For some ultramarathoners, surgical removal of their toenails solves a painful problem. Nor will they ever encounter that pesky fungal ailment.

For a couple of years, the skin on my hands seemed to be deteriorating. There were odd patches that got itchy, healed halfway and then got itchy again. Late last year, my doctor said it was eczema, gave me cortisone cream and told me to stop washing my hands so much. I quit washing dishes, letting family members step up to the sink instead.

Actually, it seemed like the simple act of handwashing had become irritating. Was it something in the water? And how could I stop washing so often? Like many, I use a keyboard all day long. I also do a fair amount of cooking, handling raw meat in the process. I eat at the keyboard. I go to the bathroom. I go outside and plant things in dirt. I knead dough.

Meanwhile, the cortisone cream would heal the patches for a bit. Then they came back elsewhere. I still had spots on the back of my hands when I woke up, raised bumps that were excrutiatingly itchy. They would disappear after an hour or so, only to return the next morning. I was getting patches of itchy skin between my fingers.

Our liquid soap of choice was Softsoap, bottles at all the sinks, including the kitchen. A dermatologist mentioned years ago that Dove was one of the mildest bar soaps. Shower soap was either Dove or Oil of Olay liquid.

Once I read this, out went the Softsoap. And guess what? The eczema is all gone from one hand, and the one patch left on the other is healing. No new patches. No itching.

Check your soaps, dishwashing liquids, toothpaste, acne cleansers, deodorant and hand lotions (yes, even that). You probably don’t want this on your skin and in your system.

Known as brown milk among my family members, it is proving to be better than your average sports drink for muscle recovery after strenuous activity.

I first encountered hair-chewing when volunteering in a child’s first grade classroom. One of my tutees could not begin any task without wrapping a strand of her hair around her fingers, then sticking it in her mouth. As time went on, I wondered why her mother didn’t just cut her hair really short.

There’s a revolting photo of what happens when this is carried to an extreme. Scroll down to the second story here, and put that sandwich down.

An Indian village of 2,000 families has 250 sets of twins. That’s six times the usual rate.

There is no word for autism in the Somali language. Some are calling it the ‘American disease’.

An NYTimes article that outlines the many conditions that can cause severe memory loss and confusion in older people. The comments provide further insight from readers’ experiences.

If you can’t get into the site, go to bugmenot.com, and you will find clarity.

After finding drunken patients, hospitals in the UK have removed the hand cleaning dispensers. Despite the horrible taste, imbibers managed to down the gel by mixing it with juice or soft drinks. Why would someone sick enough to be in a hospital do this?

The stuff is 75 proof.

Bloomberg reports that he might be considering it. Within the article is a quote from an irritated Jobs, highly annoyed at the media scrutiny. Apple stock drops over a point, following drops in previous days. Via Briefing.com.

The good news, of course, is that the antibiotics knock out the bacteria pretty fast. On the down side, the side effects can be annoying. For this one, I’ve had headache, lightheadedness, nausea and for a short time, the red pee.

Even though I’ve spent the morning looking at food photos, there’s no appetite. Just the queasiness. But yesterday, I bought four cans of Select Harvest chicken noodle soup by Campbell’s. If it was featured in the latest Real Simple, it must be okay. No msg, says the label.

Not bad, not too salty.

My triglycerides are kinda high. After find out that flax seed would be a helpful addition to my diet, I went looking for it at the grocery store. When I asked a clerk where to find it, she looked blank and said, ‘What’s flax seed?’

I found it in the cereal section. It makes my morning oatmeal a little thicker, and will help me get a little thinner, along with many other benefits.

When the lab person printed out the stickers to go on the blood vials, I thought, no way. It was a very, very long strip. Longer than anyone else’s in the mostly filled waiting room.

But, as I said, I got into the Coben book and was transfixed by the page-turning wonder that it is. When I realized that people with numbers higher than mine were being processed, I dashed in to take a seat in a cubicle.

Long ago, I learned not to look. Maybe it was during one of my pregnancies when they would take 3 vials of blood at a time. The technician seemed to be taking a really long time. He was not a talker. I had not eaten since 7:00 last night.

Luckily, there was a distraction. The man next to me was being told he had to stay for three hours in the waiting room after. He was not happy. He said he’d just go around the corner and get some coffee. The technician said no, he could not leave the building. I was still pondering what his problem might be when my silent blood person seemed to be finishing up.

Lined up neatly were five vials. Four were for the allergist. I went home to eat. Meat. It’s on the list of approved foods.

If you have to go in for a blood test and anticipate a long wait, Harlan will help. In fact, I missed my number when it came up because I was engrossed in The Woods.

If only they had allowed me to keep reading during the taking of the blood.

My allergist handed me a list of foods yesterday. Since I broke out in hives from almost everything I’ve eaten lately, I was expecting the worst, but still, it was depressing. So here are a few of them:

Apples
Peaches
Grapes
Oranges
Apricots
Strawberries
Raspberries
Nectarines (there goes summer)
Tomatoes
Peppers
Cherries
Ice cream (well, I knew that)
Gum
Jam or Jelly
Lunch meats such as salami
Bakery items
Diet drinks (what!) except for 7-up and some Hansen’s natural soft drinks
Candies
Hot dogs

On the bright side, I am allowed:
Lemons
Dates
Bananas (hmmm, I’m not sure about those)
Pears
Dates
Figs
Melons (not sure about those either)
Meat
Eggs
Veggies
Fresh lemonade
Water
Vodka

And while this was not mentioned, I can eat 100% cacao chocolate, which is palatable to me if it is chopped and baked into scones, for example. I’m on the second piece of the afternoon. Between the chocolate and the vodka, maybe Christmas won’t be so grim after all.

After cutting up an avocado, some tomatoes and a cucumber last week, I broke out in hives. The kind that has me stumbling to the kitchen for an antihistamine in the middle of the night. I’ve cut up these veggies many times without a problem before.

I made a beef vegetable soup with carrots, onions, tomatoes, corn and peas. Ditto. I had a cup of soy chocolate milk. Ditto. I took an antihistamine with a spoonful of applesauce. The hives lasted twice as long. I ate a lot of grapes one afternoon with no apparent reaction. The day after, I ate a few grapes. Almost instant hives.

Clearly, I needed some expert advice and allergy testing. Today, I met my allergist. She checked me out before setting up some skin tests, but she wanted to make sure I was up to it. She made some slight marks on my arm with the back of her fingernail and waited. Within a couple of minutes the marks got redder and raised. Not hives, but enough to tell her I could not do the skin tests.

More later.

For months, there were red, itchy areas on my hands that wouldn’t go away. Of course, I did some online research. I looked at quite a few graphic photos of skin ailments. The closest match was scabies, a condition that is not that unusual but highly contagious.

I was convinced that microscopic mites were burrowing in the skin of my hands (sounds pretty psychotic). Between the time of my research and my doctor’s appointment, I washed my hands even more than usual, and spent a good deal of time ironing my sheets and underwear.

Now how would I contract something so gross? From time to time, I go hunting for photo props, and sometimes that means pulling tapestries and old quilts out of boxes at estate sales. Some of these sales occur in less than hygienic conditions, but I gamely plow through, even on porches that seem to be the permanent residences of really smelly, unwashed animals.

When my new doctor entered the exam room, she immediately shook my hand. I was taken aback, because the last doctor I had was the one who backed away when I said I had poison oak. After one look, the new doc said I had eczema, easily treated. We agreed that too much information is not necessarily a good thing.

She told me to stop washing my hands so much. However, when I go looking for props again, I think I will scrub right after, just in case.

For patients in the early stages of multiple sclerosis, a drug usually used in leukemia treatment stops and reverses the effects of the disease.

In drug trials, Alemtuzumab has been shown to actually enlarge the brains of patients, which means that tissue lost to MS is being repaired.

Researchers are addressing side effect issues, but there is hope that the drug will be available by 2010.

The next time you find yourself in a vacuum chamber, and you just happen to have some scotch tape with a dispenser, what interesting fun you’ll have.

If it appears on the menu at some seafood joint, or if it looks enticing at the fish counter in Asian markets, choose something else. It’s not white tuna, but has similarities to real oilfish. Here’s a new word for your vocabulary: keriorrhea. Read the Wikipedia entry (the definition of your new word is there), every bit of it, including the parts about the FDA, Japan and Canada, and how they deal with the legalities of it.

After that, if you want a more, uh, colorful description of the consequences of eating escolar, go here.

You’ll be glad you listened to your Aunt Spacebar.

As one who used to get the shakes from a sip of my mom’s coffee, I learned early to avoid caffeine. However, my large, extended family members thought it was funny to give me the last few swallows of their Cokes back in the day when there was no such thing as non-caffeinated sodas. I stayed wired.

Nowadays, there are such drinks as Cocaine, with 280mg of caffeine, equal to eight times the usual amount in a can of cola. Drink enough, and panic attacks set in, not to mention vomiting, chest pain, and other signs of
caffeine overload.

Our last dog was a golden retriever. I’m thinking about getting another big dog, and pondering the reasons they have such short lives. A little research shows that gastric torsion and bloat are fairly common. I did quite a bit of reading.

After lunch one day last week, I felt a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. What did I eat? Homemade vegetable soup, full of carrots, tomatoes, corn, cabbage - all high fiber material. But then I eat this stuff all the time without problems. This time I did add a parsnip, something a family member bought out of curiosity. Was that what was stabbing me?

The previous night I had shrimp salad. Both days I had an ice cream sandwich, the little ones that are referred to as ‘chocolate-flavored cardboard around some ice cream’. Actually, I’d been eating ice cream almost every day lately, these sandwiches were less than 200 calories each.

Did I have torsion? Nah. It didn’t feel like my stomach was rotated. The pain was lower, and very sharp. I felt cold. I went to bed real early.

It wasn’t any better the next day. I read up on intestinal woes. I called a friend who had knowledge of Crohn’s disease and diverticulitis. I learned what irritable bowel syndrome is. She failed to shed light on my problem. By now it was the weekend. If it’s not better by Monday, I thought, I’ll have to see a doctor. I don’t like GI testing.

By now, the pain was beginning to have a familiar feeling. It was less sharp, but still bothersome. It reminded me of the time I had a stomachache for months. The doctor could find nothing wrong after doing a lot of really uncomfortable tests. During this time, I wanted to eat soothing things like oatmeal with milk. Cream soups. Mashed potatoes. What made the pain go away? One day I snapped to and stopped all dairy. The doctor had not said a word about lactose intolerance.

So. This time, it only took three days. The pain is gone.

Years ago, a friend and I decided that your hair knows when you’re coming down with something. A really bad hair day just might mean there’s a bug in the system.

Thanks to Olympic pressures, a discovery has been made to detect infection early in athletes. The test, which involves the assistance of a luminescent mollusk, known as the piddock, will help coaches decide when to isolate a team member or to cut short the hard training sessions of a soon-to-be-ill competitor.

But I bet their hair looks like crap too.

A panel of experts at the Center for Environmental Oncology (University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute) have drawn up a list of precautions. Most of them have to do with keeping the phone as far away from the body as possible, suggesting the use of the speakerphone function or a Bluetooth headset.

If they’re so harmless, why did three neurosurgeons get on CNN and say they don’t put them up to their ears?

Thoughtful article from the NYTimes here.

Has someone gifted you with some bear meat? Are you wondering what to do with it? Whatever you decide, be very, very careful to cook it till it’s completely done. Not medium rare. Done. Use a meat thermometer.

If you don’t, you might get trichinellosis (also known as trichinosis), a nasty infection formerly associated with eating undercooked pork. Just because the meat was frozen doesn’t mean it’s safe. At least one species of this parasitic roundworm can survive for a long time in a freezer.

Note that this is under the ‘medical’ category.

Bear releases tend to be somewhat mundane events. Open the door, let the bear out, drive off. But sometimes, there’s a slight glitch. And when things go wrong, they go wrong fast.

It lingers, the bug. Just when I thought I was free, back it comes this afternoon, a vague queasiness, tiredness, a froggy throat. The runs came back as well.

At dinner, I watched as a family member ate leftover barbecued baby back ribs and hash brown patties. It smelled good, but I was having none of it, even though my stomach was beginning to rumble. Nothing in the fridge appealed, most of it being raw.

We had to run out to Whole Foods, whose pastry department is the best place to get a surprise gift for someone who’s done something very nice for you and isn’t going to send a bill. After I picked out three of the big fancy desserts, including the one shaped like a coffee cup, I headed for the soups/stews island. Rejected most, settled for the turkey.

All this wearing my heaviest coat, which is heavy indeed, the kind with two layers of fasteners. I was happy to see other shoppers wearing overcoats, though none quite as extreme as mine. Then I saw something that made me feel much better, and finely dressed at that.

Over by the fresh mozzarella, highly favored by another family member, a couple was talking to a clerk. The guy was dressed in a light jacket, the woman had on black furry boots that looked to be made of bear. At least six inches thick. I must find these online and post a picture.

The turkey stew/soup was most excellent, I should have gotten the big container.

The good news is that it’s not the vomiting thing going around. The bad news is I sound like Alec Baldwin. I chugged half the jug of Tropicana yesterday until my stomach complained of acidic conditions. My errand running ended when I realized I’d best be near a bathroom.

I sent a family member out for toilet paper, because even though I generally stock up, the apocalypse does tend to arrive now and then.

Today, food is not real welcome, which I guess is a good thing.

One patient showed remarkable results within ten minutes after the drug was injected. Experts say that Etanercept, usually prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, might not have this effect on all Alzheimer’s patients.

If it’s pointed up, and you’re fumbling around for a paring knife, forgetting that you put the razor in there, you might get a finger that keeps bleeding. Two days later. Maybe I need a stitch or two. Now the finger next to it is complaining that it too needs a bandage. Chapping, I think, and trying to open stubborn screw-tops that the other finger normally handles. Why does this happen when I’m supposed to be Christmas shopping.

Your hands, your feet too. Oh, and your eyebrow ridge will get all bulgy. Your hair might fall out though.

But don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else for that matter.

No way, says you? I beg to differ.

Here is an example of clothing to accommodate the truly nurturing man. No comment on the facial expression of the child.

I had a cracked tooth that needed rebuilding.

At this office, one is not allowed to sit and calm down by reading about starlets and other Beautiful People in rehab. The dentist came right out, rubbing her hands in glee. (I really was supposed to get this done three years ago.) They got the nitrous mask on right away. Two of the ceiling panels have been replaced with photos of billowy clouds and blue sky. I spent much of the time watching my floaters (an unusually large number) drift by these clouds. Whenever I felt something sharp, I took a deep breath, and thought, ‘That might be hurting, but I sure don’t care.’ There was a whole cabinet of dental tools in my mouth. About halfway through, the dentist got my attention:

Dentist: Why are you watching me?
Me: Awaaa?
Dentist: Your eyes are following me around the room. You’re not supposed to be able to do that.
Me: Ohaaaaa.
(She and the hygienist confer, and make adjustments to the tanks behind me.)
Dentist: There, that should be better. You were out of nitrous.
Me: Ohiiiiaaaa.

Today around lunchtime, I’ll be sedated. My very excellent dentist, Dr. Amy, will be working on teeth she has worried about for a long time.

The bright side is that this will be the last lengthy appointment (no more root canals). But I’m having a lot of difficulty focusing on work this morning. I ate pancakes laden with El Rey chocolate. Should have gotten a shot of the oozing, molten chocolate, the light this morning is lovely and diffused by fog.

A family member has dined at some of the fanciest SF restaurants, and still keeps a Totino’s or two in his freezer. For you, Chris - be sure and read all the comments.

All this time, as scientists tried to devise ways to kill the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA, the solution was simple and close at hand. Thousands have died when they encountered MRSA in hospitals, especially the elderly and others with suppressed immune systems.

Garlic is powerful medicine.

When a patient tried to commit suicide via antifreeze (the ethylene glycol in it being the culprit), Australian doctors ran out of the antidote - medicinal alcohol. They improvised a drip of vodka to the comatose man, and he survived.

This afternoon at a very awkward time, I felt an intense need to throw up.

Thankfully, this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often. Only once before, as a matter of fact, about three weeks ago. What precipitated that episode was something of a mystery since I had eaten several questionable items. Just before I got sick, I ate a small bowl of pistachios.

Today was more of a clear-cut matter since I had not eaten that much by 5:30 p.m. The only thing different from my normal foods was a homemade (by me) frosted chocolate cupcake sprinkled with a small bit of chopped up pistachios. It was delicious. It made me terribly sick.

So there I was at someone else’s house, clutching my stomach, wondering if I would be able to drive the five minutes home where my faithful bathroom was. It was the worst stomachache I’d had since I don’t know when. The salivating thing had set in, so once again, that insidious question of which end arose.

Five hours later, I’m still shaky. Sipping a diet coke helped. From now on, I’ll remember that pistachios are related to mangos and poison ivy, both of which are my natural enemies.

It can afflict a player or a spectator, and affects more men than women.

Perhaps you’ve noticed if you live here in the Bay Area. It’s front page news in the local paper, and if you’re suffering, you’re definitely not alone.

I went to a library book sale Sunday, and in the fiction section, went through all eight tissues in my purse. In less than five minutes. Some of those around me were sniffing loudly.

In the nursery at Lowe’s last night, I was fine, but the clerk was a soggy mess. Hello, spring.

Maggots win. Where antibiotics have been largely ineffective, maggots step in (squirm in, perhaps) and cure a group of diabetics with MRSA-infected foot ulcers.

Not the shingles eye, but the one that now has a sty on the inside of the lower lid. Applying a hot teabag is supposed to help.

Wearing my usual contact lens is impossible. Getting used to glasses again is a slow process since the world looks very different without much peripheral vision. Straight-ahead vision is not bad, but tough when taking photos.

But now I can do something useful with all that tea I didn’t like.

Am I done yet? Well, no.

In the third week, you’d think it would be a smooth coasting to the finish, when the bumps are mere scabs, and the whole thing is just a bad memory. Last week, the opthalmologist was very reassuring about the stuff only affecting the right quadrant of my face. That’s all good, but no one said anything about the itching or the crawling sensation on the scalp.

The pharmacy is temporarily out of the cream the dermatologist prescribed.

To keep from going mad, I’ve been working longer hours than usual. The beauty of a trackpad is that I need both hands to work in PhotoShop. If I had a third hand, it would be scratching. Scratching is how my cornea might get infected. But if I had a fourth hand, I could really get the P/S work flying out of here.

What’s that? No, I haven’t done my taxes yet.

That’s a tough one. I’d say they were equal, except with shingles, there’s no reward at the end of the ordeal.

Watching a movie with eyes still semi-dilated can be taxing. The opthalmologist assured me my corneas are fine despite the shingles, but that could change. She launched into a description of a retinal tear (which thankfully I don’t have) that made me wonder if she thought I needed more fearsome images of calamitous conditions.

I needed the movie to erase the pretty pictures from the handout given by the dermatologist yesterday. Some unfortunate souls have much worse cases of shingles, and there are many photos to prove it.

The movie was diverting, Brandon was handsome, the cape should have gotten an award, and the leftover beef stew was perfect. What I really want is a large piece of chocolate cream pie with a big dollop of whipped cream on top.

Over my right eye. Life has been strange lately.

It started with a throbbing headache about 10 days ago, which didn’t go away. For days. The pain made me jump with each throb when I was tired. Thanks to the age of information, I learned it could have been a migraine or several things much worse. My hair hurt. Aspirin didn’t help. A household member asked if I had a stiff neck. I decided I had an aneurysm. But without the symptoms other than the killer headache.

I kept working. It took my mind off things, but I did only the essential stuff. Didn’t blog. Started thinking it was something I ate. I began detoxing by eating right. It didn’t help. I slept badly because the headache kept waking me up.

I decided I had a brain tumor, but without the nausea and vomiting. Well, thank goodness for small blessings.

The night we watched Godfather I for the fourth time, I reached up and scratched my head. There were welts on my scalp. Big ones. As Al Pacino gazed off into space holding his godchild, I began to panic. Did I have botflies?

Family members became alarmed, and urged me to see a doctor. How on earth would I explain botflies to a suburban doctor? (These flies are not the result of poor housekeeping.) I decided to tough it out for a few more harrowing days.

The welts took on more sinister characteristics. My right eyelid became poofy. A large welt appeared toward the bridge of my nose. The area under the eye became a large ballooning sac of something. About then, I read a fascinating entry in Wikipedia about shingles, which is caused by the chickenpox virus lying dormant in the body.

When I walked into the dermatologist’s office today, I had a pretty good idea of what ailed me. It took her a couple of minutes to confirm. She suggested the peas to soothe the itch. The afflicted areas around my eye will most likely turn purple or dark brown in the next few days. I need to see an ophthamologist asap to make sure my cornea isn’t involved. Blindness is a possibilty. I’m to stay away from pregnant women and anyone else who shouldn’t catch chicken pox because I am contagious until the welts crust over.

The meds prescribed include acyclovir, an antiviral that the good doctor said might lessen my pain by a day or so. The main side effect? Both the doctor and the pharmacist assured me there was only one: headache.

The movie? I excused myself from the rope beating scene. But I kinda want to see the rest again. Minus the bag of peas.

My mom is beginning to slip away from us. She rallied at first, and just as the doctors were going to release her, has developed breathing problems. Time after critical time, in the past, she would brighten when my boys would show up, but today she slept through it all. The nurses are lowering their voices and the words “morphine” and “hospice” are being mentioned, although she is not in pain.

Cornell researchers say there seems to be a distinct connection between autism and TV watching by very young children. States where the study took place include California, Washington state, Oregon and Pennsylvania. The proliferation of VCRs and cable TV coincides with the alarming rise of autism starting in 1980.

The researchers are careful to state that they have not found the specific cause of autism. But what they do say should give anyone with kids under 3 serious food for thought.

We live in an age when infants watch videos, and youngsters are kept occupied with DVDs in the back seat during long trips.

Those who follow autism news might be wondering about the Amish, who have extremely low rates of the disorder. The Amish do not watch TV.

In Britain, the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile has claimed at least 49 lives in recent months. It is now considered to be more dangerous than MRSA.

So far, the only defense seems to be steam-cleaning wards, and asking visitors, patients and staff to wash their hands before touching anyone.

The young med student and a needy mother-to-be listen to the faint sounds of a new life.