Ain't Got Time to Fix The... Shingles?

For a bit of a health update (am I getting old or what?) here's part of the weekly e-blessing I sent to my adult children today:

The older I get, the more I'm grateful for how blessed I've been. Life that has been good way beyond deserving, with my wonderfully loving family and church family, good health, meaningful work and wonderful opportunities to grow and serve.

All this became even more vivid in my mind when I noticed some strange, ugly looking sores on my chest and my back last Tuesday. I had been experiencing some itchiness in those areas for about a week but had never seen anything like this. I first thought I might be experiencing a recurrence of my one and only diagnosis of "cancer" twenty-plus years ago, involving a small spot on my thigh that turned out to be an easily removed case of basal cell carcinoma. But this looked far worse, and I was thinking something far more serious, like melanoma (!). Strangely enough, I found myself not only feeling the dread of a big "What if...", but a sense of peace in having enjoyed a long and truly satisfying life and feeling quite ready to go if that were my lot.

My good skin specialist, Dr. Carolyn Miller, whom I got to see Thursday, took one good look and immediately said, "Oh, you've got a case of shingles." Much as I hated to hear that (having heard all kinds of horror stories about the condition) I felt a great sense of relief as well. I hadn't expected this diagnosis, since I had gotten a shingles shot over two years before, but was told that would at least help me experience fewer and less prolonged symptoms, and was prescribed a medication that seems to be helping.

I guess it's all a part of growing older. It's life. There is spring and there is autumn, the season I'm in now.

Here's a quote by Parker Palmer, a Quaker writer I've come to appreciate. It's from his book, "Courage To Lead":

"This hopeful notion that living is hidden within dying is surely enhanced by the visual glories of autumn. What artist would ever have painted a season of dying with such a vivid palette if nature had not done it first? Does death possess a beauty that we - who fear death, who find it ugly and obscene-cannot see? How shall we understand autumn's testimony that death and elegance go hand in hand?

For me, the words that come closest to answering those questions are the words of Thomas Merton: There is in all visible things ... a hidden wholeness. In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They are held together in the paradox of the hidden wholeness."  

Love and blessings,

Dad

Going on the "Amish Diet"

 

In light of studies showing that members of Old Order Amish communities have significantly fewer cases of obesity, diabetes and related health problems, some have suggested that an “Amish diet” might work even better than, say, an Atkins diet.

In short, it would mean eating hearty meals every day but being as physically active as are typical members of Amish farm families. Their meals routinely include lots of home grown meats, fruits and vegetables, but also some very tasty desserts. But all of that is accompanied by hours of good manual labor (and the use of far less fossil fuel) in the growing, preserving, preparing and transporting of food, in making many of their own clothes and otherwise taking good care of their households and farms.

In his book, "Great Possessions, An Amish Farmer's Journal," David Kline describes some of the simple everyday pleasures of living on their 120-acre Holmes County, Ohio, farm, where the entire family works together to grow and market food and take care of the land that is so vital to their way of life. Without the distractions of radio, television, computers, e-mail, or cell phones, something as ordinary as cleaning out their horse barn becomes an opportunity for Kline and his teenage son to experience rigorous exercise while engaging in an extended man-to-man conversation, something that happens all too seldom between most fathers and sons in our faster paced urban society.

While not many of us urbanites will be able to live like the Amish, a healthier, lower-tech lifestyle might involve the following:

1) less mowing and more hoeing--and gardening
2) less shopping at crowded malls and more sharing of home produced goods and resources with our neighbors
3) less dependence on far-off corporate farms and factories and more reliance on home and locally grown products
4) less dependence on passive forms of media entertainment and more involvement in physically active and socially interactive work and play
5) less riding and more walking and biking

We could call it the latest, state-of-the-art "Amish Diet and Workout Plan."

P. S.  I grew up in an Amish family and community but have been a member of the Virginia Conference Mennonite church most of my adult life.

I’m Just Fine For The Shape I’m In

This ole house is a-getting shaky
This ole house is a-getting old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold

Lately I’ve begun reflecting more on this lament from an old song by Stuart Hamblen.

The thought of getting old and shaky is new for me, since most of my 72 years I’ve enjoyed exceptional health, been physically active and have never suffered a single broken bone or gone through any major surgery. In fact it wasn’t until August of 2009 that I had my very first overnight hospital stay. I wasn’t even born in one. And that overnight at “Hotel RMH” followed a simple procedure my doctor first led me to believe would allow me to return home the same day, but he changed his mind for the sake of being able to check me over early the next morning.

Now I’m learning from experience that good health isn’t to be taken for granted. Things can change without notice and without my being ready.

Not to bore you with details, but early this year my blood work showed an excess of “antinuclear antibodies” (I joked to my friends that my being an “antinuclear” advocate for so long has finally gotten into my blood). Anyway, I was told that my 1:312 count of said antibodies (should be 1:40 or less),  may be associated with having a recent diagnosis of Ménière's disease, a condition that isn't life threatening but can have unpleasant symptoms like increased hearing loss and nauseous spells of vertigo, both of which I've been experiencing too much of lately. I'm on some Triamterene/hydrochlorothiazid (!) now that may helping, but my good doctor isn’t promising a "cure" as such.

So this ole house does feel a tad shaky. For someone who listens to people for a living, to have to strain to hear well is no fun. And to feel tired much of the time, and not to be able to enjoy singing and other activities as I once did, was hard to adjust to.

Today I’m finishing a two-week regimen of Prednazone. I can bear testimony that this is a miracle drug, though one I can’t stay on due to its undesirable long term effects. But for the moment I feel younger and more energized than I have for months, and the inside of my head and my sense of hearing feel about 90% normal.

I can live with that. And I know there will be many more adjustments to make as I grow older. That’s just the way life is, I tell myself. Meanwhile, I want to enjoy each day as if it were my last, and make the most of every opportunity to  live life to the full, and to learn to “number my days and so apply my heart to wisdom.”

On the plus side, this has been a wake-up call about taking better care of myself. By simply eating oatmeal or an oat cereal with fruit and skim milk for breakfast, and by enjoying more salads and home grown vegetable stews for lunch and dinner (while cutting back on breads, sweets, salt and desserts) I’ve been able to shed 16 pounds since March without going on any "diet.” Or maybe it’s just the Ménière's . Who knows.

I do know that God is good. All the time. And yes, Stuart Hamblen, “I’m getting ready to meet the saints.”

I just hope that won’t be right away. I want to see a little more of our grandchildren growing older first.

Re-membering

I heard a story on NPR some time ago of a man using a table saw who accidentally cut off one of his fingers. The severed body part flew off into the corner of his shop among scraps of wood, sawdust and other debris. After he managed to stop the bleeding he and his family looked frantically for the missing finger, hoping they could take it with them to the hospital to reattach and save it.

Remembering is something like that. Sometimes an important part of us becomes lost, has for some reason become dis-membered. Maybe our parents or others have intentionally kept some troublesome parts of our family’s narrative from us. Or maybe we’ve just plain forgotten some things from lack of reviewing significant aspects of our story. Or we may have willfully cut off some painful part of our past we simply didn’t want to deal with, or some relationship we no longer wanted to be a part of.

But distancing ourselves from parts of our past can be like losing a part of ourselves, like a body part, or member. In remembering we are re-attaching, are re-connecting, so that healing and growth can take place.

Waste Amid Want

In his new book "American Wasteland," writer Jonathan Bloom documents how so much food produced in America is wasted along every step of the supply chain from field to fridge. Somewhere between 25-50% of all food produced in America, he says, goes to waste every year.

Journalist and author Bloom documents specific examples, beginning with food crops lying rotting in fields owing to intentional policy, economic factors, and sheer ignorance. And in restaurants, portion sizes have become ever larger and daily buffet meals result in enormous amounts of delicious leftover food being thrown away at the end of every day.

Unlike my mother, who believed wasting food was a mortal sin, Bloom points out how many Americans allow food to spoil in their refrigerators out of carelessness, lack of meal planning, and just plain neglect.

He does find hopeful signs, though, in some grocery stores and restaurants disposing of their surplus through food pantries and other charities. And some socially conscious farmers are even reviving the ancient practice of allowing those in need to glean from their fields after a harvest.

What makes food waste especially appalling is that while in developed nations like ours we throw away massive amounts of food, people all over the globe are starving. Every day we see TV images of dying children and gaunt mothers dying of malnutrition in Somali refugee camps--interspersed with ads urging already overweight Americans to gorge on super-sized burgers and fries and to make yet another trip to an abundance laden supermarket or a restaurant buffet. 

Bloom believes we have trained ourselves to regard food as a symbol of American plenty that should always be available cheaply in all seasons and times, and in limitless quantities. He warns, "Current rates of waste and population growth can't coexist much longer," and makes practical suggestions on how we can all help "keep our Earth and its inhabitants physically and morally healthy."

My mother would like that.

P. S.  Here are some agencies that can help provide urgently needed food relief:  http://www.care.org/    http://www.mcc.org/, http://www.oxfamamerica.org/