Thursday, July 30, 2020

Ten years?

Greetings, loyal fibrinogen amyloidosis blog readers! If you are reading this email or blog entry during the summer of 2020 I hope you are staying safe and COVID free. For those of you reading this on the blog many years after 2020, I hope the COVID pandemic of 2020 is finally over and you no longer have to view every person you get close to as potentially hazardous to your health. (Also, you citizens of the future should always have plenty of toilet paper at home. Trust me.) 

There is not much news to report from here. I am still asymptomatic, and my only recent medical issue was a little scare with some chest pain that my doctor and I are attributing to musculoskeletal stress while playing around with my grandson in the front yard one afternoon. (If playing with a six-year-old child sends you to the emergency room, does that mean you're getting old?) One benefit of this episode is that I had a stress test and echocardiogram, both of which were normal. So now I have some baseline measurements in case things start to change later.

Although I still do not have an article review ready for the blog, I wanted to get a post out today, July 30, 2020, because it was ten years ago today when Mom and I were informed by Dr. Martha Skinner of the Boston University Amyloidosis Center that genetic testing showed Mom had the fibrinogen mutation. Here's a link to my blog post where I described that call and what happened over the next few days:

That was the beginning of my journey into the world of fibrinogen amyloidosis, and it has certainly been an interesting ten years. That first article Dr. Skinner sent me has now grown to around 60, most of which have been reviewed on the blog. It is also worth noting that the current treatment options for fibrinogen amyloidosis are essentially the same as what Dr. Skinner told us over the phone in 2010, which is organ transplants. Hopefully that will not still be true in 2030.

I will go ahead and close out this post by once again saying I hope to start doing some article reviews soon. But I am not going to suggest that will happen once things calm down in the world. So goodbye for now, stay safe, and carry on.

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Combined stats for January through June

Total posts: 189 (1 in January)

Total pageviews: 152K (average 2K per month)

Email subscribers: 15 (unchanged)

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 161

New countries:
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Thursday, January 16, 2020

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!

Welcome to 2020 everyone. In keeping with my tradition, there are eight exclamation points in the title (or subject line) since this is my eighth Happy New Year post in the history of this blog.


Here is what happened with the blog in 2019:

  • 3 new blog posts were written. (Down from 4 in 2018)
  • No new articles were reviewed.
  • 9 additional countries visited the blog, bringing the total to 159.
  • The blog received 14 spam comments in 2019. None were especially noteworthy, but if I had to choose a favorite it would be the one that began with this: "Hi! Someone in my Myspace group shared this website with us so I came to take a look."

In patient news, I believe I became aware of two more families affected by fibrinogen amyloidosis in 2019, and I know of one combined liver and kidney transplant that occurred in 2019 and another that almost occurred but was cancelled at the last minute. In personal news, I am still asymptomatic.

That's about it for 2019. I hope you all have a safe and healthy 2020.



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

As of December 31, 2019:

Total posts: 188 (1 in December)

Total pageviews: 139K (~2000 in December)

Email subscribers: 15 (down by 1)

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 159

No new countries viewed the blog in December.
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