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Rick emailed me, “I’m sitting here with my leg propped up.” Last month, Rick, 68, climbed Mt. Baldy — California’s 4,000-foot-elevation peak — so his next sentence surprised me. “Broke my femur on a little walk with our dog, Mookie. She crossed in front of me, and BOOM! Now my most exciting moment is going for hyperbaric treatment.” Really? Another friend with a slow-healing radiation wound spent several sessions in the hyperbaric chamber. I’d never heard of hyperbaric treatment for a broken bone, so looked up approved uses of hyperbaric oxy...
I can't see clearly out of my right eye, I have a headache and in spite of blinking, the eye is uncomfortable. I have extreme dry eye. I went to an ophthalmologist who plugged the tear ducts into which the tears drain. Didn't help. He gave me a sample prescription of Xiidra which would have cost $600 a month if it worked. It did not. In fact, I awoke feeling as though I'd dipped my entire eyeball into sand. A second ophthalmologist prescribed prednisone drops which helped the irritation but not...
Recently I interviewed Dr. Ahmad Sajadi, at University of California, Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, a nationally recognized Alzheimer’s research center. Running out of time, here’s the question he never answered: Why be diagnosed with dementia early if there’s no cure? At 88, my friend Marilyn’s doctor suggested a cognitive assessment diagnosing the possible onset of dementia. Marilyn told him, “I don’t do that test.” As my aging father’s caregiver, I learned to agree with Marilyn. In 2001, I took my dad t...
My Grandma Tillie, born in 1893, was on to something. Her son, my dad, made fun of his mom. He laughed at her admonitions to eat fiber-filled whole grains, saying, "Tillie was always telling us to eat brown bread for our bowels." My dad was a scientist, but in the science of fiber consumption, Grandma was the authority. Harvard.com's Nancy Ferrari agrees with Grandma Tillie. She quotes Dr. Harvard Med School's Frank Hu, who says fiber diets help to prevent type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular...
We sat waiting in yet another medical exam room, my mother perched on the exam table, legs dangling. A nurse came in wheeling a device. She began circling my mom’s forearm with the blood pressure cuff. My blood pressure rose: “Her feet have to be supported and her arm should be chest high,” I said, my strained voice betraying the stress of telling a nurse her business. “That’s true with a manual cuff,” she said. “I have the IVAC automated device here.” Later, I checked with two doctors. The protocol for taking blood pressure is the same, manua...
I do not waste food and am chagrined watching my daughter’s family throw out expensive organic fruit and vegetables forgotten in the back of their refrigerator. Today, I tossed $4 worth of my favorite low fat organic yogurt because I noticed clumps of green mold floating on the surface. In spite of the mold, I would have eaten the yogurt, having carefully spooned out visible green fuzz, rinsed it the down the sink, then poured the remainder through a strainer, discarding many smaller green colonies. At the point of returning the yogurt to t...
A few years ago, my husband couldn’t roll out of bed without feeling dizzy. Our family doctor referred him to an otolaryngologist who sent him home with a motion sickness prescription. Worse than dizziness, the meds made him groggy. Still looking for relief from revolving-room syndrome and nausea, he consulted another doctor, who put him in a special chair and tipped it at an uncomfortable angle. Called the Epley maneuver, the doctor timed abrupt changes of Paul’s position from side to side. “I’m cured,” Paul said, returning home after the...
Wheelchair marathoners fly to the finish at 20 mph before this runner is half done with the race. I don’t call them athletes – I call them daredevils, who jet down hills at head-cracking speeds, sometimes dump, vault back into their chairs, and surge on with arms of steel and guts few others possess. What about typical people, confined to a chair? A friend, with severely limited use of limbs, operates a joystick, smiling radiantly while spinning to music. She breathes enthusiastically as the music guides her moves. Another friend, with cer...
