CW: Stuff about medicine, post-surgical care, and wounds. Feel free to close the tab if you need to.
This won't be easy for me to write, mostly because I'm tired, scatterbrained, and trying to put everything in some kind of order. I'm pretty stressed out and my allergies aren't helping, either. It's also been difficult to find ideas to put together right now.
Cancer is a nasty adversary. It runs you down, robs you of your strength, and tries to steal away your dignity. The overall supply of dignity in the world right now is starting to run low and …
Observant readers may have been wondering why I seemed to drop off the grid for a couple of days. Timed posts kept going up as expected, and undoubtedly other socnets seemed like they were being operated by my exocortex (which they were, for the most part). You've probably been wondering what happened.
You know what? Fuck it. I don't have the compute cycles right now to do a proper intro. I count it as fortune that I have the compute cycles just to type this right now. There's no easy or polite way to talk about it. My concentration is …
Ordinarily if something happens that causes a chunk of your body to be removed (like, say, a shark bite) there isn't a whole lot that can be done to fill it back in. Scar tissue will form over the wound and skin will eventually cover over it, but that doesn't cause lost muscle and bone to come back. It's kind of scary, when you think about it - what's lost is lost. But that may not be the caes for much longer. A research team active in the field of regenerative medicine at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the …
If you've ever been injured enough to need stitches, you know that it's no picnic. Administration of local anesthetic aside (which usually involves multiple shallow injections directly into the wound site), flesh is touchy stuff to suture back together. Get the suture too close to the edge of the wound and it might rip through and pop open again. There may not be enough usable skin far enough away from wound site to stick a needle through (such as on particularly skinny fingers or the backs of some ankles). Some parts of the body just don't take well to being …
It almost seems as if we're indoctrinated by North American culture to not enhance ourselves (the blizzards of spam to the contrary) in some way, shape, or form but still be told to do whatever we can to make sure that we get ahead. It's safe to say that we've grown up in a time when we can't remember hearing about at least one star athlete being suspended from a league because they tested positive for anabolic steroid use (be careful searching on that term, there are a couple of dodgy SEO sites in the top twenty) to build up …
After badly breaking a load-bearing part of your body it's not uncommon for an orthopedic surgeon to install a couple of after-market bits of hardware to hold the bones together while they knit. This usually takes the form of a couple of titanium alloy screws, though plates, rods, and tubes are not unknown. The downside of using something made out of metal to put things back together is that the screw holes left behind after the implants are removed require additional time to heal. Plus, the holes further compromise the structural integrity of the bone until they fill in. In …
Lyssa's home from the hospital and recovering in the next room.
Her surgery was scheduled for 1400 EST5EDT today at a surgicenter just down the street from the specialist she went to yesterday. There was a bit of a mishap on the way to the car this afternoon because our apartment complex is berift of accessibility features for the handicapped. Lyssa fell again on the sidewalk, though it seemed that the thermoplastic fitted splint took the brunt of the shock. All things considered, however, the surgery itself took a little over two hours. Grant and I spent some time with …
She woke me up around 0600 EST5EDT this morning complaining about the pain in her ankle. After we took our turns in the shower (and let me tell you, trying to maneuver in an apartment-sized bathroom on crutches is no walk in the park) I re-did the splint on her leg and helped her get dressed. Somehow she managed to get an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon shortly after 0900 EST5EDT today (she always was the social engineer of the family), and a consultation confirmed our fears: her achilles tendon is …
As I write this, Bill (my father in law) just came out of surgery to implant a defibrillator to monitor his heart. I'm told that the procedure went smoothly, and he's recovering nicely. He'll be spending about four days in the hospital while they experiment with his medication a little.
After work on Friday night, Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I packed our gear to make the trek northward back to Pittsburgh, by way of Chili's for dinner just of the Beltway (to give the bridge and tunnel crowd a chance to get home and clear the way). We packed as little …
Pain specialist Dr. Eske Aasvang of Denmark is trying a new compound in clinical pain relief trials: Capsaicin. Yes, the very same compound that makes hot peppers hot, and unwary college students who've never heard of chicken vindaloo before want to shoot themselves. Capsaicin, as it turns out, bonds tightly to the receptors of C-type nerve fibres, which trainsmit status messages to the brain that are interpreted as pain. Those receptors will fire briefly (as anyone who's ever eaten chili can attest to) but then go silent because the nerves will have exhausted their supplies of neurotransmitters. It is expected …
