Tag: Health

Posted on

Last Hurrah – Tahoe with work crew

When the diagnosis rolled in and I realized what the treatment schedule was going to look like, I made a list of all my spring and summer plans to figure out what to cancel. Which was pretty much everything – there’s no way to take a break in the radiation course, nor to move it to another clinic. Because I’ll need the custom-fit fiberglass mask that will strap my head down in perfect position and be bolted to a tray that will clip into the radiation toboggan, and because it’s essential that the radiologist have consistent experience with patients, I can’t go anywhere for two months once treatment begins. Add in recovery time, and we can pretty much call it three months.

We’d had gray skies through most of the trip, but the sky opened up and I was able to enjoy sunrise over Lake Tahoe on the final morning.

So I canceled plans for a couple of organized rides, told my parents I wouldn’t be able to visit Morro Bay for a while, and told Ward that backpacking was out for me this Spring.

That left the annual work ski trip, which always happens in late March, and is a highlight of the year for me. We love to do one day of snowboarding/skiing, and one day of snowshoeing, eat a lot of great food, and get to know people in other departments. But when I brought it up with the oncology surgeon a couple of weeks ago, he surprised me by saying “You have to go – it’ll be a great outdoor experience to remember when you’re in the thick of things, and a reminder of what you want to get back to when this is all over. ” Good advice. Turns out he’s an active snowboarder too.

Continue reading “Last Hurrah – Tahoe with work crew”
Posted on

Dental oncology and a delay

A few days ago, I had no idea there was such a thing as “Oncology audiologist” or “Oncology dentist.” But radiation treatment can have real impacts on both hearing and dentistry, and they need baseline measurements and preparatory conversations before getting started.

The audiology visit came first. They led me into a soundproof room with thick walls, and inserted a series of earbuds into my ears and played long series of clicks and tones at high and low tones, with progressive degrees of quietude. Also, tests where I was asked to repeat words back. My hearing is normal, with typical falloff at the high end correlated to my age. Potential effects of radiation would probably be either tinnitus or mild hearing loss. Possible future hearing aids if that does come to pass, but it’s rare. Not much to say here.

Artifacts of a 2018 visit

The Dental Oncology visit was more intense. I’ll definitely need fluoride trays, and to fluoridate nightly during treatment (loss of saliva during treatment means a much higher likelihood of cavities). But why is there less saliva? Because my salivary glands will be irradiated too, and damage to them could be permanent. I should expect a drier mouth for the rest of my life. Apparently, these days they are able to do a better job of targeting radiation so that it has minimal impact on salivary glands. And some people even have pre-surgery to move the glands! That prospect did not come up in my case.

The really scary/new information was that the radiation will also affect vascular flow in the jaw, which will make it impossible for it to heal in the future. That, in turn, means I will not be able to have teeth removed or implants done in years to come. So it’s important to get everything removed now that looks like it might be a problem down the line, and the doctor did find one tooth that seemed to have borderline future prospects. So, on top of everything else, I now have to have emergency dental surgery to have another molar removed, which means it’s going to get even harder to chew and swallow.

Not the news I wanted to hear, but I do appreciate the wisdom of it.

The next morning was to be my final CT scan – the “mapping and planning” one. Unfortunately, when I got there, they told me that we’d have to delay that because the tooth removal would change the structure of my mouth. So now I need to get the tooth extracted ASAP, give it 7-10 days to heal, and then do the final CT scan. Not great.

Posted on

So Many Appointments

Hi everyone – 

Physically, I don’t feel that much different – I need a bit more sleep, my throat feels kind of “thick” with just a bit of difficulty talking sometimes. The hard part is yet to come. 

Emotionally, I’m coming to terms with what’s coming down the road. I’ve learned a ton in the past week, and all of the information has helped turned a big scary mystery into a big scary plan. But I no longer have “fear of the unknown.” I know it will be uncomfortable and then painful and I just have to be here for it. 

On a boat in Kauai, 2022. I miss feeling this healthy – time will come again. Photo by Ward Ruth.

The number of appointments and scans involved in planning for cancer treatment is just ridiculous (but everything has a reason – no complaints). Trying to fit all of this into my work schedule has been a challenge, but work has been really supportive – no one is complaining that I’m missing half the time. I’m keeping a log of appointments I’ve had or that are coming:

Continue reading “So Many Appointments”
Posted on

The Science of Sleep

60 Minutes, The Science of Sleep — We’re sleeping less than ever:

In 1960, a survey by the American Cancer Society asked one million Americans how much sleep they were getting a night. The median answer was eight hours. Today that number has fallen to 6.7 hours – that’s a decrease of more than 15 percent in less than a lifetime. And from what the scientists 60 Minutes met are finding, we may be putting ourselves in a perilous situation.

.. and we’re paying dearly for it. Test subjects allowed to sleep only four hours per night are able to metabolize sugars at about the same rate as pre-diabetics, and have a voracious appetite. In other words, there may be a connection between cultural sleep deprivation and the obesity epidemic. And of course, memory and mental acuity in general suffer dramatically as well. Not to mention nice-ness (tired people are cranky people).

But what refrain is more commonly heard in the workplace than “I’m exhausted?” We’re compensating for the insane pace of everything by staying up later, perhaps fooling ourselves that we’ll be more productive if we just trim off a few of those hours “wasted” on sleep. But it ain’t natch’l, what we do.

“But you know I find it amazing to see how many people are asleep within five minutes of boarding an airplane at 11 o’clock in the morning. You know, sit down and boom. It shouldn’t happen. A normal adult shouldn’t be falling asleep at 11 o’clock in the morning, minutes after sitting in a small, uncomfortable airplane seat. It just shows that, you know, people are exhausted.”

Ever since Miles was born, I’ve been deep in this pattern, getting by on 5-6 hours/night (7 on a mellow day), day after day, week after week. I used to try and get one full 8-hour night per week, but now even that doesn’t happen regularly. You just get so used to being a zombie, it starts to feel normal. Every now and then you get a full night or something close to it, and the mental clarity is astonishing, this feeling of alertness like you remember from a long-ago life. I swear I’m going to reform, get back on the 8-hour track permanently… but I never do. They say we’d be more productive sleeping more than less – that the increase in sharpness more than compensates for hours lost in sleep. But it’s hard to convince myself of that.

Anyway, it’s well worth the watch (or read).

How many hours of sleep do you average per night?

View Results

Music: Dengue Fever :: Oceans of Venus
Posted on

Shop the Perimeter

J-School professor and Birdhouse Hosting customer Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has a new book titled In Defense of Food – a common-sense manifesto for eaters. Fittingly, Pollan is blogging this month at omnivoracious.com. Don’t have time to read the book? Pollan gives away the kernel:

  • Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
  • Avoid food products with more than five ingredients; with ingredients you can’t pronounce.
  • Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.
  • Shop the perimeter of the supermarket, where the food is least processed.
  • Avoid food products that make health claims.
  • Eat meals and eat them only at tables. (And no, a desk is not a table.)
  • Eat only until you’re 4/5 full. (An ancient Japanese injunction.)
  • Pay more, eat less.
  • Diversify your diet and eat wild foods when you can.
  • Eat slowly, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.
Music: Herbie Hancock :: Solitude
Posted on

Oak Hymenoptera

Milesoak     Milesoak2

By the grin on my face, you’d never guess I just got 14 sparkling new stitches in my right hand.

Headed out for Crockett Hills Regional Park with Miles on a gorgeous November morning – felt like late spring, amazing day. Halfway through the day, arrived at a cache under a giant oak … which we just couldn’t nail. Knew it was a tiny camouflaged micro, but it wasn’t about to give itself up. The clue was “Oak hymenoptera,” which of course was all Latin to me, so called Amy for a lifeline. She described a fungal growth related somehow to hornets or wasps. OK, the tree had its share of tumors and testicular outgrowths, and I searched them all while M ate cashews and an apple from his perch in the tree. But this one just wasn’t willing to be found.

A bit bummed, we moved on. Had intended to do a big loop around the park, but suddenly found ourselves at trail’s end. Realized we’d have to cross a road and hop a fence to continue our circuit – either that or hike two miles back the way we came and miss caching half the park, so went for it. Lifted Miles easily over the barbed-wire fence, then went to get myself over. OK, know this: I like adventure, and I’m not what you’d call “risk averse,” but I don’t think I do dumb things at the expense of safety. Studied the situation carefully to make sure there were no alternative crossings, then carefully got my feet into position on the top rung of the fence. Intended to sort of do a light vault over and spin down to the other side (this was only a 5-foot fence).

Continue reading “Oak Hymenoptera”

Posted on

How Often Do You Shower?

I know that some people shower a lot, but was surprised by the results of this poll showing that 23% of people shower more than once a day, and that an additional 55% shower every day or almost every day. Several people in the comments on that page also mentioned wanting a clean towel for each shower! Even though I bike daily and hike on the weekends, and Amy works in the garden almost every day, we’re both light showerers – we average 2-3 showers/week each, and neither of us take showers lasting more than 10-15 minutes (how long does it take to lather up, shampoo, and shave anyway?) Miles gets one or two baths per week, depending on what he’s been up to. Neither of us have ever been accused of stinking, nor do we feel dirty. I can’t help but think that personal perceptions of cleanliness don’t correspond neatly to cultural standards of cleanliness (in other words, people don’t consider us “dirty” based on our appearance or smell, even if they think daily showering is necessary for cleanliness).

According to one person’s calculations, the average 10-minute shower costs $1.12 and uses 26 gallons of water – they don’t come free! If you’re using low-flow toilets, reducing your lawn watering, or taking other water-saving measures for environmental reasons, you could cancel out your efforts pretty quickly by taking long or frequent showers. YMMV.

Curious whether Birdhouse readers have similar showering habits to the population at large, so I’m reproducing the poll here. Votes are 100% anonymous.

How often do you shower?

View Results

Posted on

One Ear Warm, One Ear Cold

Does it mean anything if one of your ears is warm while the other is cold? Even if you’ve been inside for hours and haven’t been wearing a hat and can’t think of anything you might have done that could have caused such a thing? Does this mean I’m going to die? Or just that my left brain is running hot for some reason? Ah well – I’m going to die eventually anyway.

William Shatner – “You’re Going to Die”

Music: Electrelane :: This Deed
Posted on

Specialist Limbo

So I’ve been dealing with a persistent ear infection thing for the past 10 days. Started while I was sick, but has lasted long beyond the other symptoms, which have passed. Scarily, it has survived a round of antibiotics without diminishing. Feels like a knot of something behind the inner ear – either a vacuum or a clod somewhere in there, leaning against the cochlea maybe. My hearing in the left ear is diminished by about 50%, and there’s a persistent ringing. My voice reverberates in my head, as does my every footstep. It’s uncomfortable and scary and leads to hypochrondriacal thoughts about tumors and other dangerous nasties – not typical thoughts at all for me, but its resistance to medication and unrelenting nagging at my state of being is doing a number on me.

My M.D. has run out of theories and has referred me to an otolaryngologist. Here’s where my patience with the medical system runs into a brick wall. When you get referred to a specialist in this country, you go into this double limbo state. First, you’re given a list of doctors covered by your plan. In this case, I had 18 to choose from, with zero criteria to use in choosing one. Throw a dart at the wall and see where it lands. No Consumer Reports for medical specialists, no user rankings, no anecdotal assistance. Just pick someone at random to entrust with your most critical needs.

Fortunately, I did have one criteria: I needed to see someone yesterday or today, because I fly tomorrow to Austin for a week at SXSW/Interactive. That’s where you hit limbo state #2. Started calling names on the list, only to find that earliest appointments were three weeks out. If you need to see someone soon, you’re directed to the emergency room — where you end up not seeing a specialist, like your doctor ordered. These are your choices: wait weeks (while more damage is possibly caused, depending on the malady), or go to the E.R. where you’ll wait all day and see someone who doesn’t specialize in the problem (gee, isn’t that why my doctor sent me to a specialist to begin with?) If you’ve got something that needs rapid attention, you’re S.O.L. What really weirds me out is that when you try to talk about this paradox with nurses and receptionists, there’s zero sympathy. That’s just the way the system works, and my goodness, aren’t you a weird one for bringing attention to it?

Finally did find someone with an appointment for today (a cancellation), but it took hours out of my work day yesterday, wading through phone trees, waiting on hold, waiting for call-backs, having the same conversation over and over again…

Everything – everything – is wrong with this picture. The idea seems to be that medicine somehow stands apart from the free market. I would expect that there being more demand than supply would result in there being more practices. But it’s not even about that. A lot of the offices I spoke too said things like “We only see patients Tues and Thurs mornings.” Huhn??? If you’re setting appointments three weeks out, why don’t you work more hours?

Every time I’m forced to deal with Medicine in America I feel like I’m walking on a strange planet where the rules of reality are in permanent suspension. None of it makes any sense.

Continue reading “Specialist Limbo”

Posted on

Dr. Miles, At Your Service

Amy and Miles decided to play doctor. Amy describes the scene:

Miles set up a doctor’s office in his bedroom yesterday, and I got treated. I thought you might like to hear about his techniques.

The nice thing about this doctor’s office is that you get to sit upon two pillows, so it’s kind of like having a little throne. The doctor first ran a green crayon down my arm and then kind of pushed it in to draw some blood. I got a Barbie band aid for that. At this point, the brilliant doctor already knew what was wrong with me. A bone had broken somewhere in my body, and when it fell off, it made a hole in my heart. He crammed my left hand into a toilet paper tube and then inserted the whole hand into a little plastic oven (from his play dough toys). There was a whooshing sound as more air went into my body. Finally, a small, plastic red thing was kind of plunged in and out of my mouth a few times and I was ready to go.

On my second visit to the doctor, I was diagnosed as having a crammed tummy. This procedure is easy. You just take a magnolia seed pod and crunch it around in the patient’s belly button. This will uncram everything.

While we were playing, I asked Miles if he would like a doctor’s kit for Christmas and then immediately regretted it. What fun is a stethoscope when you can have your hand crammed into a toilet paper tube? Maybe he’ll forget that I brought that up.

Music: Herbie Hancock :: Succotash