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Náthás

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My Nasal Congestion Was Nowhere So Pretty As Hers

Sometimes, from deep inside my early memories, a Hungarian word comes flying to the surface, bringing with it a whole jumble of interconnected moments from my past.

Today’s word is náthás, which was a word frequently applied to me as a child. It is pronounced like naht-hahsh, equally accented on both syllables. According to my trusty Országh Magyar-Angol Kéziszotár (translates as Handy Hungarian-English Dictionary), the word means “having a cold.” Actually, in my experience, it really means “having the symptoms of a cold, whether from an actual cold or allergy.”

In my case, it was respiratory allergies, going back to an early age. I remember all the vain attempts to unblock my nose, starting with the deceitful over-the-counter nose drops called Neo-Synephrine. It actually succeeded in unplugging the blockage for up to half a minute, immediately followed by an even more resistant blockage.

Then there was the old Hungarian remedy of filling a large pan with boiling water and mixing it with table salt. I would hold a towel over my head and bend low over the steaming salty water, breathing deeply. That didn’t work any better than the Neo-Synephrine. So much for old remedies.

Nowadays there are more effective medications and procedures. One good nasal unplugger is a sinus rinse in which salt is dissolved in distilled water and shot up each nostril using a squeeze bottle—the principle being that what goes up one nostril comes out the other, bringing with it the muck stored in the sinus cavity.

Nevertheless, I am still very much náthás, due to snorting, sneezing, and nose-blowing. That never seems to go away. I like to think of myself as a superhero in the Marvel Comic Universe, my super power being the ability to shoot great gobs of mucus at evildoers.

Discharged

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I Was Expecting Something Much More Demanding

If you’ll remember, I was hospitalized in November for two days and a night at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center for losing consciousness in the bathroom in the middle of the night—either from a lack of adrenaline (my pituitary was removed years ago) or low blood pressure. If not, you can read about it in my post entitled “I Dodge a Bullet.”

Although I had been hospitalized for roughly similar reasons three times before, this time I also had an ugly hematoma on my left forehead and a broken eleventh rib.

Apparently, this qualified me for a higher level of care than previously. Also, I am now 78 years old; and the good doctors probably thought I was a shut-in. So I had eight weeks of visits from a nurse, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and even a social worker. The last official visit was today from the physical therapist, a stunningly beautiful young woman from Ecuador.

Back when I was in high school, my mother worked at a Cleveland hospital for the terminally ill. During the summers, I volunteered in the hospital’s physical therapy department—not working with patients, but mainly inventorying and storing the materials used by the therapists. Most of the department’s patients were paraplegics and hemiplegics.

Three times before, I had benefited from physical therapists who had worked with me when I had a hip replacement in 2002 and two separate broken shoulders, one from a fall in Argentina and another (on the other shoulder) closer to home. As a result, I have always respected the profession.

The home visits from the therapist sent by UCLA were likewise helpful to me. The balls of my feet have for several years been tingling from diabetic neuropathy. The exercises the therapist had me do were relatively simple, but have mitigated the neuropathy to some extent. That’s good, because I remember one of my former physicians had the same problem and had to retire when they had to amputate his feet, which exhibited a severe case of neuropathy.

So I have now been discharged from the home visits, which have been extremely helpful in transitioning me to what is to come.

A Stiff Neck for Christmas

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Some people talk about the wonderful gifts they got for Christmas. Me, I woke up on Christmas morning with a stiff neck. For the last three days, it has constantly reminded me of its presence, especially when I am turning my neck while driving.

I probably should have been applying heat or ice packs to the neck, but for some reason I didn’t. Now i find that this has benefits mainly in the first two days of the neck pains. I guess I’ll just have to exercise my neck through the twinges and maybe take some Ibuprofen.

Most likely (I hope), the whole thing will disappear within a few days.

Now if only my Niagara of a sinus would do the same!

The Man With the Hyperactive Head

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My dentist always twits me about my chewing my teeth into oblivion. I do not think I grind my teeth at night, but she thinks I do. And there are the ruined sites of three of my long lost upper teeth. two bicuspids and a molar. She also thinks I live on a diet of jalapeño chile peppers.

In truth, there is something violent about my visage. Take my sneezes: They are so powerful that I have to be prepared to go to the bathroom after a sneezing fit. I find facial tissues to be useless, as I tend to blow them to smithereens. Like my father, I frequently rupture a capillary when I erupt. In my case, it’s usually in my left nostril.

Then there are my sinuses. Whenever there is a major change in the weather (which in L.A. means just about always), I turn into mucus man. I frequently wake Martine up with my snorting, sneezing, and nose-blowing. As she has a tendency to be insomniac, she usually requests that I transfer my drainage to the couch in the living room.

Then, too, my eyelids are constantly irritated with blepharitis. In certain times of the year, usually winter, spring, summer, and fall, my eyelids itch and generate an annoying discharge.

What’s next for me? Great gobs of earwax sticking out of my ears? Saliva that roars like a waterfall? Is my head just too damned loud?

Another Tooth Bites the Dust

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Teeth Are Not Always What They’re Cracked Up To Be

It started about a month ago. One of my upper bicuspids felt loose with several millimeters of give. I toyed with the notion of grabbing the tooth and yanking it out by main strength, but I decided to seek professional help instead. Of course, a visit to the dentist is bound to cost big bucks, so I had to take a pension distribution in preparation.

This afternoon, I finally went in to see Dr. Sakurai. She took one look at my wiggly tooth and, knowing my mouth from past experience, said she suspected the tooth was cracked. So she x-rayed it and, sure enough, there was a horizontal crack halfway down. It came out in two pieces.

Most people would just get a denture, but it seems I’ve inherited a special sensitivity to any pressure on the roof of my mouth from my father. Many times I remember him stopping in the middle of a meal, turning purple, and ejecting his dentures by force across the dinner table. (But then, of course, my parents got their dentures for free courtesy of the Peoples’ Republic of Hungary.)

The other option is super expensive: to get dental implants. Unfortunately, it would be even more expensive for me, as I would have to have an anesthesiologist handy in case I didn’t come out of the anesthetic properly. That is because, lacking a pituitary gland, my body does not produce adrenaline; and sometimes I need adrenaline to come out of the anesthetic.

Fortunately, my missing teeth are to the side, so I don’t yet have a jagged smile. Unfortunately, I may yet; as extractions frequently cause problems to the adjacent healthy teeth. So it goes.

How to Survive the ICU

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UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center

My recent stay at the Intensive care Unit (ICU) of UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center taught me some home truths about medical care in America today. If you are there because you show symptoms of one of the major diseases which could lead to death, you will likely be well cared for. I am talking about heart disease, cancer, Covid-19, preventable injury, stroke, respiratory disease, and so on.

But if your problem is of a more unusual nature, requiring a specialist to be on call that is not in the top ten leading causes of death, things can get a little dicey. The first time I showed up in an emergency room for an Addisonian Crisis was eighteen years ago in San Diego. I was admitted to the Tenet Hospital in that city and was assigned to a physician who insisted on testing me on bodily functions I no longer had. He repeatedly refused to talk to my endocrinologist in Los Angeles, Dr. Julia Sladek. Thereupon, Dr. Sladek urged me to check out of the hospital against the advice of Dr. X, who was not only incompetent, but willfully stubborn.

Even in Los Angeles, the first time I checked into the UCLA Medical Center with an Addisonian Crisis, I was kept there for several days being tested every which way by a team of cardiologists, oncologists, etc. until someone finally listened to me and called in an endocrinologist, who hailed from India. She knew at once what was happening, saw that I was over the crisis, and had me discharged from the hospital in record time.

Fortunately, that visit is now a matter of record and is consulted every time I am admitted to any UCLA hospital (there is also one in Santa Monica). I am no longer poked and prodded beyond my endurance for days while a series of well-meaning doctors who know little to nothing about panhypopituitarism (which is to say, complete lack of a pituitary gland).

In fact, I didn’t see an endocrinologist my last two visits. Thank God for those computer records!

Regaining Her Right Arm

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Today Martine Said Good-Bye to Her Rigid Cast

Today, I took Martine to her orthopedic appointment during a major rainstorm. By the time we left, Martine had replaced the punishing cast that tortured her right arm for the last six weeks with a smaller, more lightweight Ossür Formfit “Wrist Universal” manufactured in, of all places, Iceland.

That means that I am now free to leave Martine at home without worrying that she would be unable to perform some simple everyday task like tying her shoes, washing the dishes, and doing the laundry. That also means that I am no longer always on call to help her with those tasks.

Shortly after she broke her wrist late in November, I felt so stressed at having to double my household duties that I underwent an Addisonian Crisis early in December due to the fact that my body no longer produces adrenaline as I lost my pituitary gland years ago due to a tumor. As the month went on, however, I adjusted.

Fortunately, Martine now has the use of her right hand for everything but heavy lifting, at least for the next two weeks. And she could take baths again and wear regular clothes again. Because of the size of the cast on her right arm, she had to wear my shirts and jackets.

Of course, it will be some time before her right arm feels normal. It has been rigidly immobile for the last six weeks, and the fingers of her right hand are still a bit puffy from the pressure of the cast.

Middle Wigwam

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The Hanover NH Cemetery

As a student at Dartmouth College in the mid 1960s, I spent four years in the second farthest dormitory from the center of campus. Why? It was one of three new dormitories, and many of the older dormitories didn’t appeal to me for various reasons. Initially, my dorm was called Middle Wigwam; then it changed its name to McLane Hall. God knows what it’s called now, as the college erected numerous other buildings in the immediate vicinity and called another building McLane Hall. I certainly hope that the McLanes are happy with that.

There were several problems about being so far from the center, which mostly became apparent in the fierce New Hampshire winter. First of all, the central heating plant was more than a mile away. When the temperature dipped down to -30° degrees Fahrenheit (-34° Celsius), it wasn’t particularly easy to heat the building. Fortunately, I had an electric blanket for those days when the mercury sank way below comfort level. We never needed a refrigerator most of the year: windows were festooned with gallon jugs of apple cider.

Secondly, in going to and from classes and meals, I had to take a long walk on a frequently icy (and in Spring slushy) Tuck Mall past the Hanover town cemetery, which at night was a scary experience. Many of the graves dated back to the 18th century and looked ominous from dusk on.

Baker Library (As It Was Called Then) at Dartmouth

In my college years, I was frequently sick with severe frontal headaches that made going to class or the dining hall a misery. It was only after I graduated that I found the cause: a benign tumor was growing in my pituitary gland and pressing on the optic nerve. I was basically a pretty unhealthy young man who was taking long walks every day during the school year. Of course, once I got to my classes or the dining hall, I hung out in the Baker Library (now the Baker-Berry Library) or the Hopkins Center or—that’s where my habit began—the Dartmouth Bookstore.

I was fortunate to have survived my college years. All the times I showed up to the student infirmary, I was told I had migraines or hay fever or some such—pure bosh! But then, in those early years, all they had to go on were X-Rays; and the pituitary, being directly in the center of the head, did not show up well on the X-Rays of the period. MRIs and CAT Scans were all in the future.

Even so, I enjoyed most of my time at Dartmouth. It was a beautiful place, with majestic elm trees all over the place. No more! And the college’s aggressive building program has destroyed much of the campus’s charm.

Excruciating Pain

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It all started in September 1966, when I had brain surgery in Cleveland to remove a benign tumor (chromophobe adenoma) that was threatening my life. I was just coming out of a coma caused by extreme pain of the tumor pressing on my optic nerve. Unfortunately, when an ill-trained orderly was assigned to give me a catheter, my woozy brain thought that I was under physical attack, and I struggled with him. That only caused him to try all the harder, which resulted in a scarred urethra which is still with me.

Tomorrow, I visit my urologist for a procedure known as a dilation or a cystogram tray. The doctor sends a catheter with a tiny camera up my urethra all the way to the bladder. The only pain which I think is comparable is a spinal tap.

After I recovered from my brain surgery, I found I had trouble urinating. It reached a crescendo several months later, when during a film screening I was putting on at UCLA, I found I had to urinate—but nothing was coming out. A friend drove me across campus to the UCLA Hospital, where the urologist on duty was sent for, and the passage was widened.

For the next several years, into the 1970s, I had a problem with gradual shutdown of my urethra. Fortunately, in recent years, it isn’t quite so bad. However, my urologist wants me to be dilated every six months. Tomorrow at 11 AM, I go in for my semi-annual torture.

Covid Finally Gets to Me

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I fought long and hard, but Covid-19 finally caught up with me last Friday. I was super tired and couldn’t get up from bed without effort. At the same time, I had developed a wicked sore throat and a racking cough. At the time, I thought I had just developed a bad cold; so—lacking a pituitary gland—I upped my normal dose of hydrocortisone to help me fight the illness. (Without a pituitary gland, I have no adrenaline.)

On Saturday night, I got a call from a nurse friend of mine who suggested I get tested for Covid-19. Fortunately, I had sent away for free test kits, so I administered the test to myself. Sure enough, I had contracted the coronavirus.

I have no idea how I could have caught it, unless one of my vaccinated friends had it without presenting any symptoms. Or it could have just been a wild fluke, something in the air that suddenly took hold.

Fortunately, I have been vaccinated and boosted, so that by now (Tuesday), my symptoms have grown less; and I even had the energy to read again. Unfortunately, Martine caught the virus from me and has more severe symptoms. She, too, has been vaccinated and is not likely to wind up requiring medical care.

It’s a good thing that vaccines were quickly developed to fight the virus. Else both of us could easily have been at risk of a severe respiratory response.