Bad Salad?

Basil and Spring Mix May Carry Disease

I am trying to lose weight, but not so fast nor at so high a price. I was miserable while I was ill.

My diabetes has become intense and makes weight maintenance very difficult. I eat a very simple diet, low in carbohydrates and high in protein, with almost no fruit or vegetables. Most fruits and vegetables cause me intense intestinal distress because of diabetic gastric neuropathy, which means that the nerves to my intestines have died off and my intestines don't behave like those of normal people. In particular, the cabbage family and apples are hazardous to my health.

Diet plans like Atkins assume that you are healthy enough for a fairly normal diet. They give you guidelines based on that assumption. Those diets don't work for me. Until recently, diets for diabetics were high carbohydrate, low protein and low fat, which is the worst possible combination for controlling your weight. Low fat leads to excessive appetite, while high carbohydrates cause the body to store fat even with a low calorie count. Since published diets don't work, I have to wing it, doing my own thing.

A few weeks ago, I fixed myself a spring salad, using fresh basil and the small greens known as spring mix, sometimes called mesculin. That was a mistake. It turns out that both basil and mesculin have recently been suspected of causing outbreaks of cyclosporiasis in Texas, Illinois and Virginia.

About a week after making my lovely little salad, I came down with what seemed to be the flu. A few days later, quite by accident, I ran across the news report of the Texas and Illinois cyclosporiasis outbreaks. I did a little research. The symptoms agree with those I suffered, the timing was right ... .

Whatever caused my problem, I lost five pounds in just a few days. The weight has stayed away, even now that I have apparently recovered from whatever problem I had and am eating normally, despite my blood sugars being higher than normal.

High blood sugar is the weight control curse of the diabetic. When the blood levels are up, taking extra insulin causes the body to store the sugar from the blood as fat. The more insulin I have to take, the more fat my body stores. The worse my diabetes gets, the more insulin I have to take. It simply gets harder to lose weight, no matter what I do.

I've had more salad recently, simply because I like salad. I have been able to eat small enough quantities that it hasn't bothered me yet. I'm afraid to eat more.

When I can keep my blood sugar under control, I can manage to lose about a pound a month. Hopefully I'll reach some threshold where the blood sugar control will become easier because my weight is down, but the process is slow and frustrating.

And I would rather do without little parasites in my salads.

Lost: Five Pounds

Between last Thursday and this morning, Monday, I lost a total of five pounds. I suspect that some of the loss will prove to be temporary, but some might be permanent. I often have snacks larger than the total amount of food I consumed on Saturday. I have had many meals larger than the total amount I ate Sunday. My blood sugars fluctuated wildly regardless of what I ate or how much, hitting extreme lows and extreme highs.

On both of those days, I had to force myself to eat. Getting started was a real problem. Two crackers would fill me up, making it impossible to continue. I was drinking lots of water, some coffee and a bit of ginger ale, and several of my meals consisted of soup, so I was getting plenty of liquids.

A strange observation: the amount of solid waste my body produced didn't diminish greatly during this period. Hopefully, some of it was the result of fat being metabolised and destroyed.

This morning I called my doctor's office and reported my problem. After I described my symptoms (fever, body pain, pain in the lymph nodes at each side of the neck and in the upper right arm, extreme loss of appetite) and answered questions about the symptoms I lacked, like coughing, I was told it was probably a virus, which is untreatable, rather than a bacterial infection, which they could treat with antibiotics, and that I should simply rest and get plenty of fluids. That confirmed what I suspected, so I postponed making a decision until tomorrow. I had a class I wanted to attend concerning San Diego's Coastal Kumeyaay.

By the end of the class, my appetite had started to return. I paid a visit to the Burger King outside of the Robinsons-May store where the Oasis classes are held. I got one of their Angus burgers king-sized. I almost decided to get a refill on my iced tea, then decided not to. Then, driving home, I got stuck in a snarl of traffic caused by an accident on the I805 South and spent almost two hours moving two miles. Oh, how thankful I was I hadn't gotten that refill!

I feel better. My energy level is still a bit low and I still have some pain. I'm going to keep drinking larger than normal quantities of liquid for a while. I'm going to keep a close watch on my blood sugar until it starts behaving itself again.

Fever and Pain

I haven't felt well the last few days. It built to a peak yesterday when everything in my body hurt. When I coughed, it felt as if the top of my head was coming off. My face felt flushed, so I measured my temperature. The thermometer indicated a temperature of 102.4 degrees which, for me, is very high. My temperature normally tends to be a little bit low.

I had no appetite but managed to make and consume some soup for my lunch. In the evening, as things got worse, Cathy made me some more soup, half of which I could finish.

I went to bed early. At about 3:20 in the morning I woke with the symptoms of extremely low blood sugar. I needed to consume some sugar. But I was suffering nausia. If I wasn't extremely careful, that would progress to vomiting which, on my empty stomach, would result in dry heaves, which I hate. It took me half an hour to make the short trip from the bedroom to the kitchen and another twenty minutes to eat two crackers, which was all I could tolerate. I have glucose tablets in the dining room, but it would have taken me another half hour to turn on the dining room light and enter the part of the dining room where I keep the tablets.

I suspect that the effort required to wake Cathy to get her to help me would have sent me into dry heaves immediately. It wasn't worth the risk.

I slept a total of about twelve hours and woke exhausted, in pain, with my fever down to 99.7 degrees. The thumb, index finger, middle finger and ring finger of my right hand are numb, which makes typing difficult. My fasting blood sugar was up to 177.

I called Delia, as I try to do each Sunday when she is in Panama. Her reaction, quite predictable, was that I should immediately go see a doctor. But it was probably my recent trip to the doctor that gave me the problem. Hospitals and doctors' offices are distribution centers for disease.

Car Window Problems

Problems with Windows?

No, problems with windows.

I'm back to driving the little red Beretta again, a car as old as many high school students. The air conditioner isn't functioning right: I'm getting a blast of hot air off of the engine mixed with the cool air. I need to use the windows for cooling.

The window on the passenger side is now broken and will no longer roll up. It hangs open a bit over two inches.

The knob on the handle on the driver side window has a plastic spur sticking out. This afternoon, after leaving the doctor's office, the spur gouged out a chunk at the base of my left index finger, opening up one of the veins that pass through there.

Torrents of blood poured out. I keep a towel in the door for cleaning my glasses and I sacrificed it to stop the flow. When I stopped the car and removed the towel, the flow started up again.

Once inside the house I washed the wound and applied a big bandage. That kept the flow in check until, several hours later, I removed the bandage. I had to put another in its place, which I'll keep on all night now.

Do I Glow?

At noon I received a shot of Thallium, a radioactive isotope that produces gamma rays for about six hours. Obviously, to answer my own question, this isn't enough to produce even a feeble glow. It is used to produce an image of the paths the blood flow takes in the vessels feeding my heart.

The instructions said I would wait 30 to 60 minutes after the injection before being placed on the scanning machine. The technician said two hours but told me to come back at a time that was two and a half hours after the shot. He still wasn't ready for me. I didn't get scanned until more than three hours had passed.

The scan involved being placed flat on my back on the table of a machine that bore a resemblance to a miniature MRI machine. It also reminded me of the torpedo tubes on the submarines I used to ride, except that it was a clean white color instead of the dirty, greasy, dark gray metal color I remember from so many trips.

I was asked to grab my belt with my right hand. Then a broad, thick plastic band was wrapped around my body and that hand just at my waist. I was told to grab the top of my head with my left hand ... and if I moved in the next 25 minutes, the scan would have to start all over. I assumed I was allowed to breathe.

I have mild allergic rhinitis. This is normally not much of a problem. It becomes a problem when my nose is dripping back into my throat for an extended period of time. A few times I felt like I was choking. But I held on for the full period without moving enough to have to start the scan over.

Have you ever tried to move after remaining perfectly motionless for a long time? It hurts. My left rotator cuff was particularly painful.

Thallium isn't cheap. Normal people who weigh 240 or less get about 1 cc of the stuff for $250. I needed a larger dose but they haven't yet informed me how much it will be.

A week from tomorrow I go back for round two, in which they stress my heart before looking at it. They are going to inject some kind of witches brew that will produce the effect of vigorous exercise when I get on the treadmill and do mild exercise. Then they will pump the Thallium into me and make me pretend to be petrified.

I'm not looking forward to that experience.

A Little Trip

Delia wants to take another little trip to Panama. Her mother, Carmela, is about to die again and Delia wants to see her for the last time again.

Delia's mother is gravely ill, with the same kind of infection that preceded the death of her sister a couple of years ago. They are unable to control the infection and her fever remains high, as in the case of her sister. But her sister was killed by a doctor acting like a cowboy who went in to do a biopsy, punctured a major blood vessel in the liver without recognizing it, and allowed her to bleed to death internally. The chances were that she could have recovered from the infection itself if the medical intervention had not taken place.

Carmela has a history of becoming gravely ill until she becomes the center of attention, then recovering completely. She has done this repeatedly for many years. It is like a form of depression that manifests itself in a variety of symptoms, the symptoms evaporating when she gets what she wants.

Delia, however, is convinced that this really is the final act, that the curtain is about to fall forever. She wants to be there. She also wants our kids, Derek and Cathy, to be there. I don't know what either of them thinks about the illness, but only Delia can afford to make the trip. She wants to pay for all three of them to go.

I won't stand in her way. If she can talk the kids into going, fine.

But I got to thinking: What if it was me that was dying?

If Delia was still around, she would probably be there, directing things, telling everybody what to do, turning my death into a circus sideshow. She does like drama. She does like to be in charge. She does like to see people hustle and scurry, even when it's counterproductive.

Derek would probably be there, to show his disapproval. Much of what I do disappoints him and I'm sure my death would be yet another disillusionment. I've failed him far too often as it is. He would be quiet and polite most of the time but would get frustrated and start shouting at least once.

Cathy would almost be there. That is, she would be around but would be off with her friends most of the time. She would be likely to stop in after visiting hours for a few quiet words, when nobody would bother us or pay any attention to what we said.

Delia's friends would parade by, saying all of the trite things people are expected to say on such occassions. The would come in groups so they could talk with each other and ignore anything I might have to say, nice little reunions with me as the excuse but not a participant.

My friends might or might not learn about it after everything was all over. Nobody would notify them. Nobody but me knows who they are.

And the star of the show? If I wasn't completely wonked out on medication, I would probably be wondering how I could get online.

El Sol Que Pica

The Sun That Bites

Heat

The predicted temperature for the region was 91 degrees, according to the newspaper. WeatherBug reported that the Lemon Grove monitoring station reported 103 degrees. Most places in the area broke records for the date. La Mesa broke their previous record by a full 12 degrees.

Walking out into direct sunlight, even early in the morning, felt like being too close to a large bonfire. The heat was immediate and intense. Ventilation didn't help, the breeze bearing desert-like heat. We had to shut some windows to reduce the heating. We have never had air conditioning and usually only suffer, briefly, in late summer.

Schedule

Delia and I were up early. Delia had to attend a class at Dana Point, near Capistrano, at 8:30. Her ride wanted to leave by 6:30, believing the class was at 8:00 and fearing the heavy traffic on the Interstate 5. I dropped Delia off at the appointed spot shortly after she was supposed to be there, then returned home to await her call for retrieval. Delia expected the class to last just two hours.

The class lasted twice that long. When Delia and her friend returned to her friend's home, it was to discover disaster. Her friend's reverse osmosis unit had exploded, flooding the lower part of the house. A quick call to the plumber was followed by dropping Delia at a nearby mall, the UTC shopping center, from which I promptly retrieved her.

Delia had other things to do and needed the car. I also needed a car. Three people with four cars, two of which don't work, isn't a happy situation. As Delia drove off, I was arranging the repair of the little red Beretta.

Auto Shop 101

There are many things wrong with the car, mostly aggravated by its age (1988). To get it running, though, required only the installation of a battery, which I had already purchased and which was sitting in the trunk. I had discovered, when I tried to install the battery, that my tool kit had diminished in size and I now lack the means to remove and replace the battery.

Rather than buy tools that would probably disappear before I could use them again, I decided to have the dealer perform the installation. I called for a free tow to the dealer after making sure that I could get the work done.

I have no idea how hot it was inside the car when the tow truck driver had to release the brake, but his language was colorful for a moment. He had been burned through the thick gloves he wore for protection. I'm sure he was happy he didn't have to spend any significant time inside the car.

There was a long line waiting to get onto the freeway, so the driver decided to bypass it and use surface streets instead, which I preferred anyway. All was well until we approached our destination. Guava Street had speed bumps. In just two blocks there were four of them. They slow ordinary vehicles to 25 miles per hour. They slowed us to about a third of that and it was still uncomfortable.

At the dealership, Mick, the service representative promised me quick service. I went in to the display room, got my usual free cup of Italian capuchino, and told my friend Oswald that I had lost the Malibu that I purchased just a few months ago. He looked amazed. I explained that Delia was now driving the car. That gave him a good laugh.

Delia had told Oswald that buying the Malibu was one of the worst deals I had ever made. She insisted that it was an impulse buy, not the result of research or study, and that I would have done much better to wait and shop around, as she had been doing for 14 months. She is still waiting and shopping around. Meanwhile, she is driving a decent car, the one that I selected for myself after renting a Malibu for a week when I had to have the Beretta repaired.

Oswald's wife and Delia go back decades. They knew each other in Panama. Oswald saw how hard it was to get Delia to commit to buying a car even when offered a fantastic, never to be repeated deal that he wouldn't have offered even to family members. Does he suspect I would buy myself a car so Delia would take it away from me, just because she won't buy one for herself? Whether or not he did, he considered the situation funny.

The Big D

I have diabetic gastric neuropathy which often leads to diarrhea, sometimes severe. I have to be very careful about what I eat. A few days ago I wasn't careful enough and had a very rough night and day. Yesterday I was borderline.

I've had the condition long enough that I usually don't get much sympathy. But I've been able to control it for a long time now, and this time was exceptionally bad. Delia and Cathy were sympathetic.

Now it's Delia's turn. She's preparing for her first colonoscopy. She's taking clear liquids and laxitives to clean out her system. She won't remember much about the procedure itself because of the memory blocker they'll give her, but she'll remember how this intestinal cleansing session feels. I get my turn again next year.

Heart

I switched cardiologists, never having heard from the last one to learn the results of all the tests. The new doctor wants to run a new kind of stress test on me, claiming that all previous stress tests were inconclusive because they had to be discontinued before sufficient stress could be applied to my heart.

He wants to use chemicals to stress the heart while using other chemicals to make the heart arteries visible to his machines.

I'm not sure I like the idea. For one thing, it is likely to be painful. For another, I have to remain motionless for 25 minutes at a time while the machine scans me.

For young people they do the test in one five-hour session. For old crocks like me, they break it into two sessions, the long one being just three hours. For the long test I have to go in after an eight hour fast. They'll do a base scan, then run me on the treadmill, do another scan, wait an hour or so, and do a final scan.

Food

I didn't feel like cooking yesterday. For one thing, I saw no reason to heat the house. Cathy had to run an errand that she promised would be short, so I asked her to pick up some sandwiches at Subway on the way back. She wanted to try their Atkins-friendly wraps, so I agreed to one sandwich and two wraps, to be divided when she arrived.

Those Atkins wraps are a rip-off! They are tiny and contain much less meat than portrayed in the television commercials. They cost as much as a twelve inch sandwich and have a fraction of the ingredients. I don't know what the tortillas are made from, but it looks and tastes like foam latex. I wonder if it gets digested.

Another rip-off we tried recently was the long, thin sandwich things from Jack-in-the-Box. Cibata? Whatever they're called, they're overpriced that don't taste very good. And you have to be very careful at the Jack in Lemon Grove: never drive away from the window until you are sure everything you ordered has been delivered. They will frequently short-change you on your order. Let the guy behind you honk. His order won't be ready for a few more minutes anyway. When you find you've been shorted, complain to the manager; he's usually very generous in making up for shortages.

Easter Dinner

Molded Spinach Salad

The first thing I did when I got up this morning was to toss some walnuts into the non-stick frying pan with a small amount of maple syrup and some butter and set it on low heat. It cooked for over an hour, I suppose, while I did lots of other things, getting an occassional stir. One of my two salad mistakes was to use too much syrup. The walnuts candied, becoming crispy instead of gummy. The taste was fine, but the texture was not what I had planned.

My preparations had my wife confused: cooking walnuts, slicing figs and strawberries, pressing plastic film into a soup bowl ... . In the soup bowl, I pressed spinach leaves, the walnuts, figs and strawberries, getting them all tight and compact. My second mistake is that they wouldn't stay that way when removed from the makeshift mold. They would fluff up immediately. Maybe I have to zap them in the microwave or heat them a moment somehow to make them stay compressed.

I would spread a small amount of balsamic vinegar on a plate, invert my molded spinach over it, remove the bowl, remove the plastic and sprinkle a bit more balsamic vinegar on top, decorating with a few pine nuts. I used two pounds of fresh, dry spinach to produce five salads, each with three strawberries and about the same quantity of fig and nut. If I can figure out how to reduce the fluff factor, the presentation will improve. They weren't bad but I expected better.

Surprisingly, they weren't all that filling.

Lamb

I had a boned leg of lamb that weighed just over five pounds. Removing the bone left a lot of space for stuffing. I chopped together three sprigs of fresh rosemary, about ten sprigs of fresh mint, about a head and a half of garlic (big chunks) and a large onion (medium chunks). I forced this mixture into the bone holes at either end until nothing was left, causing the chunk of meat to swell slightly.

I sliced another half head of garlic into spears. I made slits in the outside of the meat, trying to go with the grain, and inserted the garlic as uniformly as I could all over the top (fat) side. I spread a small amount of EV olive oil in my cooking pan, placed the meat, fat side up, ground some fresh sea salt and pepper on top and placed it in a 350 degree oven until the alarm went off (it was set for medium rare).

Unfortunately, I was downstairs getting dressed when the meat reached its prime temperature. Delia turned the oven off but didn't remove the roast, so it was more medium than medium rare.

The meat was sliced and served au jus with the pan juices.

Garlic Red Potatoes

Last night, Delia cooked up a number of small red potatoes. When they cooled, she placed them in a plastic freezer bag with her magic mixture of finely ground garlic and whatever else it is she uses to marinate them, leaving them all night in the refrigerator. They were simple to heat just before serving.

Green Beans

No magic here. I spent a couple of hours yesterday, slaving in front of the television set, nipping the ends off of a large bag of very fresh green beans which, today, we simply boiled, drained and served with a dab of butter. They were quite satisfying.

Platanos

Some were fried, as patacones, and some were stewed. If you've never tried this relative of the banana, you should. They go very well with many foods. The ones we had today were green. You cook ripe platanos differently, to take advantage of the higher sugar levels.

Colored Eggs

Cathy insisted. She tried a new kind of coloring kit. It didn't work. All of the colors ran together, and the stuff formed a greasy film on the eggs (and on the glass bowl). So, late Friday night, she got me to accompany her on an expedition to find something else to color with. She found a kit that looked promising, using sponges and dyes, but she was suspicious and decided to also get a conventional coloring kit.

The sponge thing almost worked. But the dyes wouldn't dry and started to spread, rather then remaining where she had dabbed them.

Cathy has decided that from now on she will use only the conventional egg dye kits. They seem to be the only things that work.

Well, they work if you don't try to get too creative. You can make designs on an egg if you block parts of the surface before placing it in the dye bath. Have you ever tried to get exact placement of a rubber band on an egg?

The eggs turned out very pretty. They made nice decorations. Nobody ate any.

Wine

Cathy decided to show off some of her wine collection. She went through at least five bottles of some very tasty whites and rosés. She doesn't mind. Her wine collection is growing and she doesn't have much storage space. Her contribution was appreciated.

Before and After

Delia laid out the usual spread of cheeses and crackers, to which I added a container of fresh mozarella balls with olives and herbs in light olive oil. One of Delia's cheeses, a Brie, had hardened and wasn't soft and creamy, the way it is supposed to be; Delia will return it to the market where she got it. We did a lot of our wine sampling with the appetizers.

Dessert was a hot blackberry pie with ice cream, with cups of hot Panamanian coffee. For those of you who have never tried the coffee sold in Panama, imagine something richer than Starbucks' best with just a hint of bitter chocolate taste. It went very well with the pie and vanilla ice cream.

Potpourri

Progress

Try to take a step forward and the computer sends you two steps back.

I had the network working with file sharing and printer sharing, except that some of the printers didn't exist on the computers that the network thought had them. Naturally, the computer designated those phantom printers as the default.

I wanted the local printer on my primary computer to be the default, but the computer wouldn't let me designate it as such. So I started disabling the remote printers, the phantoms. It let me delete the first phantom with no problem, but when I tried to remove the second phantom, the computer removed the drivers for all printers on the system.

I rebooted. The computer said it found my printer and installed the drivers for me.

It lied.

I had to uninstall, using the uninstall utility provided on the CD-ROM that came with the printer. The uninstall took a surprisingly long time, much longer than the installation time. The printer had to be disconnected for the uninstall and most of the installation that followed, as did my virus protection. Half-way through through the installation the computer instructed me to connect the printer again. Now it works.

Meanwhile, I have moved the laser printer to the backup computer, which was already set up to use it. I uninstalled the color printer, the one that had caused so much trouble, from the backup computer, so that there are no longer any phantom printers defined. As a test, I printed a file from the primary computer on the backup computer's laser printer. It ran fine, although it took a while to start.

Cell Phone

For the past ten months, Cathy, who provides me my cell phone, has been dissatisfied with her provider. She wanted to keep her phone number, so she was going to wait until last November to switch to a new provider.

November came and went. Cathy didn't switch.

The old Nokia phone I had been using, which Cathy got used on eBay for almost nothing from somebody in Hawaii, was dying. It would cost more to replace its battery than it had to buy the phone to begin with. Freshly charged, it would still last long enough for several calls if they weren't very long. I had commented several times that I would like something smaller and lighter with a battery that would last a while.

Yesterday I found a new Motorola phone sitting at my place at the table, plugged in and charging. It has the same number I had before. If you don't know what that number is, then you don't need to know. The new provider is T-Mobile. The new plan provides three free phones and the monthly charge is roughly what Cathy was paying before (she won't reveal details).

Our previous provider discouraged mobile-to-mobile communications, charging both devices for such connections. The new plan includes unlimited free mobile-to-mobile. Otherwise, the plans appear to be identical: unlimited free roaming and long distance, generous monthly time allowance, unlimited evening connect times.

Now we have to teach Delia to start carrying her phone everywhere she goes.

Diabetic Biohazard Reduction

I inject insulin. The used syringes are considered a biohazard.

I used to be able to get a little device that would clip the needle from the syringes, making them safe, storing the needle part in the handle of the clipper. Each clipper would be good for about a year before it either filled up or the clipping mechanism got so dull it didn't clip.

But they weren't expensive enough or a high enough volume item for stores to make a profit selling them. They disappeared from store shelves. I haven't been able to find one for about two years now, and the one I'm using is well past when it should have been replaced.

But something new has arrived on the scene, advertised by Costco for sale through their Internet outlet: a syringe destroyer.

Like a small battery-powered arc welder, the device passes a high current through the needle and reduces it to little blobs of stainless steel. The resulting grit is safe, having been sterilized at high temperature, so it can be emptied into the trash. The machine will also destroy the things used to poke our fingers to get blood for testing blood sugar levels.

The machine works well enough. Melting needles creates enough heat to melt and partly burn the plastic of the syringe. I haven't checked on the grit and I haven't used the machine long enough to know how often it will need to be charged (they said every two to four weeks).

So far, Delia and Cathy seem not to have noticed it.

Rocky's Surgery

Rocky is an it now, not a he.

Cathy was warned by her new veterinarian that Rocky was at great risk for cancer if not neutered. Cancer surgery would be much more painful than the preventive surgery suggested and might not be successful. So Cathy finally decided to take the action I've been promoting from the very beginning.

Recovered now, Rocky was sore for almost a week. He didn't want to move at all the first three days.

Now he's getting fat. He eats twice what he used to.

Continued Recovery Progress

Computers are strange. Their behavior is often unpredictable.

My current backup computer was, in the beginning, successfully connected to the Internet from Windows 98SE. When Cathy had problems with connections on the upstairs computer, also using Windows 98SE, I attempted to duplicate the problem on my computer. I managed to create the problem but not to cure it.

The upstairs computer, our gateway machine, died and had to be replaced with a ShuttleX based machine I had built. The operating system and all of Cathy's software and data were simply copied from the old machine. The new machine was able to connect to the Internet.

I decided to add file and printer sharing to the three machines on the network. It really is a network, all of the machines being connected to a router which is, in turn, connected to the cable modem. The router is the real gateway but, being invisible to Windows machines, one of the computers had to be designated as gateway, a fiction for Windows' benefit.

Each of the computers can see files on the other computers that have been designated for sharing. Even the backup computer, which cannot see the Internet, can share files and run programs on the other computers. That means it can access the Internet by running a browser on one of the other machines, even though it can't connect to the Internet directly.

The setup on the backup computer and the gateway computer appear to be identical. Windows doesn't let me look very deeply into the details, but superficially the setup is the same. One machine works correctly, the other doesn't.

Everything now runs a lot slower on all three machines.