September 10, 2007

• Jamestown

  Things are going on, we are all busy, but am too tired to blog most of it. I found out I have been taking the wrong type of iron supplement and suspect a big part of my low energy is being anemic again. Blah! But the good news is I went to the pharmacy and got the right one, so hopefully I will be perking up soon.

  I imagine, now that more and more people have had gastric bypass surgery, they will better be figuring out long term effects and what sort of nutritional supplements people need and how much, with the changes in digestion.

  Speaking of gastric bypass, I have found I have a very rare side effect of the surgery. I now suffer from hypoglycemia because my body is now making too much insulin in response to food, in particular sugar. I have suspect this for several years, but not been able to find any studies till now. Anyhow, I have a blood glucose meter now and I am tracking my blood sugar behavior and I am finding that my occasional episodes of being ill, faint, shaky, sweaty, etc.is often happening about 1-2 hours after eating something sweet, say an ice cream cone. Most recently it hit on Friday and I was able to find my blood sugar was only 64. Experts generally agree that anything under a range of 70-80 is too low. So anyhow, I am making up records of my trends and will take them to my doctor along with the study done at the Mayo Clinic and see what he can do. Unfortunately, in very bad cases they either remove some or all of the pancreas to 'cure' the problem. This is not something I want to do, it would create a whole new host of medical problems!

  Anyhow, on to more cheerful things. Here are the some pictures from the Jamestown settlement:

  

  Some of the homes within the Jametown Settlement fort

  

  Blacksmith's wife, can you see how hot she was? Poor thing, between the heat, humidity and the fire for the smith, it was really bad!

  

  Here the girls are learning to sand wood. The boards they are working on are used to carry hot cooking pots from the fire.

  

  And here the girls try there hand a making a canoe. Hot coals are placed on a log, then shells are used to scrape out the ash. Messy, but not too hard. Joe is holding a type of blunt ax tool the natives would use, I think for trenches in planting.

  

  She is explaining the bread making process. Behind her, the beehive shaped item is a bread oven.

  

  Megan tries on kid-sized armor that is like what the original settlers brought and wore.

  

  This is where the food and meat was stored. Yes, that is real meat and it didn't smell at all good in the heat!

  

  This building was used for cooking for the majority of the community

  

  This is what the homes of the Native American's would look like

  

  A close up of a hut. The boy is trying his hand at grinding corn with a wooden tool

  

  Inside one of the larger huts. I think this may have been a community meeting room.

  

  Joe next to a bear skin in the hut of the tribe's leader

  

  Chickens! They liked to hang around the places where the corn was being ground up. Becca wanted to take them home.

  

  An exact replica of one of the ships the first settler's traveled to America on.They were SMALL!

  • 3:04 pm
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