I bet the title of THIS post got your attention, didn’t it? 😉 Well, that’s what I kept telling my students today: “Today is my last day…”
And then I’d add: “…as a 50-year-old!” 😀
My spring flowers (2012)
Yep, I’m turning 51 tomorrow. Another birthday…13 years after I was diagnosed with MGUS, and almost 7 years after my SMM diagnosis.
I love birthdays. And for this particular one I’m feeling incredibly amazingly stupendously happy…mainly because my Dad is OKAY. 😀
Waiting for the results of Dad’s biopsy, which took place more than ten days ago!, was really tough and rough for us. The important thing, though, is that yesterday we finally learned that the biopsy results were much better than expected. Located on the edge of one of his vocal cords there was a cancerous nodule, which got snipped off easily during the biopsy. Yes, it was cancerous, but it was very small…and in any case it’s gone now. Poof! According to his doctor, we have nothing to worry about…It was “just” some sort of carcinoma…at a stage ZERO. Phew!
Just as a precaution, though, Dad has increased his curcumin intake to four grams a day…
Anyway…
Relief. Relief. Relief.
Let’s see. What else? Tomorrow Stefano is taking the afternoon off from work. In part, because of my birthday, in part so that we can go see a well-known allergy doctor who’s going to try to determine the underlying cause (mission impossible?) of his nasty nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis. Once that’s over, we’re going to pick up pizzaaaaaa & my favorite dessert in the world (millefoglie!) and head back home to watch a movie and spend a romantic evening together. Just the two of us…oh…and our FIVE cats! 😉
On Thursday I’ve invited a few of my best buddies over for a petit celebratory dinner. I think birthday celebrations should go on for more than just one day, especially as we get older. Especially if we have cancer. In fact, I think the name should be changed to birthweek …or birthseveraldays…or…birthpartyondown!
Okay, this is a bit of exciting news…A new study that gives us a fine and promising example of integrative oncology…
And I say: it’s about time!
A group of Johns Hopkins researchers has recently come up with a way to combine curcumin (nanocurcumin) WITH doxorubicin (nanodoxorubicin). Their invention, called “NanoDoxCurc” (NDC), is a huge improvement over doxorubicin used by itself. For many reasons, as we will see.
Finally, a chemo drug PLUS curcumin…stuck together inside a nanoformulation. (And yes, nanoformulation appears to be a proper word.)
As we can see from the full study (which you can access for free here: http://goo.gl/YFpY9), the presence of curcumin lessened at least two of the well-known and very serious side effects of doxorubicin, namely, its extremely harmful effects on the heart and bone marrow.
It also overcame the stubborn chemoresistance of three different cancer cell lines, including a myeloma one. Multi drug resistance, as we know, is a huge problem in cancer treatment. HUGE.
The study begins with a discussion of chemoresistance and the related issue of doxorubicin dose escalation. When cancer cells become resistant to doxorubicin, you can increase the chemo dose and overcome that resistance to some degree, but this carries with it a series of problems, including damage to the heart (e.g., congestive heart failure) and bone marrow suppression. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…
Many attempts, the authors write, have been made to overcome chemoresistance with synthetic substances (small molecules and antibodies), but most have failed.
And that brings us to this exciting bit: Natural products are gaining attention in MDR inhibition due to their low cytotoxicity profiles. For example, the role of the phytochemical curcumin (derived from Curcuma longa) in inhibiting multiple MDR pumps in cancer cells has been widely studied, including in combination with DOX. (DOX = doxorubicin; MDR = multidrug resistance). As I said, ABOUT TIME!
Because of curcumin’s well-known poor bioavailability, the researchers developed a polymer nanoparticle formulation of curcumin (NanoCurc or NC) that significantly enhances the systemic bioavailability of this agent. (I WAAAAAANT SOME! But it seems as though it isn’t currently for sale…?) And then they combined NC with a nanoformulation of doxorubicin (or ND) and, poof!, created NDC.
The authors discovered that their nanocurcumin was able, and I quote, to overcome DOX resistance in a variety of human and murine cancer cell lines in vitro as well as in vivo. Notably, we also find that systemic NDC shows no evidence of cardiotoxicity or bone marrow suppression, even at cumulative dosages at which such demonstrable adverse effects are readily observed in free DOX or Doxil®-treated mice, thus overcoming some of the greatest limitations of DOX-based chemotherapy. So, even at high doses, the mice treated with NDC were okay. Isn’t that amazing?
Jumping to the “Results,” now. Here we can read that treating the drug resistant cancer cell lines (including a myeloma one, as I mentioned) with NDC reduced the drug resistance of the cancer cells dramatically compared to nanodoxorubicin alone. Dramatically!
Before I go on, I have to say that I really hate to talk/write or even think about mice in a lab setting, especially whenever toxicity is mentioned…but I must.
Please check out Figure 4 on page 6: this shows that the mice treated only with doxorubicin ended up with HOLES in their little hearts (ugh). Those treated with the nanodoxcurcumin formulation instead didn’t have any heart damage.
But how well did this new formulation work against the three different types of cancer? Very well: NDC SIGNIFICANTLY DECREASED the proliferation of all of the cell lines. 🙂
And check this out: Interestingly, NC alone showed greater potency than ND in all three DOX-resistant cell lines. Wowsers! 🙂
Well, there is lots more info in the Results section, such as glutathione levels and body weight. For example, the mice on ND and NDC didn’t lose a lot of weight compared to the control group, which is important. Later on, you see, we discover that the mice on DOX and DOXIL (the latter is a liposomal formulation of DOX) lost 40% of their body AND heart weight! Eeeeeekkkk!
Another interesting tidbit concerns hemoglobin (Hb) levels. Compared to the 12.5 g/dL of the control group, the Hb of the mice in the DOX group dropped to 7.5 g/dL. They became anemic, in other words. Their lymphocyte counts were also very low, leaving them vulnerable to infections. Nothing of the sort occurred in the ND and NDC-treated creatures. So that’s another important finding…
Nanocurcumin also protects healthy cells from damage: Our recent studies with nanoparticulate curcumin have confirmed its ability to ameliorate oxidative damage to non-neoplastic tissues, such as in hepatocytes and neuronal cells, through induction of a favorable intracellular redox environment. I’ve posted many times about this particular ability of curcumin, in fact…
Okay, if you don’t have time to read the full study, just skip down to the Discussion. It summarizes all the important bits, such as the following:
Nanocurcumin protects the heart from DOX-induced injury.
Nanocurcumin also reduces multi drug resistance. Strongly.
The new nanocurcumindoxorubicin (= NDC) formulation can whack cancer cells much more strongly than nanodoxorubicin (ND) alone.
Hemoglobin and lymphocyte counts in the NDC-treated mice were similar to those of the control group.
The NDC-treated mice maintained their body weight and didn’t show any evidence of toxicity. They behaved normally.
A group of NDC-treated mice infected with an extremely aggressive and chemoresistant form of leukemia survived 50% longer than mice in the control group and those in the ND-alone group.
I’ll end with an important excerpt: Interestingly, while both ND and NC each showed a degree of tumor growth inhibition, the composite nanoparticle NDC showed nearly complete growth inhibition (>90%) over the duration of the study.
I almost fell off my chair laughing yesterday morning at work (so did my student, by the way). I asked one of my students to do a simple grammar test consisting of a list of sentences. Each sentence contained ONE mistake, which she had to find. She did very well until she reached the following:
“He never wear a hat.”
After staring at it for a few seconds, she said: “Margaret, for me, that’s okay. There is no mistake.”
“Oh no, there is indeed a mistake,” I assured her.
A few more seconds passed.
Finally, just as she was ready to give up, I gave her the following prompt:
“I never wear a hat, YOU never wear a hat, HE…” (I paused.)
She smiled triumphantly and exclaimed, “Oh yes, of course, I need to add an ‘s’!!!”
“Okay, so give me the correct sentence now…” I said.
I’m definitely not one of those people who complains both about the cold in winter and the heat in summer. I don’t complain for the sake of complaining. At least, I don’t think I do! 😉
But one thing I cannot stand is extreme heat, extreme DAMP heat. It isn’t good for me (is it good for anyone?). It slows me down. It turns my brain into mush. It makes my asthma a million times worse. Just running the vacuum cleaner a bit this morning left me in a pool of sweat, gasping for breath (but I had to do it…CAT HAIR!!!).
Yeah, this new heat wave from Africa is a bad one…a really bad one. Today is particularly bad. Just to give you an idea: according to one of the Italian weather websites, at 2 PM today the heat index in Florence was supposed to have hit 44 degrees Celsius (that’s 111.2 Fahrenheit).
The nighttime temps have also risen, making it difficult to sleep unless you have air conditioning, which Stefano and I don’t, unfortunately…Ah, speaking of air conditioning. I do have something amusing for you. Most Italians will tell you that AC is verrrrry bad for you. Over and over again I am told that it can cause all sorts of maladies, from neck cramps to eye infections and earaches. Even electric fans should be used in moderation, if at all…
To be fair, I should add that this negative and rather silly attitude has changed quite a bit since I was a kid. In heat like this, Italians who have AC in their offices usually turn it on…Just to be on the safe side, though, a window is frequently left at least partly open to let in some “fresh” air…Yeah, I know, air conditioning AND open windows = such a wasteful combination. But it happens a lot here. Last week, for example, I went into town with a friend, and at least three windows on our air-conditioned bus were open, wide open. Eeek.
I always turn on the AC in my office at work and keep the windows shut. Bliss. That is, until one of my students comes in and complains that 24-25 degrees (= 75-77 degrees Fahrenheit) is too cold…mamma mia…
Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. I just wanted to give you ONE of the reasons why I haven’t been writing or doing research for the blog lately. There are a couple of other reasons, too.
The most important one: last week my Dad had a biopsy of a nodule that was found behind his vocal cords. The procedure went smoothly, and we hope to get the results today. Even though I’m feeling very positive about it, living on the other side of the world is incredibly difficult right now…I mean, this is MY DAD…Anyway, nothing to do but wait…
The other thing that happened is that last week our cat no. 3, Priscilla, who is about seven years old, developed a case of gastroenteritis and a urinary tract infection. She’s been on an antibiotic since Friday afternoon.
Now, those of you who live with cats know how bloody HARD it is to give them an antibiotic (any sort of pill, really). There are all sorts of funny jokes circulating on this topic, such as this one: http://goo.gl/kWAuB Don’t miss the part about how to give a pill to a dog… 😀
And Priscilla is our fierce little tiger. Even though she’s been with us since she was a baby, she still hisses and growls–and MIGHT even bite if given the opportunity–if we do something she doesn’t like, such as pick her up when she wants to be left alone. Yet she’s also the sweetest kitty imaginable. Seconds after hissing and growling at you for whatever reason, she will climb onto your chest or into your lap and purr madly, and if you stop petting and scratching her, she’ll stare intently into your eyes and emit a pitiful little “raaaaaaaaaa.” As I write this post, she’s lying between me and the keyboard, as happy as a bee in a field of flowers. Go figure. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that’s our Priscilla.
Premise: Stefano and I know how to give a pill to a cat. Been there, done that. Oh, that reminds me of the innumerable YouTube “how to give a pill to your cat” videos. I can only comment that those cats must be heavily sedated…I mean, I’d like to watch those vets give a pill to one of MY cats…hah! Fat chance…
“Don’t even THINK of touching me…”
And so I spend a lot of time trying to come up with new, cunning ways to get the blasted pill into her…
One of my incredibly clever plans was based on the fact that Priscilla would do anything for a bite of rocket salad or arugula (rucola, in Italian)…the bitterer, the better. She will sit next to me while I wash the arugula from our garden, begging like a dog. And she won’t budge until I’ve handed her an arugula leaf, which she devours within nanoseconds. No kidding. So yesterday I got some arugula from our garden, cut it into pieces and added it to the crushed-to-smithereens pill that I’d previously mixed with a bit of the hairball remedy that she normally (!) loves. I even put a few arugula leaves on top, in a foolish attempt to…fool her. Didn’t work. She turned away. And when arugula doesn’t work with the Queen of Arugula, you know it ain’t gonna be easy…
By now I’ve mixed the crushed pill with ALL of Priscilla’s favorite foods. She just looks at me. I’ve tried hand-feeding the food-pill mixture to her, because this kitty will lick ANYTHING off my finger. Last night, that approach worked splendidly. This morning, she sniffed my finger, turned on her heels and walked away. And I’m supposed to give her an antibiotic for another whole week??? 😯
We may have to resort to the “grab and pop” method in the end…If that happens, I’ll be posting from the emergency room…
But let’s get back to the heat wave for a second. This morning, sitting under my ceiling fan thinking cool thoughts, I began making a silly list of things I enjoy about summer. It wasn’t easy. But here goes:
When you hang out the laundry, it dries almost immediately, even with a 90% humidity index
Ice cream…for medicinal purposes only, of course!
Less traffic
You can park almost anywhere in Florence (this is linked to the “less traffic” item and to the end of the school year, yay)
Wearing sandals
Bees and butterflies on my lavender
Eating organic tomatoes, rucola, raspberries, figs and blackberries right from the garden
Trying to come up with creative salad ideas
Fresh tomato sauces
Tomatoes, period
Things I don’t like about summer:
Mosquitoes, especially the tiger ones; bothersome bugs in general
Loud, partying neighbors
Watching my flowers wither and die in the heat
People who don’t use deodorant
Sweating
Being unable to think clearly…
No winter veggies! Where’s my broccoli???
Can’t use the oven…And cooking pasta makes the kitchen almost unbearably hot…but you can’t live without pasta…
So, what do YOU like (or hate) about summer? Just curious! 🙂
Finally, I’d like to ask you for a favor: please, pretty please!, go sign a petition that will be delivered soon to the U.S. Navy concerning its use of active sonar in training and testing exercises off Hawaii and southern California as well as off the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. According to this article (see: http://goo.gl/xkHJJ), the sonar testing might harm marine mammals a total of 33 million times over five years. These estimates come from the Navy itself, by the way. So who knows what the real impact is going to be…
To me, that’s simply and utterly UNACCEPTABLE. We might be able to stop this nonsense by signing the online petition (it takes less than 30 seconds…easy peasy…and just think: your signature could save the lives of a staggering number of sea creatures, not just whales and dolphins…): http://goo.gl/Ocb6v
And, while we’re at it, there is also another petition. This one is for a group of chimpanzees. Please check it out: http://goo.gl/rHlu5
As a former member of Amnesty International, I know that signatures CAN make a difference. So…pleeeeeease sign! Thank you!
Stefano has complete faith in his GPS navigator. So do I, normally…even though on a couple of occasions in the UK we’d somehow ended up in a cow field (I kid you not) instead of our B&B. But that’s another story and, to be fair, we haven’t yet had a problem with the super new GPS system.
Yesterday, though, I could tell something just wasn’t right. My friend Ben had dictated meticulous “how to get here” instructions to me over the phone, and I had double-checked them via Google maps. To be triple sure, I’d also printed the driving directions I’d found on the (rented) villa’s website, which even provided photos of various landmarks, such as the gas station where we were supposed to turn right and so on. No way we could get lost, I thought.
According to my directions, we were supposed to get off the highway upon reaching the city of Lucca, about an hour’s drive from Florence, but Stefano’s navigator wanted us to keep driving toward Pisa. Then it directed us to get onto another highway, this time heading north, towards the port city of Genoa.
At that point, I piped up and said: “I think we’ve made a mistake. We’re going towards the sea, but we should be heading toward the Apennine mountains, based on what Ben told me.”
Stefano snorted with contempt and replied: “Don’t worry. I told the navigator to give us the fastest route, not necessarily the shortest.”
We kept going towards Genoa.
We finally got off the highway and began slowly climbing up the side of a mountain…one of those incredibly narrow winding bendy curvy roads that I’ve experienced only in Italy and that really shouldn’t be a two-way road at all. But this one was. Of course. Yikes.
And we finally (and safely!) reached our, er, destination. Now, I don’t remember the exact name of the town…It began with a “T,” so let’s just call it Torciglione. Well, Torciglione turned out to be no more than a few houses clinging to the side of the mountain. We stopped in what I suppose was the main square, barely wider than the narrow road, and I asked a man if he could direct us to the villa. After glancing at my printed instructions, he exclaimed: “Oh no, you’re in the WRONG Torciglione! The Torciglione you’re looking for is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN.”
I didn’t dare look over at Stefano.
Stefano turned the car around (managing somehow not to dive off the cliff), and we went slowly back down the mountain, retracing our steps to Lucca.
I tried to restrain myself, I really did, honest!, but it was no use. It began as a stifled giggle. Then guffaws. Finally tears began streaming down my face. Stefano kept driving, looking fierce, the “don’t talk to me or I’ll bite your head off and spit it out the car window” type of fierce.
Finally I managed to sputter: “Well, if we ever need to return to Torciglione no. 1, at lllllleast…at least now we know THE FFFF….FFFFASTEST RRRROUUUUUTTTTTEEEEE…” And then I let it all out. I just howled with laughter, all doubled over, clutching my sides. Stefano ended up laughing, too.
How odd, though, to find TWO towns with the SAME name in the SAME area…a mere 20-25 minute drive from each other. Yep, verrrry odd.
Anyway, we finally got to the right Torciglione…and the right villa. After hugging and kissing (and being introduced to various family members), Ben, Stefano and I headed up to the salt-water swimming pool, located on the top of a hill covered by a gorgeous olive grove…surrounded by lovely views of the Apennines (my photo doesn’t do justice to the view, but I was too distracted and didn’t even think about taking more decent photos). Stunning, absolutely stunning. We jumped into the pool, ahhhh blissssss!, and stayed there until it was time for us to leave, catching up and chatting non-stop.
I haven’t seen Ben in years, possibly as many as 10 or 12. As best as I can recall, the last time I saw him was near my home in Massachusetts…one of your typical Cape Cod beach scenes, with two friends lying in the sun and chatting. At the time, he was engaged, and I was already living with my Stefano, who wasn’t with me on that particular trip, though.
Even though we live in different countries, we’ve kept in touch over the years. First, with handwritten letters (hey, remember those? 😉 ), now with email.
Well, Ben is now in Italy with his family–his wife and two young sons. They’re not staying with us in Florence because they are going to one of those humongous family reunions, with relatives flying here from different parts of the U.S. to spend a few days all together in a rented villa in the Tuscan countryside…with a swimming pool. 🙂 Tomorrow we’ve tentatively planned a get-together…of the “bring your own bathing suit” type.
Ben and I go a long way back. We have been friends (ONLY friends, and yes that is possible!, in spite of what Billy Crystal aka “Harry Burns” declares in “When Harry met Sally,” that is, that men and women cannot be friends…bah, hogwash!) ever since we both went on a solidarity trip to Nicaragua not long after the Sandinistas took power. We were part of a group of U.S. citizens staying in the city of Estelì, in the northern part of the country. Estelì and its surrounding countryside were frequent targets of the U.S.-sponsored “contras,” who were mostly former members of the cruel, corrupt and brutal National Guard (under the former dictator Somoza). At any rate, to cut a long story short, we hoped that the presence of a bunch of U.S. citizens inside the city would in some way protect the inhabitants of Estelì from the vicious (and illegal) “contra” terrorist attacks. I think it did.
At any rate, that’s how Ben and I first met. In Nicaragua. In a war zone. 25 years ago…or thereabouts.
Since then we’ve seen each other a handful of times in the States and here in Italy. But it’s been quite a while now, as I mentioned, so I’m really looking forward to seeing him again and meeting his wife and kids (Ben’s never met Stefano, either).
Yesterday he called me from Rome, where they began their summer 2012 Italian holiday. After trying to figure out when and how we could hook up this weekend without melting in the horrendous heat wave, he asked me pointblank:
“So, are you healthy?”
I’ve been asked this question before, but it always manages to send a slight shiver through my spine.
Am I healthy? I mean, really healthy? What should I answer? I mean, I FEEL healthy. I LOOK healthy. And, in spite of my itsy bitsy immune system, I haven’t been sick in ages…no flus, no fevers, no coughs, nada. Most importantly, all my counts are stable…and I have no CRAB symptoms. Does all that signify that I’m healthy? Or healthy enough?
After a slight pause, I decided to let my infallible gut reply:
I read the sad news about Nora Ephron’s death this morning…and a friend posted the link to her obituary in the “Washington Post”: http://goo.gl/rYZbY She had acute myeloid leukemia.
Oh how much I enjoyed her movies, from When Harry met Sally to You’ve Got Mail…The former is my favorite movie ever…
Here’s an excerpt from When Harry met Sally…and no, it’s not what you are probably expecting, that is, the famous org…m scene. 😉 Nope, these are the cut-aways, which were brilliant, I thought: http://goo.gl/gBSNs “I knew the way you know about a good melon…” Hehe.
And then there’s the movie trailer, which has some of the best quotes (of which there are sooo many!): http://goo.gl/a4Yxm
Great quotes from the movie: http://goo.gl/c18am Pick your favorite…Mine could be the two kinds of women quote, the high maintenance versus low maintenance. Hehe.
Ah yes, fun memories…great movies. Nora, you were the best!
And so today I decided to write a NON post, in an attempt to “unblock” what I guess is a bit of writer’s block. I hope it works.
Part of my problem is the heat. I don’t do well in heat—that’s no secret. I really shouldn’t complain, since we are lucky enough to live in a lovely neighborhood of Florence, surrounded by the fields and rolling hills of Fiesole…So at night we sometimes get a breeze, while the rest of Florence swelters in the heat…
Plus, I have a lot of work to do on my blog, such as: update my Pages section (!), send TAB’s report off to all those who have requested it and other stuff. But I’ve been procrastinating…on that, too. Sorry!
Today is Paula’s funeral. In fact, by the time I publish this post, I imagine it will be underway…or almost…(yes, definitely underway now…)…
Well, let’s move on. Since this is NOT going to be a proper post, here’s a list of some of the things I’ve read/watched in the past several days…
Here goes:
SERIOUS STUFF:
A different take on stress and the immune system: http://goo.gl/LhsH2 Keep in mind that this study is talking about short-term stress, not chronic stress. Important to make that distinction. Still, interesting…I mean the idea that a wee bit of stress could be good for us…hmmm…
A blog reader sent me the link to a “Daily Mail” article on a woman who, following surgery, chose to change her lifestyle and diet rather than take Tamoxifen for her breast cancer. She has been in remission now for four years: http://goo.gl/NUFGs
Quercetin and doxorubicin: http://goo.gl/fQJPl The evidence in favor of integrative oncology is piling up left and right…ABOUT TIME TO TAKE NOTICE, DON’T YOU THINK? Oh oops…sorry, didn’t mean to shout… 😉
AMUSING STUFF:
Henri the cat, chapter 3, “Le Vet” (for me, the best is still number 2, though: http://goo.gl/1ooxq): http://goo.gl/y0XPk “They mock my French, but why?” Hehe.
And now I’d like to send a big hug of encouragement to my friend Paul…Italy, you see, deservedly beat England in the Euro 2012 quarter-finals last night (too bad it had to end with penalty kicks, though!)…
And another hug to my blog reader Clare B., whom I met in London a few weeks ago. That was sooooo lovely! Many thanks to Paul for making the arrangements, by the way…
And that is precisely how I’d like to end my NON post of the day:
with hugs…
and with the photo of an amazingly talented songbird–a great reed warbler (taken by yours truly on Saturday at the Parco della Piana…).
