Can A Broken Humerus Affect Your Hand And Wrist Long Term?
Sixty-four years ago, my left humerus was broken at school and I don’t think the local hospital fixed it too well. I also don’t think I had the best of physiotherapy, after some of my experiences with physios since my stroke, which have been of a generally very high-quality, from both the NHS and private physiotherapists.
The wrist has not been misbehaving itself recently, so I asked Google AI, the question in the title of this post and received this reply.
Yes, a broken humerus can affect your hand and wrist long-term, especially if a nerve like the radial nerve is injured during the fracture or surgery. This can cause temporary issues like wrist drop, which is the inability to extend the wrist and fingers, often improving with therapy. In rare cases, if nerve recovery is incomplete, surgical procedures may be necessary to restore function, though most fractures have an excellent long-term outlook with proper rehabilitation.
Note.
- I certainly didn’t have proper rehabilitation in 1961 at Highlands Hospital in Winchmore Hill.
- I wonder if I have actually suffered from wrist drop in recent years.
- I suspect that now there are better treatments available.
Google seem to have scraped the article from the respectable Cleveland Clinic.
Why Has My Left Humerus Got Worse In The Last Few Months?
I wonder, if it is new BYD buses on route 141.
- I always sit or stand downstairs, as at 78, I don’t want too risk climbing the stairs.
- The buses are more pokey and the seats are narrower than say a Routemaster or other British bus.
- On Routemasters and other British buses, I usually sit on the far-right seat to protect the humerus.
- It is getting increasingly knocked if I sit in the left-hand seat of a right-sided pair, by peoples’ backpacks.
- The seats are narrow on the BYD buses, and if sitting in a left-hand seat of a left-sided pair, my left humerus rubs against the outside wall of the bus. This is worse with a large person in the right seat.
- If I sit in the right-hand seat of a left-sided pair, it’s usually better, but if there’s a large person in the left seat, because of the narrow seats, the arm get knocked.
- On the BYD buses, there are no forward facing seats downstairs on the right side.
- There are some forward facing seats at the right side at the back, but they are difficult for me to climb into.
- The corridor from the front to the back in the bus is narrow and I sometimes bump the left humerus.
- I met a lady with a pram, who finds the corridor narrow for her pram.
- The step-up and down into the bus is higher and puts strain on my knees, unless I get it right.
I do wonder if the BYD buses were designed around smaller oriental people.
I certainly never had these problems, when I was riding on on Routemasters and other British-designed buses.
For the next few works, I will avoid travelling on the BYD buses unless I can sit in the right-hand seat of a pair, by myself.
I can also stand, if the bus isn’t too full. Looking back, I feel, I don’t mind standing on the buses.
I will now be forwarding this post to those that know me well.
Did I Have A Funny Turn Caused By Dehydration This Morning?
I followed my usual Sunday morning routine today
- I took my drugs with a large mug of tea.
- I had a deep bath with emollient in the water.
- I put my head under the water and opened my eyes, to clear the massive amount of sleep, I get overnight in my eyes.
- I then went to Leon in Hanover Square for a good Full English gluten-free breakfast.
Unusually, Leon made a mistake and didn’t put any milk in my tea, so I didn’t drink it. So was I low on fluids?
A Transformer Is Being Moved Tonight
This press release from National Grid is entitled National Grid Prepares For Two Major Supergrid Transformer Deliveries In London.
The first one is to be moved into Redbridge substation tonight, so I went to have a look after breakfast.
- It was easy to get to the site, as it is close to Redbridge station on the Central Line.
- Out of the Underground, it was quite hot.
- By the time, I got to Redbridge station, I was feeling slightly unwell and felt my balance was poor.
- So I immediately turned around and came home using the Central and Lizzie Lines to Moorgate, where I took a bus home.
- I was certainly feeling better in the air-conditioned atmosphere of the Lizzie Line.
Since I’ve been home, I have been continuously drinking Adnams 0.5 % Alcohol Ghost Ship and I feel that I am now back to normal.
I asked Google AI “Can being dehydrated affect your balance?” and got this answer.
Yes, dehydration can definitely affect balance. It can lead to dizziness and a feeling of unsteadiness, which can make it harder to maintain balance. This is because dehydration can disrupt the fluid balance in the inner ear, which plays a vital role in balance.
I can remember an incident in my thirties, when I fell down the escalator at Oxford Circus station and went round to the Middlesex Hospital to be cleaned up.
Did Dehydration Play A Part In My Serious Stroke?
I had my stroke during breakfast in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. I’d had two or possibly three very small strokes early in the morning before and I know from measuring my weight, that I can lose up to a kilo overnight.
So I asked Google AI “Can dehydration cause strokes?” and got this answer.
Yes, dehydration can increase the risk of stroke. When the body lacks sufficient fluids, blood volume decreases, potentially leading to thicker blood and reduced blood flow to the brain. This can exacerbate existing blockages in blood vessels or make it more difficult for blood to reach the brain, potentially causing an ischemic stroke.
My late wife drunk a lot more fluids that I do and perhaps, I should have followed her example more, of always having water handy?
My Family And Lunchtime Naps
Consider.
- My father was a great one for a lunchtime nap of perhaps thirty minutes after his sandwiches and a cup of tea in his print works in Wood Green.
- I can still see him sitting there on a wartime Utility dining-chair fast asleep.
- As my paternal grandfather was a professional alcoholic, I suspect he slept a lot. But whether he took naps, I do not know.
- I’ve always been prone to fall asleep, but as I’ve got older, I seem to do it more often.
- My middle son, also had a nap after Christmas Lunch last year. But was that just coincidence.
These are questions, that I’ve asked Google AI.
Are There Any Medical Benefits Of The Spanish Siesta?
Google AI said.
Yes, there are potential medical benefits associated with the Spanish siesta, which is a short afternoon nap. Studies suggest that siestas can improve cognitive function, mood, and cardiovascular health. A well-timed and appropriately short siesta can help reduce stress, improve memory consolidation, and even lower blood pressure.
That seems fairly positive.
Will A Spanish Siesta Help Atrial Fibrillation?
I ask this question, as I have atrial fibrillation and I was told, it caused my stroke.
Google AI said.
Spanish siesta, or daytime napping, is not a guaranteed or recommended treatment for atrial fibrillation (AFib). While some studies suggest a link between napping and AFib risk, the relationship is complex and depends on nap duration and individual factors. Short naps (15-30 minutes) may be associated with a lower risk, while longer naps could potentially increase the risk, especially in those with hypertension.
As I don’t have hypertension, it could be positive for me!
Does Atrial Fibrilation Run In Families?
Google AI said.
Yes, atrial fibrillation (AFib) can run in families, meaning it can be inherited. While many cases of AFib are linked to lifestyle factors, age, and other medical conditions, a significant portion of individuals with AFib, especially those with no clear cause, have a family history of the condition. Studies suggest that up to 30% of people with AFib of unknown cause have a family history of the condition.
As my father’s medical history seems fairly similar to mine, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had had it.
Is there A Connection Between Atrial Fibrilation And Coeliac Disease?
Google AI said.
Yes, there is an association between atrial fibrillation (AF) and celiac disease (CD), with studies indicating an increased risk of AF in individuals with CD. This connection is thought to be linked to the inflammatory nature of both conditions.
I have both and I suspect my father did too. We both had a serious stroke at around sixty.
My father had a second, which killed him a few years later. Modern pharmaceuticals have probably kept me alive.
Can You Measure Blood Pressure At The Ankle?
Consider.
- As long, as I can remember my left foot has always been larger than my right.
- Over the last few years increasingly, my left foot has often been a stronger shade of red, than my right.
- I also know, that after my stroke a specialist physiotherapist found that my left leg was stronger than my right.
I also know that I have a strange leaky skin.
- I had my stroke in 2010 in Hong Kong and was looked after in a private Chinese hospital.
- They were very strict and measured all the bodily fluids, that I passed.
- They didn’t collect any urine, so they accused me of throwing all my water away.
- I was not guilty, as I was drinking it all.
So they fitted me with a catheter and guess what? They still didn’t collect anything.
It was evidence that my skin is not good at holding water.
So why do I want to measure the blood pressure at my ankle? Or in fact both ankles.
In my ICI days in the 1960s and 1970s, I was helping chemical engineers to understand chemical plants and reactions, by looking at flows and pressures in the various pipes of the plant or experimental rig.
But I do wonder, if the red nature of my left foot, is due to some sort of irregularity in the blood flow to my left leg.
Mind The Step At Warren Street Station
This warning message is at Warren Street station.
I sometimes miss these single steps due to my poor eyesight from my stroke, but the message alerted me, as I was coming out of the station.
I find it funny, that I will more usually trip going down stairs, rather than up.
But then rabbits and hares are more likely to take a tumble going downhill.
They also tend to run uphill, when they sense danger.
Alzheimer’s Expert Was Treated Like A Heretic Until Now
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
For decades Professor Ruth Itzhaki believed there was a link between Alzheimer’s and the virus that causes shingles, and has just been vindicated
These two paragraphs outline an amazing story.
Ruth Itzhaki does not, she says, refer to it as her time “in the wilderness”. When she reflects on the decades investigating — often almost alone — whether Alzheimer’s could be triggered by viruses, she prefers a different term. “I’d call it, ‘repeated burning as a heretic at the stake’. ” For much of her career she was treated “contemptuously”.
Today, as yet another study finds that the shingles vaccine appears to cut dementia risk, that has changed. At a stage in life when most researchers are retired, Itzhaki, an emeritus professor at Manchester University, finds herself reviewing studies from around the world. She is treated with contempt no more. But, she says, it has not been fun. “I just have to stop myself from being bitter.”
Sad to say, it is not an unusual story.
This was the comment, I appended to the Times web site.
There was a wonderful BBC Panorama about a Glasgow Veterinary professor, who believed the messenger of the body was an oxide of nitrogen, at least twenty years ago.
He was ostrasised for being a heretic.
Eventually, he was proved to be right.
I might have exposed how a simple treatment for stroke is ignored in the UK.
I was found to be coeliac at fifty and Addenbrooke’s hospital said that I should have B12 injections every three months.
In my sixties, I had a serious stroke and if I lived in the States, I would have been given B12 injections to aid my recovery. But that simple treatment is not used here, as it is considered American quackery.
However, several doctors have said, I have made a remarkable recovery. Was that because of the B12 injections, I still have?
More research needs to be done and I’ll travel anywhere to help any doctor, who is doing serious research.
It could just be, that as a London Mongrel, I have more survival genes, than a small field of Japanese Knotweed.
I should add, that as the date of my next B12 injection approaches, I can almost feel, the various parts of my body fighting for what little I have left.
But what do I know? I’m just a slightly crazy engineer/scientist and mathematician, with no medical training, who has been given an unusual body to investigate.
To Norbiton For A Plate Of Lovely Liver
I seem to need a lot of Vitamin B12.
- I am coeliac, which probably means I don’t absorb enough out of my food.
- Although, when my gallstones were removed, the surgeon had a look and said everything was good.
- When Homerton Hospital found my Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, that I talked about in I’ve Got Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, they also said everything else was good.
- In the United States, Vitamin B12 is given to stroke patients to help recovery.
- I’ve had Vitamin B12 injections for nearly thirty years, since they were prescribed by Addenbrooke’s hospital.
Certainly, I find that a Vitamin B12 injection doesn’t seem to have the same effect, it had twenty years ago. So, is my brain saying, I’ll have that, when I have an injection?
When I lived in Suffolk and I felt my Vitamin B12 was low, I’d go down the pub or carluccio’s in Cambridge or Bury and have a plate of liver.
But liver is rare in London restaurants and Carluccio’s don’t serve it any more.
A guy in the reader’s comments in The Times told me of a restaurant called the Trattoria Calabrese, that sold liver in sage butter yesterday. So today, I took a train to Norbiton to get myself some extra Vitamin B12.
These pictures describe my first visit to Norbiton.
The short walk to the restaurant from Norbiton station was very much worth it. I shall go back!
Is Vitamin B12 Pulling Me Through?
About five months ago, I swapped my food shopping from Marks & Spencer in-store to Ocado once a week. This was mainly to cut down on my walking with shopping, but also to make sure, I’d usually got a meal or two in.
In August, I wrote Liver From Ocado and I’ve generally been eating one of these ready meals a week.
Although, Ocado doesn’t always stock them, so I have to go hunting round the various Marks & Spencer stores looking for Liver and Bacon.
Unfortunately, I’m not always successful.
Today, I went searching round South London looking for a transformer. Nor a kid’s toy, but a National Grid electrical one with the weight of thirty African elephants.
I didn’t see it, but I did walk quite a bit.
I then realised that the various muscle pains in my legs, that I’ve been having for the last few months had gone.
Was it the Vitamin B12 in the ready meal, as I stopped taking the paracetamol some months ago?
Also on Thursday, I had my three-monthly Vitamin B12 injection, so my body probably had enough of the vitamin.
The older I get, the more I feel that the Vitamin B12 injections have helped my stroke recovery.
A Funny Sunday Morning
I didn’t sleep that well and I got up about 05:45.
But by 06:30, I’d completed and entered the Sunday Times Prize Sudoku, as I always do.
The odds of winning must be exceedingly long, as I complete it every week and have not won anything yet.
I had my bath and flushed the sleep from my eyes in the hot water as I always do and by 10:15, I was sitting in Leon at the Angel having my usual gluten free Full-English breakfast.
I also went round the corner to the Marks and Spencer to buy a few items I needed.
- Bananas – I can never have too many
- British Strawberries – Strawberries are rich in magnesium and coeliacs can be low, so when I see quality strawberries I usually buy.
- Liver and Bacon Ready Meal for One – I have one a week to keep up my B12 levels and Ocado didn’t have any yesterday.
- Packet of Chocolate Cakes – I am slightly addicted.
The strawberries were from Dyson Farming, which I would have thought was the wrong side of the political spectrum for Islington.
My left knee also had a funny turn, which I was looking for the liver. Was it just reminding me that, if it didn’t get its B12, it would play up something rotten or was my brain using my knee to signal that it was low in B12 after the superb work on the sudoku?
Thirteen years ago I had a serious stroke and two or three serious doctors have said I’ve made a remarkable recovery.
From what I can gather on the Internet in the United States, I would have been given B12 injections for my stroke.
But then I am, as I am coeliac and Addenbrooke’s prescribed the injections, when I was diagnosed as coeliac in the 1990s. So is that behind my excellent recovery from stroke or did the Chinese doctors in Hong Kong diagnose my stroke as worse than it was?
Since I swapped to Ocado for my food purchases about two months ago, I have found it easier to buy the Marks and Spencer’s Liver and Bacon. I now eat one every week to top up my B12 and the arthitis, I occasionally get in my joints has reduced.
So I asked Dr. Google if arthritis gets worse after a stroke.
They pointed me to this paper on the National Library of Medicine. They also helpfully gave me this AI-derived answer to my question.
Yes, arthritis can worsen after a stroke:
Osteoarthritis
A common type of arthritis that can worsen after a stroke. This can be due to spasticity that develops after a stroke. Osteoarthritis can also make it harder for stroke patients to recover during rehabilitation.
Rheumatoid arthritis
Patients with RA may experience worse functional outcomes after a stroke due to pain and swelling in their extremities. RA patients may also have an increased risk of ischemic stroke.
Other types of pain that can occur after a stroke include: Headaches, Tingling sensations, Shoulder pain, and Central post-stroke pain.
Pain after a stroke can range from headaches that resolve on their own to chronic, severe joint pain.
Ic like the answer, as it fits my symptoms. Is artificial intelligence going to do some doctors out of a job?
I certainly get the tingling sensations.
I’ve just prescribed myself Liver and Bacon for a late lunch.
I’ll report back later!
Note, that I’m eating in front of the computer with the new keyboard.
The Odd Sugary Snack May Be Good For You (But Lay Off Sugary Drinks)
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Tunes.
I shall be discussing this research with my cardiologist. My relationship with him is as doctor/patient, researcher/lab-rat and just friends. I am also coeliac and very much feel that I need to take the odd sugary snack to keep my energy levels up. I also had a serious stroke at 64, thirteen years ago, due to atrial fibrillation.
Sweden and coeliac disease could be another complicating factor here, as Sweden went the wrong way to try to eliminate coeliac disease after WW2 and just created a lot more.
I found about this Swedish research in a peer-reviewed paper entitled Coeliac Disease: Can We Avert The Impending Epidemic In India? in the Indian Journal of Research Medicine.
A History Of Sugary Snacks And Drinks And Me
Growing up in London, after World War 2, I didn’t get much sugar, as it was rationed.
But I did put it in tea and coffee.
I never ate many cakes, except for some chocolate ones.
My habit of not eating cakes and proper puddings really annoyed my mother-in-law.
I was a sickly child and I didn’t really get better until I was found to be coeliac at 50.
I am fairly certain, that my consumption of sugary snacks has got more, as I’ve got older.
But because American drinks, sweets and snacks could use sugar made from wheat, I don’t touch any American sweetened products.
But I haven’t put on any weight, since I was fifty.
Thanks to the likes of Leon, Marks and Spencer and the cafe at Worksop station for excellent sugary gluten-free snacks to keep me going!
The Anonymous Widower 