The Pierpont Family Name

I recently ran across the below article from a newspaper in 1921 (2 years before the founding of the Pierpont Family Association).

[Newspaper article]

 

This is evidently from a series of newspaper articles that traced family names. Let’s look at it closely, as there are a number of errors which we now know based on more recent historical research.

1)     “…the name is said to have been derived in England from Normandy.”

I’m not sure why the author makes this statement. What does derived in England mean? Is she referring to the fact that in Normandy it was “de Pierrepont” and in England they dropped the “de” part?

2)     “The founder was Robert de Pierrepont, a Norman knight…”

While Robert was the first of the family to come to England (with William the Conqueror), he was not the “founder” of the family. We now know that there were at least a couple of generations before him in Normandy.

3)     “Others say that the Pierreponts were not Norman at all, but that they came from Picardy at the time of the Conquest, having taken the name from a castle in Picardy.”

I’ve discussed the topic of the origin of the family name at length before (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2022/01/origin-of-pierrepont-family.html), so I’ll not repeat it here. Please read this research if you are interested.

4)     “…the younger son of William Pierrepont, a younger brother of Sir Robert Pierrepont who was baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark…”

I’ve also discussed this topic and charted it out before (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/06/lost-dukedom-of-new-england-pierponts.html). William was not a younger brother of Sir Robert, rather he was a younger brother of Sir Henry, and an uncle of Sir Robert. This also means that the statement in the following sentence about John Pierrepont of Roxbury being a second cousin to Evelyn (duke) is inaccurate as he would be the second cousin, once removed.

5)     “The early members of the family in the new world usually spelled the name Pierepont, but almost all have gone back to the older English speeling, Pierrepont.”

There are three errors in the sentence. The first two are inaccuracies in the printing process as it’s obvious that “Pierepont” should be “Pierpont” and “speeling” should be “spelling.” The person who did the typesetting had a problem with using the “e” key. The third problem requires a bit more explanation.

The statement about “almost all” now using the English spelling of “Pierrepont” is based on where the author of the article lived. She had been born on Long Island in 1887 and, at the time of this writing, was living in northern New Jersey. As a result, the branch of the family she would have been most acquainted with would have been the descendants of Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont (1768-1838). (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezekiah_Pierrepont). Hezekiah was the great-grandson of the Rev James Pierpont of New Haven. He had been born in New Haven, but in 1790 moved to New York City and a decade later moved to Brooklyn, NY. It was there that he not only became quite rich by marrying into a family that owned considerable land (500,000 acres) in NY, but changed his name back to the English spelling – perhaps as a way of sounding most closely related to his distant titled cousins back in England. As the most prominent member of the greater Pierpont family at the time, that apparently was the basis for the author making this statement.

 

This has been a great exercise in pulling together my past research and being able to set the record straight on a newspaper article from over 100 years ago!

Christmas in Pakistan

As I write this it is the day before Christmas. Here in the US we’ve been seeing houses decorated with colored lights, special church services, people getting together with family and friends, and presents being wrapped then unwrapped. Even for those who are not Christians, it’s a time of celebration.

But what does it mean to be a Christian and celebrate Christmas in other places in the world? How about some place like Pakistan where Christians are in the minority?

 

August 19, 2023

It didn’t make the headlines here in the US, but back in August there were riots in the city of Jaranwala, a small city of 120,000 in NE Pakistan. This city is located about 20 miles from Faisalabad (3.2 million people) and 70 miles from Lahore (11.2 million people). [For local readers of my blog, think of Jaranwala being Allentown, Faisalabad being Philadelphia, and Lahore being New York City.] During the course of these riots some 20 churches and nearly 80 homes (of Christian families) were burned by the mobs.

The cause of the riots, which seemed to happen somewhat spontaneously, were ostensibly as a result of a report of a Christian man desecrating a few pages of the Quran. A report in Aljazeera just a few days later gives some of the particulars.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/23/pakistan-christians-in-fear-after-blasphemy-allegations-trigger-violence

Two weeks after this report, there was an article in the Diplomat which explored the incident as apparently stemming from a personal dispute between two individuals.

https://thediplomat.com/2023/09/jaranwala-church-attacks-another-example-of-the-misuse-of-blasphemy-laws-in-pakistan/

As a follow-up, BBC published an article just yesterday with the title “Months after attacks, Pakistan’s Christians still feel unsafe.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67781469

I’ve been following this story closely because I have a friend who lives in the Christian community in Lahore. Here are some pictures that she sent me back in August when these riots had just occurred.

[Fires] [Burned building] [Burned wall]

 

So, what should our response be in cases like this? Before I answer this, let me introduce you to my friend, Samreen.

 

Samreen

I became acquainted with Samreen somewhat by accident back in May 2023. I had identified a scammer who was trying to become friends with me and as I checked out their account in Facebook, I noticed that they had also sent a friend request to someone else - Samreen. I sent a message to Samreen letting her know that her new “friend” was a scam and suggesting that she block that person.

She thanked me for watching out for her, then asked if she could friend me instead. After checking her out, I quickly determined that she was a real person and agreed to accept her friend request. This began our friendship.

Samreen was orphaned when she was quite young. She has no memories of her parents or grandparents, and she had no siblings. But she was fortunate enough to have been raised in a Christian orphanage in Lahore, Pakistan. When she was a young teen, she began helping to teach the younger students in the orphanage. This led to her founding her own ministry to widows and orphans in the Christian colony in Lahore, a ministry that has continued to this day (she’s now in her mid-30s).

Her ministry is called “Faith Fellowship Ministries” (FFM). Here is a link to their website.

https://faithfellowshipminis.wixsite.com/mysite-3

While there are pictures on the website, here are few that give some good insight into this ministry:

[Children] {Rice] [Church]

 

When the riot of August 19 happened, it of course was upsetting to her and all the other Pakistani Christian. There were some radical individuals in Lahore who also joined in the actions against the Christians there. While not as bad as those in Jaranwala, all the Christians in the province were fearful for their lives.

 

What Can You Do?

While it’s difficult to appreciate the atmosphere in places like Pakistan where the Christian population is a small minority surrounded by individuals who may be hostile to Christianity, there are three things I can think of that we can do.

1 – Educate yourself on what’s going on in the world. Don’t just follow news sources from US media. Periodically look at outlets like BBC, Aljazeera, and other international sources. Here is a quote from one of the above references that might give you a perspective.

“Our colony was a model of peace and unity. But this one incident has sent us back centuries. I don’t feel any safety or security here any more.”

 

2 – Realize that there are people around the world who need our prayers. Samreen told me recently:

“Please pray for me. I will be praying for you too, Alan.”

I have put together a list on my phone that has various people/families around the world divided up into regions. So each week I “pray around the world.”

 

3 – Realize that we sometimes need to move from just prayers to actions. Here are few more quotes from Samreen:

“We have people who don’t even have their own Bibles”

“Here people just say we are praying but we need action than words too”

While there are some overseas ministries that have a US affiliate who collects money for them (and gives them tax credit), there are many others like FFM that have no such connections. When the incident in Jaranwala happened, they set up a GoFundMe to try and collect money for the affected families. Having a personal contact with Samreen, I made a small donation. Checking a month later, I was upset to see that I was the only person who made such a donation. That’s sad!

Christmas 2023

As one gets older the time seems to fly by even quicker. It seems like 2023 just started a short time ago and here it is, time to write our annual Christmas letter already. I’m using last year’s letter as a reminder of all the topics I covered then – but also as a way to remind myself what things have happened in 2023 and what things from 2022 might make their way into my mind.

 

Family

Our grandchildren seem to be growing up so quickly! This fall our oldest, Aryon, went off to college – following in his parent’s footsteps, he’s a freshman at Taylor University in Indiana. Majoring in Computer Science – like his dad and myself. This summer he got a job working at Pinebrook Bible Conference in the Poconos – the place where our family gets together for a week each year.

Each of our four grandsons from PA got to spend a month in FL with their cousins this year. Caleb went from mid-April to mid-May (so that he’d be back home before final exams). Isaiah went from mid-June to mid-July (coming back when Chris and family came up for our week at Pinebrook). Ethan then went back with them and in late August we did a swap so Asher was there until mid-September (doing his first three weeks of school from there). See below for our annual picture of all 7 grands together – Tiernan is now 6’!

Tiernan is in his junior year and Ilyanna in 8^th grade and continue to be homeschooled. Our four PA grands continue with Liberty University Online Academy. Ethan (8^th grade) works with Kim. His social studies class this year is Geography and he’s in pre-algebra. I have the other three boys each day (school hours are 9-11:30 and 2-3:30/4). Isaiah and Caleb are in 6^th (middle school!!) and Asher in 4^th. Donna was going to be doing Bible and Literacy with Asher, but she has a lot on her plate taking care of her plants (both inside and outside) and other activities so I’ve ended up overseeing all of Asher’s subjects. See below for what my den looks like every day!

This fall we were blessed to have two visits from family members. My brother Edd and his wife Ingrid came back to the US from their position as missionaries to Thailand. They were with us for a day as they visited their supporters on the East Coast before officially retiring the end of January. Then a few weeks later our nephew, Matt VanDeCar and his wife and children stopped by for a day as they had come to PA for a wedding. We had not seen them since we went to MI for their wedding several years ago. It’s nice that we can continue to be in close contact with all of my and Donna’s siblings and many of their children even though we are scattered all around the US.

 

Medical/Health

As I noted last year, I had begun the screening process for a drug-based Alzheimer’s study but was awaiting the administration of a brain PET scan at the beginning of 2023. The results of that PET scan showed that I had no amyloid in my brain, so I did not have any incipient Alzheimer’s and was unlikely to. So I did not qualify for that study, however I continue my involvement in a number of other studies.

Donna and I are now in our mid-70s but in relatively good health. The only exception is the continuing problem I’m having with the wound on the bottom of my right foot. After an operation last year and a long healing process, I thought that I could finally put that behind me. Then this fall, for an unknown reason, the wound opened up again. So I’m once again having to rebandage it every few days, staying off my feet as much as possible, and going through the healing process. This is now going on six years (!!!) and it’s a bit frustrating. But if that’s the only physical/mental issue I have to deal with, then I suppose I should be grateful as many others my age have a lot more issues.

 

Genealogy

This past summer was the 100^th annual meeting of the Pierpont Family Association. We met at Mill Plain Church in Waterbury, the site of our first meetings back in the 1920s. As the co-historian of the group, I made a couple of presentations. Then this fall the other co-historian, my 3^rd cousin Bob Kraft, passed away at the age of 89. Since he also lived in PA, I was blessed to be able to attend his memorial service and spend some time talking to his wife and some of his children. I’ll miss working with him and we’re still working out the details of how to continue all the work that he had been responsible for.

I’ve also continued my research into all the members of our church here in PA – where I’m in distant cousin relationship with about 2/3 of everyone there. It’s something that I enjoy doing and the results are appreciated.

 

Writing

Following on the heels of my 3-part book series of the adventures of Fred Forchelli last year, I wrote two more detective stories in early 2023. Both of them were written by the fictional friend of Fred – Betty Rubble. They are also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions (see below).

Otherwise, I also continue posting in my blog. I added 35+ entries this year and am approaching 650 entries since I began my blog nearly 9 years ago.  It’s also approaching nearly 2000 pages (at 8.5x11 size) – a lot of writing over that period of time.

 

Miscellaneous

This spring our local power company began the process of replacing the power transmission poles behind our house (they were about 50 years old). Doing so required the building of a thick wooden plank road across our property. So, except for a couple of times in the spring, we’ve been unable to mow the back yard and we periodically get large trucks or front end loaders driving down that “road”. The lines are finally complete and we hope to have the “road” removed in the next week or so (the planks a few properties away were removed two weeks ago), but we have no idea what the ground will look like afterwards. But it’s definitely affected any property plans we had for this year. And I haven’t been able to help anyway due to my foot problems. Next year?

 

Concluding Thoughts

I get a little jealous when I see family and friends around our age who are “retired”, taking extended vacations or cruises, etc. Homeschooling our grandchildren means those types of activities are not available to us. And I get tired enough each day that I appreciate being able to take a nap after lunch before beginning our afternoon session. But the opportunity to have that kind of relationship with our grandchildren is not something I really want to trade. I talk to some of our senior friends at church who look after their grandchildren perhaps one afternoon a week and the typical response is, “I could never do what you’re doing!” But we do it and in some ways it keeps us young. So while traveling or cruises are not in our immediate future (it will be 7 years before the youngest is off to college), we have a good life.

 

Wishing all our family and friends a very merry Christmas,

Alan and Donna

 

[Grandchildren]

 

[Homeschooling]

 

[Book]

 

[Power poles]

 

[Reason Season]

 

Finding a Cousin by Using DNA

Background

I’ve been using ancestry.com as the primary place for storing all my ancestral research since 2008. So, I have a large number of individuals in my extensive family tree. I also bought a DNA kit from them about 8 years ago and have used it extensively. In order to extend the reach of my DNA research, I also loaded my DNA results into GEDmatch – a DNA tool that allows people who use not only ancestry.com but other DNA analysis tools such as 23andMe to search for relatives based on shared DNA. I had used this tool at the time to find a few new relatives, but I’ve not used it actively for a couple of years. Thus, I was surprised to get a message from GEDmatch this weekend announcing that I had a new match to be checked out.

 

My New Match

The information in GEDmatch is fairly technical. It shows the total length of matched DNA, the largest matched segment, an estimate of how close the match is (e.g. 4.00 is a 4^th cousin – but numbers are never that precise so it might give anywhere from 3.8-4.2 or so), haplogroups, etc. It tells where the DNA test is from (ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage, etc.). And it gives a name/alias that the individual has given and an email address that you can use to contact them. You can sort the matches by any of these fields, with the default being the match closeness. For example, my closest match is my niece who used 23andMe this past January and the degree of that match is 1.54 – pretty close to the actual 1.50 that she actually has.

I was surprised that this new match was in the 3^rd cousin range, i.e. someone relatively close to me. But who was this individual? The name/alias was “Momoffivekids”. That would seem to indicate that it was a female and the sex of the individual was “F”. With five children, she would not be very young. And her email address was of the form FLLLLLLYY, i.e. a fairly common usage where the individual uses their first initial, last name, and a two-digit number which is often either their birthyear or some other significant date. In this case the YY was “62” which I believed would be their year of birth.

Thus, my new cousin was female, had a first name that started with “H”, a last name of “M_____”, and she had been born in 1962. (Note that for privacy purposes, I’ll not be giving exact names.) But with 5 children, the “M_____” is probably her married name, so that’s going to present an additional challenge in making a family tree for her and determining how she is related to me!

 

Initial Searching

While searching using an email address is usually not very successful, I thought I’d give it a try anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to get one hit – in a document on a proposal for a community health advocacy program in New Mexico from 20 years ago. It was a 75-page document that included a 7-page list of all the task force members, including their email addresses. Now I had a full first name and a state (or at least where she lived 20 years ago).

I next did a search using that information, i.e., “H_____ M_____” and “New Mexico”, to see what else I could find. I was quickly able to find her current address, her husband’s name, and the names of a few of those five children. But then, farther along the list of results, there was another page that gave even more detailed information. H____ and her husband were running the Spanish ministry of a church in the area and were listed among the church leaders. It gave a brief bio for each of them, noting that she was born in Michigan, moved to CA as a teenager, met and married her husband in 1980, and that they had 5 children (confirmation of the info in her alias). It also had a picture of the two of them.

Ok, so now I know who this new cousin is. But how do I find how she is related to me?

[H____]

 

Family Tree Research

[Before beginning H’s ancestral tree, I thought I’d see if I could find her using social media (e.g., Facebook) because she had a somewhat unusually spelled first name. There were only a handful of people with her first/last name, but I was quickly able to determine that one of those was for her since I had a picture to match. She had a minimal amount of information there, but there was a good picture of her entire family, i.e., she, her husband, and all five children. But she was not accepting new friends.]

The best place to start looking for ancestors of living individuals is often obituaries. I searched using her name, state, and the word obituary. I was able to find one somewhat sparse entry – an obituary for one of her sisters from over 20 years ago. But this was valuable as it mentioned that her mother had predeceased her and gave her mother’s last name, “T_____” (of course, that being her mother’s married name, not her maiden name). But that meant that H_____’s maiden name was “T_____” and was another piece of valuable information.

Ancestry.com hides a lot of information on living individuals. But I now had the names of some individuals who were no longer living – H’s sister and her mother. I started a partial tree with what I had thus far – putting the full name and birth/death years of the sister, the maiden name and year of birth of H, the full name of H’s husband, the first name of H’s mother, and the last name of H’s father. Now I would be able to use the power of the hint/search capability of Ancestry.com!

I quickly found a marriage record for H in California – and that supplied me with her middle initial. Then death records for H’s sister gave me the full names of her mother and father. Continuing up the tree, adding one generation at a time, I worked through the various hints. In particular following the women in H’s maternal line, it went back from CA to the Midwest, then finally to her great-grandmother who had been born in CT – and whose name I recognized.

I checked my own family tree and found that I had her great-grandmother already there and her grandmother as well. I then added in the other generations going down so I could discard the partial tree I had just created.

I have now confirmed that H_____ M_____ is indeed my 3^rd cousin and exactly how she is connected to me. The initial hint from GEDmatch has resulted in my identification of a living and previously unknown (to me) relatively close cousin – and one who is at least interested enough in her genealogy to take a DNA test and load it into GEDmatch.

I’ve sent this information to her and am eagerly awaiting her response!

 

Spelling Words

             Each week our grandsons have new spelling words as part of their literacy curriculum. This past week, the list of spelling words for fourth grade were based on words with the “-r” sound – noting that this includes words with “-er,” “-ir,” and “-ur”. So, some of the words were percent, circus, and surprise. I noted that all of these words have to be memorized, as it’s not obvious from the sound which vowel is supposed to be used. For example, these three words could just as easily have been spelled “purcent,” “cercus,” and “sirprise” and they would be pronounced fine.

            This set the creativity in my brain off. As I pondered all the words in this category, the thought came to me about cases where there are words with different vowels but the same “-r” sound and they are pronounced the same way. So, without boring you anymore, here is the little story that came to my mind…

 

            In the mountains and valleys of West Virginia, they enjoy eating all kinds of things. And unlike those of us who live in cities and suburbs, there are other kinds of animals that grace their menu – things like possum and squirrel. But in addition to eating the meat, the other parts of the animal can be put to good use, including the pelt and fur. After removing it from the animal, it must be scraped and dried. One of the methods of drying is to spread the hide on a small tree. In one small community, a man named John has perfected this art and has begun selling his wares. He takes a small evergreen tree, perhaps 5’-6’ tall, cuts it down and nails a couple of crossed boards to the base. He then removes all the needles and small branches. What is left works really well for hanging/draping the drying pelts.

            One day a friend of his was walking by John’s cabin and noticed that John had another brand-new drying tree sitting next to the front door. Being curious, he knocked on the door and when John answered, he asked, “Who is the fur fir fer?”

 

 

In Memoriam – Bob Kraft

Last month, Sept. 15, 2023, my cousin, Robert Alan (Bob) Kraft, passed away at the age of 89. We were alike in many ways and had much in common (as you’ll see below), but our paths did not cross much until recent years when we were co-historians of the Pierpont Family Association. His memorial service will be next week, but I’d like to write this post to honor him first, so I am not influenced by the emotions of that day.

[Bob Kraft]

 

[Bob Kraft obituary]

Genealogical Connections

Bob and I are biological 3^rd cousins. Our common ancestors are Charles Pierpont (1825-1884) and his wife Mary Ann Warner (1828-1911). My descendant line is through Wilson Pierpont (1855-1921), Harold Pierpont (1898-1969), and my mother, Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012). Bob’s lineage is through a series of females – Mary Ann [Pierpont] Miller (1860-1938), Margaret [Miller] [Northrop] Hall (1889-1987), and Marion Northrop [Kraft] (1912-2006).

But there is another complicated path that connects us at the 2^nd cousin level. My grandfather’s mother, Annie Merrill (1858-1898), passed away just two weeks after he was born. He was given to another family in the next town to be raised. But his father, Wilson, then remarried about 3 years later in 1901 to Anna [Root] Hall (1853-1938). Anna was a widow who had four children, then ages 25, 23, 19, and 14, from her first husband. These would have been my grandfather’s stepsiblings. One of them was George Ransom Hall (1877-1946). When Bob was only 2 years old, his grandfather Northrop passed away in 1936. George Ransom Hall also became widowed only a year later, so Margaret and George married not long thereafter. Thus, Bob’s step-grandfather is a step-brother of my grandfather, making us step-step-second cousins. Complicated, yes, but genealogy is not always neat descendant charts.

 

Wolcott Connections

The Pierpont Family Association (PFA) had begun in Waterbury, CT, with their first meeting in 1924. Mary Ann [Pierpont] Miller and her husband, Charles Somers Miller, were some of the prime movers in getting that organization started. The PFA met in those first few years at the Mill Plain Church in the west end of Waterbury. My grandparents were part of that church (they lived less than 2 miles from it) and so our family was also heavily involved in those early years.

But members of the greater Pierpont family were beginning to migrate just a few miles north into Wolcott. Wolcott had no industry nor many large farms due to its topology, so it was a “bedroom community”. It had no high school of its own, but high school age children were bused to Waterbury. Of the above families, the Root and Hall families had been in Wolcott since the late 1800s, Howard and Marian Kraft had moved to Wolcott when they married in 1931, and my parents also moved there when they married in 1946 (as did two of my mother’s siblings and my father’s sister).

Wolcott was a small town. In 1940 the population was only 1800 people. So those who lived there tended to know each other. With genealogical connections in common as well, the Hall/Kraft and Pierpont/Russell families were well acquainted with each other. Bob was 14 years older than me, so I did not know him personally at the time. I hadn’t even started school when he was going away to college. But I knew his family. His sister, Sharon, was just two years older than me. His mother was my swimming instructor when I got my Red Cross Lifesaving Badge.

So, while third cousins are often unacquainted with each other, our closer second cousin connection as well as both our families being in the same small town gave us lots of other connections.

 

Parallel Lives

Bob left Wolcott when he went to college in the mid-west. He got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1955, and a master’s degree from that same school in 1957. He then got a PhD in religion and Christian origins (from Harvard). His teaching career at the University of Pennsylvania began in 1963. But when computer technology began to spread a few decades later he also had an interest in that. His obituary (above) notes that “In 1983, he helped Penn students fulfill a new computer literacy requirement that led to innovative computer science classes and groundbreaking digital application in scholarly research and information dissemination.”

Fourteen years behind him, I followed the same path. I left Wolcott and went to college in the mid-west, getting my BS in computer science from Michigan State University in 1969, then a pair of master’s degrees from that same institution in 1971. I later got a PhD in information systems. I had a 25-year teaching stint at DeSales University from 1980 to 2005 in parallel with my work in the computer field. And Bob and I lived just 35 miles away from each other in eastern Pennsylvania.

 

Reconnecting

Bob retired from his professorship at UPenn in 2003 at the age of 69. I retired just a few years later in 2007 at the age of 58. With one of his interests being genealogy and using the computer to help organize it, Bob had been involved in the PFA for a number of years as their historian. When my father passed away in 2006, I began to get interested in genealogy as well (I began my membership in ancestry.com in 2008). Thus, it was only natural that I began attending the PFA meetings where Bob and I crossed paths. It was a few years later that the PFA, both recognizing my growing interest in genealogy and Bob’s getting older, appointed us co-historians of the organization.

Bob and I actively corresponded on genealogy-related subjects. But shared email was our only connection outside of the annual PFA meeting. He had 4 children, 3 of whom lived in the area, and 9 grandchildren. I only had 2 children, but a growing brood of grandchildren that reached a total of 7 by 2014. These family interests took precedence and so we just never seemed to have the time to get together.

 

The End of the Story?

Now Bob has moved on from life in this world. But the things that we held in common are still there – love of family, importance of religion, and appreciation for the impact of growing up in the small town of Wolcott. I’ll miss sharing with him and getting his comments on my various blog entries on Wolcott and genealogy stories. And I’ll miss seeing him at the annual PFA meetings (this summer was our 100^th consecutive meeting).

Next week I’ll be driving down to Philadelphia to attend a memorial service him at the UPenn library. It’s only 2 buildings away from UPenn’s Perelman Center where I go a few times a year for my participation in various Alzheimer’s studies, so it’s a route I know well. But it will be a much more emotional time than my study visits. I hope to have a chance to talk to some of Bob’s children who also live in this area.

Thanks for your contributions, Bob. I was not aware of how much I was following in your footsteps as I grew up in Wolcott, drove to college several states away, got my degrees, then settled down in eastern PA. We’ve been a lot alike. Maybe something in our genes and in the environment we shared in Wolcott?

 

Health Update

Back in January I gave an update of where I stand in all my medical issues (see here). Having gone into a great amount of detail on my brain and heart/blood in the prior two postings, there are still three areas which need to be updated. And, unfortunately, these areas are the ones where there has been much activity over the past several months and which have thus worried me the most. Two of them appear to be resolving, but the third is still ongoing. So, without further ado, here’s what’s going on.

 

Mouth/Teeth

I had indicated in January that the plan was to remove four of my remaining original teeth (23-26) as they had been loosened by the strength of my upper jaw connected implants and to replace them with a few implants as well. Unfortunately, in doing those removals, the oral surgeon discovered that many of the other implants on the bottom, many of which I’d had for a long time, were also slowly failing. So … change of plans.

In addition to the removal of 23-26, I have also had all but the last molar implant on each side of my lower jaw removed. This is not as easy as taking out an original tooth as the implant is screwed into the jaw. Two of them could be easily unscrewed, but the other two had to be drilled around – using the dental equivalent of a hole saw. At that point I only had four bottom teeth – one implant molar in the back on each side and two (fortunately very strong) teeth in positions 22 and 27. While all the healing was taking place, I only had those four teeth for eating with for several months (no corn-on-the-cob, having to cut pizza up with a knife and fork into bite-sized pieces).

I was then fitted for a lower removable plate that will be partially anchored by going around those four remaining teeth. As I write this, the trial fitting was successful and I’m only waiting for the lab to complete making the final plate. But this should be the end of a long process. I’ll only have two teeth which are original and will need to be brushed, the remaining ones mostly get treated with a Waterpik to clean them as they have no enamel, only porcelain finishes.

 

Colon

I had indicated back in January that I was shortly scheduled for my 5-year follow-up colonoscopy and that it would likely be my last. I commented, “no big deal.” Little did I know!

Perhaps reminiscent of 2017 when I had my first colonoscopy and they found nine polyps, then requiring a follow-up in 2018 when they found one more, this one back in February found several, including one very large one. They were all removed (none were cancerous) and they marked the spot of the large one with a tattoo. I then had a second colonoscopy in June to ensure that they got everything. Unfortunately, there was another small one right where they had taken out the large one. So, I was scheduled for a THIRD colonoscopy just last week. For those who have gone through this procedure, the colonoscopy itself is not a big deal – you’re under general anesthesia and don’t notice a thing. But the day before prep is another story. I won’t go into the details here, but it’s not pleasant. And when you only have them every 5-10 years you kind of forget the unpleasantness, but when you have three in just eight months the anticipation is almost as bad. Enough said!

This last one was not scheduled in the outpatient GI location, but with a specialist in the GI center in the hospital where they have specialty equipment, etc. The after-report was about as good as I could expect. They did find one very small one in that location. But in addition to removing it, they also cauterized the area which should prevent any recurrence. However, I do have to have a one-year follow-up to ensure success. Maybe that will be my last one?

 

Foot

I had noted back in January that I just had another bout of sepsis from infection in the sore on the bottom of my foot. After that was cleared up, I made the decision (with a push from my wife) to begin taking a daily protein supplement to speed up the healing process. It worked. In May I got my new custom shoes that will help relieve the pressure. In June, my podiatrist was able to declare success and I just had a six-month follow-up visit.

Unfortunately, we declared success too early. In mid-September something went wrong – not sure what – and I got a slight tear in the skin which opened the area back up. So – back to the podiatrist for periodic checks, a round of strong antibiotics, and trying to get it to heal back up again. Things are going much faster this time – probably due to the protein supplements – but it’s a bit frustrating. Thus, while most of my other physical problems have been resolved, this one has not yet. Maybe this time will work? We’ll have to wait and see.

Heart/Blood Issues

My History

Back in January 2005 I had a major heart attack – what is known as a widow-maker. I’ve related the details of it before (see here), so I’ll not repeat them. But following that event I began to get periodic testing – not only of my heart, but various blood tests which can give insight into some of the causes of heart issues. These insights have also been the reason for most of the medications I take – which have increased and gotten refined over the past 18 years.

Below I’d like to first give a complete list of my current medications and the reason for each, then detail the particular blood tests I currently get. I’ll end by noting some of the recent invitations I’ve gotten for various clinical studies which are related to the results of those tests.

[Blood drop]

 

My Medications

Allopurinol – This is the only one not related to these heart/blood issues. In 2001 I had a VERY painful kidney stone. This stone was not the more typical calcium stone, but one that was formed of uric acid – the same component that can cause gout. In order to prevent any future gout or kidney stones, this medication reduces the amount of uric acid in your system.

Baby Aspirin – Not a prescription medication, but a low dose of aspirin can help prevent heart attacks or stroke by acting as a blood thinner to make it easier for the heart to pump blood.

Farxiga – This works by helping your kidneys remove sugar (glucose) from your blood through the urine, which decreases your blood sugar. It can help lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and heart failure in people with type 2 diabetes. (It is pretty pricy and is one of the 10 drugs on the list to have the costs addressed by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices in a few years.)

Lantus (insulin) – This is a long-acting insulin and is used primarily for adults with type 2 diabetes. I’ve been taking this for over two years now and it does a good job at helping to manage my sugar level.

Lisinopril – Used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure. It is often prescribed after a heart attack and helps to prevent future strokes and heart attacks.

Metformin – Helps treat diabetes by helping the body’s cells to better use the insulin that is still produced by the pancreas, i.e. for those with type 2 diabetes.

Metoprolol – A beta blocker which lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, making it easier for your heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. I notice that when taking this that even when getting my periodic heart testing that it’s difficult to get my heart rate up very high, so it’s very effective at that.

Niacinamide – An over-the-counter medication, this can help prevent vitamin B3 deficiency.

Omega-3 – An over-the-counter medication, omega-3 fatty acids can significantly reduce blood triglyceride levels. I had been taking this in the form of concentrated fish oil and by taking 3 tsp containing 4800 mg of Omega-3 I was getting 3900 mg of the DHA/EPA (goal was about 4000) – the part that had an impact. Earlier this year I switched to a squeeze pouch product which does not require refrigeration or measuring with a spoon. Unfortunately, I mis-read the label and saw the fish oil total of 4000 mg with just two pouches. However, of the 4000, only 2400 of the fish oil was Omega-3 and only 2100 was DHA/EPA so I inadvertently cut my DHA/EPA intake to only 2100. As you can see in the below writeup on my triglycerides, this had a negative impact, so I’ve increased my intake to 4 pouches which now gives me 4200mg of DHA/EPA.

Simvastatin – Used to treat high cholesterol and triglyceride levels and thus prevent heart attacks. I’m on the maximum dosage of this and while it appears to be very effective at keeping my cholesterol (both HDL and LDL) down, it has not had much impact on my triglycerides (see below for more on this).

Trulicity – A once-a-week injectable, this stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin secretions for those with type 2 diabetes. Like Farxiga, this is pretty pricy and I could benefit if it is put on the Medicare drug price negotiation list.

 

Blood Tests

Lipid Panel

This group of tests looks at the lipids (fats) in the blood as these contribute to coronary problems. In addition to the total cholesterol, they measure HDL (high-density lipids – the “good” fats), triglycerides, and LDL (low-density lipids – the “bad” fats). LDL is generally not measured directly as doing so is quite complicated and takes many steps. Rather it is calculated through a formula. The most common formula is called the Friedewald and calculates your LDL as equal to (Total – HDL – (Triglycerides/5)).

Because of the above medications I am taking, my total cholesterol is on the low side (100-120 v. a target of <200). Also, my HDL tends to be on the low side (30-35 v. target of 23-92). None of these are a cause for concern, except as it impacts the LDL calculation. I tend to get one of two errors in my annual Lipid results. First, if your triglycerides are more than 400 then they won’t even try the calculation. But because my triglycerides are high and my Total and HDL are on the low end this calculation results in a negative number for the LDL – for example, one test I took a few years ago had my Total at 101, my HDL at 36, and my triglycerides at 302, yielding a calculated LDL of -1. This is obviously incorrect. There are other formulas which try to account for these kinds of situations, such as the Sampson and Martin formulas. These tend to give results in the 20-45 range for my LDL. If these are correct, then since the target for LDL is to be less than 130 that means that my LDL is also pretty good.

Thus, my primary concern here is focusing on my triglycerides. The ideal is to have that be less than 150, but mine has never been anywhere near that. Before taking any Omega-3 supplements mine was over 900. Thus, when I can get it into the 200-300 range then I consider that success. I was pretty much there in December of 2021, but as noted above I made a miscalculation when converting from a liquid fish oil to some squeeze pouches and it went back over 400 again. I’ve now corrected that and hope to have it back in the proper range at my next blood test in 2024.

 

CBC (Complete Blood Count)

This analysis looks at all the various components of your blood with a count of each of the physical components – red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, monocytes, ovalocytes, etc. Most of my results are within the normal range with two exceptions. First, my red blood cell count is on the low end and this can also be seen in the fact that my iron level (hematocrit and hemoglobin) are at the low end of normal. This not a cause for particular concern except that I have to watch my diet just before I give blood every 8 weeks as there have been two occasions when my iron level excluded my giving blood that day. Secondly, my platelet count runs around 90-100 when “normal” is 140-350. Again, it’s not low enough to be a concern (if too low a clotting factor they would not be able to perform things like brain surgery), but I am not excluded from anything at this level as it’s pretty stable. While I’ll continue to monitor the results of this test, there is nothing here that is concerning.

 

CMP (Comprehensive Metabolic Panel)

This analysis is looking at the various elements of the blood that relate to kidney function – things like sodium, potassium, calcium, etc. All my results are consistently in range with the exception of my glucose level. For more on that see my A1C results below where it is also tested.

 

A1C with eAG (est. avg. glucose)

This is the primary measurement of blood sugar that is used to monitor diabetes. There is a good detailed explanation here, so I’ll not repeat all that you can read there.

In summary, these are measurements of the percentage of glucose that is attached to your red blood cells. The A1C is the percentage of cells that have glucose attached to them. Since these cells have a lifespan of about 90 days, the A1C is the average over those 90 days. This can be converted to the amount of sugar in the blood which is measured in mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter). This latter measurement is the same as the numbers that you get when taking a fingerstick and having a drop of blood analyzed by a glucose meter. This fingerstick measurement is an instantaneous measurement of the amount at that moment – which will vary all day long as food is taken in and the sugar in that food is absorbed.

Here is a summary of my A1C results over the past several years with some commentary on the medication changes that I was getting at the time:

·       2015 – 8.5 (197) – first measurements, obvious that I had diabetes which is anything greater than 7.0

·       2016 – 6.6 (143) – started taking Metformin

·       2018 – 8.1 (186) – dosage maxed out, need additional medications

·       2019 – 6.7 (146) – began taking Farxiga and Trulicity as well

·       2020 – 7.8 (166) – still increasing

·       2021 – 8.0 (183) – time to start on insulin (Lantus), met with nurse specialist and slowly ramped up amount until results acceptable

·       2022 – 6.9 (154) – doing well, anything under 7.0 is considered “managed”

·       2023 – 6.7 (146) – continuing to do well, in fact improving

It appears that I have finally gotten my sugar levels under control. In addition to the various medications, I also watch my diet (eat healthy and only take diet soda). As I monitor my sugar each day with a glucometer, I take note whenever it is high and think back through the prior day and what may have caused it. In addition to breaking my diet for the day, things like stress have an impact. I wish I could cut out the high-priced medications (Farxiga and Trulicity), but they are designed to work on other parts of the whole picture than Lantus, so I’ll keep them for now.

Some of the impacts of diabetes such as diabetic retinopathy I’ve avoided by never having my glucose levels be real high (over 9.0), but unfortunately, I do have peripheral neuropathy in the front halves of both feet and that damage is permanent so I have to be careful to not injure my feet as I will not feel it. But for the most part, I’m pretty comfortable with where I am now.

 

Clinical Trials

I’m now starting to get calls about clinical trials related to the above. At the end of August I got one call from a hospital in Philadelphia that was helping to test a new drug that was designed to help with lipid levels. The requirements were that the person had to have had a heart attack (check!), was maxed out on taking a statin (check!), and had a starting LDL of 55 or more. I drove down to Philly to get some blood testing to confirm my LDL level since I really didn’t know what it was due to my high triglycerides. Unfortunately, (?) the blood test came back and assigned me an LDL level of only 17. While I’m happy with those results, it meant that I didn’t qualify.

Last week I got another call from a hospital in Horsham about another drug trial. Over the phone I confirmed that I met the initial screening criteria of having had a heart attack and being on long-term use of a statin. I’m awaiting a second call to go over the exact details. I don’t yet know if I will still be qualified after going through all those details.

 

Conclusion

While the number of medications I take is not insignificant, I seem to have things in this area fairly well under control. My heart remains healthy, my diabetes has been stable to improving for the past few years, and while my last triglyceride level was too high (again!), I have identified the cause and am pretty confident that it will be back where it needs to be when I next get it tested in 2024. But there are a lot of moving pieces that I’m keeping track of.

I’m not sure what clinical trials I may qualify for, but I’m open to doing so to improve our scientific understanding of this area, and to help test new drugs which may help others.