely harder than normal. My legs went back to normal, and it was somewhat like I'd never exercised.

I walked to the other end of the apartment complex, which gave me a distance of about 1.5 miles at that point. I had walked more slowly, so I was feeling okay. It's the stress of the moment that's hard when you're low on blood. If you take it easy, you can keep going as if there's no problem.

As I came back from that end of the complex, I conducted a test. I power walked up a hill. It was very hard to make it to the top.

Now, keep in mind that 5 days ago, I ran all the way up a steep hill that is more than a half-mile long. Today, I'm struggling to walk fast up a hill that was about 100 yards long, or maybe just longer.

At the top, I slowed my breathing. Sure enough, it was no problem to stop breathing hard. Felt no different. Then I took my pulse.

Wow.

The convertible Beamer from the end of the apartments, in case you like such machines.

My pulse was going too fast for me to count. Nurses at the hospital refer to "chemo-brain" when a patient isn't thinking too clearly. I was having a flash of chemo-brain. I couldn't count the beat of my heart and pay attention to the seconds passing on the stopwatch on my iPhone at the same time.

Finally I figured out to look away and just count my pulse. When I did that, I found my pulse to be somewhere around 150. I'd already been stopped for a few seconds. It had surely jumped to near maximum climbing that hill.

The reason I'm bothering with details is to to tell you that a minute or so later, my heart rate was still at 130, but I was comfortably breathing, not hard at all.

Very weird.

I'm back at home now, obviously, since I'm typing on the computer. I feel normal. You don't need much blood to sit at a table and type. It's possible that the weirdness won't go on too much longer, though. They gave me a shot called Neulasten yesterday to boost my blood counts.

Of course, that was weird, too.

This coming week is when the chemo from last week is really supposed to take effect. It's supposed to be killing blood cells. Why are we boosting them while they're still supposed to be going down?

I have a suspicion that the doctors didn't realize how quickly I'd be able to get a transplant due to the cord blood. Adult stem cell transplants from a baby's cord blood is a relatively new technology. I suspect if they had known how quickly the stem cells would become available that they would never have done this second round of chemo.

Thus, the Neulasten shot is a way to get me out of this second round as fast as possible.

I'm just guessing, of course. I do know that getting a leukemia patient to transplant while he's still in remission is really important and probably all the more so because of the relationship between my leukemia and Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm, a form of leukemia in which relapse has always been fatal.

September 9: Sometimes This Seems Like a Game

It was funny lining up this morning behind two other bald guys. There were no men with hair in the waiting room this morning.

It must be harder to go through that as a lady. I saw a bald lady come in yesterday.

Don and I (I'm on the left): "The Toxic Twins."

Today's my last dose of "consolidation" chemo, the second round.

It's weird because I feel healthy. My red blood cell counts haven't dropped the last couple days, and I'm just over 80% of what would be normal to me. By now, that's a pretty good blood count, so I feel normal, like nothing's wrong.

And on the surface, nothing is wrong. Except for the fact that I'm receiving my fourth large dose of poison today, I am healthy.

Of course, it's extremely likely that there's a ticking bomb hiding out somewhere in my bone marrow or blood, so the poison's necessary.

Nonetheless, this all feels like a game. I come in, give them blood, fill out the questionnaire on how I'm feeling (great except for nausea that is controlled very well by medication they prescribed), and then I sit around and type on the computer for a few hours while they poison me--and hopefully kill any leftover leukemic cells by doing so.

Even more like a game is all the stuff I do at home. Since the chemo attacks all quickly reproducing cells, it stops saliva and mucous as well as destroying blood cells. So I rinse my mouth regularly with a salt and baking soda solution, and I take some extra careful measures to prevent hemorrhoids. (There I go having to talk about that again!).

Also, the Ara-C that I'm getting this time makes for very dry eyes, so four times a day I put drops in my eyes.

There's a lot of people who live like that. They take meds every morning, every night, and maybe at every meal. Insulin shots, checking their own blood ... all sorts of stuff. I think it's a lot of people who do that because the hospital is always surprised when I tell them that I don't take any meds on a regular basis.

So, a lot of people go through that, but not me. It would be different if I felt sick or weak. I don't, so it feels like I'm playing a game or acting.

It feels something like this. "Yes, yes, I'm very sick. I could die in less than a year. In fact, if we were leaning on odds, I have about a 60% chance of being buried within 2 years. Also, I'm in the middle of chemo, with all its side effects ... So, do you want to go to the gym? A good workout followed by a couple-mile run would be fun!"

It just doesn't seem very real.

For the record, though, my white blood cell counts dropped significantly today, including my neutrophils (the anti-bacterial ones). Tomorrow they're going to give a shot related to neupogen, called Neulasta, which will help raise my neutrophil levels. Apparently, they're going to try to prevent me from ever going neutropenic (under 500 on the Absolute Neutrophil Count) this time, which is part of what makes chemotherapy so dangerous.

The Ability to Heal Is Awesome

That will be really nice. What made the last chemo unpleasant was that for a week or so, every irritation was compounded. No matter if we treated a problem and stopped it from getting worse, it couldn't get better until my white blood cell counts came up. Even cuts wouldn't heal. They'd stop bleeding, but they'd just stay there. Athlete's foot, hemorrhoids, mouth sores ... they can be slowed or stopped, and maybe their symptoms improved with pain medication, but not healed.

Let me tell you, there is a huge difference between slowly accumulating injuries and irritations that don't go away and the ability to heal.

Healing is an awesome thing.

Another Brian Regan Excursus

That reminds me of the most recent Brian Regan audio I heard. It's not available on Amazon, but we downloaded it from iTunes. I don't remember how much it cost.

On it he talks about getting older and how things don't heal. He gets up one morning, feels some pain and says, "My hip hurts ... I guess forever."

I can't find that tape on YouTube, but ... Brian Regan has lots of funny stuff I love, so I'm going to give you a video of one anyway.

Have any of you noticed that it's right about 37 or 38 years old when the healing process slows down ... dramatically? A good bruise or very sore muscles from a sports event takes a month rather than 3 days to get better. A pulled muscle can hurt for 4 or 5 months rather than healing up in a week.

If you haven't, then when you do ... don't worry. It's normal.

Back to the Hip Pain Thing

I've got to get a good web page up some time on the massage therapy I use that helps with that. I've passed it on to a lot of people, and it's effective. It takes a tennis ball, although there's an over-priced tool called a "Backknobber" that helps, too.

For me, I mostly use it on my upper back (both the Backknobber and the tennis ball) and my hips (tennis ball only).

I'll make it a priority to get a page up on it soon, and I'll link it from here.

I have ongoing hip pain, but I almost never have to deal with it because I know how to keep it under control. What's neat is that the result has been that my occasional lower back problems have virtually gone away. I can't remember the last time I've struggled with lower back pain.

Same with the neck and upper back pain. There has been a lot of times that I'll find someone who can't even turn their head or can't pick anything up on one side because of upper back pain. I'll tell them they don't need to put up with that, find the spot on their back that's hurting, put pressure on it for a couple minutes, then watch their amazement at the relief. Then I hand them a tennis ball and tell them to lay on it as they need to.

They all describe it as miraculous.

There's a couple safety bits of advice that go with what I just described, but basically it's safe, and you could probably figure it out on your own.

If you want a real thorough explanation of how that works, or how it's used to treat other muscle pain, then you can get Julie Donnely's Pain-Free Living. (You have to scroll down to get to just the books.)

I emphasized the word muscles there because so much joint pain, and especially back pain and sciatica, is actually caused by tight muscles or muscles with spasms in them. Also, muscles are safe to treat with massage. It's not like a chiropractor popping joints. Do that wrong, and you can cause real problems. Sit or lay on a tennis ball in a controlled manner, though, and the worst you're going to do is make your muscle a little sore.

Again, I'll get a page up soon, but you can skip that with Julie Donnely's book. By the way, Pain-Free Living is more comprehensive, but her The Pain-Free Runner or Pain-Free Triathlete would probably give you enough information, too. They're a lot cheaper. Oh, and her Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is just $10, too, and if you've got the symptoms of CTS, you really need to read her book and possible avoid unnecessary and somewhat dangerous surgery. The treatment she suggests is free, often effective, and safe. You'll know in days whether it's going to work, so there's no reason not to try it.

My wife had the symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome for a while. We cured them with shoulder massage. No kidding. Many people, however, have to do more long-term massage of the forearms. It's not far out or anything. In a hospital setting, a physical therapist will often treat Carpal Tunnel Syndrome with massage, exercises, ice, and special gloves in order to prevent the need for surgery. The Carpal Tunnel Syndrome book is just far cheaper, somewhat easier and, in my opinion, more effective because you're not overdoing it.

Once again, I'm supposed to tell you that if you use my links to go to Julie Donnely's page, I'll get a commission. Same with the Amazon link above to the Backnobber. I make about $100 per year of such commissions, which isn't much. I didn't make those links to sell you something. Everything I wrote here is simply true and written to prevent pain for the many of us my age who have it.

Something Interesting?

It seems like I had more important—or maybe interesting—to talk about today, but I can't remember what those were. So, here's a video recommended by a friend and my wife that you may find funny. Personally, I think it's just good advice.

I've Got a Donor! Leukemia and Unrelated Cord Blood Transplants

I guess I should report this as breaking news. From my doctor:

Noted -- I did speak with the transplant team [yesterday]. Cord blood stem cell units have been identified and reserved.

I was told by a nurse on Tuesday that cord blood transplants can be done, but it takes 3 umbilical cords to provide enough for an adult. A friend of mine, Becky Milam, told me she had donated an umbilical cord, in fact.

I read some articles about it today.

Apparently, you don't have to match cord blood as stringently because the immune cells in the cord blood are less mature. In fact, when you receive bone marrow from an unrelated donor, the doctors remove the T-cells to help reduce graft-versus-host disease. (That's when the new marrow or stem cells create an immune system that attacks the recipient's--that's me--body.) In cord cell blood, however, you can leave the T-cells in, which helps make sure that there's no relapse. The T-cells make the new immune system more likely to find and destroy any lurking leukemia cells.

In old articles I read—and I only read medical news reports and actual research papers, about 12 of them—there was increased graft-versus-host disease from unrelated cord blood transplants. That was around 2005. In 2010, the papers show a reduced incidence of graft-versus-host disease.

Survival rates for partial matches from cord blood are just as high as perfect matches from adults.

That's really good news, but you don't want to know what the survival rates are. They're not quite as good as I thought they were.

Of course, the higher risk just increases my excitement. At the end of this, it makes my claim that God is in control of all this that much more powerful.

So, okay, I'll tell you. I saw 38% chance of survival for 2 years. The vast majority who survived that long were leukemia-free. Keep in mind, though, that there's a lot involved in that number. Some people were not in remission when they got their transplant, and those people do terrible. Others didn't have quite as many stem cells as I'll probably get, so it took longer for their counts to recover. Some of those were basically without an immune system for over a month, and others for over two months. A lot of those died of infections and diseases incurred during that time.

Either way, I like the risk. It's exciting because we're trusting God.

Again, I always really loved the end of The Last Starfighter, a children's movie that's not clean enough to show to children. An alien lizard-like being is in a ship, the very last fighting starship of our galaxy, against an invading race with many warships. A human is with him who is gifted but inexperienced, and he is terrified and hopeless. Not the lizard, though. He is thrilled! "I've always wanted to fight a battle against incredible odds!" he cries.

The inexperienced starfighter at the helm mourns. "It's going to be a slaughter!"

"That's the spirit!!!" the zealous lizard exuberantly shouts!

"No, I mean they'll slaughter us!"

The lizard's shoulders slump in dejection. "Oh," he says.

Here's my battle against incredible odds, life or death, in the hands of God.

I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will never die. ~Jesus Christ, from the Gospel of John, ch. 11

September 8 Update:

Last night when I had free time after a busy day, which I'll tell you about in a minute, I had some time to catch up on others' blogs that I haven't read yet. One of them was my daughter's. Our frequent trips have led her to entitle it Nel Around America.

Janelle's on the right; her friend Kay on the left

Last week's blog had this entry in it:

I was so angry at first when everything happened with my dad, but through it all he made new friends and he seems to be happier than he has ever been. For us, we are not lacking anything. While he is in the hospital, everyone goes completely out of their way to make sure that we have everything we need and want.

The cancer society provided a free apartment that is much nicer than anything I have ever lived in in my entire life. This has also provided a chance to get some very needed schooling done, that will be entirely uninterrupted. Ray has been putting together a box of vegetables every week for my parents. And so many other things. I just want to say thank you for everything everyone has done, and for all your help.

That was, needless to say, a very encouraging couple of paragraphs to read.

Yesterday: Chemo and Preparing for Half Marathons

I saw how much my blood counts went down yesterday, and I thought I'd better get in a long run (well, mostly walk) before they went down too much. I went a little over 5 miles in about 80 minutes. It made me feel like that 3-hour half marathon is not out of my reach!

Even better, despite having a full unit of blood destroyed by the chemo, I made it up the hill to our house for the first time. It was really slow, but we measured the hill in the car on the way home from the hospital yesterday, and it's about .6 miles, or about 1100 yards. There's a short downhill in the middle of about 150 yards, but the rest is all steep uphill.

It took me 7 and 1/2 minutes, which is slow, but I ran uphill for 7 and 1/2 minutes! I was excited. All the more so because that was at the 2.7 mile mark, and I'd surely run a mile of those 2.7 miles and power walked through the rest of it.

Yes, power walked ... like this:

I guess I'm "a disgrace to the man race"!

Quick final note on me: Oddly enough, my blood counts didn't drop today at all, really, except that my neutrophils are down to a more normal 60% of my white blood cells.

They did call the doctor this morning to check on my chemo because I was very slightly slow and shaky on the dexterity test. I don't have the steadiest hands, anyway, but they had another nurse check me, and then Dr. Strickland said to continue the chemo.

Yesterday and Surprise Visits from Friends Who Trust God

Towards the end of my run/walk, I got a call from an old friend. He'd been with us back in the early days at Rose Creek Village, but he left to go live a more organic and off the grid lifestyle.

As it turns out, his daughter has contracted a virus that has paralyzed her from the shoulders down. In fact, she can move her neck, but she can't hold up her head on her own. She's being treated at Vanderbilt at well, though she's home. Vanderbilt saw the care she's been receiving from her family and has allowed them to handle her physical therapy and care.

It's hard to predict recovery from the virus, but his daughter is young, about 15 years old, and it's likely she'll gain full recovery within a year.

What's funny is that when I told them I'd pray, her older sister told me that Naomi considers her illness the will of God that has created a great opportunity to minister to people. So she asked me to pray that God's will would be done rather than to pray that Naomi would be healed.

Now where have I heard that before?

Anyway, it was a great story. Naomi's sister told me about nurses coming to their room just to see Naomi smile. It appears that she never stops smiling, and she never admits to being in pain. They have to read her pain by subtle adjustments in her smile.

I'm telling you, there are a lot of inspiring, brave, and God-fearing people in these hospitals that make you feel like life's worth giving your best shot to.

Note to Dee Dee

Right at the center of the blessings of leukemia is all the people I get to enjoy.

I got a letter from my cousin Dee Dee, a first cousin I wasn't even aware I had, which was really inspiring. It came by snail mail, so I'm having to obtain the archaic tools needed to return mail by postal service. I suppose I'll find out at the same time whether I still know how to print by hand. I'm certain I can't write readable cursive! I can barely sign my name legibly even when I'm trying to!

Anyway, getting the ancient tools out has been a slow process. I should have written back already. I will soon, but I'm hoping, Dee Dee, that you and your children will see this blog post and know how encouraging your letter was to me. I was grateful for all the letters. They were amazing.

Made me cry.

Still a disgrace to the man race, I suppose.

September 7: Consolidation Round and Updates

Today is day 2 of the "consolidation round." That's like an immunization booster shot. The first chemotherapy round worked. I'm in remission, but this is to make sure I stay in remission.

Leukemia's pesky. Only one leukemic cell has to survive, hidden out somewhere in your body, in order to create a relapse. In my case, that one cell could even be hiding out in my skin somewhere!

I thought this time we'd be doing a lighter version of the same medications they used the first time around. Not so. I have one new medication and one repeat medication. The repeat medication is a larger dose, not smaller. I think the Ara-C (the repeat med) is usually used on ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia). My leukemia, though undifferentiated, is more related to AML (Acute Myeloid Lukemia) than ALL, but they're attacking it from both sides.

But I could be wrong. Maybe it's the other med that's for ALL.

The potential side effects aren't much different, though. They did add a new one: dry eyes. They told me to get some eye drops from a pharmacy and use them every day. Apparently, they can get so dry that it leads to irritation that won't go away until my blood counts get back up and my body can heal itself.

Speaking of ...

Blood Counts

Remember that I'm hoping to run (but mostly walk) a half marathon on November 12. It would be nice to train for that with as many red blood cells and as much hemoglobin as possible. Muscles like to be provided with oxygen while they work. In fact, every cell in the body needs oxygen to carry on the processes of life.

But ... Bang! On day one, hemoglobin, which was just under normal at 13.4, dropped to 12.1. That's 10% down. Red blood cells 4.16 to 3.84, and hematocrit (which measures very, very similar to the red blood cells) dropped from 39% to 36%.

I know from experience that I can't really run at 2.75 on the red blood cells, and by the time I get under that, my hematocrit will be at 25%, and they'll be giving me a transfusion.

They also got 10% of my white blood cells the first day, which is a lot because the chemo won't really kick in until next week. The funny thing, though, is that my neutrophils, which are part of the white blood cells, leaped up from 3000 to 5000. They now represent over 80% of my white blood cells.

Weird.

But it doesn't bother the doctors and nurses. Weird is actually normal when they stick chemo in you. "Don't worry; it will all pan out."

Jerry

I mentioned this on Facebook, but Jerry was in the waiting room when I went in to get briefed on my chemo. He was waiting for a biopsy. He was with Rayetta, his wife, and Dump, his brother, and I invited them out to dinner. They're going home today, so it was the only chance.

It turned out that my chemo lasted till around 6:30 pm, and I was very hungry by then, so Caleb and I ate in the hospital. (Caleb's my driver this week.)

So Jerry and I made arrangements for dessert.

I found a 24-hour cafe called Cafe Coco. It's a little pizzeria with a downtown coffee shop feel (which I like). I'm sure the building used to be a house, so there's winding halls inside; they have a lot of outside seating, too.

I had wings. They were hot. I'm sure they were probably good, too, but mostly they were hot.

We brought the kids, and Dump and I chatted about his upcoming heart surgery. It's called a "heart ablation." It's pretty strange. They're going to stop his heart, then burn a nerve (to kill it), and then restart his heart.

Dump, back when Jerry and I were hospitalized

Scary, huh?

He's got a flutter. I think it's called an Atrial Flutter. His heart will jump to over 100 beats per minute and stay there. Only it's not really beating 100 times per minute. Instead, just half his heart is fluttering, and the heart rate monitor picks up the flutter.

That Atrial Flutter comes and goes with him. He's had something like three spells, and there's some medication they can use to bring it down. It appears from the Wikipedia article I linked that it can get worse, though, so they want to do something about it.

That something is what I described, and Dump's having second thoughts about it.

He described a conversation with the doctor in which the doctor was assuring him he could restart Dump's heart, and Dump was saying, "There's only one person who can guarantee he can restart my heart, and you are not him!"

He finally forced the doctor to admit he could not give a 100% guarantee that he could restart the heart. Dump said okay, and the doctor added, "But I can restart your heart."

So Dump's doing research. He's going to go looking online for the most highly recommended cardiologist. He's also found several people who've had a heart ablation. While some had their flutter cured, one lady said she's had three nerves burned that way in three operations, and she still has the flutter.

I told Dump, "Well, at least they restarted her heart every time!"

He acknowledged that was a good thing.

Please feel free to pray for him. I prayed for him right there in the crowded coffee shop. There's two lives at stake here, his and Jerry's. He is Jerry's bone marrow donor.

Um, um, um ...

I think that's it. Wait, one more thing ...

My Book

Don't forget I have book.  It's 20% off at lulu.com if you use SEPTEMBER305 as the check out code. That's only good until Friday (Sept. 9).

It's a history book, but it's an interesting one. Actually, if history's done right, all history books should be interesting. After all, what is history? Isn't it the stories and facts that we think are worth remembering? Thus, history is the stories and facts that we find most important, most relevant, or most fascinating.

With all of time to work with, the result should be that there is nothing more interesting to read than a history book!

Hopefully, I've accomplished that for Christians because a book about the Council of Nicea is all those things: relevant, important, and interesting. It's a story thatis often embarrassing because church leaders got sucked up into politics for the first time ever, and for the first time every had armies at their disposal.

They also had something to fight about, and they did. As the Roman historian Ammianus put it:

The highways were covered with troops of bishops galloping from every side to the assemblies, which they call synods; and while they labored to reduce the whole sect to their own particular opinions, the public establishment of the posts was almost ruined by their hasty and repeated journeys.

On top of the intrigue, the Council of Nicea is a hot potato today. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, claiming to be a scholarly book for sales purposes but really just borrowing the discredited scholarship of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Passover Plot, has "informed" much of the historically ignorant public that Christianity as we know it was basically invented at the Council of Nicea.

Catholics and Orthodox say the Council of Nicea and other "ecumenical councils" carry divine authority. Protestants repeat and venerate the creed that came from Nicea, but many blame the council for ruining the church and turning it into an institution rather than a participatory community. Others, as said, accuse the council of reinventing the Bible by throwing out dozens of books and persecuting their authors.

Perhaps—at least I hope it's true, and I've been told so before—the best benefit of anything I write is not my conclusions but the methods used to arrive at them. How do you know who's telling you the truth? That's what I've devoted a lot of my adult life to answering, and I like to think that I'm not only pretty good at it, but that I'm pretty good at helping you get a "feel" for what you can and can't trust ... not only from people addressing the subject of my book, but from the media in general.

Research is a skill. In this internet age, it's a simple enough skill to be worth mastering. Most people are very interested in a good BD, which is a, uh, bull feces detector.

In the Beginning Was the Logos is an excellent BD for the Council of Nicea, and it is training for other subjects, too.