Health: Kidney Donations and Transplants

Today's health story is about a kidney donation.

I can't use the real names of the people featured in this story, so I'll call them R1 and R2. They served together in Vietnam as young men forty years ago.

As young draftees, they were part of a tight-knit group that repeatedly risked life and limb in the course of duty.

Yes, we all have strong opinions about that "war" that was never declared a war, about the millions of Vietnamese peasants and farmers who lost their lives, their homes, their farms, their families, their limbs; and the 58,000 Americans who came back in body bags. But the young draftees were not to blame for any of this, even if a few of them went on to commit war crimes. By and large, they were serving in the military for a myriad of reasons and most of them conducted themselves decently.

They are now in their sixties. Silver-haired men who continue to stay in touch, forever connected by the ties that bind, watching friends and old comrades drop away due to the ravages of old age.

So R1, a man who suffered many grievous wounds in the course of service, suffered a recent insult to add to all his injuries: his kidneys started shutting down. For close to two years now, he's been on dialysis. If you have healthy functioning kidneys, you probably don't know what dialysis is. Thank your lucky stars. It's not for the faint of heart.

Essentially, because your kidneys can no longer filter harmful wastes and extra fluids out of your body, you have to go to a location (a clinic or hospital) where you get hooked up to a machine that slowly filters your blood for you. This is called hemodialysis. Because only a few ounces can be filtered at a time, the procedure takes up to five hours. And you have to do this three times a week.

In addition, you don't get to eat tasty stuff anymore. No bacon, no salt, no cheese, no ketchup, no crackers, no chips, limited quantities of potassium-containing fruit and vegetables, or items high in phosphates (like chocolate), or protein (meat, dairy products, whole grains, nuts).

Fun, huh?

In the event, R1, after suffering through this and waiting patiently for a kidney donor, was finally told he didn't have much time left if he couldn't get a kidney replaced. So he put out the word to his old buddies: can ya spare a kidney for a fellow trooper?

Unbelievably, to this old cynic, at any rate, replies came pouring in. Yes, they would spare a kidney if they could, said his brothers in arms. Dutifully, they submitted to the tests required to determine if any of them qualified — and if they didn't make a perfect match, they'd donate anyway, if they could, just to bump their old buddy up to the top of the list so he could have the next kidney that did match his needs.

There is a special deity for old soldiers, methinks, and s/he lent a hand. After much trading of insults (which, really, is just another way of saying, "Hey, man, I fucking care,") one of his brothers in arms was found to be both in good enough physical shape to spare a kidney and to be a match for R1. So R2 (the trooper with two good kidneys and a clean bill of health) signed up to give one of his to his fellow serviceman, R1.

Sometime in January, the swop takes place. R2 goes home with one less kidney, and R1 emerges with one working kidney, to a life of, hopefully, no more dialysis. Send some good thoughts their way, peeps. Just because it's so fucking heartwarming that somebody would give up a vital organ for someone else, in commemoration of bonds forged four decades ago.

The deity of old soldiers would like both these fine men to know the following information, published in Science News (175:5):

The Jan. 29, [2009] issue of NEJM (the New England Journal of Medicine) has reported that Hassan Ibrahim and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have found that kidney donors have the same probability of survival over several decades as the general population, including adequate kidney function and — surprisingly — even less risk of severe kidney disease. The data was derived from studying kidney transplants performed at U.Minn between 1963 and 2007, including selecting 255 of the donors to undergo kidney function tests. The test results were then compared with similar tests on individuals with two functioning kidneys, and donors were matched for race, gender, body weight, and age.

So, R2, for your great generosity in donating one of your healthy functioning kidneys to R1, the deity of old soldiers wants you to know that you're giving away nothing but your love, man. Power to you both, continued health and long life.

ICHC

And as for those who are all, like, supporting the troops? Consider donating an organ. Especially you rich young Republicans who don't ever plan to sign up for military service but support all wars with your mouths. Now you can show that you *really* support the troops. Sign those organ donor cards and carry them at all times. And if you have two healthy kidneys, go see if there's someone who could use one.

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Health: Swine Flu Update

ICHC

While y'all are panicking over Joe Biden's latest comment (he apparently announced that he'd told his nearest and dearest to stay off trains, subways, and other such crowded places because of the swine flu), here's the latest news on the swine flu. For those disinclined to click the linky, the WHO (World Health Organization, in case you've been a hermit for the past X decades) is stating unequivocally that only SEVEN people have died worldwide since the supposed "pandemic" began.

Brian thinks large, friendly letters saying "DON'T PANIC" should never be reproduced in red, a colour that is alleged to induce panic just by virtue of it's position on the colour spectrum or the eyeball-friendly wavelengths or whatEVER. Point taken, Bri, you'll notice that we've reoutfitted our friendly warning. So. In short. DON'T PANIC. You'll feel better that way.

The reasons the WHO and other governmental agencies, like the CDC, have declared this outbreak of swine flu a pandemic is that (1) it is safer to be prepared for an emergency than to be caught flatfooted; (2) human lives are at stake. An epidemic of butt-vanishment would probably have elicited a worldwide yawn. (3) the epidemic comprises viruses from several different forms of life — avian and mammalian — that have combined to form a new virus; (4) influenza virii mutate quickly and unpredictably; (5) unlike previous animal-source influenzas, this virus can be transmitted between humans.

That said, knowing that a mere seven people have died, not 152 as reported by some hysteria-inducing media morons, is major cause to NOT PANIC. Sheesh, that death rate is way lower than that from traffic accidents, drinking, drugging, and prescription medication mixups. So, yeah, it's sorta worrisome that the disease can be transmitted between humans, but it is almost to laugh that it is transmitted rather ineffectually and doesn't seem to kill very many humans (of whom many should die just because, like Neal Horsey, Michele Bachmann, and Flush Rimbowl, they're a complete waste of oxygen and protoplasm).

So, DON'T PANIC.

In other news, Satan's porcine handmaiden (all praise to Maru, goddess of name-calling and aproposity), KKKarl Rove apparently once mocked President Obama's willingness to spend money battling swine flu. No doubt KKKarl has little to worry about, since his fellow swine will extend him the professional courtesy of "passing-over" him, as it were, you know,making sure they don't infect him. The rest of us, not having that guarantee of rosy health, will just take precautions and pray/work for the day when that oinking swine is in leg chains at the Hague.

Those of you who have given up in exasperation that the li'l porker will never meet the justice he so richly deserves, take heart. Judge Baltasar Garzon of Spain has opened an investigation into the systemic torture at Gitmo, and one can always hope that Dick "Dick" Cheney and Karl Rove get swept up as a result. They'd look so cute in matching orange jumpsuits.

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Health: Swine Flu

ICHC

For all my fellow swine out there (what can I say, I've been in a swinish mood lately, and the pain meds don't seem to be helping), a little pertinent information on the purported pandemic flu we're in the middle of, currently.

First of all: DON'T PANIC!

Hope those letters were large and friendly enough for you. No, srsly, don't panic. So far, the swine flu cases in the U.S. have been relatively mild. No one has died, and no one has become seriously ill. Plus, this strain of flu appears to respond well to existing doses of Tamiflu. So, once again: DON'T PANIC!

ICHC

HuffPo has a list of the things you need to know to protect yourself. As you can see, not a whole lot is known about the flu, except that (1) It's a new strain; (2) Although Mexico reports that 149 people have died from this flu, only 20 of those are confirmed. The rest are still being tested. No deaths have occurred in the U.S. It seems we're being hit with a milder strain; (3) Commonsense precautions should be sufficient — wash your hands frequently with soap and water, especially if you're around people who are sneezing and coughing; Don't sneeze all over your fellow swine, I mean humans; If you're in a health care setting, wearing a mask might help. Ditto if you're in really crowded conditions; (4) Tamiflu and Relenza work fine, although you shouldn't use them as a prophylactic. Older medications are ineffective.

In other words, don't panic. Don't rush to get antiviral medication if you're not suffering any symptoms at all. You're just helping germs and virii develop resistance to the current medication, which is great for those lifeforms, but not so great for you, or pigs, or, for that matter, birds. In the meantime, please don't go to Mexico unless you have an overwhelmingly good reason, like your nonagerian grandma is ill enough to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. If you're European, Asian, or African (that is to say, resident in those parts of the world), don't travel to the Americas unless you absolutely have to.

Symptoms are typical flu symptoms — cold, cough, fever, chills, bone and joint pains. If you live in an area where swine flu has been detected, OR you've recently been to Mexico, call your doctor before deciding to rush in. Chances are, they're up to the eyeballs dealing with hysterics. If you don't have a fever, don't bother calling in at all. Chances are, you have something else — allergies, perhaps, or a sinus infection, which is bacterial, not viral.

The CDC is monitoring the situation. Check with them if you need updates.

You'll be pleased to hear that stalwart Republicans wanted the budget stripped of protection against a flu pandemic — like this one. Sort of like Louisiana Governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal mocking the budget item for volcanic monitoring right before the volcano blew in Alaska. These are the same people who prayed that rain would destroy the Democratic convention and inauguration, only to find themselves on the receiving end of a hurricane during their convention.

If I believed in Gawd, I'd kinda think Gawd was trying to tell the Republicans to FOAD. Incidentally, they did manage to knock a whole bunch of money out of the funding for flu pandemics. I believe "moderate" GOP Senator Susan Collins was the blockhead responsible. Maine, can't you find someone a little more sensible to represent you? I mean, lookit, the Republicans keep wanting to cut taxes for corporations and rich people, but they don't want to spend a penny on sensible precautionary measures for the sick and poor. Someone should point out to them that viral pandemics don't examine your bank account before deciding to infect you.

Also, Republican idiots have been holding up the appointment of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Now might be a good time to express your wrath to your Republican Congresscritter in no uncertain terms. But then, why should they care? Thanks to us taxpayers, they have a gold-plated health care plan, may they only catch some incurable nasty that gives them permanent bowel drips.

And finally, in an effort to make you LOL and take your mind off this pandemic — Governor Goodhair, aka Rick Perry of Texas, who told us a week or two ago that Texas should secede from the United States (which, incidentally, is not something Texas has any right to do, so ignore his blatheramskate about the agreement made when the State of Texas joined the others, he's either lying or pig (heh) ignorant), is now down on his knees begging the Federal Government to send aid. Can't have it both ways, Governor, I thought you were seceding, you ambulatory pigturd. Well, the fine folks of Texas shouldn't be punished for failing to boot this idiot out of power, but hopefully his next run for office will find him flailing alongside a few other people who NEED to GO — like Susan Collins, Joe LIEberWHORE, Piyush Jindal, Jon Kyl, James "Pig-ignorant AND Liar" Inhofe, Michele "Fruity as a Nutcake" Bachmann, and the like.

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For Sandy

Part of being a gimp, and growing steadily gimpier over a period of five years, is — you don't have time to clean. At all. And if you have five cats as well, your house slowly acquires an impressive coating of cat hair and dander, with an overlay of all the other detritus that a house acquires over such a long period.

I was reminded of this rather forcefully when fellow-blogger Sirenita Lake and her partner came to call. He's violently allergic to cat hair, and after an hour or two, was forced to take his leave. The good news is that I managed to stay on my feet long enough afterwards to vacuum up an impressive quantity of life-debris, including various "knitting kittens," which is my term for the clumps of cat hair that seem to rise spontaneously out of every nook and cranny. In the process, I cleaned out my art materials, so that I could prepare to work on a piece of fabric art that is being inspired by my dear friend Sandy, who often comments here. That's the good news.

Thanks to the deities of health and wellbeing, I am in much less pain than I was a few weeks ago. It's going slowly, but fabric art can be done sitting down, so I plan to start on the project soon.

Pictures will be posted when the project is ready, over at the sisterblog, CultureVultures.

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Tales of the Horrorspital, Part II

Calcium burn at one IV site

So, where were we already? Bemoaning the lack of adequate staffing at our hospital surgery recovery rooms? The paw in the above picture belongs to yours truly. It was actually the better of the available paws. The other had swelled up like a house but was not discoloured, so we went with this photograph for the "roast chicken" effect.

The nurse staffing situation was actually the least of the problems. Or the least enervating, anyway. Pain is pain, and bad as it is, it only hurts until you pass out or fall asleep or they bring you medication to numb it.

My roomie, on the other hand ... think ground glass in underpants. With all appendages tied, so you can't even get it out.

After the nice Vietnamese lady left, and before I regained consciousness, the hospital staff trundled in the Roomie From Hell. Naturally, when I awoke, I was otherwise occupied, as in, trying to get pain meds, but once that was taken care of, I began looking around. The Roomie From Hell (let's call her Dolores, shall we? Dotty for short? As in, that's what I was after two days of exposure to her?), for reasons that will never be clear to me, decided at this point to introduce herself. Thus:

RFH: Hello.

TPC: Hi. (All friendly-like.)

RFH: Can you take me upstairs please?

TPC: ??? (with a silent WTF? for emphasis)

RFH: Hello?

TPC: Yes. (Probly a mistake. I should've said, "NO!")

RFH: I need to go upstairs.

TPC: Uh, well, I'm sorry, Ma'am, I've just had surgery and I'm not mobile. Maybe you should press the call button.

RFH: I need to go upstairs. Can you take me to the operating theater? I'm supposed to have surgery at four o'clock.

TPC: (Squints at clock, which clearly shows the time as being 11, although it's not clear whether this is in the AM or PM) Ma'am, I'm sorry, I'm your fellow patient? And I'm not mobile, so I can't take you anywhere. Please press the button, and a nurse will attend to you.

RFH: (Begins to hum a song, and then talks to herself, first in Spanish (fluent, unaccented AFAICT), then in French.) Excuse me?

TPC: Yes?

RFH: Nurse?

TPC: No, ma'am, I'm a patient. The nurse will be along in a minute. (Begins to long for a larger dose of painkillers to drown out rather annoying RFH.)
Nurse arrives.

Nurse: What's the matter, dear?

TPC: (Cringes at the use of the word "dear." It's pretty obvious the patients are "dear" only in the sense of "expensive.")

RFH: Oh, nurse, could you have someone take me up to the operating theater? My surgeon, Dr. Blarney (I swear, that's what she said) is supposed to be operating on me at four o'clock.

Nurse: (Distinctly unamused) Uh, ma'am, why don't you try to go to sleep, you're not having surgery till tomorrow.

RFH: Are you sure?

Nurse: Yes, ma'am. Let me know if you need something to help you sleep.

RFH: Begins a lengthy gabbling conversation full of extraneous details about friends, family, dog, surgery, clothing, doctor, and blood while TPC desperately tries to sleep. No such luck.

Exeunt Nurse, edging out of room after fluffing RFH's pillow and sneaking away.)

RFH, stymied, picks up her cellphone and begins calling everybody she knows with details about her dog, car, surgery, clothing, and some fireman's luncheon at which she will donate blood. TPC desperately continues trying to sleep.

Some time later (the attempt to sleep was, apparently, successful) TPC is woken by the morphine wearing off and the gabble of voices. Apparently, RFH has now decided that she is actually at the firemen's luncheon and needs to go home.

Nurse: Ma'am, you're here for surgery.

RFH: This is America. You've heard of the Constitution, haven't you? You're holding me against my will!

TPC: (sotto voce) WTF?

Same arm, reverse side

Nurse: Ma'am, we're not holding you against your will. Your doctor will be here in the morning, I suggest you talk to him about it.

RFH: But I'm not supposed to be here. We finished the demonstration, and I have to go home now. My dog, she'll be all alone, and I've never left her alone in my life!

Exeunt Nurse looking annoyed

TPC: (Feeling sorry for the lady despite her obvious lack of anchor to reality) Ma'am, it's in the wee hours and your doctor will be here in a couple of hours more. Why not just take a nap now? I'm sure your dog will be fine, you were talking to your neighbour earlier, and you said she was looking after the dog for you.

RFH: I'm calling the police. I'm being held against my will. This is America. You can't do that to people here. (Calls 911)

Enter young policeman, looking confused

COP: Ma'am, are you Dotty?

TPC: (sotto voce) Hell, yeah, she is.

RFH: Officer, they're holding me here against my will, I've told them and told them that I need to go home, but they JUST won't LET me GO, Office, you've GOT to DO something ... gabble, gabble

COP: Ma'am, this piece of paper here? You signed it, Ma'am, that's your signature there? It says you're having surgery at this hospital. So, no, Ma'am, they're not holding you against your will. You're having surgery tomorrow and then they're going to release you. Do you understand me, Ma'am? Is there someone you'd like to call who could come down and help us explain this to you?

RFH: Gabble, gabble (punctuated with breathy, hand-wringing cries about the firemen, the demo, the blood samples, and other completely incomprehensible blatheramskate).

TPC: Oh, Deity, fucking kill me now. (very sotto voce. Not in front of the cops, and all that.)

Several more hours pass in a stupor, with TPC regaining consciousness at intervals.

Enter a short, brown, efficient-looking man.

MAN: Ma'am, are you Dotty?

TPC: (sotto not so voce) Holy Mother of God, can a person get a little shuteye in these parts or what? Excuse me? Can I help you? (This last addressed to the man)

MAN: No problem, I'm just here to take a blood sample. Dotty, could you roll that sleeve up for me?

RFH: (Complies while engaging man in a lengthy conversation about her youth in Argentina, spec. Buenos Aires, her education at a French convent, her subsequent marriage and move to the US, her membership in the local Democratic Party, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseam, winding up with her own declamation about what an interesting person she is)

TPC: Oh, Christ. (semi-audible groan, combined of parts physical pain and parts guilt about being not-very-nice to an apparently impaired and elderly woman - also parts sheer crabbiness from meds and lack of sleep)

Man leaves, silence reigns, TPC passes out, only to be wakened by TWO screaming nurses.

NursieChorus: WHAT have you DONE? Oh, my GAWD! What has she done? What happened to you? Who did this to you?

TPC: (Abandoning all further thoughts of sleep) WTFFFFFF??

NursieChorus: Oh, my GAWD. Can you believe this? What are you doing, Dotty? Who did this to you?

TPC: (Wonders WTF is going on but daren't ask. Not in the mood for further gabbling details of woman found dead in her bed or whatever. Hears, with relief, the dulcet tones of ...

RFH: Well, a man came up here, he said he was from the fire department, and he wanted a blood sample, so I gave him some blood ...

NursieChorus: WTF??? Dotty, there are no firemen here.

Apparently, the man was actually a hospital employee who had been sent to get a blood sample, which Dotty generously provided. While in the same generous mood, she apparently decided to provide a poop sample, too. Apparently, the man then fled. Dotty, discovering that her fit of generosity had, so to speak, spilled over onto her dressing gown, took it off. We leave the audience to imagine the result.

Dotty spent the next X hours until surgery railing at me for failing to get her wheelchair, find her dressing gown, find her coat, dress her, and take her upstairs for surgery. She punctuated the raillery with a hearty breakfast, complaining all the while that she was STARVED, yes, simply STARVED, and a person couldn't get a thing to eat around here.

Over the next two days, she somehow managed to persuade a really sweet gay man to wash her disgusting pooped-on dressing gown and insisted to anyone who would listen that I had stolen her lamb-lined floor-length leather coat. In between, she hissed the following repeatedly through the curtains that separated us.

RFH: You think this is funny, don't you?

TPC: Oh, jeez, wouldja leave me the fuck alone?

RFH: I can hear you laughing over there. You took my coat, it cost a thousand dollars! And my Democratic Party keychain, and my watch, and my bracelet. You think I don't know. But I do. I know you took them. And now the two of you are standing there behind the curtain, laughing and staring at me.

TPC: Goddammit, where's my book?

RFH: Why won't you take me upstairs? I need to go to physical therapy!

TPC: Look, I've told you before, I'm a patient just like you. I've just had surgery. I can't walk. I sure as hell can't take you anywhere. Now please, leave me alone!

RFH: You're just angry because I'm using logic on you.

TPC: WTF x n???

RFH: Why don't you just come over here and help me get upstairs?

TPC: Lady? I can't walk. But if I could? I wouldn't be pushing you upstairs, I'd push you through that fucking window. It's a three-storey drop. Now leave me the fuck alone, goddammit.

I don't think I slept more than two hours at a stretch the entire time I was saddled with Dotty. And how glad I was to get out of there, you'll never know. I was definitely ready to kill someone by the time I made good my escape.

Poor thing, it really wasn't her fault, though. Her surgeon had her on a pretty toxic combination of drugs and a psychiatrist or geriatrician should have been monitoring her. I think she was suffering temporary psychosis. Ah, whatever, lookit, I'm still feeling sorry for the bitch, and after she deprived me of sleep during the worst hours of my life, at that.

Part I of the saga here.

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Tales of the Horrorspital

Today I'm in a lot of pain, so why not tell how I got here, I asks meself. Why not indeed. Those of you who have been following my saga know that I ended up needing a knee replacement after I injured my knee. The fall broke my heart as well, as the year before the damage, I had hiked 20+ miles in one day and was planning to do a few more of those. In fact, I had my eye set on a lengthy nature trail which spans several counties and would have been a three-day hike altogether.

From thrice-weekly gym workouts, thrice-weekly workouts on the treadmill, and one or more lengthy hikes every weekend, I went to sitting in my bed, walking with a hideous limp, using crutches, canes, and finally just plain grumping in a seated or lying position. By the time I got the doctors and insurance jerks to agree that the knee ought to be replaced, five years had passed. Five years of no hikes and no workouts. For a pretty active person, that's torture. Plus, even as the joint and its surrounding cartilage deteriorate, one gains weight from the lack of activity, weight which can't be taken off except with activity. Catch-22.

So when I finally managed to get those eejits to agree to replace the knee, I thought I was in heaven. You know that old saying, "Beware what you wish for?" I could well have done to remember that.

My surgeon is top-notch, he trains other surgeons in the techniques of knee-replacement, and teaches at a top-notch hospital in an area filled with top-notch hospitals. Many famous people would be hobbling around if not for his surgical skills. He told me he was going to put me in the hospital where he taught, and I was thrilled.

But the gods of comedy and tragedy accompanied me there to ensure I would have some useful tales to tell, some, as it were, learning experiences. No, really.

The surgery probably went fine, although I wouldn't know squat about that. All I know is, he used the latest technique leaving a scar barely four inches long, and less than a month afterwards, it's hard to see the neat scar. This is impressive, because I tend to keloids and have impressive twisty ropes of scars from things as minor as blisters, scratches, minor knife injures garnered from cook-prepping, and so forth. All hail the surgeon. I did, however, notice that all the muscles around the hip socket felt agonizingly painful, as if someone had twisted the joint nine different ways. Pas de quois. It's just a leg, after all, and there's a reason we have a spare, yes?

The fun and games began upon recovery. Begin, if you will, with the spideriest of veins, in which the good nurses had inserted various needles for the transportation of fluids, blood, saline, anesthesia, and so forth. The problem with spider veins is, they pop, or, as the nurses like to say, "blow out." What this means is, the needle pierces right through the vein causing fluid to leak out under the skin and concentrate in the tissues around the vein. Rather than, for example, going where it needs to.

Mind you, the "pain management team" of the hospital had inserted a spinal and a hip catheter to manage pain. The hip catheter is a relatively new technique and, in my personal experience, utterly useless. If they suggest it to you, suggest you will insert it in anyone who tries to use it in lieu of proper pain meds. Srsly. I'm not going through that again. The spinal, or epidural block, I guess, was fine, but when it started to wear off the full worthlessness of the hip catheter made itself, haha, felt. And felt. And felt again.

A word of caution for those about to have surgery. Horrospitals in the U.S. are utterly worthless except for approximately 72 hours during and after surgery. Their sole purpose appears to be to provide a location for the butchery and medications that won't require major DNA samples from everyone handling them. When it comes to taking care of you after the surgery? It's preferable to have unprotected sex with a chainsaw for all the care and effort you'll get.

Now, this is not the fault of the nurses, most of whom are fine individuals who work hard to take care of way more patients than they should. It's a horrible job that I personally would never do, and wouldn't wish on an enemy. It's hard physical labour for a relatively inadequate salary that invariably ends up crippling the performer. If you're lucky you can last two decades and a little more as a nurse. If you walk away without carpal tunnel, permanent back problems, and various musculoskeletal disorders, you're a lucky soul.

So big kudos to most of the nurses.

Of course, with my luck, I wound up with Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. On the plus side, she didn't show her face till the night shift. On the minus side, she didn't show her face till the night shift. At least on the day shift, you can call other nurses, the supervisors, doctors, and senior staff are around, you can telephone (or scream loudly) for assistance, and with any luck, you have visitors who will agitate on your behalf. The night shift is called the graveyard shift, and I'm sure it's for the most sinister of reasons. Plus, Ilsa was the senior nurse, and made good use of it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My first day in recovery, I shared a room with a very sweet elderly Vietnamese lady who spoke not a single word of English. With gestures and smiles and variously-pitched grunts, we managed to make ourselves intelligible to each other, and I passed a relatively peaceful time, not even noticing that the venuous system on which I relied was busy distributing unwanted substances to unneeded areas.

When I finally noticed (thanks to climbing pain levels), I requested more pain killers. They gave me a patient-operated morphine pump. Well, screw that. The only time you operate it is when you're conscious, and the whole idea is to be conscious as little as possible, which means that you're constantly waking up in pain and pumping the thing like a bicycle tire. With scant effects.

By the time I finally got the "pain managers" to agree to something more effective, the right arm (with the recalcitrant vein) was beginning to resemble a turkey leg in size and consistency. Still being doped up, I only noticed when those fluorescent plastic ID bands they place on each wrist began cutting into the right one.

This caused so much pain and itching that the staff finally cut it off, replacing my meds with something that caused me to, mercifully, pass out. Unfortunately, I apparently passed out for over 24 hours, waking to the worst case of the junkie bugs, which is the crawly sensation your skin gets when you take too many powerful drugs. I began scratching even as they trundled my sweet little old roommate out, and by the time the nurses bothered to answer my increasingly desperate requests for something to take care of the pain and itching (yes, the pain was back, of course), had removed a dime-sized piece of skin under the other wrist.

Unbeknownst to me, the needle in the left arm was beginning to leak. Ilsa the She-Wolf was on duty by this time, and if ever you find a nurse you dislike, please hold your opinion in abeyance until after you meet Ilsa. I'd like to think you will dislike her even more. She invented the term bitch as a self-endearment. Rly.

Next installment tomorrow.

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Caturday!

From the ICHC LOLcattery

We were supposed to let Cyrrie of 922 Cats host today's Caturday post. And as you can see from the photograph below, Cyrrie the avowed foodie is just as sweet as a kitty can be. No, he's not trying to nom Buddy, just bayve him.

Cyrrie Bayves Buddy

However, as Fate would have it, a sweet little white kitty named Pearl drifted by and we got distracted. So, apologies, Cyrrie, but when you hear of Pearl's adventures, you surely will not begrudge her the Hostess o'the Day position.

This is Pearl.


Thanks to Hurricane Gustav, poor Pearl became so terrified and discombobulated that she stopped eating for quite a while. As any cat person knows, if a cat doesn't eat for more than two or three days, it becomes a candidate for liver problems (specifically, hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease). Which is why you should NEVER EVER put a cat on a diet without a vet's recommendation and supervision.

Well, Pearl, who is the most beautiful adorable little blue-eyed white shorthair, was temporarily rehomed due to Hurricane Gustav, and became so terrified that she hid under the bed and refused to eat. Naturally, she began showing symptoms of hepatic lipidosis, including yellowing of her normally pristinely (dare one say Pearly?) white ears. She's spent the past week in a feline hospital on an IV.

Her hoomin brought her back from the vet just yesterday, and she appears to have regained some appetite, which is good news. We are very, very happy for Pearl and her hoomin. If you have some kind feelings, good thoughts, beneficial karma, food vibes, or just general "be-well-furry-one" feelings running around in your personal hoomin bubble, please direct as many of them as you can spare towards little Pearl, who can use them. Let's hope she's soon back to a shining state of health.

Pearl in happier days:


Be well, Pearl! Be fluffy and furry and purry and happy and hungry and well-fed and contented and all good things that kitties deserve to be!

Gustav Proclaims Innocence

La Casa de Los Gatos' own personal Hurricane Gustav the Cat insists on DNA tests to prove his innocence. We believe him. He's hardly moved out the door for over a month now.

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2008 Elections: Finally!

We here at La Casa de Los Gatos have been pondering, verbally and otherwise, about the state of John McCain's health for a long time. Our ponderment got booted especially hard in the butt when we recently came across a photograph of the old fart looking especially ... odd:


Look at his left eye in the picture on the left. Doesn't it look like there's something wrong with it?

Well, today while tootling around the InnerTubes, we found that the Big Boys o'Blogging — John Aravosis of Americablog in particular — had noticed the same.

Note: It is not the policy of La Casa de Los Gatos to link to the mighty bloggers of Blogtopia, with the sole exception of Skippy and Jon Swift. It makes more sense to link to smaller blogs, who need the exposure, no? After all, probably less than 1 per cent of the readers of Americablog (which is a fine blog, incidentally) even know of our existence.

At any rate, John did some mighty fine work pointing out the droop in McCain's left eye and opining as how it looked different from the right. Check out the documentary evidence he posted.

Here's another, more recent photograph:



The droop is more clearly visible here. The right eyebrow is raised, but the left eyebrow is not, and the droop seems to extend all the way down the left side of the face.

Now, we've had to tend to aging parents over the past decade, and watch them suffer multiple strokes. Our first thought was Bell's palsy, a relatively trivial problem suffered by many. Symptoms include drooping of one side of the face and sometimes drooling on one side, or inability to close one eye, and watering of the eye on the affected side.

Our next thought was, he's had a minor stroke. That's a definite possibility for a man of his age. Although strokes can affect people at any stage of life, the older you get the greater your risk. John McCain is 72 years old. By the time his father and grandfather reached his age, they'd been dead for a couple of years, IIRC.

But as we wambled on through the comments at Americablog, we found that many of the commenters were thinking along the same or even more ominous lines. One physician raised the possibility that McCain is suffering from Horner's syndrome. Note that there is no cure for this disease.

The commenter pointed out that Horner's syndrome is often associated with a lung tumour known as Pancoast Tumour.

Today, fellow-blogger FoTPC sent us email, having heard on Thom Hartmann's show that McCain is apparently having odd symptoms in his left arm — twitching, clenched fist, and so on. A commenter on Americablog apparently listened to the same show.

Then there's his bizarre cognitive problems and memory problems, his sudden mood swings and abrupt changes of mind. Those things could be symptomatic of one or more strokes. Given how long he's been in the Legislature, he's always been fairly well-spoken and at least coherent, even if he does fly off the handle and call his fellow Senators foul names. He hasn't sounded so coherent lately, has he? Stumbling, multiple gaffes, not understanding or being able to repeat what people say to him.

A commenter who works with geriatric patients opined that McAncient might be suffering from sundowning syndrome; others thought it might be nerve damage due to removal of a large facial melanoma recently; and still others speculated as to whether the multiple melanomas he has suffered may have metastasized into his brain. These are all possibilities. Given his age and his medical history, they are possibilities that we must take seriously.

When is he going to release his medical records? Isn't it time we knew what kind of shape the man is in? Is President Palin closer to reality than some of us might be comfortable with?

Here's yet another photo in which the deterioration is clear.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Damn it, John, what the fuck are you hiding? No wonder he needs an expensive make-up artist.

If you think it's time he released his medical records for the American people to see, please check out this petition and sign.

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Activism: Sisters Doin' It For Themselves

and their community. Bambi Gaddist is a determined AIDS activist in her community of Columbia, in South Carolina. For the past 20 years, she's been working on the AIDS issue, running a mobile testing center. Founder of the South Carolina AIDS/HIV, Gaddist has brought free confidential HIV testing to people throughout South Carolina.

Gaddist says the face of AIDS has changed since the mid-1980s, when she helped run one of the first grass-roots AIDS awareness campaigns in Columbia, South Carolina, while pursuing her doctorate in public health.

"In the '80s, HIV was seen as a gay, white male disease," Gaddist said. "Here in South Carolina, it became an African-American disease."

In 2006, African-Americans accounted for 76 percent of the new AIDS cases diagnosed in South Carolina, and the state ranked ninth in the nation for those living with the disease, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

What a woman! She plans to keep fighting against the web of ignorance and shame that helps the spread of AIDS. Says Gaddist:

"When it's my time, I want my obituary to say that I have made a difference for someone and that I saved somebody's life."

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Taxpayer Alert: This is Ridiculous!

This story is just one of those that make you go WTF??? Are these people fucking kidding?

Here's the dealio, peoples. Remember back when a slaughterhouse in Chino got busted for processing sick "downer" cows &mdash cows so sick they couldn't even stand up &mdash into ground beef that was then sent to schools and other institutions as well as commercial outlets? Approximately 143 million pounds of ground beef was recalled for possible contamination. Some fifty million pounds of that beef had been distributed to school lunch programs. Kudos to Democratic Rep Rosa DeLauro for putting pressure on the USDA to reveal which districts were affected.

The US Department of Agriculture has billed the Westland/Hallmark Company, that was the source of the contaminated meat, $67 million for expenses associated with the recall. Replacement of the contaminated meat could cost an additional $50 million.

Here's the most important part of the article:

If the plant can't pay — which is likely — taxpayers will pick up the bill, officials said.

WHAT??? Excuse the fuck out of me? Are you people out of your fucking minds?

The government refuses to adequately fund and staff the agencies responsible for our food supply. The government then (big whoopdeedoo fucking surprise!) has to pay millions of dollars to clean up the contaminated food that results from this stupid fucking policy. Now the government wants to charge us, the contaminated victims of its incredible stupidity, to cover the cost of the mess.

Here's a suggestion, USDA: Sue Dick and George and their families &mdash they're worth multiple millions &mdash for their negligence in allowing the food supply to be contaminated in the first place. Use THAT money to pay the costs of the recall.

We need our goddamn tax dollars to pay for all the other problems this Misadministration, and its gang of thugs, have inflicted upon us.

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Health: Chinese Herbs Cure Eczema?

Auntie Beeb is reporting that a traditional Chinese herbal medicine may ease eczema symptoms, according to a study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, reported in the British Journal of Dermatology.

The herbal concoction comprises these five herbs:
Flos lonicerae (Japanese honeysuckle)
Herba menthae (peppermint)
Cortex moutan (root bark of peony tree)
Atractylodes Rhizome (underground stem of the atractylodes herb)
Cortex phellodendri (Amur cork-tree bark)

The study focused on patients with atopic eczema - the most common type of the disease which affects at least one in ten children.

The researchers found the herbal remedy reduced patients' needs for the conventional treatment of topical steroids by an average of four days a month, compared to just one day a month in the placebo group. Patients using the herbal remedy showed lower blood levels of four proteins thought to have inflammatory effects linked with eczema. This finding was confirmed in lab tests in which the pentaherbs formulation was added to blood cells in a test tube.

La Casa de Los Gatos does not believe you should rush out and buy the Chinese herbs. For one thing, you'll need to find a Chinese herbal doctor and a source that verifies weight of the active ingredients and certifies their sources free of contamination.

On the other hand, we're really hopeful for friends of ours who might suffer from this or other related problems.

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Health: Snippets

Photograph from Auntie Beeb

Gulf War veterans everywhere should thrill to hear that Auntie Beeb says there is evidence linking chronic health problems suffered by Gulf War veterans to exposure to pesticides and nerve agents, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One-third of veterans of the 1991 war experienced fatigue, muscle or joint pain, sleeping problems, rashes and breathing troubles, the article says.

A US Congress-appointed committee on Gulf War illnesses analysed more than 100 studies in the research.

It found evidence linking the problems to a particular class of chemicals.

These were an anti-nerve gas agent given to troops, pesticides used to control sand-flies, and the nerve-gas sarin that troops may have been exposed to during the demolition of a weapons depot.

Dr Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, the committee's chief scientist, has basically stated that the reason some people were affected, and not others, is due to genetic variance. We strongly believe that sooner or later U.S. health insurance companies will use genetic testing to deny health care claims to those unfortunate enough to have exposure to toxins that sicken them.

"Convergent evidence now strongly links [...] acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors to illness in Gulf War veterans," Dr Golomb told Reuters.

[...] unlike the most recent conflict in Iraq, the ground conflict during the 1991 Gulf War lasted only a few days, she added.

We're guessing that's a polite way of warning that the fit will hit the shan and there is a vast store of as-yet-undetected, undiagnosed, or unreported illnesses that will result from Dumbya McFuckwit's Excellent Adventure in murdering Iraqis and Americans alike.

En route to the Little Shop of Horrors (the dentist) today, we had the much-maligned opportunity to sit in traffic for lengthy periods, inhaling fuel exhaust. Preferring nitrous with our oral torture, we returned, somewhat addled and pained, to research just how good pollutants are for the functioning human brain, and, surprise! Auntie Beeb asserts that they are not!
According to researchers at Zuyd University in the Netherlands, humans who spent as little as an hour in a room filled with exhaust from a diesel engine came away with not just headaches, but altered brain functions as well. The findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.

Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.

The volunteers were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) and monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room.

After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex.

This effect continued after they were no longer in the room.

"We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm.

Ken Donaldson, professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh, calls the study "very interesting, and potentially important." The article also referred to a study of dogs in Mexico. Apparently, those who lived in highly-polluted Mexico City had brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients, while those who lived in much less-polluted rural areas showed a much lower rate of damage to the brain.

We would like to take this opportunity to indulge in a little baseless speculation regarding the overwhelming increase in Alzheimer's disease, as revealed by anecdotal yawp by those of our acquaintance. We note, together with Brass and Ivory, that MS, which is the central topic of that worthy (and newly-discovered) blog, also results from lesions in the brain.

If you, or anyone you know, has MS, you might consider frequenting Brass and Ivory for support, information, and the sense of spiritual well-being that comes from knowing that you are not alone, and no, it's not "all in your head." In a manner of speaking.

In the spirit of further indulgence in baseless speculation, let us also point out that Listeriosis, commonly contracted from contaminated food, may not kill you but it will give you summat in the way of lesions of the CNS (central nervous system) and brain. Listeria monocytogenes is often found in milk, which is an excellent medium for bacterial growth, and the bacterium thrives under refrigeration. It is associated with listeric mastitits in cows, which in turn is associated with administration of BGH (bovine growth hormone).

Anyone ever had a kidney stone? Any of you, that is. We haven't, and hope, by the imbibing of the product of the noble vine coupled with humongoscads of our good clean local water, to avoid any such unpleasantness. We're reliably informed by sources that the experience is sort of like popping one's first sprog, but we're not able to offer a comparison of pain.

Good news for you lot, though. Researchers at Boston University just conducted a study on the possibility of using Oxalobacter formigenes, a naturally occurring bacterium, as a "probiotic" treatment for kidney stones. Results are available in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

It is not always clear what causes kidney stones, although they tend to be more of a problem in hot, dry places. In some people, they form naturally and recur at every opportunity.

They range in size from a grain of sand to a pearl. They can be smooth or jagged, and are usually yellow or brown. They can block the urinary tract, cause infection or severe pain, and even lead to kidney failure, sometimes even before the stone can be identified. They will afflict between five and fifteen per cent of the population, but seem to target people aged 20 to 40.

Up to 80% of kidney stones are predominantly composed of a compound called calcium oxalate. O. formigenes breaks down oxalate in the intestinal tract.

Don't celebrate just yet. According to a urologist interviewed for the article, clinical trials of a probiotic are still a ways off.

Meanwhile, Raw Story warns us that one in four teenage girls has an STD (sexually-transmitted disease). And the way the mainstream media has picked up on this story makes you wonder how much teenage cooter these people are indulging in; no wonder the American public has no idea how many have died in Iraq. The media's busy telling them all about teenage pussy, instead. Pertinent excerpts:

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

Media peeps, the interest in this article wouldn't have anything to do with the drug giant Merck developing a handy-dandy little vaccine named Gardasil, would it? Being as how they're practically trying to force it up the snatch of every pre-teen child, and all?

Fortunately, we have no children, so we don't have to make this judgment call, but it must be tough. To the best of our knowledge so far, the effectiveness of Gardasil has been studied in a mere 20,000 women between 16 and 26 years of age, with follow-up lasting between 2 and 4 years. It does not protect against all types of HPV, of which there are over 100; Gardasil protects against four. It does not protect recipients who might already have been exposed to any of the four types of HPV against which it is effective (in other words, it is not a treatment). It has not been tested in the age group (11-12 years) for which it is being recommended. Two to four years is a very short follow-up for any vaccine, let alone a recombinant-DNA type vaccine.

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) points out, among other things, that "At least 15 oncogenic HPV types have been identified, so targeting only 2 types may not have had a great effect on overall rates of preinvasive lesions." Which is a more scholarly way of saying that it only protects against two types of HPV that can cause cancer, and there are 15 such types. Moreover, the number of women who actually get cervical cancer from these particular types of HPV virus appears to be small, and it is not clear how effective the vaccine is against viruses that cause the type of lesion that leads to invasive cancers.

Please read the NEJM article, if you can. If you have a preadolescent daughter, do the research. The day has yet to dawn when Big Pharma aggressively pushed a drug whose sole value lay in its lifesaving properties.

We, meanwhile, will amuse ourselves with wondering why it is that no one is bothering to study the incidence of STDs in teen boys. After all, those sexually active little girls had to get their STDs on with someone, and let's hope it was a teen boy and not some repulsive aged, flabby, haggard old fart.

Meanwhile, researchers over at the Medical University of South Carolina are telling us that adding a glass of wine to your daily sup has shown a quick heart-protecting effect. We could've told them that, but we're just as happy for them to be backing this up with some hard, non-anecdotal evidence.

Regrettably, although your daily sip will reduce what the researchers euphemistically term "cardiac events" while improving your HDL cholesterol levels, they added a sentence in the article that makes us long for another glass of wine to deaden its effect:

There was no difference in deaths over the four-year follow up.

Apparently, if yer gonna kack, yer gonna kack. But you might want to reduce your cholesterol en route. Feh. If we're gonna kack, we'd rather have a relatively swift "cardiac incident" send us toes up, instead of dragging around with cancer or, worse yet, Alzheimer's. Disirregardless, as they say in the better schools of this fair land, we'll do it with wine, thanks, and hopefully we'll be sozzled enough not to give a good shit when it hits.

We leave you with a truly awful joke.

Doctor: Mr. X, I have some good news and some bad news, which do you want first?
Patient: Ah, give me the bad news, Doc, I can handle it.
Doctor: Mr. X, I'm sorry, but our tests show you have cancer.
Patient: Oh. What's the good news, then?
Doctor: You have Alzheimer's.
Patient: Oh, thank GOD! I was afraid you were going to tell me I had cancer!

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Health: Stories That Make Us Go Hmmm

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

Reuters has a story up today about people contracting acute urinary tract infections from their pets. (SOURCE: Journal of Infectious Diseases, January 15, 2008.)

La Casa de Los Gatos has had multiple cats, dogs, and other beasties in and around La Casa for some 25 years now, and cannot recall anyone in this sometimes multi-peopled household having any urinary tract infections, let alone "acute" ones.

What's the matter, peeples? Are somebodies not washing their hands regularly, or something? How do you contract urinary tract infections from your pets? We're simply stumped at this.

Most times, UTIs are contracted by people who have continence problems - sitting around in a diaper full of poop will do that to ya. (You hear that Senator Vitter? Senator Vitter, affectionately referred to as Shitty Vitty by various New Orleans bloggers, is alleged to have a fetish for both prostitutes and diapers; oddly, unlike his colleague Larry Craig, Senator Vitter has never been censured. I guess GAY is worse, to Republicans than pooping yourself.)

Women often contract UTIs when they fail to wipe from front to back. Wearing very tight pants and overenthusiastic humping are other causes, believe it or not. As for men, UTI rates tend to be low till age 50, and climb thereafter.

But the pet thing? We don't get it. Most bacterial infections can be avoided by simply exercising basic cleanliness - washing one's hands after using the toilet or cleaning the catbox, for example. And you don't even need antibacterial soap or cleaning products. In fact, you should avoid antibacterial soaps and cleaners. We're trying not to imagine how E. coli bacteria got from your pet's digestive tract to your urinary tract, OK? We really don't want to know.

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Health: Yellow Fever in Paraguay

Conquerors of Yellow Fever, from the Congressional Gold Medal site

Auntie Beeb is reporting a recent outbreak of yellow fever in Paraguay &mdash the first in 34 years. Seven people have died so far.

The World Health Organization is sending two million doses of vaccine. Paraguay's own stocks have apparently been used up, as have those sent by neighbouring countries in the region. Paraguay has declared a state of national emergency.

Meanwhile, desperate Paraguayans are anxious and upset, and riot police have been called in to protect buildings from which vaccine is being distributed. Brazil, which is also experiencing an epidemic of yellow fever, in which 16 people have died so far, is one of the countries providing assistance to Paraguay.

Yellow fever, like malaria and dengue fever, is spread through mosquito bites, and out of 200,000 cases worldwide every year, an estimated 30,000 people die. Unlike malaria, yellow fever is a viral disease. It is spread by Aedes mosquitoes &mdash Aedes simpsaloni, A. africanus, and A. aegypti in Africa, the Haemagogus genus in South America, and the Sasbethes genera in France.

The disease gets its name from the outbreak of jaundice in affected patients. Because initial symptoms are so similar to those of other diseases, such as malaria and dengue, and even some forms of poisoning, yellow fever may be difficult to diagnose.

There is no cure for yellow fever, and the medical approach is to treat the symptoms. The only existing vaccine has been known to cause severe reactions in people over the age of 60, up to and including massive organ failure. The vaccine provides an approximately ten-year immunity to the disease, and thus must be re-administered periodically.

Robert Shope of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, Yale University School of Medicine, writes in Environmental Health Perspectives at length on the effects of a rise in temperature and rainfall patterns on the epidemiology of pathogenic infections. We do not have permission to reproduce his article, originally published in 1991; suffice it to say that he named yellow fever and dengue fever as the vector-borne diseases that pose the greatest threat in North America as the world warms.

Aedes mosquitoes are rapidly killed at freezing temperatures, according to the article. However, Shope goes on to say:

The northernmost winter survival of Aedes aegypti is now about 35deg. N latitude, or the latitude of Memphis, Tennessee. This distribution is predicted with global warming to move northward and encompass additional large population centers, the numbers depending on how much warming occurs. In addition, the development of mosquito larvae is faster in warm climates than cold ones, and thus with global warming, the mosquito will become a transmitting adult earlier in the season.

As early as January of this year, researchers were warning of a resurgence of dengue fever in the U.S., and the Los Angeles Times carried an article that cited Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who helped lead the government's efforts against AIDS.

In an article this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Fauci and his science adviser, Dr. David Morens, said more than 760,000 cases were reported in the Americas last year, of which some 20,000 involved the virulent form, known as dengue hemorrhagic fever. The disease [...] beginning to make its presence felt in the U.S., with cases popping up in Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Last week, top health officials warned that a "widespread appearance" in the continental U.S. is "a real possibility."

Thus far, cases of dengue fever in North America — where disease scientists thought they had conquered it 30 years ago — have tended to be scattered and affect relatively few people. But increased travel to and from South America, where a resurgence has made dengue widespread, is thought to be boosting the disease's spread northward. And some experts suspect climate change is aggravating the problem.

So, to those who scoff at the need for the U.N., or universal health care, here's your answer. Dengue fever, like yellow fever, has no cure. It too can kill. These diseases, and other like them, can be controlled with the help of vaccines and global cooperation. However, there are costs to such diseases.

Massive organ failure is not a great way to die. If you value your life, and the lives of your friends, neighbours, children, et cetera, you should support truly universal health care. Because the world is a small, round globe, and ultimately we are all interconnected through the very web of life that makes our lives possible.

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Recipe: Chicken Soup Cure

This'll fix ya!

Chicken Soup Cure

Ingredients:

1 stewing hen
2 bunches green onions
2 cups Basmati brown rice
1 small cabbage
6-10 cloves garlic
4-20 hot chilli peppers
1 thumb ginger
4 red and 4 green bell peppers
6 celery stalks
6 carrots
2 large yellow onions
Olive oil cooking spray or 2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 bunch parsley
salt to taste

Wash chicken, removing giblets (save for another use), pin feathers, excessive fat. Place in a pasta pot (the kind that comes with a removable strainer) if you have one, cover with plenty of cold water. Halve one unpeeled onion and add to the chicken, together with 2 stalks celery, the parsley stalks, or half the bunch if you just can't be bothered to separate leaves and stalks, 1 bunch of the green onions.

Peel the ginger, removing any woody bits or eyes, and slice thinly lengthwise OR hit it with the flat of your knife to bruise it. If it cracks or breaks into chunks, you have achieved success and will soon be granted the blessing of ginger. Add to the chicken together with 2 chillies. If you can take the heat and like spice, you can remove the chilli stems, otherwise leave them intact.

Bring the pot to a full, rolling boil, then turn the heat down to the barest simmer and let simmer for approximately 45 minutes or until chicken is done and vegetables are very tender.

Remove chicken and vegetables from the pot (see why a pasta pot with strainer is perfect?) and let cool.

Dice all the remaining raw vegetables, shred the cabbage, slice the green onion (separate the white and green parts)and mince the chillies. Smash the garlic cloves with the flat of your knife (this makes them easy to peel and also releases the powerful antibacterial and antifungal, allicin. You must use it soon after smashing, as allicin degrades fairly rapidly.)

Heat the oil in a skillet large enough to contain all the vegetables except the cabbage. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the onions and let cook at medium heat till golden and fragrant. Add garlic (you might want to smash it right before adding it) and white part of green onion, and stir till the garlic releases its powerful fragrance. Add the carrots, celery, bell peppers, chilli peppers, stir for a minute or two, then cover and "sweat" the vegetables for about 10-20 minutes. They should release some liquid, in which they will cook, caramelizing their natural sugars.

Scrape the skillet into the chicken stock. Remove meat from the bones, discarding fat and skin (or you could donate the skin to Mike Huckabee, I hear he likes it), discard or reuse the cooked vegetables and either save the bones for stock or discard them. Wash the rice thoroughly and add. Let the soup simmer for about 40 minutes (Basmati brown rice cooks to perfection in approximately 30 minutes), then add the shredded cabbage, stir, garnish with finely minced parsley and sliced green part of green onion, and eat!

Cook's notes:

1. The older the chicken, the tastier the soup!
2. To reduce the heat of chillies, remove the seeds before mincing.
3. You might want to reserve some of the bell peppers to garnish the soup with. Raw peppers are sweet, and if you dice them tiny, they lurk like glistening jewels within your soup, bringing a little cheer to the sickbed.
4. We specify varying quantities of garlic and chillies, recognizing that not everyone shares our obsession with these ingredients.
5. Ginger is excellent for catarrh, sore throats, and upset stomachs.
6. All the vegetables used in this soup are high in Vitamin C.
7. You might find, if you have a cold, that everything tastes a little bland. This soup should fix that. Add salt sparingly, and add a little fresh lemon juice to bring out the flavours.

Feel better!

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B.A.D. To The Bone

Healthcare Bill of Rights image from Project HealthCare

Around Blogtopia (y,Sctp!) this morning. Stopping to nibble here and there. We rediscover Brian's home on the Net (well, one of them. The fellow has many lairs).

Blogrolling appears to be down. Dammit. We spent most of the first week of February figuring out how to use the damn thing, and blogrolling everybody and their sister-in-law. We coulda just hand-hacked the HTML. Sheesh. We can't help but wonder, somewhat guiltily, if Blogroll Amnesty Day crashed Blogrolling?

All you people! We're working on adding you, it's just taking time.

Meanwhile, check out what today's Featured Blogger has to say.

Over at American Street (our new fave hangout since they gave Cosmic Christian Cosmetician Sister Nancy a guest spot), Comrade Kevin holds forth on health care policy and the likelihood of universal health care for all Americans. It's an impassioned and moving piece, and Comrade, we are pleased to have met you and even more pleased that you are saying what needs to be said.

Kevin Tongzhi, you speak for more of us than you know. Some of us are young, with chronic ongoing health problems, but the number of older people is large and growing. And anyone over forty years of age knows, a lot of health problems come with age. Cancer, for example. It's not a young person's disease, as a rule. You have to live long enough to get it. Adult-onset diabetes, stroke, heart disease, Alzheimer's, COPD, and that unavoidable scourge of even the fittest over-forty: arthritis. We won't even discuss how the joy of an athletic youth bears fruit in midlife with ACL injuries and missing cartilage, "replacement previously used" tendons, bursae at various stages of inflammation, and torn or frozen rotator cuffs. Oh, yes, and all the RSIs, most significantly carpal tunnel which is inevitable for computer users, among others.

We quote only the smallest snippet from this eminently readable article:

However, taxes will need to be raised. How much and on whom is a matter of debate. The fairest system would increase taxes directly proportional to income. Those living in poverty could not afford the increased tax load and would benefit from universal coverage the most. Not just because they are often the ones fleeced by greedy Big Pharma, but that with more money in their pockets, less bankruptcy and less poverty would result. These people would have more more at their disposal and no matter where they spend it, they would thrust more capital into the system and increase the economy. I’m not nearly naive enough to believe that people will best spend their money to benefit themselves. The money not spent on healthcare might be spent on cell phones, lottery tickets, or computer games systems but at least these people would be able to add money into the economy rather than draining it by contributing nothing at all.

I think taxation would then need to begin at a minimum income that would be adjusted for inflation periodically. Those who make more would ultimately be taxed more. That’s how we do it now to fund a variety of other social services. A Compromise that includes a Democratic tax raise in return for a promise of deregulation to appease Republicans is the best solution.

Yaknow, we'd love to see the corporations pay their fair share of the fucking tax bill. Ever since Snuffles McPigboy took power those bastards have kept their foot on our neck while siphoning off whatever squeezes out of our prone forms by way of dollars. It's time for this obscenity to stop.

Either that, or it's time to hang the lot of them from the nearest high structure.

OK, American Street is way bigger than we are, but the health care issue really burns our ass. We'll link to smaller blogs tomorrow, we swears!

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Health: Things To Look Out For

In case yesterday's post on infants and phthalates left you insufficiently nervous, here's more. Regrettably, it appears to be mostly geared towards women, as in "women are so dumb they use all this stuff to make them more beautiful and then oops, they die!"

We all know that the issue is really "Consumers don't have a fucking clue what's in all the crap that advertising tells them they must buy because their government wants them to spend money to keep the economy afloat, but not be protected from any possible adverse effects that might cut into manufacturers' profits, so they use it on themselves and their families and oops, they die!"

You think we're kidding? No, my friends, we're not kidding. Here, we give you an example in young, athletic Arielle Newman who died because she used an OTC pain-relieving gel on her sore muscles. Either she was peculiarly susceptible to absorbing the gel, or she used very large amounts. Or, like many athletes who might suffer from stiffness and soreness, she used both the gel and aspirin as pain relief. The moral of this story is, that shit will kill ya.

What about the non-athletes? What are they using that might kill them, and for what? Well, apparently, lots of young women opt for laser hair-removal treatments to make their legs and pits look hairless and "pretty." Jeez, people, talk about neonatophilia. Real adult humans have hair all over their bodies and especially in their armpits and crotches. And if you want to get rid of it, try a razor instead of something that could kill you. Is it worth dying just to get laid?

At any rate, ABC tells us that many laser treatment providers give clients a gel that contains both lidocaine and tetracaine, and numbs the areas to be worked on.

Unfortunately, lidocaine and tetracaine, alone or in combination, can cause death in some susceptible people. Because people have different absorption rates, and the product they're using is not reviewed by any agency, because human error exists, and there have not been long-term safety studies done on many of these compounds, users who fail to educate themselves on the issues might just kack from using this stuff.

One of the women in this report, Shiri Berg, put a 10-10 solution (ten per cent hydrocaine, ten per cent lidocaine) on her legs, then wrapped them in cellophane to speed the absorption. Who told her to do this? You read something like this and just go WTF? She puts the stuff on without knowing anything about it, wraps her legs to speed the absorption process, then gets in a car and drives to the spa, and surprise! She dies!

Her family's attorney is now complaining that she received no education on the product. We bet he votes Republican and would be simply scandalized at the thought of losing his tax breaks so the FDA and other regulatory agencies can be beefed up to exercise proper oversight. This is where the "cut the taxes of the very rich and slash all public programs to the bone" policies of the Republican Party and the Bush junta have left us.

Nobody's paying attention to what's in our food, our water, our medicines, our soil, our air, and our bodies. There are a few dedicated nonprofit groups out there, but they are hamstrung by tiny budgets and overworked. We pay taxes in order to create and protect our entire community - in this case the community called a "nation."

Not to give the obscenely wealthy even more wealth. Not to pay for spoiled fratboys to kill men, women, and children. Not so that manufacturers can make huge profits by poisoning and killing people.

Other things that can happen to people who do not insist on better and greater scrutiny of commercial products, or fail to educate themselves thoroughly (which, let's face it, ain't much of a substitute if you don't know a lot about chemistry, biology, medicine, law, and deity knows what else):

• Chemical face peels can leave you burned and disfigured.
  
  
• Aspirin can interact with any pain-relieving externally applied OTC medication that contains salicylic acid.
  
  
• Blood-thinning medications such as Coumadin or Plavix can interact with these medications and natural healants.
  
  
• Ginger has blood-thinning properties.
  
  If you're taking other blood-thinning medications or being evaluated for heart health, let your doctor know if your diet is high in ginger. As an example, ThePoliticalCat consumes ginger tea daily. This is important for the doctor to know.
  
  
• Do not use OTC analgesics on children without a doctor's prescription and supervision.
  
  If they're in pain from athletic injuries, they need to rest and heal, not be medicated and keep going so they can do greater damage to their bodies.
  
  
• If you're using any OTC topical analgesic to deal with vaginal itching, and the itching persists, do not apply more analgesic.
  
  Instead, go to a doctor and find out why you have the problem.
  
  
• When using topical analgesics, always use the smallest possible amount that does the job.
  
  Never use more than recommended. Never try to increase the effect by using bandages or other coverings over the affected area. Apply to the smallest possible area.
  
  
• Do not use hydrocortisone or other corticosteroids except as prescribed by a doctor and under medical supervision.
  
  We are reliably informed that some very stupid people use hemorrhoid cream to remove the bags under their eyes. Listen people, medication that is formulated for your arsehole is not necessarily suitable for your eyes. If you don't want bags under your eyes, quit hitting the bottle, put down the fucking cigarettes, cut out the salt, and ice your eye tissue till it shrinks. Here's a list of the possible side effects of corticosteroids.
  
  
• Do not use creams containing estrogen or progesterone without first having your hormone levels tested.
  
  If you think you need them to counter menopausal side-effects and your doctor's being a jerk about it, find a different doctor, talk to experts in women's health issues (they do exist) and research the subject thoroughly before slathering on the stuff.
  
  
• Lightening "age spots" with hydroquinone is not for everybody.
  
  Especially, it appears, for darker-skinned women, who can end up with darker skin instead, or, worse yet, with cancer.
  
  
• Retin-A or glycolic acid, which removes the top layer of your skin, might reduce your wrinkles but it's also going to leave your skin more vulnerable to injury.
  
  So don't do anything that stresses your skin (like using another exfoliant, or a chemical peel, or waxing your eyebrows, or even lying around on the beach in the sun) shortly after you've used these substances. Put on extra SPF sunscreen, wear a hat, and fer chrisake, stay away from cigarettes.
  
  
• If you're using henna, whether for temporary tattoos or to colour your hair or make nice patterns on your skin, always test it first.
  
  If you're one of the X number of people who are allergic to the stuff, you're going to look utterly gorgeous with your eyes swelled shut and your whole face, scalp, or other skin red, cracked, shiny, itchy and oozing.
  
  
• If your kid has a cold or cough, do not give them medications, OTC or prescription.
  
  Such medications send thousands of little children to the ER every year. The unlucky ones die. If they're under 6 years of age, the FDA recommends that you not give them any OTC meds. If they're between 6 and 11 years old, be very careful. Yeah, symptoms suck, but death sucks worse. Antibiotics don't work either. Just put the kid to bed, administer lots of fluids (chicken soup, orange juice, water - not soda), keep the kid wrapped up and warm, and get your tubes tied ASAP so you don't have to do it with a second or third kid.
  
  
• Don't use antibacterial soaps.
  
  Most of the liquid or gel soaps on the market and about a third of bar soaps are supposedly antibacterial. How does that help us resist illness? It doesn't. Most of the bugs that will knock you and your family out are viral. Antibacterial soaps don't do squat for those. Moreover, a common chemical in antibacterial personal care products, triclosan, is now implicated, ScienceDaily tells us, as an endocrine disruptor, causing a variety of problems, including cancer, reproductive failure and developmental anomalies, according to animal studies.

Finally, consider this enlightening quote:

A study has shown that some women use more than 20 different beauty products a day [...].

This reliance of this ‘cocktail’ of cosmetics to enhance beauty means that 4lb 6oz of potentially dangerous chemicals is absorbed into the body through the skin.

The Environmental Working Group provides a Cosmetic Safety Database that you can use to find out whether what you're putting on your skin is safe.

Remember, sometimes less is more. Many thanks to Sister GTG, Regular Reader and Terrorist Nun, for the info on triclosan.

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