Lucky week…green tea/tai chi & bone health…and a dog singing the blues…

May 18, 2011 / / 1 Comment

My UK blog reader and his family left Florence this morning and are probably back in London by now…Boy, the house seems so empty without them! We really had a glorious time and hope to meet up again soon.

I wanted to tell you about a few of the almost unbelievable strokes of luck that my blog reader (= a professional photographer) had while he was here. For example:

Yesterday we were in San Miniato, a small hilltop town between Florence and Pisa. My friend stopped to take a few photos in one of the town squares, Piazza della Repubblica (= this photo shows part of the colorful façade of a 17th century religious seminary located in Piazza della Repubblica, which you can reach by walking down a flight of stone steps under the enclosed bridge…), while the rest of us walked ahead…down a hill toward what turned out to be a very nice ice cream parlor. 🙂 Within a few minutes he caught up to us and, with a HUGE grin on his face, he told us that, while he was in Piazza della Repubblica taking photos, he had started thinking, “Oooh, wouldn’t it be nice if a nun walked out of the seminary just now?” And, within a few seconds, a nun came out…No kidding…
Very early this morning he drove up to the Piazzale Michelangelo to take a few last-minute photos of Florence. Well, lo and behold, he spotted and photographed a hot air balloon flying right over the city. I mean, HELLO???, a hot air ballooooooon over Florence? Why, I have never EVER seen one here…and so early in the morning, too!!! Unbelievable…unbelievable…
Just before they set off for the airport, my friend and I went for a quick walk in my neighborhood. As we were going up a hill, he stopped and pointed above our heads. I looked up just in time to see a rather big red squirrel running across an electric wire. Now, I have lived in this neighborhood for more than ten years, and this is only the second time (!!!) I’ve seen a red squirrel here…(For the record: Stefano has never seen one…not in our neighborhood, I mean, or elsewhere in Italy, for that matter!)…

There are a few other similar “lucky” episodes, but I can’t recall them right now…Anyway, clearly this was my blog reader’s lucky week! Ours, too…

I haven’t had any time to do research today (ehm, I am desperately trying to catch up with my e-mails in my snippets of free time…), but I did manage to read an interesting Science Daily article on the healthful effects of tai chi & green tea on our BONES. You will be surprised, I think: http://goo.gl/gF5z1 Good stuff! Oh, speaking of which, a quick word of caution: please don’t forget that you should not drink green tea or take any supplements containing EGCG if you are taking Velcade. Or rather, you should avoid green tea/EGCG on your “Velcade day.” At a patient seminar, Dr. Brian Durie told me that it’s okay for green tea aficionados to have a cuppa on their “off-of-Velcade” days.

I also watched a funny video that made me laugh and that I hope you will enjoy, too. It shows a dog singing the blues…: http://goo.gl/gKB8V 🙂

Val D’Orcia…

May 16, 2011 / / 8 Comments

This was one of the loveliest weekends that Stefano and I have ever had…Everything was perfect, simply purrrfect.

We’d both forgotten how stunning the Val d’Orcia is…the area around Pienza and Montepulciano…magnifica!

And it’s only a 1.5 hour drive from our home! Funny how that happens…

Stefano and I had to return to Florence last night, but our British friends are still there, exploring other bits of the region located south of Siena. They are coming back to Florence this evening.

Visiting the Val d’Orcia with them was just the icing on the cake…

I really don’t have much to say about any of my photos, except to explain that I took the first two in the ancient village of Monticchiello, about halfway between Montepulciano and Pienza.

A simply adorable little village covered in roses and other flowers…and very neat and clean. It also didn’t hurt that we had a fantassssstic lunch there! 🙂 Very few tourists, too, which always helps…

Photo no. 1 shows a view of the square in front of the 12th century Church of San Leonardo e Cristoforo (taken from inside the church) in Monticchiello. Photo no. 2 is just a pretty view of Monticchiello from a side street, with roses and whatnot…

Photo no. 3 shows a typical Tuscan landscape with rolling green hills (so many different shades of green…simply magnificent…my photos don’t do justice to the beauty of this area, but that is all I have, so it will have to do…), a lone farmhouse and cypress trees…

This particular one was taken very near the ancient, and beautiful!, town of Pienza.

Photo no. 4: a view of Palazzo Massaini, near Pienza…Don’t you just love those poppies???!!!

Photo no. 5…Another view of hills and cypress trees, this time taken from the town walls of Pienza…

Well, I would like to end this picture-post by suggesting that if you’re planning a trip to Tuscany, make sure you visit the Val d’Orcia, too…

Stefano and I were so blown away that we have decided to go back and explore the entire region, especially when the sunflowers begin blooming…I can’t even imagine what it will look like (well, actually I can, since I’ve seen heaps of postcards and calendars filled with Tuscan sunflower fields…but seeing it live must be amazing…)…

Life is good. No, I take that back…

Life is GREAT!!!

First time in Florence…

May 13, 2011 / / 4 Comments

Busy busy BUSY but fun fun FUN days…As I announced in my previous post, I’m spending all my free time these days with some close friends from the UK who have come to pay us a quick visit…

On Wednesday we drove up to Fiesole, a pretty hill town with splendid views of Florence. Not to be missed: Fiesole’s Roman theatre…

Yesterday was totally exhausting. Mamma mia!!! We (minus Stefano, who was at work) walked all over the centre of Florence, from Piazza San Marco to the Duomo (= the cathedral in Florence), then–cutting through tiny side streets in order to avoid the, uhm, madding crowd–down to Piazza della Signoria and the Ponte Vecchio…

After admiring the Arno River from the Ponte Vecchio, we walked to and over the next bridge, Ponte alle Grazie, to get some good shots of Florence’s most famous bridge (see above). From there we visited the church of Santa Croce. AND, of course!, Piazza Santa Croce (=the square in front of the church), which is one of my favorite places on Earth! But I have written about Santa Croce before, so I’ll try not to repeat myself. 🙂 After a quick stop at Vivoli’s for some gelato (=ice cream), we headed back home…and collapsed!

Here are a few random photos, chosen among the ones I took yesterday. As I mentioned, the first is a shot of the Ponte Vecchio taken from the Ponte alle Grazie.

Then we have a side view of the Fountain of Neptune, located in Piazza della Signoria. If you look at it closely, you will catch a glimpse, in the distance, of the very top of the famous dome of the cathedral in Florence.

Speaking of Piazza della Signoria…When we first stepped into the square, emerging into blinding brightness from one of the dark, narrow side streets, we noticed that it was quite crowded…including quite a number of policemen and secret service-looking guys…

I asked a policeman what was going on…He told me that the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, was inside the Palazzo Vecchio (= the town hall of Florence, among other things) and was about to come out. Wow!

So we stayed in the square long enough to get a photo of President Napolitano, here shown walking and chatting with, on the left, Rosy Bindi (President of the Italian Democratic Party and Vice President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies) and, on the right, a rather worried-looking Matteo Renzi, Mayor of Florence…

Photo number 4 shows Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, holding the severed head of Medusa…This is one of the many statues located inside the Loggia dei Lanzi, = a 14th century “arched” open building on a corner of the Piazza della Signoria.

This morning, while Stefano and I went to work, our friends headed off to the stunning Val d’Orcia region, which is more or less south of the city of Siena. Stefano and I are going to join up with them tomorrow.

It should be great fun…I just hope that this glorious, not-too-hot weather holds up and that my photos of typical Tuscan landscapes, with rolling hills and cypresses and whatnot, will turn out well!!!

A glorious day…

May 9, 2011 / / 5 Comments

Yesterday, = our 12th wedding anniversary, Stefano and I got up at 5:40 AM (zzzzzz) in order to be at the WWF Oasis of Gabbianello, near Barberino di Mugello, by 7:30 (zzzzz). Actually, we are both early risers…but on the weekend we like to stay in bed a little longer than 5:40 AM (zzzzz)!

The Gabbianello oasis opens early for groups of at least five people every second Sunday of the month (it normally opens at 10 AM on Sat and Sun). Yesterday happened to be the second Sunday of the month, so we were able to join up with a group of five others…A few more people arrived later on, but there was never a crowd, which was nice.

The lake was full of birds, mostly common birds that we have seen over and over again (but then, the migratory birds have already…migrated, so that is not surprising)…I still love to watch and photograph even the common ones.

The best scene we saw yesterday morning was of a couple of great-crested grebes courting each other…Lots of head shaking and crest puffing and turning heads to the left, then to the right, in a ritualistic manner. Fun to watch, and so very elegant…

We saw our friend the purple heron again, but he (she?) stayed put on a small grassy island in the middle of the lake and didn’t come very close to us, as you can tell by the rather fuzzy photo. The wild swans are always fun to watch…And there were heaps of other birds—little grebes, overactive coots chasing each other with lots of splashing and shenanigans (hey, we also saw a couple of coot babies…fluffy little cuties!), ducks of all sorts (also with babies), egrets, grey and white herons, one squacco heron, one least bittern and one cattle egret…oh, and a small hawk, perhaps a falcon (we don’t do as well with our birds of prey, I admit!), hunting in a nearby field…

Stefano also got some great shots of an inquisitive, completely unruffled hare munching on a flower that looks as though it is going right up its nose…so CUTE. Stefano’s photos came out much better than mine, of course. But I want to post my own photos on the blog…so there! 🙂

We made a couple of friends at the oasis. One was a guy we’d seen there before. Like us, he is an amateur photographer (nice camera, though…So he and Stefano spent some time discussing this or that photographic technique, zzzboringzzz as far as I am concerned…), but he could identify more birds than we could, so that was helpful. He was the one who told us, when all we saw was a blur, “Hey, a thick-throated paparazzi just flew by!” 😉 Well, after all, he has been birdwatching for the past 20 years!

We also ran into a young couple who took a lot of photos but really complained (a lot…) about having gotten up early in the morning just to see some ducks, blablabla (“hey,” I wanted to say to them, “not true…what about the purple heron???”). They left early, disappointed. Silly things. What were they expecting to see? Puffins? Eagles? Penguins? A Himalayan quail? Humph!

There were also two other guys who just sat and sat and sat inside ONE hut (whereas we and the others walked around the lake, trying out other huts and viewpoints) and took photos of everything with their big cameras and big lenses. I say this with a bit of envy, since, as luck would have it, the squacco heron landed on a branch right in front of their hut, and they had plenty of time to take about 40 photos of it. And these were perfect photos, I have to say. When Stefano walked into the hut later that morning, they asked him if he could identify that bird. They didn’t even know what they’d photographed. We were both much amused, especially since the two of us still can’t distinguish a pigeon from a hawk (well, ok, slight exaggeration, there!), so we are happy to run into folks who are worse off than we are! 😉

As the morning hours passed, and it got hotter, the birds began being less active. Some disappeared…probably off to take well-deserved naps. We were the last humans to leave the oasis. As planned, we had lunch in the restaurant I’d found the day before…about a two-minute drive from the oasis. What a lovely place it turned out to be…

We had a fabbbbbbbulous meal. Everything was just purrrrrrfect, from start to finish. Stefano had crostini (a classic Tuscan chicken liver pâté spread on toasted Tuscan bread…Tuscan Tuscan Tuscan! 🙂 ), and we both shared some fried veggies, which we never have, but hey, this was our anniversary! Then we both had “tortelli mugellani,” which are mainly-potato-filled pasta with meat sauce. Yummy. I was stuffed by then, but Stefano had room for a “tagliata,” which is grilled, then sliced (need I say “Tuscan”? 🙂 ) Tuscan meat, served with beans, Tuscan style…

As we getting ready to leave, our waiter showed up at our table, holding a tray with two champagne flutes and a dish of yummy (Tuscan, what else? Hehe…) sweets. He handed us the flutes and said, solemnly: “You must make a toast on your anniversary! Auguriiiiii!” (Auguri is an expression of goodwill that means “best wishes.”)

So Stefano and I sat back down and made a toast to at least (AT LEAST!!!) another 12 happy years together… 😀

Those few sips of champagne put a lovely finishing touch on one of our best anniversaries ever…

A 2011 dendritic cell-idiotype myeloma vaccination study…Part 2

May 4, 2011 / / 5 Comments

I decided to go ahead and finish Part 2 of my vaccination post even though I didn’t get any feedback on Part I (April 21^stpost), which, I confess, led me to think there might be no interest in the subject of myeloma vaccinations…Well, no matter, it is a subject of interest to me, and this is my blog 🙂 , so here goes… 😉

Reading on…the authors of this new study (http://goo.gl/KHCQh) raise the question of long-term impact of vaccinations = a big unknown. After 12 months, five out of nine patients still had stable M-protein levels. Three of these patients, however, had had local radiation for a lesion 6 to 7 months before the vaccination study began, which might (or might not…) have made a difference in terms of lingering effects. Incidentally, it turns out that the patient who progressed to stage III (mentioned in my April 21^st post) was one of those who had undergone “radiation”…

Another thing that turns up in the full study is that five of these patients (= more than half, that is) had received bisphosphonates. Not sure if that is relevant, but I understood that these patients were not supposed to have been previously treated… Now, aren’t bisphosphonates considered to be part of a conventional treatment strategy? Hmmm…I am a tad perplexed, here…

Well, let’s go to the Discussion part where the authors provide a list of earlier studies…Unfortunately, I didn’t and don’t have the time to check them all, but I would like to note that previous vaccination studies also involved stage I myeloma patients. What makes this January 2011 study different, the authors state, is the fact that it is the first DC-based Id vaccination (where DC stands for dendritic cell, Id for idiotype) tested on stage I patients who had not been previously treated…hmmm, with the exception of the three radiotherapy patients, I guess…

Point is, according to the authors, these stage I patients had less compromised immune systems compared to the advanced stage patients in previous vaccination trials.

Possible problem: apparently, the vaccinations stimulated an increase in the patients’ production of interleukin-10, or IL-10, which, even though it is a known anti-inflammatory cytokine, happens also to be a proven growth factor for myeloma cells (see http://goo.gl/jfZkT). Ehm, don’t really want that, do we? Authors of another vaccination study, published in 2007 (http://goo.gl/SaM1i), report that two out of ten patients had increased productions of IL-10 and TNF-alpha several months after being vaccinated…Well, this certainly doesn’t sound very encouraging, but I need to do more research on the Th1 and Th2 responses before I’m able to make any judgments/reach any conclusions…

Let’s see. A positive finding of the January 2011 study is that immune responses were detected in a few of the patients…

Wait a sec.

As I was writing the “positive finding” sentence and racking my brain to, er, find something, er, positive to say about immunotherapy and this new vaccine study, the only sentence that kept popping into my mind over and over again, as much as I tried to ignore it, is the following: HERE WE BLOODY GO AGAIN!

I may be wrong, terribly wrong, of course, and, whenever that happens, I am always ready to apologize publicly…but in this case my gut feeling, which has rarely led me astray, tells me that it’s wrong, just plain WRONG, to screw around with smoldering patients like this. (Don’t even get me started on that ongoing Spanish SMM-lenalidomide/dexamethasone trial…WHICH INFURIATES ME BEYOND BELIEF!!! Grrrrrrrrr…Oh, as if ONE such study weren’t enough!!!, a National Cancer Institute study is in the process of recruiting so-called high-risk SMM folks RIGHT NOW for a similar study to be held in the U.S. GOOD GRIEF!)

I personally would never participate in a vaccination study… not as long as I remain in the smoldering stage, that is…

There are simply too many unknowns, too many potential risks of making things worse…Even the authors admit that they don’t know what could happen to patients in the long-term…I am worried about them and can only hope that they remain healthy…

I would like to conclude with a link that a blog reader sent to me: http://goo.gl/7ExWQ Hah. It figures. Whenever the potential of making money enters the picture…big pharma* jumps on the bandwagon, ready to make a few million or billion bucks, give or take a few…GOOD GRIEF (again)!!!

*A related note: a Science Daily article (see http://goo.gl/U6RET) tells us that big pharma spends about twice as much on advertising than on research and development. We are talking billions of U.S. dollars, here. And that article was published three years ago. Quelle surprise…sigh…