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Quick Treatment Update – And Thanks

by HildegaBelton Posted on October 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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I had my first round of chemo about six hours ago, and I had no reaction at all. No nausea, no vomiting, no nothing. I ate lunch an hour afterward. Obviously this may change as things progress, but so far I seem to be tolerating the treatment regimen well. That’s good news. And my back continues to slowly get stronger and less painful.

The outpouring of prayers and good wishes has been genuinely heartening. Thank you to everyone for all the comments, tweets, and emails. They truly mean a lot to me. And to Nora and Jason from Chicago: Thanks for the flowers! They’re lovely.

On a related note, several people have asked if I need any financial help. As it happens, MoJo provides excellent health coverage (mine is through Kaiser), so I’m well covered on that front. Beyond that, as many of you know, my previous career has left me in very good financial shape. So I’m one of the lucky ones: All I have to do is worry about following my treatment plan and getting better. I have no money worries, and plenty of family and friends (and cats!) rooting for me and ready to take care of me when I need help.

That’s the latest. And here’s the best news: Depending on how things go tonight, I may be able to go home tomorrow. Hooray!

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Quick Treatment Update – And Thanks

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Friday Cancer Blogging – 24 October 2014

by tunwoelx7 Posted on October 24, 2014

Mother Jones

A few of you have probably cottoned onto the fact that people don’t usually spend a week in the hospital for a broken bone, even a backbone. So in the long tradition of releasing bad news on Friday afternoon, here’s my first-ever Friday news dump.

When I checked in to the hospital Saturday morning, the first thing they did was take a bunch of X-rays followed by a CT scan. These revealed not just a fractured L3, but a spine and pelvis dotted with lytic lesions that had badly degraded my bones. That’s why a mere cough was enough to send me to the ER. It was just the straw that broke an already-weakened camel’s back. Later tests showed that I also had lesions in my upper arm, my rib cage, and my skull—which means that my conservative friends are now correct when they call me soft-headed.

The obvious cause of widespread lytic lesions is multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells, and further tests have confirmed this. (The painful bedside procedure on Tuesday was a bone marrow biopsy. Bone marrow is where the cancerous plasma cells accumulate.)

I know from experience that a lot of people, especially those who have been through this or know a family member who’s been through this, will want to know all the details about the treatment I’m getting. I’ll put that below the fold for those who are interested. For the rest of you, here’s the short version: I’m young, I’m not displaying either anemia or kidney problems, and treatments have improved a lot over the past decade. So my short-term prognosis is pretty positive. Treatment involves two to three months of fairly mild chemotherapy, which has already started, followed by a bone marrow transplant. My oncologist thinks I have a very good chance of complete remission.

The longer-term prognosis is less positive, and depends a lot on how treatments improve over the next few years. But I figure there’s not too much point in worrying about that right now. Better to stay focused on the current regimen and see how I respond to that. Wish me well.

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Friday Cancer Blogging – 24 October 2014

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Friday Cat Blogging – 24 October 2014

by BudLionsxdip Posted on October 24, 2014

Mother Jones

We’re a little late with catblogging today, but that’s not bad under the circumstances—which partly include all those meddling doctors with their tests and pills and questions, but are actually mostly technological. For the most part, the Windows tablet and the new phone have been godsends in the hospital. The Windows tablet, running standard—and fully synced—Firefox, allows me to blog with no trouble, unlike either my iPad or Android tabs. Windows OneDrive gives me access to every picture I’ve ever taken of the cats. And the hotspot on the phone is fast and reliable, unlike the hospital WiFi system.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Photoshop installed, and probably never will since it’s now astronomically expensive and available only by subscription. Even the simplest image editing is a trial with only MS Paint to work with, so any post with a picture is sort of torturous to publish.

But I’m a professional, and nothing is too much work for my loyal readers. So here you go. That’s Hopper on the right, grooming a slightly bemused Hilbert, who joined in a few seconds later and turned both cats into blurs.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 24 October 2014

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Yet More Housekeeping

by RaymonGillen Posted on October 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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How much detail do you want about my medical woes? Well, I’m bored, so you’re going to get more.

By the time you read this, I should be sedated and ready for a something-plasty, a procedure that injects bone cement into my fractured L3 lumbar vertebra. In other words, I will become a low-grade Wolverine in one teeny-tiny part of my body. According to the doctors, the cement dries instantly and should relieve my back pain almost completely. It sounds too good to be true, and of course it’s always possible that I have some other source of back pain in addition to the compression fracture. But this should help a lot.

There is more to this story, and hopefully tomorrow will wrap everything up as all the rest of the test results come back. I’ll keep you posted.

On a related subject, I have to say that the Irvine Kaiser hospital is excellent. I have a very nice little single room with good visiting accommodations. It features all the usual annoyances of a hospital, some of which have made me grumpy, but everyone has been very nice and professional. They’ve made my stay about as nice as it could be under the circumstances.

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Yet More Housekeeping

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Housekeeping Update

by UEPLyndongorqk Posted on October 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Just a quick update. Yesterday my doctor decided to do a “little bedside test” to get a better reading on the state of my bones. It was indeed bedside, and it was indeed done with just a local anesthetic, but I guess it wasn’t a very powerful one. Hoo boy, did that hurt, and naturally I was a total baby about it. In any case, they want to keep me here for at least another day to make sure I didn’t get infected etc. Also, today I get my first monthly dose of some bone-strengthening med whose name escapes me. So it looks like it’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before I go home. It depends on how I’m doing and what the doctor gods decree. But I walked 300 feet this morning without too much trouble, so that has to be a positive sign, doesn’t it?

When will blogging recommence? I’m not sure. In the meantime, though, enjoy a bonus cat.

Originally posted here:  

Housekeeping Update

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Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids

by AlfredoParnell Posted on October 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve long been sort of interested in the ongoing research that shows the importance of building vocabulary in children. This is famously summarized as the “30 million word gap,” thanks to findings that high-income children have heard 30 million more words than low-income children by age 3. But apparently new research is modifying these findings somewhat. It turns out that quality may be more important than quantity:

A study presented on Thursday at a White House conference on “bridging the word gap” found that among 2-year-olds from low-income families, quality interactions involving words — the use of shared symbols (“Look, a dog!”); rituals (“Want a bottle after your bath?”); and conversational fluency (“Yes, that is a bus!”) — were a far better predictor of language skills at age 3 than any other factor, including the quantity of words a child heard.

….In a related finding, published in April, researchers who observed 11- and 14-month-old children in their homes found that the prevalence of one-on-one interactions and frequent use of parentese — the slow, high-pitched voice commonly used for talking to babies — were reliable predictors of language ability at age 2. The total number of words had no correlation with future ability.

In practice, talking more usually leads to talking better, so there’s probably a little less here than meets the eye. Still, it’s interesting stuff. Regardless of parental education level, it turns out that simply interacting with your newborn more frequently and more conversationally makes a big difference. So forget the baby Mozart, all you new parents. Instead, just chatter away with your kids. It’s cheaper and it works better.

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Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids

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This Poet From a Tiny Island Nation Just Shamed The World’s Leaders

by BufordWillshire Posted on September 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Presidents and diplomats aren’t the only ones calling for climate action at the United Nations. During the opening ceremony of today’s climate summit, â&#128;&#139;Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner—a 26-year-old poet from the Marshall Islands—spoke eloquently about the threat that rising seas pose to her country.

Jetnil-Kijiner warned delegates of the high price of inaction and described the current challenge as a “race to save humanity.”

“Those of us from Oceania are already experiencing it first hand,” she said. “We’ve seen waves crashing into our homes…We look at our children and wonder how they will know themselves or their culture should we lose our islands.”

“We need a radical change of course,” she added. “It means ending carbon pollution within my lifetime. It means supporting those of us most affected to prepare for unavoidable climate impacts. And it means taking responsibility for irreversible loss and damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.”

You can read more about Jetnil-Kijiner here.

Video via TckTckTck.

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This Poet From a Tiny Island Nation Just Shamed The World’s Leaders

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Should We Regulate Poop As a Drug?

by IrwinKDIDa Posted on August 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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In 2011, Mark Smith was working on a Ph.D. in microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when his friend’s cousin—we’ll call him Steve—was diagnosed with C. difficile. Known by the shorthand C. diff, it is now the most common hospital-acquired bacterial infection, and, as the name implies, it’s difficult to treat. Patients have near-constant severe diarrhea and bleeding from the bowels that can last for months, or even years. Many sufferers can’t hold a job because they’re housebound.

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Should We Regulate Poop As a Drug?

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

by EdisonWJOkpkr Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the annals of stories I’m afraid to read:

The age of cooking by smartphone is here. We test a Robo-Crock in the connected kitchen.

But I’m a professional, so I clicked the link:

For my first test, I made chili….But instead of reaching for any knobs or buttons on the front of the device, I launched an app on my phone to set temperature and time.

The machine fired up, eventually reaching a simmer. The app kept track of time and alerted me with a pop-up message when my three-hour stew was ready for mass consumption. If I had wanted to bump the temperature from High to Low or adjust the cook time, I could easily do that whether I was down the street or half a world away.

I am happy to report that the $130 Smart Crock-Pot works as billed….The chili came out great. It was at that point that the greater existential questions surrounding a Smart Crock-Pot began surfacing: When would I really need this? Is it worth the extra $50? And is it smart enough?

Indeed. Is it smart enough? I’d say no, because it still forces me to cut up all the meat and vegetables and then manually toss them in the crock pot. That doesn’t sound nearly smart enough to me. Call me back when a robot version of Wolfgang Puck is available for $130.

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

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Is ISIS a Monster of Our Allies’ Creation?

by ClementZ93 Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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On her show last night, Rachel Maddow highlighted a piece by Steve Clemons claiming that the rise of ISIS in Syria—and, more recently, in Iraq—has been largely due to financial and arms assistance from Saudi Arabia:

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the “moderate” armed opposition in the country, receives a lot of attention. But two of the most successful factions fighting Assad’s forces are Islamist extremist groups: Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)….Qatar’s military and economic largesse has made its way to Jabhat al-Nusra….But ISIS is another matter. As one senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.”

….The United States, France, and Turkey have long sought to support the weak and disorganized FSA, and to secure commitments from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to do the same….In February, the Saudi government appeared to finally be endorsing this strategy.

….The worry at the time, punctuated by a February meeting between U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and the intelligence chiefs of Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and others in the region, was that ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra had emerged as the preeminent rebel forces in Syria. The governments who took part reportedly committed to cut off ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and support the FSA instead. But while official support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia appears to have dried up, non-governmental military and financial support may still be flowing from these countries to Islamist groups.

Clemons’ piece is vaguely sourced, and Saudi Arabia has strongly denied accusations that it has supported ISIS. Nonetheless, it’s a fairly commonly held view, and it certainly demonstrates the dangers of trying to pick sides in Middle East conflicts. The US may have been doing its best to support the FSA, but that doesn’t mean our allies are doing the same. Unfortunately, there are inherent limits to just how precisely you can pinpoint aid in conflicts like this, and that means the possibility of blowback is never far away. That sure seems to have been the case here.

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Is ISIS a Monster of Our Allies’ Creation?

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