BPA: The Hits Just Keep on Comin’
Bisphenol-A, the chemical in plastic bottles that appears to play a role in reproductive health problems, diabetes and cancer, might contribute to asthma as well. This research on mice suggests exposure to BPA during pregnancy ups babies’ risk for the disorder.

Infection During Pregnancy Linked to Asthma in Preemies
Today’s the day for risk factorss associated with pregnancy, apparently. Already linked to preterm birth, an infection called chorioamnionitis is somewhat common in pregnant women and sometimes goes undiagnosed, for lack of symptoms. Here’s how it may relate to asthma development, too:

In animals, chorioamnionitis has been shown to cause lung and brain damage in offspring, Getahun says. Scientists also have found lung scarring in infants who died after pregnancies complicated by the condition.

Help the American Lung Association Support a Tougher Smog Restriction
The public hearings are already over, but you can send in written comments until March 22, 2010. The EPA will announce its decision on ground-level ozone restrictions in August.

On the Blog Front
Stay tuned to my little corner of the Internet for a new, semi-regular feature making its first appearance here on Monday morning. It’s not the super-secret project I’ve been working on, by the way. That development will involve other sites besides this one, and it’ll go live sometime in the next couple of weeks.

This feature is mine alone, and I hope you’ll like it. I’m pretty sure you will.

Filed under: Air Quality, Asthma Triggers, EPA & FDA Fun, News & Research, Risk Factors | Talk to me »

Andrew Wakefield’s deeply flawed study that generated the MMR vaccine/autism scare and contributed to the anti-vaccination movement was retracted this week by The Lancet, the British medical journal where it first appeared in 1998. The British General Medical Council labeled Wakefield himself irresponsible and dishonest in his research last week, as you may have read here or elsewhere. The GMC cited, among other disturbing practices, Wakefield’s paying children for blood samples at his son’s birthday party and subjecting children to unnecessary procedures like spinal taps and colonoscopies.

This is a man who – a British newspaper discovered back in 2006 – accepted but did not disclose thousands in funding for his study from lawyers who needed evidence of MMR-vaccination injury for a lawsuit:

Critics this weekend voiced amazement at the sums, which they said created a clear conflict of interest and were the “financial engine” behind a worldwide alarm over the triple measles, mumps and rubella shot.
- Brian Deer, The Sunday Times

Investigative journalist Brian Deer has been researching and reporting on the Wakefield case for years. Check out Solved – the riddle of MMR on his site for more links to stories and research about the original study.

Full retractions like this one are a big deal. Huge, in fact, and it would be nice if this were the end of the story.

But it won’t be.

The Huffington Post, which frequently gives space to writers promoting a vaccine/autism link despite all the news and research to the contrary, has already published a piece calling the retraction “censorship.” (via Gawker)

Here’s author Kim Stagliano:

We need a thousand doctors like Andrew Wakefield, who are willing to risk their careers and reputations in order to find out what is happening to our children and how to heal them. That’s what physician scientists do after all. Help and heal.

A thousand doctors like Wakefield? If we had a thousand studies like Wakefield’s, a thousand research articles whose theories spread and scared people, despite being discredited and before they are finally retracted after 12 years, would we have even more parents turning down vaccines for their children? We’re already experiencing a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases. More of that’s a truly terrifying thought.

Consider the following quote from self-proclaimed “mother warrior” Jenny McCarthy, a vocal player in the vaccine-injury movement:

I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their fucking fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s shit. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism.
- Time

Actually, no.

It’s not polio versus autism. It’s polio versus not getting polio. Because no research has ever proven a link between childhood vaccinations and autism, not ever.

This, by the way, was her response to interviewer and Time science editor Jeffrey Kluger’s question about rising polio rates, considering her collaborator’s recommendation that new parents accept only the Hib (for epiglottis, pneumonia, bacterial meningitis) and tetanus vaccines and “think about” the rest.

Read it again. Are you okay with polio just “coming back?”

Polio.

I know I’m not.

Even scarier, Oprah Winfrey’s company signed a deal with McCarthy last spring to produce her syndicated talk show. When you consider the scope of Oprah’s influence – and as far as I can tell, Oprah has remained silent on the retraction – that gives McCarthy an even broader platform to keep suggesting a vaccine/autism link than Oprah’s own show, where she’s appeared several times.

Check out what Liane Carter, autism mom, thinks about McCarthy’s activism on the New York Times’ Motherlode.

I’ve heard McCarthy say on national TV, ‘Evan is my science.’ I’m sorry, one little boy is not ’science.’ Warm and fuzzy anecdotes don’t do it for me. Give me hard science any day, with its double blind studies and rigorous peer review. . . .

It’s time for the media to stop giving airtime to celebrities with no medical credentials who peddle unrealistic hopes to families dealing with a devastating diagnosis.

Filed under: Health Care, News & Research | 5 people talking »

Except for dust mites, my daughter doesn’t have any allergies. Intrinsic triggers tend to generate her flares instead.

But how about you?

What allergies are you/your child living with?

Related and making today a twofer:

Which one of them is the worst trigger?

Filed under: Asthma Triggers, My Asthma Girl & Me, Reader Response, The Allergy Game | 10 people talking »

I’ve not been too active blog-wise lately because these are the weeks of AG.

Seriously, check it out:

1. Last week, the kid performed an early morning audition for her school’s spring musical, and this week’s the callback.

“Callbacks?” you say. “In elementary school?”

OH YES, is my answer.

The school music teacher doesn’t play when it comes to extracurricular productions, apparently. You should’ve seen last semester’s Christmas play. It looked and sounded more elaborate than you might expect, given that it featured only the younger students in kindergarten through third grade, including the Sidekick.

2. AG also competed in the district spelling bee last week.
It wasn’t pretty.
There were, in fact, tears that were thankfully short-lived because:

3. Saturday found us doing the typical, two-child-family weekend juggle between the Sidekick’s figure skating lessons, shopping for a birthday present for AG’s best friend, an early dinner with extended family, and getting AG to the sleepover party for that birthday.

4. After sleeping just a few hours at the party, my kid then went to volleyball clinic from noon to 2:00 yesterday, a chain of events leading directly to:

5. Her crashing at about 5 pm last night and sleeping all the way through to this morning. I hope that means she’s well rested for her normal school week, the callback audition, the first of the musical’s weekly after-school rehearsals, and – AND! – her 11th birthday party at the skating rink this Saturday.

6. I’ve been shepherding AG through all of the above while A) updating this site, B) working on some freelance projects, C) still looking for a full-time position during a dismal recession in which no one’s hiring and in a newish-to-me city where I have almost no business contacts, and D) working on the Super-Secret project for this site.

This sounds like me complaining, but actually it’s not. This is more the dawning recognition that hot damn, is life busy now that AG’s reached that tween stage, where she’s attending after-school events and parties and practices all the time but won’t turn old enough to drive for another five years. (Not that I’m rushing that particular milestone.)

See, that normalcy we were talking about in last week’s reader response?

This is it.

This right here, this chauffeur/planner/homework-helper stage of life Mr. Asthma Mom and I have entered? This constitutes that “normal,” everyday stress that other families experience and that I dreamed of when AG was little, when the girls would go to bed and I’d imagine what it’d feel like to watch a WHOLE MOVIE on the couch, all the way through, without having to start up the old nebulizer at midnight. Not to feel the nausea rise and my stomach clench over the stress of a child who cannot stop flaring and never gets just to sleep, just sleep and breathe.

Related, I don’t write very often about my neverending job search because it gets me down, this terrible, terrible luck I’ve had with timing.

You just can’t make this stuff up:

My earlier interval as a stay-at-home mom lasted longer than expected because of AG’s health, my attempt to return to the full-time work path started in a small Florida city with terrible job prospects for anyone, and then I finally moved to a much larger city with better jobs – but right in the middle of a recession. It’s not that “normal” life makes the job hunt easier to bear but more that I appreciate, so much,  how that’s source of my stress – rather than AG’s health – right now.

That both my girls get to experience healthy childhoods. That most of the time, I can watch movies all the way through and that when my daughter does have problems breathing, she can catch them early. That now I can focus on looking for a full-time position with a good trajectory for my career and on teaching her the first steps of asthma maintenance and on decisions like:

Should I let her join a swim/dive team the way she wants, despite my reservations about indoor pools and asthma? Because she’s a strong swimmer and diver and she loves them both and she’d be great.

But that’s a post or three for another day.

Filed under: Asthma Parenting, My Asthma Girl & Me, School and Sports | 4 people talking »

Low Levels of Vitamin D = Lower Lung Function, Steroid Effectiveness
National Jewish adds to the body of research linking vitamin D levels and asthma with this study, and it appears the connection is strong enough to warrant the possible use of supplements. (Previous posting on vitamin D and asthma research here and here.)

Score One for Actual Science, One Less for the Dangerous Anti-Vaccination Folks
In other words, the UK’s General Medical Council found Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the man behind the MMR/autism rumors, “dishonest” and “irresponsible” in his research methods from the very study the entire antivax movement is founded upon.

And in even better vaccine news,

Gates Foundation to Spend $10 Billion on Vaccines in Next Decade
On the one hand, you’ve got a doctor (Wakefield) responsible for an increase in childhood measles in England and small pockets elsewhere and contributing to the threat to herd immunity, and then you have Bill and Melinda Gates. They’re committed to protecting children from vaccine-preventable diseases around the world.

Filed under: News & Research, Risk Factors, The Sickroom | 1 person talking »

We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more.
- Pearl S. Buck (1892 – 1973)

Have you learned from your breathing problems, or your kid’s?

I sure have.

Parenthood in general – and in my case, young and unplanned parenthood – has force-fed more lessons into me than I thought possible over the last decade. Throw the moderate-now-but-severe-when-AG-was-younger persistent asthma into the mix, and OH, THE LEARNING FUN. IT NEVER STOPS.

Under duress, because I am nothing if not stubborn, I’ve acquired patience for those parts of my life still on hold and still affected by the years home with AG, the humility that caring for young children and their body fluids and always putting yourself last requires, and more than anything else, gratitude for my own good health and my daughter’s well-maintained lungs.

What is asthma teaching you?

Filed under: Asthma Parenting, My Asthma Girl & Me, Reader Response, The Sickroom | 12 people talking »

I can’t stop thinking about this lately.

As much as I talk and write and think about my daughter’s early years of severity, the way her breathing instability robbed me of time, peace of mind, and occasionally my sanity and has hurt and continues to hurt my career today, I never had to wonder – not once, not ever – where her nebulizer meds or inhalers were coming from.

In addition to the immediate, critical need to treat the injured and the massive organizational effort it’s taking for humanitarian groups to help provide food, clean drinking water, and shelter to the survivors, what happens if you have asthma in Haiti?

Even if patients can make their way to an intact pharmacy, what happens if the earthquake destroyed all its asthma meds?

Both asthma medications and antibiotics top the lists of needed medical supplies.

Even worse, asthma problems in Haiti will most likely deepen with all the quake dust in the air.

I’m not a doctor or a nurse. I can’t volunteer to treat patients in Haiti. I’m not a celebrity with millions to donate or enough fame to generate millions of donations from others.

What I am is a writer with an Internet connection and a website. Beyond the donation I’ve made myself, all I can do is keep spreading the word on Haiti and the groups that are doing good work there.

Last week, someone from International Medical Corps emailed me about the ability to text donations for their charity as well:

International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization, founded by volunteer doctors and nurses and dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through relief and development programs. Our emergency response team is in Haiti responding in force. . . . There are still thousands of patients seeking treatment of which approximately 80% are in need of surgery and are running out of time – especially with the tremendous aftershocks still devastating this country. The team is treating crush injuries, trauma, substantial wound care, shock and other critical cases with the few available supplies – And they’re in it for the long haul.

Text Haiti to 85944 to donate $10 to International Medical Corps, or click here:

And from last Friday’s Hope for Haiti Now benefit concert, the incomparable Mary J. Blige on Hard Times Come Again No More:

Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 people talking »

EMTs Accused of Ignoring Dying, Asthmatic Pregnant Woman Back at Work
This is a pretty big story right now in New York.

Back in December, a Brooklyn Au Bon Pain cashier who suffered from asthma and was 6/7 months pregnant complained of shortness of breath and stomach pains. She later collapsed and died while, reports indicate, two emergency medical technicians on break in the restaurant refused to help. The unborn baby of the employee, 25 year-old Eutisha Rennix, died as well.

I’ve been following this story but waiting to write about it until now, since I had trouble formulating a coherent response beyond, “Are you f*ing kidding me?”

You have to read both links above to get all the details, but it appears Rennix collapsed in some sort of back room in the restaurant while the two EMTs – Jason Green and Melissa Jackson, on break and in uniform – stayed in the customer area. When other Au Bon Pain employees told Green and Jackson about Rennix’s condition, the EMTs refused to help and claimed they called a dispatcher instead. According to reports, there may be no record of this call if it went through an internal system rather than 911 channels.

Green and Jackson are back at work this week after a 30-day suspension without pay, even as the district attorney investigates and to the outrage of New Yorkers.

And me.

They’re working in an office-based, non-emergency capacity which, I guess, is at least partially positive news for the good people of New York who, should they find themselves in a situation similar to Rennix’s, would probably not want to be on the receiving end of emergency care from these two particular EMTs.

Green and Jackson also spoke publicly for the first time from their lawyer’s office this week. They say the reports of their conduct are lies.

Au Bon Pain employees, on the other hand, say Green and Jackson ignored their requests to help Rennix. In fact, this Gothamist post from December mentions an employee who remembers people yelling that Rennix was turning blue as the EMTs told them to call 911.

Rennix left behind a 3 year-old son. Her mother is now raising him.

I don’t have to tell you how this story pushes just about every one of my buttons. “Horrified” is probably too weak a word.

Here’s the part I keep coming back to: Green and Jackson assert that had they examined Rennick, they couldn’t have have treated her, anyway, not without the right equipment.

Except:
Wow. That statement’s just – it’s a stunning equivocation, isn’t it?

We did everything we could. But if we didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

Not that they could actually know this for sure, since they didn’t even examine her.

Except:
Did this woman carry an inhaler? That’s what I’d really like to know. Because that qualifies as equipment, wouldn’t you say? If Rennick was known to have asthma, chances are probably at least 50/50 that she had an inhaler somewhere in that restaurant. And if she didn’t, well, asthma’s one of the most common chronic medical conditions in this country. A customer might’ve been carrying one.

Now, if Rennix were flaring severely enough to keep her from taking a full breath, maybe a quick-relief inhaler would’ve helped her and maybe not. Maybe it could’ve bought her some time until she got the emergency care she needed, or maybe she was too far gone for a bronchodilator to have any effect. Plus, as I understand the ongoing investigations, it hasn’t been conclusively determined that asthma caused her death.

However, there’s no mention anywhere, in any story, that Green and Jackson even attempted to locate an inhaler or ask if she needed one, even though Jackson admits learning about and reporting Rennick’s asthma to the emergency medical services dispatcher she claims she called.

Except:
That phone call Jackson alleges she made – has that been verified? Maybe I’ve watched The Wire too many times, but I’m assuming that even if a recording of it isn’t available, the call could at least be confirmed through the cell phone company. Although maybe criminal charges – or some other legal requirement – have to enter the picture before something like that can happen.

Except:
According to Gothamist, that particular Au Bon Pain is in the same building as an EMS dispatch center and the same complex as FDNY Headquarters. Did Green and Jackson know this? Would either of those places have the right kind of emergency equipment to help Rennick?

At any rate, between Green and Jackson themselves and those two places, we’re talking three separate institutions associated with emergency care all in the vicinity, while Rennix lay dying.

Most likely, of asthma.

Allergic Disease Switch Discovered
I write a lot about the concept of an off/on switch for the hyper-inflammation associated with asthma. Maybe this is it. At the very least, this molecule called TSLP is an important part of the overall picture.

Caretaker Resources
Finally, remember to send me your links, ideas, and other tips for the future feature on coping with asthma parenting and taking care of yourself while you do.

Filed under: Asthma Parenting, Media & Pop Culture, News & Research | 4 people talking »

Do you watch American Idol?

AG has a beautiful, powerful voice that she does not get from me. She and her Steadfast Sidekick love that show.

When they watch it, I usually cringe over Idol’s smarmy, heavy-handed editing of contestants’ “very special stories” that shouldn’t have any bearing on a talent competition, anyway, since everyone has some kind of sob story if you look hard enough. And as far as filler value goes, why not just use more footage of, you know, the singing?

Anyway, I’m not writing anything that hasn’t been written about Idol before, my main point being that one competitor on last night’s Chicago auditions had a backstory I actually paid attention to.

Check out Paige Dechausse, whose background includes a severe asthma flare that almost left her for dead. This is pretty much my nightmare:

paige chi @ Yahoo! Video

(via TV Crunch)

Her story’s kind of a kick to the ribs, no? Like Paige, asthmatics look healthy and generally are healthy, but a severe, life-threatening flare can happen to anyone, anytime.

Unfortunately, that’s the nature of asthma. It’s a stealthy disease. It’s also, however, a highly liveable disease, as Paige herself demonstrates.

Filed under: Media & Pop Culture, Uncategorized | 7 people talking »

If you’ve read this site for any length of time, you know my daughter’s near-constant coughing during flares will, even now, drive me to that cliff’s edge of a nervous breakdown on the worst nights. AG has no love for the coughing either, obviously, especially since it drives her to the point of hoarseness, a sore throat, and on the worst nights, aching ribs.

As a parent OR a patient, which asthma symptom do you hate the most?

Filed under: Asthma Parenting, Flares & Flare Symptoms, My Asthma Girl & Me, Reader Response | 17 people talking »