That time of month...

Call Jayne Cobb, a Mudder needs help

I remember getting the call from my dad just a few weeks ago, "Your mom has breast cancer." Drawing on my vast knowledge of medicine and doctorly ways, I knew just what to do. I got on Google. Okay, that's not entirely true, I first got out all my medical text books, skimmed half a dozen pages of notes and realized, Google is easier.

The initial diagnosis was DCIS - ductal carcinoma in citu. It's a very treatable cancer in the breast that has a good prognosis. If you have to have a breast cancer, that's the one to have. Or so I thought.

My mom just got done with her first surgery and the new pathology report came back a little differently from the first. According to the biopsy sent for review, my mom actually had Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma. "Eek." I thought when I first heard the new diagnosis. That sounds bad. And it is. Unless it's in the breast. You see, normally it affects the salivary glands and when that happens, it is bad news bears. But when it is found in only the breast, then it has an excellent prognosis. In fact, there is no medical literature that records any deaths from ACC. So we went from DCIS, which is pretty good to have, to ACC which is really good to have.

My mom's doctor is excellent. She is a sturdy, hold nothing back, Scottish woman who eats cancer for breakfast. Actually, that's a little weird. I doubt she actually eats cancer with her eggs and toast. But when I saw her, I was reminded of Mel Gibson with his face painted blue, riding a horse towards the English army and calling over his shoulder in his thick accent, "I'm off to pick a fight." I think she hates cancer as much as she hates the English. So I'm glad she's on our side.

However, we aren't in the clear yet. She still has another surgery and then radiation to follow. Just because there are no recorded deaths, we don't want to mess with cancer.

If you want to follow along with my mom's story, she recently started a blog. She hasn't put a lot up yet, but she plans to chronicle her journey there. I'll continue to post updates on here as events warrant.

Volleyball

I played volleyball in high school and we had to fight for our right to not wear little shorty shorts. Play basketball instead.

Physiology Friday

It has been a busy morning already. Looks like we are gonna have a lot of Good Friday babies. How exciting.

With that in mind, today's cool physio is brought to you by my wife, who recently said, "I don't really know that much about menopause." Hopefully she still has a couple of years before it hits, but it's never too early to learn.

Before you completely zone out with a sigh and a "menopause is so boring," don't worry, we are gonna start off slow. This morning we are going to only hit the very cool subject of hot flashes. Oh yeah. We're gonna go there.

Some background first: menopause is when a woman's ovaries begin to fail. They no longer send out eggs and, more importantly, they don't send out their usual supply of hormones to the rest of the body. The main hormone that the ovaries are crucial for is estrogen. And today it's all about the estrogen.

You see estrogen, among the many things it does, is a muscle relaxant. It's one of the reasons women have a typically lower blood pressure than men - their blood vessels are more relaxed. It's one of the reasons women are typically more flexible. Estrogen makes those muscles a little more relaxed. Take away point: estrogen=muscle relaxant.

*(I'll explore estrogen a little more at the end, but it will be a bit more technical, so feel free to skip that part and just move on to the next paragraph)

So when a woman experience a hot flash, it is her ovaries playing the hero. They are giving a last ditch, dying effort to squeeze out whatever estrogen they can. That burst of estrogen then hits the blood vessels and causes them to dilate. When the blood vessels near the skin dilate, warm blood, right around 98 degrees, rushes to fill the empty space. Her skin turns red and she feels warm and sweaty.

And there you have it, hot flashes explained. Making the estrogen connection.

*For those of you still reading, let's take this a little further. This explains why an S3 is considered normal in an adolescent female. She has high levels of estrogen causing her heart to be more relaxed. As her estrogen levels begin to approach a more stable level, the S3 should disappear. The estrogen connection also helps explain why a pregnant woman, who has elevated levels of HCG leading to elevated estrogen, is at a greater risk for DVTs - the high estrogen relaxes veins and allows for pooling of blood and subsequently clot formation (Estrogen also causes increased production of liver proteins leading to increased clotting factors, except for XI, and so between the two factors, we see a higher incidence of DVTs in pregnant women).

Easter Bunny Massacre

So this happened last night. Yes, that is a little boy wearing bunny ears, wielding a battle axe. No, he did not like being a bunny. And yes, we did purchase the battle axe.

Feelin old

Find the real animal

Doh!

I'm having some issues with my blogging app on my iPad today. I had 3 posts sitting in the wings waiting to be published and they got deleted. Not cool. I spent at least 15, maybe 20 seconds on each of them. That's time I'll never get back. I'm going to go bang my head against the wall for a bit. Regular posting will be resumed shortly. Probably.

Wonder Woman