A Charm Bracelet of Small Pleasures

                                  

My mother always used to say: "when you're feeling down, think of five good things about your life." Of course, those were the bigger things - your children, your health, your friends, your job, your faith. But there are small pleasures too....not as important individually but, collectively, they can mean a lot. Sort of like a charm bracelet of joy.

1) One example for me recently is the pot of spring flowers my friend, Jan, brought me. They were like a little daily miracle.  At first, the daffodil buds only had a tiny spot of bright yellow on the tips but within a couple of days, the whole bud was yellow. The next day, they opened into bright bits of sunshine in the house.

Meanwhile, the tulip bulbs fattened, then bloomed. They too were butter yellow. Finally, the mauve hyacinths opened with the additional pleasure of their sweet fragrance that perfumed the whole room.

Since this has been a rather dreary spring outside, every day I looked forward to the pot of spring on the kitchen table.

2) Birds - Speaking of spring, the goldfinches are now truly gold again....and next month the hummingbirds will return, both adding charms to my bracelet of small good things..

3) I'm now addicted to shortbread cookies. It was actually the hospital Oncology Department that got me started. They offered me a snack to while away the time during my transfusion. They had Oreos and shortbread cookies. I took them only because I was bored. I sort of forgot how much I enjoyed them when I left the hospital, then LeAnn brought me some when she visited from Iowa and LeAnn, being LeAnn, these were much higher quality than the commercial grade from the hospital (not that I'm above eating plain old Lorna Doone's).

LeAnn has sent me more since. Shortbreads are the perfect nibbling cookie. Bite off the teddy bear's toe, then his belly, then his head. So satisfying with coffee or tea. I'm only sorry I didn't discover them before I was 72 years old!

4) When I retired, of course, my income plunged so I shut off almost all the automatic payments that came out of my bank account, like Ancestry which I'd paid for but never used, and Sirius Radio, because I didn't figure I'd be in the car that much. I belong to a site called Webshots. They feature different photos every day. It's pretty cheap - $20 for a year. Picking out my daily photo is something I look forward to every morning. Some days, it is kittens or wolves or spring flowers or snowy woods. There are beaches and sunsets and castles. I love seeing different places. I never knew Romania was so gorgeous! I decided I got enough daily enjoyment out of the anticipation of beautiful pictures that it was worth $25 so I made the choice to keep it.

5) When Brenda cleans my house, she leaves behind the spicy, fresh scent of Pinesol. That aroma make me feel so good. It is the epitome of clean.

Maybe these are all small in and of themselves but string them all together and they make life more joyful. 

Cheerleading for Heart Failure

                                                       

You have to have a somewhat morbid sense of humor to cope with illness. When I went to the emergency room, the doctor said - "I have bad news. The spot on your lung is cancer." Then he went on to say: "And...."

"Wait," I asked, "you mean there's more?"

"Yep," he told me, "you also have some congestive heart failure going on."

When I left, I had to chuckle a little at the irony of having two diseases and having to root for one or the other.

"Come on, heart failure!"

After all, who wouldn't rather die in their own bed of a massive heart attack than to linger painfully on while cancer drags you down and down? If that's the way it happened, of course, quickly and suddenly. But no strokes that propel you into a nursing home, please.

Because that is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid to die but I'm terrified of helplessness. I have the best friends in the world but I don't want to have to depend on them anymore than I already do.

And hospice? Oh, God, I have an absolute horror of hospice. I don't want strangers coming to my house to feed or bathe me or even just to pat me on the hand in an effort to comfort me. My prayer has always been - "go away and let me do this on my own."

So that's why I root for heart failure to prevail over cancer in the end.

It's strange too because sometimes the different things you need collide with one another.  I'm anemic and so I take iron pills, iron deficiency being the main cause of anemia. Iron pills lead to constipation. When I read up on anemia, the website said to be sure to take a Probiotic because keeping your colon healthy is very important. Probiotics work in the opposite direction as iron. So you take these two pills and you have to wonder if your body is saying, "make up your damn mind." To go or not to go?

Plenty of food, the anemia website says, is essential.  I hate most of what you're supposed to eat - chard, spinach, beets, liver. Yuck! But one of my two diseases has taken my appetite. I don't know which one to blame. I eat but it is now more of a chore than a pleasure. So, on the one hand your metabolism says, "food, I need food!" and on the other hand, it says, "nothing really sounds good." I remember when I would have given anything to voluntarily curb my appetite. Another irony.

Just for my own curiosity, I'd like to know how many of a certain kind of pill you'd have to take to end things yourself but how do you Google that question? Would anyone answer? Would you get turned and have Adult Protective Services make an emergency welfare check? I have two loaded guns but I'm pretty sure I'd never have guts enough to pull the trigger.

If all this makes me sound depressed, I'm not. I have a rather black sense of humor and if anything, I find the oddnesses life puts in front of you amusing.

Opioids - The Solution May Be as Bad as the Problem.

                                               
                                             

Being a terminal lung cancer patient, I am probably one of a minority of people who could get a prescription for pain-killing opioids (like hydrocodone, oxycodone, being two of the most frequently precribed), without much hassle. But I've never had to take pain pills because I'm not in any pain.

There is no doubt that America has an opioid crisis on its hands. In 2015, overdoses were the leading causes of accidental death in the U.S. with 52,404 deaths.

Twenty and a half million Americans over the age of 20 had prescriptions for opioids while 591,000 used heroin. It is estimated that four out of every five heroin users first used prescription opioids When asked why, they said heroin was easier to get and cheaper.

So, yes opioids are definitely a problem. But there is another side to the story. Ironically,  I have friends who actually do have chronic, severe pain due to various conditions. Because we are making opioids so difficult to obtain,  people with legitimate constant pain are finding it difficult to receive relief.

Doctors, generally, have over-prescribed opioids over the last several years but now they are under-prescribing them in order to stay out of possible legal jeopardy. You now have to sign a contract with your doctor stating that you will not try to receive a prescription from any doctor but him or her, on pain of being fired.

Even in cases of serious injury, the protocol is to only allow patients to take opioids for a week, although the pain may still be severe in that period of time.

So, we are in danger of creating a huge new problem in trying to solve an old one. People in constant pain have a low quality of life. Is it any wonder, many of them go outside the law to try to find an help?

There has to be a better way.