dear ms b-be screened

DEAR MS B-BE SCREENED


we pay the price
ms b
for past sins

no its not bad stuff
just
when we were little long time ago
we were kicked outside
go outside and play
we were told
so
out we went

now we when the weather was warm
went outside with just a pair of shorts on
sometimes even barefooted
we were

during the summer
we would get
real real real dark
like we were from south of the border

what that means
was that there was probably a lot of sunburning
going on

i can remember my nose peeling a lot
it would be a pink island inside a dark face

now fast forward well a lot of years
those hours and hours
of
exposing my skin to all that radiation
well
ms b
it finally caught up to me

right there on that pink island
my nose
im sure it even though i wear a hat a lot when
i am and was outside
it still peaked out of the shadows

so gradually over the years
the dna inside those skin cells on my nose
got changed
so
that they began to grow irregularly
so
that it began to grow downwards from the surface
even
making a pinpoint area when the skin
would just bleed

so

aafp.org
a spot that bleeds frequently
a spot that comes and goes
a spot that changes and grows darker
or

healthline.com
a spot that develops an ulcer in it
or


a mole that gets darker and grows and changes how it looks
its
a warning to have it checked

so
thinking ok i am now paying for my past uv overexposure

so
i am now destined to have mohs surgery on
a basal cell on my nose
that pink island that im sure looked cute when i was little
well
we didnt know better back then

so mohs it is
shave
slides
more shaves
more slides
until the bad cells are all gone
then
the hole thats left
well
that has to be filled in some way

flaps and stitches
thats the final event for that day

so
ms b
i want you to be sunscreened as much as possible
with a pretty little hat on
so that nose will not peak out under its shadow

yes
wish i had known better back then

the organicgreen doctor

wwyd fight like hell

Walk to End Alzheimers
click here to donate or join 
the organicgreendoctor.com team

click here to find your local walk 

PURPLE DAY
this friday is alzheimers awareness day 
many businesses are going purple 
the employees are wearing purple to increase
awareness for this disease
austins skyline and other cities will have their
skylines lit up purple for this day 
so 
wear purple on friday 

WWYD FIGHT LIKE HELL
we all know what wwjd means
but wwyd
means what would you do 
if you or your family or your wife or your daughter
or your friend was faced with this situation

wwyd



this is about lindsay jones who was an avid runner
and wife and librarian
she was a big runner and had ran some marathons
she was a wife and was excited that finally after trying
for awhile she was pregnant 
and she was a librarian
not any librarian
one of those special librarians that you remember and 
who finds ways to encourage kids to read

my wife had an occasion to interact with her once
she teaches in an alternative high school and was trying to 
find an elementary school to let her students skype and interact
with elementary kids 
none of the librarians at the more than 30 schools in the district
would agree to do this except for lindsay jones
both the high school kids and elementary kids enjoyed the 
experience

lindsay was not afraid to try things different
my wife was so impressed with lindsay jones and was saddened
as she followed her story over the next months
her online journals were hard to read sometime

i had trouble reading them knowing what was coming

lindsay jones was so excited that she was pregnant as she 
and her husband had wanted a child for awhile
she was doing everything right to stay healthy

then at about 20 weeks of her pregnancy she was told that she 
had melanoma
melanoma can be simple-remove the lesion and if caught early 
you are essentially cured
if caught later it can spread and can be more difficult to treat

hers was the latter
she needed aggressive cancer treatment 
the problem there was a good chance that the fetus would
be harmed

she had a choice 
a difficult choice to make

undergo cancer treatment with the effects of chemo on her and 
her fetus with the risk that the fetus would be permanently harmed
she would survive though or she might not

terminate the pregnancy at this time and undergo chemo to save
her life

continue the pregnancy and hold off chemo and treatment until 
the baby was born

you see sometimes pregnancy does funny things to the bodys 
immune system 
people with rheumatoid arthritis will have it go away until after
the baby is born 
people with latent tb will have it become activated and tb infection 
can harm the mom and the baby 
melanoma could it be more aggressive because of pregnancy 

wwyd

this is one of those tough choices that patients have to make 
sometimes and
as a physician you have to be non judgemental in whatever
decision that is made
despite your own political or religious or personal views

your job is to be supportive and when the decision is made on 
what to do you have to make sure that patient gets the best
care thats available 

because there is no good answer to this 

ive thought about this a lot as a father and as a physician and 
im not sure what i would do if this was my daughter or my 
daughterinlaw or my sister or my wife
but whatever decision was made i would be there for her

her best chance to live is to terminate the pregnancy and undergo
chemo as soon as possible
waiting 5 months with a pregnancy suppressed immune system 
could be fatal
she if she survived the chemo and the disease could try again later

doing chemo with the pregnancy could lead to her survival but there
is a good chance the baby would be born with problems or could die
in utero

lindsay jones made the choice
to complete the pregnancy then immediately undergo chemo and 
cancer treatment
she decided to fight like hell and that she could beat this melanoma

she delivered a healthy baby girl named reece
lindsay underwent treatment but after several months she died last
october

she fought like hell to beat this melanoma 
she did have a year with her daughter
her daughter will grow up without her mom 
but her mom gave her that gift
that gift of life

wwyd

here are links to her story

the organicgreen doctor

fires, skin cancer, rash

FIRES
lately around here because of the heat and lack of rain fires
seem to be a daily or weekly occurrence
when i drove to dallas this week there were quite a lot of
areas that had burned around here

when we got back from our wedding journey this summer and
after we heard the story of the fire that burned the peoples
house we stayed at during the wedding we mowed a large area
around our house as a protective barrier
one cigarette onto our pastures would burn all my property
we have had several old hackberry trees die from the drought
also and these would burn easily

the fire would go fast and probably couldnt be stopped before
the fire departments got there
luckily my house sits on a 1 acre enclosed area inside the middle
of my property
we have kept the grass cut low this summer on this 1 acre
(we only cut it once since it was dry as it all went dormant
it is all native grasses)
the rest of the pastures have been allowed since we have been
here to go completely la naturale
i have planted native grasses also in bare spots over the last
few years
so 90% of my property would burn rapidly
this is what use to happen on the prairie before we all got here

near here a fire broke out this week and burned 15 homes and
displaced quite a lot of people
luckily the fire departments acted fast to contain the fire
a few days before a few miles away hundreds of acres were
burned and was eventually contained
luckily no loss of life occurred

what we need is an end to this drought
on a recent walk i stuck my walking stick (thanks jr for the stick)
into one of the cracks in the pasture and the stick went down
3 feet into the ground
that first rain we get will probably disappear down all those
holes

in my pastures there are patches of green stuff growing
everything else is brown and dormant
as i went to a grass seminar recently on native grasses i was
able to identify the grass-it was switchgrass which is a native
grass that is good to have on your property
it got there when i planted the seeds a few years ago
maybe it will spread since the others arent seeding this year

a new storm is brewing in the caribbean
maybe it will head this way and give us some rain
lets go h-------- storm

SKIN CANCER
today i pay the price of sun worshipping a lot during my lifetime
i have a lesion that has popped up on my left cheek that
appears to be an actinic keratosis (a pre cancerous lesion) that
grows from too much sun exposure
if it is this ak (actinic keratosis) it willl be frozen off and be gone

if it has developed further as i have neglected to have it taken care
of for a few months (doctors make bad patients)
then it may have developed into a squamous cell cancer which
will have to be surgically removed
or
it may be a basal cell cancer which is also treated surgically
once it is removed it rarely returns

the one you dont want to get is melanoma
here is a picture of what it may look like



see the brown areas around the edges with the black
areas in the middles
thats what a melanoma looks like
if you have one of this dont sit around and watch it grow
it can metastasise to anywhere in the body
if caught early it can be cured as cured as cancer is cured
if caught later it becomes more difficult to treat

why did i get this lesion on my face
i worship the sun
i have always been an outside person all my life
and have not been a good sun screen person until the
last several years
a lot of damage got done when i was younger that now im
paying for
there probably will be more that will show up as i get older

note: most of the melanomas ive seen in my career were
in young people in their 20s and 30s

so wear a wide brimmed hat
wear long sleeves when possible
use a good suncreen that doesnt sweat off
reapply sunscreen when needed during the day
avoid going outside the hottest times of the day
wear sunglasses
if you get a lesion get it checked
dont do like i did and wait awhile before you get it
taken care of

RASH
videomedicine is the way of the future assisted by skyping
texting and emailing

(i recently was a participant as a patient in a videomedicine project
of the university of texas medical center in dallas using it to do
long distance videoconferencing of a neuropsychological exam
this will be used to do assessments at isolated clinics miles
away from the university)

my wet suitcase sisterinlaw is in central america with her family
something always happens to her every summer when she goes
there
last time she got a bad staph infection in her foot from stepping
on coral or something when surfing
she eventually recovered but was miserable for days with fever
and pain

now this time she got a kidney infection and was running fever
this started the same day she got zapped by a sting ray on the
heel which caused a great amount of pain

after two days of the antibiotic she developed a rash and felt
miserable (again)
so she texted my wife she and later emailed me so i could get
a better history without having to read all that text jargon some
of which i couldnt understand
rsh rd swln fvr nd yur hlp
so i got a good history from her by email
we tried skyping but the connection was bad and i needed a
finer picture to look at
so she texted me a picture of a body part that appeared to be
a thigh
it was the rash that you commonly see in a reaction to antibiotics
she was told to stop the offending antibiotic
take benadryl every 8 hours until she could get into the doctor
in a few hours
and to drink extra fluids to help flush her kidneys well

so this is how we may all communicate to get health care in
the future

i didnt mind doing it for her as i owed her for the wet suitcase story

she eventually went to the er there and got a shot (probably a
steroid shot) and got a new prescription for a new antibiotics
24 hours later she felt much better

austin texas october 15, 2011



the organicgreen doctor