He Fell and He Couldn't Get Up

Earlier this week I got a call from my son.  He had become light headed in the bathroom that morning and unfortunately fell in such a way that his muscle cramped up.  I guess he was stuck lying on the bathroom for the whole morning before he could get up and call me. 

After a visit to the doctor that afternoon followed by a blood test, he seemed to be fine.  And that made me feel fine, until I heard the message from the doctors office the next day requesting we come back in to review the results.  

My mild anxiety slowly increased as we drove to the doctors office and by the time we got there I was a wreck.  During the drive across the city I was trying to keep calm, as to not upset my son while simultaneously I was annoyed at his lacksidasical attitude towards the whole thing.  

You'd think after 15 years of parenting in which my son has: ingested a poisonous substance, broken his arm while on vacation and needed surgery to have a pin put in, and who required a week stay in the hospital due to renal failure, that I would be able to handle these kinds of things with ease.  I have spent over half my lifetime watching my fathers' muscles destroyed by muscular dystrophy and  yet I don't always realize that I have a complete and utter lack of control in these situations.  

The return visit to the doctor turn out to be better news than I expected.  It turns out my son is simply low on iron.  This can be easily addressed by iron supplements, and eating iron-rich foods.  I'm sure my son will be happy to be served more red meat!

Looking back, I'm left with these three thoughts:

Worrying gives me a divided mind  (and a whole lot of stress!)

I've never been good at getting rid of stress and anxiety.  On the way home I could feel all my stress and anxiety dwelling in my body like lactic acid buildup after an intense workout.  I reacted in irritability to my sons choice in the radio station and again when he made trumpet sounds with his lips at me.  Had I been truly in the present I would have been relieved that he was back to his old self again instead of reacting in annoyance.  


Where my mind wanders will ultimately determine my reaction 

As soon as my son phoned me at work I spent my time trying to find out from him what had happened .  I tried to think of all the possible causes, like a recent medication change, or perhaps a repeat of his renal failure had occurred.  My default reaction is to fix and control everything myself and as a result I ended up a twitchy, irritable mom who then went home and made and ate a ham and turkey melt and coke zero to make me feel all better.  If I had just taken a moment at the very beginning to pray I wonder if I would have approached this situation with more peace and calmness.  


My worry must be replaced with something else

During the drive to the doctors office I kept mentally chiding myself to not be anxious.  But once I am worried, it is next to impossible for me to stop.  Instead of worrying I need to bring it to God who is sovereign and who wants me to come to him with my worries.

Phillipians 4:6 (NLT)

Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 

~b~

What Your Kids Have Taught Me

I am so blessed to have so many friends with children who have included me in their lives.  It's fun to goof off with kids when I play with them, especially because I don't have to worry about naps or dirty clothes, or sugar crashes.   I don't know what it is about kids, but I tend to be a little less filtered when I'm hanging out with them.  I don't worry about how loud I am, what I am laughing at, and especially what I look like.

Over the past few weeks as I have hung out with different children, I realized that for some reason they have "chosen" me to be their friend:

• The other weekend I got an invite to a hot dog roast, because my favourite 3 year old told her parents she wanted to invite me over to have hot dogs that night.

• I got to play soccer with the two-year old who recently learned my name and can now yell my name until I play soccer with him.  He likes to kick "hard" or "high".

• I connected with my friends niece at a dance recital the other week and now she likes to sit on my lap, hug me good-bye, and even ask me to blow her nose (oh lucky me!).

• On Saturday I ask my friends son to write out our names (I helped him spell mine) and he ended up adamantly denying that he had drawn a heart around our names (it was clearly a heart).

It's funny how special I feel when a child "chooses" me, because I don't think I've done anything special to warrant their extra attention.  And all my flaws and insecurities don't seem to matter to them.

What I have learned from your children is that giving love and attention first and unconditionally is the key to connection.

Connection seems so simple with children, they wear their heart on their sleeve, they give themselves first and seem to expect that their attention and love will be reciprocated.  Children act without worrying about getting rejected.  As an adult, I tend to protect myself- I want to know how someone feels about me first, before I respond.  But in that safety, I think I'm missing out on living a deeper, fuller life.

So I guess the question I have is:

Can I step out from playing life safe and into the uncertainty of vulnerability?


~b~

Leap Year Day

This post really has nothing to do with leap year day, but I thought that I should write a blog post to commemorate this rare day.

* * *

I think I might have seasonal affective disorder, so today I went for a walk on my coffee break to boost my vitamin D levels.  But instead of noticing the birds singing in the trees and the hot sun warming my jacket and melting the snow I realized that my face was the only surface area of skin that could absorb vitamin D.  And then I spent the rest of the walk optimizing my vitamin D intact.

Here's what I came up with:

Ways to optimize vitamin D absorption while walking

• Use other surface area of skin ie.  my hands.   Its too bad we live in such a cold climate that all our jackets cover up our skin.

• Optimize my walking route to fully maximize sun exposure by trying to face the sun as much as possible.  

• Change the time of day to get the fullest intensity of sunlight.

I have no idea why I just can't go for a walk and notice the birds like everybody else without trying to optimize everything.

* * *


Here's a picture of me that shows my propensity for reading books and learning.  I think I'm trying to figure out my brothers lego, so he'll let me help him put it together.

I think I'm four, thus my Dora styled haircut was not a decision I made.

Happy Leap Year Day

~b~

A long day.

I had a meeting today in Regina today.  I gotta say, 5 am is really early when you usually start work at 9.

I don't know if it was the fact that I had to spend 5 hours of small talk as we travelled between cities, or that I had to be assertive in presenting my ideas to the other board members or participating in a long conference call when I find it a struggle to listen to people talk, but I am exhausted.

We had some time to kill before we returned so two of us walked over to the downtown mall.

I ended up getting some loose leaf tea from Davids Tea which is ironically called forever nuts.

Here are some pics from my iPhone:

One of my favorite parts of today was being able to make a contact that has access to many different networks of people.  I had been asked earlier this year to be a mentor to some students from my diploma program and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do, or how I can bridge these two contacts together.  

 I also really enjoyed listening to the lab director describe how he is settling into his life here (he moved from Ontario).  He bought an acreage with 80 acres and is working towards living out his dreams of living that type of lifestyle.  As in buying chickens and roosters type of living.  I love listening and watching people living our their dreams.

~b~

What I've Been Reading Lately

I just starting reading The Emperor of all Maladies.  

Ever since reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks my interested has been piqued in health related books.  As I've been reading this book, I've found so many different things fascinating.   Learning of how historical care practices from doctors, who with the best of intentions, but lack of knowledge was really horrific and macabre for the patients.  There really is a fine line between human trials and human experiments that was probably crossed with the best intentions.  

I have to confess, I really know nothing about cancer, with so many different types of cancer, I really didn't know what cancer really was.  I'm so ignorant, I didn't even know that oncology was until I started reading this book.  And I guess that makes be lucky  but I'm retiscent to talk about all the things I've been reading, because I've seen how hard it is for families when I family member has cancer.  So I will leave you with one thing I found interesting.

One interesting thing

When the humoral theory was proposed, with the different fluids of the body (black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood), the only disease that was attributed to black bile was cancer and depression.  I wonder if its because the symptoms of either manifest in a variety of different ways, or that people often look fine on the outside, but are well aware of their "condition" on the inside.  Or that those closest to a person with depression and cancer are also affected by the disease.  

 I'm also reading an interesting article that explores the correlation between your gut microbiota and your metabolism.  This kind of article is a little outside my field of knowledge, but its still pretty interesting, and so far I can grasp what it's saying without googling any of the big words.  

The article is talking about how the gut microbial community has more microorganisms that in the body by "two orders of magnitude".  In my mind I have a tiny universe of microorganisms living inside my gut helping my body with biochemical and metabolic stuff.  Kinda like the locker in Men In Black that holds an entire universe:

 

~b~

In the Kitchen

Last night I made this for supper:

Carrots and Lentils in Olive Oil

The recipe it not only healthy (it uses 4 cups of sliced carrots and has 12 grams of fiber in one serving), it is really delicious too.

I also made a red velvet cake too last night, so I could make this:

Red Velvet Trifle with layers of cool whip,  chocolate fudge pudding, raspberries, and skor bits.

 My favorite part about making a trifle is you can bake a cake and eat bits of it too, and no one will ever know.

~b~

A Glimpse into My World

Last year my son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS which stands for Pervasive Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified.  It's really just a long fancy sounding name that means he has symptoms that fall under the autism spectrum.  This means that, among other difficulties, it is harder for him to connect socially with others, so most of you probably don't know him like I do.  Which is unfortunate, because he is really quite funny.

So this post is some of the ways he has made me laughed this past month.

My son saw this when we made a late night trip to Walmart:

He pointed it out to me and thought I should buy it.  So that when I got married I wouldn't have to "ascribe to traditional gender roles".  I don't know where he even gets this kind of language from, but I'm glad he's looking out for me!


I came home from work on Monday and my son asked me if I had any dreams lately.  Then he proceeded to tell me that he had a dream that he was "that wrestler, Macho Man Sandy Ravage".

OHHH YEEAHH!!!

  

Sandy Ravage???  SANDY RAVAGE!!!  I couldn't stop laughing and kept on repeating Sandy Ravage, and asking him where he had even heard of Randy Savage.

And then the funniest part of the whole situation was when I calmed down from laughing and he said:

"Actually, I didn't have a dream of  Randy Savage . . . I made the whole thing up."  And then with a bit of reflection, he said . . . "I don't know why I just made that up."

I don't know why he made it up either, but it was pretty funny.  Funny and weird.

My son had to write some poems for his English class.  One commented on the current economic situation.  Another one was about Smelly Pete, who takes bathes in expired milk.

Here are two of my favorite poems he has written:

A Haiku

Loopy Lorenzo
lost his marbles and his hair
oh what a dispair!

A Tanka

Dreary and drunk Dan
slurs, stutters, and stumbles around
the streets of Boston
he searches his bag for booze
Why is the rum always gone?

I'm not too sure what inspired him to create characters like Smelly Pete, Loopy Lorenzo, and dreary and drunk Dan, but I like it!

~b~

2012-01-04

It's been so long that I've published that I actually had to spend some time looking for the "new post" button.

Last month was such a whirl wind of activity that for the first time in this blogs history I didn't publish at least one post.  Besides going to parties and getting ready for Christmas I ended up signing a lease on an apartment that has some amazing view of the river and downtown Saskatoon.  I will have to post a picture of the view soon.

It seems like this time of year should be spent reflecting on the important/major events from last year but with the move and settling into a new place most of the time my mind is preoccupied with envisioning my future here.  I have a lot of good memories spent with friends from this past year and a lot of times and events that were hard to endure.  Maybe the move has made me look at the past with rose colored glasses, but I think because of those hard times I have left last year with a deeper faith, better clarity of who I am meant to be, and what I love to do.

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I had any resolutions, and I hadn't really thought about it too much.  But after listening to a leadership podcast about Mission Statements which is essentially writing out exactly what you want out of life, I realized that if I want to live the life that I envision, I need to be more intentional in how I live on a daily basis.  The other two things that resonated with me was the point that people who accomplish things decide in advance how they spend their time, and that success is direction.  So hopefully this weekend I can get the mountain of boxes out of the house and carve out a little time to make a "time" budget and make sure I spend time in my week getting to that place that I envision myself to be in.

For those of you who make resolutions or goals I wish you the courage to define and pursue your dreams and the tenacity to continue on until you arrive.

Happy 2012!

~b~