A kind of scary story in this week's news about a contaminant in heparin, which is used as a blood thinner - the contamination may be responsible for the deaths of 19 Americans from an anaphylactic shock reaction to the contaminant.
Much of the supply of heparin originates in China, already known for other cases of contaminated food, drug, and sundry consumer products distributed around the world. Particularly troublesome is the implication that the contamination may be deliberate. This one hits a little too close to home for me - I receive heparin every time we access/deaccess my port. The port is routinely flushed out before we start an infusion session (my biweekly "basting") with two syringes of sterile saline, followed by a syringe of heparin to ensure that blood won't clot in the catheter; and we follow the same procedure when we end an infusion and disconnect Silent Bob, leaving the heparin in the port and catheter. So far, the contaminated product in the US appears to be in vials distributed by Baxter International - not the source I receive (which I think is from BectonDickinson in pre-filled syringes). I'll be watching this story carefully and will have some questions when I go in this week for treatment.
In other items in the news last week, actor Patrick Swayze was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He is receiving treatment at Stanford University's Cancer Center, described as "radical chemotherapy". While advanced cases of pancreatic cancer have a pretty gloomy survival rate, perhaps Swayze's treatment will be successful and can be replicated with other patients - again, kind of close to home for me, as I have a friend with pancreatic cancer.
I'm not sure why I'm still awake enough to write this tonight. I've been up since 4:45 this morning with no sleep (and with the change to Daylight Savings this morning too - ugh) so that we could head down to the coast to go razor clamming. And for the effort, not much in the way of a catch - our determined party of three managed a paltry 4 clams, and for the first time, I was completely skunked and got nothing. And not only did I get skunked, but I broke my clam "gun" and then completed the trifecta by doing something that made a horrible "popping" sound in my lower back while trying one last time to pull a clam out of the sand. Even with the habitual "lift with your legs and not the back" that I try to do when lifting, somehow that missed it's mark this morning and had me temporarily immobilized for a few minutes (and just a teeny bit scared that I was going to repeat my TIA episode from January). After resting for a few minutes, it seemed OK, and so far is only just a little sore. I'll see what happens tomorrow morning when I get up. I'd say that the clams won this round pretty decisively.
An update regarding last week's post about access to this blog to employees at Swedish Hospital. Kate Wakefield contacted me on Monday to indicate that access had been restored - some of the widgets on the right sidebar (these don't show up in the version that shows up in your email inbox, but are present on the home site) can't be displayed, but that's a minor detail. And a correction - Ms. Wakefield's title is Sr. Information Security Engineer. Thanks again, Kate.
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. For details on some of the activities planned to raise awareness, please see http://coveryourbutt.org/.
This week's pictures above are of Samish Bay, WA from the drive back from Bellingham WA on Friday, and below another sign of spring in the backyard.
