Health Eugene Fischer | 03 Apr 2009
I’ve been waiting for a fourth of a year to be able to take this picture: At long last, I have some medication that has a chance of being effective. As I alluded to in my silliness yesterday, Humira is an injectable antibody for a cytokine called tumor necrosis factor alpha. TNF-alpha is used by [...]
Fiction &Health Eugene Fischer | 02 Apr 2009
The following is a classified communique, smuggled across the blood/brain barrier from counter-insurgency leaders in the cortex. ————— *URGENT MESSAGE FOR PARTISANS OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE DIGESTIVE TISSUES* It’s been a long battle. No one knows better than we do how entrenched and seemingly unstoppable are the rogue forces within the immune system that [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 01 Apr 2009
Yesterday I had a tickle in my throat that metamorphosed in the night into something more akin to a forest fire. And I’m on day 2 of a weird, intermittent nose bleed. And as I mentioned a little while back, I’ve lately been suffering from an increase in the severity of my Crohn’s symptoms. But [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 25 Mar 2009
Crohn’s patients, I have come to learn, frequently experience what are known as “flare ups”: sudden spikes in the severity of their symptoms, often requiring agressive medicinal intervention to combat. I had a flare up yesterday, and it had me–during my more lucid moments–reflecting again that “flare up” is a far less evocative phrase for [...]
Health &Tech Eugene Fischer | 19 Mar 2009
Check out the “signs and symptoms ” section of the Wikipedia article on Cushing’s syndrome. I am experiencing most of these; not because I actually have Cushing’s, but because I have Crohn’s disease, which is currently being treated with prednisone, which ups my cortisol levels–functionally giving me an artificial case of Cushing’s. One of the [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 05 Mar 2009
In Roger Zelazny’s Hugo award winning story “Home is the Hangman” there is a line that, in one sentence, captures what has been the primary theme of my life for the last seven months as I have been scrabbling my way out of the pit of Crohn’s disease. “Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas [...]
