Life in progress

Tag Archives: Health


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Connections

My best friend John was talking to me today about a man he works with named Mike. Last night Mike didn’t show up for work; apparently he just found out he has cancer.

Mike is 32 years old, just got married, his wife just had a baby and they just bought a house. The cancer spread from his testicles and is now in his stomach. Nine weeks of chemo await him.

Yesterday, I took a picture of a tree.

in bloom

I feel lucky to have what I believe is a bunch of open-minded people following my blog. So I ask you, please try to see the connection.

In life, there is so much beauty. While I’m sure Mike is worried as hell for himself and his new family, and it might be impossible at the moment for him to see what he has gained in light of what he has potentially lost, this is what I would advise him, if I knew him: focus on the beauty in every single day.

It’s so much easier for we who are not suffering to see the positive in things. The very last thing I mean to do is be glib. But each and every one of us is dying. Every thing that lives, will die. This is what connects us.

Please, send some positive thoughts out for Mike, and for all who suffer. And don’t forget to look for beauty, everywhere you go.


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The Simplest Things

DSC00084

click on the photo to see the detail

It’s funny how the simplest, and sometimes the ugliest, things can be made beautiful by nature.

The frost along the edge of these dried leaves captured my attention this morning while I was outside with Alex, waiting for the school bus.

Speaking of Alex and going to school, I thought he would be staying at home today. Yesterday he came home with a little itch on his wrist. No biggie. I couldn’t see anything, and he seemed to forget about it as he got involved in things to do. Then before bed it began to itch again. I encouraged him to ignore it and just go to sleep but he wouldn’t stop scratching. He was miserable.

After listening to him whine in bed for about half an hour, I went back upstairs to see him. He was covered, head to toe, in a red, angry-looking rash. There were bumps and actual weals on his legs, some of which were five inches across. It was horrible! I gave him an anti-histamine and let him sleep on the couch where it was a little cooler.

This morning, when he woke up, he’d forgotten about it. All that was left of the rash was the scratches he inflicted on himself with his fingernails.

The cause, as well as I can theorize, was stress caused by the simple little itch he had on his wrist – which was also gone this morning.

Funny how the simplest things can take on a life of their own, when given a touch of something extra, isn’t it?


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JusJoJan 18 – Dodged a Bullet

It’s both a blessing and a curse having a child who enjoys going to the hospital. Obviously it’s nice not to have to fight with Alex every time he gets sick – he gets sick a lot. He enjoys the attention he gets there; he loves to charm nurses and doctors alike, and to him, it’s an adventure. The downside is, he’ll pretend to be sicker than he is and then beg me to take him to see a doctor. And what better way, at this time of year, to actually catch something nasty, than sitting for hours in an emergency waiting room?

Last night he almost managed to convince me that he’d aspirated food into his lungs again. He complained of pain in his chest, that he was feverish, (he wasn’t) and he was just plain miserable, the same as he was on Christmas Eve. I suspected he might have been exhibiting symptoms from the flu shot he received the day before yesterday, so I decided to call Telehealth Ontario, a service we have here so that we can talk to a nurse, so see if our symptoms are worth taking to the emergency room.

The nurse asked me all the protocol questions before she would talk to me about Alex – is he responsive, is he in pain etc etc. I answered as honestly as I could. Yes, he was complaining of chest pain, yes he was turning blue around his lips (I explained he always does whenever he’s upset – it’s due to his heart condition) but no, he doesn’t have a fever. Finally she asked me a question that was relevant. When did he last eat? It was three hours ago. She told me that if he’d aspirated, the symptoms of that would have shown up earlier.

So while I was relieved, she was telling me to call 911 and have an ambulance take him to the hospital because of his blueness and his chest pain.

Why didn’t I? It was the sparkle in his eye that told me all he really wanted to do was visit his beloved nurses. Today there’s not a thing wrong with him.


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The Healing Power of Vitamin C

Every once in a while I come across an opinion piece in the newspaper or on the internet, stating the importance of Vitamin C in preventing and even curing illnesses. By far the most astounding account of it is this:

http://www.sott.net/article/256313-Did-Liposomal-Vitamin-C-cure-cancer

in which Vitamin C was apparently proven to cure leukemia in a child. The data is actually quite convincing.

I stumbled across the concept by accident years ago, when I realized that if someone else in the house had a cold, or if I felt the beginnings of one in myself, if I took at least a 1,000mg (1 gram) pill, I could avoid the cold altogether. This didn’t work, however, when we all had H1N1, but then again, according to the article, maybe I just didn’t take enough.

It seems to me that there’s enough evidence that Vitamin C works, that it brings up once again the subject of the big pharmaceutical companies having the monopoly over the market, and that doctors are perpetrating their hold on our wallets.

Nevertheless, I urge anyone who hasn’t already to try taking 500 – 1,500mg per day, in the case of the common cold. You can’t, from what I understand, overdose on Vitamin C, though it is thought best to be taken throughout the day rather than in one large dose, as anything more than is necessary for your weight and size will just go straight through.

It’s cheap and it works. On what, we have to trust the “experts.”


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All for the Cause

It’s Movember again and time to raise awareness for men’s health issues. Last month we wore pink ribbons for breast cancer.

I find it strange: when I was a kid there were no colourful ribbons, nor were there people shaving or not shaving to make others pay attention to their cause.

Now I’m not knocking anyone who decides to put themselves or their adornments out there to attempt to raise money or simply let everyone know what they’re fighting for; far from it. In fact, it makes me feel bad that I don’t have the resources to help out everyone.

But that’s the thing. It’s because there are so many different causes that foundations have sprung up, that ribbons are being worn, etc. because every one of them wants to be noticed.

Were diseases just not talked about years ago? Was research played down? Or is it that horrible diseases are so prevalent now, disabling and killing off our populations that our governments can’t keep up with the demand, and so the public must find a way to pay for the fix themselves?

The logical, dispassionate side of me wonders if it is the earth’s way of depopulating and renewing itself. The paranoiac side of me wonders at the possibility that the governments have a hand in it…  One way or another, it is natural selection – survival of the fittest.

But neither of these scenarios slow us down. We will always fight for what we believe in. Whether we are acting as survivalists or puppets, we can only do what we can to save those we love from the ravages of disease. I’ll be thinking of that, every time I see a ‘tache this month.


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My Three ‘Only’ Children

The dynamic that makes up my family is so unique that I don’t imagine there is even a statistic out there which would cover it. Since this is the case, I will describe it so that you can imagine.

Having grown up an only child, I always said that I would have more than one, so that my children would have a sibling to play with. So I gave birth to one beautiful little boy and then another, 14 short months later. When my second turned four years old, things became complicated. He was diagnosed with autism. After months of therapy and learning to read, he finally began speaking. Yes, reading taught him to speak. But being autistic meant lining up toy cars all the way around the dining room table, not playing with his older brother. To this day, he prefers to be alone all the time, and rarely interacts with us.

Then came the decision to have another child. Although there was going to be five or six years difference, at least when they were older my first child and my third would be able to get along perhaps. My third son was born Deaf, however. Imagine it. Having someone in your family, who you gave birth to, who speaks a different language.

Yes, we have all learned to sign. But there is no doubt that my youngest son is most at home with people who can not only speak his language fluently, but who can teach him what it truly means to be a Deaf person in a hearing world.

So there you have it. My family consists of three children who essentially have lives which are fundamentally different from each other’s.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, and anything is possible.


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My missing week

It all started Tuesday morning at 2:41am. I was woken from my sleep by one sick little boy. You have to understand that when this kid gets sick, he really gets sick. Stomach flu has, up until now, always landed him in the hospital because of his heart condition; his heart doesn’t do well with dehydration. So after being up since above mentioned 2:41 I took him to the hospital to get him set up on an IV before his condition became critical. Then I learned something new.

They don’t automatically hook up the IV anymore. First they try a very strong anti-nausea medication. So we did that, and after they were sure he would at least be able to handle electrolytes he was sent home.  Five hours later he wasn’t tolerating anything anymore, so back to the hospital. I’ve seen this kid when he’s been in distress, and believe me, I don’t want to go there again. It’s no fun seeing your 12 year old in cardiac arrest.

8:30pm we arrived in emergency again. 3:46am we were called into a room… still no real signs of distress from my little guy but he looked pretty dry having kept down the equivalent of two glasses of water all day – it was Wednesday by then. So we got into a room and he layed down on the bed and went to sleep. I managed to nod off for about 45 minutes sitting up in a chair. Then the doctor finally came in, woke me up, and demanded answers none of which I could remember right away, so she was pissed off. She informed me that they would give him some more of this wonder drug and try to feed him a half hour later, meanwhile they would send him for an x-ray because of his history of bowel obstructions. That was fine. We got back from that and I nodded off again, sitting up – 45 minutes later (an hour and a half after he’d had the drug) two nurses came in with a needle saying the doctor had ordered blood work on him.

“I thought you were going to try to give him water!” I exclaimed, tired beyond belief by this time.

“Nope,” they said. “Just blood work.”

They asked me to hold him still for them while he screamed his poor bloody head off but I was too much of a wreck. I felt sick. So they went about it without me. When I did turn to help they had poked him, unsuccessfully, and given up. Oh, did I forget to mention the discussion they’d had between them where the least experienced of them had offered to let the more senior one try and the more senior said no, you try it. … even though I told them it was difficult to find a vein on him when he WASN’T dehydrated? Yeah, that happened.

Then they left. Without saying a word to me, they walked out. I managed to snag one of them about half an hour later and I asked her what was happening.

“What’s happening with what?” she asked.

“With the blood work!” I said, shaking my head.

“Oh, he struggles too much and we don’t have enough people to hold him,” she said, and rushed away. This was at 6:50am.

I stood up after that, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who would actually tell me what was going on. At 8:30am the doctor finally came in. She took one look at Alex, who by this time was busying himself getting packed up to go, and one look at me, and declared I looked worse than he did.  Well yeah, after 4 hours of sleep over the course of 48, what would you expect? I was total mush.

I had everything explained to me, finally. His x-ray didn’t look normal so she told the nurse to let me know they were holding his water and giving him blood work instead… but the nurse didn’t. Had they done that I would have been able to tell them he looked better and saved him from being poked unnecessarily. Apparently the doctor had also requested a bed for me so I could get some sleep… Lovely.

So we were sent home.

Then I got sick.

I completely lost Thursday to sleep and, well, bed. There was NO WAY I was going back to the damned hospital.

So here I am. Both of us are better and almost back to normal. So what did I miss?