Category Archives: training

MS, MS research, MS treatment, resilience, training

Two Types of “Extraordinary”

Well, with shoes on, K is 2'10".
With shoes on, K is 2’10”.

When I think extraordinary, I think either very rare or not yet understood. Often times, the difference between the two types is blurred because we do not have enough information about the rare event to see a pattern or cause. I think of our youngest daughter who was recently measured in the 0.05 percentile height-wise for children her age. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, picture 10,000 children getting in line from shortest on the left to tallest on the right. Of the 10,000 children, K would only have 4 children further to the left of her. Her height is very rare for her age, but is it unexplained? The line is blurred here as she was born missing a chromosome and very early at 23.5 weeks. The doctors do not know the impact of either well enough to attribute them to be the cause of her height.

It may sound odd, but I do not wish my children to be extraordinary in any medical sense. I think the two most terrifying things a patient can hear from a doctor are “you have a fatal condition” and anything prefaced by “This is interesting…” As a patient, I want to hear the doctor say, “You present like another case, and I would like to try what has worked for others to see if it can help you too.”

Of course this bring me to an event which excites me at the end of this week. I will have the honor of participating at a meeting for the American Board of Internal Medicine which has been dealing a lot with continuing education requirements for doctors. I know the dread of continuing education for those of us who think we are done with formal education. I hate doing the continuing education required for me to manage and the separate course work to remain a foster parent of medically fragile children. However, when I am most tired of finding time I don’t have for continuing education, I think how fast the world is changing.

A has come further than we had ever hoped.
A has come further than we had ever hoped.

Ten years ago, the literature about the long term prospects of a kid who has undergone a fontan procedure for their heart said they would need a heart transplant in the next thirty years. Now, patients who have had the fontan procedure are living much longer without needing another heart. How long? Well, we will just have to keep reading into the future as that research is ongoing.

Then I think about my own MS twenty to twenty-five years ago, I would have been given steroids to treat flares with little hope of reducing the number of incidents. In the 1990’s, MS patients began to get some disease modifying drugs, but they not the most powerful treatments on the market today. They reduce flares some, but their impact on disease symptom progression is not statistically significant. Recently, there has been a bigger push to look at symptom progression as a better measure than number of flares, and on this basis the newer drugs fare better. The oral options are more effective than the older injectable treatments, and Tysabri still has the best results as measured by symptom progression and numbers of flares. However, the drug was pulled off the market when a few patients died from brain infections. It was put back on the market when patients pointed out they were willing to take the minor risk for the possible benefits of the treatment plan. I have been lucky enough to have neurologists who stay current on the research which has allowed me to stay on the most effective treatments. Their education saved me the dreaded “interesting” designation. Their education allowed me options many patients I meet have never been presented. Still, the history book is not closed on either my MS or MS research.  Even last week, the recommended treatment course as defined by NICE (the  National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) for newly diagnosed patients changed:

http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.com/2014/10/multiple-sclerosis-management-update-on.html

Recently a pharmaceutical company declined to pursue a drug (Cladribine) which showed potential to wipe out MS in patients because of an “increased” cancer risk. Increased is in quotes because patients in the trial who took the drug had more cancer in their group than the control group which had none. This sample anomaly in the control group killed that drug’s chance to make it to market as an MS treatment. Still, maybe the trial will give hope to a desperate patient for whom nothing has worked. Maybe it will give inspiration for further research into another drug with similar properties. Maybe the positive MS results will seem extraordinary enough to serve as a catalyst for us to learn more about how MS works and can be stopped.  I am not clear if it was just the oral version that was rejected and not the injectable.  For a write-up on Cladribine’s rejection, check out (http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-regulators-got-it-wrong-and-throw.html)

On a personal note, I turned 39 this week, and my favorite part of my birthday was going for a run as O and A rode their bikes. Being able to play “Zombie Escape” for 3 miles seemed extraordinary. It felt good to think how far we have all come; me with my MS, A with her heart and digestive system issues, and O with his premie lungs and brain injury. It’s a memory I will cherish.

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2 percent, Black history, foster care, law history, race, religion, story, training

"At Least They Let Him Die"

J and I went to a foster parent training on Saturday.  It was incredibly boring, and became kind of a running gag between us about how we have the “most interesting dates.”  Of course it went late, but we stayed because the last 2 speakers were the only 2 we would have gone out of our way to hear even if the last was sad as all get out.  The highlight of the 5 hours before the last 2 speakers was this Chinese proverb:
“A farmer planted a tree, but it seemed that this tree when planted, watered, and nurtured for an entire growing season did not outwardly grow as much as an inch. Then, after the second growing season, a season in which the farmer took extra care to water, fertilize and care for the bamboo tree, the tree still did not sprout.  This continued as the sun rose and set for four solid years. The farmer had nothing tangible to show for all of his labor trying to grow the tree.
Then, along comes year five.
In the fifth year that Chinese bamboo tree seed finally sprouts and the bamboo tree grows up to eighty feet in just one growing season! Or so it seems….”
This story was told to us to try and instill a keep the faith attitude even if we don’t see the changes in our kids.  I wrote a message to J noting that while the class was talking about the miracle 5th year, I think the miracle was the farmer continuing to water and fertilize the spot in the ground where a seed had been planted four years ago.  Seriously, 4 years of nothing = me giving up and spending my time on another spot…2 years before.  Now think about how long it took to read that blurb… That’s what I got for my first 5 hours. Did I mention we were a little bored?
2nd to last speaker:
For our second to last speaker, we heard from Senior Judge Arthur Burnett Sr. (http://www.dwlr.com/files/bio/aburnett.pdf).  I’d heard of Brown vs. the Board of Education, but I didn’t know there was a case settled before it.  The case before it allowed him to attend college and then New York University School of Law.  From there he went all the way to federal court and advising presidents like Kennedy during the Civil Rights marches.  It’s pretty amazing to think of the path he blazed and through his work with children, continues to make.  I try to keep his story and inner strength in mind as a counter to the often ugly sides of our history both racial and other civil history.  We really have come a long way. 
(Last speaker on next page)

Our last Speaker:
Our last speaker is a former foster-child. I don’t think I will soon forget the exchange he recounted.  He is a survivor of foster-care in the 70’s who went on to graduate college and then law school and is now politics.  He talked about walking back from school one day when he saw another fostered kid he knew from one of the homes. 
 “What school are you in now?  I haven’t seen you in forever.  So what have you been up to?”
“I dropped out.  Prostitution.”
“You mean women pay you to have sex with them?”
“Not that kind of prostitution…  I hate it.  I can’t…”
“It will be OK.  Do you believe in Jesus?”
“You mean the guy on the cross?  At least they let him die.”   
I keep comparing that conversation to the one my kids had last week about their surgical experiences.  I think about his description of boys’ homes, the group living centers for foster kids with no foster families to take them.  If nothing else, his stories get back to the “why do I do this?” in a big way.  It’s a bit unfortunate we ended with him because the speaker before him had an awesome, uplifting life story.  Did the kid he saw on the path even have a chance to live life well?  Still, when I think of what I (we) give up to provide homes, it seems so small compared to what happened to some of those who never got the homes they needed. So maybe his was a good story on which to end.
I was also taken aback when he mentioned only 2% of foster children go onto graduate college.  In part, this is because so little is expected of them.  I expect my kids to go to college or get some schooling after high-school, but that is in large part my passing expectations which were on me to my kids. The expectations led me to know if I put in the work, I will be able to go (and I darn well better put in the work).  Maybe that’s the difference between me and the Chinese farmer.  Because I have no expectation of success farming, if faced with no immediate or short term signs of progress I would give up and try something else.  Maybe the 98% of fostered kids follow my thought path.  With my kids, I am more content to keep watering and fertilizing like the farmer even if I see nothing in the 5thyear.  Eventually something will grow there, even if it looks different than the tree I thought I was waiting to see grow.
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