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Lacrimal Gland Fluids in My Fermented Barley

Things are progressing as well as can be expected for my mother. She is saying she feels good, and her eating is decent, her drinking is also decent.

Unfortunately the swelling in her feet has not been alleviated, as the heart specialist (actually the heart specialist's nurse did not clarify exactly what medication my mother was taking to the doctor, so his messages was *ss backwards because the medication (Altace) he said to remove from my mother's regime was one that was already removed when she left the hospital 10 days ago.

I am of the belief that what my mother's heart specialist *should* do is to either a) reduce her dosage of Verapamil by half (go from 80mg/day to 40mg/day) in order to elevate her blood pressure (this morning it was 90/65... a number low enough to cause swelling in many older people, and very different from the typical 120-130/65-75 she typically had on her previous medications, or b) remove all the Verapamil and put my mother back on Altace. In both circumstances, I think my mother should have her Furosemide (Lasix) levels increased temporarily.

Current medications for the heart include: Coreg (two tabs each day), Verapamil (two tabs each day), Digitek (one tablet every other day), Isosorbide (one tablet every day), and Klor-Con (one tablet every day). These are the medications SPECIFICALLY for heart function, which is also combined with blood thinners etc.

Her previous medications differed only slightly: Coreg (two tabs each day), Altace (one capsule each day), Digitek (one tablet every other day), Isosorbide (one tablet every day) Klor-Con (one tablet every day), and Slow-Mag (one tablet every day).

So, the difference is.... Altace and Slo-Mag were removed.... and Verapamil was inserted.

I feel so captive and imprisoned by this waiting and waiting and waiting. With my background and experience, I know what the physician will do in roughly 95% of the instances, yet knowing is not the same thing as being able to enact those changes. As I am not a practioner of medicine (I am a doctor (Ph.D.), but doctoral degree is one that that is typically not considered a real doctor by a large percentage of society), so I cannot really make those decisions for my mother's medication. But it so damn utterly frustrating to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, for a return call from the person who can. They are often quite UNtimely in their efforts.

Enough griping again. I am getting sick of being a broken record. I should simply shut up about this like I have for so many years. Instead, I will offer up a story I found interesting, sad, and a bit surprising. Not that this occurs in the animal world... it does all the time... you can see birds loopy on fermented apples every fall. I was surprised by the odd tone... a bit sad (and appropriate) because of the loss of life, but also a bit jovial (and less appropriate) because it was about drunken pachyderms:

Wild Elephants Rampage Villages for Rice Beer

Guwahati, June 30, 2006 (IANS) Herds of wild elephants are running amok in Assam, damaging vast swathes of crops and also mud and thatch huts as they move out of their jungles to look for rice beer in human settlement areas in northeastern India.

The raids by the pachyderms have resulted in at least five people losing their lives during the past two months. Wildlife officials are in a quandary as the huge animals feast on the farmlands - mainly rice fields and sugarcane cultivations.

The latest raid by herds of wild pachyderms took place in the eastern district of Golaghat.

"The villagers saw the elephant herd and fled their homes fearing for their lives. The same herd is terrorising people in nearby villages as well, damaging their crops and properties," said Haridhan Tanti, a community elder of Soutali village in Golaghat.

Angry over the elephant attacks, villagers Thursday locked the local forest office alleging the officials were indifferent in chasing away the herd.

"This is a real problem. We are doing our best to ward off such marauding herds, but then it is not possible to deploy forest officials in each and every village to keep track of the elephants," a senior wildlife warden said.

During the past two months, the wild elephants herds have been wreaking havoc in several parts of Assam with the pachyderms fancying harvested rice stalks and the 'moonshine' country liquor that many of the villagers brew from fermented rice.

"We have noticed that elephants really relish guzzling rice beer which many tribal people and tea garden workers ferment at home," Kushal Konwar Sharma, a noted elephant expert and a teacher at the College of Veterinary Science in Guwahati, told IANS.

Experts say wild elephants have been moving out of the jungles with people encroaching upon the animal corridors. This in turn is leading to an increasing number of elephant attacks on villages.

"A shrinking forest cover and encroachment of elephant corridors have forced the pachyderms to stray out of their habitats to human settlement areas," Sharma said.

In the past, villagers drove away marauding herds by beating drums or bursting firecrackers. Now with man-elephant conflict on the rise, they poison the animals.

In the last five years, elephants have killed at least 150 people in Assam.

Angry villagers, in turn, have killed up to 200 of the animals during the same period, some of which were brought down with poisoned-tipped arrows. The last elephant census in 1999 recorded 5,400 elephants in Assam, more than half of India's count of 10,000.

The story above is from the Teluga Portal.