Sleep

...ba href=/sleep/a/b, for hours on end.

Catheters were inserted in his groin.

Another was put through his nose and down his throat.

"No rib spreaders, so this was much better," Rupp said.

"I was awake for the first hour and a half.

The pain wasn’t overbearing, but the discomfort was consistent.

It can drive you crazy because you’re strapped down on what’s essentially a tile floor, and it seems like forever.

It felt like my heels and my butt were flattening out.

"They would up the meds, and I’d fall aba href=/sleep/a/b.

I’d wake up and my heart was beating out of my chest — they said they had to make it race to test it.

.

.

.

You know, it could have been a lot worse." Rupp had a similar procedure in 2001, when doctors used catheters and lasers to burn away the extra electrical pathway in his heart.

The procedure was stopped prematurely, Rupp said, because some of the tissue he needed was being destroyed.

This time, doctors went in and froze, rather than fried, what they wanted to kill.

Millions of people live with either Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome or atrial fibrillation, but when both are present there can be major problems with palpitations.

Rupp’s freeze-dried tuneup ought to eliminate any further personal dramas.

He has to take blood thinners for a few months and, obviously, avoid lacerations.

His workouts will be closely monitored for another two weeks or so.

Then he’ll increase his workload.

He hopes to have a clean bill of health by the end of June.

"It has been a long year with injuries and be...

...ba href=/sleep/a/b.

You wouldn't have known it from the way he started, with four scoreless innings, but it all un- raveled in the sixth.After allowing only his second run of the spring in the fifth, Harang gave up a long home run to Jonny Gomes leading off the sixth, then back-to-back doubles by Greg Norton and Travis Lee to drive home one more.

The next batter, Toby Hall, was the last he would face regardless of what happened, and Harang drilled him with a pitch.

Lee and Hall would come around to score when Ty Wigginton homered off reliever Matt Belisle.So much for that 0.64 ERA Harang had carried into the game."I just ran out of juice, got tired," said Harang.

"As the game went on, I felt all right, and then during the sixth it was just gone.

I lost the feel of some of my pitches, my fastball was flattening out on me."As Harang was quick to acknowledge, he didn't want his spring to end the way it did, but he has a role to uphold and he decided to do it Wednesday rather than risk getting off track leading into his start against the Chicago Cubs on Monday in Cincinnati.

Though the burly right-hander had been under the weather for a couple of days, he told manager Jerry Narron he wanted to take the ball."I didn't want to skip out on throwing today, because I wanted to make sure to keep my pitch count going," said Harang.

"I wanted to get my work in and not do it out in the bullpen."The soft-spoken Californian wasn't trying to be a tough guy or anything.

But as Harang has blitzed through t...

...ba href=/sleep/a/b," Tony Powers said.That prediction proved true.

"It came down on me," Watson said.

"I had just kept going.

When I got here, for days, a couple of weeks, I didn't want to do anything but ba href=/sleep/a/b."Watson had attended college in New Orleans but hadn't completed her bachelor's degree.

Her relocation to Sterling has provided the place for her to continue her education - four blocks from where she lives.

She's enrolled in a 16-hour schedule at Sterling College.

Beyond the end of the spring semester, though, her future remains uncertain.

"God had a hand in this very much.

It's one more step in my walk of faith," Watson said.

"I consider that's the only way I can get through all this, manage to go forward, is with God's hand in it." Having Watson on the campus has put a face on the Katrina disaster, Sterling College professor Steven Boese said.

As a nontraditional student from a different cultural area, she's "a good addition" to the community and the campus, he said.

Louisiana is still home, but what's happened makes it all different, Watson said.

She hears from friends who say returning is a mistake because of the devastation.She's in contact with her family, and while she misses them, she takes comfort in knowing they're safe.

A son who lived in New Orleans went to Houston and has attended barber school.

He'll stay in Texas, while another son is in Bogulusa, La.

Her daughter is back in Slidell, but they haven't seen each other since November.

Like a dandelion in the wind, they...