Statins, Now what.

Why avoid the surgery (cost?)?

Yes. During laser lithotripsy, the surgeon would fish around the kidney trying to find the stones. As he later mentioned, the kidney is a big place to go fishing when you're looking through a thin fiber optic pipe. He spent about 1.5 hrs doing what normally be a 45 min surgery because one of the rocks was floating round and was hiding somewhere. The others were easily found and zapped with the laser.

However, after the big rock was broken up by the laser, the stones were expected to get flushed out normally. That didn't happen. Instead, they got stuck in the ureter forming what's called a "stein strasse" or stone road. That's exactly what it looked like on the xrays. After about 2 weeks of maximum pain, my urologist decided that he needed to do some more laser rock zapping and needed the X-ray for targeting. Fortunately, the rock pile passed a few days before the scheduled 2nd attempt: That's about 1/3 of what appeared on the X-rays and what I fished out of the toilet. Since I was still hurting rather badly, another X-ray was needed after passing the rock pile to verify that everything had passed.

Yes. I've had kidney stones since I was about 25 years old at roughly

My last adventure produced 4 months of pissing sand instead of rocks. It wasn't particularly painful, but the accumulated aches and pains wore me out. The urologist mumbled something about it being the debris from laser zapping growing large enough to be noticeable.

Good luck. That doesn't sound like much fun. I have a very minor case of Sciatica, that goes away when I take the pressure off the sciatic nerve by laying down for a few minutes.

th

ter,

void > > surgery.

That's a good reason on it's own, but evidence-based medicine points out th at bed rest works just as well as surgery in almost all cases, and doesn't have the side-effects. My consultant told me that surgery did improve the s ituation in 85% of case, but there was a 5% risk of unfortunate side-effect s, where it damaged the spinal cord. One of the side-effects was incontinen ce.

In my case it took eight weeks of bed rest before I could start getting aro und more or less normally, and it was months before I was backed where I'd started.

The UK National Health offered me back surgery six months after I'd got out of bed, and the consultant (who would have made a bundle out of doing the operation) conceded that I didn't need it when I went in and talked to him about it.

Spray nasal steroids work great with, in my case, no side effects. Fluticasone propionate.

I also had my nasal passages opened up, RF cautery, took about 20 minutes. Recovery was a bit messy, but the results are astounding. All that cold air rushes right into your head. I had no idea that humans could breathe through both nostrils at the same time.

Since I hope to live another 20 years, halving the risk of a heart attack from 2% to 1% seems like a good idea. A really good idea since I've already had bypass surgery once.

Flonase. Yes, I've used it with minimal success. My immune system is apparently hypersensitive (e.g., scratch test yielded "severe" reactions on 42? of 48 allergens tested -- my entire back was swollen after the test!).

You actually only breathe out of one nostril at a time and this alternates every ~90 minutes.

My problem isn't getting air *into* my "body" but, rather, into my

Unfortunately, we have several growing seasons, here, so something is

Presently, the Texas Mtn Laurel are in bloom. Even *more* olfactory appeal (smells like grape soda) with attendant health risk :-/

My MD has a chart on the wall showing which pollens are dispersed in each month, here. For me, it's just moving from one offender to another, month after month!

I know what I have now, I don't know what I'll have after surgery. Also I keep thinking I'm getting better, especially Dec and most of Jan, then I took on a construction project and it set me back. Also I'm self employed, It would put a big burden on my wife.

As far as cost, I was old by a rep of BCBS, Note this was after I had quizzed him hard about why I have to pay an additional $6500 for an Obamacare policy that is no better than the policy I have, the only reason he could think of is that someone that knew they were going to need a triple bypass, could get an Obamacare policy, pay one months premium, get there $100,000 dollar bypass, then cancel their insurance. That's why I need to pay more for an Obamacare policy! So, if I decide to do this, I'll make sure it's legal for me to have two policies, I'll purchase a very low deductible Obamacare policy, get my surgery make sure the bills get paid, then cancel and resort back to my $10k deductible policy. So any problems with this. Other than ethical! Which for my is long gone, I had it figured out with a high deductible low cost policy, then in 2012 when Obamacare rule started, I got large increases. I went from $4300 to $7750 in 3 increases and I dropped from coverage for 4 to coverage for 3 during that time. Note the Obamacare policy was $13,800 with $12,500 deductible. (Silver)

Mikek

Those scratch tests are awful. Grade-9 itching.

Spray steroids work great for me, but it takes a couple of days to kick in. I then sometimes forget to use it, and start sneezing again. Bad control loop.

I've read that only a minority of the population does that. Maybe we could have a quick survey.

Oh, that's different. My problems are nasal.

In New Orleans, the ragweed was killing me. I tried immunization shots with minimal results, and antihistamines put me in zombie mode. When I decided to move (getting fired was inspirational) I studied America for 6 months or so, including pollen distributions. The East coast was out. California, close to the ocean, seemed best; the closest major pollen source is Japan.

Hi,

When a statin lowers LDL it is lowering "good" (larger fluffy molecules) and "bad" LDL (smaller molecules) at the same time, and possibly preferentially lowering the larger molecules. LDL levels can be lowered via the diet as well, and it is possibly to get an optimal cholesterol profile dietarily. I think a next generation statin will come out that tries to lower LDL small molecules preferentially and I'm sure the mass media will educate the public on the importance of lowering a subtype of LDL, but all the while LDL/cholesterol and triglycerides can be controlled most optimally via a traditional diet, which doesn't exclude the option of using modern medicine, it just reduces the frequency that it is required!

cheers, Jamie

Yes. And, in my case, with so many "hits", it involved my entire back.

As a kid (New England), I used to sneeze, eyes *swell* shut, etc. But, only in Spring. Mowing the lawn was suicidal.

When I was in school (city but still NE), no problems at all!

Moving to the midwest brought a return of the "lawn mowing dread". But, it seemed significantly *less*.

Moving further west seemed to get rid of them almost entirely!

But, coming here (SW) they've morphed into "year round" -- but no sneezing or swollen eyes. Instead, it's like a faucet is running (post nasal) continuously leaving my airways coated with mucous, etc.

(MD can apparently *see* this just by looking at the back of my throat through opened mouth)

For me, NE was considerably better than here. I've seen others visiting complain significantly about "allergies" -- while claiming that they

I was disappointed with the scratch test as it was too generic (probably for reasons of economy). I would much rather it been tailored to THIS local environment (e.g., some of the items that I was tested for are just not PRESENT, here!)

I also question the "need" for it as a prereq for the SLIT therapy. I could understand if the test was used to specially formulate the treatment for the individual (it may well be -- I've not checked). OTOH, if you are NOT allergic to a particular allergen, then there is no reason (?) why that allergen would have to be EXCLUDED from the dosing! I.e., everyone should be able to receive the *same* dose -- why do you care if I am allergic to A,B,C and Q while someone else is allergic to A,B,R and S?

My mother made it her personal mission to clear the whole neighborhood of ragweed. She walked twice a day and that was her spring time duty.

Regarding nasal passages, my right side seems fine but the left side is often plugged. When I use a neti pot, I can pour in the right side and get good flow out the left but, if I pour in the left side and it is difficult to get it flow out the right. When I get it going it will stop and I need to work at getting going again. The RF cautery sounds interesting. Mikek

Send me an email (address in signature) and I'll send you his email address so you can ask him for a copy. The email address can also be found on a few old web pages on his site.

You can excavate some useful info from his site by searching with: such as: etc.

The basic problem with gutta percha is that it traps a pocket of air at the bottom of the canal which collects bacteria and eventually gets infected. Getting the plug out after it's sealed with cement often makes a bigger mess. This mostly covers the problem:

The method works well, has a high success rate, and is much faster than the standard method, but didn't gain sufficient traction in the schools to become standard practice. Here's part or the story:

Incidentally, many years ago, Dr Jack would drive around the country in a mobile classroom and lab, giving lectures on the method: I kept his computahs and electronics going for about 20 years until he moved to Florida.

Well, he said, he can't send them out. Which is one reason I wanted it. :-) I'm more curious about what the reason is he can't send them out? I just thought it was a legal problem.

Never had a root canal, I've heard I don't want one. As a kid I had braces, They took out a bunch of teeth, that left me with 24 teeth, saves a lot on toothpaste. ;-)

My dentist got ill and sold his practice, the new dentist upgraded to the sensors for xrays, along with computers and monitors in each cubicle. Mikek

Oh yeah, that mess. Here's an abbreviated version of the story: It's not a good idea to contradict the medical establishment dedicated to the perpetual maintenance of the status quo, especially when they're underwriting endorsing and accrediting your course material.

I've had one. You haven't missed a thing. My root canal was deliberately dragged out over several visits, apparently to increase the cost. Drilling the hole in my tooth was not too horrible. However, the hole drilled in my bank account was seriously painful.

I almost had a 2nd root canal, when my current dentist decided that it was appropriate practice to try and save a wisdom tooth. I told him where he can file that idea and suggested that a simple extraction was good enough.

The big challenge in dentistry is not filling the tooth. It's filling the chair.

I had a friend that died from heart failure caused by an infection that was introduced during a root canal. Insufficient or ineffective broad spectrum antibiotic. Be careful.

I also had braces and hated them. No teeth needed pulling. I suspect that my parents had the braces removed prematurely in order to end my complaining. Also, I don't use toothpaste.

My dentist's office is setup much the same way. Of course, I now take care of his computers after I fixed a large number of problems his former service company failed to address. His intraoral camera was only 0.3 megapixels, so I dragged in my 4 megapixel borescope camera and demonstrated how much more detail can be seen with more dots and seperate lighting. Unfortunately, it couldn't be sterilized and therefore wasn't suitable for office use. Nobody uses film X-rays these days unless they have a huge inventory of film and chemicals they're trying to deplete.

Understandable. Presumably, there is a risk of being *worse* off.

Ah, but you should have known better? Or, is this something that you can't predict until you've been screwed (or not)?

Due to (long?) recovery period? Or, does the surgery "cost" you some capability, thereafter?

The recovery time. She could do it, but I'll probably just wait some more. Mike