Tag Archives: teach

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Shim Sham Shimmy

I had to choose shim as my Ragtag Daily Prompt today because I am relearning the Shim Sham!

I learned it years ago, but forgot it. Now the dance group that I hang out with on Fridays does the Shim Sham as the end of their dance evening. This is a line dance but it’s a line dance from Harlem in the 1920s and 30s. It started from tap dance. “At the end of many performances, all of the musicians, singers, and dancers would get together on stage and do one last routine: the Shim Sham Shimmy.” Here.

I am learning it from this teaching tape. The individual moves are not that hard, but it is fast and it’s the transitions that I really have to work on. It is fast enough that it has to be memorized and automatic, I can’t think about the next step.

Frankie Manning was an American dancer, instructor, and choreographer. Manning is considered one of the founders of Lindy Hop, an energetic form of the jazz dance style known as swing. I got to take lindy hop classes with him in the 1980s in the Washington, DC area, when swing and lindy hop were having a revival. It is still going on, and what better exercise is there than dance?

And the photograph is Jonathan Doyle and friends playing in late March 2023. I love dancing to live music!

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Tongue twisters and counting rhymes

My mother taught us the tongue twisters that she learned growing up. My favorite is “the mistle thrush whistles in the thistle bush”. There are mistle thrushes in Europe but not in the United States. It is also found in temperate Asia and North Africa, here.

A counting rhyme that we learned is this:
“Intry mintry cutetry corn
Apple seed and apple thorn
Wire briar limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew east, one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Sit and sing, by the spring
One, two, three
Out goes he.”

Here is another version, from 1920: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/74/nursery-rhymes-and-traditional-poems/5204/intery-mintery-cutery-corn/.

We also learned some of my grandfather’s songs. A piece of this one:

Only we learned it as “chop, chop” not clap, clap. It’s like a 1960s line dance, isn’t it? Shirley Ellis, 1965.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: whistle.

And here is a version with the clapping:

I would bet that there are way more elaborate versions of the clapping.

Before that, a song called Little Rubber Dolly was recorded in 1930.

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G6PD deficiency and diabetes

Today I follow an online trail to this article on diabetes from Nature Medicine here.

It is talking about a genetic variant that is found in people with African-American heritage called G6PDdef. This genetic pattern makes the HgbA1C test inaccurate. It will look low and “in control” even when blood sugars are high. Since the blood sugars are NOT in control, complications from diabetes can happen: damage to vision, to kidneys, to nerves in the hands and feet.

I have been reading articles about current and changing guidelines about diabetes. The current guidelines say that checking blood sugars at home doesn’t make a difference. I REALLY disagree with this and at the same time, I don’t think that physicians are approaching blood sugars in a practical manner.

I saw a man recently who is diagnosed with “insulin resistance”. His HgbA1C is in between 5.6 and 6.0. Normal is 4.5 to 5.6. Over 6.5 is diabetes. He has prediabetes. He has not checked blood sugars at all, but he is on metformin.

There is evidence that metformin is helpful, and still, I think it is putting the cart before the horse. I ask my people to go buy an over the counter glucometer. Ask for the one that has cheap strips, 6 for a dollar instead of a dollar apiece. Then we go over the normal and abnormal blood sugar ranges and I ask them to start checking blood sugars. If I give them a medicine right away, they don’t learn how to control their blood sugar with diet. ALL of my patients can figure out how to bring their blood sugars down with diet. If we can’t get to a good range, then we will add metformin. I do explain that the guidelines say use a medicine right away, but I ask, “Would you like to see if you can control your blood sugars with diet?” The answer is overwhelmingly “YES!” I have never had someone say no. If we do not give them the chance and explain the goals, why would they even try?

Also, I read the dietician handouts for diabetes yesterday and I am not satisfied. I do not think they explain carbohydrates well. Foods have fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, and anything that isn’t fat or protein has carbohydrates. I think of carbohydrates as a line, from ones with high fiber that do not send the blood sugar up fast, to ones that shoot it way high. At the low end is kale and lettuce and chard and celery. Then the green and yellow and red vegetables that are not sweet. Then beets and sweet peas. Next come the fruits, from blueberries up to much sweeter ones. Fruits overlap with grains: bread and pasta and potatoes and rice. The whole grains have more fiber and are slower to digest. Candy then sweet drinks (sodas are evil) and sugar.

Sugar has 15 grams of carbohydrate in a tablespoon. Kale has 7 grams of carbohydrate in a cup. That’s a pretty huge difference. A small apple has about 15 grams of carbohydrate and a large one 30 grams. Read labels for grains. There is a lot of carbohydrate in a small amount. The issue with fruit juice is that most of the fiber is gone, so the sugars are broken down and absorbed much faster. A 12 oz coke has 32 grams of carbohydrate and a Starbucks mocha has 62! I quit drinking the latter when I looked it up.

Most people with diabetes are supposed to stay at 30 grams of carbohydrate per meal, or 45 if it is a big person or if someone is doing heavy labor. Snacks are 15 grams.

Avocados are weird. They have about 17 grams of carbohydrate in a whole one, but they also have a lot of fat. They do have a lot of fiber, which surprises me.

Diet control takes a combination of paying attention to what is on the plate and serving amounts. Three servings of pasta is not going to work, unless you are out fighting forest fires or are on the swim team. Fire fighters are allotted 6000 calories a day, but most of us do not get that much exercise.

At the same time that articles are telling me that home blood sugars are not useful with a glucometer, everyone is pushing the continuous glucose monitors. I think we like technology. And other articles say that diabetes can be reversed with major lifestyle changes.

Articles: about not using home glucose checks, here. Starting metformin, here. Starting with one of the newer medicines, here.

I think people feel a lot more successful if they get a glucometer and can bring their blood sugar down by messing about with diet. I tell them to check after what they think is a “good” meal and after a “bad” one. How much difference is there? Contrast that with being handed a pill to control it, while someone talks about diet and says all the same stuff that we’ve heard for years. Nearly all of my people want to avoid more pills and are willing to try a glucometer to see if they can avoid a pill. People who have been on diabetes medicine for a while are less willing to try, but sometimes they do too. And sometimes they are surprised that some meals do not do good things for their blood sugar.

This is all type II diabetes. For type I, we have to have insulin. If type II has been out of control for a long time, sometimes those people have to have insulin too. Right now insurances will usually cover continuous glucose monitors for people with diabetes who are on insulin, both type I and II. I do hope that they really make a huge difference for those people!

The spectrum from the low carbohydrate vegetable, the green and yellow and orange ones, up to the really high simple sugar ones is also called the glycemic index. There are lists of low to high glycemic index foods. Perhaps some people with diabetes find that helpful, but I think it’s simpler to say, ok, the stuff that doesn’t taste sweet will send the blood sugar up less. Also, since we are all genetically different and then our gut bacteria and microbiome are all different, it is individualized care to say how does this person at this time respond to this food? We change over time!

There are other examples of the HgbA1C not working to track diabetes. A resident and I looked over a person with diabetes and spherocytosis. The HgbA1C was nearly normal but the blood sugars were in the 300 range. Spherocytosis is a genetic blood cell abnormality, and the red blood cells don’t live as long. People with a past bone marrow transplant also have red cells that live for a shorter time. The G6PD deficiency is thought to help people survive malaria, so persists in the population, like sickle cell anemia. Isn’t genetics fascinating?

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The New Old Time Chautauqua

Funny how our brains work. I think of going to the other computer and then think I will look in this one for a moment. I have photographs from years past of the New Old Time Chautauqua. I open the file of Nikon photographs. There are 28 subfiles. I go to July 2018. At the end of the file, here is this motley parade. The New Old Time Chautauqua with our local Unexpected Brass Band and Other Friends.

I didn’t “know” that these photographs were even on this laptop. At least, not consciously. These are taken at the fairgrounds, August 11, 2018, in Port Townsend, Washington.

The New Old Time Chautauqua is the last one on the road. They are fundraising to go work and play with the Blackfoot Confederacy in Canada and the US. There are too many people dying from fentanyl, so the Chautauqua is part of the healing process. They are fundraising as they hit the road. I wish all of them the best.

And here is the Unexpected Brass Band at THING last year. You can hear them even if you can’t see them!

To donate to the New Old Time Chautauqua, go here. No, I mean back there. Right.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Chautauqua.

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Achievement

My first achievement for today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is spelling achievement. And no, I did not spell it correctly on the first try.

My daughter has finished her first two years of teaching eighth grade, during Covid-19. She taught remotely until March of 2021 and then in person. She worked on her teaching certificate the first year and finished her Masters last month. She is SOOOO amazing!

Hooray for ALL of the teachers who continued to teach during Covid-19, remotely, in person, hugs and prayers and sending love.

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Adverse Childhood Experiences 12: welcome to the dark

Welcome to the dark, everyone.

When you think about it, all the children in the world are adding at least one Adverse Childhood Experience score and possibly more, because of Covid-19. Some will add more than one: domestic violence is up with stress, addiction is up, behavioral health problems are up, some parents get sick and die, and then some children are starving.

From the CDC Ace website:

“Overview:Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. ACEs can include violence, abuse, and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems. Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress. ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood. However, ACEs can be prevented.”

Well, can they be prevented? Could Covid-19 be prevented? I question that one.

I have a slightly different viewpoint. I have an ACE Score of 5 and am not dead and don’t have heart disease. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about ACE scores and that it’s framed as kids’ brains are damaged.

I would argue that this is survival wiring. When I have a patient where I suspect a high ACE score, I bring it up, show them the CDC web site and say that I think of it as “crisis wiring” not “damaged”. I say, “You survived your childhood. Good job! The low ACE score people do not understand us and I may be able to help you let go of some of the automatic survival reactions and fit in with the people who had a nice childhood more easily.”

It doesn’t seem useful to me to say “We have to prevent ACE scores.” Um. Tsunamis, hurricanes, Covid-19, wars… it seems to me that the ACE score wiring is adaptive. If your country is at war and you are a kid and your family sets out to sea to escape, well, you need to survive. If that means you are guarded, untrusting, suspicious and wary of everyone, yeah, ok. You need to survive. One of my high ACE Score veterans said that the military loved him because he could go from zero to 60 in one minute. Yeah, me too. I’ve worked on my temper since I was a child. Now it appears that my initial ACE insult was my mother having tuberculosis, so in the womb. Attacked by antibodies, while the tuberculosis bacillus cannot cross the placenta, luckily for me. And luckily for me she coughed blood at 8 months pregnant and then thought she had lung cancer and was going to die at age 22. Hmmm, think of what those hormones did to my wiring.

So if we can’t prevent all ACE Scores, what do we do? We change the focus. We need to understand crisis wiring, support it and help people to let go of the hair trigger that got them through whatever horrid things they grew up with. 16% of Americans have a score of 4 or more BEFORE Covid-19. We now have a 20 or 25 year cohort that will have higher scores. Let’s not label them doomed or damaged. Let’s talk about it and help people to understand.

I read a definition of misery memoirs today. I don’t scorn them. I don’t like the fake ones. I don’t read them, though I did read Angela’s Ashes. What I thought was amazing about Angela’s Ashes is that for me he captures the child attitude of accepting what is happening: when his sibling is dying and they see a dog get killed and he associates the two. And when he writes about moving and how their father would not carry anything, because it was shameful for a man to do that. He takes it all for granted when he is little because that is what he knows. One book that I know of that makes a really difficult childhood quite amazing is Precious Bane, by Mary Webb. Here is a visible disability that marks her negatively and yet she thrives.

A friend met at a conference is working with traumatic brain injury folks. They were starting a study to measure ACE scores and watch them heal, because they were noticing the high ACE score people seem to recover faster. I can see that: I would just say, another miserable thing and how am I going to work through it. Meanwhile a friend tells me on the phone that it’s “not fair” that her son’s senior year of college is spoiled by Covid-19. I think to myself, uh, yes but he’s not in a war zone nor starving nor hit by a tsunami and everyone is affected by this and he’s been vaccinated. I think he is very lucky. What percentage of the world has gotten vaccinated? He isn’t on a ventilator. Right now, that falls under doing well and also lucky in my book. And maybe that is what the high ACE score people have to teach the low ACE score people: really, things could be a lot worse. No, I don’t trust easily and I am no longer feeling sorry about it. I have had a successful career in spite of my ACE score, I ran a clinic in the way that felt ethical to me, I have friends who stick with me even through PANDAS and my children are doing well. And I am not addicted to anything except I’d get a caffeine headache for a day if I had none.

For the people with the good childhood, the traumatic brain injury could be their first terrible experience. They go through the stages of grief. The high ACE score people do too, but we’ve done it before, we are familiar with it, it’s old territory, yeah ok jungle again, get the machete out and move on. As the world gets through Covid-19, with me still thinking that this winter looks pretty dark, maybe we can all learn about ACE scores and support each other and try to be kind, even to the scary looking veteran.

Take care.

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Thoughts on Ramadan

I have been thinking about Ramadan.

Those religions. Judaism, where you don’t eat pork or shellfish. We do know the reasons: trichanosis and food poisoning. And possibly that paralytic shellfish disease: that would be bad, right? People die fast. So pork and shellfish are forbidden.

But Ramadan. I have thought about it for a long time. I think I will do it next year, the diet part. Because I think I have been doing it: in 2012 and 2014 and now. I change my diet to help kill whatever bacteria I have. I go ketotic and the bacteria that require sugar or glucose or fructose can’t grow. It kills them. Quite effectively, since I was sent home after 24 hours of hospital observation when I had strep A pneumonia and sepsis in 2012, after drinking only 4 liters of fluid and putting out ten liters of urine. This is not a good thing. If it goes on, my circulation would collapse, which happens to be the defining symptom of sepsis. Since I did not want my circulation to collapse, I drank 6 liters of water when I got home. With electrolytes and MgS04 because I had a very low potassium and magnesium when I hit the ER. The hosptialist just said that I was bananas in her discharge summary, but she failed to explain the potassium and magnesium and she didn’t even LOOK at the nurses record of the oral intake and urine output. This is not my standard of care. I think one should ALWAYS look at the test results. The usual urine output is up to 2 liters. Ten liters should have stopped her dead in her tracks. Unfortunately I think she had me labeled. Bananas or not, a crazy person can ALSO get pneumonia and sepsis. Really.

She did give me a penicillin shot. Unfortunately it was the dose for strep throat. Not very much penicillin. After I failed to improve from the antibiotics for a couple of days, I thought OH. THERE ARE TONS MORE BACTERIA WHEN IT IS A SYSTEMIC INFECTION. INADEQUATE ANTIBIOTICS. I pulled my sanford guide. For strep A sepsis you are supposed to treat with:

penicillin G 5 million units iv every 6 hours

and clindamycin 3 million units iv every 6 hours. At least, that was the treatment in 2012.

Damn, I thought. Bit hard to do that at home on my own, isn’t it? Now what?

So I called a local pharmacy. I ordered penicillin V 500mg one four times a day and clindamycin 300mg four times a day and then I hunkered down and ate NO CARBOHYDRATES for two weeks.

Penicillin tablets are horse pills and bitter. Yet the first one I put in my mouth, it tasted delicious. Super weird. But my body must have been saying THANK YOU THANK PENICILLIN and released a crazy high dose of dopamine in my brain.

After two weeks I hoped the damn strep would be dead. I took myself out to dinner, feeling like shit, and ordered food. It tasted like heaven, but…..sepsis symptoms once my blood sugar went up. Third spacing fluid. It feels like sand running out of an hourglass as the fluid leaves your arteries and veins. It also causes an instant and terrifying panic attack as your body tries to tell you YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE GET FLUID HELP HELP HELP.

Which is why sepsis can get misdiagnosed as a panic attack or mania or what the fungk ever. It is by miles one of the most terrifying things I have ever been through.

Survived it. At home. While my fellow docs in my small town whispered about how I was bipolar. A physician’s assistant told me that the internist told her at a party that I am bipolar. Ok, I cried again. He sucks. How the hell does he know? He’s not my doctor.

Another woman doctor said, “I heard about you in a meeting. After all we aren’t really friends.” I didn’t say much. Afterwards I stared at the phone. I thought we were friends. Guess not. And ok, speaking of HIPAA, what the fungk did they say about me in a hospital meeting? Fungk them. Over and over and over, please. Spank them with a HIPAA paddle.

Next I read about strep A sepsis. Gosh, once you get it you are more likely to get it again. Damn. Power of suggestion. I got it again one year to the day from when I found my father dead in his house. Stress, you see. He’d left an out of date will, my sister was dead of cancer, it was written when I was nineteen. I knew what my father wanted. He’d said that I was the only person he know who could handle my sister, so I was the person he wanted to watch over her daughter. But the damn will didn’t SAY that.

So I did what any sensible human would do. I took the stupid will to an attorney and did what he said. So then the interfering family sued the executor (me) on my niece’s behalf. Stupid interfering mean and actually not very bright family. After three rounds, I said give it to her.

Half the estate? said my attorney.

Yes.

But… how do you feel about that?

It’s good for me. I will be done with her and that part of the family. It’s not what my father wanted but my niece clearly doesn’t want me to watch over her. Ok, fine. Give her the money. Never mind that her mother extracted at least 1/3 of the estate before my father died and made him cry. I was pretty pissed at my sister for making our father cry. That is when my father and I started comparing notes on what my sister was doing. It was grim. Anyhow, let the dead lie. Sometimes they do when they are alive, too.

It’s not good for the niece. Handing her that stack of money is thoroughly dangerous. And she’s over 18, so, well. It is on my cousins’ heads, whatever happens.

Long silence. My attorney says: you are a really nice person.

Well? I said. Have you known any cases like this.

Yes, he said reluctantly. A 19 year old. He got half a million dollars. He was dead in five years.

Mmmm hmmm. I said. Well, I wish her the best.

Anyhow, second round of strep A sepsis/pneumonia. And third round of pneumonia. With the hospital physicians for the most part still insisting that I was a liar. I mostly handled it at home though I confess that when I started bleeding from my gums, I got scared and went in. The kale water, vitamin K source, kicked in and it stopped by the time I got there. The ER doctor said that he wouldn’t believe me unless the disseminated intravascular coagulopathy labs were high. They were only a little high, but he broke his word, told me I was nuts and sent me home. He also told me I was dehydrated, which was comic because I’d asked the nurses for a “hat” and urinated 4 liters while I was in the emergency room. I was keeping track. I WOULD have been dehydrated except that I was drinking fluid when he was not looking. My daughter brought in a water bottle and quietly went to fill it. I didn’t trust that moron ER doctor to take care of me if my blood pressure tanked. Stupid man.

Home again home again.

This time they don’t believe me again. This time I think it’s funny. Also I caught it early enough so that I don’t have sepsis, praise to (your deity of choice)! I have been here for 21 years, doing medicine in this town. I was one of the two doctors who took the lead in the opioid overuse crisis. The hospital didn’t break down and train its doctors until 8 years after I started. You’d think they might say, wait, she has weird ideas….. but you know, sometimes they are really GOOD weird ideas.

Back to Ramadan. I think spending a month being ketotic and only drinking water during the day has a purpose. I think that it kills bacteria that require sugar, and also yeast and fungi, and possibly some viruses, too. What is the mechanism for the virus killing? Well, the cells slow their metabolism in ketosis, because the lizard brain thinks that the person is starving. Some systems get shut down, like chronic pain. Acute pain is still on line because WE HAVE TO FIND FOOD. In ketosis, the body burns fat and protein to make just enough glucose to keep the brain alive, and the side product is ketones. If it is the body’s store of fat and protein, well, that is starving, right? The lizard brain can’t tell if it’s an outside source. FIND FOOD so vision is sharper, hearing is more acute. Fast twitch muscles burn too many calories, so they are decreased. The slow twitch are ON so that we can go for miles and miles if need, cross continents… and where did I learn all this? Not from medical school or residency. There was a brilliant article in the Atlantic Monthly, about fasting for over a month to lose weight. He wrote about the history of fasting and fear of it and about… ketosis. Thank you, Atlantic Monthly, your article helped save my life when my doctors would not listen and sent me home to die.

Maybe viruses can’t get into the cell as easily when the cells slow their metabolism. Or, better hypothesis, the cells are slower so they don’t make viruses very well. They are slow. They ought to ride the short bus.

Ramadan 2022 starts April 1, 2022 and ends May 1, 2022.

I think I will start three days early, on March 29. Because I want to end early. Because… something big is happening at the end of that April in 2022.

Blessings.