Death of my Son
My youngest son died yesterday from pancreatic cancer, at just 37. He passed away peacefully at home with friends and family.
I shall always remember how he bore his illness very bravely and always thought of others, despite the fact he only had days to live. The support from the local surgery, district nurses and Macmillan was impeccable and meant he was at least as comfortable as possible.
Nothing I can say will really make any difference.
Pancreatic cancer is an awful disease for which there appears to little chance of any progress towards a cure. I do have hope though and it is my wife’s and my old University of Liverpool, that is one of the leaders in this fight.
Read more about their work here.
A Scare to Laugh At?
Last night I noticed that one of my eyes was very red. This morning it wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t any worse.
Was it blood pressure? Was it the statins? Was it the aspirin? Or was it something much worse?
So I got driven to the drop-in Health Centre in Haverhill and feared the worst. Perhaps that was that I had to wait twenty minutes or so, but then there did seem to be quite a few walking wounded in the centre.
When I did see the doctor, he gave me a bit of a thrice-over, had a deep look into my eyes and said that it couldn’t be any of the first three, as only one eye was badly affected. He said it looked very sore and said that it could be caused by hay-fever.
Too right! I suffered badly last spring and when I got the prescription for some drops at the pharmacy a few minutes later, the pharmacist said that he was dolling them out at a high frequency!
It’s funny, but before I was diagnosed as a coeliac, I never suffered from hay-fever. Now, I usually spend a rotten spring. You win some and you lose others. I suppose my immune system was so crap before, it wasn’t good enough to give me hay-fever.
A New Face for an Old Lady
I found this article on the British Library web site. It’s called Stroke and Coeliac Disease and is from Italy.
I’ve ordered it. I hope it’s worth the price.
Another Paper
This paper has the title of “Effect of B vitamin supplementation on plasma homocysteine levels in celiac disease”. It sounds boring, but I think it says that if you have low B6 and folate levels, then you might be more likely to get a stroke.
In any case I’m going to get my homocysteine, folate and B6 levels checked. I know the B12 are OK.
Coeliac Disease and Ischemic Stroke
I’m up early and playing on the Internet with Google. I’ve just typed “stroke coeliac” into the search engine with a couple of modifiers to cut out some of the things I already know about.
I have now found this paper by El Moutawakil B, Chourkani N, Sibai M, Moutaouakil F, Rafai M, Bourezgui M and Slassi I working in Casablanca in Morocco, entitled Coeliac Disease and Ischemic Stroke. This is the extract.
INTRODUCTION: Neurological manifestations of celiac disease are various. An association with ischemic stroke is not common and has not been well documented. We report two cases.
OBSERVATIONS: The first patient had experienced several transient ischemic strokes in the past 2 years and then had an acute ischemic stroke involving the territory of the right posterior cerebral artery. Investigations revealed celiac disease with no other recognizable etiology. The clinical course was marked by persistent visual aftereffects, but no new vascular event. The second patient had been followed since 1998 for celiac disease confirmed by pathology and serology tests. She was on a gluten-free diet. The patient had an ischemic stroke involving the territory of the left middle cerebral artery. Apart from a positive serology for celiac disease and iron deficiency anemia, the etiological work-up was negative.
DISCUSSION: The mechanisms of vascular involvement in celiac disease are controversial. The most widely incriminated factor is autoimmune central nervous system vasculitis, in which tissue transglutaminase, the main auto-antigen contributing to maintaining the integrity of endothelium tissue, plays a major role. Other mechanisms are still debated, mainly vitamin deficiency.
CONCLUSION: Being a potentially treatable cause of ischemic stroke, celiac disease must be considered as a potential etiology of stroke of unknown cause, particularly in young patients, and even without gastrointestinal manifestations.
I’d always fancied going to Casablanca to see the ghost of Humphrey Bogart.
Beware the Ides of March
I had my stroke on the 15th March, which is The Ides of March.
This is not a suspicious day for me, but it was my mother-in-law’s birthday. My late wife always said that we should beware the Ides of March.
Now I didn’t get on too well with my mother-in-law, as she was a lady with different principles to me, but surely my stroke isn’t her fault?
How Am I Doing?
I suppose that I’m OK, and that in itself is probably good news as I only had the small stroke three days ago.
My real problem I suppose is being unable to drive, as this means that I have to rely on the goodwill of others. That is not my style. And if you have been reading this blog, you will know that I like to travel to all sorts of places in both the Lotus Elan and the Jaguar.
Other than that, I don’t have too many problems, except that I find it difficult to drink quickly. As I tend to drink a lot of tea, coffee and diet-Coke, I seem to be trying to drink all day. I think I’m losing weight despite eating quite a lot.
But overall I suppose it’s not too bad.
I could have been much, much worse.
Mephedrone
There has been a lot of talk about mephedrone or meow meow in the news lately.
Can anybody tell me, why anybody is stupid enough to experiment with crap like that?
I’m dubious of legal drugs, let alone illegal ones.
Can Influenza Cause Strokes?
I ask this question in an enquiring fashion, not actually wanting to prejudice the answer. After all I’ve criticised medical researchers on this blog a couple of times for trying to prove a theory rather than solve a problem.
So let’s start with some facts about me.
- I had a stroke on Monday and this winter despite having a flu jab, I got a bad dose of flu. I also remember saying to my housekeeper and she confirmed it, that I thought that the flu was coming back.
- As I write, I have a runny nose and my head feels just like it does when you are getting over a cold.
- I have also had another small stroke in the last perhaps couple of years. This I don’t remember, but I think I can remember a time when I woke up dribbling. But then I had no slurred speech. I vaguely remember telling my wife that I felt odd, but that was it. When exactly it was I do not know.
- I also remember two incidents where I blacked out for perhaps a second whilst driving. Incidentally, both times it was in the Lotus and in one, I know I was getting over the flu and put the incident down to that. Both days were days with a lot of sunlight. I just put them down to the usual migraines that I occasionally get and one to the flu.
So were the last two incidents TIAs.
Two of these incidents definitely involved recent flu.
Now this may all be conjecture and two out of four is not good statistics, so you can make what you want out of them.
But!
This article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is a respected journal seems to show that if you are vaccinated against flu, then you are less likely to be admitted to hospital with a heart attack or a stroke.
This large study definitely shows that if you don’t get flu, then you are less likely to have a stroke.
But is the reverse true?
More Checks
I went back into Addenbrooke’s today to have the arteries in the neck checked. Apparently, if they’re clogged these can be a cause of strokes.
But mine were fine. Or at least the ultrasound guy said that it wasn’t necessary for me to see a doctor.
I will be thankful for small mercies.
By the way, I’ve had a few ultrasound scans and seen lots with horses, and this is another technology that gets better and better.
The Anonymous Widower 