Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
I found two interesting articles concerning pregnancy and having children. I quote the articles here and let you decide which one you want to believe 
First, a five-year study run by Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction proves what many in the scientific community have always suspected: having children significantly lowers the IQ of both male and female parents.
Dr. Hosung Lee, director of the study, was not surprised with the findings. “The research proved that our hypothesis was correct. Having children does retard one’s brain activity, and since both parents lost intelligence, we must assume that this loss has a psychological rather than biological cause.”The IQ tests show that when a child is born, the part of the brain that makes one think objectively takes the biggest hit when it comes to losing brainpower. “This explains why every parent thinks their child is the smartest kid in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time their forty-yard dash. People who before were intelligent and open-minded turn into raving lunatics who want to blame a teacher or coach every time their mediocre child fails,” said Lee.
Lee says the Kinsey Institute will continue to test the couples participating in the study to determine if the loss of intelligence is reversible once children grow up and leave the nest and if parents who continue having children lose even more intelligence.
Second, a recent study performed at the University of Richmond and Randolph-Macon College in Virginia illustrates that pregnancy brainpower actually doesn’t decline at all during pregnancy.
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After two times rescheduling, finally my mom had the IVT injection on Friday morning. It was a quick procedure, only took about two hours. She was scheduled at 8:30 AM and we had to be there by 8.
My mom was at a good condition so there was no pre-treatment before the injection. Unlike when she had lucentis injection, her blood pressure was high at the time and took almost 4 hours for the anesthetic just to lower it. This time her blood pressure reading was 130/80 which was considered “normal” in my mom’s case. At 10:30 AM she was already released from OR.
On Saturday morning, the next day, we came back to the hospital for checkup. Her ophthalmologist said so far the IVT worked fine. The increase of intraocular pressure (IOP) as the side effect of IVT didn’t occur on my mom’s eye. Her tonometry test result showed 11 mmHg which still in the normal range of IOP.
She was scheduled to have another checkup on Thursday morning to see the progress. Hope everything would turn out fine.
As mentioned on previous post my mom was scheduled to get an Intravitreal triamcinolone (IVT) injection on Wednesday afternoon but had to cancel it as my mom was not feeling well. She got stomach ache since Tuesday night and couldn’t sleep because of that. So we called the hospital in the morning to reschedule the appointment. The next appointment would be tomorrow afternoon.
I don’t understand why all of a sudden she got stomach ache that night. She didn’t eat anything unusual during the day. My brother said she probably just nervous for getting the injection the next day. He could be right. Hopefully, she can make it tomorrow.
We went to my mom’s ophthalmologist last Friday to check her eye’s condition. She wasn’t supposed to meet her ophthalmologist until next month but lately she’s been complaining that her vision became blurry again especially when she tried to read so we decided to make an appointment immediately.
The doctor said there was a swelling around my mom’s eye as a sign of Cystoid Macular Edema (CME) so he sent her to CDC room to get an OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) test to make sure. However, somehow they couldn’t perform the OCT test so the doctor used ultrasound instead. Here’s the result.
His doctor then proposed an Intravitreal triamcinolone (IVT) injection as treatment to reduce the edema. He explained several possible causes of CME and the side effects of IVT. He also recommended some further tests to find out the exact cause of my mom’s macular edema such as hematology and TORCH test, thorax x-ray and dental checkup (in case she has tooth cavity).
The injection is scheduled on Wednesday at 2PM but we have to be there by 1PM as we will have further discussion about the procedure. Hopefully the IVT procedure can help to improve her vision.
We went to the hospital yesterday to meet my mom’s ophthalmologist. That was part of her monthly routine check-up after having Lucentis injection for her AMD treatment on August. The initial schedule was supposed to be on the 10th of November, but since it had been raining hard lately we had to reschedule the appointment until yesterday.
The hospital, Jakarta Eye Center, is about 30 km away from our house and easy to be reached by train since both our house and the hospital are located near the train station. However, during bad weather like this, traveling by train is not a good option. There will be many delays or even cancellations. We tried to wait until the weather was good, but it never happened, it got worse instead.
So yesterday I forced myself to drive her to the hospital under heavy rain. My mom actually didn’t like the idea of me driving in rain, and to tell you the truth I didn’t like it either, but we couldn’t delay it any longer since she ran out of her artificial tear (Hialid 0.1) and started to feel burning sensation in her eye so she needed to get a new prescription.
Anyway, despite all the troubles we went through during our drive to the hospital, we heard good news from her ophthalmologist yesterday. He said my mom’s AMD treatment was showing a great result and her eye was already back and stable to its initial condition (which was after the glaucoma and cataract surgery), praise God. So the doctor changed her monthly check-up into every three month. Her next appointment was set on the first week of February next year, unless she felt something uncommon in her vision or her eye then she needed to see him immediately.
She also got a new prescription for her artificial tear and it’s copy until the next three months. Her ophthalmologist advised her to slowly reduce her Hialid 0.1 dosage from 6 times a day (current dosage) to whatever level she feels comfortable. His recommendation was to reduce it gradually until only three times a day but it depends on my mom’s eye reaction. That’s a really good news for us and we’re so happy to hear them!
