Happy New Year!!

Welcome to 2014 everyone. Since this is my second Happy New Year post in the history of this blog, I put two exclamation points in the title. Hopefully I'll be around long enough such that the number of exclamation points becomes ridiculous.

This post will be a quick recap of 2013, some speculation on 2014, and the always exciting monthly blog stats at the end.

First, here is what happened in the blog in 2013:

• 73 new blog posts were written, which happens to be an average of exactly one post every five days.
• 31 articles were reviewed in 27 blog posts.
• Three pages were added on the right side (Welcome New Visitors, What should I do now, and Simple Glossary.)
• 60 additional countries visited the blog, bringing the total to 79.
• The blog received 73 spam comments, which happens to be an average of exactly one spam comment every five days.

In personal news, here is what happened in 2013:

• Mom's dialysis transitioned from the permacath to the fistula, and eventually to using the buttonhole technique. To say dialysis has not been smooth sailing for Mom would be an understatement.

• During 2013 Mom had the following notable medical procedures:
• Two balloon angioplasties on her fistula
• Permacath removed, inserted, then removed again
• Two abdominal surgeries to address infection at the site where peritoneal dialysis catheter was removed. (One was emergency surgery, resulting in two nights in the hospital and two weeks with a wound vac.)
• Mammogram, ultrasound and needle biopsy due to benign lump on left breast
• Biopsy and Moh's surgery to address low grade skin cancer on right leg
• Three (maybe four) CT scans and a bone scan
• Heart catheterization
• Three emergency room visits, including one on a cruise ship

• We learned that a cousin on Mom's father's side of the family also has fibrinogen amyloidosis, solving the mystery of which side of the family it was inherited from.

• Mom was removed from the kidney transplant list November 1, since a suitable living donor could not be located.

• We became aware of another US family diagnosed with fibrinogen amyloidosis, and met them and members of two other affected families at the familial amyloidosis meeting in Chicago in October.

The blog will continue to primarily include article reviews and updates on Mom. Hopefully 2014 will have a little less drama for Mom, with fewer complications related to dialysis. Updates on others with fibrinogen amyloidosis, myself included, will be provided as appropriate. Naturally I will also report on any updates regarding the treatment of fibrinogen amyloidosis. We probably will not see any reports on the doxycycline or CPHPC clinical trials published in 2014, but maybe some preliminary results will be communicated.

The next post will kick off our 2014 article reviews with a couple of articles from 2008.


=====Monthly Blog Status Update=====

Total posts: 118 (5 in December)

Total pageviews: 10,400 (~600 in December)

Email subscribers: 6

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 79

No new countries viewed the blog in December.  :-(