A self-indulgent post today

I've been doing this blog for almost a year now and one of the things I find most fun about it is checking to see who visits the blog. Don't worry, you're still anonymous, but my stats program tells me from what country people visit and the search words or phrases that are most commonly used.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I see people visiting from countries I can only dream of visiting and I have to admit that there are times when I check my map to make sure I know where the country actually is. I'm proud to say, I usually am pretty close.

Interestingly, the two most popular search strings are "broken hips in the elderly" and "spelling tricks". I can almost guarantee that at least one of those two, particularly the broken hip one, will show up once a day.

I will try to find more information on that because it is such a popular topic. I'll also address it on Help my Hurt, as it is a common source of pain and debilitation for the older people in our population.

I'm happy that people are finding this blog to be a good resource because many are return visitors - I figure if it's not a good resource, people wouldn't come back, right?

As always, I love comments and suggestions, so please don't be shy.

News for Today:
Rare skin cancer deadlier than melanoma, yet studied little
Blood test for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's may soon be available in U.S.
Drug warning linked to less help, more suicides
Medical errors cost US $8.8B, result in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths: HealthGrades study
Birth control choices expanding for women over 40
Child sleep problems linked to later behavioral difficulties
Sleep problems common in children with ADHD
Depression increases risk of Alzheimer's disease
Cavities in Children Reduced Over 60 Percent by New Experimental Chewable Mints

Dementia screening - is it time?

The article, Dementia screening in primary care: Is it time? was interesting to me. We are hearing more and more about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and the social, emotional, physical, and financial toll that the disease takes.

Some people feel that screening for dementia would catch a significant number of people who could slip through the cracks. However, currently there are no methods for across-the-board screening. In this article, it is argued that such screening could, in fact, have detrimental effects. It says, “Harms include possible stigma, loss of long term care insurance, emotional dislocation for both the individual and family, and resources’ shifting from other health problems.”

It’s a tough one. It’s a sad and frustrating situation when an elderly person does slip through the cracks when dementia develops and doesn’t receive the care he or she needs. There has to be a way to identify the people at risk without causing a whole new problem, as could be with overall screening.

News for Today:

Women happier when babies delivered by midwives: Statscan survey
Surgery allows amputees to 'feel' in missing hand
Dementia screening in primary care: Is it time?
Hospital superbugs now in nursing homes and the community
High-trauma fractures in older adults linked to osteoporosis, increased risk of another fracture
Factors identified to help predict risk of hip fracture in postmenopausal women
Another complication for gastric bypass patients
PET/CT brings new hope to patients with deadly form of breast cancer
PET imaging may improve lung cancer diagnosis
Freezing bone cancer tumors reduces pain, Mayo Clinic study shows

Wednesday's news

I love Wednesdays for news because so many stories come out on Tuesdays. There is so much to choose from. I try to pick things that are not as clinical as interesting as they may be, but what I think my readers may find applicable and interesting.

Blood test predicts onset of Alzheimer's is interesting because Alzheimer’s is such a devastating disease. Of course, detecting it doesn’t mean that there is a cure, but it is a good step in that direction. Plus, researchers are finding ways to slow down the progress of the disease, so early detection would be a great plus.

Canada approves first new HIV drug in 10 years and Study examines AIDS patients in Africa seem ironic, to me, that they show up in the same week. It’s known how difficult it is for people in so-called Third World countries to get HIV medications and now we learn (although it’s not surprising) that many don’t take them as they should. Very sad.

This story A low prevalence of H pylori in HIV-positive patients was just interesting to me.

Now, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised with this story: Severely mentally ill at high risk for cardiovascular disease. I’m thinking of it from the point of view that a psychiatric illness must be stressful on the body – that was always my amateur take on this type of thing. I believe that psychiatric illnesses have a much greater impact on the physical body than the medical community has realized.

Potentially deadly staph superbug spreading faster than ever is an important story. We hear a lot about some problems that may never affect us, but this is a biggie. We need to be more aware of this. Interestingly, this story also appeared at the same time: Simple measures can reduce spread of respiratory viruses. Handwashing is our number one defense against spreading germs and getting sick ourselves.

Sometimes, the stories hit home because of issues that I’ve gone through or had. I’ve had a few gastroscopies so this story definitely caught my eye: Patients may have sweet and effective way to prepare for upper GI endoscopy: an anesthetic lollipop. I can do a lot of things without freaking, but I just can’t tolerate upper GI endoscopies. I have a very strong gag reflex and it’s not easy for me to imagine one of those scopes going down my throat.

A few others that were interesting because of professional or personal experience were these ones: Chinese herbal medicine may help relieve painful menstrual cramps, No evidence that insoles prevent general back pain, Stretching out does not prevent soreness after exercise, Don't routinely use enemas during labor, and Don't 'break the waters' during labor without good clinical reason, concludes Cochrane Review.

Most women who have had painful menstrual cramps can definitely understand the interest in such a finding. If you don’t get a good effect from the available treatments, it really is miserable having to experience that cramping every month. The story about insoles is interesting. As a nurse, I have that age-old nurse problem, a sore back. I never thought of trying special insoles though.

Now, the stretching story really caught my eye because I’d read that before. And you know what? Even though they have the findings, I have to disagree with them. I know that if I do any type of exercise, be it on my elliptical, raking leaves, shoveling snow, or golfing, and I haven’t stretched first, my muscles hurt. However, if I stretch before (and after if I think of it), there is minimal, if any, muscle pain.

The next two stories about labour are also interesting. I thought that they didn’t do enemas to labouring mothers any more. I guess I was wrong. As for breaking the water – that one makes a lot of sense because we really should be limiting any type of medical intervention in labour and delivery unless it is really necessary, in my opinion.

And that is the news for today!

Letting our children grow up and away

As a parent, you do your best to protect your children. Of course, you don’t want anything to ever happen to them, but from time to time, accidents do happen.

I know that when my kids were small, as much as it pained me to see them scrape their knees or hurt themselves, I knew that it was all part of growing up and exploring. I see some parents telling their children not to run because they may fall, not to climb because they may slip. Yes, they may, but they have to run and climb too. Scrapes heal, bruises go away – but being constantly told you shouldn’t or can’t do something because you might get hurt, takes away from the ability to make your own choices about what you should and shouldn’t do. It’s not as if my children were accident-free. From broken bones to stitches to emergency surgery for appendicitis, we had our share of hospital visits, that I can say.

Of course, I’m not talking about letting your child pull over a pan of boiling water or sticking a fork into an electrical socket, but allowing your child to climb on a jungle gym, playing superman with a towel clothespinned to a t-shirt, or having a pillow fight with a friend are activities that can end up with an injury, or with lots of giggles.

We weren’t the type of parents who sent our children to camp. For one thing, they were way too expensive for us and another – important – thing was that our kids weren’t the type to want to go away to camp. Until 3 years ago, when my youngest son came home with a pamphlet for a camp two hours north of us; it was a sports/wilderness camp for boys 12 years old and up. It has been around for many years. I knew someone whose son had gone for a few years and had begun to work there as a leader-in-training. At first, my heart sank when my son came home all enthusiastic about going, because I thought, there is no way on earth that we can afford to send him to a sleep-away camp for two weeks. Tht is, until I found out that it only cost 375.00. That’s right. For the full two weeks. It’s a camp that gets funding from many different sources to make it and keep it affordable. It’s been around for so long that many of the campers are sons of men who went to there.

When my son came home after his first summer there (two weeks), he said to me in the car, “Mom, I did things that I never imagined myself ever doing.” I thought I was going to cry. He climbed rocks faces, jumped into rivers, kayaked, camped, and just had a wonderful, wonderful time. And it was the beginning of something wonderful for him.

After two summers of being a camper, last summer, he was invited to participate in a special week at the beginning of the session, reserved for boys who the leaders saw as being potential leaders. My son was ecstatic because becoming a leader had now become a serious goal. While he was there that week, he did even more things that he never imagined, including kayaking on rapids. What I found out later is that something went wrong on one of those trips and he could have been severely hurt, even killed, at one point. There was a miscommunication somewhere and my son went down some rapids and headed straight for a log that was across the river. Quick thinking had him flip upside down, but then the fast current made it almost impossible to tear off his kayak skirt so that he could right himself. He told me after that this was “the most scared” he had ever been.

Part of me was severely ticked that this could happen, but a bigger part of me knows that accidents happen and that we can’t wrap our kids in cotton batting and still expect them to be able to go out and challenge life head on. I am so forever grateful that he escaped unscathed and I know what could have happened. However, he could have stayed home and almost been hit by a car crossing the street too. Life is full of challenges and dangers. So, what did my husband and I do Sunday evening? We dropped off our son for yet another week of this leadership training. We know that what happened last year was an accident and that the leaders are now aware of the breakdown in communication. We know that we have to let our kids do things, to try things. And we have to hope and pray that they come out ahead at the end.

Just like when my daughter broke her arm, or my oldest son broke his elbow, my heart sank when my youngest told me of his kayaking adventure. But, as with all the other accidents the kids have had, I know that holding them back won’t keep them safe. Holding them back would only encourage, in a sneaky way, other types of risk taking. So, I let them go. I hold my breath and I wait for them to come back. And then I listen to all that they learned. And I never forget those words from my son, “Mom, I did things that I never imagined myself ever doing.” That makes it all worth it to me.

Today's News:
Health Canada approves Seasonale
India's HIV infection estimate drastically lowered
Jefferson oncologists show breast cancers to be more aggressive in African-American women
Exelon(R)Patch, the First and Only Skin Patch for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease, Receives First Worldwide Approval in US

Now, where did I put my pen this time?

When our kids were young, my husband and I would play Memory with them and they would beat us, hands down, each time. Memory is that card game where you put a deck of playing cards all face down and you take turns choosing, two at a time, until you have uncovered all the pairs.

A friend of mine told me that the kids could play it better because they had less stored in their memories and it was easier for them to store that information. I don’t know how true that is, but hey, it worked for me. :-)

Forgetting things is normal; we’ve all forgotten where we’ve put something or an activity we were supposed to do. Again, when my kids were young, I could remember just about anything. I had no need for a family calendar because I kept track of appointments for our whole family all in my head. Rarely was anything forgotten. And then, the shock came. I forgot an appointment. And then another. Time to use those calendars I kept buying. I find I can remember most of the appointments still, but every once in a while, I do still double book myself or forget something altogether.

Some people begin to fear Alzheimer’s disease is setting in if they start forgetting things. But, our brain, like the rest of our body, is aging, so it’s normal that it might not be quite as fertile as it once was. Forgetfulness is not necessarily a sign of Alzheimer’s.

Unless your memory lapses are starting to affect how you do things (not counting using a calendar and making lists!), you probably shouldn’t have to worry about memory loss and something more serious.

Studies have shown that that people who exercise their brain by reading a lot and doing mental puzzles do slow down the rate of memory loss. If you add to this staying physically active helps keep your physical body healthier, and staying socially active helps your psychological health, the key looks like it is keeping busy and living your life to its fullest.

News for today:
Thin people may be fat on the inside, doctors warn
Chemotherapy More Effective When Given Before Breast Cancer Surgery
HIV survival improves if patients stay in care