Strawberries are high in vitamin C

Strawberries are high in vitamin C

If you struggle with iron deficiency, and are not a meat eater, I can tell you a quick way to get 50% of your daily iron in one shot.  This is how I do it.

For breakfast, prepare one serving of cream of wheat.  Add to it 2 ounces of fresh strawberries.  Make sure to use organic strawberries, please. Locally grown, if you can get them.  Strawberries are my favorite berry, but they’re also one of the EWG’s “Dirty Dozen.” You can watch their video here >  http://www.ewg.org/news/videos/ewg-and-pesticides-dirty-dozen, so try to buy organic.

Why strawberries?  They have a high vitamin C content.  Why does that matter?  This is what the CDC says:

In addition to a healthful diet that includes good sources of iron, you can also eat foods that help your body absorb iron better. For example, you can eat a fruit or vegetable that is a good source of vitamin C with a food or meal that contains non-heme iron. Vitamin C helps your body absorb the non-heme iron foods you eat, especially when the food containing non-heme iron and the vitamin-C rich food are eaten at the same meal.

You can read more about that here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/iron.html

So, if you need more iron in your diet, a very easy way to accomplish that is to have a breakfast of an iron fortified cereal and a fruit high in vitamin C.

 

myeloma blog statsI don’t really blog much anymore, because I’m not being treated for my multiple myeloma these days.  It’s been pretty stable for nearly six years.  I try not to live in the myeloma world too much.  Actually, I don’t really even try.  It just works out that way.  When I first learned I had myeloma, back in 2003, it was all I could think about, from the time I woke up in the morning, until the time I went to sleep.  I’ve talked to a lot of people who experienced the same sort of involuntary obsessive thoughts about the disease.  It’s a strange feeling.  You know there’s something inside you that’s trying to kill you, and you can’t stop thinking about it.  The farther you get from your last treatment, the less you think about it.

Since I don’t do much blogging these days, I don’t pay attention to my stats, either.  This morning I decided I’d take a look.  What surprised me was the number of people who found my blog by searching for something with the word “rash” in it.    I had written a post in 2007 about what I think could have been an insect bite on my leg.  As you can see from the image on the right, “bed bugs rash” is now the number two search phrase that brings people to my blog.  Very interesting.

In the past, my blog was a big attraction for people searching about shingles.  I’ve had shingles at least three times, and blogged about it — with pictures.  I wasn’t shocked when I used to see that turn up in the analytics.  “Bed bugs rash,” however, is surprising!

It’s been a while since this was written, but I just became aware of this NPR story about Minnesota Don.  Don’s an amazing person, in every way.

Targeted Cancer Drugs Keep Myeloma Patients Up And Running

Don Wright got diagnosed with multiple myeloma at what turned out to be the right time. It was 10 years ago, when he was 62.

That was at the beginning of a revolution in treating this once-fearsome , which strikes around every year. The malignancy can literally eat holes in victims’ bones, which can snap from the simple act of bending over to pick up a package.

Read More Here

I have never met Don in person, but I have spoken to him on the phone, and he even  did me a super big favor once.  A couple of times.  He’s been great about sharing his experiences with the myeloma treatments he’s undergone.  He’s been on pomalyst lately, which is a new-ish drug for mm patients.

You can listen to the story at the article’s home > http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/18/172098789/targeted-cancer-drugs-keep-myeloma-patients-up-and-running

You can read Don’s blog here > http://myelomahope.blogspot.com/

During the time I was in treatment, I coordinated my doctor visits and chemo with another myeloma patient who lives about 25 miles from here.  We traveled to Chapel Hill appointments together and, when we were told the only treatment left to us was a stem cell transplant, we had ours together through The Duke Adult Blood and Marrow Transplant (ABMT) Program in Durham, NC.  We even had apartments next door to one another!

One of our doctors started calling us the “myeloma twins.”

I’m really glad to have just gotten the news that Joyce is moving to Pinehurst, which borders on Southern Pines (where I live)!  She’ll only be a few miles away, so we’ll get to see each other more often.

Yay!

I got these results last week.  Pretty much the only difference between these results and the last ones is that the IgA is about 200 mg/dL higher.  Last time, it was 663.  The m-spikes are the same.  This time, the kappa/lambda free light chain ratio is just inside the normal range.  IgM and IgG are suppressed, and at about the same levels they were in October.  Why the increase in IgA? My doctor suggested that it may simply be a normal immune response to something.

Blood tests for myeloma Feb 2012

Everything’s pretty much the same as it was last time.  Still stable. Two m-spikes that add up to 0.8 g/dL.  The last time I had blood drawn, the test results were pretty much the same.

October Myeloma Blood Test Results

The serum free light chains weren’t back yet when I got this. I don’t think about this stuff as much as I used to, so I probably won’t even call in to ask about it. I’ll wait for my next appointment in a couple of months to find out.

I had been seeing the doc every 4 months, but now it’s going to be every 3 months, due to a small increase in m-spike. The doc asked me if I want to start maintenance, but I said no. The m-spike was somewhere about 0.3 five years ago after I had my auto SCT.
Myeloma blood test results 2012 July

Beth