I have to apologize for not having published my comments on the smoldering myeloma case report yet. I’ve written sooooo much, in fact, that I’ve had to divide the post into two parts. But I still have some editing to do before it’s fit to be published. Soon, soon, I promise (tomorrow?)! 🙂

A big reason for the delay: Stefano and I have been terribly worried about our eldest cat, Puzzola. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that she was acting strangely. Then, the following day, she pulled down and peed all over my bathrobe. I knew exactly what was wrong (this has happened before) and took her immediately to the vet who confirmed it was a urinary tract infection. I’ll spare you the part about trying to give an antibiotic to a cat who can smell an antibiotic inside anchovy paste ten miles away… 😉

In checking her over, the vet also felt a small nodule on her thyroid gland. She ran a bunch of tests, which confirmed what she suspected: hyperthyroidism. This essentially means that her thyroid is working too much…It’s a condition that can eventually lead to a lot of problems involving the heart and the liver, just to mention a couple of things. And in fact her heartbeat is accelerated, and her liver numbers are already out of whack, even though this is only the beginning of hyperthyroidism. Still, she has lost quite a lot of weight and doesn’t really look like the cat in this photo, taken just a couple of months ago (uhm, Puzzola is the cat on the right… 😉 )…

She’s now on medication for the thyroid issue. Twice a day. Fingers crossed that it works!

Okay, now for something else…something that I think most of you will find incredibly interesting, that is, the results of a LARGE, long-term German cohort study on vitamin D, showing that you have a LOWER risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases if you have HIGHER levels of vitamin D (= more than 30 nanomoles per liter, or 12 nanograms per milliliter. A nanogram, by the way, is the billionth part of a gram…amazing that it can even be measured, huh?). The difference between the sufficient and insufficient vitamin D groups was significant. See: http://goo.gl/kBFNI

I’d say this gives us another (!) incredibly good reason to keep our vitamin D levels up!

Okay, I need to get back to work now. Ciao! Oh wait…here’s a really cute Simon’s Cat video titled “The box”: http://goo.gl/x9og3 Okay, going…going…gone! 😉

UPDATE: Taking a break from work, I read an article titled “Do-it-yourself medicine” in “The Scientist” magazine. Fascinating…HEAPS of food for thought…worth reading: http://goo.gl/Om1wD