Daily prompt: Avant Garde

Tags

health, politics, postaday2014

From your musical tastes to your political views, were you ever way ahead of the rest of us, adopting the new and the emerging before everyone else?

Politics: I was very intrigued by the whole process since my teens; history was my favorite subject and politics can’t be understood without historical context so I grabbed both with both hands and sank my teeth wholeheartedly into both areas of study. Is that avant garde? I don’t know, but I wasn’t shy about speaking my mind regarding my political convictions with adults at the table. I learned a lot during those discussions at the dinner table with my parents and their friends; I was amazingly blessed that my parents and their friends never made me feel out of place in these discussions or that my opinions weren’t important and valid. That was one of the best gifts that they could have ever given me, making me feel important and of value.

On a sadder note, lately the term thigh gap has been talked about in the news and for some it is a whole new concept. Women bent on getting a large enough gap between their thighs and overdoing it on exercise and diet. I am glad that it is getting attention in the news because it is part and parcel of the unhealthy obsession that many women face over their weight and honestly between fashion magazines and Hollywood, women receive the worst kinds of beauty related messages; hopefully with the conversations going on in the news, things will change for the better. Years ago, when I was in full blown anorexia, I decided that I needed my thigh gap to be as wide as possible, long before anyone was ever talking about it, it was my gauge as to how much more weight I needed to lose, honestly and sadly, I never could be skinny enough ever in my mind. I am now too tired to ever put myself through that again and I am so thankful for that. These days, I don’t have a thigh gap and I will never have one and I am resigned to that. It is fine.

I did my exercise!

Tags

exercise, health, heart health, postaday2014

I am documenting my exercise to provide myself with some added pressure to continue because at times it is hard to get motivated when you know that it is 92 degrees outside. I have found a loop right by where we are staying and I think that it’s about 3 miles long; I figured that length because given that it takes me 45 minutes at a fairly rapid clip, it makes sense. I remember from walking our little hill back home; the 3-4 miles would take me 45 to 50 minutes so that is how I came to my conclusion.

My face always gets this flushed when I do exercise and it takes at least almost an hour for it to go away. I get the added heat and sweat for longer than my physical exertion, which can be frustrating at times.

My outlook on exercise has changed over time; I don’t exercise for weight loss purposes anymore; I really do it for my overall health, especially my heart. I want to keep my circulatory system in the best shape possible and I want to keep my bones nice and strong; it is important after 40. You can’t stop getting older, but you can at least help determine how you are going to feel while getting there.

Daily prompt: Close call

Tags

health, postaday2013, stress, writing

Tell us about a bullet you’re glad you dodged — when something awful almost happened, but didn’t.

I count myself very lucky that even though it has been unbelievably uncomfortable and stressful, that each mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy have been negative for cancer. I also count myself lucky that despite having the most annoying and spastic esophagus, I don’t have alchalasia, which is when the gateway between the stomach and the esophagus no longer functions properly and food doesn’t get pushed into the stomach and instead gets regurgitated, the tests that I went through to find out the good news, took an entire weekend, that alone was a tad surreal, but it was good news nonetheless.

These are just two bullets that I have most recently dodged, I have to say that while you are going through any stressful situation, it just plain stinks, it’s only after the bullet has been successfully dodged, that you can look back and either view it with humor or at least minimize it so it becomes manageable. Either way it is far better than to keep reliving the stress of it all.

I’m happy to see it as more adventures to write about, medical procedures can be awfully interesting, especially if you have ever had aspirations to become a nurse or a doctor and you aren’t queasy around bodily fluids. Thankfully I fit the bill and I am sincere when I say that I am grateful that I am not in the least bit queasy and I have a great deal of interest in medical procedures because that has gotten me through so many.

Daily prompt : The Golden Hour

Tags

dream, health, postaday2013, sleep, writing

6:00AM: the best hour of the day, or too close to your 3:00AM bedtime?

Oh 6:00 AM is not my friend and 3:00 AM is not a comrade either. I need a lot of sleep, I always have, even when I was younger. I know that I did chafe against my bedtime, but when I was in bed, I didn’t try to fight sleep, I let it come because I enjoyed sleeping, sleeping sometimes was more pleasant than being awake, what with nice dreams, cocooned under the covers all safe and sound. Who wouldn’t want to stay asleep?

The only reason that I ever complained about going to bed was because I was missing t.v shows, but my mommy in her infinite wisdom, knew that her oldest needed the sleepy time. What was amazing is that my little sister’s nickname was Dracula, my father came up with that one because getting her to fall asleep was a nightly battle and getting her up in the morning was no picnic either. It is a constant source of amazement that two children coming from the same parents can be so different. Well in the case of myself and my sister, it isn’t so surprising about our sleep differences, because I inherited my father’s capacity for sleep and my sister inherited my mother’s difficulties in sleep. Personally I think that I lucked out, sleep is such a luxury and so good for you. Sleep is your friend, embrace it, I do. 🙂

Never take your teeth for granted

Tags

antibiotics, health, infection, postaday2013, teeth

My poor hubby. He has never taken his teeth for granted but due to a faulty old root canal, he spent two hours having oral surgery to scrape away a horrid infection surrounding his nerves leading up his left cheekbone. This abscess came overnight and my poor hubby woke up with his left side swollen and red from the infection. He was steered to a great orthodontist from his very good friend so we we made a beeline for his practice this morning. The nurses were lovely and took very good care of them while they were preparing him for the quite painful surgery. I’m glad that my hubby is exceptionally proactive about his health and his teeth, the infection he is fighting is quite dangerous simply because it could migrate to his brain if left unchecked. The orthodontist gave him a strong regimen of antibiotics to kill the infection and if all goes well, he should be right as rain in a few days and he knows to take antibiotics through their entire course to insure that the infection is gone for good. The poor lamb.

Good news from one of my M.D’s

Tags

good news, health, maintenance, medical, postaday2013

Good news on the health front. My gynecologist Dr. Wool, who I like a lot, grabbed me as soon as he saw me in the waiting room to let me know that all the lab results from my procedure, almost two weeks, came back benign. He also said that he wanted to take a look and see attitude regarding my hormone levels, he wants to see how my body is going to respond now that all the polyps have been removed. I said wonderful, let’s see what Mother Nature has to say and what she has in store for me for the next three months. I really like Doctor Wool, he likes to talk and he doesn’t rush you at all. He is also very easy to talk to, a great bedside manner and I feel very relaxed with him. I find myself telling him all about my past medical issues and he doesn’t brush me off, he actually listens with interest. Moreover when he comes into the room, he knows why I am there and doesn’t waste ten minutes reading my chart. In my opinion that is a huge plus, I have been to tons of doctors and there is nothing more disheartening than sitting there waiting for your doctor to reacquaint himself with you. If I were a doctor, I would read my patient’s history before they came into the room so that they would feel reassured that I know what is going on with their medical issues. You would think that this would be an obvious way to treat your patients, but it is a rarity in our medical reality. I am very happy with Doctor Wool and especially in the field of gynecology, that is a huge deal.

Healthy maintenance

Tags

health, hernia repairs, hospital, postaday2013

Today my hubby needed to get his hernia repaired, it had been in need of repair for a few years but being an exceptionally busy man (a workaholic if we are being honest) my hubby let it go until it was starting to bother him enough that he kept the appointment that I had made for him. Our out-patient experience at the hospital was a very pleasant one, I can say this because I wasn’t the one being operated on, but my hubby can’t complain either because all the nurses took such good care of him. He was the star attraction on the floor, my hubby is very charming and affable, even more so when he is at the mercy of medical personnel.

His doctor Dr. Earle had operated on me in 2010 and my hubby was impressed with his work so that is why he picked him for this procedure. Dr. Earle and his team have a very relaxed, yet professional rapport. The nurses love to tease him as Dr. Earle loves to tease them and his patients, he told us a few jokes and I just burst out laughing. My hubby really appreciated that because he appreciates self-confidence in others, it puts you at ease when they are in charge of your well-being.

I still can’t get over that despite being cut open, hospitals are still comfortable sending you home the very same day. I know that for us it is infinitely cheaper, but still no matter how many times it happens to one of us or someone I know, it still amazes me. In France, they like to keep you for a few days and I am assuming that in other countries, they would keep you a tad longer as well. Here it sometimes feel like an assembly line operation, you come in on a conveyor belt and you get moved along the belt until you exit the line. Maybe that is why the nurses are so kind and nurturing, they want to make sure that when you leave, you are in the best shape possible. All that I can say is that my hubby’s nurses were exemplary and kind.

I’m so relieved that my hubby came through with flying colors.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Tags

food, health, movies, pesticides, postaday2012, toxins

Arsenic and Old Lace, one of my favorite movies of all time. Cary Grant, Boris Karloff and Peter Laurie are all spectacular in the movie and the two lovely older ladies, who do in their old boarding house guests, are absolutely adorable. I always see “Teddy Roosevelt” charging up the stairs with his saber up in the air and poor Cary Grant, who is in a panic, especially when he is sitting on the window box seat that holds a poor deceased former house guest and realizes that his two beloved aunts are responsible. The poor lamb, I think that it is this movie in particular, that audiences realized the comic brilliance of Cary Grant, I still can’t believe that he never won an Oscar for any of his performances. He won an honorary Oscar for his body of work but never one for a particular movie.

I have arsenic on my mind because once again, arsenic is being discussed in the news connected to a food source, this time in our domestic rice. Last year, we had Doctor Oz warn people about the hazards of arsenic in apple juice, especially if the juice company was getting its apples from China, they still use arsenic in their pesticides. That started a whole national discussion where the F.D.A was angry with Doctor Oz, accusing him of being sensationalist with his reporting and not doing his research. In the end Doctor Oz was vindicated and people are reading labels making sure that the apples are organic or at least not coming from China.

This year, we have been alerted to higher levels of arsenic in our rice, rice grown domestically down South. There are two reasons for the high level of arsenic, the first reason is that our factory raised chickens are given small amounts of arsenic in their feed to kill certain bacteria and to give their meat a pleasing color, the resulting waste from the farms and the chickens, gets washed out and leaches away in the rivers and eventually in the soil and many rice farms coexist with factory style chicken farms. The second reason is that there exists a high concentration of arsenic in the soil down South because years and years ago when they were cotton fields, they were treated with arsenic laced pesticides, and even though those pesticides aren’t used anymore, it takes an extremely long time for the arsenic to die, leave or whatever arsenic decomposes into, if anything at all. The kicker is that rice is grown in water, therefore the arsenic permeates the whole plant. Thus Doctor Oz has suggested that to make the rice less toxic, rinse it repeatedly in water until it runs clear and to cook it as you would pasta, in a lot of water, and then when it is done, you rinse it again before eating it.

I would go even further and not purchase United States rice, I would buy rice from Europe where there is markedly less exposure to arsenic, arsenic occurs naturally in the soil but we aren’t talking about the levels that we have found here down in our Southern part of the U.S.

I wanted to start the conversation off with a happy thought on arsenic, the subject of a very entertaining movie before I got into detail of yet another food controversy here in the good old U.S of A.

Can you really have it all?

Tags

happiness, health, postaday2012

• What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

• July 3, 2012

• On Having It All
• Health

  Having been very ill at various times throughout my life, I would say having good health is what really matters and everything else will figure itself out. I should amend my statement only slightly by including the good health of your family as well. Here is to good health and happiness!

Adventure at the Burke Womens Imaging Center

Tags

health, hook up, imaging center, medicine, odd angles, postaday2012, two doctors

I have to start by saying that everyone at Burke’s Women Imaging Center is highly trained, kind, compassionate and professional. The nurses especially were tremendous, I had three with me during the biopsy, which took two hours, and they helped keep me distracted, they were focused on my comfort or potential discomfort at all times. The doctor of radiology was also professional, he was 100 percent focused on the job at hand and he was determined to be the most accurate and thorough possible. I also had a resident in training taking notes so it was a full house during the procedure.

The nurses and the doctor were very liberal with the lidocaine, so I felt no pain and the discomfort mostly came from the pressure exerted by the probe within the breast and that was manageable. The position that I was forced to stay in for two hours was the hardest part because it was an unnatural seated position and my head and neck were at odd angles as well to accommodate the different positions of the machine. It was easy to let the discomfort fade into the background between listening to the two doctors discussing what was on the screen and watching the nurses hook up tubes and adjust the knobs of the various machinery. It was all very interesting.

Since I got home, my two babies have been here taking care of their old Maman which makes me so happy. Now all I have left to do is wait for about a week for the results. Hopefully I’ll be able to put this out of my mind for the following few days.