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7106. judithathome - 5/17/2007 4:59:01 PM Wonk, got the number and suggest Magos delete the post now...thanks! I can't get a referral until Monday when my doc returns from a trip. Will keep you posted. (And thank your brother for me...I just might give him a call!)
Thoughtful, I'm thinking it's going to be a big nothing...I have no symptoms, no pain, no blurred vision...he showed me a lot of examples of what it might turn into but didn't seem overly concerned. (Didn't send me straight to the specialist, rather.)
He did show me that particular problem your hubs had, though...said it actually looks like over-stretched SaranWrap. 7107. judithathome - 5/17/2007 4:59:55 PM Sorry, I thought this was the Cafe...maybe Wabbit could delete it. 7108. judithathome - 5/17/2007 10:19:24 PM Well, my doctor just got all in a swit and referred me to another eye doc and I will be going in tomorrow...he was quite miffed at me that I thought it could wait til next week. 7109. arkymalarky - 5/17/2007 10:58:06 PM This site is very neat for monitoring diet and fitness. 7110. wonkers2 - 5/18/2007 10:33:43 PM A few hospital jokes 7111. judithathome - 5/19/2007 8:41:58 PM My eye is fine and that was 3 hours and 15 minutes out of my life that I'll never get back...the specialist's office is a hotbed of inefficency and there were about 20 of us sitting there with dilated eyes, trapped in a room waiting to see the doctor.
Only funny thing was that his name was Dr. Hu and the girl at the desk said "You're here to see Dr. Hu?" and I said "Ranalle" and she said "No, Dr. Hu" and I repeated "Ranalle" and finally I glanced down at the card and saw DR. (whatever) HU printed on it and told her I got it...but that I felt like I was trapped inside an Abbott & Costello routine. Unfortunately, she was too young to get that particular joke...
Anyhow, I'm supposed to watch for any changes in my "floaters" and "flashes" and if I see a change, to come back...otherwise, just keep getting older. 7112. wonkers2 - 5/19/2007 9:50:32 PM That's good news! 7113. betty - 5/20/2007 3:11:36 AM arky,
I was out running yesterday and my eyes started filling up with goo. Of course I thought of you...How is the fitness routine going? 7114. arkymalarky - 5/20/2007 3:56:09 AM I've been just maintaining a little exercise and eating out a lot less, and otherwise I haven't able to do a lot without getting worn out, but since my doctor doubled my thyroid medicine the other day I feel better. Today is the first day I really felt like I could tell a difference. I bought a basketball goal and Bob and I worked on assembling it quite a while without me getting exhausted. I don't know if I'll be up to "normal" next time my thyroid is checked in about three weeks, but I see I can function better with this upped dose and I haven't gained any more weight--I lost a pound or two from where I was originally and then planed off, and I'm thinking I'll be able to exercise longer now and eat less. 7115. arkymalarky - 5/20/2007 3:29:42 PM I'm also trying to figure out how long I may have had this; if I had it before my hysterectomy and then it went lower this year, when I gained ten or fifteen pounds and felt like crap but attributed it to being way overloaded (which I was). Or when I gained about 20 before that and got the symptoms that required a hysterectomy, which I attributed to extreme stress and overload while I was in a mad fight to keep our rural school from closing. I'm just trying to sort out what's what and trace things back so I can see where I'll be wrt health, weight, etc, once my thyroid is correctly adjusted and my allergies are back under control, which I hope will happen within the next few weeks. If "normal" is before all that, then my weight should be about 20 lbs less, and I'd like to lose another 20 eventually, to get to where my weight was in my 30s.
I'm focusing on feeling good, though, at the moment, and won't concern myself with weight per se until I'm at what I think would be my "normal" health level through eating a balanced diet and exercising.
Speaking of which, anyone have opinions (HA!) on the detox rage? I read an article in MSNBC about it that really warned about it, but I know a few health-food store frequenters (not health nuts--they seem to use health-product resources like a Chinese menu) who think it's great for cleaning their systems, not weight loss. 7116. arkymalarky - 5/20/2007 3:31:47 PM And wrt eating right, I am eating at least one piece of fruit and some vegetables every day and drinking a low-sodium V-8. And I'm drinking 4-6 glasses of water a day at a minimum and getting in physical activity most days, but--as I said--very little of it. 7117. arkymalarky - 5/20/2007 10:14:31 PM It took two days to put up that basketball goal. The instructions were awful, even by assembly instructions standards. But I got a lot of physical activity out of putting it together and was able to do it. Last week, no way. And I LOVE IT. I shot baskets while Bob cleaned off the old concrete slab I'm playing on (from the carport of our old house), and I just love it, chasing the ball around and everything. It's all fun. 7118. thoughtful - 5/22/2007 2:41:34 PM On the importance of adequate protein and other nutrients in the diet.
Death by veganism
WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty....
Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.
The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal proteins and fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of plant proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even soy.
A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods; usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage.
and
There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run. 7119. wonkers2 - 5/22/2007 4:03:18 PM I saw that article yesterday. It confirmed my previous opinions about veganism. It also validates my occaisonal two slider and fries lunches. My new daughter-in-law is a vegetarian. But she drinks milk, and eats eggs and cheese, etc. I hope that will be enough for a pre-natal diet if she were to get pregnant. She grew up a vegetarian and is a graduate of MIT and has a PhD from U of Washington. So, I guess she didn't lose any brain cells as a result of her diet. 7120. thoughtful - 5/22/2007 4:59:42 PM what's a slider? 7121. robertjayb - 5/22/2007 5:35:38 PM (baseball) A pitch thrown with added pressure by middle and ring fingers yielding a combination of backspin and sidespin, resulting in a motion to the left when thrown by a right handed pitcher
The closer had a wicked slider that was almost unhittable.
A small greasy hamburger
We ordered five sliders.
(curling) A piece of teflon or similar material attached to a curling shoe that allows the player to slide along the ice
(Wiktionary)
7122. thoughtful - 5/22/2007 6:02:02 PM hmmm...you learn something new every day! 7123. wonkers2 - 5/22/2007 9:22:50 PM A slider is a very small hamburger cooked with onions. Sometimes they are a bit greasy, hence the name slider. The kind they sell at White Towers. 7124. thoughtful - 5/24/2007 2:39:53 PM The two go hand in hand...the diabetes drug Avandia substantially increases the risk of heart attack.
Diet and Exercise can stave off type 2 diabetes
Participants randomly assigned to intensive lifestyle intervention reduced their risk of getting type 2 diabetes by 58 percent. On average, this group maintained their physical activity at 30 minutes per day, usually with walking or other moderate intensity exercise, and lost 5-7 percent of their body weight. Participants randomized to treatment with metformin reduced their risk of getting type 2 diabetes by 31 percent.
So which is it...expensive drugs that are less effective with potentially deadly side effects?
Or diet and exercise that is more effective and will make you look and feel better?
I report...you decide. 7125. wonkers2 - 5/24/2007 3:06:56 PM Opinion All NYT
Opinion
Rethinking Old Age
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By ATUL GAWANDE
Published: May 24, 2007
At some point in life, you can’t live on your own anymore. We don’t like thinking about it, but after retirement age, about half of us eventually move into a nursing home, usually around age 80. It remains your most likely final address outside of a hospital.
To the extent that there is much public discussion about this phase of life, it’s about getting more control over our deaths (with living wills and the like). But we don’t much talk about getting more control over our lives in such places. It’s as if we’ve given up on the idea. And that’s a problem.
This week, I visited a woman who just moved into a nursing home. She is 89 years old with congestive heart failure, disabling arthritis, and after a series of falls, little choice but to leave her condominium. Usually, it’s the children who push for a change, but in this case, she was the one who did. “I fell twice in one week, and I told my daughter I don’t belong at home anymore,” she said.
She moved in a month ago. She picked the facility herself. It has excellent ratings, friendly staff, and her daughter lives nearby. She’s glad to be in a safe place — if there’s anything a decent nursing home is built for, it is safety. But she is struggling.
The trouble is — and it’s a possibility we’ve mostly ignored for the very old — she expects more from life than safety. “I know I can’t do what I used to,” she said, “but this feels like a hospital, not a home.” And that is in fact the near-universal reality.
Nursing home priorities are matters like avoiding bedsores and maintaining weight — important goals, but they are means, not ends. She left an airy apartment she furnished herself for a small beige hospital-like room with a stranger for a roommate. Her belongings were stripped down to what she could fit into the one cupboard and shelf they gave her. Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses, and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies, and other forms of group entertainment. Is it any wonder most people dread nursing homes?
The things she misses most, she told me, are her friendships, her privacy, and the purpose in her days. She’s not alone. Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning — results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually.
Certainly, nursing homes have come a long way from the fire-trap warehouses they used to be. But it seems we’ve settled on a belief that a life of worth and engagement is not possible once you lose independence.
There has been, however, a small band of renegades who disagree. They’ve created alternatives with names like the Green House Project, the Pioneer Network, and the Eden Alternative — all aiming to replace institutions for the disabled elderly with genuine homes. Bill Thomas, for example, is a geriatrician who calls himself a “nursing home abolitionist” and built the first Green Houses in Tupelo, Miss. These are houses for no more than 10 residents, equipped with a kitchen and living room at its center, not a nurse’s station, and personal furnishings. The bedrooms are private. Residents help one another with cooking and other work as they are able. Staff members provide not just nursing care but also mentoring for engaging in daily life, even for Alzheimer’s patients. And the homes meet all federal safety guidelines and work within state-reimbursement levels.
They have been a great success. Dr. Thomas is now building Green Houses in every state in the country with funds from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Such experiments, however, represent only a tiny fraction of the 18,000 nursing homes nationwide.
“The No. 1 problem I see,” Dr. Thomas told me, “is that people believe what we have in old age is as good as we can expect.” As a result, families don’t press nursing homes with hard questions like, “How do you plan to change in the next year?” But we should, if we want to hope for something more than safety in our old age.
“This is my last hurrah,” the woman I met said. “This room is where I’ll die. But it won’t be anytime soon.” And indeed, physically she’s done well. All she needs now is a life worth living for.
Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of the new book “Better.” He is a guest columnist this month.
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Past Coverage
National Briefing | South: Louisiana: Post-Hurricane Charges Dropped (April 26, 2007)
Oversight of Nursing Homes Is Criticized (April 22, 2007)
FITNESS; Shuffleboard Gets Pushed to the Closet (April 10, 2007)
Elder-Care Costs Deplete Savings Of a Generation (December 30, 2006)
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