Saturday 12 March 2011

Get in!

Here's a music video.


Remember Polite Requests? Well, yesterday at mum's nursing home, the nurse in charge called my name. She sounded rather stern, so I thought that I was going to get a slapped wrist for talking too loudly again (as I do, because I'm a bit deaf). But no!

She said that I hadn't done anything wrong. She wanted to talk about mum's Vitamin D blood test result. My eyes lit up. She said that the result had been "temporarily mislaid" (whatever that means), but that they had now found it and it was "normal" at 98nmol/L (RR 50-200nmol/L). Divide by 2.5 to convert into ng/mL. I said that I already knew this as I had spoken to Dr F**'s secretary.

She then said with a smirk "Dr F** knows what you're like (I also smirked) and has agreed that mum can have a serum Vitamin D level of around 125nmol/L. He said to buy some of this." She handed me a piece of paper with the word "cholecalciferol" written on it.

What should have happened: I put my left hand into my right inside jacket pocket and whipped out a tub of Healthy Origins, Vitamin D3, 5,000 IU, 360 Softgels (use discount code NIG935 to get $5 off the first order. Standard shipping $4) with flair and panache.

What actually happened: The pot snagged on something and I had to tug on it for about five seconds to get it out.

I then handed the pot to the nurse and told her to get on with it. Job done!


8 comments:

praguestepchild said...

Next time you should have a bottle spring loaded in your sleeve like DeNiro in Taxi Driver.

"You talkin' to me? About vitamin D?"

Nigel Kinbrum said...

Nice one! I had a 500mL bottle of drink in that pocket, together with the kitchen sink. As there are so many depressed people in the world, I really need a more elegant Vitamin D3 gelcap delivery system.

After last night's blog post, it suddenly occurred to me that the Blogger template I use looks a bit tear-stained!

praguestepchild said...

The newer blogger templates are nice but I wish that the html was directly editable. As it is, edit seems to take one to just the style sheet. I would like, for example to take away the left margin on my blogger template. Doesn't seem possible. I did manage to modify the blockquote format (how's that for nerd talk?).

Anyway, yours looks nice.

Nigel Kinbrum said...

I use the old editor which allows html editing. I use html editing to "tidy-up" pages, as you'd be amazed at the amount of spurious code that gets inserted when C/P'ing from other web pages and inserting images. I also embed videos using html editing. Can you revert to the old editor?

Thank you for the compliment! I used the layout editor to widen the blog to the maximum that would fit in a 1024 width display, while having a wide enough RHS for the labels, archives & other gizmos.

praguestepchild said...

I don't think I can without losing my template which I wasted too much time customizing already. The new template system is nice, and for most people I'm sure it's enough. It's like having a Mac, great interface but terrible when you want to tinker under the hood (I mean bonnet!). Ideally, I'd like to have the template stick everything to the left but with wrappable text so that it would fill a 1600 or whatever width display.

I suppose if I was serious and not lazy I'd just move the whole thing to an independant domain and use joomla which I have some familiarity with. Then I could start looking for a book deal, quit my day job ...

dextery said...

Nige,
Perhaps the national health service is coming around regarding D3. Still 125 is only 50ng/mL. Dr K on Paleohacks wants 70 to 100ng/Ml for his patients. Slip your Mum 10000IU for a couple of months...heh heh.
I hope your Mum is outside dancing to the chirp of the birds.
It certainly has been a long fight! Science wins out every time!

Nigel Kinbrum said...

The NHS is definitely coming around to the idea that optimising Vit D levels in the population is a good idea. See Diagnosis and management of vitamin D deficiency. The Rapid responses are interesting.

I'd like to meet mum's new GP as he seems like a good egg. I'll tell him that my Vit D level was last tested at ~160nmol/L with Calcium at the bottom end of the RR. I'll also tell him that the RR is what 98% of the population fit between, not what the optimum levels are. As mum has a progressive degenerative brain condition, she needs to be at the top end of the RR for maximum therapeutic effect.

With a current upper RR limit of 140nmol/L, I think that mum will start on about 2,000iu/day on average. Her dose will then be tweaked by her GP, with occasional blood tests. I don't want to interfere with the process.

Nigel Kinbrum said...

Update: Mum's been on 5,000iu/day for about 12 months and has suffered from zero medical problems other than a slight skin rash (probably nappy rash) that cleared up.