Category: Geezer health

Good things or bad things? I choose good things

You have done some extraordinary things. I don’t know what they were but you do. You have helped someone, been somewhere memorable, had an unforgettable experience, had someone sincerely thank you for something you did and the list goes on.

You have some bad memories of something you did, something that happened to you, a mistake you made that you can’t take back. That list goes on as well.

We all have those lists in our heads. It’s normal and natural.  We all sometimes find ourselves remembering the bad stuff.  But we have a choice. Keep beating ourselves up with the bad memories or start remembering the good ones?

Knowing this, I wrote down a list of as many good things in my life as I could come up with at the moment and saved it.  More importantly, I saved it in my head where I could access it whenever I wanted to.  I found that the more frequently I revisited those memories, the easier it was to recall them. I add to them from time to time.

So now, when I find that I’m getting down on myself about a bad experience I had and can’t change,  that triggers me to just start remembering the good stuff instead, starting with the best first. I try to be as vivid as possible in my memories of the good stuff.  Then a funny thing happens. I don’t care about the bad stuff anymore. It’s in the past, only exists in my memories, and really doesn’t have to exist anymore at all.  Sure the good stuff is only memories now as well but it’s a hell of a lot more pleasant to think about.

Here’s just a few of those good memories:

Flying my Cessna not just over a live volcano but through it. The sides of the volcano on both sides and behind me as I fly down and out the front of it where it blew the side out.  Yes, that really happened…a few times. I did that a long time ago and don’t recommend it…in fact, it could be illegal. I never asked.

Flying my plane alongside an erupting volcano (20 miles away) and watching the pyroclastic flow affect the river below as it washed logs from a riverside log dump. Watching the logs crashing down the river and into a bridge where traffic was backed up for miles both ways while I got to just fly back to the airport.

Having a friend tell me that his doctor told him the aspirin I gave him when he was having chest pains “saved his life.” He got a stint and is still leading an active life.

This is Brian. Next day he fell in a blizzard and broke his leg.

Riding an “Adventure” motorcycle with good friends who were riding theirs north of the Arctic Circle to Prudhoe Bay, the most northerly place one can drive in America. Then, two years later doing the same thing in Canada visiting an indigenous people’s village of Tuktoyyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean. Surviving a blizzard on the return trip that took out two of my friends (who have recovered from their injuries).  This in my mid-70’s.

Stopping and helping a stranded stranger more than once and helping them get their car started and seeing the look on their face as they asked “Who are you?”

Marrying my high school sweetheart and remembering how my mother told me I should meet this 15 year-old girl (Same age as I was) who was helping her in our restaurant. Thinking how lucky I am to still be with her as our 80 year old birthdays approach.

Having my grandchildren ask me to help them fix or do something. Loving that they live next door!!

Having good friends to call and do things with.

Hiking on beautiful mountain trails. Exploring a rustic deserted log cabin and seeing where the cougar put deep scratches into the old sturdy ladder as it climbed up on the loft perch. Stopping in mid-stride in a mountain meadow after seeing a mother bird do the broken-wing thing they do to lure me away from their babies. Discovering that there was a nest with two tiny babies under my lifted foot that I would have stepped on had their wonderful mother not done her broken-wing act.

Sailing a 50’ sailboat in the British Virgin Islands with good friends. Going to the Barcelona Olympics and many other places with them.  Cruising through the Panama Canal and meeting wonderful people on that trip who are still our friends.

Winning Four Wheeler Magazine’s “Top Truck Challenge” making my Jeep and I famous…for maybe 15 minutes.

Finally getting around to writing a few things in this blog.

There are many more, most of which are much more mundane but pleasant to recall releasing the good-feeling endorphins.

I’m sure you can write your list which may or may not be as adventurous sounding but equally pleasurable to remember.  When should you do it?  How about now?

Knee starting to hurt? Try glucosamine.

My Physician said, as he looked at the x-ray of my sore knee, “It looks like you are going to have to have a knee replacement in a few years. See this Milky looking substance floating down from your meniscus? ( knee cartilage) That is small pieces of meniscus wearing off. Sooner or later we’re going to have to do a knee replacement, otherwise, you will be bone to bone.”

This is what I take now. I get it at Costco. I was taking 2-3 of the supplied cups a day at first. Now just off and on when the knee reminds me that I should be more consistant.

“However,” he said, “we don’t know why this works but some people seem to get relief using a substance called glucosamine. You might want to try that.”

So, after doing a little research on it, I purchased some liquid glucosamine and chondroitin mixture. I had heard that the liquid compounds seem to be taken up into the body better than something in pill form.

I have been taking the stuff now for about 20 years and still have the same knee which is almost pain-free. So I am a believer. “Your results may vary.”

My theory on how this works is that the meniscus does have a mechanism for repairing itself. In the form of new cartilage cells that replace the ones that are being worn off. It has been shown that small meniscus tears do heal. Otherwise, how could something that gets this much use have much longevity? It could be, that the problem comes when the newly attaching cartilage cells, which have to be pretty soft to start with, getting knocked off by rough spots on the opposing femur joint. The same thing that was wearing out the meniscus in the first place. Your body May take the cartilage particles that glucosamine is made from and place it in between the two rubbing components, sort of like a grease or oil, to protect the new cells and give them time to set up into harder, abrasion-resistant cells.

So, expanding on the theory of loading up with as much cartilage as possible, when I have fried chicken, I tend to knaw off all the cartilage. Sounds kind of funny but, you know, if it works, why not?

If you were thinking about trying this, don’t put it off. It is said that the inner 2/3s of the meniscus does not have the blood supply to do repairs. So if you wait until you are worn down too far, it might be too late. if you do try this, don’t be in a hurry to see results. It took a month or so for me to notice the lessening of the pain I was experiencing. Probably because of the slow development of the replacement cartilage. This is all very unscientific and unproven and just my opinion based on my personal observations. But I’m still walking around on the same knees I was born with long after the doc said they were going to have to be replaced. So, if you are beginning to experience knee pain, what do you have to lose?

“I Feel Weird”…HyperParathyroidism

“I feel weird.” my 67-year-old wife, Marcy, kept saying. I asked her to describe “weird” and she would just say she didn’t know but she felt weird.  We had been visiting doctors for more than 3 years for this and she was being treated for restless leg syndrome, possible Lupus, acid reflux and host of other “guesses” the docs were making about her condition. She was taking calcium supplements due to bone loss in her hips, osteoporosis. Anti-anxiety meds, meds for her gastric reflux and more. She had three stints put in her heart due to blood flow blockage. Meanwhile, her overall general health was going downhill. She started sleeping in another room to avoid keeping me awake since she was crying nearly every night and morning from the discomfort. She no longer visited her weekly “coffee and cackles” group of girlfriends as she had for several years. She was starting to give away things of hers because she thought she was dying. And maybe she was.

At a doctor’s visit, I heard him remark “I’m not sure what is wrong but her calcium is a little high.”  I pulled out my notepad and asked him “How high?”  He said “10.6.” So I wrote that down and began researching.

I learned that having a calcium level over 10 is considered “hypercalcemia.” “Hyper,” means high and “hypo” means low.  On this website, I found a list of symptoms that seemed to match hers.  It said that if you had just some of these symptoms you most likely had the disease called hyperparathyroidism. It affects approximately one out of 80 people in their lifetime and the most likely candidates for it are post-menopausal women where the rate is about 1 out of 50.  The most common symptoms are “feeling weird” and being “bitchy.”  Well, Marcy wasn’t bitchy but seemed to have several of the other symptoms.

So we went back to the doc and I asked for a test of her parathyroid hormone level or PTH. It came in at 93. A little more about that:

The parathyroid glands are four glands usually in the neck near the thyroid gland. They were the last glands discovered in mammals and they regulate the calcium level in your blood. They are normally about the size of a grain of rice. Once in a while one or more goes berserk and grows much larger, forming a non-cancerous “adenoma” that pumps out too much PTH and raises your calcium level. It gets some of that calcium from your bones causing osteoporosis. Normally, the PTH level goes from maybe 10 or so to up to 65, depending on how much calcium you require at the time. The more calcium you require, the higher the PTH level. When all is working right and the calcium gets up there, the PTH level diminishes. A red flag is when the PTH is, say 67, and the calcium is 10 or so.

The doc said he thought possible hyperparathyroidism was a “red herring.”  I  asked him for a referral to an endocrinologist or gland specialist. When we got with that specialist he looked up the results of the PTH test he had ordered himself when we made the appointment and said it was 62 “and that was normal.”  I said “No it isn’t!  Not with a calcium level of what you see there…10.6!”  I said I think she has hyperparathyroidism. Especially with all her other symptoms. He seemed a bit flustered and said he was going to order some more tests which would take a week or so to get to and then a few more weeks for him to get back to us.  As we left I mentally fired him.

I had learned that there is a very simple 15-minute operation that takes out the berserk, but benign, adenoma through a very small incision in the neck and completely cures the disease.  So I began found a doc with good references who did that nearer to my residence in California than James Norman who does the website and practices in Florida.  His name was Emery Chen less than an hour’s drive away. (Update: Dr. Chen is now practicing in Palmdale, CA. Updated 1/9/24)

We visited his office and after only a few minutes of describing her symptoms and blood tests, he said “I think she has hyperparathyroidism. Come on in back and I’ll do an ultrasound to see.”  In about five minutes he asked me to come over and look at it. He pointed out an all-black area on the screen where there were no ultrasound echoes. He said, “See her carotid artery pulsing here and her trachea there? See the black area here? Parathyroid adenomas are very soft so don’t reflect ultrasound pulses. That’s how I know what it is.”

I’m telling you this part in detail because some docs say you can’t see parathyroid adenomas on ultrasound and say you must do what they call a Sestamibi scan or a more recently developed CT.  Both use dye contrast to identify the parathyroid glands.

We discussed with Dr Chen whether we thought we needed a Sestamibi scan. We decided we already knew enough to go ahead and schedule the surgery.

Both of us cried as the elevator came to take us down to our car. I tear up as I’m writing this and have almost every time at this point when I’ve told this story. After several years of misery, someone knew what was causing it and was going to fix it.

A week later Dr Chen walked into the waiting room where I was awaiting the results of the 15-minute surgery. He showed me a picture of the adenoma he had just taken from Marcy’s neck. It was about the size of the end of a thumb instead of the size of a grain of rice like a normal parathyroid gland.  He said “She’s cured. We tested her blood shortly after we took it out and the PTH is now at a normal level.”

Here is that photo

And cured she is!  She is back to her normal self. Back to Coffee and Cackles with her girlfriends. Back to sleeping in our room together. You can’t even see the scar from the tiny incision in her neck now. No more acid reflux, anxiety pills, feeling weird or any of the other symptoms. She will have those heart stints in forever but her heart function is great now. I’m positive that the blockage was caused by the excess calcium. Statistically, her life expectancy is now at least 5-6 years longer than it would have been with this disease.

So I urge you to listen carefully to anyone who says “I just feel weird.”  “I get kidney stones.” “I just have no energy.” “I have acid reflux.” or describes more than one of the other symptoms on this web page. Ask them if they know their calcium level. If it’s 10 or above, you may just be able to help them live a longer, happier life by referring them to a doc who knows about hyperparathyroidism and will order a PTH blood test.  Remember, one in 80 people are said to have this in there lifetime and it is one of the most under-diagnosed diseases. You probably know someone who has it.  You, they and their doc just don’t know it yet.