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  • Thank God for Bluetooth

    I’m in the car right now. Dad’s driving and we’re speeding up 84 to Boston, and I’m bored. At this point I’m just ready for this to all be over and done with. So I figured I’d see if I could get my computer set up to use my cell phone for connectivity and it’s working just dandy. Pretty damn slick.

    So the next step in all of this lung stuff is to get to the ER at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (where I’ll be having the surgery and recovering). Once there they’ll take some blood, stick an IV in me and we wait for the lung to be ready. Beyond that we’ll see. My guess is I’ll be fully offline for at least the first few days. Though I’m sure they’ll have me up and shuffling along at least a little even by tomorrow.

    As far as visitors I don’t think I get to have any right at first. My immune system will be fairly suppressed at first and they want to eliminate any chance of infection. Check back here for more details.

    I still can’t believe it has only been a week since I was last called. And they called during the day! That was the last thing I expected!

  • What is it about Wednesdays

    Hopefully this one won’t be a false alarm. I just got a call to go to the emergency room for a lung. I’ll try and do an update from the road. Wish me luck!

  • On Breathing

    I’ve been meaning to do a lung update for ages. Since everyone keeps asking how things are going. For those of you just joining us, I have something called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has a pretty decent web site on it if you want more details. But in general it means this:

    Pulmonary Fibrosis involves scarring of the lung. Gradually, the air sacs of the lungs become replaced by fibrotic tissue. When the scar forms, the tissue becomes thicker causing an irreversible loss of the tissue’s ability to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream.

    I’m not sure how I got it or even when exactly I started feeling the effects of it. In hindsight it was quite a bit before I saw a doctor about it. To put it bluntly, it sucks. I’m the kind of person who used to walk everywhere, go out dancing till the wee hours of the morning, and just be active all the time. These days I take things much more slowly.

    I’ve tried various treatments and none of them seem to have done much, except maybe stabilize my condition. I haven’t gotten any better or worse in a few years. So, the current step is waiting for a new lung. So, not much has changed. I’m definitely towards the ‘top of the list’, but that is all due to change when some new regulations go into effect that will make them order the list by ‘need’ in another month. Bah.

    So I’m now opening this up for any questions you may have about it all. Ask away, I’ll do my best to answer.

  • It Always Comes In The Middle of the Night (pt. 2)

    Well, the one thing they were waiting to hear back on came back with a result that made the lung not a good one. So no late night trips for Gregory tonight. Of course after that I’m not going to be able to sleep at all the rest of the night. I’m already feeling myself start to come down off that little adrenalin rush I got.

    I’ve been meaning to post a bit about how things have been going with this for a while, but just haven’t had a chance. I guess I should do that later today.

  • It Always Comes In The Middle Of The Night

    Well, it’s around 2:20 am and my phone just rang. It was the doctor at the transplant clinic and she was calling to say that they had a potential lung for me. They had one thing they were waiting to hear on, but if that was okay it was a go. They wanted me to start getting ready to come up to the hospital.

    So I’m freaking out just a tiny bit now. Even if I go up tonight it still isn’t 100%, but it’s pretty damn close. I’m not sure how long this means I’ll be offline for. I would like to have access again fairly soon, but that isn’t anything definite. I’m surprisingly calm about the whole thing right now. Though we’ll see how things as I get closer to the hospital.

    I’ll try and post again as I hear more (I’m going to try and do one from the road). Otherwise it may be a week or so before you hear anything. Wish me luck!

  • Chickenpox Parties

    Uh. I really have no response to this. I saw the story and had to go listen. It’s just mindboggling.

    ‘Chickenpox Parties’ for Parents Wary of Inoculations
    Oregon is experiencing a growing phenomenon of “chickenpox parties” — events where parents wary of getting their kids inoculated against chickenpox knowingly expose them to infected children to build immunity. [via NPR News: Health & Science]

  • Get Up And Exercise

    McDonalds is starting a new ad compaign urging people to get some exercise.

    McDonald’s Says It’s Time to Exercise

    MCDONALD’S has a suggestion for Americans, who are becoming obese in alarming numbers: get some exercise.

    The company, under fire from those who say its food plays a role in the nation’s obesity problem, introduced a marketing campaign yesterday promoting physical activity as part of a balanced life. The theme: “It’s what I eat and what I do … I’m lovin’ it.”

    The campaign includes commercials that largely dispense with traditions like showing the product, the restaurants or people eating food. One spot even tells viewers, “Maybe you should spend less time with your TV.” [NYTimes]

  • More Hope For IPF Patients

    More hopeful news in the fight against IPF:

    Anticancer Drug to Fight Fatal Lung Disease,…
    Anticancer Drug to Fight Fatal Lung Disease, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis [via Blogdigger Search: Pulmonary Fibrosis]

    I’m really glad to see more coverage of IPF online and in the news. IPF is one of those conditions that so many people have never heard of, and is a pretty hellish thing to have.

  • Pulmonary Fibrosis and Interferon

    I hadn’t heard about this article until just now so thought I’d share it. My doctor did not recommend that I try this treatment as he felt that the variety of IPF I had wouldn’t be helped by it, but I know of a lot of people who were really happy with the results they had on it. So I am kind of surprised at this report. At least there seems to be hope that it will help people with mild to moderate symptoms.

    Interferon a No-Go for Pulmonary Fibrosis

    WEDNESDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDayNews) — A once hopeful treatment for pulmonary fibrosis, a fatal disease of the lungs, appears to have little or no effect on progression of the disease or on quality of life, a new study has found.

    There remains some optimism, however, that the treatment, interferon gamma-1b, might benefit patients with mild to moderate symptoms of the disease. The authors of the study, which appears in the Jan. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, are launching a new trial to test this hypothesis.

    The median survival time for patients diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis is only two to three years. The disease results in a scarring of the lungs that eventually prevents the lungs from fulfilling their primary mission of delivering oxygen to the body. The only effective treatment is lung transplantation, although many people are treated with anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive drugs, both of which have side effects… [www.medicinenet.com]

    As for me, I’m just waiting for a lung to come up for me on the transplant list and wondering why this article just popped into my aggregator now if the article is from January.

  • Two Types of Sperm

    Just the text of this clip alone is bound to give me some good search traffic.

    Japanese men’s sperm comes in 2 types
    Japanese men’s sperm concentration changes seasonally and is categorized in two types according to the season when it becomes more concentrated, research jointly conducted by two universities revealed. [via Medical News Today]