Reviving a rusty camera!

 

A friend gave me this rusty, wet, grimy little beauty last night- a vintage Kodak Duaflex camera!

This camera was made from 1947-1959 in The States.  It has a focusable lens, 3 aperture settings, and takes 620 film.  

I opened the camera in total darkness to see if there was any film inside, but their wasn't.....(wouldn't it be cool to find a roll in there?)

 

Boy howdy, that's rusty!  The shutter is stuck, and the film advance knob is, too...

 

This is the viewfinder- full of rust, too.  I'll have to take the whole camera apart to clean it out.

I cleaned up the accessible surfaces with my homemade cleaner, and am soaking the screws and nooks and crannies in oil, in hopes to ease everything loose for a complete cleaning, and then see if it will still work!

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In other news......

We've been to the doctor about Daughter's morphea, and we are about to try a new treatment regimen.  Instead of a local vitamin D-based ointment applied locally on the skin (which we have been doing for several months) we will be trying an oral course of doxycycline, an antibiotic in the tetracycline family.  The usual duration of treatment for morphea is one year. (very good , sometimes permanent results, have been obtained)  This seems a ghastly long time to be on an antibiotic, and we are doing a three-month-long trial (still long, but much more manageable to us) to see if Daughter's skin shows a favorable response, and measure it's effect on her general health. (the goal for this time period is softening of the lesions, and no development of new ones)

We've started her on a probiotic supplement, and can pick up her prescription today.  We'll continue following Andrew Weil's anti-inflammatory diet.  (come see my food blog, A Curious Epicure) to see some recipes I concoct to help follow this diet) We'll monitor her reaction to the antibiotic over time, and do what we can to help her digestive system adjust.  Though she is older that the cutoff guidelines suggest, we'll also make sure she is still growing, and watch her teeth.

I'm glad that Daughter has had very very little antibiotics in her lifetime so far, and hope this course doesn't affect her immunity, and antibiotic effectiveness in general, if she should truly need one to help fight an infection.  Her doctor says studies show that for this class of antibiotics,   immunity/resistance problems are low.  This is an antibiotic commonly used to treat acne conditions, and curiously, is also used as an anti-malarial medication, and anthrax treatment.  

I think think of the hardest issues I have mulled over in parenting so far, has been what, how, and when to treat medical ailments.  Luckily, my kids haven't had any real life-threatening conditions, but the balance of benefits to side effects, and whether a standard medical treatment is truly beneficial or potentially harmful in the long run, is something I grapple with long and hard.  So far, I think we have made fairly good decisions.  I hope guidance, information, gut intuition, good advice, and common sense still be good tools, with Daughter's condition, especially with this new-to-us treatment regimen.

Do you have experience, or know of anyone who has experienced morphea before?  If you have information you are willing to share, I would appreciate it!  Thank you!