Tag: Guest Blogger

 

This Saturday, December 21, we are planning to drive three hours to attend a funeral.

What could possibly be more important than time spent with the people we love? Yet I hear complaints about stupid things like what children’s school Christmas-Holiday-Winter Concerts should or should not be billed as. Does it matter that much? I personally know two young mothers whose little girls didn’t live long enough to start school. There are actually arguments over the ethnicity of Santa. In my own childhood, Santa was a woman (played by my now long gone grandma). The Santa of my grandson’s younger years was a young African American man (also now gone from this world).

I know two young ladies who are facing the first Christmas without their mothers. A former classmate will spend another Christmas without his son, who was killed in Afghanistan. My mother’s oldest friend is going to dress up and drive to the nursing home, where she will eat Christmas dinner with her husband of over 60 years, a resident there who suffers from Alzheimer’s. My son works all day on Christmas. The hospital is full of people who will also be spending the holiday there. He gets to come home when his 12-hour shift ends; they do not.

It doesn’t matter if the cookies burn, the weather is lousy, the tree is crooked, and the turkey is a bit dry. Who cares if we have to exchange the ugly sweater we received, the kid’s Christmas concert was called a Winter concert, Santa didn’t look the way we thought he should or the wrapping paper didn’t match the tree ornaments? Does it matter if, because of scheduling conflicts, we have to celebrate two days before or three days after? The greatest gift any of us could possibly hope for is the gift of time. Not much else matters.

This Saturday, the winter solstice, will be the darkest day of the year. It is the day with the least daylight hours. Each day after will be a little brighter.

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You’ll find them at the dinner table, in coffee shops, on the beach and just strolling down the street on a nice day. They can be seen in cars, at the mall, or in the grocery store. They are “the extra person in the room”. They are the electronic devices. Almost a species of their own, they are carried around and talked to, given attention and frantically searched for if they go missing.

I stood back and took notice of how, when watching a pay per view movie over the Thanksgiving holiday, there were several “extra people”, uninvited mind you, who were getting lots of attention. One “extra” was playing backgammon with my husband, who wasn’t interested in the movie. Another was facilitating a chat between my grandson and his friend. The third was sending real time photos of scenes of the movie to my daughter’s social media account. The following day I watched a woman get her dog’s leash tangled in her legs while chatting with her friend via “the extra person”. (By the way, I now know what she pays for car insurance, what gift she is getting for her husband for Christmas and how much she paid through Amazon, and that she’s pretty sure the relationship between her sister and married coworker is no longer platonic.) While getting groceries, I was treated to the details of a woman’s gynecological exam, as she relayed that experience to her mother via the “extra person”. I’ve been shown real time photos of people I have never met doing things I have no interest in. I’ve watched people so preoccupied with “sharing” something as it was happening that I’m not real sure they were fully aware of the experience themselves, even though they were RIGHT THERE.

The result? I am setting out to prove there is life without “them”. The holiday season is hectic, what with the baking, shopping and meal planning. This year, I am going to go through Christmas without the help of social media or cell phone. The computer will be limited. I will buy a few things on line that I can’t get locally, but will finally pay a visit to some of the lovely little mom and pop shops downtown. I may look up a recipe or two, but more probably I will peruse those dusty old cookbooks I’ve collected over the years.

The “extra person” is not invited. I plan to savor the season without added distraction. I want to be fully engaged in the experience.

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Thursday we give thanks for all that we have. Then later that same day, or maybe the day after, we head on out and see how much more we can accumulate. Tradition.

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I know this flies in the face of all that Jeff Noel stands for, but I have got to be honest. I hate to exercise. The minute I set foot into a gym, the distinct odor causes my gag reflex to kick in. I love to swim, but living in the Northeast means there is a definite season for that. Indoor pools = public toilet bowls.

All that being said, there comes a point in time when a decision must be made. We can either keep on ignoring the truth and hope for the best or we can force ourselves into submission. I don’t think there are many people out there who have not heard the benefits of exercise. The same as smokers know that smoking is negatively impacting their health, drinking heavily isn’t doing them any favors and fried cheese steaks with mayo and a side of fries is making substantial deposits in their arteries, we all know that we should try to incorporate physical activity into our life. We KNOW!

Sometimes true motivation comes from desperation. Arthritis has caused me to wake in the night with hip pain and stop wearing anything but supportive shoes. When I turn my head my neck makes the sound of milk being poured into a bowl of Rice Krispies. One day when my ankle was nice and swollen I got some free medical advice from my son. “Looks like arthritis, Mom. You know, dropping a couple of pounds would mean less weight on the joint.”

As I sit typing this post, I can see the park at the end of my street. The Township just paved a quarter mile walking trail around its perimeter. I’ve been forcing myself to go down there (almost) every day for the past two weeks. I walked a mile on day one, not wanting to aggravate my joints. Yesterday I walked two miles. Last night I slept through the night without waking up in pain. I feel like a hamster on a treadmill, pointlessly going in circles around the track. I haven’t bothered to see if I’ve lost any weight. This gal loves her sleep and doesn’t enjoy pain, so I will be heading down there later today, as soon as the rain stops.

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“By golly, Jim, I’m beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!” – Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy – Chief Medical Officer, USS Enterprise

Yes, I’ll admit it; I watched Star Trek. My son was a HUGE fan and his interest was contagious. What amazes me is that some of the things that seemed so futuristic on that show have become reality. Tricorders were a constant presence, used for data analysis and recording. Medical tricorders were used for analyzing a patient.

NASA now uses a LOCAD, which monitors space stations for onboard fungus, E Coli and salmonella. Not so different from the fictional Tricorder! In the not too distant future, we will benefit from handheld devices that check for cancer, diabetes and bacterial infections. Development is in the works!

It really is amazing when you stop to think of the recent medical advances we now take for granted. Joint replacements, cardiac stents, statin drugs and MRIs are all commonly used. Open-heart surgery for valve replacement isn’t that old a procedure and now, in some cases, is being done as minimally invasive surgery. In our grandparent’s day, having one’s gallbladder removed was major surgery; now it’s routinely outpatient, with three tiny incisions covered by Band-Aids. Cataract removal meant lying in a hospital bed with sandbags around your head to keep you immobile. My mother recently had hers removed by laser and stopped for lunch on the way home. My current amazement is the treatment for my father’s macular degeneration. My friend’s mother is now legally blind because of this common condition. For just the past decade, there is a treatment that slows the progression and in most cases even restores some vision loss. Monthly injections into the eyeball of the exact same drug- but in a much lower dosage- that is also used to treat colon cancer; my father is now able to read two more lines of the eye chart, and he’s only had three injections so far. I stay by his side through the process, which is pretty simple and totally painless, according to him. It always makes me smile and say a little “thank you” to those child science nerds who saw the future in the crew of The Starship Enterprise.

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