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Okay, so this has nothing to do with MS, but I'm a bit stunned that this happened at a Starbucks not far from me! Nuts were in a product that didn't list nuts in the ingredients. So a nut allergy person ate it. And suffered huge!
"The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating Starbucks' labelling practices, after a young woman ate a parfait from a Coquitlam, B.C., outlet and almost died.
"I was shaking. My eyes were rolling into the back of my head. I wasn't breathing," said Kristin Gardiner. "The ambulance attendant later told me they couldn't get me to breathe."
Gardiner is allergic to nuts. On May 19, 2008, Gardiner said she ate a Starbucks Peach Yogurt Parfait — after finding no mention of nuts in the listed ingredients and being assured by a Starbucks employee that it was nut-free.
"I am very careful with what I eat and what I consume, and I always read things," said Gardiner.
The product included a granola topping, but the label listed the granola ingredients as "rolled oats, brown sugar…." Gardiner said the parfait was the first thing she ate that day.
Almost immediately after eating the dessert, Gardiner said she started feeling itchy. Within minutes, she couldn't breathe. She went into anaphylactic shock as the ambulance arrived.
"I was dying. There was no oxygen going to my brain," she said.
Cladribine
Another oral med option for MS that is looking at some good results from a 2 year study. Who will make to FDA approval first!? :)
"The trial, called CLARITY, was a two year study involving 1,326 people with relapsing/remitting MS receiving one of two doses of cladribine or an inactive placebo.
During the study, people receiving the lower dose of cladribine experienced a 58% reduction in relapse rates compared to the placebo group (an average of 0.14 relapses compared to 0.33). Side effects included lymphopenia, a reduction in white blood cells, headaches and nasopharyngitis (a cold)."
I'll admit it. I'm doing an hourly countdown until the new season of Lost starts :) Who's joining me in this addiction?
Okay, I know I'm not the only one here. My feet get seriously cold sometimes. And stay cold for as long as they want. I can wear warm cushy socks and do everything possible to warm up but they decide when and how. My legs don't even have to be actively tingly or numb for this to happen. It's just me.
Last night I thought I would have a nice soak in a bath and that would regulate my body temperature nicely. I checked the temperature with my hands and arm before putting a frozen foot in and it seemed a nice temperature. I put my foot in and I got this massive shock feeling over and over and I had to get out! It was like I was plugged into an electrical socket and I couldn't stop the sensation from carrying on. I got out of the tub, but that didn't help. Weird messages I guess travelling to my feet cause that. Too many speed bumps on my nerve path? Who knows. What I do know is normal people don't get that reaction!
So, I ran cold water for a long time and made the bath luke warm and got back in. Not so nice and relaxing as I would have liked, but the more luke warm water seemed to do the trick for my feet. For the moment. I got out of the tub and went to bed but then promptly overheated. I removed all my blankets and spent another hour and a half cooling down. I fell asleep and at 3am I woke up cold. I yanked back my covers to warm up again but couldn't get back to sleep or regulate my body temperature for another 3 hours. Then my alarm went off. 5 hours of sleep. Sigh... this is going to be a long day.
Neat. New doses for a longer acting Avonex are being trialed so you would only have to inject once every 2 weeks or once a month. Nice.
"Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB.O) has moved a long-acting version of its multiple sclerosis drug, Avonex, into trials designed to meet requirements for regulatory approval, the company's chief executive said on Wednesday.
CEO Jim Mullen said during an investor conference being held in New York that the company is studying dosing the drug once every two weeks as well as once monthly.
"I think we've got a good chance of similar efficacy as interferons," he said.
Patients in the trials will be treated for one year and full results will likely be available in two years, Mullen added."
If a neurologist had MS, what would he do?
Pretty cool little must watch video with Dr. Jock Murray of Dalhousie University. He talks about MS and then is asked what he would choose for treatment if he had MS and how he would manage the disease.
Click here to watch.
Fingolimod is better than Avonex!
And not just because it's a once a day pill! Less relapses too! Yay! I was particularly happy to see that Novartis will be seeking FDA approval at the end of this year!
"Fingolimod, an oral drug under development for treating multiple sclerosis, was shown to be more effective than current treatments in a recent trial.
The trial consisted of over 1,200 individuals receiving either fingolimod or Avonex. On average, the people receiving Avonex had 0.33 relapses per year while the people on fingolimod had between 0.16 and 0.20 relapses (depending on dosage tested).
The full results have not been released yet, but the company that owns the drug, Novartis, will submit for FDA approval by the end of 2009. That means there could be an effective oral MS treatment available in 2010. This is great news to all of us who deal with side effects and injection site reactions on a daily/weekly/monthly basis."
The snow is almost all gone and the rain has kicked in full force :) Ahhhh the familiar scenery is back!
Wow Ikea. I really like your furniture. I also don't mind putting it together most of the time. But this one!? This Pax wardrobe was CRAZY. 20% off right now or not! After all said and done, the roll out drawers can't roll out with the sliding glass door. Sigh... well, they can if I wedge the door as far over as possible and then let the drawer keep the slider open. Sigh....
So, now that the building project is done, I'll be able to catch up on all those google alerts of whats happening in the world of MS!
Ahem... ya, so I clearly know nothing about managing a blog ;) But Heather does and she graciously helped me out! Great big thank you for getting me back online! I'll be catching up soon!
For now, here is what my commute to work looked like with all the snow that continued to fall over the holidays!
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