Synvisc

This stuff sounds like a real breakthrough. A 98 year old resident where I work has just gotten the injections. She had no cartilage left in her knees and sometimes you could hear the bones grind together--very painful. She told me that over the course of the week the liquid that was injected will form into a soft solid, acting as an artificial cartilage. It sounds very beneficial for those for whom surgery might be counterindicated due to extremely advanced age or other complicating conditions.
Every now and then, the medical community comes up with something really wonderful. Synvisc seems like it's one of those things.

Warehousing the Elderly

This was my reply to a friends' post about moving a lady to an assisted living facility. You can read his post here.

http://analytixman.blogspot.com/…dying.html

Sadly, most assisted living and long term care facilities have rooms such as you describe. While the fat cats' pockets get fatter, our elderly and disabled continue to get the shaft.

The apartments in the place where I work are not like this. But said apartments are, to be blunt, hella expensive. The apartments in the independent living area are about $3500 a month. The ones in assisted living are $6000, and the rooms in long term care are $9000. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time managing the $1100 I pay between mortgage and lot rent on my mobile home. (I know you wouldn't do this, but if anyone else feels the need to refer to me as 'trailer park trash,' so be it.)

None of the people I work with could afford an apartment or room in the place where we work.

Its scary. I have long term care insurance and a retirement plan but when I look at what this brings as compared to the cost, it ain't much. I do try to save but there's not that much if anything left over to save when the bills are paid.

I worry about what's going to happen with my father. He had a stroke four and a half years ago and is badly handicapped. My mother is his 24-7 caregiver. No home health agency will deal with him because he's so difficult to do transfers with. I pulled a muscle in my chest helping to transfer him. If something happened to my mother he'd have to go into a care facility because he needs someone with him 24-7. My brother lives in a different state and of course I work a full time job. There's no way we could swing it. And that's a sad thing to have to admit.

My parents had $300,000 in savings which sounds like a lot but its quickly being eaten up by my fathers' medical costs.

I don't know just how it can be done but something really needs to change in the way our most vulnerable populations are treated.

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Happy birthday to my brother

My younger brother was born at 4 PM on March 17, 1965. My mother had a precipitous labor with my brother. A precipitous labor is the kind where things move fast and it often isn't as painful as a normal length labor.
My mother and I were at the grocery store and she started feeling nauseous and a bit dizzy. The lady standing in front of her asked her if she was all right. We went home and as she later told me "I went to the bathroom and thought that it seemed like I was peeing forever. Then I realized what was going on."
She called my father and he came home. Not long after, maybe 20 minutes, my brother was born. I was in the room. I was four years old and to me there was nothing traumatic or awful. There was no screaming, maybe a bit of groaning, which is more typical of a precipitous labor. My brother was fine though he was three weeks early and he did have the cord wrapped around his neck. My father was able to remove it quickly and right away he started hollering.
Maybe it was because my brother and I had four years between us that there was never any great sibling rivalry. I was always very maternal towards him--until he got older and then we wrestled and climbed trees and such. Anyone who calls me a tomboy gets a can of whoop ass opened on them. My name was never Tom and I was never a boy. I was an active girl who liked playing with toy trucks as much as I liked playing with dolls. I've never been a "girly girl," it doesn't suit me. But I don't think I've ever presented as "masculine," much though society might like to apply that label to me because I don't fit the label its created for "femininity."
I have never been as much of a daredevil as my brother. He's done things such as hang gliding and sky diving, and he's a firefighter/paramedic/SWAT medic. Unfortunately he will have to have back surgery to fuse 5 discs together in his spine next month. When he was coming off the engine he had a bad fall backwards and torqued the hell out of his back.
My brother once tried to teach me to ride his dirt bike and I nearly killed both of us. He declared me a hopeless case. Which is probably a pretty accurate assessment!
My brother is a pretty busy guy. I hope that one day we might be able to be in touch a little better than we've been over the past 20 years. We're in touch, but not very often. Maybe someday he'll come into the Information Age and learn how to use that newfangled Email stuff.
Happy birthday to my brother.

Lymphoma and Multiple Sclerosis

A question on the Winzy site was postulated as to the similarities between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple sclerosis. Those interested in medical matters might find this to be worthy of thought. Personally I couldn't think of any similarities between the two. They affect different systems of the body and the mechanism of each is different. This was my answer.

A lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphocytes. A lymphocyte is a type of white blood cell. The trouble often begins in the lymph nodes. Lymphoma is often discovered because of tumors in the lymph nodes. There are actually many classifications of lymphomas rather than just two as is the common belief. Hodgkin's lymphoma was discovered by Thomas Hodgkin in 1832. There are actually 16 varieties of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. There is a great deal of information to be found on Wikipedia about the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/…i/Lymphoma

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder which destroys the myelin sheath of the nerves. The term "sclerosis" refers to the scars that are formed in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord. It eventually results in paralysis in many sufferers.

Thus, lymphoma is a type of cancer and MS is a destructive autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system. I can't think of any direct similarities between them.



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