Saturday News

Contents of This Week:

• Headline - Plavix (Clopidogrel)
• Comics   - For Better Or For Worse, Dilbert, Mayes, Doonesbury
• Eclectic - Many articles from many guest bloggers
• TEDTalks -  Technology, Entertainment and Design
• TadpoleUpdate -  Spokes Fighting Strokes
• RickMercerReport - Intelligence, humorous, politics, ...

Index of Eclectic Stuff This Week

1. Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Too Many Doctors in the Mix
2. Pharmacopia
3. Drug Combo May Reduce Risk of Second Stroke
4. Aspirin, Plavix Not Good Stroke Prevention Combo
5. Persistent Insomnia and Alcoholism
6. A Breakthrough At Speech Therapy!
7. Enough about Ebola. Get a Flu Shot!
8. Our New Approach To Communication Meets The Challenge!!!
9. Experience
10. Stroke Statistics zzzzz
11. Mobility = Physical Recovery + Problem Solving
12. You're Already Awesome. Just Get Out of Your Own Way!
13. Elderly Couple Texting - A True Romantic!
14. Socially Speaking and Conversational Courtesy
15. Jorge Soto: The Future of Early Cancer Detection?
16. Tadpole Update - Spokes Fighting Strokes - Oct/25/2014
17. RMR: Rick at the New Brunswick Exhibition

Definition: Plavix (Clopidogrel)

Clopidogrel From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Clopidogrel (Trade name: Plavix)
(MedlinePlus: a601040)

Clopidogrel (INN) is an oral, thienopyridine class antiplatelet agent used to inhibit blood clots in coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease. It is marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi under the trade name Plavix. The drug works by irreversibly inhibiting a receptor called P2Y12, an adenosine diphosphate (ADP) chemoreceptor on platelet cell membranes. Adverse effects include hemorrhage, severe neutropenia, and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP).

Medical Use

Clopidogrel is indicated for:

• Prevention of vascular ischemic events in patients with symptomatic atherosclerosis
• Acute coronary syndrome without ST-segment elevation (NSTEMI),
• ST elevation MI (STEMI)

It is also used, along with acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, brand name Aspirin), for the prevention of thrombosis after placement of intracoronary stent or as an alternative antiplatelet drug for patients intolerant to ASA.

Video: Plavix (Clopidogrel)

SSTattler: Plavix is both good and bad about preventing strokes. Please ask your doctor to tell you as much information available about you & Plavix.

Contents:
1. Yay - Plavix is the Good Drug...
2. Nay - Plavix has Problems...



1. Yay - Plavix is the Good Drug...

Commercial For PLAVIX

Uploaded on Feb 11, 2010

Plavix keeps blood platelets slippery and discourages formation of clots, thereby improving blood flow to your heart, brain, and body. The drug is prescribed to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and serious circulation problems in people with hardening of the arteries or unstable angina (dangerous chest pain), and in people who've already suffered a heart attack or stroke.

Standard YouTube License @ iBenefitRX

Daily Comics

For Better and For Worse
Lynn Johnston

Canada Family Events

Dilbert
Scott Adams

Dilbert Office Events

Edmonton Journal
Malcolm Mayes

Politics Views from Canada

Doonesbury
Garry Trudeau

Politics Views from USA

  

** I tried to get low or free price at the people http://www.UniversalUclick.com/ for the images for the cartoons. It was too high for Stroke Survivors Tattler i.e. we are not a regular newspaper and our budget is very, very low. Fortunately, you will have to do only 1-click more to see the cartoon image, it is legit and it is free using GoComics.com, Dilbert.com and EdmontonJournal.com.

Eclectic Stuff

Definition: Eclectic(noun) a person who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.

Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Too Many Doctors in the Mix

Jo Murphey
The Murphey Saga

Sunday, October 19, 2014

There is a small, orange pill on the market that does a jam up job as a blood thinner called Plavix. It's a shame I wasn't on it at the time of my stroke or I might have been delayed my family history catching up to me. I had been on it for years prior to too many doctors in the mix. Here goes my story...

I was in the third vial category.

In 1998, my blood tests came back with cause for concern. I had a very high red blood cell count. So I was diagnosed with erythrocytosis (uh-rith-roh-sie-TOE-sis). A big word meaning high red blood cell count. I was put on Plavix to thin my blood because I was allergic to aspirin. Considering all the chemo I had received during my cancer treatments, I thought this was good news, but it wasn't. Now my bone marrow was producing too many of them. My blood was clotting too fast. I had, in fact, thick blood.

Pharmacopia

Andrea
A Year of Living In My Head

Thursday, May 2, 2013

I was prescribed standard "post-ischemic stroke of unknown origin" drugs.  So: statin-blood pressure-blood thinners to add up to a anti-stroke cocktail that "studies have shown" will deter that other stroke.  Will lessen the chances.  Even though my chances are elevated because I already had one.

Thing is. Those drugs suck.  I took them for one year, 3 months.  Daily.  Religiously.  Because. I. Did. Not. Want. Another. Stroke.  And that is the only way I was told was proven. Yeah. Exercise.  Yeah. Weight loss.  Yeah, diet.  Did those inadvertently because I was so freaked out.

I did not want my kids to experience another stroke.  They are still dealing with the ramifications of July 2011, it drastically changed how we all see life.  It put fear in their life when honestly, I wish they did not have it.  (But we don't control lives now, do we?)

Drug Combo May Reduce Risk of Second Stroke

Jeff Porter
Stroke of Faith

Thursday, June 27, 2013

I was on aspirin and Plavix for several years to prevent a second stroke. I eventually had a mini-stroke (or a transient ischemic attack) anyway. Still, more info to discuss with your own doctor. Check out this article about how a study shows this drug combo may reduce risk of second stroke:

After suffering a stroke or a mini-stroke, patients are usually given aspirin to prevent clots that can cause another stroke. Now a new study suggests that adding the drug Plavix (clopidogrel) to the mix can reduce the risk of a second stroke by nearly a third over aspirin alone. ... 

"Giving two drugs that block platelets works a lot better than aspirin alone in people who have had a minor stroke or TIA," said researcher Dr. S. Claiborne Johnston, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. 

The trial was done in China, so whether the results would be the same in the United States isn't known. "They probably are, but we would like to see them confirmed," Johnston said.

See the original article:

Drug Combo May Reduce Risk of Second Stroke

in

Stroke of Faith

Aspirin, Plavix Not Good Stroke Prevention Combo

Dean Reinke
Deans’ Stroke Musing

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

See what your doctor thinks about this research, No self-diagnosis. Aspirin, Plavix Not Good Stroke Prevention Combo.

Combining clopidogrel (Plavix) with aspirin did not prevent recurrent stroke deep in the brain, and even increased the risk of bleeding and death, according to a double-blind, randomized trial that was halted.

Patients receiving the dual antiplatelet therapy had a 2.1% risk of major bleeding -- double the 1.1% risk of those on aspirin plus placebo (P<0.001), Oscar Benavente, MD, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and colleagues found.

Similarly, the annual risk of all-cause death was greater with the combined therapy: 2.1% for aspirin plus clopidogrel compared with 1.4% for aspirin plus placebo (P=0.005), Benavente reported here at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference.

Persistent Insomnia and Alcoholism

Bill (William) Yates, M.D.
Brain Post

October 20 / 2014

Sleep problems complicate the treatment and recovery in alcoholism.

Heavy alcohol consumption modifies the nature of sleep architecture.

A high blood alcohol concentration at bedtime may promote sleep early in the sleep cycle.

However, as alcohol levels decline, sleep is often interrupted with limiting rapid eye movement (REM) sleep duration.

Shortened total sleep time with alcohol can produce a lack of feeling well rested on awakening.

For those with alcoholism or alcohol dependence, successful treatment and alcohol abstinence can restore a normal sleep pattern. However, the clinical picture appears more complicated.

Kirk Brower and colleagues at the University of Michigan published an important summary of the effects of alcoholism treatment on sleep.

A Breakthrough At Speech Therapy!

Diane
The Pink House On The Corner

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Well, he finally did it! On Wednesday, Bob was able to come up with a full, complete, grammatically correct sentence to describe a photo!!!!

This task (describing a photo with a sentence) has been a challenge for Bob and the ST has been running him through photo after photo for over a month now. Bob struggles so, trying to find the words, it's really heartbreaking to watch. He usually can come up with a noun, sometimes even the correct noun (ha!) but he seems at a loss on how to construct a complete sentence. You know, with verbs and conjunctions and modifiers and whatnot.

So on Wednesday, when the ST showed Bob a photograph of a girl riding a horse, Bob actually said, without prompting of any sort:

"The little girl is riding a horse."

well, actually, it was more like this:

"The little girl..... is.... riding.... a horse."

I tell you, both the ST and I jumped to our feet and applauded him!  I mean this is BIG. No, actually it's a HUGE step for Bob in the right direction. I mean, really, he actually said "The little girl is riding a horse."  All I can say, is WOW!!!

Enough about Ebola. Get a Flu Shot!

Joyce Hoffman
The Tales of a Stroke Patient

Oct 20th / 2014

The CDC and the Dallas Hospital are in deep doo-doo. Unlike Vegas, what happened in Dallas didn't stay in Dallas.

In an article by Christina Coleman called "5 Mistakes The CDC and Texas Health Presbyterian (THP) Hospital Made While Handling Ebola," she wrote just a few days ago that 1) Thomas Duncan, the man from Liberia who had Ebola, was sent home from THP the first time despite his fever and his telling the nurse he came from West Africa, 2) improper protective gear, like for Nina Pham, the first person and a nurse in the US to contract Ebola, who attended to Duncan, 3) inappropriate disposal of waste, 4) lack of response by the CDC in regard to the training for nursing staff, and 5) the CDC's endorsement for Amber Vinson, the second person and a nurse who contracted Ebola and who also attended to Duncan, to board a jet packed with132 other people, all contributed to the exponential spread of Ebola.

Figure it like this, taking one of many examples: Vinson traveled from Dallas to Cleveland on a plane while she may have been showing early symptoms with Ebola. While in Cleveland, attending to her bridesmaids and their gowns, she may have been sweating or coughing or sneezing and she touched the gowns.

Our New Approach To Communication Meets The Challenge!!!

Gary Gray
PEI Stroke Recovery

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Nicole Caron

A guest post by:  Nicole Caron, the Social Media Manager at Voiceitt.

Voiceitt is an Israeli-based technology startup whose mission is to create innovative solutions that helps aid the lives of people with disabilities. The fundamental goal of VoiceItt is to foster independence and social inclusion for the disabled and improve their quality of life. Voiceitt is currently developing Talkitt, an innovative speech technology which is able to recognize unintelligible language and translate it into understandable speech. Ultimately, Talkitt is giving individuals with speech impairments their voice back!

Experience

Amy Shissler
My Cerebellar Stroke Recovery

October 18, 2014

The first couple of years that I was a practicing physical therapist, I was scared of everything.  It’s really scary when someone that’s already in a lot of pain and coming to you for help tells you that the exercises that you asked them to do caused more pain.  That’s a scary thing.  That’s when confidence and experience become critical.  Now, I only have 4 years of work experience so I don’t want to give the wrong impression but that being said, I kinda know a lot and I was really good at what I did.  I only have 4 years of work experience but I have personal experience now that most health care practitioners with decades of work experience don’t and never will have.  It took a few years after getting a lot of good results with people to have the confidence to say to someone “I know it hurts a little more or in a different spot, that’s ok.  Keep doing the exercises and I promise you’ll feel better.”  That didn’t always happen of course but I knew what to do and how to deal with it after a while.

Stroke Statistics zzzzz

Peter G. Levine
Stronger After Stroke

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

15 million people suffer stroke worldwide each year.

In the USA...
▶ 10% of survivors recover completely or almost completely recover.
▶ 25% recover with minor impairments
▶ 40% experience moderate to severe impairments that require special care
▶ 10% require care in a nursing home or other long-term facility
▶ 15% die shortly after the stroke
▶ Approximately 14% of stroke survivors experience a second stroke in the first year following a stroke.
If we concentrate on the people who may need help with recovery we'd include survivors with
▶ minor impairments to...
▶ those requiring care in a nursing facility
This includes everything from occupational therapy to AFOs. Therefore...

11.25 million people per year worldwide will require these services and equipment. 

See the original article:

Stroke Statistics zzzzz

in

Stronger After Stroke

Mobility = Physical Recovery + Problem Solving

RebeccaDutton
Home After a Stroke

October 15, 2014

A study found that impaired attention and visual-spatial deficits 3 months after a stroke was significantly associated with a poor quality of life 12 months after a stroke (1).  Studying what seems like an obvious connection may seem wasteful if you do not know some therapists ignore cognition.  They focus on concrete issues like passive range of motion and strength and assume clients will know what to do with their physical gains when they go home.

Without cognitive skills I would not have the luxury of getting up in the morning whenever I feel like it, fixing what I want for breakfast, and sitting at the table after breakfast reading the newspaper. I used to drive 100 miles round trip to work so lounging after breakfast while other people are doing battle in rush hour traffic never gets old.

My recent post begging someone to teach us to turn is a perfect example of what I am talking about.  Making multiple turns while concentrating on the steps of preparing breakfast requires constant attention and visual-spatial awareness.  I had to learn to pay attention to what objects are doing instead of concentrating on what my hands and feet are doing.  Squeezing Theraputty and walking in the PT gym did not make this possible.  Therapists who have a simplistic view of recovery need to incorporate cognition into their clinical practice.  Therapists and stroke survivors need to remember that mobility = physical recovery + problem solving.

1. Cummings TB, Brodtmann A, Darby D, Berhardt J.  The importance of cognition to quality of life after stroke. J Psychosom Res, 2014;15: ??

See the original article:

Mobility = Physical Recovery + Problem Solving

in

Home After a Stroke

You're Already Awesome. Just Get Out of Your Own Way!

Ramon Florendo
Life after a “STROKE"

Published on May 11, 2013

By Judson Brewer MD, Ph.D.

We have all experienced moments in our lives where everything just comes together in some almost magical way --whether playing music, participating in a sport, or just getting totally absorbed in a project. These moments are timeless, effortless, completely free of worry and delicious! As described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this is "flow" and is often a hallmark of exemplary performance -- whether it is Michael Jordan scoring 50 points in a basketball game, or someone rising to a challenge that they never thought they would be able to handle.

We're lucky if we get into this "flow state" a few times in our entire lives. Is this flow state that hard to achieve? Is it more accessible to all of us than we think? And are we the only barrier that is keeping us getting into flow?

Judson Brewer MD PhD, an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Yale University outlines several common ways that we get in our own way. Using examples such as Lolo Jones tripping on a hurdle in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and smokers resisting their cravings, he describes how we can get caught up in thinking, as well as resisting our own body sensations as ways that we prevent ourselves from performing optimally, in whatever situation arises.

Elderly Couple Texting - A True Romantic!

Jackie Poff
Stroke Survivors Tattler

An elderly couple, who had just learned how to send text messages on their mobile phones. The wife was a romantic type and the husband was more of a no-nonsense guy.

One afternoon the wife went out to meet a friend for coffee. She decided to send her husband a romantic text message and she wrote:

 "If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me a sip. If you are crying, send me your tears. I love you."

The husband texted back to her:

"I'm on the toilet. Please advise."

Socially Speaking and Conversational Courtesy

October 22 / 2014

Last evening my wife and I were invited to a niece’s birthday party.  You know the drill; pizza, cake and presents.  As what happens with most birthday parties there are guests who may be “new” to the group.   When this occurs it is customary to have the new visitor “introduced” to all the guests, with a repetition of each person’s name.  Whether child or adult, going somewhere new, and meeting unfamiliar people can be daunting, esp. if one is confronted with new names to remember.

So in walks Mom and her son.  As they were introduced one by one to the group, I noticed she was fingerspelling the names of each person to the young man, while his head was bowed, and making only eye contact with his mothers’ fingers, but never lifting his eyes to those of the other guests. That introductory process did not yield a “meeting of another person,” only the recognition of a finger spelled name.  There was no attempt to speak, repetition of the name, no eye contact, or gestures on the part of this child.  After the introductions, I realized no one really met him; that it was all a formality that seemed to have NO MEANING for this child, nor anyone else.  As soon as this process was repeated with all the guests the child sat down on the couch with his smartphone and continued playing a game without stopping although other children were coming up to him and checking out what game he was playing.  One child had the same game on his phone, but it was still curious there was minimal if any interactions with anyone at the party other than the game on his smartphone.

Jorge Soto: The Future of Early Cancer Detection?

Published on Oct 15, 2014

Along with a crew of technologists and scientists, Jorge Soto is developing a simple, noninvasive, open-source test that looks for early signs of multiple forms of cancer. Onstage at TEDGlobal 2014, he demonstrates a working prototype of the mobile platform for the first time.



Standard YouTube License @ TED