Today’s email is a hodge podge of things.
For one thing it is hard for me to believe I have been writing these emails now for a whole year. Right on time for this anniversary, I received a very sweet card today from one of my patients telling me that my emails have been very helpful in getting her through this pandemic while feeling informed and reassured. I was literally touched to tears by her card. That gives me the fuel to keep writing them, so thank you so very much. I want you to know that it means a lot.
I have been lucky not to lose any patients so far but we cannot quit while we are ahead. At the same time none of us are untouched by this catastrophe.
5 and a quarter million people dead, a number so big it is hard to mentally grapple with it. So big, there is nowhere for us to lay our unspeakable sorrow.
On Friday a patient came in (at my urging) for a blood pressure check. I hadn’t seen her for a while. On checking her blood pressure it was totally out of control and I asked her why. I thought she was going to tell me that she ran out of her medicine “I buried my son 2 days ago from Covid” was the answer.
I tell this story so people don’t get spring fever and get crazy. It will be déjà vu all over again. The threat is still with us. The only good news is that now we have a vaccine that can help us get on top of the pandemic but the pandemic is going to be with us for a long time. We can’t let up now.
Amidst all the Covid drama do not forget how fragile life is and was, even without the pandemic.
I had two patients diagnosed with cancer last week, confirming the need to continue getting your full physical and routine health check up, even if you feel fine.
One patient is in the hospital right now battling a very rare form of cancer. Because she came in December for her routine complete physical, I was able to reassure the oncologist how aggressive this new condition is and show that it only started after that time. I provided them with baseline numbers showing there was no sign of it in December. Please take note: you don’t just get a physical to “find something wrong” you also get it to establish what your current state of health is, so you have a baseline for the future.
I also want to continue giving you information that you can use and FYI‘s that are related to what’s going on now. So here are a few tidbits.
FYI:
A study from the UK shows that you should delay any surgery by at least 7 weeks after a COVID-19 diagnosis.
WARNING: People have tested positive after one and 2 shots of the Covid vaccine.
If two is good are three better? No, An elderly man in Hamilton, Ohio, went into shock after accidentally receiving two coronavirus vaccinations for the second dose on the same day at a nursing home.
New pills to treat patients with COVID-19 are currently in mid stage clinical trials and, if successful, could be ready by the end of the year. These medicines would do for Covid what Tamiflu (Ostemavir) does for the flu.
And now to go completely off topic! 2 things I thought some of my patients might find interesting.
According to Medscape: “There is a growing body of evidence that smartphone addiction has a deleterious impact on sleep,” wrote the researchers. This study was published online March 2 in Frontiers of Psychiatry: Smartphone “addiction” may explain poor sleep quality in a significant proportion of young adults, new research suggests. Investigators found that almost 40% of adults aged 18-30 years who self-reported excessive smartphone use also reported poor sleep.
And last of all:
The University of Virginia in Charlottesville put out a study that shows that the right colon appears to age faster in Black people than in White people, perhaps explaining the higher prevalence of right-side colon cancer among Black Americans, according to results from a biopsy study. Stay tuned…
