Tag Archives: Health

Imaginary Friends in High Places

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I never made a secret of being less-than-optimally mature and having an imagination that makes Attention Deficit look laser focused. Let’s be honest, keeping that reality quiet was a non-starter idea anyway; that particular cat shot right out of the bag before I even escaped my own play-pen, and, well, I was an early climber.

And speaking of climbing, I was a social climber from the beginning. I kinda think I’m better than I probably actually am, if you take my meaning. No, I never gave a serious fig for name-dropping (though, boy-howdy, the stories I could tell you!) or for impressing people with my associations with prestige. Not only do I find overt fawning generally an embarrassment except between actual friends, I’ve always been too poor, too cheap, or both when it came to buying Name merchandise. Not to mention that I think rich retailers should pay me to advertise their products, not vice-versa, and so on those rare occasions when object-lust converged with mega-sale, I am the person who instantly took said objet home and blacked out the corporate logo or sat and snipped it off the clothing, stitch by stitch.

All of this information is not as off-topic as you might think. My theme, you see, is that I think pretty highly of myself just as-is. Now, no doubt there are those detractors that might hasten to add that “it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.” I’ll leave them to fester in their own frightful fallacies. If indeed my fine self image is problematic, there might be some other persons fit to share a portion of the blame with me: parents who subscribed to that bizarre notion, unconditional love; teachers (not counting my third grade ogress) who actually taught and encouraged me. Family and friends, too, who still unfailingly clothe me in the cape-and-tights raiment of someone admittedly far better than I am but for whom I am quite willing to be mistaken while I’m yet busily aspiring to become them.digital photo illustrationMeanwhile, I can tell you that I’ve always had a pretty good sense of this being surrounded by earthly and supernal cheerleaders to assist and enhance my sense of personal privilege and well-being in the world. It keeps me on a relatively even keel.

Now, if you happened to be on board here when I’ve previously mentioned coping with anxiety, clinical depression, phobias (yes, I’m a veteran of all of those), nerd-hood, weirdness and being 17 (I’ve survived all of those too), it should be as obvious as the strings carrying Ed Wood’s flying saucers that I am neither perfect nor so deluded as to think myself so, let alone be immune to self-doubt and those temporary bouts of dis-ease that rate various positions on the inadequate-to-self-loathing slide rule.

But thanks to this even more deeply ingrained, however fanciful, liking of myself, I have always eventually recovered and returned to my standard state of cheery self-hugging enthusiasm. I think I’m a little like those boxers’ training dummies, taking a righteous smack to the schnoz from time to time that floors me, but always eventually sproinging back upright with my vapid but genuine grin on my face, just happy to be here. Because, by golly, I really do think I’m kind of swell.photo

Foodie Tuesday: The New Miracle Diet that will Give You X-ray Vision, Eidetic Memory and the Pheromones to Attract Every Sexy Human You can Possibly Want!!!

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If the Perfect Miracle Food were the food you despised most, would you eat a barrel of it anyway?

I’m beside myself [Ed: yes, right over here] with ecstasy that we live in an age where we’re constantly receiving updates apparently teleported, straight from God’s lips, on new life-saving Superfoods and diet strategies that will bring about world peace and end the shortage of sporty convertibles in our time. I realize that as long as there have been hucksters and hyperbolists that could spell Snake Oil there have been such claims filling the air and jamming our brainwaves with unrealistic wishful optimism. Purveyors of serious science and common sense have both long since given up on the possibility of coming to a definitive answer to the perpetual question of what’s good for us to eat, at least one on which all sentient beings can agree. That never stops anyone from trying either to discover it or to convince us (with our remarkably flexible wallet-hinges) that they have.

But the modern info-bombardment wherein we swim encourages us to see, hear and believe an ever-noisier, ever more enthusiastic and far-reaching set of claims to this Truth. Amazing! Astounding! and the ever-popular exclamation that I so love, Incredible! (As if I can’t tell just from the obnoxious typography of the advert and the hilariously awful before-and-after unretouched photos that there’s nothing remotely credible to be found in the accompanying claims.) Scientists are almost as guilty of outrageous claims as anyone, in this environment where every research program has to compete for every dime with not only every other genuine researcher but also the whole phalanx of false prophets and their wonderful platinum-plated products. It takes only a tiny effort for the completely uninformed amateur to sleuth out at least two diametrically opposed studies on any given dietary claim that have produced what looks and sounds like fairly convincing data, so I am loath to do anything more dramatic than take it all with a grain of salt.

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. . . and how do you prefer your sodium chloride: hickory smoked or deep fried?

Which, indeed, is what I will likely do. Hey, there are enough mutually exclusive authorities regarding how much sodium is permissible in whose diet and in what forms to keep a whole herd of elk dying in wait for the salt lick. I’m fond enough of being alive and not feeling like, say, I’m in imminent danger of keeling over with toxins squirting out of every pore of my body while I disintegrate to dirty swamp water like the alien in a 50s B-movie that I do try on the average to put things into my mouth with a modicum of moderation and thoughtfulness. I look for what seems to make me feel my best and work to include that in my meals rather than always succumbing to the lure of the luridly unhealthy.

It just seems to me that we have actually been living for a bit right in the middle of Woody Allen‘s Sleeper. Regardless of your view on Woody Allen movies, I’m nearly at the point where I think all school health classes should be required to see that film at some juncture in their studies just for the scenes where hero Miles Monroe is brought out of his cryogenic sleep and is coached by his attending doctors on how the understanding of health has changed in the two hundred years while he was snoozing on ice. There’s something almost eerily familiar nowadays when reputable researchers and doctors from every corner are admitting that perhaps not all of our longtime religiously held convictions about sugars, fats, proteins and all of those other pesky elements of edibles we fear and worship are exactly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. That perhaps there is a bit more difference in how one person or another is affected, and how good or evil that might be.

All I can say is, it’s kind of a relief to think that I don’t have total control over my destiny through what I ingest, so I’m going to continue to consider myself a so-far live experiment subject willing to undergo certain tests to see what can be most deliciously survived in my lifetime. Come on over and chow down with me, and don’t get too hung up on it, okay? There’s too much edible, drinkable goodness of every kind just hovering on the edge of my ken for me not to show it some respect and appreciation. Amen, let’s eat.

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So many tasty choices, so little time . . .

Elemental, My Dear

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The elements . . . not just for survival anymore . . .

Let’s face it, no question that we’re deeply dependent on the elements of nature. If I ever had any doubts, this summer has been full of wonderfully explicit reminders. The fiery heat of this record-breaking high temperature streak is scorching the land, making the state as water-starved as it’s ever been and turning the very air into an enemy (friend Patrick perfectly described standing in the wind here these days as being “like I’m standing inside of a giant hair dryer“). Even the water that still exists around here is overheated: fish are being cooked in the lakes. Parched crops are dying and threatening to starve the livestock, which in turn are being sold off before they too die off, and that means whole farms and ranches crossed off forever. At the same time, in other parts of the world, flood and typhoon and hurricane–a surfeit of the water my region is desperate to drink–are equally fierce in toppling crops and towns and livelihoods. These wet winds blow with the same violence that stirs up the dust of our baked clay ground and desiccated, blasted trees’ branches, but when loaded with water their fury takes on drowning power along with the walloping wall of pressure that forces the world into what we would like to think are unnatural contortions–but of course are sent directly by nature.

The elements are also high in my consciousness when I’ve been seeing my partner through a series of outpatient procedures, the latest and most significant of them (nasal surgery) intended to greatly improve his ability to breathe. Let me just tell you that nothing on this bejeweled and stupendous planet will compel me now to steer my current search for vocation (a job will do, but a vocation would be SO far preferable!) in a medical direction! I always knew I was not a natural-born caregiver, being much too self-absorbed to devote my all to looking out for the best interests of another properly. I knew I was, to put it kindly, timid in the face of danger and not especially tough, unless you might be referring to the calluses on my drawing hand. But I also rediscovered my squeamish side, finding that seeing my beloved in the least discomfort, let alone wan and semi-anesthetized and speckled with his own blood, renders me just this side of paralyzed and struggling for equilibrium and air just about equally with his own distress. Not a huge help. Luckily for us both, his medical teams throughout the summer have been truly outstanding and the procedures have all gone as nearly perfectly as one could wish, or we might both have been marooned.

The latter surgery itself was a fresh reminder of the centrality of air in our lives. My spouse, being a singer and conductor and teacher, has always been very pneumo-centric in the peculiar way of such creatures, and has also long had nasal breathing impairment that made a good night’s sleep an unattainable grail. Despite this, it wasn’t until we decided to further investigate the possibility of some of his seemingly mild allergies being better treated that his ENT discovered a whole world of underlying trouble with a CT scan and a little nostril-gazing. A drastically deviated septum, bone spurs on his internasal structures, and a whole “secret room” closed chamber taking up space on one side to further block air passage–it all makes me curious how he managed all of these years on such inadequate resources.

It’s a little like when I finally got the treatment that brought me off the brink of disaster when that infamous foe of a chemical imbalance in the brain couldn’t be corrected with talk therapy and a better physical health and earnest intentions for self-improvement. The minute my meds really started kicking in I began to realize not only that I was capable of being my whole self, but that I could do so without enormous impediments it’d never occurred to me other people didn’t have, let alone that I didn’t have to have them. What a pleasant shock. I am hopeful that once he’s fully recovered my guy too will find a perfectly astonishing improvement not only in his breathing (his surgeon says he wouldn’t be surprised by an 80-90% improvement) but in all of the aspects of life directly influenced by it. There’s no question that being far more fully oxygenated will drastically change his life experience, and I can only expect that that will be for the better.

Now, of course, the post-op life is full of struggling for enough hydration to counter the dry breathing (particularly through the humidifier-free night) constricted by swollen sutured tissues and following the effects of anesthetic, meds and stress. Ay! It’s conscientiously working on deep breathing techniques to counter the post-op blockage. It’s being careful to gently spray rather abused tissues with plentiful healing saline but conversely not to let bath, shower or shampoo water get, literally, ‘up in his face’.

What’s ahead, no knowing. Only that we will continue to learn our respect for the elements both when they attack us in excess amounts and when we long for them in their absence. For now, I will join in the communal rain dance and add to it my own arabesques for more air. Just be glad I’m doing any of my dancing in the metaphorical or perhaps metaphysical sense and you don’t have to watch me perform it, or there would undoubtedly be a surfeit among my readership of another kind of saline. Whether you cry from horror or from laughing yourself to tears is up to you.