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Choosing an Elder Care Agency
Are you in need of an elder care agency for a loved one, but don’t know what you should be looking for? I’m here to help you get started. A few years ago, when my father began to experience cognitive decline and difficulty with organizational and household tasks, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He became anxious when left alone, even for a short amount of time, so my family decided to hire a home health aide. The agency we chose didn’t charge too much for caregivers, and they could take him out to lunch or to do...
read moreTwenty-Two Week Preemies, Should We Save Them?
Are you a neonatal intensive care nurse? Do you believe we should save premature babies born at twenty-two weeks? What kinds of treatments does it take to save a fetus whose viability is uncertain? The New England Journal of Medicine recently published the results of a study showing the outcomes for five-thousand babies, born between twenty-two and twenty-seven weeks, at twenty-four different hospitals. The purpose of the study was to see if differences in hospital practices regarding initiation of treatment for these babies could explain the...
read moreAre You Wearing a Helmet?
With the warmer temperatures finally here, maybe you’ve unlocked your bicycle from sitting stiff in the garage all winter, and have been riding it, hopefully with a helmet, to work every day. Or maybe you ride for pleasure – to feel spring wash over your face while inhaling the lilac scented breeze. It’s estimated that nearly 70 million Americans ride bicycles. It goes without saying that riding a bicycle is good for your health, but doing so does not come without risks, especially if you are not wearing a helmet. More than 600,000 people go...
read moreHow to Write About Body Image
If you had to write about your body, what would you say? First, let me define body image: it’s how you think and feel about your body, it’s shape and size, how you see yourself in the mirror, how you feel in your body. Writing about your own body might feel a lot like walking through town naked. But I’m not here to encourage you to strip on the page, though a certain amount of stripping is required in order for our readers to get to know us as real human beings. The more important question is, when writing about your own...
read moreEquine Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Are you in search of a creative, interactive approach to treating post-traumatic stress disorder? Several years ago, when horseback riding, I reached behind me for my raincoat that was strapped to the back of the horse. As I swung the coat toward me to put on, the horse bucked and started running. I panicked and forgot what I had learned a few moments earlier – not to hold the reins too tightly, which will only make the horse pull harder, or lean forward, which signals the horse to run faster. The guide, who was not far behind me...
read moreBananas
During a visit with my father last October, I experienced a moment of mutual presence with him, a moment so rare between the two of us that I had to write about it, not only for me, but for you. Do you have a similar experience you are in need of sharing? Bananas While I eat lunch with my father today, he stares at the bunch of bananas in front of him. “They’re so beautiful,” he says. “Their so yellow.” He smiles, then giggles. Who is this man? Before my father’s dementia started progressing a few months ago, he never noticed the...
read moreStages of Forgiveness
*Years after eighty-six-year-old Russell Weller ran me down at the Santa Monica Farmers’ market, I possessed enough emotional fortitude to unearth the new articles I had collected about the accident. It was then when I decided I needed to find a way to forgive him. I’ve been told that forgiveness is over-rated, that you don’t have to forgive to heal. While that might very well be true, my want to forgive others for any wrong committed is part of my constitution. So I had to at least make an attempt to forgive Russell Weller. Otherwise, I’d be...
read moreHealth Care: “The Right of Every Citizen”
I recently had the pleasure to meet Dr. Gene Lindsey, a compassionate and empathetic physician for nearly four decades, who has been a guiding voice in Massachusetts concerning healthcare reform. To be fully informed about the latest happenings in healthcare, I encourage you to read Dr. Lindsey’s blog, where you can also sign up for his weekly newsletter Healthcare Musings. In an email exchange with with Dr. Lindsey, he shared with me his experience visiting his ninety-four-year-old father this past winter. Because I want to understand...
read moreGlassmusic: A Novel by Rebecca Snow – Review
In her debut novel, Glassmusic, painterly prose brushes the page in sweeping greens and blues. Weaved throughout that lush 1920’s Norwegian landscape, is the heart of the narrative: A coming of age story in which young Ingrid struggles to come to terms with the sexual assault she witnessed against her sister, Kari. Ingrid’s blind father, who relies on her to see for him, teachers her to play music on water-filled glasses. Those melodies, along with guiding her father, are what protect her from her secret and ground her through her tumultuous...
read moreHow to Keep Your Brain Fit
Do you enjoy memorizing poetry? Do you recall your youth, when when your teachers assigned you poems to memorize? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Sound familiar? Or maybe you have craftily blocked that time period from your memory bank. But, like our quads and gluts, the brain is a muscle too. If we don’t exercise our muscles they’ll turn to flab. Memorizing poetry, or a song or scene from a movie, is just one way to keep our brains fit. And the profits are worth the time invested (I know, you’re wondering what the profits...
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