Doctor Column

At the end of the summer last year, a friend of mine rang my doorbell at 4:45 p. m. Smiling, he presented me with the last vegetable harvest of the summer from his garden.

Sharon, a 38 year old lab technician, is filling out her medical history in the doctor’s waiting room. One of the first questions on the medical form: What’s your main complaint? She wrote — Sinus pressure and pain. Another question: “Are you allergic to any medication?” She wrote — Penicillin.

Many are aware that vitamin A is needed for normal eyesight, especially in low light. Vitamin A helps maintain a healthy cornea, the clear, outer layer of the eye. It’s also needed by the retina, the nerve layer that lines the back of the eye, for it to function normally.

Sharon, a 53 y/o writer asked her husband to, “Look at my thumb. The right thumb is bigger than the left.”

We’ve all had a bloody nose, scraped a knee or cut a finger at one time or another. A remarkable feat happens when liquid blood turns into a solid mass forming a blood clot and the bleeding stops. If a wound, internal or external does not clot, the bleeding continues leading to shock and a catastrophic ending!

Someone said, it seems like “deja vu, all over again” for measles. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, has confirmed 387 individual cases of measles in 15 states from January 1 to March 28, 2019. What is the reason or reasons for the current measles’ outbreak?”

When I was about five years old, my mother would open the kitchen cabinet door, take out a dark bottle and come towards me with a spoon in her hand. She didn’t have to say anything.

Today, we don’t blink an eye when we buy vitamin D fortified milk, vitamin B1 (thiamine) enriched cereals, iodized salt or other enriched foods. Yet, it took centuries before researchers started to figure out the biochemical composition of food and minerals and how they impacted our health.

JoAnn, a 67 year old retired secretary, experienced abdominal pain that at times radiated to the back which she dismissed as indigestion. Usually energetic, she uncharacteristically complained of fatigue and, from time to time, itchiness “all over my body.”

The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2018 there will be close to 610,000 deaths in the United States due to cancer and approximately 1,735,000 new cases of cancer. The early diagnosis of cancer increases dramatically the cure rates and the five year survival rates of this disease.