Don’t stop reading, this isn’t about me testing positive - thank goodness. It has been many months now since The Virus has insinuated (forced?) itself into our lives. I haven’t been purposely avoiding the topic (it’s impossible to ignore), but I did feel it was time to share a bit of perspective.
One of the ingredients in my weekly cocktail is a drug called dexamethasone. This is a steroid that is blended into my “mix” which is often given to help minimize delayed nausea and vomiting (which is does for me - thankfully). For those of you paying attention to the litany of therapies being tried and recommended as interventions for those poor unfortunate souls who happen to be stricken with the Covid, dexamethasone has proven to be an effective treatment component in some cases, that seems to speed (facilitate) the recovery from the disease. Here's a little bit of the science behind the STEROID: Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid used in a wide range of conditions for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects. It was tested in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom’s national clinical trial RECOVERY, and was found to have benefits for critically ill patients. According to preliminary findings, for Covid patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for Covid patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth.
The amount of Dex that I get each week is 40mg for the one day of treatment, and I’m fairly certain that it’s presence in my blood stream is having no anti-Covid value whatsoever (although for the rest of my treatment Saturday and the majority of the following Sunday, my post-back surgery inflammation/discomfort magically disappears). By contrast, the dosage used for Covid patients is 6mg per day for 10 days. I'm not sure scientifically what the contrasting dosage numbers mean, though it is all fairly interesting to me. But here we are yet again, this time at this coincidental crossroad between cancer and Covid - with me on the corner.
What does it mean? Nothing. (Most of this bloggery has no real tangible meaning anyway). But once again I find myself surrounded by an odd set of circumstances in my life that can’t go unnoticed. I really need to get a life, right?
