Monster Hospital

He cannot understand how a place as sterile as a hospital can feel so dirty. The odour of rubbing alcohol permeates the entire building, burning his nostrils as the elevator doors open.  He steps onto the fourth floor and immediately hears an anguished cry from a room to his left.

“IT HURTS! OWWWW!! OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD! AUGH! MERCY! IT HURTS! PLEASE!”

“Mrs. Murphy, please… just try and lie on your side…”

Pleading with her won’t help you, he thinks. In 12 hours, Mrs. Murphy will be dead. She’ll die in her sleep from an infection and severe pneumonia, both of which she contracted despite an otherwise successful operation to remove a tumor from her right lung. The nurses and doctors have no chance to save her.

Fuck it, the nurses and doctors here are idiots anyway, he thinks to himself. Her immune system couldn’t handle the invasive surgery and was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Mrs. Murphy will die tonight at 1:13AM, while her nurse smokes a joint in a car outside the ER. Her boyfriend will come by to play her his latest mixtape – trying to become a DJ, he goes by the name of Smokestax.

Backing away from Mrs. Murphy’s room – wife of Charles, and mother to Johnny and Sean Murphy – his gaze stops on a small placard with an arrow pointing to the left. The engraving on the copper sign, affixed to a faded and crumbling baby-blue wall, reads ROOMS 401-429. He turns to his left and walks down the hallway.

401… 403… 405, on his right. 402… 404… 406, on his left. He slowly plods toward 423, muttering under his breath as he passes each room: “401… pancreatic cancer; water in the lungs, dead before New Year’s. 403… punctured lung; full recovery. 405… brain embolism; he’ll develop an allergic reaction to his medication and fall into a coma, dead by February…”

He never understood why he was so aware of these intangibles, and frankly he never cared. It was more a burden to him than anything else. The strengths and weaknesses of those around him, their deepest secrets and their darkest thoughts, all their repressed memories and blocked emotions; he knew them all.

“415… heart attack; he’ll have another one before week’s end but live another 23 years. 417… Fractured skull; brain damage, she’s a veggie for life. 419… liver disease; her son donated his liver but died during the operation, she’ll survive, but no one has told her yet.”

He doesn’t care. He never cared. When his own mother died, he didn’t so much as shed a tear. Why care? He never asked to know about everyone’s problems, nor does he want to keep it up, but that’s life. And if that’s life, he may as well not care. It doesn’t seem to make a difference anyway.

Steps away from room 423 now… his heart is not racing, sweat is not dripping from his brow. He is as calm and collected as ever.

He reaches for the doorknob and, upon making contact, shudders violently; ungodly, terrifying, disgusting images enter his mind, swirling about as if being blended into a black ball of pure and repulsive evil. Worse than anything he has ever seen or imagined, this hatred and atrociousness engulfs his brain and spreads its monstrous grip until he blacks out from agony.

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he is… On the floor, he thinks. He scans left and right… People, he thinks. His head pounds. Is that music? Or horrible screaming?

“Where… where am I…?” he mutters groggily. A swift kick to his ribs knocks the wind out of him. Gasping for air and clutching his chest, he hears someone whisper in his ear: “It’s Daniel’s birthday, muhfucka.”

A new article in Men’s Health reports the “Drunkest Cities in America” for 2010. From USA Today, “The magazine, which will publish the list of 100 major cities in its March edition, drew upon such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties.”

Unfortunately, Austin, Texas came in at the 5th drunkest city in the US, far above most of our states larger cities. Here’s the Top Ten:

1. Fresno, California
2. Reno, Nevada
3. Billings, Montana
4. Riverside, California
5. Austin, Texas
6. St. Louis, Missouri
7. San Antonio, Texas
8. Lubbock, Texas
9. Tucson, Arizona
10. Bakersfield, California

Austin, the “Live Music Capitol of the World,” is well-known for the downtown party scene, especially 6th Street, music events like Austin City Limits (ACL) and South by Southwest (SXSW), and UT Longhorn Football (and the tailgating that comes with it).

Despite the fact that we have thousands of travelers from all over the world visiting Austin, we can’t blame Austin’s alcohol culture on tourism. Yes, this city is fun, but too often,  these music and sporting events are sponsored by alcohol companies, and therefore are used to encourage drinking, without thinking about the impact it is having on the community around us.

Here’s what our youth had to say about growing up around an alcohol culture in Austin:

When some people think Austin, they think 6th Street, live music clubs, college parties, etc. Those events all have alcohol handy to help people supposedly have a fun night, but they can lead people to drink and drive, to drink and fight, or to drink and basically act a fool. Sadly, I’ve also seen so many people in bad car accidents or situations with the police because of alcohol. It’s a sad situation and hopefully the city of Austin will get a reality check from this so we can do something to fix this problem. –Marissa Hornsby, Senior at Connally High School

Growing up in the 5th drunkest city in American isn’t hard, but it seems once you pass 21, activities always include alcohol–parties, football games, and just chilling with friends. Sadly, the trend is starting to go younger and younger. Parties aren’t just for laughing and having fun, or playing games; now you know that there is going to be all kinds of alcohol. That brings pressure for people who don’t usually drink to drink. –Samantha Cannon, sophomore at Connally High School

Hopefully, Austin can continue to be the fun, vibrant city, but we can work together as a community to reduce our label as a drunken city.

Thanks to Ian Broyles and Caomai for the great photos for this post.

“Dear Kaldi, yes, he herds the goat

Tiresome walks without an antidote

Til one day a bush he found

With bright red cherries all around

The goats they ate and chomped the fruit

Then pranced and danced without a flute.”

The dancing goat legend is the most well-known part of coffee’s 1000 year-old history. Roasts are named after it and the Ethiopians get credit for figuring out that if you roast beans then add water, you’ve got one hell of a picker upper.

However, coffee’s original impression on the world was more scientific. It was recently discovered that coffee can help those that suffer from liver disease, meaning that not much has changed throughout the beans journey.  

The first textual mention of coffee was found within a medical book written by the Arabian Astronomer “Rhazes” in the 10th century. He describes Bunchum (coffee) as “hot and dry and very good for the stomach.”

Similar to tea, coffee blossomed through the medical community where it gained ground as a cure for indigestion. The blessed bean was also listed as a cure for the bubonic plague.

When coffee finally made its way out of Africa and the Middle East to Europe in the 17^th century, doctors were fast to praise the drug.

Physician Gideon Harvey wrote in his book Advice Against the Plague (1665), that coffee is:

A very whoesom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the Heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsy, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others.

Yet benefits and health warnings go hand in hand. Since coffee made people feel good, there had to be a catch.

In 1674, a group of women drew up a petition against coffee explaining that “this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch Men … and tie up the Codpiece-points without a Charm.” They also claimed it made men too thin and that it caused headaches.

Well the headache part has been embraced as anyone who has gone without caffeine has felt the afternoon pound. Thankfully our advancements have de-bunked the impotency idea.

Coffee has moved far beyond the legendary herder. It has been poked and prodded and found to be more than just an enjoyable beverage that causes hyperactivity in goats.

As the medical community continues to find more antioxidants, cures for liver disease and possibly cancer, coffee remains an ancient drink providing the same benefits as it did hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

1. Protein study shows Evolutionary link between plants and animals -

Inserting a human protein important in cancer development was able to revive dying plants, showing an evolutionary link between plants and humans and possibly making it easier to study the protein’s function in cancer development, a Purdue University study has shown.

And yet millions of creationists are still unimpressed. Go figure.

2. Mouse with human liver aids research –

How do you study-and try to cure in the laboratory-an infection that only humans can get? A team led by Salk Institute researchers does it by generating a mouse with an almost completely human liver. This “humanized” mouse is susceptible to human liver infections and responds to human drug treatments, providing a new way to test novel therapies for debilitating human liver diseases and other diseases with liver involvement such as malaria.

Just in case you needed another reason to want to punch anti-animal-testing extremists in the face.

3. Steve Novella gives the 411 on the Bloom Box – After it being featured on this week’s 60 Minutes, I too was interested in finding out more about this Bloom Box and whether it really was as impressive a solution for clean energy as it seemed on the show.

4. $cientology hires reporters to investigate the St. Petersburg Times – For those who don’t know the St. Petersburg Times has over the past several months become one of $cientology’s worst enemies, doing the kind of in depth investigative reporting on the evil cult that every other news outlet should have been doing decades ago. Now the $cientology is out for blood and has gotten three veteran journalists to try and investigate the paper’s conduct:

While the journalists have promised an independent review, the Times has refused to cooperate, saying their work will be used to fuel the church’s ongoing campaign against the Florida paper.

“I ultimately couldn’t take this request very seriously because it’s a study bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology,” says Executive Editor Neil Brown. “Candidly,” he adds, “I was surprised and disappointed that journalists who I understand to have an extensive background in investigative reporting would think it’s appropriate to ask me or our news organization to talk about that reporting while (a) it’s ongoing, and (b) while they’re being paid to ask these questions by the very subjects of our reporting.”

. . .

Church spokesman Tommy Davis says that he recently received the approximately 20-page study and that it will not necessarily be made public. It was commissioned, he says, because “we wanted to get an outside view” of the situation. Davis, who would not disclose how much the reporters were paid, calls the report highly critical of the Times stories on the church.

Shocker!

The names of those journalists who sold their souls to $cientology are: Russell Carollo, Christopher Szechenyi, and Steve Weinberg.

5. Judge Judy vs. creationism, anti-choicers, anti-stem cell researchers, and “fundie” politicians -

In demand to lower the risk of heart diseases foods consumed contained by everyday diet become one of abundant critical factors. Here are many foods that I enjoy found can truly lower large blood fixed a bee in the bonnet and levels of cholesterol ensuing contained by lower the risk of heart diseases.
Spironolactone is normally used to treat fluid retention in patients with liver disease or heart washout.
Cholesterol is a fat that is a character of ill health and causes many diseases after some event such as heart strokes, heart attacks many other heart diseases.
It is most dangerous to the heart when large plaque deposits win thinner and block the vital arteries.
The Carotid artery is plug uphill only only like the behind the times mans heart.
Heart is the most vital organ; it pumps blood to all other parts of the body.
Collective the amount of omega-3 fats and decreasing the amount of omega-6 in the diet is another effective way in reducing the risk for heart bug.

Further Readings
Reverse Heart Disease Now, Stephen T. Sinatra, James C. Roberts, Martin Zucker, 2007
Reverse Heart Disease Now, Stephen T. Sinatra, James C. Roberts, Martin Zucker, 2008
50 Ways Women Can Prevent Heart Disease, M. Sara Rosenthal, 2000

Recommended Links
Valvular Heart Disease
Heart Disease Fact BlogCatalog Topic
Heart Disease
Chronic pulmonary heart disease
Coronary Heart Disease
Heart Disease

Preventing Heart Diseases With Foods is filed under Heart disease.

The liver is the second largest organ in the body. It is in the upper part of the abdominal cavity and on the right beneath the diaphragm so it is protected by the ribs. It weighs about 3 pounds and it is divided into main lobes, the right and left.

The lobes contain liver cells and passage ways for the blood circulation that are called sinusoids. In the lobes the liver cells can transform chemical substances into nutrients and neutralizes toxins. The liver plays a huge role in circulation and composition of blood, the health of the liver can affect all the systems in the body from thinking to hormone regulation.

two conditions affecting people who drink little or no alcohol. The first is a mild condition, while the second represents its progression to a more severe disease.

1. Fatty liver, also known as steatosis, is an accumulation of fat in the liver that typically does not cause liver damage.
2. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is the accumulation of fat in the liver accompanied by hepatic inflammation. Fibrous tissue can form with NASH, which can progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Liver cancer function to destroy the liver. Liver shall be destructed severely and will not work normally. Severity can lead to death. That is the reason why, that preventions must be observed carefully to protect one self and to prevent the spread of the disease as well.

There are effective ways to prevent cancer of the liver:

Vaccine – there are no cancer vaccine for liver,, but there is a vaccine to prevent hepatitis B. knowing that hepatitis B is the early stage of cancer of the liver, this must be prevented as early as possible by having the injected vaccine.

Food contamination – this is a very obvious symptom that anyone must take into consideration. Street foods are not advisable because there are foods and beverages sold in the streets that could not be healthy for you. Most especially for foods that were not covered properly for safety and contamination free.

Alcohol – This is the number one factor that can lead to liver cirrhosis. Abuse drinking of alcohol can also lead to cancer of the liver. Too much of alcohol can destroy the normal functioning of the liver.

Causes of Fatty Liver

Obesity – The risk of NAFLD increases with every pound of excess weight.

Hyperlipidemia — High levels of triglycerides or low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol can cause hyperlipidemia.

Diabetes – This common metabolic disorder is characterized by resistance to insulin, the hormone that regulates the amount of sugar in your blood. Recent studies have demonstrated insulin resistance to be the primary trigger for fatty liver development.

You must read about Kidney Diseases Treatment, Insomnia Treatment and Natural Cure for Kidney Stones

I recently saw the movie “Julie & Julia” which I found thoroughly enjoyable.  I also recently got the lab results from my blood tests.

I won’t reveal much about the movie except that “Julie” is a young aspiring writer named Julie Powell and “Julia” is a seasoned Master of the Art of French Cooking named Julia Child.  There’s a lot to be said about the Julie Powell and Julia Child connection (for lack of a better term) – just check out the results when you Google, Bing or otherwise do a search.  Results may look like this if you Google in Firefox: http://www.google.com/search?q=julie+powell+blog&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Onto the results of my blood tests.  Cholesterol is middling-high, no surprise there as it’s been there as long as I can remember.  I do place some blame for it on my family genes.  Liver enzymes are also elevated, which, is not surprising either as they have been elevated for no apparent reason all of my adult life.  What did shock me is, when I compared the liver ALT enzyme levels to last year’s results, they have really shot up.  A few years back my doctor at the time said I have “Non-Alcoholic Steato-Hepatitis” called “N.A.S.H.” – it’s like having a drunk’s liver without having the benefit of the booze.  My days of serious drinking I can count on my hands.  For a more information about NASH check out http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/nash/ .   I’m having another blood test in a couple weeks.  It seems that the liver-functioning and cholesterol are related.   This is one reason why my doctors have flipped back and forth over the years when it comes to using cholesterol-reducing medicines.  They can adversely affect the liver.

I already know I should be eating less fatty foods, exercising with more exertion and shed 50 pounds of weight.  As I mentioned, I am a very light drinker (a glass of wine a couple times a month).  I am also a non-smoker.   I have taken regular daily small doses of Yoga, Tai Chi, Aerobics and Pilates.  I have two timed Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers.   I use portion controls like setting half of a restaurant dinner aside for the following day, skipping the fast-food meal deals (no fries or drink), opting for the burger only and then cutting it in half.   It’s not enough.  More precisely, it’s not enough for me.  What I have been doing is not working for my body, the unique way it happens to be constructed and the way it functions.   I hate that what I have been doing is not working to restore my health.  It almost seems that I was healthier then I was a cigarette smoker some 15 years ago!

I am angry about my weight and my poor health and am going to try to turn that angry-energy into something useful.   I sit too much.  I don’t feel like cooking most days of the week so I eat out or fast food it.  The three to four days a week I do cook a meal, it is healthy.  I just haven’t exerted myself with respect to cooking or exercise.   I don’t do either enough or with as much gusto as I need to.

Last week, I dusted off my American Heart Association “Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol cookbook” and I’m going to plan my daily meals from it for the next seven (7) days.  One day at a time, one week at a time.

Today is Day 1 of the “The JLP/AHA Project” – and yes, I’m leaning on “The Julie/Julia Project” except that our scope and initial primary motivation is different.  I am including cooking and exercise.  I am doing this to improve my health, have more positive energy and live a longer life.  “JLP” stands for me, J. L. Peterson and, as you may have guessed, “AHA” is the abbreviation for the American Heart Association.   After a bit of persuasion, my partner (“DC”) and I read through the book’s Introduction together.   I gave myself some goals for the year, I know I could do the weight part if I apply myself but I’ll need to talk to my doctor about the cholesterol and liver enzyme levels to see if they are achievable.

Goals by December 31, 2010

• Weight under 161 pounds
• Cholesterol under 201
• LDL under 101
• Bilirubin under 1.1
• ALT under 54

It’s now past 3:30pm and DC have nibbled our way through breakfast and not had lunch.  We are starving.  Not a good time to go grocery shopping.   We decided to pull out an IHOP (don’t laugh!) coupon good for weekday meals after 2pm.

Once there, at the International House of Pancakes,  we both ordered breakfast for our dinner.  Did you know that IHOP has a two-egg, two-bacon, hash-browns and toast meal with less than 900 calories?  They actually print the calorie count right next to the meal.  I discovered that not only could you substitute egg-whites (or egg-beaters) for real eggs, you can switch the hash browns out for cottage cheese or tomatoes AND have turkey bacon instead of real bacon.   The discounted price and the food were all good – except my turkey bacon was a bit on the chewy side.  We spent $155 US at the market (some of the items will last longer than a week) and I finished putting the groceries away just after 7:30pm.  Logged on to finish off today’s post.

One day at a time.  Until tomorrow, good night.

My name is Maggie Shook, a professional jazz piano player and my story begins in June 2009. A year after being diagnosed with End Stage Liver disease, I had resigned myself to a very short but full life. My parents were none too pleased with my decision and sought guidance from the Liver Support Group at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. They left the meeting with not only guidance but hope.

Encouraged by their enthusiasm I submitted my records to Mayo and began evaluation on June 28, 2009. After extensive testing and meeting with numerous doctors, social workers and counselors, I was accepted and listed for liver transplant on July 27, 2009. Thus began the waiting period. As my health continued to decline so did my ability to perform. I became a virtual 29 year old shut in, only attending support group meetings when possible and hospital visits when necessary. While waiting I experienced major bumps in the road, one of which required removing my name from the list until I was well enough to be listed again. Those of us who have experienced waning health have a sixth sense of the end – perhaps a revelation. In October, I knew my time was limited. That changed in the wee morning hours of October 12th, I received “THE CALL”.

I arrived at Mayo Clinic around 2 a.m. and was sporting a brand new liver by 2 p.m. that afternoon. Columbus had discovered a new country and I discovered a new life. Thus, I became a member of the Mayo Family. Every individual involved in my care and recovery has become an important part of my life. I can never thank the decision makers at Mayo for the opportunity of a second chance at life.

As I look forward to being able to play piano again, I consider each day a gift from God and the ultimate gift from my donor, whom I will honor each day by treasuring the gift of life.