Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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5 Comments:
Sweets,
By Oh yeah, I know this story well! The borderline diabetes, the calcium and the heart are related and stem from the same DNA issues. The good news is a lot of it can be helped by diet and exercise changes. You might want to pick up a copy of the South Beach Diet book - Dr. Agatston is a cardiologist, he explains the issues very clearly.
Oh my goodness... Just saw this. I'm sorry for the stress, but I'm so glad to hear that things sound positive and hopeful from here. Hopefully that new puppy will also want to cuddle indoors!
By
This woman is incredible and I've only met her once. Her words and thoughts are so very inspiring and optimistic.
By
This woman is incredible and I've only met her once. Her words and thoughts are so very inspiring and optimistic.
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, April 22, 2005 My dear and most beloved friends. Those of you who have posted here. those who have written to me or called. How I love you. How strong is the net you have knitted to catch me if I were to fall. The knowledge of it is such a powerful support. It keeps terror, not just at bay, but out of the picture all together. It covers my back so that I can go forward, really hearing what the doctor is saying, sleeping soundly at night, and only overindulging in the littlest bit of Shopping Therapy, that spending of money we do when we need to fill up the black hole of fear in our hearts. In fact, apart from that brief bit of time while BD’s blood pressure was bottoming out, right at the beginning, I haven’t really been afraid throughout this whole awful thing. How can I ever thank you? And if you were to see the HeartPatient, you would think "What sort of game is being played here? This is no sick man - this is a fake." This is the most vigorous, powerful looking, voluble heart attack victim you’ve ever seen. He looks like someone taking a vacation, not someone who’s blood pressure flatlined 2 days ago. He’s bored. He says over and over "I can’t believe I’m supposed to be sick. I feel perfectly normal." And he really does look - not just normal, but better than he has for a long time. This is also the first time my goofy guy has had a physical since the draft board got to him back in 1962 - and all sorts of not very good things are finally being revealed. BD has an enormous presence - a yoga instructor once said his aura spread out 15 feet - and that’s about right. If you are at all sensitive to personal space, you bump into his just about the moment you walk into any room he’s in. His voice carries across the miles. You really do get a lot of him when you get him - and even when he’s still he seems to be just about to chop down trees or heave boulders about. This enormous presence has always been something I liked. It made me feel like I could be all sorts of big loud things and it would never be too much for him to handle. And all of this bigness seems to be holding his creaky health together, at least long enough for him to be butt kicked into a doctor’s office where he has learned that, not only does he have plaque in his arteries, but he also has early stages of Type II diabetes and a parathyroid condition that has his calcium regulator stuck in overdrive. This fellow is going to be very pharmaceutical in the coming months. As the distracted worry factor has ratcheted down and I have been able to consider and ponder and associate random things into a meaningful understanding, I realize there have been so many warning signs of his underlying health condition. The dichotomy of BD’s overwhelming vigor combined with a matching stubbornness and the normal human frailties of an aging body that’s been used hard, blinded me to what others might have deduced out of a rather black and white list of facts. Part of me is really shocked at how stupid I’ve been. Fer cryin’ out loud - why didn’t we have a blood sugar test after his retina detached 5 years ago? Of course, the doctors then assured him that people as nearsighted as he is often had detached retains, but mostly their patients were all diabetic. Sheesh! How blind can two people be? Well - the way I have lived with such a huge bull in a china shop that is no bigger than planet earth, has been to state my case, maybe even state it twice, and then, if I couldn’t easily move that table full of bric-a-brac out of the way, just let him walk into it. After the crash I’d hand him a metaphorical broom and let him sweep up the shards. Big hugging arms would always enfold him after he’d cleaned up the mess. Almost never have my warnings been heeded, though I’ll admit, he never has trouble coming back to me and saying "You were right." After 31 years, it will probably be difficult to change many of our ways of relating to each other, but yesterday he promised me he wouldn’t fight me on the food issue. In fact, I was present when the dietitian came in and the three of us had a very lively conversation. It was endearing, too, to watch him gesture towards me several times and say "well, she will take care of that". Whatever there was of the frightened little boy inside him was so glad to have whatever there is of the Big Mama inside me, close by, fully capable of fixing things for him. It really was like going to a parent/teacher conference. He’s out of the intensive care unit now, and sometime today or tomorrow or, possibly, Sunday, he’ll be discharged. The Magnificent Sheryl came by yesterday and did an extra special job on the house. It gleams with welcome-home shimmers. He can walk up and down stairs so we don’t have to set up a new bedroom. I will be sure to be with him most of today so that as doctors come by and give him their perfunctory instructions - like "no excessive walking" - which he will think means he can’t walk up to Rose Hill, 4 miles away, but surely he can walk the mile out to the mailbox. (Thank goodness I was there when the doctor started talking about one mile hikes! That’s just a stroll out to the mailbox around here.) He has to take it easy for 6 weeks while the trauma to his heart subsides. After that the doctors will assess whatever, if any, permanent damage was done. By then he will have been on Weight Watchers for a month and a half and there should be many signs of improvement - not just in his body, either - for I hope to benefit from the new regimen as well. TheDarlings promise to go get the new puppy on Sunday. A board member has promised to play hostess at our Japanese Embroidery Lecture and Demonstration this Saturday. I stopped by Ben Franklin and, in spite of the StashFromHeck, bought beautiful green Patons Merino to knit the Spring Fling Bag from this. I don’t really want a hairy purse, so I am using some mohair yarn in variegated pinks, from my stash. I’m working on the body of it now and with size 15 needles it will go very fast. I am not particularly covetous about bags. I am more of a box person. Boxes stay at home and tempt one with the promise of a surprise inside. Bags or purses are both mobile and utilitarian - sort of like cars - and they have to be easy to learn, easy to memorize and seldom change. I have one expensive brown leather bag I use summer and winter till it gets so shabby even I notice it, and then I go out and buy another expensive brown leather bag. There are a lot of very cute bags and purses in this book I’d like to knit. I hope my friends will enjoy them. And so my dear friends - thank you so much for caring and for letting me know and for just being who you are. posted by Bess | 6:25 AM |
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