It was a rather sloppy, cold day today. We had what the weather services refer to as a wintry mix. My ride to exercise classes decided she did not want to go out in the mess. Understandable, especially since I landed flat on my back twice at the dog park. Ice under the snow and I walk with a heel strike. Heel down and whoopsie! Yet another reason I need to keep exercising, though.
Being in decent shape, I tend to bounce and not break. Fortunately there was no one nearby to hear the crazy old lady cursing and laughing at herself as she lay in the snow….twice.
Anyway, I ramble. Not a bad day. We took the recycling and went for pizza. Took Beastie Baby to the dog park. I finished a short report for work and I am now – gasp- cooking. You know I have run out of things I even remotely enjoy when I get domestic.
I could be willful. I could get all pissy and declare if there is nothing I want to do to do, I will do nothing! That will get me nowhere but miserable. Problem is, I am stuck in the house with myself! It is after dark and we are now getting freezing rain. I need to be willing to entertain myself with what is available.
I am lousy company even for myself when I am bored and miserable. Willingness as opposed to willfulness needs to be the choice.
And while things are in the oven, I am reading an article Lin sent me. When I was a teen, our family doctor thought I should go to medical school. Maybe if I had done that, I could actually decipher this thing!
The Saudis wrote this article, Update on clinical trials in dry Age-related Macular Degeneration. It is a review of the research up until November, 2015. The abstract says none of the biologically-oriented therapies have resulted in vision improvement, although I would say some of them probably slow the deterioration process. It also says the stem cell studies show promise. Yippee! That means if I hope to exceed my basic goal of stopping the progress of the disease, I have chosen well. (If this is the first of my pages you have read, I am applying to two stem cell studies.)
I have picked up a couple of facts from the article. Geographical atrophy – the divot where my photoreceptors used to be – is “sharply delineated” and by definition at least 175 microns. I assume that is across. 175 microns is .00689 inches. That is a tiny little space to be causing all these problems! The divot also needs to be deep enough to show the blood vessels in the choroid.
I also found out that hard drusen are a sign of normal aging. It is the soft drusen that are the troublemakers. There are all sorts of other drusen, too. It all appears rather complicated. [Lin/Linda here: click here for my post about drusen.]
I will try to be willing and slog through the rest of this article. It is informative, just over my head. Let you know if I learn anything.
written 12/17/2016