High-tech medicine

---

My father’s radiation therapy in the mid-1970s was really brutal. It scorched his entire torso, and it did no good anyway, as his cancer was far too advanced.

My mother’s 1990s chemotherapy in the 1990s was much milder. She was only nauseous a few times. Taxol made her hair fall out, which really stunned her; I think it was the worst thing about the treatment for her. But the chemo extended her life considerably, without much affecting her quality of life.

And now it’s twenty years later, and I’m doing a tandem combination of radiation and chemotherapy. The radiation is directed straight at my left tonsil; after the first few treatments, I haven’t noticed many ill effects, apart from a little neck soreness/stiffness. The first few chemo treatments were similarly mild (apart from a little nausea and fatigue).

When I go in for radiation, I lie on the table and let the nurses fasten on my Radiation Mask:

They also give me a plastic hoop to grip with both hands, so I don’t flail my arms too much. The treatment is about ten minutes long; the machine makes all kinds of space-age humming and beeping noises. Then the attendant comes in and unbuckles me.

My mind wanders during the treatment. Early on, I found myself thinking about the plastic hoop. It’s ridged, and slightly flexible –

When the attendant came in to unbuckle me, I handed her the hoop and said: “This is a dog toy, isn’t it?”

She chuckled. “Yep. The medical version costs a hundred and fifty dollars. I bought that one at Petco for seven ninety-five.”

File this one under “health care costs,” and “high-tech medicine,” and probably under “human ingenuity.”

Pity the poor dog going without his toy. But it’s in the name of medicine, after all.

Woof woof!

---

Why I could never be a medical professional

---

A few days ago, I was lying on a gurney, lightly anesthetized, waiting to be taken into an operating room to have a feeding tube implanted. They’d parked me in a hallway; I was like a plane idling waiting to take off at an airport. (To be honest, I wasn’t so much idling as eavesdropping on doctors’ telephone conversations and studying the pattern of the ceiling panels.)

The receiving nurse, Rose, introduced herself and patted me on the shoulder (to reassure me, I think, and also to reassure herself that I wasn’t going to be difficult.) Then she busied herself with the ten thousand other things that seem to be going on in her department.

Then two new characters appeared: a fortyish woman, very pert and charming, and a tall younger woman, trying very hard to look bright and eager. They presented themselves to Nurse Rose. “Hi,” the older woman said. “I’m Professor Dunbar from the nursing school, and this is Katie, our nurse trainee.” She giggled briefly. “We want Katie to have an endoscopy day.”

“That’s fine,” Rose said. “The nursing staff is okay with it, and you don’t even have to ask the docs, because they’re okay with it too. All you have to do is ask the patients if it’s okay.”

She and Professor Dunbar slowly turned to face me, with sweet smiles. Katie didn’t know right away what to do, but caught on quickly. “Hi,” she said to me brightly. “Is it okay if I observe - ?”

“Of course,” I said.

As they wheeled me into the operating area, I heard Rose tell Katie: “This isn’t the usual thing – not an endoscopy or a colonoscopy. This is the implanting of a feeding tube. You won’t be seeing many of these.”

I lay in the operating area for about fifteen minutes, listening to the nurses chatting around me. They’d faced me toward the clock, and all of them were behind me, so I had a hard time connecting names and faces; there were at least four of them, I think, including Trainee Katie. Rose showed Katie the various kinds of equipment they’d be using, and now and then a new nurse would introduce herself to me and ask my name and birthdate. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I kept having to reassure them that, yes, I’d taken my medication that morning, and that my through-the-roof reading (190/90) was unusual for me; before my diagnosis, I was usually more like 135/85.

Then my gastroenterologist came into the room. I find him cute: he’s short and stocky and has a sharp expressive face. He kept leaning with one elbow on my gurney as he talked to me. I could tell that this was just a routine procedure to him, and I was very comforted by that, and by his casualness, and by the way he insisted on shaking my hand, even though I was draped with all kinds of tubes and sensors.

It was over in an hour or less. A little after that, I was revived in the post-op area and given cranberry juice.

Also, I had a huge plastic tube sticking out of my midsection.

I keep thinking about Katie, the nurse trainee. No doubt she learned something that morning, watching my feeding tube being implanted (it’s a quick process, but a very involved one). How did she feel about it? Did she wince when they made the incision into my belly?

I’m fascinated by medicine, but I know I could never be a practicing doctor or nurse.

The things they see! The things they have to do!

---

Glaucoma and marijuana

---

I’ve told you recently that I have been getting loads of genetic information from 23andme.com. Among other things, I have learned that I have a significantly enhanced chance of developing something called “exfoliative glaucoma.”

 

 

I have read several descriptions of this interesting condition. As I understand it, little particles of dead tissues (often described as “dandruff-like”) begin to accumulate within the eyeball. (Actually they accumulate within the “trabecular network,” but let’s not get too technical.) At any rate, your eyeballs turn into miniature snowflake paperweights, full of inert whitish material. This increases the fluid pressure within your eyeballs, and – presto! – glaucoma.

 

 

The average chance for developing this charming disease is 0.7 percent. Mine is 2.2 percent. Not huge, but more than triple the average.

 

 

This is interesting. There’s no glaucoma in my family that I know of, but we seem to be capable of generating nasty little mutations of our own, so I’m sure the folks at 23andMe.com are not making this stuff up.

 

 

So what’s to be done?

 

 

Glaucoma is treatable. There are eyedrops, and laser surgery, and other things.

 

 

Also there is always medical marijuana.

 

 

One of the first uses of medical marijuana was to reduce the fluid pressure in the eyeballs of glaucoma patients. It’s not the most highly-recommended treatment – damn medical research! – but it’s still used in many cases.

 

 

And medical marijuana gives you the nicest giggly feeling, and the most tremendous appetite.

 

 

Ah well. There are much worse things than glaucoma.

---

 

 

Floating kidney

---

Gather round, children! Mama has another self-diagnosed illness!

 

 

So you know all about my kidney stones, blah blah blah. I was told a month or two ago that little can be done for them; they’re small, and they dissolve quickly, and there’s no medication to prevent them. The pain and discomfort I suffer is mild, and usually ibuprofen is enough to make me feel better.

 

 

But hm.

 

 

I took some very interesting Human Biology courses in college. My instructor was a remarkable woman who was a church organist, and city councilperson, and chief anesthesiologist at a local hospital, as well as teaching courses at Gonzaga. She was funny and energetic, and an excellent instructor. I remember a lot of what she taught me.

 

 

And suddenly, from back the mid-1970s, I remembered her saying something like this: “The kidneys are cushioned on layers of tissue. In some people – often when there’s weight loss – the kidney can move around. This can cause discomfort. It’s called floating kidney.”

 

 

No kidding.

 

 

I checked. Kidney stones normally don’t feel worse when you move around, but a floating kidney certainly does. Kidney stones aren’t normally relieved by lying down; my pain goes away when I lie down.

 

 

A lot of the other symptoms are the same: colic, upset stomach, etc.

 

 

So wait’ll I see my timid little doctor.

 

 

Do I have a few things to tell him.

---

 

Mama is a valetudinarian

---

I finally had my follow-up visit with my urologist, to discuss my kidney stones, and how best to dig and/or drill them out of me.

 

 

And guess what? There’s no good way to do it.

 

 

It turns out that my kidney stones appear and disappear on a dime. In December 2011 I had one the size of a marble; it was gone six months later. The doctor informed me that there’s really no treatment for the kind of stones I have. I could undergo lithotripsy – the ultrasound treatment that shatters stones – but it appears that my body is already doing that: the stones form and then dissolve again, and I pass them with little or no pain. The only discomfort I have is a dull ache, like a toothache in my back. It goes away for days, or weeks, or months, and then comes back.

 

 

So it is a chronic condition.

 

 

Which means I will be moaning and complaining about it for a very long time.

 

 

Which makes me a valetudinarian.

 

 

From dictionary.com:

 

 

val·e·tu·di·nar·i·an [val-i-tood-n-air-ee-uh n, -tyood-] Noun 

 

1.   an invalid. 

 

2. a person who is excessively concerned about his or her poor health or ailments. 

 

Adjective:

 

3.   in poor health; sickly; invalid.

 

4. excessively concerned about one's poor health or ailments.

 

5.  of, pertaining to, or characterized by invalidism.

 

 

I am all of the above.

 

 

Mazel tov to all of you.

---

 

 

The miracle of Xanax

---

I have spoken before about my use of brain medicine: specifically, that I take a daily pill that makes me just a bit calmer and more – well, human.

 

 

But wait! There’s more!

 

 

Long before I went on my current medication – back around 2000 – I was going through a rough patch: a stressful period at work, my mother’s illness and death. I talked to my doctor, and he gave me a wonderful little prescription for alprazolam, also known as Xanax. The prescription reads (to this day): “Take one to three tablets daily, as needed.”

 

 

Over the last twelve years, I have availed myself of this medication, as needed.

 

 

Xanax, when used correctly, is wonderful. It creates perspective. You know, when you’re worried about something, how it becomes obsessive and nasty and threatening? Xanax takes the threat away. You’re confronting the same problem, but without the accompanying angst. You can look at the world calmly, without freaking out.

 

 

The problem, of course, is that you really can’t take it every day. It’s not a narcotic, but it’s addictive in its own way; you begin to rely on it. I’ve always tried not to take it more than two days in a row.

 

 

Since 2010, when my doctor prescribed the Wonder Drug Citalopram, I have not used Xanax much. I was worried, at first, that they might interact and send me into a coma. “No,” my doctor reassured me. “They don’t work that way. You can take both in the same day.”

 

 

I actually tried, one day, just to see. He was right. Nothing happened.

 

 

Lately, I’ve been having some stress. Nothing world-shattering, but it’s been making me nervous and cranky.  So I dipped into the Xanax reserves again.

 

 

Oh my! I’d forgotten how it felt!

 

 

I took one just the other day, at seven-thirty in the morning, anticipating a tense active day. By eight I was Jesus and Gandhi in one cheerful package, and I think I could easily have cured scrofula with a touch of my hand. The day passed in a glow of benevolence. “You know,” my student assistant Gunnar said around four forty-five in the afternoon, “you were in a really good mood today.”

 

 

“I confess,” I said. “I took something this morning.”

 

 

“Muscle relaxer?” he asked.

 

 

“Brain relaxer,” I said.

 

 

He laughed explosively. He wasn’t expecting that.

---

 

23andMe.com

---

A year or more ago, Partner and I bought into a very bad gene-testing thing, which told us (ridiculously) that we were both of Iraqi origin. It turned out that the test was the same one that the FBI uses: it’s very good for identification, but it doesn’t really give you any information on heritage, or disease, or anything else.

 

 

Well, okay. I only paid about $40 for testing for the two of us, so I got what I paid for.

 

 

Now: behold! The much more reputable 23andMe.com is offering its much more comprehensive testing for only $99 per person! They give you info on your heritage, and your Neanderthal inheritance, and your likelihood to develop genetic conditions. They are very thorough.

 

 

For Xmas, I bought lifetime memberships for both myself and Partner.

 

 

Well, my results have come in. I can summarize them as follows:

 

 

1)    I have DNA.

2)    It appears to be human.

 

 

I have no genetic predisposition toward either Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. This lowers my chances of contracting either, although nothing is certain.

 

 

I have a heightened susceptibility toward several cancers, including melanoma, prostate cancer, and especially stomach cancer. (There’s lots of cancer in my family, but none of these three. I am fascinated by this. There are risk factors that I can avoid for all three, and I need to think about this.)

 

 

I am genetically sensitive to the medication Coumadin / Warfarin, which is a commonly-prescribed blood thinner, which means that a regular dose would be too much for me, and I should be prescribed a lower dose. (I should tell my doctor. But will he listen, or just smile and pretend to listen?)

 

 

I have a three-times heightened likelihood to develop an especially nasty kind of glaucoma. Uh-oh. I’ve always had vision problems.

 

 

I am slightly taste-blind, especially toward bitter tastes. This is exactly correct. I love bitter flavors, and this is probably because I can’t taste them very well. People with “supertaste” can’t stand bitter tastes; they spit them out immediately.

 

 

I probably have blue eyes, moderately straight hair with a wave, B-positive blood, and I do not tend toward male pattern baldness. Correct, correct, correct, and correct.

 

 

They’ve churned up my national heritage too. I have a lot of northern European ancestry (my mitochondrial DNA hails from Doggerland, a place submerged beneath the North Sea, halfway between England and the Netherlands). I have a drop of Italian (not much), and lots of crazy eastern European (Czech, Hungarian, Russian, “Balkan”), and a surprising amount of Scandinavian.

 

 

Also I share tiny bits of other lineages. A tenth of a percent of something that might be Ashkenazi Jewish. A tenth of a percent of something that might be sub-Saharan African.

 

 

Gandhari says in the Mahabharata: Origins are obscure.

 

 

But sometimes we learn things about our origins, and they become a little clearer.

---

 

 

Kidney stones

---

I was diagnosed with kidney stones back about eight months ago. They were described by my general practitioner as “small.” He recommended that I drink a lot of water to help flush them out, and told me to let him know if I had any recurrences of pain or other symptoms.

 

 

I was a very good boy after that. I stopped drinking coffee after my first two cups in the morning. I stopped drinking cola drinks altogether, both naturally and artificially sweetened. I tried to drink as much extra water as I could.

 

 

After a month or so, the pain went away.

 

 

Then, a few months later, very surreptitiously, it came back.

 

 

(Note: I have never had the falling-down-dead kind of pain that’s associated with kidney stones. Mine is more of a mild ache, but it’s very localized; I know exactly where the stones are. I visualized them, after my December doctor’s visit, as something like aquarium gravel, or maybe tiny lemon seeds.)

 

 

The pain came back in earnest about three month ago, along with a couple of other more-or-less alarming symptoms.  So I presented myself to my G.P., who (with some alarm) referred me to a specialist.

 

 

If you’ve never been in a urologist’s office, you’ve never lived. I (at my advanced age!) was easily the youngest patient there. There was an aquarium with two suicidal-looking fish mooching around the bottom of the tank; if I see the same two fish there when I go back for my next appointment, I’ll be shocked. Everyone in the waiting room was running to the restroom every five minutes, and we all knew why.

 

 

The urologist (when I finally got in to see him) was a funny redhead who said funny things. When I told him I’d been reading WebMD, he said, in a Scooby-Doo voice, “Ruh-roh!”

 

 

And when he looked at my X-rays, he said, soberly: “Wow!”

 

 

My stones, kids, are not so small after all: one is 11 millimeters, and another is 5 millimeters. In short: I have a handful of driveway gravel inside my left kidney.

 

 

I’ve started carrying around a couple of small stones in a box in my pocket.  Whenever anyone starts complaining to me – about anything! – I pull out the little box and show them the two objects.  “I have kidney stones,” I say. “They are this size. I can feel them inside me right now. Now: what were you saying?”

 

 

It sobers people when they realize that you have a handful of driveway gravel inside your abdominal cavity.

 

 

(The next step, of course, is getting this handful of driveway gravel out out OUT of my body. There are several methods. All are more or less painful.)

 

 

(As the Rolling Stones said: “What a drag it is, getting old!”)

---

 

 

My procedure

---

Momma went to the hospital last week.

 

 

Let me tell you all about it.

 

 

I’ve told you that I have kidney stones. Well, I had accompanying symptoms that worried my doctor (and were scaring the bejeezus out of me), and since I have a family history of cancer, they scheduled me for an exploratory – um – procedure.

 

 

I call it a “procedure” to be polite.  Think of it this way: there’s really only one good way to look into a person’s bladder. It involves something like a Krazy Straw, inserted into the most inconvenient place possible.

 

 

Luckily, I was under anaesthesia at the time.

 

 

I had this done at Kent County Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, and I tell you Rhode Islanders who may be reading this: you should be heading to Kent Hospital for pretty much everything. Every single staff member was wonderful to me, and the care was first-rate. They were having dog-therapy day when we arrived, and there was a huge mutt the size of a Shetland pony coming down the corridor toward us when we first arrived, and Partner was immediately entranced. (Sadly, the dogs go off-shift at 3:00 pm.)

 

 

I have never been under complete anesthesia before. It was charming. I felt a kind of coldness in my arm, and heard the anesthesiologist telling me to “breathe deeply,” and – well, that was that.

 

 

The recovery room was also wonderful. There was another man my age who’d had something unpleasant done to him, and an older woman ditto. I was the least traumatized patient, and the staff were very kind to me as a result, because I was easy to deal with. (I was a lamb, actually. I’d been napping all day in preparation, and I was terribly dehydrated, so I was as weak as a kitten. They could have knocked me out with a wet Kleenex.)

 

 

Before the “procedure,” they made the mistake of giving me the binder that had my whole patient history in it. So I read it. Terrific. I find that I had “good hygiene” and appeared to be “well-groomed.” Naturally!

 

 

Also I have an abnormal T-wave in my EKG, and an enlarged left ventricle (I think I knew that), and – get this! – an ischemia.

 

 

I will hold this over Partner’s head for the rest of his life. Our favorite episode of “The King of Queens” involves Doug’s father-in-law, the unbearable Arthur Spooner (played by Jerry Stiller), having an ischemia, which sends him into conniptions whenever he’s frightened.

 

 

Nobody had better frighten me from now on. I might go into cardiac arrest.

---

 

 

Whooping cough

---

Above is a picture of me at the age of five months, in December 1957. As you can see, I was fat and adorable.

 

 

A few months later, I was scrawny and miserable.

 

 

It was because the whooping cough (AKA pertussis). I almost died of it, because I became very emaciated and weak. I made it through; my body’s immune system apparently fought it off long enough to save me.

 

 

I was only six months old, so I don’t remember a thing about it, thank god, but it must have been pretty terrible. Imagine: you're coughing continually, and you can’t keep down food or water, and you can’t sleep.

 

 

But – again, thank god – nowadays there is a vaccine.

 

 

But people like the idiotic Jenny McCarthy are telling you not to give your children the vaccine. It might make your children autistic! (This is ridiculous, of course. But a lot of people will believe a pretty (aging) blonde celebrity before they’ll believe their own doctor.)

 

 

A few years ago, one of my student assistants told me that, in her public health class, they’d played a recording of a child suffering from whooping cough. This, she said, was the greatest incentive they’d found to encourage parents to have their children vaccinated; once they’d heard the horrible reality, they were willing to tell Jenny McCarthy to go to hell.

 

 

Here, for those of you who are tough enough, is the sound of a child with pertussis. This was the caption on the sound clip: "[The patient] is three years old, and has a very severe case of the disease. She only coughs like this five or six times a day.  She coughs until her lungs are empty of air and then you hear several whoops one after the other as she tries to take a breath in. She frequently finishes an attack with vomiting."

 

http://www.whoopingcough.net/cough-child-muchwhooping.wav\

 

 

Heard enough?

 

 

If you have children, and they’re not vaccinated, go get them vaccinated right away.

 

 

Don’t make them go through what I went through.

 

 

And tell Jenny McCarthy to go to hell.

---

 

 

Tennis elbow

---

Hey, kids! I just self-diagnosed myself into another interesting condition!

 

 

About two months ago, my right elbow began to bother me. It hurt when I picked anything up with my right hand, even small light things. It felt better some days, but then it got worse again. Sometimes it felt like it was burning. (Actually, I think I whammed it into a wall or cabinet around that time. I am extraordinarily uncoordinated.)

 

 

One day, on a whim, I asked my student assistant Jake: “What does tennis elbow feel like?”

 

 

He raced onto the Net and read the info to me, and showed me a diagram of the bones and tendons involved.

 

 

Bingo!

 

 

It’s not a big deal. It only hurts once in a while, when I pick something up the wrong way. It’s not a crippling pain; it’s a once-in-a-while ache. It has lots of other names: its medical name is “lateral epicondylitis,” but we can call it “shooter’s elbow,” or “archer’s elbow,” if we are feeling twee.

 

 

My friend Matt, the big tough parking cop, tells me that I can buy a brace that will help. I read on WebMD that I’m supposed to rest it, and ice it. My skinny little doctor giggled when I described it, and when I touched my elbow to show him where the pain was, he said: “That’s exactly where tennis elbow pain is.”

 

 

I can deal with it. I have gigantic bottles of ibuprofen at home and at the office, and I eat them like M&Ms if/when necessary.

 

 

It’s just one more thing in my life, you know? One more small breakdown, one more ache, one more flower in my garden.

 

 

From “The Simpsons”:

 

 

Doctor: Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything. 

Burns: You mean I have pneumonia?

Doctor: Yes.

Burns: Juvenile diabetes?

 Doctor: Yes.

 Burns: Hysterical pregnancy?

 Doctor: Uh, a little bit, yes. You also have several diseases that have just been discovered – in you.

 Burns: I see. You sure you haven't just made thousands of mistakes?

 Doctor: Uh, no, no, I'm afraid not.

 Burns: This sounds like bad news.

 Doctor:Well, you'd think so, but all of your diseases are in perfect balance.

 Burns: So what you're saying is, I'm indestructible.

 Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even a slight breeze could . . .

 Burns: Indestructible. 

 

Over and out, kids.

---

 

My ophthalmologist is a jerk

---

My eyesight turned bad when I was about nine years old. I’ve worn glasses ever since, and go for regular checkups.

 

 

Luckily, the Rhode Island Eye Institute is a block and a half away from our apartment.  The day before my last appointment, I received a telephone reminder from a robotic assistant, who told me blurrily that I had an appointment on Wednesday with a Doctor – Newberg? Newsome? Nugent?

 

 

I couldn’t remember.  I’ve had at least three different doctors since going there; the first one retired, the second one moved away.  When I checked in, I tried “Nugent,” as that seemed the trendiest, what with Ted Nugent in the news and all.  The receptionist looked up at me wearily.  “Newman?” she said.

 

 

“Sure,” I said.  “Why not?”

 

 

First came the assistant.  Eye drops.  “Is this better – or this?  Number one – or number two?”  I’ve been doing this since I was nine years old.  I know the drill.  I hate the drops, but I can deal with the glaucoma test and the blazing lights they shine into my eyeballs.  I’m tougher than I look.

 

 

Then, after an interminable wait (to allow the drops to take effect), in walks Doctor Newton: younger than me, blondish, goofy-looking, very sure of himself.  He looks into my eyeballs.  Optic nerve blah blah blah. Cornea blah blah blah. There’s some pitting of the retina that might (if I live long enough) be serious, but not to worry: surgery can fix it. 

 

 

Lovely.

 

 

I decide to ask a question.  “I’ve been wearing bifocals for a while,” I said.  “Do I really need them?”

 

 

He starts to giggle. “You probably don’t realize that you’re using both lenses,” he said.  “That’s a good thing.”

 

 

At first I’m relieved.  Then I notice that he’s still laughing at my silly question, and glancing back at his assistant to make sure she notices what a silly thing I’ve said.

 

 

And I suddenly realize that my ophthalmologist is a jerk. 

 

 

I have pretty much decided I will never visit Doctor Nerdburger again.  There are lots of ophthalmologists in the world.

 

 

I wonder if Ted Nugent is available?

---

 

 

An aspirin a day keeps cancer at bay

---

 A new study shows that a low-dose aspirin a day keeps cancer at bay.

 

 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to rhyme.  But that’s what the study said.  A low-dose (under 100mg) aspirin once a day not only assists in ongoing cancer treatments, but seems to help in preventing cancer.

 

 

I love simple solutions to heavy problems.  If this will help, then by god I will do it.  My mother’s family (and Dad’s too) is rife with cancer; both my parents and both my sisters died of it.  If this will help, then I will by god do it.

 

 

That’s this year’s conclusion, of course.  Last year, it was found that the problems caused by aspirin (including internal bleeding) were significant enough for the medical authorities to caution people from taking the drug.

 

 

Internal bleeding?  Hell, that’s like a paper cut, or a scraped knee.  That’s an everyday occurrence for me.  If I lose the same amount of blood because of one aspirin, and I gain some traction against cancer, then sign me up!

 

 

(For now.  Until they find otherwise.)

 

 

(Remember my kidney stone?  Until very recently, doctors were recommending cranberry juice as a preventive measure against kidney stones. My student employee Noah, only last summer, told me that his father drinks gallons of the stuff for kidney stones, on the advice of his doctor. Now, however, there’s reason to believe that cranberry juice is (at best) useless, and (at worst) a contributor to kidney stones.)

 

 

(This is how medicine works: a step at a time.)

 

 

(We work with what we have.)

---

 

Clinical trials

---

The evil pollen arrived early this year.  Everything bloomed out of season: the forsythia, the cherries, the dogwood. And every year my allergies get worse.  I used to get a mild cold in the springtime, and thought nothing of it.  Then I realized it was allergies, because it was always at the same time every year. (I keep a diary, so it’s easy to check these things.) 

 

 

I normally soldier through with no pharmaceuticals, but this year I felt a little frail, so one day I took a Claritin (loratidine), on Partner’s advice.  No result.  (I know these things are supposed to take time to build up in your system, but I’m looking for immediate relief, you know?)

 

 

“Nah,” Paul the Brown shuttle driver said.  “Zyrtec.”

 

 

So that evening I went shopping for drugs.  I bought some CVS-generic Zyrtec (a dollar a pill!) and some CVS-generic Benadryl (much cheaper).

 

 

Next morning I took a generic Zyrtec, AKA cetirizine. Nothing. Again, Then I realized that I was getting lively and intense, and I though, Oh god, here it comes.  (Antihistamines make most people sleepy; some of us, the really lucky ones, react as if we’d had a shot of adrenaline  It’s artificial energy, and I end up exhausted at the end of the day, when the pill wears off.) 

 

 

The following morning: generic Benadryl (diphenhydramine).  Immediate effect: it dried me out right away.  I was still coughing, but my throat felt tight and nasty.  And there was that same rush of fake adrenaline energy.  (Luckily it went away in a few hours.)

 

 

“Why do you do this to yourself?” my friend Cathleen said to me the other day.

 

 

“Clinical trials,” I said. “I need to find out what works. I’m my own test subject.”

 

 

She groaned and shook her head.

 

 

Following day: no drugs.  I gave up.  And you know what?  I felt much better. It was cooler, that’s true, and there was probably much less pollen in the air.  

 

 

And so I tucked away all my pills in the medicine cabinet.

 

 

Until next year, when the pollen comes back, and the clinical trials resume.

 

 

Home remedies for kidney stones

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Ever since my diagnosis with kidney stones, I have been a very good boy.  I drink coffee only until noon each day, and water thereafter.  I have stopped drinking Coca-Cola altogether, as one of the websites I consulted recommended discontinuing “dark beverages.” 

 

 

And then there are the home remedies.

 

 

Here’s one: six cans of Coca-Cola, twenty minutes apart.  Then puree one can of asparagus and drink the result, followed with two large glasses of water.

 

 

One of the cures recommends asparagus all by itself.

 

 

The funniest of all recommends kidney beans.  This is a great example of sympathetic magic: if a plant resembles a body part, it must be good for the health of that body part.  (See “liverwort” and “lungwort” for further examples of this.)

 

 

Here’s the thing: kidney stones hurt.  So I am tempted to try all of the above silly cures (which seem to be at least non-life-threatening), just to see if they’ll work.

 

 

But I know they won’t!  (The kidney-bean one especially.)

 

 

And the simple course recommended by my doctor – hydration, i.e. drinking lots more water than I had in the past – seems to be working, because the pain is considerably less than before.

 

 

But if the pain gets worse again, I may well try the six-Coca-Colas-and-a-can-of-asparagus cure.

 

 

It can’t possibly kill me. And who knows?  It might work.

 

 

(But probably not.)

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Kidney stones

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Gather round, children.  Momma has some pretty awful news.

 

 

She has a kidney stone.

 

 

I’ve suspected this for some time, actually.  I’ve suffered with a dull ache in my lower back for years, centralized right around where I know my kidney to be.  My doctor insisted I was mistaken, my urine tests were clear, it was just a muscle cramp, blah blah blah.

 

 

Well, now we have X-ray confirmation.

 

 

Eh.  It’s a small stone, apparently, which is why I am not rolling on the floor in agony.  There’s no real treatment, except to increase fluid intake and try to avoid certain foods.  Beer.  Broccoli.  Beets.  Beans.  Bran, for god’s sake!  And those are only the Bs.  (Not to mention that I have increased my consumption of beans and broccoli and bran over the past few years, because they were supposed to be healthy for me.  Go figure.)

 

I looked up the condition online.  Lots of famous people have suffered with kidney stones: Napoleon, Giovanni Gabrieli, Michel de Montaigne, Michelangelo, Billy Graham, Lyndon Johnson.  I’m not sure why this matters, but it makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. (Especially Gabrieli and Montaigne.)

 

 

I do not intend to give up my beloved beans and broccoli and bran, not altogether.  So I am resigned to drinking lots and lots of water.  Lots and lots and lots of water.

 

 

Which reminds me of a funny story:

 

 

In Morocco, we drank mineral water exclusively.  There were three brands: Sidi Harazem and Sidi Ali, which were both flat, and Oulmes, which was sparkling.  As an aesthete, I preferred Oulmes, because the bottles were prettier. 

 

 

One day I was idling in a café with my British friend Austin and reading the legend on the Oulmes bottle.  “Oulmes is naturally carbonated,” I read, “and radioactive –“

 

 

I stopped.  Austin laughed.  “Didn’t you know that?” he said. "The water comes from a hot spring. It’s radioactive lithium, I think.  A friend of mine used to drink the stuff all the time.  He developed kidney stones, and they showed up beautifully on the scans, because they were radioactive too.”

 

 

(I notice, by the way, that the Oulmes website does not mention this.  Hm.  They’re marketing in Europe now.  I wonder if they’re just lying, or if they’re actually bottling non-radioactive water.  Who can say?)

 

 

So, you see, things could be worse.

 

 

At least my kidney stone isn’t radioactive.

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Paula Deen, diabetes queen

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I have written about Paula Deen at least twice before.  She is one of those (you should pardon the expression) larger-than-life people who command your attention.


Her backstory is admirable.  She had something like agoraphobia, needed to work, started cooking and baking and selling food, and is now a small industry herself.  She is cheerful and funny.


Her recipes are atrocious.  Do I need to tell you again about her “English Peas” fiasco?  Not to mention the fist-sized balls of peanut butter and powdered sugar, or the bread pudding made with Krispy Kreme donuts. 


Paula, you see, discovered some years ago that primates like us crave sugar and fat. So: her recipes revolve around those two things.  (I will not soon forget her show on which two big muscular guys carried a huge block of butter to her on stage, as if it were a royal palanquin.  Or the recent incident in which a  muscleguy smeared butter on his abs and commanded Paula to lick it off.  And she did!  And then rode him around the stage.  But I digress.)


Paula discovered a couple of years ago that – gosh! – she had developed adult-onset (type 2) diabetes.


She did not speak of this until very recently, when she struck a deal with a drug company, Novo Nordisk, to become their spokeswoman.


Guess how she’s dealing with her (at least partially self-inflicted) disease?


She’s walking on a treadmill.  She’s not drinking sweet tea anymore.  She is (presumably) taking medication.


She continues, however, to be a spokeswoman for Bad Sugary Fatty Food.


Kids: turn away from her.  Don’t watch her show anymore.  Ignore her.  I did a few years ago, after the Krispy Kreme bread pudding.  She’s a freak.  She’s cute and winsome, but she’s not a role model.


Even Fox News agrees with me.  And how often do you suppose that happens?

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The emergency room

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We were at Rhode Island Hospital not long ago. One of the orderlies told us that the previous night had been terrible: gunshot victims, stabbings, all kinds of mayhem.  As it was, the emergency room was still crowded at 11:00 am on Saturday morning.  You can pretty much tell what’s wrong with people in an emergency room without asking: the woman in a wheelchair who’s coughing up a lung, the guy lying motionless on two chairs and wheezing from time to time, the stocky guy clutching his back and moaning from time to time. 

 

 

The triage system seemed inefficient: they take your photo ID and hold it – I suppose to keep people from walking out – and do a quick once-over, blood pressure and temperature, and ask a few questions.  Then they give back your ID card, and you sit and wait. 

 

 

It’s kind of like the DMV: if you’re looking for a method to isolate the best whiners in a group, this is it.  You can always hear people loudly complaining about how long they’ve waited, other people being taken first, etc.  (To be fair, they’re presumably trying to take the serious cases first, so the lady with foot pain probably isn’t going to get priority over the lady in the wheelchair who can’t breathe.) 

 

 

We quietly relocated ourselves from the coughing lady, who was spraying her contagion all over the southeast corner of the room, and waited.

 

 

The wait really wasn’t that long.  They called us, and we sat in the inner area (which means you’re in!), and we were put into a little examining room.  A tall shaven-headed nurse attended to us, as did a short bearded nurse wearing a polka-dotted smock.  Then the ER doctor – short, cute, funny, very buff, very bouncy and energetic – came in, did his thing, asked a few questions, and sent us off to the X-ray room.  After the X-rays, we waited for only a bit longer before Doctor Cutiepie came back– twice! – with prescriptions and advice, and sent us home.

 

 

Please note: every single person who dealt with us was cheerful and professional.  This was in a large hospital serving the run-down heart of a run-down East Coast city. 

 

 

And we came home feeling much better, and feeling that we’d received pretty good care.

 

 

It is amazing.

 

 

It is partly, of course, because Brown University and its medical school are right next door; there’s a steady stream of interns, residents, etc. 

 

 

But still!

 

 

I am deeply grateful that I live in a place where high-level care is easily obtained, and affordable.

 

 

Is there any reason that good health care like this shouldn't be available to everyone?

 

 

(Ahem.  Political, political, political.  You get my message?)

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Drugs!

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 Partner and I attended an event the other night at which a very nice (and rather attractive) young psychiatrist did a presentation on Alzheimer’s disease: diagnosis, treatment, medications.   He then invited questions. 

 

 

There was a noisy giggly group of older women there, who’d been cackling through most of his presentation.  One of them raised her hand.  “I got the fear of the elevator,” she said in Italian-accented English.  “Other people get on, I get on too, sometimes.  But alone – no!”

 

 

This quite evidently had nothing to do with Alzheimer’s disease, but there are always people who solicit free medical advice from doctors, and Doctor Cutiepie was obviously used to this.  He nodded sympathetically.  “It’s a phobia,” he said.  “Anxiety is the number-one psychiatric disorder in the United States, and phobias are one of the commonest forms of anxiety.  I had a patient who didn’t leave her house for seventeen years: agoraphobia, very common.  And I prescribed Prozac, and –“

 

 

That was enough for Elevator Lady.  “A drug!” she spat.

 

 

Doctor C. nodded.  “A drug.  But effective, in this case.”

 

 

Much muttering from Elevator Lady’s table.  You could tell that Doctor Cutiepie had gone down a few pegs in their book.  He was advocating drugs!

 

 

Later that same evening, Partner and I had a conversation with a nice couple across the table from us.  The husband suffered from sleeplessness.  “But!” he said triumphantly.  “My doctor said: Do you take anything for it?  And I said: No.  And he said: Good for you!”

 

 

He and his wife grinned across at us.  “Well,” I said, “we both have insomnia issues, and we both take Ambien.  It does the trick for both of us.”

 

 

“Really?” the husband said, a little tremulously.  “What’s that called again?”

 

 

(I ask you, kids: has anyone really never heard of Ambien?)  “Ambien,” I repeated.

 

 

“It’s pretty safe,” Partner added.  “They usually give you a prescription for twenty pills once a month, so that you can’t take one every night.”

 

 

“Oh!” the wife said.  “You need a prescription for it.”  She looked at us both sympathetically.  “Haven’t you tried something like Tylenol PM?”

 

 

I am not known for my tact.  “Feh!” I said.  (Literally, I said “Feh.”  I surprised myself a little bit.)  “Tylenol PM is kid stuff.  Why bother with that, when you know there’s something that can really help you?”

 

 

You have to wonder what people have in their heads these days.  I have heard otherwise intelligent people say things like: “Well, I get the flu shot every year.  But sometimes it gives me the flu.”  No, honey, it doesn’t.  Or: “I hear a lot of stuff on TV about how the flu shot’s not really good for you.”  Would you please tell me on what Satanic TV channel you hear such nonsense?

 

 

I know lots of people who believe it is a sign of weakness to take medication.  Aspirin (or, in life-threatening situations, Tylenol or Advil) is permissible once in a while.  But nothing more! 

 

 

I carry a few Claritin in my briefcase for emergencies.  I don’t find it very useful, frankly, but on a bad allergy day it can be a life-saver.  I proffer it to people sometimes when they’re coughing and wheezing, and they react as if I’m giving them heroin. 

 

 

Seriously, kids: human beings are highly irrational.

 

 

I really should have asked Doctor Cutiepie about this while I had the chance.

 

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Get a flu shot!

 

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I have had the flu at least four times in my life.

 

 

The first time was when I was probably seven or eight.  I barely remember it; I do remember that it lasted a long time, and that I spent a long time in bed, and I did crafts at home with felt and glitter and Styrofoam.

 

 

The second time was around 1977, in college.  Everyone had it, and we were all bedridden and miserable and had a horrible cough.  The college dispensary gave out big bottles of bright green syrupy cough medicine with codeine, which at least allowed us to sleep.

 

 

The third time was in Tunisia, while I was in the Peace Corps.  I slept on the sofa for days, with our housecat breathing sardines in my face, and I was so miserable that I didn’t even care.

 

 

The fourth time was in the early 1990s, while working at my current job.  I passed out in my office, I remember that.  I spent at least a week at home, and I was barely able to crawl from room to room.  After the flu, I ended up with a case of walking pneumonia that lasted several months.

 

 

I have not, however, gotten the flu since I began getting a yearly inoculation.  And thank Buddha for that.

 

 

People think that the flu is a bad cold.  It is not a bad cold.  It is a very serious illness.  It killed my great-uncle Dewey, for one.

 

 

So, kids, get your little flu shot today.

 

 

Poor little frail weak Uncle Loren isn't sure if he can live through a fifth bout of the flu, and he certainly doesn’t want to be exposed to more viruses than absolutely necessary.

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