Ouch!

Yesterday morning I made a significant mistake. I tried to emulate a normal human being and pull the top blanket back over me (after being stolen by my husband) using my right arm. Don't ask. Why should I think I am normal? Instantly my left shoulder, on my shoulder blade blossomed into a huge wall of pain. I had to lie still and breathe slowly and quietly. It didn't subside. Finally I tried moving a tiny bit, and then a bit more, and more. I rolled over enough for my husband to massage it which helped. After taking a shower and running hot water on it, popping a pain pill and applying two lidoderm patches, I felt like I could survive the day. I did. I survived. I lasted the day.

Today I feel okay but there is looming pain in there. So what am I doing? I am going to stand at a trade show all day. I am sure I will feel wonderful tonight. This is complicated by the fact that my husband is not feeling well and was up all night (penance for yesterday's blanket theft?) and as a result, I was up several times as well. I feel wonderful.

Tonight we will have left overs for dinner. There are lots in the fridge and I won't have to cook anything. I am sure I will have back pain today so I will bring pain pills and lidoderm patches with me. As well as a lot of optimism.

A 66% increase in cancer costs by 2020?

This is ridiculous. Studies are predicting between 39% - 66% increase in cancer costs by 2020.

The basis of their numbers make sense - aging population, increasing cancer rates, etc. We know about all that.

However all these breakthrough drugs that are now being used for treatment I would think would reach the end of their trade mark protection and generics would be available.

Obviously new breakthrough drugs will come through as well. But if there are more cases of cancer so more of the drugs would be needed, you would think that mass production would kick in sooner thus allowing drug companies to spread their development costs over more doses.

Drug companies say that new drugs are developed at a high cost and then are used to treat only very few. I don't buy it.

This is another example of how we need a new system to manage the costs of medications. Not just for cancer but for all diseases.

More ups and downs

I think I have been neglecting my health here for the past few weeks. I don't know. Sometimes I don't feel like talking about things because I don't want to talk about them so I can pretend they aren't happening or because I don't want anyone asking me about it. And its my blog and I can blog about whatever I want.

Yesterday I went to my ankle doctor to find out the results of my ankle MRI. It turns out that yes my ankle has healed up nicely but it has left two pockets of fluid in my ankle which is why it is still stiff, sore and swollen. The answer for this is to try to stick a nice big needle full of cortisone in one of them to see if it helps reduce the swelling. (I hate big needles and don't like the fact that doctors always want to stick me with them.) I go back in six weeks to see how it is doing. Maybe she'll stick a needle in the other pocket of fluid. In the mean time, the outer side of my left ankle is a bit sore from the needle. Oh joy. All of this caused by a nanosecond of stupidity where I tried to look over my shoulder while walking at the end of July 2009.

Next week is my big avoidance. I am invoking my inner three year old who is screaming 'no, no, no' with her eyes closed. Next week I am having an ultrasound of my thyroid. Last year I was supposed to have a baseline ultrasound but it found a 'thingy' called recurrence, thyroid tissue, or lymph node. Nothing was supposed to be there. I had a follow up one in July to see if there was any change. It was the same size. It was called a recurrence or tissue. But since it had not changed, it was called more likely tissue and another six month follow up was called for. Which is next week. The problem is it is big enough to see but too small to biopsy. The fact that it was stable and hadn't changed is good meaning that it is probably just tissue.

Now left over thyroid tissue or regrown thyroid tissue isn't necessarily a good thing. I had radioactive iodine treatment to destroy all tissue and have been told that it is very unlikely or even unheard of to have left over tissue. Regrown tissue is bad because it is unsure if it is good (clean) or bad (malignant) tissue. And it can't be biopsied because it is too small. The only other test is a full body radioactive scan that requires dietary changes and other prep and requires isolation afterward.

Another reason I haven't talked much about this is that this would be a recurrence nearly thirty years after the fact. This is difficult because I don't like talking about recurrences and this is an example of why you can never say you are free from cancer after diagnosis. They just can't find anything. But then they did.

So we are just pretending next week isn't happening.

My tennis elbow is sort of healing. I was supposed to have more acupuncture today but its basically a blizzard outside so everything is canceled. PT seems to be helping and I have progressed to little bitty weights.

In the meantime, my back is having its ups and downs. Today I woke up achy and sore and I'm not sure why. But its snowing out and I can't shovel so I'm just going to work from home with my feet up on the coffee table and get caught up on a lot of work.

Otherwise, life goes on. I actually declined some volunteer work this week because I simply don't have time and was starting to be overstressed.

Oh, and I cant shovel snow so I guess my health has one good side effect. I just get to supervise.

A breakthrough without out a purpose

DNA Researchers have found that sometimes a shattered chromosome turns the entire cell into cancer. Aside from the fact that this represents the part of biology class I doodled through, they aren't quite sure what this breakthrough means - other than the fact that you can have a clean mammogram one month and the next month have a very aggressive tumor.

Well, in wrapping my non-medical brain around this, I think:

- This reinforces the fact that every cancer is different. Just because you have stage IIA cancer, doesn't mean someone else with the same diagnosis is the same. Every cancer is different. They put it into slots based on body part and characteristics they can identify - spread, tumor size, hormone receptors, agressiveness, etc - but there are a lot of other variations.

- So they have a breakthrough that they don't quite know what it means but I think that it shows how much we have to learn. Is it a research breakthrough? Is this how cancer spreads and mets? And why someone can all of a sudden have a remote recurrence? Does this mean its an opportunity?

- Maybe cancer doesn't spread through cells but through chromosomes in the cells? Maybe we have been wrong for a long time. Face it for thousands of years, man thought the earth revolved around the sun.

Now you can see my extensive lack of scientific and medical knowledge. But if it is considered a breakthrough, I would think it would represent a new way to look at things. But I am just a patient so don't ask me.

Pain - a topic close to my heart (unfortunatley)

Real Age, a wonderful resource, brings us the truth about pain.

Some myths about pain debunked.

Myth #1: Pain is always a sign of an ailment or that some part of your body is hurt or damaged.
Fact: Pain sometimes travels alone.

Myth #2: Medication is the only treatment that can really relieve pain.
Fact: Pain has many enemies.

Myth #3: If OTC medication relieves your pain, it's nothing to worry about.
Fact: Pain can mean business.

Myth #4: Pain is an inevitable part of aging.
Fact: Pain hates to be ignored.

Myth #5: Only a doctor can assess your pain and determine whether it's real.
Fact: Pain is personal.


I can tell you a lot about pain. I know more about my pain than my doctor - I deal with every day. He deals with it for 15 minutes or so every couple of months. Don't ignore you pain. Pain is your body telling you something is wrong. But it doesn't mean that it can only be treated by medication.

My husband had some shoulder pain a few years ago. I told him to talk to his doctor who sent him for Xrays and then PT. He skipped the PT on the grounds that it wouldn't help. A year later he went back for a physical and the doctor sent him for PT again. Now he does not have pain.

Also, I live with the two week rule - if its not better or improving in two weeks with self care, its time to see the doctor.

Pain is an indicator of something wrong. Don't ignore it. This is why they ask you what your pain is on a scale of whatever they use when you go to the doctor.

I think I know too much about pain... But its a part of my life now.

Time to tone it down

Why does it take a tragedy like what happened yesterday in Arizona to make us realize that there has been too much mudslinging and polarization in the past few years? We need to tone it down. We are all entitled to our own opinions and to talk about them and discuss them and allow others to disagree. We are not entitled to make targets out of others in any manner.

In addition to the shooting in Tucson yesterday which left a politician and others injured and caused 6 deaths including a child, six middle school girls in Nevada are in trouble for targeting teachers on Facebook. One girl posted and five others responded. They were all arrested. These girls have learned behavior from what they have seen take place around them.

What I don't understand is why this is an acceptable behavior. Sarah Palin, before the elections, posted a target list with cross hairs on Facebook that said 'don't retreat, reload'. I don't care about your politics - as I said everyone is entitled to their own opinion - and your opinion of Ms. Palin, but I fail to see how this is an acceptable behavior.

I have always thought the US was a good place to live. We can have an election without it resulting in a political coup, riots, or a revolution. I am trying to live my relatively quiet life with out a lot of stress and distress from the outside - as I have enough of that from my own life. The time is now to tone things down and not focus on what others are doing that you don't like, but what is an acceptable way to live with our differences.

Ridiculous is the only word

If you were told a bill was going to go up 59%, what would you do? Get rid of it? Yep, I would.

Blue Shield in California wants to raise premiums up to 59% in March for 193,000. Their explanation doesn't even make sense:

"our individual market medical costs are rising rapidly due to higher provider prices, increased utilization, and the fact that healthier people are dropping coverage during a bad economy."

So healthy people can't afford the rates and are dropping coverage so they are only insuring sick people. And their costs are going up. Where's the logic? So only the sickest people will keep the coverage. Healthy people will find insurance elsewhere. This is just another step on a downward spiral.

Insurance has to be for sick and healthy people - DOH! I think they just want to put themselves out of business or expect health care reform to kick in and solve the problem for them. Ridiculous is the word for them.