To from Farmer Laurie

[Guest guest]

Well....we are only argicultural farmers.....and on a small scale

(we have six acres total, three where we live, three that we " farm "

- 2 acres is in hay and the last acre is our organic produce and

ornamentals site). We don''t have any animals, unless you count

a herd of cats. Our neighbor lets us have all the cow manure we

need so we have the benefits of animals without the work or

heartbreak ( I get too attached to my animals...they all end up as

pets so I had to just limit our enterprise to argriculture).

It is hard for me to believe that there are people in our world that

has never seen snow....but then, we have had some very mild,

snowless winters for the last decade or so, so even young or

transplanted wisconsinites can make that claim. If we were to

get our longed-for blizzard this winter I will be sure to let you

know and you can come up and play in the white stuff. It really is

beautiful....and so much fun when you have the right toys. Our

recent winters have been so boring. Just cold, no snow. Dull,

gray and ugly.

I agree with you that pancreatitis, even chronic is most likely

inflammatory. I think that it is similar to the types of arthritis that

we see that has no serum markers but that by symptoms, can

be classified as a type of arthritis....maybe even inflammatory

arthitis (which seems redundant but isn't). This is different than

the RA type of arthritis which is driven by autoantibodies. I think

that the there is a clear inflammatory pancreatitis that produces

high CRPs and ESRs as well as possibly enzyme

elevations....and the inflammatory type that may not have any

blood markers but is just as valid as the arthritis that has normal

CRPs, ESRs and RFs. Maybe this is because the damage is so

local that the cytokines and other inflammatory products of cell

activation do not get into the general circulatory system....or there

are markers that we just do not know exist yet so we don't test for

them....Who knows? But in my mind, there is cell death in all

forms of CP....but that in many cases, we just don't know how to

look for it or document it. I cannot believe that CP is just

pain...that is, just a nerve response gone bad...it has to have

some type of cell death process to generate the pain signals....at

least that what seems logical. But who knows, and I wonder if

we will ever know as not too many researchers seem interested

in studying benign chronic pancreatic disease.

Hope that you are resting up from eyeglass shopping, I need to

do that at some point. It is not something I particularly enjoy...but

I have a friend who is an optician so I go to his lab / store so that

makes things a little better. I just hate fussing with all that

stuff....but it is good to be able to see!

Laurie