Health Update Jan. 4, 2013

Birthday #69

From Portlandia “Put a Bird on It!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XM3vWJmpfo 

Dear All,

New Year’s greetings to each of you! I hope this finds you feeling rested and well after the busy months of November and December!

Knowing I could find the best birthday gifts, Rituxan and Dexamethasone, at an infusion center, I spent today at Compass Oncology and that means it is “Health Update” night. I have a new doctor, Kathryn Kolababa:  “East Coast” trained: Yale with a few other impressive stops on her way from there to here. She’s impressive! Smart, experienced, curious, thorough, a problem solver, and a teacher who wants her patients to understand their disease and meanings of the labs. I think she felt good about my own research and understanding and my relationship with WM. Today she went to great lengths to tell me about my “numbers” on the labs done a week ago. I agree with this quote and apparently she does too: "The best prescription is knowledge." 
-- C. Everett Koop, MD, former Surgeon General of the United States

 New to me was the IgG understanding. If one’s IgG is greater than 400, they don’t have problems with infections. Mine is 100, so I need to be sure to get the pneumonia vaccine and stay away from biting cats and dirty people. My blood viscosity is NORMAL! And my thyroid is NORMAL! I think “normal” is a great birthday present. All you have to do is try abnormal to really understand. My IgM at 1144 was up a little and she had some concern about that. She felt it could have been related to the stress of the holidays or the persistent cold and cough I’ve been fighting. She’s right, I’ve spent half of Nov. and December traveling and all “best practices” for good health were neglected. I’ve been in quiet mode since I returned ten days ago and this week I plan to start the New Year in balance… the ever illusive goal!

For me, sensitively balancing the following is the goal:  time with family, friends, and community, time with yoga and meditation, time “giving back” in volunteer work, time exercising and strengthening my body and preparing healthy foods so I eat well, time tending to household tasks, and time spent learning something new. I remember my mother saying, “Time is the only thing everyone has the same amount of. How you use it is the difference.” I know I should start here with exercise. You might find this motivational too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo&feature=player_embedded#!

23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? - YouTube

 Facilitating writing groups with Write Around Portland will fill lots of my goals at one time. Visit their website if you want to know more about this activity I will be involved with: http://www.writearound.org/what/what_we_do.html. Facilitating a writing group of adults here in my apartment community also fills some goals I hadn’t anticipated at the onset. There are eight of us age 86 to 30 and through our freewrites and sharing, we’ve evolved into a group of close friends.Yoga, meditation, exercising, etc are all falling back into place, but I have a new challenge/endeavor related to breathe and to having fun.  A few weeks ago, my friend Deb invited me to a “free voice workshop”. http://transformvoice.com. I had little idea what to expect, but found out it was a new not-for-profit that has classes in how to use your voice…singing, speaking, and I don’t know what else. Fifteen weeks from now, I will be singing loudly; I do know that.

So friends, that’s way too much about me tonight, but here are a couple of things I want to share with you before I crash (Dexi is slowing down on me and it’s only 4:40!)

Great read! Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I’m about halfway through and I can’t put it down. Fascinating!

 This is a uTube of kids who made musical instruments from found stuff in the dump. You may have seen it before. It gives me hope: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151279562307432&set=vb.759907431&type=2&theater

For those who love adventure, take a look at a few of these: http://expeditionunderground.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ

I may have sent this uTube before, but it’s worth another look, so I urge you to watch it and while doing so think about change in all life forms.

He says it’s about gratitude, but it’s also about change, and I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately. There was an interview on NPR yesterday with a man who has researched people’s perception of change. He said people think change happens when they are young, but not much once they older. He had his research group write about change and growth in the past ten years of their lives. He discovered people are continually changing throughout their lives; it’s just a bit slower in later years. I had my writing group do a 10-minute freewrite on it last night and it was an eye opener! Try it and it will reveal how much you have changed. I bet you’ll be surprised! Here is the link to the interview.
  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/science/study-in-science-shows-end-of-history-illusion.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

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The following is an interesting article I read while visiting a Hindu Monestary on Kauai last month. It's about aging and change too, so I'll include it in case any of you are interested.

Lesson 234 from Living with Siva From Reviewing Hindu Family Life Strucfture

Renewing Life's Plans
When the body reaches middle age, a change of pace occurs. One feels like sitting rather than walking, sleeping more than one did before, and it is more difficult to make long-term plans, ten, twenty, thirty years ahead. At middle age, the question "What am I going to do with my life?" has long been answered but still should be asked, because at middle age, around forty, there is still a long life ahead. It should be planned out as carefully as the life span that has already been lived, based on the experiences gained from it.

Many people plan out their lives at eighteen or twenty, and others don't. Nevertheless, when the change of life at middle age comes, both for men and women, it is only wise to regroup one's thoughts, analyze one's desires, motivations and educational skills, physical, mental and emotional abilities. It is time to plan another forty years ahead with as much enthusiasm and dynamism as can be mustered up. After all, they say life begins at forty. A lot of people die at fifty or shortly afterwards because they feel that everything is breaking down. That is because they misinterpret what is happening. They think the death experience is coming, whereas only a change of life, of life experience, has occurred, which began at forty. If they took it as a new passage in life, they could be on smooth sailing until eighty.

Forty years of age is well known as a change of life. Seventy years of age is the prime of life. Eighty is the fulfillment of that prime. As one nears eighty years of age, this is again time to revamp one's life, motivations, desires, and to plan for the next forty years, which recognizes a natural life span of 120 years. It is interesting to note that the muscular structure of the physical body does not start to deteriorate until after age seventy-two, and then only slightly, unless one neglects to exercise. Mystics say that eighty years of age is a difficult time to get through psychologically, physically and emotionally, because it is definite that your are old when you are eighty. Therefore, a new plan for motivation for the future should be made well in advance, at least at age seventy-two, so that when eighty rolls around it is well impressed in the subconscious mind that, this might be time to start slowing down and preparing for life after the life of the physical body.

 It is at this juncture that one should give one's wisdom to the younger generation, be dedicated to and interested in children and their welfare, manage orphanages, set up endowments and scholarships for educating the young, see into the lives of promising people and encourage them to greater heights. This is the time also to perform sadhana and intense tapas. This is where the yoga marga naturally comes in a lifetime. The physical forces are fading, the muscular structure diminishing. Great spiritual progress in burning out the last prarabdha karmas, even those that did not manifest in this life, can be accomplished at this time. If retirement is thought of, it should be at eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four, around that time. This should be the slowing-down period, yet still being active in the mental, emotional, sociological, political, ecological arenas.

Here, now, is a time to practice hatha yoga and pay close attention to ayurveda. There is another forty years before the natural life span of 120 is reached, plenty of time to fulfill the Sanatana Dharma, to get out there and give of the wisdom that has been accumulated through the past eighty years. This is the real fulfillment of a life well lived. Or if your life was not well lived, you can teach people, from experience, what they should not do, and explain if they don't follow that advice, things won't work out right.

That's all the news that's fit to print! Be well. Do good work. And take good care of yourselves and your neighbors!

Ruth