Tag: health

Updates on health

A Short Visit and a Variety of Thoughts and Happenings

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I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I thought I could do everything. But I can’t. My first priority is, as has always been my loving “Puppy”, and our time together is growing short. I am his caregiver. I am his wife. And he is the love of my life, so I need not have to elaborate how triply difficult this journey is. Trying to suck it all up 24/7 so I can keep him happy and talk about happy things.  I may have done wrong by keeping him optimistic, knowing full well I was lying to myself and him. But I am newly over denial, and reality sucks.

I’ve taken this quiet time out to post here for a bit of this and that, and not quite sure when I will get the time to write again as my husband is in end stages, palliative at home, every day is stolen time. This whirlwind mountain of actual what the fuck, had taken me into a tailspin since the horrifying diagnosis and me trying to make like there was hope when there is none. I will also blame goddamned Covid and no doctor visits because I believe if they saw him in the past year, all the tests would have been done then. So yes, I BLAME COVID, like the thousands of people dying of non Covid ailments because of no doctor visits.

I won’t even allow myself to think of our good times, as that would just throw me over the edge. I function on autopilot. I do whatever I can, and if it means a few weeks of no sleeping, so be it. I’m 24/7. My always strong, smiling, loving husband is like my child now and I continue to fight for him, and I am thrilled at the most amazing doctors and palliative teams of nurses and personal support workers, and our country’s health system. I’m getting a bird’s eye view of what goes on when you’re actually living the experience.

This is the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life. And it’s something you can’t begin to explain. One who has walked the shoes only knows how affecting it is to be an eye witness. I’m an empath. These are the parts in books and movies I squint my eyes at, or fast forward. I feel the pain and the sorrow of others, and it’s cutting. And I’m smack in the middle of it. I cannot allow myself the time to grieve as I’m living it and because I must soldier on. I cannot allow my brain to wander over to the ‘after’ part and all that comes – and leaves, with it. So I don’t focus on it, I just keep to what’s in front of me one day at a time.

So much is going on daily here with nurses and support workers and phone calls and and medical supply deliveries, and I had to call 911 for the last time last Sunday again to try and save him one more time. He came home Thursday by ambulance to live the time he has left, at home with his Cub. I’ve learned to operate in numb-like mode, on autopilot. I dare not take any thought of what will be when he is no more. He is now bedridden since his last return and won’t eat, only sleeps. I thought I was losing him Thursday night, but my warrior husband is still here. He can’t talk but he can nod his head.

We’ve struggled our whole marriage about where we would ‘go’ once we leave this earth, as our religions are different and I never wanted to talk of such things. My bad indeed.  But I am grateful to my brother who did the legwork for me, and I have an appointment on Monday to purchase plots ten minutes away from where I live. They have a section for inter-faith marriages – something that was sparse 20 years ago.  I’m pretty sure I’ll need a Valium on Monday.

Time is very precious at this time, and I’m plum worn to the bone, so I’m not sure when I will post again. But I wanted to update you all here, as I’ve been getting so many emails, texts and messages of love and support from many of my friends and answer only when I get a short minute. I know my very good friend Sally Cronin has been keeping my online presence alive and I’m sorry I can’t like, comment or share, but just know, I will be back after this journey. I most definitely won’t be the same person as I once was, but surely, I will have much to write about.

Thank you all for your love and support and keep the love coming as somehow, it does help.

 

©DGKaye2021

bitmo live laugh love

Because life is never guaranteed.

#BookReview – Forget the #Viagra, Pass me a Carrot – Sally Cronin

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book reviews

Today’s book review is on Sally Cronin’s book ‘Forget the Viagra, Pass me a Carrot. Sally is a brilliant writer and writes in different genres. This book just happens to offer a lot of her wisdom and knowledge Sally acquired as a nutritionist, on health and nutrition and the human body.

 

From the Author:

 

The latest headlines in the Media recently are constantly highlighting the fact that men are at risk as they ignore early symptoms of life threatening disease. Cardiovascular and Prostate disease if caught in the early stages can be treated and managed but surveys indicate that men do not know what symptoms they should be looking for.

 

Despite the title, Forget the Viagra, Pass me a Carrot! is not just about the physical causes of sexual dysfunction and the dangers of taking a drug that is bought without medical consultation, but about men’s health in general. A workshop manual takes the working parts, describes how they function, what can go wrong and how to prevent problems in the future. This men’s health manual – does just that – takes all the major organs, illustrates how they work, the symptoms to look for and also how to avoid the problems in the first place.

It is never too late to make changes that can give your body a great chance at a long and vital life.

 

Blurb:

 

This is a health and Nutrition book aimed at men – and their partners who are interested in keeping them fit and well. It provides a fundamental understanding of how to deliver essential nutrition to support all the major organs, with a focus on keeping a healthy sex life into old age.

 

pass the viagra sally

 

 

                                       

 Visit Sally’s book page on                

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/author/sallycroninbooks

 

My Review:

 

This is a book for everyone to have on their bookshelves. The blurb states it’s aimed at men, but don’t be fooled, this book has a wealth of health information for everyone. It is similar to having a manual or a dictionary about keeping our bodies in optimal function with suggested nutrients, vitamins and minerals, causes of bad health, and suggested methods of repair for the whole human body.

 

A fascinating read which will have every reader identify with at least some part of the book pertaining to their own health issues.

If you want to learn how our organs function, what it takes to keep them running efficiently, and live in health, I highly recommend this book.

Thank you gratitude

A Heads Up and Thank You

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thankyou new

Just a quick post to thank you all so much for your kind words and wishes to me here and on Facebook regarding the ongoing illness of my husband. So many of you have been so wonderful with your concern and good wishes through this ongoing process. I’ve done my best to try and keep up with your blogs and find stolen moments to reply to all of you who take the time to leave comments here. I really appreciate the support more than you know.

 

The past few days have been difficult, and yesterday I had to get my husband back to the hospital. The waiting and worrying is grueling, and to be quite honest, if I get a moment to breathe, it’s difficult to push myself to get on the computer. So with that said, I just want to let you all know I’ll be scarce most of this week, and will be catching up intermittently when I can. So please forgive me if I miss visiting some of you this week.

 

I do have a very interesting post coming out Tuesday that I put together in draft a few days ago. Please feel free to leave your comments as always, and know I will respond to them when I can.

 

Thank you all so much.

xo D.G.

#Health and #Happiness Wishes For The New Year

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cheers V day

Health and happiness wishes have become somewhat of a trademark blessing from me when the clock of time turns over a new year. I also tend to write these same wishes to someone when I am signing a birthday card for someone. I suppose it can become so easy to sometimes take our health and life for granted. Studies say that often many don’t fully appreciate things until they experience a near fatal situation which somehow spurs one into deep appreciation mode.

Sometimes we just seem to get so lost in our daily lives that even those of us with best intentions and inner gratefulness can also tend to let these blessings be taken for granted. We all have our moments in life when we sweat the small stuff when we know very well that those problems we are groaning about are miniscule compared to worse things in life but human nature will make us focus on the immediate obstacle rather than overlooking its insignificance compared to a tragedy.

Although I am always grateful for my life as it is, I am no different than the majority. I admit I’ve had my moments of ‘freak out’ but I don’t dwell on things and eventually I shake myself out of those moments. And maybe because I have survived some life altering moments and cheated death once or twice I did become one of those newly awakened people even though I thought I had previously never been ungrateful.

The bottom line is if you analyze things right down to its smallest form, you can wish you were rich and you can wish for materialistic objects but none of it is any good to us if we don’t have our health. All the money in the world can’t make us better if we are fatally ill and we would give our last cent just to be well again. So when I offer someone my wishes I always wish in the highest power and so there is nothing better than to wish health and happiness to someone because there is simply nothing better in this world that we could want for.

So once again, I would like to wish you all health and happiness for this new year and forward.

 

DGKaye©2014

What?

Is Canadian Health-Care becoming an Oxymoron? -My Opinion

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What

Isn’t it strange that most of the time we watch the news regarding government funding, there rarely seems to be anything positive in the decisions being made for the average citizen?  it seems that more and more the topics being discussed usually include some sort of cutbacks.

I always say to my husband, there is not usually any good news on the news; I find it sometimes a mere foreshadowing of some gloom to come.  The Americans cry out at the state of their health-care and often compare it to our Canadian O.H.I.P. system.  Albeit, we as Canadians, are quite lucky to have such a health care system, but like most systems these days, it is quite evident that we continually feel the pinch of cutbacks with each passing year.  It seems as though more and more tests and prescription drugs are being eliminated from  formerly covered expenses.

As a holistic person, I do my best to try and live by ‘clean eating’ and I maintain my health by taking natural supplements which have sustained me and kept me in long remissions through the years while living with Crohn’s disease.

Health Canada has been slowly taking many supplements off the shelves of our health stores; supplements that many people like myself have come to depend on for better quality of life, for many years.  Not necessarily for health warnings per se more so because a lot of beaurocratic red tape.  It seems the process of approval for many supplements has been going through a ‘re-vamp’ for quite a few years now.  When they decided that all supplements required a NPN number, the supplier of such supplements had to re-submit forms for these numbers for items that had already been on shelves for years.  Newer supplements suppliers submitting forms could literally be in a wait line for years because of the backlog to implement the system,  This process can take some years until all submissions get to their review. In many cases, products are being taken off the shelves in the interim.  There is a lot of controversy about this because of a lot of hearsay about whether or not the system is relying on qualified checks on such products or if it is leaning back to the pharmaceutical companies, because that is where the money is.

This lag in the review process of course gives people like me, who rely on such products, not many alternatives,  I feel as though doing this to people who choose to live ‘naturally’, without pharmaceuticals, are being pushed against a wall.  I just think that we should all be able to make informed choices based on truthful information and not be media-hyped or government urged to have to rely on pharmaceuticals as an ‘only’ alternative,  I just want Health Canada to start looking at us citizens with human compassion and not as statistics about the almighty dollar.

Unfortunately, the world is becoming to greedy, in a desperate attempt to ‘one up’ one another, leaving human compassion sometimes to the wayside.  For now it’s just an inconvenience, but I am grateful to be able to still obtain my long-time remedies from the U.S.

 

DGKaye©2013

question marks

Thoughts – #Brain health – Food for Thought

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Can you even imagine?

All my great ideas and great question marks seem to come to my mind in the still of the night, lying in bed waiting to drift off into slumberland.
Last night I was reading an article in a health magazine and stumbled across an article on Alzheimers and Dimentia. As I was reading , I found myself becoming really frightened at what I was reading.
I know we all know about this terrible disease and we all think it will never happen to us, so in a certain way I think we disregard it like it’s something that we would never want to dwell on happening to us, but in the still of the night when your mind tends to wander into the realms of the ‘what ifs’ I found it scary.
The fact that your mind abandons you and possibly your lifetime memories and memories of loved ones could  be snatched away from you, leaving your life in a dark abyss. I think it just brought to light how we so often take so much for granted in life. Just the simple day to day things we do, we rely on our brains to autopilot us through life.
So in that sinister moment I  shake my head and reiterate to myself that I must keep feeding my brain. The brain needs exercise too, not just the body. We must feed it with knowledge. Eat well, read, write, listen to music, dance, play cards and anything else that challenges ourselves to keep it running like a well oiled machine.