The dreaded cough is back, after a welcome absence of months. Since by now I know that whenever I get even the slightest cold it goes right into my chest and turns into bronchitis, I pay attention to the signals. On Wednesday evening, the signals told me to begin taking an antibiotic. In the nick of time! Luckily, I don’t have any English classes until next Tuesday, so I have plenty of time to get over this thing. I feel fine but have an occasional annoying cavernous cough. No biggie. The antibiotic will zap it.

More importantly, Sherlock and I have a new protocol. After our Biocurcumax experiment ended on Tuesday (when we had our blood and urine tests done), we went back on the C3 Complex curcumin (Doctor’s Best), eight grams a day (no change in quantity).

New item: we have added 500 mg of EGCG, which we will increase to one gram next week. We are testing the synergistic effect of curcumin and the green tea extract, in other words. For a couple of months, as usual.

The protocol also includes (no change from previous protocol): omega-3 oil capsules (I take flaxseed, she takes fish oil), one gram a day. Also, vitamin D and, for me, an occasional multivitamin (B vitamins, mainly). We are still following the “atomic bomb” theory. That is, we take all this stuff once a day (early evening).

Now, as my faithful blog readers may recall, I suffer from rosacea, an inflammatory (inflammation-cancer connection…?) condition of the facial skin, which I inherited from my father, instead of his lovely green-gray eyes! This means that I have occasional flare-ups. Usually they aren’t too bad, I merely look a bit flushed. While I was taking Biocurcumax, though, I noticed (hard not to! This is what I looked like: ) that my flare-ups were absolutely…dreadful. I wore cover-up to work, but that didn’t disguise it completely. Well, today is my fourth day without Biocurcumax, and my facial flare-up has already died down a bit. Hmmm.

So my questions are: was the flare-up (as I have suspected all along) related to my Biocurcumax intake? Could it be seen as a good or bad sign? For obvious reasons, I hope it was a GOOD sign, a sign, that is, that my immune system was kicked into high gear to attack the myeloma. Wishful thinking, eh. We will have no way of knowing until we get our test results next month.

Really tired and sleepy this evening. It’s been a long day.

But I just read a fascinating "Globe and Mail" article on heart disease prevention and thought I would post about it briefly. The article first discusses a new University of Minnesota study showing that cat people (I don’t care for the expression "cat owners") have a much lower chance of developing heart disease. Interestingly, dog owners aren’t as lucky (makes no sense, but there you go). Click here for the full story: http://tinyurl.com/24m4qy

There follows an interesting section on turmeric, the “spice of life” (no kidding!): “A new study involving laboratory mice suggests curcumin can dramatically reduce the chances of developing heart failure, a chronic illness that claims 40,000 Canadian lives a year.” Basically, when mice with big hearts (I have a big heart, too! Yikes!) were fed curcumin, “signs of the disease actually reversed.” How about that? This is news to me. Welcome news, too! 

[This is a photo of Priscilla when she was a kitten. Here she is walking through a cat play tunnel.]

On my way to work this morning I was pulled over by two traffic officers for the first time in my life. They were checking out older cars to make sure the anti-pollution laws were not being violated.

Cars here are classified as Euro 0, Euro 1, Euro 2 and so on (for information on European low emission zones and relative policies, see: http://tinyurl.com/2dya7q). Cars that belong to the Euro 0 category can no longer circulate in Florence (and elsewhere), nor can certain types of Euro 1 (diesel cars, e.g.). It has to do with keeping the levels of pollution as low as possible. Speaking of which, how can the big polluting SUVs be allowed to circulate? Outrageous.

At any rate, my little old two-door hatchback Mazda is a Euro 2, so it is still okay, but we will probably have to turn it in (sob) and buy a new car next year. Anyway, this morning the officer checked my driver’s license and vehicle registration…everything was in order, so I drove off.

I had barely crossed the bridge (over the Arno River) when I got stopped…AGAIN! Even though I was afraid of arriving late at work, I just had to chuckle. I rolled down my window and told the traffic officer that my car had just been checked out by a couple of his colleagues, and the funny (handsome, too!) guy quipped, “well, then you already know what documents I need to see!” 

Just as I was pulling back out on the street, he shouted after me, “ah, ma non c’è due senza tre!” The English equivalent is “it never rains but it pours,” but the literal translation from Italian would be: “two things never happen without there being a third.” Meaning that before long I would be stopped again. Haha, very funny.

But no, I managed to get to work without further incident.

And my students very much enjoyed the story.