Welcome to World Wide Wood, the online home of Peter, Rebecca and Catherine Wood.

Category Archives For Health and Fitness

cystectomy

Today I had three ovarian cysts removed. Here are the highlights:

*I woke up from the anesthesia with “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid” running through my head. I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve heard that song played! I wonder if my Doctor was listening to the Beatles during surgery.

*The nurses kept telling me that I “did a great job” and that I “should be the poster child for laproscopic surgery”. I just insisted that it was the doctor that should be praised; all I did was lay there asleep!

*a note to Corey: the hospital tech that walked me down to our car was, by far, a much better wheelchair driver than you. No offense.

*My dad sent flowers addressed to “my three best girls” to me, Mom and Catherine. Awwww!

I’m home now and feeling just fine. The wonders of modern medicine!!

DDR

Several weeks ago, Becky and I finally joined the crowd and bought DDR (if you don’t know what that is, read about it over at Wikipedia). Specifically, we bought Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 3. Also, since we didn’t have a video game system to play it on, we bought a used XBOX, and of course some dance pads to use for playing the game.

Becky poses in a DDR move

A few more pics here.

We had heard about DDR a while back, I believe on the Today show, where there was a segment on kids who lost weight while playing DDR. Then our friend Jenny mentioned using it as part of her excercise regimen, so we thought it sounded intriguing. We finally got a chance to play on Martha’s Vineyard, when the Lyttles had it in their cottage. They had the Xbox version, which has some really great songs. Later on, we went up to Jenny’s apartment and tried her version, on the PS2, with the workout mode. After that, we decided that we had to get it.

We ended up going with the Xbox version because we felt that it had more enjoyable songs, and that is key in our enjoyment of the game. Since we didn’t have any video games already, we didn’t have a particular loyalty to a gaming platform. Surprisingly, I was pragmatic enough to let slide the fact that the Xbox is manufactured by Microsoft. It certainly works well enough to play DDR, which is the only thing we have plans to use it for.

The game is really a lot of fun, and it is, as best I can tell, a very good workout. We have workout mode turned on, which is a game-wide mode that tracks calories burned during any type of game play. You input your weight, which it uses in a fairly simplistic calculation to determine calories burned. After you complete each dance session, your calories burned are summarized. You can also track your daily calorie burn record in the main Workout Mode menu. It draws a pretty graph, and it also charts your weight over time (assuming that you edit your weight in the game as you take the measurements on your own).

There are a few areas where DDR is weak. It doesn’t take your body through a full range of motion, particularly in the upper body. Also, although it does raise your heart rate, it doesn’t keep it up, which is key to developing good cardiovascular health. In addition, there is no stretching, warm-up, or cool-down built anywhere into DDR. You can get that on your own by changing difficulty levels and doing stretching beforehand, but that can be easy to forget. Finally, it is a fairly high-impact excercise. The jumping and foot stomping can be pretty hard on your joints.

We haven’t been doing it for long enough yet to see any solid results in one way or another, but we are both definitely feeling better, and it’s a heck of a lot better way to spend our time than watching TV in the evenings. We are certainly getting more excercise this way than we ever did with our gym membership!

If anyone’s in the area and wants to come check it out, let us know. We’d be glad to have you over.

I’m a mutant

In fact, so are most people of Western European descent. One of the things that I discovered, while reading up on child development, is that the ability to digest lactose normally disappears in mammals after they are weaned. Thus, being lactose intolerant is actually the “normal” state of a mammal. However, most humans of Western European descent have a genetic mutation that allows them to continue to digest lactose after weaning.

So, if you’re lactose intolerant, rejoice! You are perfectly normal, for a mammal. If you can digest lactose, enjoy your genetic mutation (albeit an extremely common one)… in lieu of the X-Men’s powers, I’d say being able to eat ice cream is pretty good.

My Royal Diadem

My middle name, Ryan, means ‘little king’. It is appropriate, therefore, that I just received a ‘little crown.’ The dentist attached the final part of my root canal work, a dental crown for my top left back molar. This process actually only took about five minutes and wasn’t painful at all. He just had to pull off the temporary crown, put in some cement, and stick in the real crown. It is custom molded for my tooth, so it fit perfectly. In the same appointment, he also filled in one last cavity. And that’s it… no more scheduled dentist appointments until this summer, when I go back for my six month checkup.

So, kids, if you would like to avoid all of this, brush at least twice a day, and floss at least once a day, and get in to see your dentist for a checkup every six months. It’s cheap insurance for what is a very pricey bit of work. Thank you for your attention. This has been a public service announcement from World Wide Wood.

Rooted

My root canal this morning went pretty well. If you want the enthralling details, I present to you a run-down of what they did, along with relative pain rankings, “N” being no pain, and a scale of “!” ( for a bit of wincing pain ) to “!!!!!” ( for excruciating, unbearable pain). Continue reading…

Root Access

At my regularly scheduled dental exam last week, my dentist told me that I had several cavities. I’ve had several cavities filled in recent years, so this wasn’t a huge surprise. But one of the cavities was larger, and he said that it might require a root canal. gasp

Well, today I went in to get one of the small cavities filled and have the larger cavity examined. The dentist found that it did, in fact require a root canal. So this Wednesday morning, I’m headed to the dentist to get a root canal. From the fairly extensive reading I have already done on the subject, the procedure is apparently nowhere near as bad as the reputation it has garnered over the years. I won’t bore you with the medical details of the procedure; you can read about it at the link above. Suffice to say, as long as I’ve got a few good shots of novocaine in my jaw, it is supposed to be no worse then getting a regular cavity filled.

Other than the root canal, there aren’t any other good options - I could have the tooth pulled, but that would introduce a host of other issues, or I could just do nothing at all, in which case the tooth would infect the surrounding tissues and I would be in really bad shape. So a root canal it is. The procedure on Wednesday is the first of three parts, where the root canal itself is cleaned out and filled temporarily. The second and third procedures will be scheduled later, where a permanent filling, post, and crown are put into place on the tooth.

The cost of the procedure, I think, will be the post painful part. Usually when I am finished with a dentist appointment, I stand at the counter and settle the bill with the account manager. This time, however, the account manager led me to a desk with chairs around the corner from the main reception area. She sat me down and then broke the news to me. Yikes. I’m not going to say how much, but it is definitely a pricey procedure. Thankfully, I was able to set up a payment plan which will enable me to get the procedure right away, but allow me to break up the big payment into smaller, more manageable, and interest-free payments.

[ To answer the questions you may have: 1) yes, I brush my teeth daily 2) yes, I floss... every so often 3) yes, I will be doing both 1 and 2 even more frequently now than I have in the past 4) yes, the dentist will also be filling in a gap in my molars which was causing junk to build up, and which I could not have easily cleaned out on my own ]

Cheap Meds

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a nasal allergy sufferer. Without my meds, I get sinus headaches, stuffy nose, and on worse days, runny nose, sneezing, and really bad headaches. I take rhinocort, which is a prescription medicine that runs $25 for about a month’s supply. I also take Alavert D-12, a 12-hour medicine which combines loratadine, the active ingredient in Claritin, and pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in Sudafed. Loratadine controls most allergy symptoms, while pseudoephedrine controls sinus congestion.

Alavert D-12 runs $15.99 for a 24-dose pack, or $0.67 per dose. Each dose has the equivalent of two 30mg Sudafed tablets and one 5mg Loratadine tablet. For a while, I thought this was the best deal I could get, combining two medicines I needed into one pill. That is, until my last doctor’s appointment, where I found out that I could get generic pseudoephedrine and generic loratadine for much cheaper than even the cheapest store brands, at the medical center’s in-house pharmacy. How much cheaper?

Well, today I picked up a bottle of 100 “SudoGest” tablets, equivalent to Sudafed, for $1.77. Yep. Not a typo. One dollar and seventy-seven cents. That works out to $0.02 per pill. Compare that to name-brand Sudafed, which, at best is $7.99 for a 48 pill pack or $0.17 per pill. Even Walgreens’ store brand, Wal-phed, is at best $8.99 for a 96 pill pack, or $0.09 per pill. Dag, yo! And I picked up two boxes of generic 24-hour loratadine, $4.99 for each 30-pill pack, or $0.16 per pill. Compare that to name-brand Claritin, 30 pills for $23.99 or $0.79 each, or Walgreens’ brand Wal-itin, 90 pills for $19.99 or $0.22 per pill. Boo-yah! In addition to the price advantage, separating the two medicines means that I can take the allergy medicine every day, and then take the nasal congestion medicine only when I need it.

Is it sad that I get so excited about things like this?

Fear, Guilt and Dental Floss

Do you like the Dentist? I do. I love the way that my teeth feel after they’ve been cleaned. I don’t even mind the scraping and poking of the… umm… scraping and poking tool. And I kind of like the ’stuffing your mouth full of film’ x-ray part. So, minus the drilling and the pulling, I consider the dentist to be a pretty cool person.

I have found that most people dislike going to the dentist. I’m not sure why. Perhaps they hate keeping their mouths open for so long. Or the hurting of the dental tools. Or the sound of the drills. Probably all of the above.

I suspect, however, that there may be another anxiety that comes into play during a trip to the dentist. It comes in the form of a question (perhaps from the all too perky Hygenist). So, have you been flossing?

You sit, pinned to the chair by a heavy lead apron, unable to answer. She glares down at you under the yellow light of the adjustable lamp… Do you tell the truth? “No, I have not, in fact, been flossing. Which ring of Hell has been reserved for me?” Or do you lie through your teeth (no pun intended)?? “Of course I’ve been flossing! Can’t you tell?”

The pressure, the guilt! There’s no where to turn and it’s impossible to change the subject.

So, do YOU floss? ummm. ahhhh… How about them Red Sox, eh?

Stethoscopy

Dr. Gary Paul Blanchard for the Boston Globe writes, “Is listening through a stethoscope a dying art?“

As of my last exam in October, my doctor is still using a stethoscope. I think it would be a sad day indeed when such a recognized tool of the trade is lost.

Good Plans and Bad Plans

Good Plan:

Our web hosting provider, Site5, just upped disk capacity and bandwidth across all of their plans. We now have 1.5 gigabytes of storage space instead of 550 megabytes. Woo-hoo! It’s a good thing, too, because our photo albums were taking up just about 500 megabytes of that space. This should keep us happy for quite a while. And they were able to offer this upgrade without any price increases! Yay Site5!

Bad Plan:

Our recently-new HMO, Tufts Health Plan, on the other hand, has changed their prescription drug plans. One of the allergy medicines I take, Rhinocort Aqua, was just moved from Tier 1 (least expensive) to Tier 2 (second most expensive). This means it now costs $25 instead of $15. Unfortunately, there are no Tier 1 options that are equivalent to Rhinocort Aqua, so I am kind of stuck in that respect. Add to this the fact that Allegra-D, which I used to take, was raised to a Tier 3, which means $40. When that happened, I switched to Alavert-D, a generic brand of Claritin, which works just as well as Allegra and only costs $15 for 24 tablets. (Both Claritin and Alavert are available without a prescription, as well, so I never have to worry about getting the prescription renewed, at least for that half of my drugs.)

Boo to Tufts Health Plan! And, I suppose, boo to allergies for making me have to take this stuff!

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