Category Archives: Health

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate, World History

Clean Teeth. Legislation. Western Civ.

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Spring                                                                       Waning Bloodroot Moon

Dangerous driving conditions tomorrow. Winter storm warning.  Who stole my spring?

Into the city twice today, once to get my teeth cleaned and a second time for a Sierra Club meeting on legislative basics.  The teeth cleaning, an every 6 months visit, has become routine by now.  Mary, the dental hygienist I saw today, complimented on my teeth-brushing.  That feels a bit to me like being told, good boy, you cleaned your plate.  Mary has a gentle way with her and worked hard to convince me to take extra good care of my teeth.  It’s important for overall health, especially as we age.

On both trips listened to another lecture series, this one on Western Civilization, part II.  It focuses on the 500+ years in which modernism arose.  This is ground I’ve been over from several perspectives over the years, but each time it gets a bit clearer and the puzzle pieces seem to fit together better.  Modernism and the Enlightenment are key to understanding our current political, cultural, social and economic conditions, so it’s hard to become over educated about them.  What I enjoy now is finding connections between, say, Chinese history and Western.

I’m on lecture 9 already.  Just finished the Reformation, ground I know pretty well, but it never hurts to hear it put in the larger socio-political context.

The economic and environmental situation we find ourselves in now can be traced back to this period, both the good and the bad.  More later.  I’m tired.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Humanities, Retirement

This is life.

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Imbolc                                            Waning Bridgit Moon

Sunday night Kate and I went to St. Anthony Main, overlooking the Mississippi and St. Anthony Falls, for a Roots Music festival put on by KBEM, a local jazz station.  While we ate at the Aster Cafe and listened to a small group, Kate looked up at me and said, “Ah, the life of the retiree.”

I understood what she meant.  Free at last.  But….

I had another reaction too, “Yes, I know what you mean.  But, really.  This is life.  Not retired life, but life itself.”

In that moment I realized the category mistake everyone makes when speaking of retirement.  It is seen as special, different, unique, something to be fussed over and transitioned into when really it’s just life, life continuing.  Not different, not special, not unique, not to be fussed over.

Or, to say the same thing another way.  It is different, special, unique, to be fussed over because it is your life, your life, your one and only special and true life.  We have to want our life and lead our life before we work, while we work and after we work.  We do vacate the workplace, but we do not retire from our lives.

In fact, the fuss is too often that we’ve left our lives up to others.  Our boss, our clients, our patients, our corporation or agency.  The past times and activities that seem so necessary, but are really only the ideas of others.

So, the problem and the promise lies not within the change in our work, but with the change in ourselves.  If we have known what our life is, if  we have chosen activities and friends for their intrinsic value not their external rewards, well, then, on with your life.  If not, the issue is not the transition, but the need for self-examination, for honesty with the you that you bring to life as  you grow older.  No one else can do this work for you.  It’s up to you.

Cooking, Health, Weather +Climate

Nix Still Comes Down…Geesh

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Imbolc                                                       Waning Bridgit Moon

This has been a nix two-day event.  The Woolly’s, for the first time I recall, canceled.  Too little parking around Charlie Haislet’s condo.

The days events scattered around me, I never quite got traction, feel a little down.  Nothing bad, just wheels spinning.  Don’t like it.

The snow-blower, which needs a tune-up, chugged, coughed and sputtered, but worked long enough to blow the snow off the sidewalk.  I was glad.  This was too heavy for a shoveling session.

Kate and I do plan to join the Y here after I get back from Blue Cloud.  I’m after a personal trainer to get a resistance work out going again, plus I’m going to do my first Pilates and attend a bodyflow class that uses a combination of Tai-Chi, yoga and Pilates.  Sounds fun to me.  I’m deconditioned right now when it comes to muscle mass, so shoveling the walk would have hurt.  My aerobic conditioning is fine, no heart attack likely, but a lot of back and shoulder ache.  Looking forward to getting back to resistance work.

So, I’m gonna workout then roast a chicken with garlic cloves under its skin and onions on the inside.  These are our garlic and onions, still useful this far into the season.  I’m also going to use some canned beans from 2007.  A little bulgur and we’ll have a meal.

Aging, Cooking, Health

On Weight

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Imbolc                                                                       New (Bridgit) Moon

While at the Northern Clay Center yesterday, I had a conversation about weight loss.  Weight loss can prove difficult for those of us in recovery since we often replace alcohol with calories.  The obsessive nature of the alcoholic personality tends to keep us coming back for more, of no matter what.  If we can’t have beer, we can at least have the weinerschnitzel.  Many Americans, not only those in recovery, struggle with weight gain.

My own weight gain crept up on me over a period of years until I was ten to fifteen pounds overweight.  I’ve tried weight-watchers, nutri-system, exercise all to no avail, at least eventually, though I lost weight with the first two each time I tried them.

Oddly, only a couple of weeks before the new national guidelines hit the newspapers, I decided to finally make up my own approach.  Eat half of what I would ordinarily.  Add fruits and vegetables to each meal.  Don’t eat in front of the TV.  That’s it.

The key to my approach is, I think, that it is my approach.  I identified three troublesome areas:  too much on my plate each meal, inadequate fruit and vegetables during the non-growing season months and mindless eating while I watched mindless TV.  I figured I could make these modification without feeling deprived and without giving up my favorite foods.  So far, so good.  I’m back in my old pants, using my old belts.  My energy level is up and the amount of work I can do on the treadmill has advanced impressively for me.

So, if my example amounts to anything, it’s this:  identify some dietary problem areas.  Decide on simple, manageable solutions.  Apply them consistently.  Most of all, be kind to yourself.  We all die of something.  We all have times when we look great and when we look terrible.  Befriend the part of you that wants to get real about weight.

Cooking, Health

A Simple Plan

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Winter                                                    Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Chili smells have begun to fall down the stairs and enter my study.  Smells pretty good, especially after  a workout on the treadmill. I’ve up the difficulty by two incline levels over the last week or so and it feels good.  Need to find a personal trainer who can get both Kate and me jump started on a new resistance program.

Also, in dietary news.  I have the found the secret to a healthy weight:  eat less food.  No kidding.  I know.  Obvious, right?  Here’s what I’ve done:  first, I imagined the portion I would cr400_late-summer-2010_0200eat for a meal and cut it in half.  Surprisingly, not a hard thing to do.  Still satisfying.  second, I decided that I had to have a vegetable serving and a fruit serving at every meal.  Again, obvious.  You’re probably already doing it, but I’ve slouched along on the fruit/veggie thing.  Now, each meal.   third, I stopped eating while watching TV.  This is an important change for me because it led to a lot of mindless eating.  Now if I want a snack while watching TV I have to turn off the TV, go make something and eat it in the kitchen at the table.

Oddly enough, this relatively simple minded plan has worked.  I’ve dropped ten pounds + since beginning it.  The good news is that there’s nothing I’ll ever need to stop and it allows me to eat what I want, just less of it.  And, actually, this is something, too, it makes it possible to have two really good meals out of what would have been one and done.  I love that.

Commentary on the news, Health, Minnesota, Politics

The Moral Test of Government

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Winter                                             Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”   It is still said.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Ouch.  Latin infinitives and indirect statements.  I’m on Chapter 25 (of 42) of Wheelock now and the grammar and vocabulary isn’t getting easier, it’s getting harder.  Suppose this should not be a surprise, but I kinda hoped…  My mind has pressed out against my skull, then bounced back, a coup contracoup injury occasioned by working too damn hard.  Ah, ok.  I love it.  Still, in spite of the strib this morning, this love does hurt.  At least now.

The legislative grist mill has begun to grind and this time the sacks will be filled with coal dust as lives, especially lives of the most vulnerable, suffer hit after hit from the budget cutters.  There was an NCIS Los Angeles (see, Latin and pop culture within two sentences of each other.) recently that I thought was corny, about a military number cruncher who wanted to make the numbers names.  The plot was corny, but the point was not.  Just as military numbers mean real people dead or maimed, so do the medicaid, general assistance, aid to the disabled and the elderly numbers mean real lives damaged, often beyond repair, because most of these folks are on the edge all the time.  It takes the smallest thing to set them on the downward spiral.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Health, Retirement

Gospel

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Winter                                                          Waning Moon of the Cold Month    3 degrees

In all the hoopla and aftermath of the party I forgot to mention the gospel.  The good news.  The friend’s wife I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the one diagnosed with cancer?  She came to the party.  Not only that she said her energy was better than it had been for a while.  She looked good, too.  Both she and her husband looked still vulnerable, the residue of concern, fear lingering.  She has a hormone treatment, recommended by her oncologist, that may keep the cancer at bay.  Not cure it, but keep it from getting a firm grasp on her.

As Leni said, another party goer that same night, about his throat cancer, “Well, you know, the goal now is to make cancer a chronic disease.  Something you can manage.”  He’s living proof, having survived in apparent good health for several years now.  He and the friend’s wife were not alone, either.  Hank, another party goer, has leukemia, a disease kept in check now for many years, so much so that it almost recedes into the background.

These are the three I know about.  There were probably others.  Cancer no longer has the skull and cross-bones attached to its every appearance.  Think of it.  Cancer is not a new disease.  It killed people relentlessly in all centuries before the last one.  Now, it begins to look, at least in many cases, like the caged tiger, pacing back and forth within its chemical compound, its lethality imprisoned, though not rendered harmless.

Kate has retired from the practice of medicine as others graduate each year to take up the responsibility, this tricky act we call healing.  It has more parts than chemistry and technology and knives, we know this, yet those parts themselves, the fruits of engineering and science, have a great deal to offer.  Perhaps this next century is the one where the enlightenment driven side of medicine will meet the ageless truths of the human spirit, joining together in a medicine, a healing for the whole person.   It may be that the last years of the baby boom generation, now upon us, will provide the impetus for this fusion.

Aging, Family, Health, Retirement, Travel

Giddy Kate

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Winter                                                               Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

A very floaty, giddy Kate rode with me back to her truck at the Hair Salon, then climbed in the green Tundra and drove off for her final night of full time medicine.  This is one happy chippy.  Fun to see her so excited.

Before that we went out to lunch at a favorite spot, a sushi place on old Hwy. 10, Takaido.  Not sure what the deal is, but the inside of the place offered little more than shelter against the wind.  It was cold.  I wanted sushi, but couldn’t imagine it in that chilly a space so I got salmon teryiaki with kani in bento box.  The hot tea warmed my hands and the restaurant slowly warmed to bearable.  They took over a fast food building and the outer walls around the dining area are glass and thin masonry.  Brrrr.

The Spectacle Shoppe called and said our glasses had come in, that’s why we were in that part of town.  This place has a really interesting collection of frames.  The owner has a quirky aesthetic, one that I like and so does Kate.  We’ve bought our last several pairs of glasses there, utilizing left over money in our flex-med account.  This is a big source of business for these folks; they even have a $75 off deal for folks using up their flex dollars.

All of Kate’s glasses were done; she had new lenses put in old pairs and bought a pair of new prescription sunglasses.  Aha.  She can see faraway now.  Good for driving.  My reading glasses were done, but new tortoise shell round frames were still waiting on their lenses.  I’ll have to go after we get back from vacation.

As to vacation.  In spite of the fact that we’re going to Denver, I find myself in an oddly sedentary mode.  Wish I could just flash there and flash back, not go through the whole airport rigmarole.  Why I like the train.  But, the timing on this one ruled out the train.l

Aging, Bees, Health, Humanities

Keep That Gray Matter Working

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Winter                                                            New Moon of the Cold Month

Geez.  I felt affirmed by this paragraph in a longer article by Oliver Sacks.

Whether it is by learning a new language, traveling to a new place, developing a passion for beekeeping or simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness.

Oliver Sacks is the author of “The Mind’s Eye.”

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health

Pain

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Winter                                                                 Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

When a friend is in pain, the pain travels.  In its journey from one friend to another, the pain may not lessen, but its burden may grow lighter.  Such a journey is underway now with a friend whose wife has received distressing news, the kind of news we know about yet still hope will never be heard among the people we know and love.  Cancer.  It has such a brutal, dangerous, threatening aura.  Black.  Shot through with jagged points.  Hearing the word in the mouth of a friend sets the inner self back.  Creates a sense of fear and loss, loss even before any loss, a type of loss that may be the final stage of innocence, the end game of our immortality.

Then there is turning to face the truth, to talk to the doctors, to sort out the words, the feelings, the possibilities, the dangers.  And choosing, choosing about matters of life and death. Decisions no amount of prayer or meditation or forethought prepare us for, decisions about our own life, its length, its end.  Or, worse, the life of a loved one.  Hope?  Of course, hope always has a role, a horse in the race.  But there are other horses, too.

My heart has been heavy ever since I learned this news, an existential dread, the kind always there, under the surface, the knowing, the knowing about predatory nature.  Yes, she is our mother; yes, in all ways, yes; but, like Coatlicue of whom I wrote a few days ago, she not only gives life, but she takes it back.

Cancer is not evil.  It has no intention.  It is.  It is a force majeur, an act of blind fate.  And yet.  We can, sometimes, turn it back.  Cancer’s aura has gotten a bit dimmer of late, a degree of lethal certainty has leaked away as drugs and drug regimens, research and surgery have chipped away at its powers.

So, I invite you to do the kind of thing in which you believe for my friend’s wife.  A kind and generous universe will know how to direct your message.  We all need love, love from places we know and places we don’t.