Newest Health Blogs (955)

Mentioned in and earlier blog, it's been years since I visited a cardiologist. All my hypertension prescriptions were written by my primary care physician. I'm not feeling any anxiety, symptoms of pain or that I have heart trouble, but sometimes heart attacks come without warning. The smart thing is to be proactive and see a cardiologist.

My cardiologist started off with a heart scan using ultrasound and that test was a few weeks ago. A second test was for stress. We're all thinking it's the test where I'll be on a treadmill with oxygen tubes and electrodes running 'for my life' while some technicians are monitoring my condition.

Last week they called and told me what to expect... it's not the treadmill test, it's a PET/CT. That means I slide into a tube scanner, similar to an MRI machine/device and they scan the heart with an injection of dye for imaging contrast first. After that scan, they they inject a drug that dilates the blood vessels and re-scan. They warned me the effect would make me feel weird. That wasn't the correct word. Within a minute I began to feel like I wasn't getting enough air and my breathing increased to the point of heart pounding, extreme headache as though I was climbing stairs but my body was at rest.

I was told caffeine would help get over the symptoms so I stopped for coffee and a sandwich. The test required fasting for 12 hours before and it was a good idea to eat some food before I pass out!

Four hours later and walking around has me feeling like I did 2 months ago when I just started doing morning walks... as though I exercised on the first day.
I did some research and it appears to be a side effect that will soon pass.

Tomorrow is the followup with the cardiologist and I'm hoping the results are normal.

If smoking gave me half the energy that trying to get off them does i would never quit.

If smoking gave me half the energy that trying to get off them does i would never quit.

Over the years, I blogged about curing cancer many times. Always my thought is why is it taking so long? Answering my own question... cancer is illusive. Hundreds of different cancers that affect people differently. This requires specialized treatment.

A friend and former coworker I've known for 30 years had prostate cancer that required about 8 weeks of mild radiation treatments a few times a week. He beat it, so far. Musician Frank Zappa, wasn't so lucky. Stage 4, he died.
I lost a friend to pancreatic cancer. He received aggressive treatments knowing that only 7% beat this one.

I want to speculate a larger percent of the healthcare field is involved in cancer treatment in one way or another. That means kids going to med school studying oncology knowing their future is secure as no cure has been arrived at. Or has it?

Recent studies are showing cure rated as never seen before.

Okay... POOF! a cure for half the forms of cancer is found and it's not expensive to produce. Does that mean drug companies have cart-blanch to charge anything they want without government intervention? Follow the dream and people are being cured as 'alarming rates' I say alarming as less hospital stay, less medical staff, less in nursing homes, less need for med students getting into the field that deals with cancer.

A prediction is within a few years the entire medical industry that thrives on income from cancer treatment will be collecting unemployment, driving for Uber or loading trucks for Amazon deliveries.

Maybe that's why it's talking so long to find a cure...

Doctors have successfully cured rectal cancer in patients thanks to an experimental drug trial.

Oncologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York found that the latest tests of patients showed no evidence of cancer.

The treatment uses immunotherapy which harnesses the body’s own immune system as an ally against cancer.

Sascha Roth, the first patient in the clinical trial involving immunotherapy had undergone six months of treatment.

For the first time, the MSK clinical trial was investigating if immunotherapy alone could beat rectal cancer that had not spread to other tissues, in a subset of patients whose tumour contained a specific genetic mutation.

As the first patient to enroll in the trial, the research team was anxious that Roth’s experience might prove to be an outlier but the same remarkable result was repeated in all 14 people in the trial.

In every case, the rectal cancer disappeared after immunotherapy — without the need for the standard treatments of radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy — and cancer has not returned in any of the patients, who have been cancer-free for up to two years.

‘It’s incredibly rewarding to get these happy tears and happy emails from the patients in this study who finish treatment and realize, “Oh my God, I get to keep all my normal body functions that I feared I might lose to radiation or surgery,”‘ said Dr. Andrea Cercek, a medical oncologist working on the trial.

The patients in the study had tumours with a specific genetic makeup known as mismatch repair-deficient (MMRd) or microsatellite instability (MSI).

There are 45,000 Americans diagnosed a year with rectal cancer. Between 5% and 10% of all rectal cancer patients are thought to have MMRd tumours.

‘Immunotherapy has proven successful in treating a subset of patients with colon and rectal cancer that has metastasized, meaning spread to other tissues,’ explained Dr Luis Diaz, Jr., a co-investigator on the trial.

The clinical trial also focused on avoiding the toxicity often associated with treatment for rectal cancer as the standard treatment for rectal cancer with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy can be particularly hard on people because of the location of the tumour.

‘They can suffer life-altering bowel and bladder dysfunction, incontinence, infertility, s*xual dysfunction, and more,’ said Dr Diaz.

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I heard that once. I wonder if there might be some truth about this...something to think about.

Narcissistic personality disorder — one of several types of personality disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.

Many of the words to describe mental health issues are inaccurate and frequently confused with other terms.

This blog going to be very
long seriel one.. ....



npd...
Personality disorder, as per its actual name.

Computers have learned how to beat any human at Chess; why couldn’t a clever narc learn how to better condition him/herself?

NPD is a *character disorder* so right out of the starting gate, they have a disability. To me a cure means it's gone. No longer a problem. If one has to constantly monitor one's reactions, it's still a problem, and there's still potential to do harm. A cure would mean that potential is gone.


A person who has NPD, but then intellectually responds to an understanding of how their behavior hurts people and then for the rest of their lives, quits that hurtful behavior, can be called “cured.”

medical world...
They don't believe NPD responds to treatment, let alone can be cured.

Got 48 minutes? I suggest you watch this very moving video about twins Ladan and Laleh Bijanic conjoined at the head, who went through a pioneering surgical separation.




"Will you stay with me after separation?"
"I'll get rid of you and escape... No, I'm kidding. I'll be with you where ever you go."

A must see!!!

Do you folk think that we have a mental 'health' epidemic here on the blog lately?

I kinda have a feeling that that's prolly the case, actually. Don't know if you've sensed it. I did.

Watch out.