Gosh, I have no good ideas. Here are some random thoughts.. Could it be an internal flushing type problem? --Could he be high on niacin...which is a b vitamin I think and can cause painful flushing? Is there a medicine he takes that could be causing this? Burning causes me to think of "allergy". Has bendryl or those type of medicines helped his condition at all. Of course, check with your doctor before trying. Does diabetes run in the family? Could it be nueropathy or a circulation problem or even a hormonal or lack of sweating issue? Again, I have no real idea what could be wrong. The only real suggestion I have for you is to have him seek out other/second opinions. Living with a condition like that without knowing the cause has got to be frustrating. He needs to seek out a doctor that will help him and not settle for anything less. Let us know if you find out anything. Here is a link that might be useful: Flushing

Been working my way through a pile of books that I just have to get back to their rightful owner, plus one of them would make good fodder for my monthly book review column that I do for a local rag. The Perfect Storm is a YA epistolary novel based on the real-life Galveston hurricane that happened in September 1900. This was actually a really good read, and in fact, the descriptions of the "I was there" POV of the lashing of the rain and the winds and the utter destruction that was the result was really powerful, as when I put down the book to let the cat out, I opened the door fully expecting it to be rainy and windy, instead of 100 degrees that it was. (Sigh. This might also have been linked with the fact that we haven't had any measurable rain in the area since last October. Wishful thinking.) The other book was called Breathing, In Dust by Tim Z. Hernandez, which is really a series of short stories (more vignettes, really) of life in a poor urban Hispanic neighborhood of LA. Each story/vignette can stand on its own, but when read as a group, you can see threads of various stories and characters throughout the book. Although I didn't enter the book with very high expectations, it was still a good book and it's likely that the author made it pretty autobiographical. Like I said, I enjoyed it but it did seem rather as though it was a thesis or dissertation from a graduate writing program. So, as a complete change of pace (and being heavy with guilt from having too many books on the real-life TBR pile), I pulled out a Ruth Rendell book of short stories which I have had in my possession for absolutely ages. Titled Piranha to Scurfy, it is a really good collection of short stories that cover a wide range of topics. Not a murder in them (so far), but more of the unexpected twisty tales of Saki or perhaps The Twilight Zone... Thoroughly enjoying this one. And in the spirit of cleaning up the TBR pile, I pulled out the NF Stuff:Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and gail Steketee. Starting off with famous Collyer brothers in NYC, the book has started really well, and I am looking forward to reading it with gratitude that I am not a hoarder (nor is any of my family). I think it would be tough to handle. So - that's my weekend ahead of me. Reading, reading, reading. (I hope. I do have the MIL in town, so there may not quite as much time reading as I hope...)

Sarah and Doriann, I finished Motherless Brooklyn. It falls into the category of "A good book which I did not greatly enjoy." I always think of this style as hard-boiled, sort of a 40's detective genre. The book was well-written and interesting and I would recommend it--and I will. I still think the Tourette's part made it more difficult for me, heartbreakingly so. As far as never knowing someone with Tourette's... well, maybe you have. Lionel's symptoms were extreme and quite rare, fortunately for most Tourette's folks. Too, while the age of onset is usually in the pre-teen years, the syndrome can go into remission or become mild as one gets older. Sorry for if this is sounding like a public service announcement but I sometimes can't resist, especially as whenever this is portrayed on the (stupid) television, it is always in the extreme. Here is a link that might be useful: What is Tourette's?

A BURNT-OUT CASE SBS TV showed the docudrama Lamumba two nights ago, on the evening of 30 July 2010. I had never really got a handle on the events of the historical crisis associated with the legendary African leader Patrice Lamumba, events which took place when I was in my mid-teens. Lumumba is a 2000 film directed by the award-winning Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck(b. 1953). It is centred around Patrice Lumumba in the months before and after the Democratic Republic of the Congo achieved independence from Belgium in June 1960. Raoul Peck's film is a coproduction of France, Belgium, Germany, and Haiti. Lumumba dramatises the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba. In late October 1959, just days after I joined the BahaÂi Faith at the age of 15, Lumumba was arrested for allegedly inciting an anti-colonial riot in the city of Stanleyville where thirty people were killed. He was sentenced to six months in prison. His name was just a news item on the distant periphery of my life, immersed as I was in a smalltown culture in the 1950s, in Ontario Canada. The plot of this docudrama is based on the final months of the life of Patrice Lumumba in his role as the first Prime Minister of the Congo. His tenure in office lasted two months until he was driven from office in September 1960. Joseph Kasavubu was sworn in alongside Lumumba as the first president of the country, and together they attempted to prevent the Congo succumbing to secession and anarchy. The film concluded with the army chief-of-staff, Joseph Mobutu, seizing power in a CIA sponsored coup.-Ron Price with thanks to SBS TV, "Lamumba," 30 July 2010. All of this got me back into Graham Greene who went to the Belgian Congo in January 1959, just before the Congo crisis broke out, with a new novel already beginning to form in his head by way of a situation involving a stranger who turned up in a remote leper settlement for no apparent reason. While Greene was writing A Burnt-Out Case in 1959 in the months leading up to and after I became a member of the BahaÂi Faith. This novel is one of those in the running for the most depressing narratives ever written. The reader only has to endure for a short time the company of the burnt-out character whose name in the novel was Querry. Greene had to live with him and in him--in his head--for eighteen months. Greene wrote that: "Success as a novelist is often more dangerous than failure; the ripples often break over a wider coast line. The Heart of the Matter(1948) was a success in the great vulgar sense of that term. There must have been something corrupt there, for the book appealed too often to weak elements in its readers. Never had I received so many letters from strangers, perhaps the majority of them from women and priests. At a stroke I found myself regarded as a Catholic author in England, Europe and America -- the last title to which I had ever aspired. This account may seem cynical and unfeeling, but in the years...