Post Op Brain Fog, or Self Abasement?

After Thursday’s surgery, I was advised to avoid making any important or legal decisions within 24 hours of the operation.  Is this because the anesthesia can cause cognitive impairment?  Or is it because the patient can be easily manipulated?

I think both are true.  

I’m old and recently laid off, so naturally I wonder if I can get a good-paying job in my technology-dense field.  So I began to fall victim to my negative self-talk.  On the second day after the surgery, I felt hopeless and despondent about ever recovering financially or cognitively.  It’s as if my darker side began to take advantage of my vulnerable state.  Fortunately I’m climbing out of that well of despair.  And as an added boost I just came across this Psychology Today article, which should help: “Rewire Your Brain and Create a Kinder Inner Dialogue”¹.

I’ve been taking an online course, but I haven’t noticed any degradation in my thought process.  Then again, my thought process wasn’t so great to start with!

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¹https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/everyday-resilience/202504/rewire-your-brain-and-create-a-kinder-inner-dialogue

Hernia Surgery -- Finally!

I went through outpatient surgery yesterday to repair a double inguinal hernia.

I was surprised by my doctor's advice about lifting heavy objects.  I expected the weight limit to be 16 ounces (or 12 ounces as my cousin said while pretending to quaff a beer).  But no, my limit was 15 lbs!  That's a good surprise.

Another good surprise was that I didn't have any trouble lifting my legs or taking a deep breath.  I was especially concerned about the latter.

Another surprise, not so good, was that the Percocet caused hiccups.  The first episode began about 90 minutes after the first dose.  The experience was so disturbing that I decided not to take anymore.  Hiccups recurred about seven and a half hours after, waking me and keeping me awake from about 1:30 to 4:30 this morning.  Sometimes I'd have a "double hic" -- two in quick succession.  I found a paper online that said a 5mg dose of baclofen helped get rid of hiccups in a 64 year old patient.¹  I cut one of my wife's 10mg pills in half, took it, and was able to get to sleep about 20 minutes later.  So I found that to be true in my case, too.

The surgery involved a robotic laparoscopic device, and the procedure required inflating my abdomen with air.  Unfortunately, someone left the air inside!  My waist measures one inch more, but it's so firm that I walk around with my pants wide open and the belt loosened three inches.  I wear a hoodie to cover the indecency.

But aside from the bloating, I get pretty good pain control by alternating 1000mg Tylenol and 600mg Ibuprofen every 4 to 6 hours.  So I'm getting by without an opioid.

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¹https://doi.org/10.1080/15360288.2022.2157070

Only 56

“But She’s Only 56 Years Old!” exclaimed the doctor.

I had just told him that my wife’s wishes are Do Not Resuscitate, and I requested just comfort measures in the ER.  I described the many years of chronic pain that she suffered for more than a decade.

My wife is one of many civilian casualties in the war on drugs.

As activity on my wife continued (vital signs, full body CT scan, blood tests, health insurance network and benefits), I pondered the doctor’s comment.  How old should a patient be for a doctor to not respond that way?  What’s the implicit minimum age requirement for a DNR?

My guess is if a person has reached the life expectancy for his or her demographic, the request would draw little reaction.

“But she’s only 82 Years Old!”¹ would be a strange response to a DNR order, for example.  But why?  Do we think it’s a waste of time and effort to take heroic measures if she’s supposed to be dead about now anyway?  No, that’s not it.  What matters more is the likelihood of an 82 year old woman surviving the procedure.

A decision on life-saving measures could be made based on the patient’s Apparent Age, or how old a patient looks.  If a patient appears to be 10 or more years older than he or she really is, it’s likely that it indicates poor health.² So if my wife looked 66, perhaps the doctor wouldn’t have reacted with such conviction.

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¹ Life expectancy for a woman living in the USA is about 82 according to https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

² https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3019310/

Trapped at 37000ft With Germs

Last month, when a federal judge struck down the CDC’s mask mandate, some flight attendants announced to their passengers that masks had become optional. And in response, many removed their masks and cheered.

What a horror that must’ve been to any immunocompromised people who might’ve been on board these flights. Imagine boarding the airplane with the expectation that everyone’s breath-born germs would be kept to themselves. Then, suddenly, you’re exposed to an onslaught of germs spewed out from revelers. This announcement was irresponsible.

Meanwhile the COVID-19 positivity rate keeps rising.

Moon Phase and Its Effect on Sleep

The article Evidence that the Lunar Cycle Influences Human Sleep was published six years ago, but I only just became aware of it today.  Nevertheless, I suspected as much.

I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea in 2006.  But lately I feel there's more to my sleep disturbances than just cessation of breath.  Some days I wake up after a mere four hours unable to get back to sleep.  Other nights I'll sleep for six hours.

So I think it's ridiculous that health insurance companies will limit coverage for a sleep study to a single one-night study over the member's lifetime.  How can a single study capture all the variations in someone's sleep patterns?

Maybe this study and others like it will motivate The National Sleep Foundation to advocate for policy change.

How I Treat Stubborn Dandruff

When large portions of skin began lifting off my scalp, I tried the usual dandruff shampoos such as products that contain pyrithione zinc or selenium sulfide, the latter of which seemed to work marginally better.  But I wasn’t satisfied with the results, so I went to see a dermatologist.

The doctor described it vaguely as yeast and as an adult form of cradle cap and prescribed Ketoconazole 2% shampoo.  It worked amazingly well.  However, the condition also affected my eyebrows, and it was difficult to apply the shampoo there without also getting some in my eyes.  Also the condition would flare up again and again, and I’d have to treat it again and again.

I did some research into “cradle cap” and found that the itchiness I would experience was not a symptom.  I decided to forget about Ketoconazole and treat it like eczema.

I swapped shampoo for Dove Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar, which I was using on my face anyway.  And afterwards, I applied an eczema lotion such as Gold Bond Eczema Relief lotion or the equivalent store brand.  Finally (and probably most importantly) I cut back on ingesting dairy products and sugar.

This regimen works very well, although occasionally I shampoo a second time with the selenium sulfide shampoo, especially if I fail to stick to a healthy diet.

Commercial lotions for eczema are expensive.  They contain 2% colloidal oatmeal, along with a great deal of other suspicious chemicals.  As oatmeal is quite inexpensive, I wonder if I can just let some oatmeal soak in water overnight and then apply that water to my scalp to rinse out the Dove soap.  So the next step is to try the “oatmeal soak water rinse” to see if I can eliminate the lotion.

I do see a recipe for a DIY oatmeal shampoo, but that seems like too much work at this time.

A Mindfulness Diary for the Alzheimer's Patient

I’ve become increasingly concerned about the cognitive decline I’ve been experiencing. Could it be a symptom of sleep apnea or another sleep disorder? Is it related to depression? Am I getting Alzheimer's?

I decided to start tracking episodes of “mindlessness.” I thought to use a weekly planner as a medical journal. I envisioned a planner in which the user / patient could select a symptom and rate its severity. But I saw only regular planners in bookstores. So I searched online for “journal diary for alzheimers patients.” Amazingly nothing related to a downloadable diary showed up. So I decided to create my own.

I found a really nice weekly planner template written in Excel by SmartSheet. I downloaded it, saved it with LibreOffice Calc and modified it in two distinct ways.

First I improved the date calculations. Now the starting date for each week is derived from a global starting date and the sheet name. Thus a new week can be added just by copying an existing sheet to a new sheet and changing the sheet name. The original template contained only five weeks of content; it was necessary to edit the start date on each new worksheet. So adding new weeks was tedious without redesigning the date calculation.

Second, I changed the layout of the page to a two-column format and gave each day the same amount of space. The TASKS and NOTES sections have been moved to the bottom, and TASKS was repurposed into two sections: CATEGORY and SEVERITY. The content in these new sections comes from a non-calendar worksheet, called SourceLists, to allow for easy changes to the lists that appear on all weeks.

Cells A1 through A10 on SourceLists contain the ten categories of symptoms. You can change the text in them and/or blank a few out. The severities are 0 (for no problem), 9 for highest functioning, and -9 for lowest functioning. Originally, I had 0 through 9 to represent symptoms from lowest to highest. But then I realized that I’d like to record good episodes, and a positive number seemed appropriate to represent this condition.  The idea is to jot down a Severity/Category code followed by a brief note.  For example, yesterday I had "-1A: I momentarily forgot that I was driving JC home after I got gas."  The "-1A" code is short for a very slight / brief memory impairment.  Having codes like this can make it easy to use a statistics program (such as R) to chart trends and to correlate with other sets of data.

I found the original list of symptoms in the Alzheimer’s Symptom Diary. I tailored the list to my needs and limited the number to ten to fit the available space.

Here's a link to the PDF document that I'm currently using.  Let me know if you're interested in seeing the spreadsheet source document.  I'm not publishing it out of deference to SmartSheet.  Someone put a lot of effort into designing that template, and I don't wish to subvert their business model by publishing a derivative work.

Quotes from "Finding the Right Psychiatrist"

Here are some quotes from Finding the Right Psychiatrist, by Robert L. Taylor...

For mild to moderate depression -- the most common target of antidepressant medication -- they are no better than placebo (Fournier et al. 2010).

And even these meager results may be overstated.  When studies fail to show any advantage over placebo or when adverse effects prove too troublesome, no problem -- psychodrug makers simply throw out the results and start over.  There are no restrictions on how many studies can be done.  A pharmaceutical company can keep at it until approvable results turn up.  These outcomes -- no matter how difficult to come by -- can then be trumpeted as the only outcomes.  (The FDA does now require all drug studies to at least be publicly registered on a website: www.clinicaltrials.gov.)

You might reasonably ask, Why then do antidepressants remain so popular?  One major factor relates to the tremendous influence psychodrug makers exert over psychiatric publications.  In some instances these companies arrange to have supportive articles ghostwritten!  Another factor stems from selective publication.  In a review of 74 antidepressant studies, researchers found 37 of 38 positive outcomes published in professional journals.  In contrast, only 3 of 36 negative outcomes made it into print (Turner et al. 2008).  In a few instances, failed results were buried in the report and replaced by a positive but unrelated finding.  This long-standing practice carries the nickname "data torturing" (Watters 2010). - page 48

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... magnesium, commonly deficient in the American diet and susceptible to depletion by stress, seems to counteract depression.  One report documented depressed persons recovering after taking extra magnesium (125-300 mg) with each meal and at bedtime.  When put to the test, magnesium also exerts a mood-stabilizing effect, which may be related to chemical characteristics shared with lithium (Eby 2006).  - page 89

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Stanford psychiatry Professor Lorrin Koran and his research team studied the addition of a stimulant drug to the treatment regimen of persons with severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms.  While continuing their previously prescribed SSRI, the patients took, in addition, one of two stimulants: dextroamphetamine or caffeine.  The researchers were surprised when caffeine (used as the control) produced improvement equal to that achieved with dextroamphetamine.  In addition, caffeine was associated with an unexpected reduction in anxiety (Koran et al. 2009).

Further evidence of caffeine's therapeutic value comes from the study of fifty thousand women.  Those who drank two to three cups of coffee a day were 15% less likely to require treatment for depression over a ten-year follow-up period (Lucas et al. 2011).  The results suggest that increasing one's consumption of caffeine might help stave off depression in persons so predisposed. - pages 91-92

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2016-07-26 Added hyperlinks to quoted text.
2016-07-24 Reformatted some paragraphs to remove unwanted carriage return / newline characters.

The First Pill

I took my first dose of Lexapro last night, a few hours before bedtime.  I decided to cut the pill in half and take only 5mg, rather than the full 10mg that the doctor prescribed.  I plan to titrate up in a few days.  Usually the recommended children's dose for OTC meds is sufficient for me.

After about three hours, I had dry mouth and felt very tired.  The reaction reminded me of how I feel after taking Benedryl.  I drank two glasses of water before going to bed.  Then I had to get up twice to pee.

We're on a college tour right now.  While driving here I had to fight an overwhelming urge to sleep that went away after about 30 minutes.

I have no inkling of any elevation in mood.

Depression Follow Up

I actually saw the doctor about my depression.  I use "actually" because I almost never go to the doctor, at least not for an ailment.  Usually the long wait time to see a doctor exceeds the duration of any medical condition that sidelines me.

The appointment didn't go the way I'd hoped.  That's probably because my wife was there with me.

My idea was that the doctor might recommend light therapy (due to the seasonal aspect of my condition) plus exercise and perhaps meditation.  And he did mention light therapy.  But my wife's agenda was that I'd leave the office with a prescription for an SSRI-type anti-depressant.  So that's the direction we took.

It amazes me that despite all the medical screw-ups my wife has experienced, she still puts so much faith in doctors and prescription medication.

In fact, my wife interrupted our non-medication discussions a few times with increasing urgency, insisting that my condition was dire.  I thought she was going to erupt in tears at one point.

So the plan is that I'll take the medicine to make my wife feel better.  As if I already don't do enough shit for her.

Now I really feel depressed.  But I'm hoping the doctor prescribed a placebo.  Do they even do that?

Here's a little SSRI humor for you.  I can't seem to embed it, so I hope you'll make the effort to click on it and watch.: http://jonesnco.com/junk/proloxil.swf

Dumbed Down Doctors

I had the most illuminating discussion with a doctor today.

My wife had been under his care since March for a condition that is slowly getting worse.  The condition itself erupted in June of last year.

We had gotten a second opinion from a very well-respected and experienced doctor.  One piece of advice from this doctor was "take four biopsies and send them to four different labs."  When we mentioned this to the regular doctor, he shook his head and said, "That doesn't make sense.  What if you get four different results?  What do you do then?  I think we should take just one biopsy."

I was almost too aghast to respond.  Eventually I said, "If you really have so little faith in the results, why even bother doing one biopsy?"

But here's what I wish I had said:

• When dealing with large uncertainty in data, the proper method is to increase the sample size, not decrease it, and,
• What you're suggesting is that it's possible that at least three of every four lab results can be incorrect. That means the one result you get has at least a 75% chance of being wrong, and,
• Didn't you have to take statistics in order to become a doctor? I think you should get your money back.

But, as I said, I was too aghast at his ignorance.

I could've accepted the one biopsy response if he said that insurance won't cover it, or that hospital policy forces us to use our own lab, or some other bureaucratic bullshit because I've become accustomed to it.  But I never expected such blatant ignorance.

And this doctor was voted Best Doctor in his specialty in our region.

I'm beginning to think that we need to go to a doctor outside the USA or consult a Shaman.  I no longer have faith in AMA-bred medical professionals.

Happy Birthday Medicare

Fifty years ago today, Medicare was enacted. #Medicare50

Few programs in the history of the United States have brought as much benefit to society as Medicare. Since its enactment in 1965, Medicare has provided access to quality health care for those Americans least likely to be attractive to private insurers - those over age 65, disabled, or with end stage renal disease. Medicare has also prevented many Americans from slipping into poverty...Medicare also provides security across generations: it has given American families assurance that they will not have to bear the full burden of health care costs of their elderly or disabled parents or relatives at the expense of their young families.

 - Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, former administrator of HCFA (Now CMS), in the preface to "A Profile of Medicare" in 1998

Please follow these links to learn more about the impact Medicare has had on USA.

http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/medicares-50th-anniversary/
http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/00119491.pdf

The Bad Dog

In the movie, "A Christmas Story," there's a brief but memorable scene in which several dogs barge in and steal the roasted Christmas turkey prior to the meal.

We had our own ravenous dog scene, except that this involved just one dog and a three-quarter pound of leg of lamb for Thanksgiving that was left over after carving.  So fortunately, it didn't spoil the Thanksgiving meal because I'd already sliced most of it, but it did leave me without enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

The biggest problem is that the hunk of meat was still in the netting when he ate it.  And so the dog ate the netting, too.  A foreign object like string in a dog's digestive system can be a serious problem as this article describes.  I found some netting in his poop this morning, but I think there's more inside.  Hopefully he'll be okay.  He's eating well and pooping well, and I don't see blood in the stool.

That would be something -- mad at the dog for eating about $8 of meat plus having to pay for abdominal surgery on top of that.

The High Cost of Vegan Cheese

My daughter has been vegan for about four years.  Vegans follow an even more limited diet than vegetarians.  The most devout ones don't eat anything produced by an animal or from an animal.  That includes eggs, all dairy, and even honey.

My daughter is devout.  But rather than give up mayonnaise, butter and cheese, she eats vegan-friendly versions instead.

My wife complains about the high cost of these vegan-friendly substitutes almost every week.  And she goes over-budget buying them.  But I tell my wife that if our daughter craves cheese and butter so much, it means her body is crying out for real, honest-to-goodness dairy.  As I wrote earlier, I don't fully endorse our daughter being vegan.

I say that we should buy absolutely no substitutes.  Instead we can buy eggs and dairy from producers that treat their livestock with care and respect, a major concern of vegans.  And I suspect that dairy produced the old-fashioned way is friendlier for the environment than the spreads made from vegetable oils or the cheeses made from cashews.  I believe that such substitutes require much more energy to produce because their raw ingredients are so thoroughly processed as to make them unrecognizable.

Some vegans will argue that there's a health issue with dairy.  They complain that it's loaded with saturated fat, which is bad.  I reject that entirely.  Saturated fat has been unfairly demonized.  The fat from pasture-raised, grass-fed cattle has a ratio of Omega3 to Omega6 that's comparable salmon, plus CLA (conjugated linoleic acids) and butyrates, both of which are important for good gut health.  The heart and brain both use saturated fat as fuel.

It's true that some people just can't tolerate dairy.  It can promote inflammation and mucus production.  Some people are lactose intolerant.  Others must avoid casein.  It's the casein in dairy that can mimic opioids in the brain in individuals with leaky gut syndrome.  So these intolerances are really the only good reasons to avoid dairy.

Well, even if our daughter agreed to eat real butter and cheese, our cost would still be fairly high.  Organic dairy from humanely-treated, grass-fed cows is not inexpensive.  But at least it's real and wholesome.

What do you think?

Alternative Hernia Treatment

I've had an inguinal hernia for several years.  The recommended remedy involves repairing the abdominal wall using a mesh sheet, which is put in place during laparoscopic surgery.

I'm reluctant to have surgery at this time, especially with my wife's unpredictable medical issues.  So I've found, through experimentation, two types of treatments that reduce the swelling and pressure in the area.

The first involves diet.  There are inflammatory foods that increase swelling and pressure.  Wheat is the most notable culprit.  So by reverse logic I decided to stick with a mostly anti-inflammatory diet, and the one I chose is my trusty Blood Type Diet.

Overeating can also exacerbate the condition.  It's simple -- there's just so much stuff you can put into a gut before it tries to expand beyond its confines in the abdomen.  Don't over-stuff it, and keep the pressure down.

The second approach is mechanical, broadly speaking.  Coughing produces the biggest stress to the area.  So if I'm about to cough, I'll apply upward and inward pressure on the area with my hand.  This is difficult to do discretely in public however, so my alternate method is to bring my knee up and across my body.  This is even more bizarre looking to the general public (I suppose), but at least I don't look like a perve.

Lying supine on a decline bench is great for providing momentary relief of acute pressure, especially when combined with the inward and upward hand pressure described earlier.

Wearing pants that are not tight around the waist also helps.  The tighter the wasit-line, the greater the pressure on the hernia.

Lastly, keeping external pressure applied for an extended period really helps.  So when I lie down to go to sleep I apply the pressure.  I used to place my hand on the area.  But then I decided I'd use a weight, instead.  I chose a stone from the garden for the weight.  I warm it before bedtime by running it through the dishwasher.  I think the combination of pressure and warmth brings healing.

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2014-11-22 - SPG  Edited to add the second to last paragraph regarding the waist line of pants.

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How to Maintain Brain Function

The current issue of Neurology Now magazine includes an article on how to maintain cognitive function.  "Staying Sharp: What you do during your free time could help save your brain" lists the following "brain-boosting activities":

• Learn A Second Language
• Become A Social Butterfly
• Play Music
• Exercise

The article also claims that heart-protective measures may also protect the brain.  For example, it recommends:

• Don't smoke.
• Sleep 7–8 hours a night.
• Keep your blood pressure and cholesterol levels in check.
• Eat a low-fat, healthy diet.
• Get plenty of exercise.
• Maintain a healthy weight.
• Limit alcohol consumption.
• Get blood sugar levels (and diabetes, if you have it) under control.

Yes, cholesterol is still a villain, despite assertions from both cardiologists and neurologists that high blood sugar causes damage, and it's the cholesterol that aids in the repair of that damage.

The biggest payoff is to stimulate your intellect while elevating your blood flow.  Learn to dance or practice martial arts for example.  I try to meditate while I walk, or walk mindfully.

Pee-Meister the Squirt

The vet doesn't believe me, but our eight year old neutered male cat masturbates on my lap.

He has always been my lap cat.  Even on his very first day with us, he preferred to curl up on my lap and fall asleep.  Sometimes he would knead my thighs for a short while beforehand.

But for the past two months he's been acting out almost exactly as described in this web article, in which the vet wrote that it's sexual behavior.  The only difference between that cat and mine is that my cat thrusts on my lap, not next to me.  He briefly touches his hindquarters down and leaves a small wet spot on my pants.

On one such occasion, he suddenly decided to mount another cat that had been sleeping right next to me.  That's Mounted, as in jumping on the other cat's back and biting the back of his neck, the way you see the lions do it on those nature programs.

This isn't the first time I've written about this cat.  You might remember him better as "Pee-Meister," depicted here.

Well, our vet said it was impossible for a neutered cat to behave this way.  He claimed that the cat was simply marking me with urine.  He prescribed Vallium, which is supposed to address urination issues.  And he recommended that we give one tablespoon of camomile tea to each of the other cats, just to calm everyone down.

Well, I refused to give the Vallium to Pee-Meister, especially considering the diagnosis was incorrect.  But all the cats, including Pee-Meister, are getting the tea.  The specific recipe is to steep one standard camomile tea bag in 4 ounces of hot water for ten minutes.  Store the brewed tea in the refrigerator.  Then add one tablespoon of the cold tea to the cat's food once each day.  Here's a reference to a website that recommends 1/2 tsp camomile tea.  That's one-sixth the amount recommended by my vet.  But then again we have Big Cats.

So should we continue to call him "Pee-Meister," or would "Squirt" be better?

Health Insurance

You can let food be your medicine, but don't expect insurance to cover it.

Likewise, medical research tells us that pets provide their owners with stress relief.  It also tells us that too much chronic stress leads to disease.  But show me an insurance company that will reimburse for pet food and vet bills, and I'll show you a three-legged duck.

The one alternative health care practice that insurance does cover is exercise.  They do this by paying for the cost of joining a gym.  Joining is covered; the monthly fees, however, are not.

What healthy lifestyle choice would you like to see covered?

Ebola, Science and Civil Rights

Should all people who enter the USA from Ebola-stricken countries be quarantined?

Maine resident Kaci Hickox returned to the US after caring for Ebola patients as a nurse in West Africa.  She arrived in New Jersey, and she was detained in a tent under strict quarantine, even though she had no symptoms.  New Jersey allows its own healthy residents to self-monitor for symptoms of Ebola, but the state's officials didn't know what to do with Kaci.  All this despite scientific evidence that Ebola spreads only when the infected person experiences symptoms, such as a fever and body aches.

Now Kaci is back home in Maine and remains healthy.  As a nurse who fought to contain the deadly virus, can she not be trusted to self-monitor and report for medical treatment at the appropriate time?  Some people don't think so.

There are some US politicians who would impose a travel ban on West African countries.  Those who disagree say that such a ban could be circumvented.  They say that infected individuals could arrive here indirectly, so it would be better to permit them to travel normally and simply monitor them.

It almost seems reasonable to me to give the Ebola medical volunteers complete freedom to travel, provided they monitor themselves for symptoms and maintain a record of their contacts and activities.  What do I mean by “almost”?

“Almost” means that I'm not 100% certain that these volunteers are unable to transmit Ebola when they are asymptomatic.  Basically, I don't trust science.  Science lives by its data.  If it lacks data, or if the data shows poor correlation between Thing A and Thing B, it will announce that there's no evidence that Thing A causes Thing B.

Correlation is wishy-washy.  A study could show poor correlation between Thing A and Thing B even if one instance of Thing A was “well associated” with Thing B when 99 others weren't.  That one data point might be considered an outlier and discarded.

Thus when a so-called medical expert recently claimed that there's no evidence that someone with no symptoms can spread Ebola, and that Ebola is spread only through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids, I became suspicious.  To believe in this claim, I'd need to read the study, look at the data, understand the limitations of the measurement system, etc.

I'd want to know why science was unable to find evidence.  And yet science seems to be unable to explain how other seemingly well-equipped medical volunteers became infected.

Bodily fluids can be coughed into the air and sneezed onto a surface, and then you and I could come into contact with it.  Science might claim that it's unlikely that we'd catch Ebola this way.  But not impossible.

What do you think?

October is LBD Month

Lewy body dementias (LBD) affect an estimated 1.3 million individuals and their families in the United States. Though many families are affected by this disease, few individuals and medical professionals are aware of the symptoms, diagnostic criteria, or even that LBD exists. Here are 10 important facts about Lewy body dementias that you should know if you, a loved one, or a patient you are treating may have LBD: http://www.lbda.org/content/10-things-you-should-know-about-lbd