
After reviewing how long I have had multiple myeloma, my myeloma specialist this July asked me if I had ever had a bone scan done. When I said no, he suggested I get one to establish a baseline. After so much treatment, what were my bones doing?
As we discussed the impact of my myeloma treatments, especially steroids, on the bones, he said to talk to my dentist if it turns out that I have bone density issues. I would …
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Several years ago, I got into an argument with an oncologist – not my oncologist – over a significance of my IgG jumping up 500 points from the previous reading. When I expressed great dismay, he snapped, “Oh, do you have a medical degree and extensive training in hematology? Do you know how to read lab reports better than I do?”
If I had not been so rattled by his attack, I would have retorted, “No, but I have lived in …
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High on the front façade of the former high school in our town are two engraved sayings. The one pertinent in my life right now? “New occasions teach new duties.”
I’ll say.
In mid-July, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. For the record, it runs in my family on both sides. Further, for the record, my personal physician and I had been watching for it. So it was not a surprise when my HbA1C level, a key test for …
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Back in April, I wrote about my adventures with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). I had run into a specious HIPAA barrier when the oncology practice I treat at initially refused to email me my laboratory results, saying HIPAA did not allow emails. Several readers shared comments about their own experiences and a few expressed interest in the memo I presented to my oncologist addressing my HIPAA right.
Before I write and before you read another sentence …
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HIPAA. We, or at least those of us living in the United States, all know the five-letter acronym even if we can’t tell you what the letters stand for. Passed in 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has been with us for more than two decades.
And we all know about HIPAA, even if we don’t know it. Anytime any one of us goes to a hospital or medical center for testing or x-rays or surgery, registration staff …
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The idiom “standing on your own two feet” is pretty much universally defined in English as meaning to be strong and independent, able to take care of yourself. As a motivational adage, it ranks right up there with “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “rugged individualism.”
All well and good, except when you can’t stand on your own two feet. Right now as I write this column, I am weeks away from that act.
In early February, I …
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Back in the late fall, I started going to a yoga class one evening a week. I did it in part because I thought it might do me some good and in part because I have known the instructor since she was in high school and dated my younger son. Either reason, yoga was a whole new experience for me.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Let me clarify what kind of yoga class this is. This is not “hot yoga.” …
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