One thing I’ve tried to do in life is to get my ego out of the way, live my values and not worry about what other people think. I thought I was starting to learn how to do this, but a recent study implies it’s not a matter of experience, it’s that a part of my brain is starting to deteriorate. Whatever. That works for me too. 🙂
What about you? Do you find it easier to get your ego out of the way and to ignore the judgments of other people as you get older?
Do you think our political system is broken? Fixed? Do you think your vote makes much difference?
Politicians in the state of Tamil Nadu, India are convincing people that their vote does affect their lives. The two leading parties are debating issues such as how to stop corruption and how to solve the problem of electricity shortages, but the race will probably be decided on the perks they’re offering if their side wins. As the Wall Street Journal points out in It’s Not the Economy, Stupid, It’s the Free Blenders and Sheep, the two parties are offering such things as blenders, food grinders, free sheep for poor families, etc. Is it really any worse than most political situations? It does have one advantage, it gets out the votes!
What do you think?
As I’ve already mentioned, I was very sick with chest pains last Monday morning and went to the emergency room. I knew it wasn’t a heart attack, but I also knew they would have to check for that first. So I was lying on the table and the doctor came in to give me a nitroglycerin tablet to put under my tongue, and to apologize in advance for the headache it would probably give me. It was for diagnostic purposes.
In fact it didn’t give me a headache. Instead my blood pressure fell to 70 over 40, which made me even sicker and got the attention of the nurses. One was frantically trying to attach my IV to some saline solution, and I said I was feeling nauseous. She said something like, “Try to hold the barf until I’m done here.” I thought she meant wait until she was out of the way, and I laughed. I said, “I would like to have something to vomit into.” So another nurse quickly got a plastic basin out of the cupboard and put it on my stomach, which was reassuring, even though I ended up not needing it.
I also told them the pill hadn’t completely dissolved…my mouth was so dry that a good part of it was left. One of the nurses took it out, which we all thought was a good idea.
In the meantime the nurse did get me hooked up to the saline solution which brought my blood pressure back up and we were back to where we started. It didn’t seem so bad any more. As one of the nurses said, “She’s really sensitive to nitroglycerin, isn’t she?” Apparently I was that. Who would have guessed?
Anyway, that was my little adventure this week. What have you been doing for excitement lately?
Message to my daughter Wednesday evening:
Thanks for the pictures. I just got home from the hospital and am going to take a nap. I feel great, just lazy. I’m supposed to take A….. for 7 days and am reading about side effects. Hope the doctor knows what he’s doing. The people were very friendly.
Love, Mom
Kaitlin’s reply:
I am so glad you are home!!! I love you! A….. is what almost killed me, but that is just me.
Take care!!!
Kaitlin
The two-day visit to the hospital was an interesting experience, but I’m too lazy to write much about it right now. I went to the emergency room Monday morning because of severe chest pains…it hurt to breathe… and because I felt really sick. In the past that feeling meant I needed medical help. I naively expected to go back home that afternoon. Instead they admitted me and kept me for two days, even though I felt a lot better that afternoon. They eventually decided I had pneumonia and prescribed A….., an antibiotic.
I was completely relaxed about the whole affair, until I had the prescription for 7 more days filled and came home and read about the side effects. (I never take a prescription drug without reading about the side effects first.) What?!! They seemed even more scary than usual, why didn’t they prescribe something less scary? Well, the doctor had asked me if I’m allergic to any drugs and I told him my standard answer… not that I’m aware of. So they had given me three intravenous doses of A….. in the hospital. I didn’t even question it at the time, so it was a bit late to ask for something else instead, and it did explain the extra day in the hospital. It gave them a chance to see how I reacted to it. It never occurred to me that I would have a bad reaction and I didn’t. I’ve been very lucky so far with antibiotics. I hate taking them, they completely mess up the fauna in our bodies, but sometimes we need them. I also eat plenty of yogurt to replenish the good fauna.
As it turned out in Kaitlin’s case she had taken a cousin drug a few years before and had a negative reaction, which the doctor insisted wasn’t from the drug. So after a couple of days of taking A….. she went into anaphylactic shock. It could have been avoided if she had known the cousin drug had caused problems. As it is she’s also had to make trips to the emergency room because of inadvertently eating chicken. For instance, once in a restaurant she had told the server about her allergies and ordered a salad. Guaranteed to give her no contact with chicken. She suddenly felt the telltale reaction, then saw a chicken bone in the midst of the lettuce. Life can get very complicated.
Why chicken? Her best guess is it’s factory farming. Producers used to give chickens the cousin drug that started her severe reaction. She has since experimented at home with guaranteed antibiotic-free chickens and that seems to be all right.
Anyway, Andy has suggested I wait until he comes home today to take my daily dose of A….., just in case. That makes sense. I’m back to being relaxed about the whole thing. The general rule about drugs still applies…don’t take them unless you have to and keep your eyes open for rare but serious side effects.
What about you? Have you had much experience with antibiotics or other prescription medicines?
What is Spring (or Fall for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere) like where you are? Here we don’t notice the birds, we notice the wind. Our elevation is over 7200 feet and we’re well aware when the jet stream shifts. I put on my ankle weights when I go for a walk. Can’t take too many chances. 🙂
Expat Mom is a Canadian-born wife and mother raising her two boys, five and almost four years old, in Guatemala. Even before the boys were born she knew she didn’t want them to be as helpless as Earl in the cartoon. Instead she says:
…I wrote down a list of things I wanted my kids to know by the age of 16. I figured at that age, they should be pretty much independent and able to care for themselves, should anything happen to us. The list included skills like swimming, driving, doing laundry and cooking.
She’s already been teaching them to cook, but she was still surprised when she and her husband recently came back from a trip to get groceries. While they were gone the boys had cooked themselves some oatmeal to eat. Their aunt, who was watching them, had turned on the stove and made sure they didn’t hurt themselves. That was the only help the boys needed. The adults were amazed and proud, and as she was leaving the aunt said,
Your kids don’t need anyone to look after them! They can navigate the internet, clean up their own messes and even cook for themselves.
It just goes to show you don’t have to be a Tiger Mom to raise competent children. I hope you enjoy the post as much as I did.
Do you agree with Picasso? What about Baudelaire?
You must always be intoxicated.
That sums it all up: it’s the only question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time which breaks your back and bends you down to earth, you must be unremittingly intoxicated.
But on what? wine, poetry, virtue, as you please. But never be sober.
—Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
Do you think Picasso and Baudelaire are saying the same thing? What keeps you young? What intoxicates you? Do you think we should be intoxicated all of the time? Never?
The world is changing fast. Are you concerned about some of these changes? Do you personally feel safe? Do you have your own “secure den and pack you can trust”?
On a completely different note, have you heard of the new “manly”, no-girls-allowed diet sodas? You can’t blame Dr. Pepper for trying, but do you think the drinks will sell?
And have you heard that the U.S. Army’s new physical training includes yoga and resting? It’s not as macho, but it’s more effective.
The world is indeed changing.
I recently read an article about why adolescents are more apt to engage in risky behaviors. It’s not that they’re irrational and can’t assess the dangers, it’s that their brains are wired to reward them for taking chances. That certainly was true for me. I’m a very risk adverse person, but I remember being a bit more daring when I was in college, especially when I was in Europe with Stanford-in-Germany. We went on a field trip to Rome for a week and a friend of mine and I sneaked into the Forum at night and walked around, feeling very daring and brave. It was presumably illegal and there was a bit of anxiety that we might get caught, but it’s hard to believe we would have been in that much trouble if it had happened.
The trip to West Berlin was a different matter. It was before the Berlin Wall was built and East Germany was still under a repressive Communist government. But East and West Berlin were connected by a common metro system and it was easy to take the train into East Berlin. Shortly before we left Berlin to go back to West Germany, another friend decided he wanted to steal an East German flag as a souvenir. What?? I tried to talk him out of it but no luck. By some misguided feeling of loyalty I told him he wasn’t going alone. I would go with him. So one night we took the metro to East Berlin and wandered around for a while looking for an unguarded flag. Just before we had to go back to the station to catch the last train back we saw a flag on the top of a trestle. The area we were in was dark and seemed secluded. My friend was trying to figure out how to climb up to the flag when we saw the glow of a cigarette not too far away. We figured it was probably from a guard and got the heck out of there.
Stupid adventure? Of course, but it ended well and it still tickles my funny bone to think of it. 😀
What a difference a few years makes. Five years later Andy and I spent 13 months in the Paris area, traveling around Europe on weekends, holidays and vacations and coming back the long way to complete a trip around the world. At one point we weren’t sure if it would be safe to go to Morocco, so we went to the American Embassy in Paris to ask. The fellow said the main thing was if we saw a crowd gathering, just go in the opposite direction. No problem, we were conservative grownups by then. Plus the fact we both hated crowds.
What about you? Did you ever do anything crazy in your life? Were you a bit more reckless when you were a teen?
What do you think of these parents who were sailing around the world with their three children and got hijacked by Somali pirates? Do you think they were being reckless?
Do you have any favorite quotes or sayings? I’ve been collecting some for years and have a huge pile of them by now. I occasionally go through them to see which ones resonate the most. At the moment it’s these two:
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day—that is the highest of arts.
—-Henry David Thoreau
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty available to us now. And that is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of practice.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
Learning to “affect the quality of life” isn’t a common hobby, but it’s been mine since I was a teen and it’s been one of the loves of my life. It’s complicated enough to keep me curious and fascinated, and it gets even more interesting as time goes on.
Do you have any favorite quotes? Do you have any hobby you’re passionate about?
