Animal trainers not doctors

Okay, this is getting to be a bit too much. I'm sorry but cancer detection by animals? Well, birds too.

This all seems to be going on in the UK. First of all, pigeons are being trained to read breast cancer imaging to diagnose breast cancer. Yes you read that right. Pigeons. You know the 'rats with wings' (as I call them) that populate many cities.

"Pigeons, with training, did just as well as humans in a study testing their ability to distinguish cancerous from healthy breast tissue samples."

I am so happy to hear that we no longer need radiologists to read our mammograms for breast cancer diagnoses. Instead of 3 years of medical school and four years of a radiology residency, we can have pigeons trained for a few weeks who can spend their lives reading mammograms.

"After two weeks of training, the pigeons reached a level of 85% accuracy. Because they successfully identified cancerous tissue from images they had not seen before, the researchers ruled out rote-learning of the images as an explanation."

Talk about a birdbrain.

Next we have dogs who sniff out cancer. I have heard of this before. We have Lucy's story. She failed guide dog school so her owners thought they should try medical detection instead.

"For the next seven years, Lucy learned to sniff out bladder, kidney and prostate cancer, and was even used in a study. Over the years, she has been able to detect cancer correctly more than 95% of the time. That's better than some lab tests used to diagnose cancer.

Now, Lucy is part of one of the largest clinical trials of canine cancer detection. A British organization, Medical Detection Dogs, has eight dogs sniff out 3,000 urine samples from National Health Service patients to see whether they can discern who has cancer and who doesn't."

Is this a good use of our medical research dollars? I am not so sure. I know people claim their dogs have sniffed out their cancer or stay very close when they are sick but again I do not think a dog is good substitute for a doctor. This research may make us think we need more animal trainers instead of doctors.

You think I make this stuff up? You can read about it the pigeons and the dogs.

Prescription freakiness

I got this email on Friday:

"The following prescription(s) received in Order #"XXXXXXXXXXX on 11/19/2015 cannot be filled.

We can't fill one or more of your prescriptions because the drug was not available, and we have no approved alternative from your prescriber."

So helpful. I had no idea what this was for. Which medication, which doctor, which ailment.

So first I called the specialty mail order pharmacy (because some of my medications are 'special') and I can't look up those prescriptions on line. After dealing with the 'helpful' automated attended for far too long and two phone calls, I ended up with someone who told me it wasn't in that part of the specialty program. She tried to transfer me to the regular mail order department but I ended up in telephone limbo.

So I hung up and made call #3. The woman I spoke with put me on  hold to research it and then when she picked the call back up, somehow I got disconnected.

So I hung up and made call #4. The man I spoke with told me that they couldn't fill it because the prescription came in without a medication on it. Very weird.

Even weirder was that it came in from a nurse practitioner in the dermatology department on Thursday where I had an appointment with another NP.

The more I think about this, the freakier it is. How did a prescription get to a pharmacy for me when it wasn't for me? I can only think that this someone didn't realize that they were logged into my account on their computer when they went to enter a prescription for someone else.

This is not a good thing. I will call them tomorrow to discuss this. There is no excuse for this. I know people are busy but when it is dealing with patients and medications, they need to double check what they are doing and make sure they are looking at the correct patient.

Just think if you were in the OR and they were looking at someone else's chart?

A busy week

I have a busy week scheduled. Some how, I have four doctor appointments, plus I need to work two days, go to the gym three days, and keep packing to move. Oh, and find a new place to live.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are having our neighbors over around 9am so they can take a look at our house to see if they want to buy it. I am giving them first dibs because they are nice and I know they have been  house hunting for a while. But that means today I have to make the house look semi decent so they can actually look at it tomorrow. Then we are going to four open houses in the afternoon.

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I have doctor appointments. These are just a major time suck and I need to remember everything I want to ask them all (that means I need to start write them my questions down). And I need to get bloodwork done.

I think I am going to work Monday after my first appointment and then another day later in the week, maybe Thursday.

Oh, and did I say my back is giving me lots of pain these days? That could make me whiney.....

Its been a long ten years

I used to be a healthy person, really. Those of you who have known me for more than ten years know that. But for the rest of you I need to reassure you I was healthy at one point.

One of the big reasons we are selling our house is that we bought it when I was working full time in Boston. I needed the easy access to the city. I will never work full time again, nor will I ever work in Boston.

We bought this house in February 2005 and moved in. We got married in May and then my health went (I really do not believe that my marriage played any part in my body's decision to go to hell in a hand basket).

That August, I was home alone waiting for my husband to come home from work so we could leave for a long weekend when I started experiencing intense abdominal pain. So painful, it took me ten minutes to reach across the bed to get the phone. My husband had a new office phone which was saved in my cell phone which was far away - across the room - so I just called 911 for an ambulance.

It turned out I had fibroids and one had died off and caused a massive internal infection which put me in the hospital on IV antibiotics and ended up with a hysterectomy and home on medical leave for six weeks.

A year and a half later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer which lead to three surgeries, chemo and radiation. Then my gall bladder was removed. Then my back started hurting. And lymphedema, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.

Now I am looking toward to retirement and a healthier body. If that is possible. Could I ever be healthy again?

House selling and buying

So life is rolling along as we try to get our house ready to put on the market but we also need to find a new place to live. We have finally decided the house will go on the market Oct 16 and have two days of open houses.

We keep house hunting as well and finding houses we like but we can't put in an offer until we have our house on the market. If we do no one will accept our offer without a kick out clause (meaning they can accept other offers and ditch ours in the meantime). But we are trying to be good sellers and are house hunting because our realtors tell us to. 

Its just aggravating. However we have decided what we want in a new house. The real answers are: one floor living as much as possible, lots of storage, and a fire place and garage. Plus in our price range and near enough to my husband's job. Nothing complicated or fancy. A newer kitchen and bathrooms and no wall paper would be nice. But we can be flexible. They are all blurring together. 

In the meantime, we just pack and 'negotiate' with each other - mostly 'do you remember the house with the whatchamacallit?' The answer is always 'no, which one was that'. Maybe someday we will find one that is memorable and we can actually remember it.