Chris Cerasi Remembers His Grandmother

I never really had to deal with death until I was in my thirties. This was perhaps a mixed blessing. While distant relatives and those I was not particularly close to passed away over the years, it wasn’t until my paternal grandmother’s death in the winter of 2006 that I finally had to deal with the subject I had gratefully, yet nervously, avoided for years.

I was very close to my grandmother, whom we affectionately called “Vee” (her real name was Victoria). She had been a constant, close (sometimes too close) presence throughout my life, and our relationship was always easy, affectionate, and very loving. While she sometimes could be a dictator in her approach to family gatherings, her heart was always in the right place, and I loved her dearly. I loved her passion, her smile, her warmth, and her ability to never tire of visiting friends and family as often as she could. She was a loud, nudgy social butterfly, flitting from home to home in her well-loved car; her iconic puff of sprayed-in-place white hair often the only visible thing above the steering wheel.

When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after an extended hospital stay in the early ‘00s, we were devastated. I was living on the West Coast at the time and saw her less frequently due to travel and other practicalities. When I did visit for holidays and vacations, I noticed how she seemed worse each time I saw her. She forgot things. She repeated her questions and never seemed to really grasp the answers, and worst of all, she stopped wanting to go places and preferred to stay in her house by herself. While the part of me that did not want to deal with the reality of her situation hoped that she would get better, the intellectual part knew that sooner or later she was going to leave us. I tried to focus on the positive as long as I could and just enjoy seeing her, but eventually it became evident that her time was limited.

I saw her for the last time two weeks before she died. She was so frail and fragile, only a dim shadow of her former vigorous self, and my heart broke. Her head was tilted to one side, her lips moved but what she said made no sense and was repetitive and worst of all, it seemed that the best of her, the grandmother I loved who was so present and didn’t forget a thing, had long gone. When she passed away quietly two weeks later, I realized that the Vee I really knew, the Vee that was really her true, best self, had died just before she had been stricken with Alzheimer’s. That was the grandmother I remember and honor now, and that is the Vee I will always cherish. When my father went through her belongings after she died, he gave me her high school ring, which I had always liked to look at and try on. It made me feel close to her, and because it was something she herself was proud of, it made me honored to become its new owner. I wear it on a chain around my neck so that it is close to my heart. So that Vee is close to my heart, where she belongs… - Christopher Cerasi, 6/24/2008

Like Chris, many of us have experienced the death of a loved one. Send your story to autwil@comcast.net if you wish to share a CAUSE OF DEATH that has touched your life and I’ll post it on my guest blog.

For more on the most recent connection between calcium and Alzheimer’s check this out:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91891831

Shingles – caused by VOG?

It wasn’t asthma that got me on vacation in Hawaii ( I stand corrected on no air pollution in Hawaii - see blog below). It was shingles! Imagine an ice pick stuck in your sciatic nerve and you’ll get the picture. Although no-one knows what triggers an outbreak of blisters on the skin caused by the varicella-zoster (the chickenpox virus), foods high in Arginine (macademia nuts, kona coffee, etc.) appear to make it worse. Compounding my Hawaiian Arginine-rich diet was the Vog in the air on the Big Island - caused by Sulfur Dioxide pouring out of the Kilauea volcano. With a lot of Advil (advil OK, aspirin not OK for treatment of Shingles pain), my little health episode actually made it easier to stop and do nothing except enjoy the company and the view – which is what vacations are all about anyway. The good news, for those approaching a certain age, is that there is now a shingles vaccine. I highly recommend it unless you’re into discovering new types of pain.

http://www.konaweb.com/vog/index.shtml

http://virtualscratchpad.com/2008/04/blogging-vog-local-experiences-with.html

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/shingles/shingles.htm

http://herpes-coldsores.com/diet_and_nutrition_with_herpes.htm

Asthma and Air Pollution?

I’m about to leave California for a vacation in Hawaii. Maybe I should pack an inhaler!

In a recent Wall Street Journal MarketWatch update, Pennsylvania recently joined a coalition of states and cities, including New York and California, in a lawsuit against the EPA for adopting air pollution standards that do not protect public health. You can spend a lot of interesting time comparing air quality by going here: http://www.epa.gov/aircompare/.

The biggest states (California, New York and Pennsylvania) clearly have the highest rates of carbon monoxide emissions but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to asthma prevalence or asthma deaths. California (with a childhood asthma prevalence of 7.1%) has the highest carbon monoxide emissions in the country, but is not even in the top 10 states with high rates of asthma.

Top 10 US States with high childhood asthma prevalence

1. Massachusetts 12.1%
2. Hawaii 10.9%
3. Oklahoma 10.8%
4. Maryland 10.8%
5. Rhode Island 10.5%
6. Kentucky 10.4%
7. District of Columbia 10.3%
8. Ohio 10.2%
9. New York 10.2%
10. Pennsylvania 9.9%

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad381.pdf

Per the CDC “State of Childhood Asthma, 1980-2005” research article, asthma rates vary widely by race and the disparity in asthma mortality between black and white children has risen in recent years. But states with higher black populations don’t necessarily correlate to higher asthma prevalence or asthma deaths either.

Top 10 US States with high black populations vs childhood asthma prevalence

1. Mississippi 37.1% black vs 8.4% childhood asthma
   
2. Louisiana 31.7% black vs 8.3% childhood asthma
3. Georgia 29.9% black vs 7.9% childhood asthma
4. Maryland 29.5% black vs 10.8% childhood asthma
5. South Carolina 29.0% black vs 8.1% childhood asthma
6. Alabama 26.3% black vs 8.7% childhood asthma
7. North Carolina 21.7% black vs 8.1% childhood asthma
8. Delaware 20.9% black vs 8.8% childhood asthma
9. Virginia 19.9% black vs 8.7% childhood asthma
10. Tennessee 16.9% black vs 7.3% childhood asthma

Source: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/27000.html

Interestingly, the U.S. state with the highest death rate from asthma (2.0 per 100,000 2002-2004) and the 2^nd highest childhood asthma prevalence rate is Hawaii, which has relatively low air pollution. And the 2^nd highest country for asthma deaths in the world is New Zealand (behind the UK). http://www.asthmanz.co.nz/in_new_zealand.php

Long Life and Marijuana

Of “The Thirteen” countries with long life expectancies, five are in the top rank of annual cannabis users, including the U.S. at #12. With drug arrests on the rise, if you're one of the long living, pot smoking, U.S. citizens, you just might spend part of your long life in jail!

Although the CDC reported only 1 death from cannabinoids in the US, out of over 26,000 reported deaths from drugs in 2002 (including accidents and suicide but excluding alcohol), according to the FBI, 45.3% of all 2002 drug abuse violations were for Marijuana (which would mean about 697,100 people arrested for cannabis out of 1,538,813 total drug abuse violation arrests).

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/pdf/02crime4.pdf (Crime in the US, 2002 page 4)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm#incrate (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Facts at a Glance)

“The Thirteen”
Population > 10 million + life expectancy > 78 years
Country and Life expectancy

1. Japan 82.07
2. *Canada 81.16
   
3. France 80.87
4. *Australia 80.73
5. *Italy 80.07
6. *Spain 79.92
   
7. Greece 79.52
8. The Netherlands 79.25
9. Germany 79.10
10. Belgium 79.07
11. The U.K. 78.85
12. *The U.S. 78.14
    
13. Portugal 78.04

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

Top Cannabis Using Countries (over 10% annual use age 15-64)
Country and Cannabis use

1. Papua New Guinea 29.5%
2. Micronesia Fed. State 29.1%
3. Ghana 21.5%
4. Zambia 17.7%
5. *Canada 16.8%
   
6. Sierra Leone 16.1%
7. Cyprus 14.1%
8. Nigeria 13.8%
9. New Zealand 13.4%
10. *Australia 13.3%
11. *The U.S. 12.6%
12. *Italy 11.2%
13. *Spain 11.2%
    
14. Jamaica 10.7%

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html

Find more fun stats in the book Cause of Death: A Perfect Little Guide to What Kills Us by Jack Mingo, Erin Barrett and Lucy Autrey Wilson