mementomori | December 17, 2006Edgar Lee Masters wrote forty books in his lifetime, but none equaled the success of his first: Spoon River Anthology, published in 1915. The book is a collection of 244 epitaphs written in blank verse, each spoken by a dearly departed citizen of a small Illinois farming town. The tales of sorrow, anger, mistreatment, ignorance and pride (to name a few) of the dejected souls lying forever beneath their revealing headstones became one of the most popular works of fiction in the 20th century.
Those of you who have read it understand what I am talking about. Anyone who hasn't yet had the…
mementomori | December 14, 2006Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.*
-Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
I almost dreaded walking into the exam room. Behind the door sat an elderly woman who had been diagnosed with an aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma earlier this fall. Among the scores of things I said to her during our initial counseling session was that her malignancy, unlike an indolent lymphoma, had to be completely eradicated in order to save her life.
"Either you get rid of it, or it gets rid of you," was my comment then. She understood perfectly what this meant but as all oncologists know, just because patients realize the…
mementomori | December 12, 2006Study: Long hospital shifts, sleep deprivation can kill
We in the healing arts have waited a long time for a headline like this. It seems that someone has finally acknowledged what we knew all along: working long hours is dangerous to the health and life of young doctors-in-training. Hurrah for research! Let's celebrate by knocking off early, before we get hurt.
A study from the U.S. of doctors in their first postgraduate year (interns) has showed that working extended shifts is associated with increased reporting by the doctors of medical errors, adverse patient events and attentional…
mementomori | December 11, 2006[Editor's Note: The narrator, in addition to being a day late again, has identified this week's poet by his given name; since most readers won't recognize this we shall provide the poet's nom de plume: Pablo Neruda.]
No one would ever argue against the claim that Neruda was one of the 20th century's greatest poets. His prodigious output alone is astounding - does anyone really know how many thousands of poems he actually wrote? His love poems are thought to be exquisite; his works were translated into numerous languages; he was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature in 1971; he is…
mementomori | December 8, 2006
While wandering around ScienceBlogs yesterday I read that my fellow med-blogger Orac has been nominated as a finalist in the 2006 Weblog Awards under the catagory "Best Medical/Health Issues Blog." Congratulations to him and to the other ScienceBloggers finalists: Pharyngula, Deltoid, Good Math Bad Math and Mixing Memory.
Unaccustomed as I am to self-promotion I wasn't sure if I should bleat the news that I was nominated too, but since we live in interesting times I asked myself "What would the typical Hollywood celebrity do?" Thus you see my decision to join the glittering crowd of…
mementomori | December 7, 2006Smoking linked to more osteoarthritis pain
You gotta love cigarette smokers, if for nothing else but their cognitive dissonance. I used to admire them for their naiveté but four decades after the surgeon general's report on smoking I think any claim of ignorance of the risks of smoking is about as believable as announcing the discovery of the Piltdown Man's girlfriend. Now on top of heart disease, COPD, cancer and rotten teeth we have this little experiment from the Mayo Clinic and two other institutions showing the effects of smoking on the knee joint. The results are not exactly what Big…
mementomori | December 5, 2006The following was sent to us anonynmously. The message was first checked for viruses, worms, parasites and offers to help recover millions of dollars tied up in African red tape, then scrutinized and translated, tying up much valuable time needed in the maintenance of this web log. After much discussion we have decided to publish it in its entirety, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning to MBA students who are considering a career in consulting. All annotations are in italics.
NOTES FROM 12/2 MTG. WITH THE QUAESTUARY GROUP RE: PHYSICIAN NETWORK
Drs - Whipple, Galen, Willis,…
mementomori | December 3, 2006Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
-from "Ode to the West Wind", by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The St. Louis area was hit by the worst ice storm…
mementomori | December 1, 2006It is hard for me to put into words what it feels like to be hit with gastroenteritis, which I had the misfortune yesterday to develop. The symptoms, as recorded in the literature - vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, headache, muscle aches, fever - certainly sound repulsive, but in some ways seem so generic as to produce little emotion in anyone reading about the illness - anyone who is not infected, that is. For those of us who have been hit with the virus, be it norovirus, rotavirus or any of the other Samurai-sounding buggers, the effects of the illness are are much more colorful than…
mementomori | November 29, 2006Scientists discover where the world's healthiest wines are grown
If you are a fan of red wine you might be interested in the fact that certain peculiar facts about the stuff are beginning to emerge:
1. Folks who drink a small to moderate amount of red wine daily live longer, or have reduced rates of heart disease.
2. Folks who live in the Mediterranean countries or in France live longer, or have reduced rates of heart disease.
3. Folks who live in the Mediterranean countries or France drink more red wine than in other parts of the world.
Whoa! Now wait just a cotton-pickin' minute! I may…
mementomori | November 28, 2006[Editor's note: the narrator hosted a large family gathering over Thanksgiving and apologizes for posting The Sunday Poem on Tuesday. He also is looking for ways to disguise reheated leftovers from his children, alas, to no avail.]
Wilfred Owen will forever be known as the most acclaimed poet who wrote about "The Great War," or World War I. Born in 1893, he enlisted in the British army in 1915 at the age of 22. In 1917 while hospitalized in England recovering from shell shock he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged Owen to expand his poetic voice to include his experiences in…
mementomori | November 27, 2006Since I know I'm not the only poor soul swamped with post-Thanksgiving chores and Rodin-like cogitations I offer some brief headlines for perusal by those interested in the status of health on Mothership Earth.
Smokers At Greater Risk of Alcohol-Use Disorders
Adolescent smokers appear to have a greater vulnerability to developing alcohol-use disorders. Results indicate that smoking "primes" the brain for subsequent addiction to alcohol and possibly other drugs. Both academic studies and casual observation support the view that smokers tend to drink, and drinkers tend to smoke. New research…
mementomori | November 23, 2006Wishing you all the blessings of family, work, friendship, faith and most of all good health. If I may I'd like to show you a piece from one of my favorite artists - Daniel Garber (1880-1958). For more information about this leading member of the "Pennsylvania Impressionists" click on the link.
A peaceful afternoon in the autumn countryside is another blessing - I envy those of you who are enjoying such a delightful scene like the one Garber painted above.
mementomori | November 20, 2006If you are interested in stem cell research, the biology of cancer cells or promising new targets for anti-cancer therapy, today is your lucky day. Two new studies, one from Italy and one from Canada, both report an astonishing finding: human colon tumors contain cancer stem cells that not only can be identified and separated from ordinary cancer cells, but can successfully transplanted into mice, forming identical tumors that can be serially transplanted for several generations. Here are links to the abstracts; the articles will appear in Nature:
Identification and expansion of human…
mementomori | November 19, 2006[Editor's note: The narrator has been begging me for months to let him post some poetry on this site, using the argument that unless we promote the world's greatest poems, the collective I.Q. of this country is going to drop to the level of people who buy books by O. J. Simpson. Out of respect for his opinion and feelings I have decided to allow the C. O. to share a poem every Sunday night. Here is his first offering.]
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light…
mementomori | November 18, 2006The following questions are for women only:
1. Have you had a pap smear done this year?
2. Do you smoke cigarettes?
3. Do you know if you are infected with HPV-16 (human papillomavirus type 16)?
If you answered "no" to #1 - see your doctor, please. If you answered "yes" to #2 - click on this link for some great information. If you answered either "yes" or "no" to #3 - please read the rest of this post.
The following question is for men only:
Are there any women in your life that you address as wife, girlfriend, significant other, POSSLQ, mother, daughter, niece, cousin, close friend or…
mementomori | November 15, 2006I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
-William Shakespeare, Richard III
Optatio: expressing a wish, typically with earnest (if not fervent) desire.
The situation was disturbing, to say the least. After being bombarded with both chemotherapy and radiation therapy, not only had my patient's cancer survived, it had in all likelihood spread to his lungs. A chest CT revealed the suspicious lesions, some plastered up against the pleural lining like a mud dauber's nest, some floating in the lung parenchyma…
mementomori | November 14, 2006As the delightful wag James Taranto over at OpinionJournal.com would say, "What would we find without studies?"
"Breast Cancer Risk Linked To Red Meat, Study Finds"
Younger women who regularly eat red meat appear to face an increased risk for a common form of breast cancer, according to a large, well-known Harvard study of women's health.
Now I ask you, haven't the steakhouses of America been punished enough? First they restrict smoking in the joints, now we get this report from Mount Olympus (excuse me, from the Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and…
mementomori | November 10, 2006Prologue: Deep within a middle-aged woman, somewhere betwixt her brain and heart a microscopic sentry scans a vast network of blood vessels, monitoring the flow of red corpuscles like a forest ranger looking for smoke. He has a worried look on his face. The number of cells passing by his station has steadily declined for some time now; the glow around him turns from its usual scarlet to a pallid pink. He grimly flips open a nearby cabinet door and with one last glance over his shoulder presses a button. Suddenly the entire universe flips on its side, flinging him across the room. The…
mementomori | November 9, 2006"Honey, what did you do with Mommy's lighter? Sweetie? Give it back to Mommy."
A new British study shows that children exposed to second-hand smoke have a 40% increase in the risk of developing bladder cancer in adulthood:
A team, partly funded by Cancer Research UK say their study into the link between smoking and bladder cancer adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests children and teenagers forced to breathe second-hand smoke are particularly at risk. Professor John Toy, Cancer Research UK's medical director, said the research justified the smoking ban. He said: "Although more…