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Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor

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Gentle Reader,

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor:

Taking down paintings, emptying book shelves, moving furniture, rolling up rugs, pulling up old wall-to-wall carpet, removing electric face-plates and then spackling, sanding, taping, and painting every wall that faces the outside is a sure-fire recipe for arthritic flare-ups of major proportion.  No matter how many times I lay down on the floor and hung my knees over the Back2Life machine; no matter how many of Shaklee’s herbal Pain Relief Complex tablets I took, I could not prevent pain from coming on.

The people I was supervising as general painting contractor were:

Carsten Rossen and Jack Dahlstrom, 14 and 16, grandsons who did major lifting and prep work and even some priming.

Hanna Rossen and Ben Killorin, 17 and 19, grandchildren who turned out to be excellent painters and were able to mask, spackle, sand, edge and roll paint with only a few drips here and there.  They each put in hours of time, their music blasting, bags of gorp and dried mangos, enormous sandwiches and Shaklee Performance drink for rehydration consumed.  Ben made the sandwiches as his first summer job was the Deli department at a local grocery store.

Elizabeth Skewis, friend of Grace, my oldest daughter, and now a great friend of mine, is a woman who has done everything under the sun for a living including painting.  She was my right hand gal, with skill and stick-to-itiveness, esthetic judgment and coaching for me and the teenagers.

Pete Rossen and Hanna, father and daughter, came to move the furniture back where it belonged after the final (almost final) painting was done.  He was the one who suggested I could hire my grandchildren when I was fretting about whom to get to do the painting.  I loved their youthful energy in the house and their “there, there, Grandma. Don’t lift anything.  Just tell us and we’ll do it.”

Mike Walker, my renter who lives down stairs and is a finish carpenter.  He put all the running toe board back in every room with his power tools.

The problem child in this final stage of the energy upgrade was, you guessed it, ME.  I love hard work and couldn’t stop myself from all the above mentioned tasks.  I did stop lifting.

Two observations that may help you who suffer from arthritis when you are over-active.

1.  Don’t stop moving.  In the middle of this ordeal I took a 3 ½ mile neighborhood walk which included a long downhill, then a beach walk and finally a 190 tread staircase and 4 long blocks uphill.  Moving keeps the nutrients flowing to the joints which are poorly nourished.  Without good nutrition, the crumbling joint cannot heal itself.  Which brings me to the second point:

2.  The cells in our joints are constantly repairing and rebuilding new, healthy cells to replace the worn out ones and to solve the problems of collapsing vertebrae.  Peggy Cappy talks about this in her meditative CD “Healing Back Pain” which I listen to nearly every day.  Wednesday, after hiking 9 miles round trip, 2000+ ft elevation gain, on Mt. Rainier’s east side to Summerland alpine meadow, I stopped for the evening with one of my hiking buddies.  Her husband is a neurologist with Group Health here in Seattle.  In our conversation he stated that these broken down joint cells do get replaced with fresh, healthy new cells that attempt to fix the problems.  He has told me many times to keep moving, no matter what.  Find something to do that doesn’t hurt and keep doing it.

Today, I spent the morning hanging pictures and scrubbing pain spots off the hard wood floors.  I have no pain.

You can build healthy joints, but you must keep moving to help your body accomplish that feat.

The house is beautiful.  It was all worth it.  Here’s a video I put together to show the energy upgrade work that was done.  When you see the space age water heater, you’ll appreciate the remark made by the city inspector when he came to sign off on the stepped-up electrical power,

“Wow.  This thing should be in the living room where you can sit with your friends, smoke a joint and watch it.”

Whoa!

May I offer a further explanation of the energy improvements under the new roof.  The Crown Roofing guys took off the old stuff including the particle board and before they put the new base and shingles on, the Vesta Performance guys laid down rigid insulation covered by a thin layer of reflective material which would further divert summer heat from entering the house.  They also installed a fan system circulating air in the summer and avoiding mold build-up from a poorly ventilated crawl space over the ceiling and under the roof.  I desperately needed a new roof and was able to fold the cost of the roof itself into the energy upgrade low-interest loan from the Puget Sound Community Credit Union.  This banking institution works with the city of Seattle to implement the Community Power Works program for the homeowner who wants to lower their carbon foot print.  A new roof by itself may or may not reduce heat loss from your house.

You are welcome to drop by and tour the garage and I’ll offer you a cold drink of some sort, but mostly you won’t notice anything different about the house.  It does look fresh and clean but I didn’t change the colors or the furniture.  If you are a person who notices roofs (is there such a person?), you’ll see that mine is beautiful, new and no places where the shingles have flown off in the latest wind storm.  But who looks at roofs?

I am so proud to have done this major effort to reduce my carbon foot print as part of Seattle Community Power Works.  The final numbers came through in the blow test today.  Looking good.  One tight house.  It’s for the Planet and the grandchildren.  I hope you’ll take advantage of any opportunity you have to do the same.  Congratulations if you already have.

Leave me a comment and while you are at it, please ‘like’ my Face book page.  I’d appreciate it.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com

206 933 1889

 

Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness

I’m reducing my carbon foot print

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Gentle Reader,

I am reducing my carbon foot print. My house is organized chaos. All the furnishings are stacked in the middle of each room, covered with sheets. Two young men are drilling holes in the outside walls of every room, caulking the heat registers, the joint where wall meets floor, and every nook where air can leak.
In Seattle we have an Energy Upgrade program to entice a home owner to do this. Over two thousand families have opted in, gotten their financing together, had the energy audit and done the work. The opportunity for low interest loans and government rebates may be extended if Cascadia Consulting, the small, forward reaching firm who operates this program can persuade the city to do another round, without Federal dollars.
What took me so long to sign up for this? I have a reputation as a carbon off-setter. I have bought shares in wind farms on the Lakota reservation. I have planted trees through Re-leaf America, the oldest environment organization in the US, founded in 1903. But my house was more of a tent with permanent walls, leaking air like a sieve.

Hudson River from Mary Ann's
Looking through leaky windows toward the Hudson River

After a recent trip to New York City with my granddaughter, I find myself reflecting on the actions of a single individual in the face of the enormity of the problem facing the world. We must get our carbon parts per million down to 350 or find ourselves in an irreversible environmental catastrophe. Compare the interest and effort in this far flung corner of the US with New York City.

My hostess, Mary Ann, lives in a beautiful rent controlled apartment on the Upper East Side, the Hudson River in full view from her spacious north facing balcony. The fine old metal and glass paneled windows do not latch. Walking along the path beside the river just 100 yards from her building’s front door, Ellie and I joined cyclists, mothers with baby carriages, old people leaning on canes, joggers, strollers. This is one New York’s back yard retreats.

Hudson River view from Upper West Side
New York’s back yard, walking along the Hudson

 

The sun danced on the wavelets of a calm river. New green, that not-shiny-yet true green that appears miraculously every May after a hard winter of snow and bitter cold. This year in New York, they were locked in a cold that would not stop, seeping into bones and the cracks in all the houses.

I asked Mary Ann how she managed to stay warm in this 17th floor apartment with its rusty metal-framed windows.

“The heat in the building is so great; I have the windows open all winter.”
Can you believe it?

The carbon foot print of New York City by itself, if reduced by 15%, could turn 400 ppm to 380, I have no doubt. This is an emergency. Federal dollars could reverse the course of disaster by compulsory retrofitting every building in New York City, changing every light bulb. People would be put to work in the process.

It would be worth every penny. Repeat the process in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and Gary, Indiana. Every major city where old high rises scrap the sky as wicks of heat pouring into the atmosphere.

I have learned in talking with my environmentalist daughter that NYC has excellent energy recovery projects underway. It is a huge job.

My little project will off-set the carbon foot print I create every time I get on an airplane for the next 10 years. It is a drop in the bucket. My visit to New York discourages me from the belief that we can save our planet for future generations.

What are you doing in your neck of the woods? Let us know, please.

By the way, are you reducing your carbon foot print by using highly concentrated, biodegradable cleaning and laundry products?  Check them out on my shopping page.  You’ll be so glad you did.  You’ll throw away 1 bottle for every 50 of those other products.

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving, Betsy

ps:  I made a video showing the energy upgrade project.  You can see it on YouTube. <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/ta1n0-YU9jI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

New approach to hip surgery

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Gentle Reader,

A dear friend and hiking companion was talking with me yesterday as we climbed to the saddle above Pratt Lake in the Snoqualmie Pass section of the Cascade Mountains.  Her husband, an athletic 71 year old has worn out his hip and finally, after months of thinking it was only a sore knee, agreed to have hip surgery.  His doctor is promising him a speedy recovery from his arthritis, so he will back on the tennis court and out fly fishing in a matter of weeks, not month.  Curious about this approach, I researched it and pass along a fascinating article from the New York times, published in March of this year.

A New Approach to Hip Surgery
By PETER JARET
Larry Kufel’s surgeon, Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, used the anterior technique for his hip replacement. Mr. Kufel said he was back at work the second week after the operation.
Kyle Green for The New York Times
Larry Kufel’s surgeon, Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, used the anterior technique for his hip replacement. Mr. Kufel said he was back at work the second week after the operation.

Larry Kufel had always been an active man, tall and rangy, who worked out regularly and picked up basketball games at the gym. But age was taking a toll on his joints, and it had become clear that he needed a hip replacement.

“It got to the point, if I did any exertion, even getting out of a chair, it felt like the muscle was tearing away from the bone,” he recalled.

Still, Mr. Kufel, 63, a financial controller in Roanoke, Va., worried that conventional hip replacement surgery would mean a long, painful recuperation. Instead, his doctor proposed an alternative that is gaining popularity across the country, an operation that many surgeons say helps patients recover more quickly.

Mr. Kufel was amazed by the results. “I was back to work the second week after the operation,” he said. “By the fourth week, I was doing a spin class at the athletic club.” A year later, he’s cycling, lifting weights, and even playing racquetball.

“I feel like I never had surgery,” he said.

The procedure that Mr. Kufel received is called anterior hip replacement. The surgeon makes the incision at the front of the hip instead of through the buttocks or the side of the hip. This approach permits the doctor to reach the hip socket without cutting through major muscle groups. Proponents claim that the procedure results in less pain and fewer complications for patients than standard hip replacement.

“We’re seeing more and more data that patients recover quicker, discontinue use of a cane or walker sooner, and have a quicker return to a normal gait,” said Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, chief of orthopedic surgery at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute, who was Mr. Kufel’s surgeon.

Surgeons have used an anterior approach to perform emergency hip repairs for decades. Anterior hip replacements were first described in the United States in the 1970s and have gradually gained popularity. No one knows how many surgeons currently use the new approach, but at a recent meeting of hip and knee surgeons, an informal survey suggested that as many as 20 percent of hip surgeons are now performing anterior hip replacements, according to Dr. Moskal — up from “less than a handful” in 2005. With more than 400,000 total and partial hip replacements performed each year in the United States, a change in technique would eventually affect millions of Americans.

Proponents note that because the operation spares muscles, patients don’t need to limit their movements during the recovery period.

“You can bend over,” said Dr. Robin N. Goytia, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston. “You can reach down to the floor. You can cross your legs — all things that patients with a posterior approach have to be careful about for a while because they can dislocate the hip.”

Surgeons who perform the procedure also say the anterior position makes it easier for them to use fluoroscopy, a real-time X-ray technique that allows doctors to precisely position the implanted artificial hip. That, in turn, may allow artificial hips to last longer.

And since the major muscle groups of the hip are left untouched, there appears to be a lower risk that the artificial joint might pop out, or dislocate, said Dr. Francis B. Gonzales, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Conventional hip replacement techniques have a dislocation rate of about 1 percent. Preliminary studies suggest that the rate following anterior surgery may be less than one-third of that.

Yet reports of the benefits are mostly anecdotal, based on surgeons’ experience. No large randomized studies have been done comparing the outcome of anterior surgery with other approaches. And there are downsides.

Anterior hip replacement often takes longer to perform and can result in more blood loss. Some patients experience temporary numbness in the thigh afterward.

Because the operation is tricky to perform, there is a steep learning curve for physicians, which partly explains why it hasn’t been taught as widely as other approaches in medical schools. Special operating tables have been designed that make the surgery easier to perform, but many medical centers don’t have them.

Even surgeons who perform the new procedure are quick to say that it isn’t “minimally invasive,” the term often used in marketing materials.

“We can do any of these approaches through a small incision, but it’s a little like assembling a ship in a bottle,” Dr. Goytia said. “If you’ve ever seen a hip replacement, it’s not a tissue-friendly surgery. We have to do a lot of bone work and cuts, and we use a lot of power tools.”

Despite a rising chorus of support, not all orthopedic surgeons are convinced that anterior hip replacement offers significant advantages over the traditional approaches.

“As far as we can tell from the data, it doesn’t appear that the surgical procedure is as important to recovery as the pain management protocol, the rehabilitation protocol, and a patient’s baseline pain and functional status,” said Dr. Kevin J. Bozic, professor and vice chairman of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

In the end, he said, a surgeon’s skill and experience are by far the most important factors. Doctors who do hundreds of hip replacements a year typically have very low complication rates, no matter what approach they favor.

“Most surgeons become comfortable with a single surgical approach and they perfect that over time,” Dr. Bozic said. “You definitely don’t want to go to a surgeon trained in the posterior approach and insist on an anterior approach.”

His advice? “Find an experienced surgeon and a medical team you trust and feel comfortable with, and leave the technical issues up to them.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 25, 2013

An article on Tuesday about the anterior approach for total hip reconstruction described the history of the operation incorrectly. The technique was first described in the 1970s, at a medical conference; anterior hip replacements were not first introduced in the United States about 10 years ago.
A version of this article appeared in print on 03/19/2013, on page D5 of the NewYork edition with the headline: New Approach to Hip Surgery.

After surgery certain dietary supplements can be helpful with swelling and numbness. Please see my post http://www.grandmabetsybell.com/2013/03/07/watch-out-for-the-metal-detectors/ for details.

Sometimes it is important to back away from a dogged determination to avoid surgery at all costs , get a second opinion, and move forward.

If this has been helpful, feel free to share.  And by all means, let us hear your comments.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving

Fondly, Betsy

www.grandmabetsybell.com/blog/

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com

www.DoWellWithBetsy.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Managing pain after eye surgery

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Gentle Reader,

While this blog is primarily about arthritis management, I wanted to use this platform to let you know about managing pain after my recent eye surgery.  I have suffered from impaired vision for several years due to a droopy eye lid condition which is corrected by Blepharoplasty.  Here’s a little video so you can see how I’m doing. [youtube]http://youtu.be/rM8HjK_ZFH0[/youtube]
Blepharoplasty (BLEF-uh-ro-plas-tee) is surgery that includes repairing droopy eyelids by removing excess skin, muscle and fat. As you age, your eyelids stretch, and the muscles supporting them weaken. As a result, excess fat may gather above and below your eyelids, causing sagging eyebrows, drooping upper lids and bags under your eyes. Besides making you look older, severely sagging skin around your eyes can impair your peripheral or side vision. Blepharoplasty can reduce or eliminate such impaired vision.


There is a diagnostic procedure to determine if the droopy eyelids are in fact causing trouble seeing.  I failed this test (or passed it, depending on your point of view) 3 years ago.  In other words, I could not see flashing points of light in the upper half of the visual field when my eyes were relaxed.

The Blepharoplasty surgery is authorized by most health insurance plans, however I was referred to a glamour doctor who specialized in cosmetic surgery.  He suggested all kinds of extra tucks and tweeks which the insurance company turned down.  I was interested only in corrective surgery so I could see better and not feel so much muscle strain lifting my eyelid all the time.

The clinic where I get my medical care, The Polyclinic here in Seattle, brought Dr. Yokoyama on to do just this type of corrective surgery.  The insurance company agreed and last Friday, I had incisions in the lids both on top and on the inside.

I am very happy with the results.  The healing is not over yet as you can see in the video.  My job is to use hot compresses several times a day and tug on the lids to pull them down and counteract the scar tissue which could give my lids a permanent and exaggerated lift.  I can tell you it is wonderful to see the ceiling when I look straight ahead, and the tree branches and sky from the upper reaches of my eyes.

What I want to share with you is the medication, vitamin and herbal regimen I undertook.

Pre Op:  Instructions were to stop all vitamins.  I chose to stop the vitamins I know to make the blood thinner:  Fish oil, GLA oil (Borage or Evening Primrose oil), Garlic, Vitamin E.  I also increased the vitamins known to repair and support the integrity of the cell, Vitamin C, and Alfalfa which is full of vitamin K, a natural blood thickener found in green leafy vegetables.

The result was that I bled very little.

Post Op:  Instructions were to take Vicodin every 4 hours for 48 hours and Prednisone (60 mg) for 3 – 4 days to cut down on inflammation.

Here’s what I did instead.  I did take Vicodin for the first 18 hours and then switched to Pain Relief Complex, an herbal COX 2 and 5 LOX inhibitor which worked just as well.  To take care of the constipation that comes with the deadening effect of Vicodin, I took 2 Herb lax tablets with each meal and 2 more at night.  One of the worse side effects of surgery is the constipation that follows anysthetic and pain meds.  This is a healthy way to avoid this problem.

I did take the Prednisone for anti inflammatory but only 60 mg the first day and 40 the next.  The swelling was a bit much on day three, so I took another 40 mg.  Now on day 6 all I need to do is hot compresses.  I iced faithfully every couple of hours the first 48 hours which I know helped considerably.

Here’s my disclaimer.  If you decided to follow your doctor to the letter or to deviate from their advice, it is up to you.  Every body is different and reacts differently.  Who knows if it would work for you the way it worked for me?  But, as I always add, what if it does?

Many of my friends have already had this surgery and I understand it is common for women to consider having their eye lids done and other tucks to lift sagging facial skin as early as their 40s and 50s.  I waited until 75 and I wish I had done this sooner.  One of my daughters beat me to it, getting her eyes done in her 40s.

You might pass this information on to someone you know who might like to hear about some alternatives to the usual course of treatment.  Leave your comments.  We’d all love to hear.

Betsy

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving

206 933 1889

 

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis, travel

Legs are numb. Now what?

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Gentle Reader,

climbing the steps to Montmartre
Daunting climb to Montmartre Basilica

The Sunday before leaving for three weeks in France I was standing in the choir and my right leg lost most of its feeling.  It tingled down to the foot.  I could see I was standing.  I could feel my upper body level, but my legs were numb.  All I could think of was what if this happens in France, in the middle of the Place de la Republic or climbing the steps to Montmartre?  

reduce back pain with an inversion table
Inversion table to relieve spinal pressure and collapse

I went home immediately and strapped myself into my inversion table, rocked back and forth a few times and then hung upside-down for as long as I could stand it.  The numbness went away, but what was I going to do in France?

Place de Contrescarpe, Paris left bank
Photo
me on the front porch, pic by Kevin S. Moul, writer/photographer

Walking around Paris, moving slowly from our Paris Oasis beneath Montmartre all the way to Place de Contrescarpe on the Left Bank, my right leg remained numb.  I could keep from falling by concentrating on the placement of my foot, using focus and intention rather than unconscious walking.  I was definitely preoccupied when we stopped in at the Shakespeare and Co. book store, the one-time lending library which catered to the young writers hanging out in Paris before WWII and after.  These authors included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound.  We were going to study the writings of some of these in our week long writers’ retreat with Natalie Goldberg.  Distracted, my cell phone disappeared.  No posting on face book, no phoning via skype.  I was about to enjoy a complete vacation from electronic communication and was able to focus solely on writing and meditation.  Natalie’s retreats are conducted in silence except for class time.  That means meals, and morning and evening bath and bedroom negotiations among the 10 women living in La Solitude, a quarter mile from the Ferme Villefavard.  Can you imagine how you might emerge from such a phone free existence in a euphoric state of mind?

managing arthritis back pain and leg numbness
feet in chair, knees at right angle

My solution to the numbness problem was to hang from my knees with my feet out of the window in the second floor of this beautiful building (above).  This position lifted my sacrum and lower vertebra off the floor.  I used padding under my knees.  Then I lowered my self down (my butt is up against the wall under the window, here’s a picture I took when I was in New York City last month.

Every morning to open the sacrum and lower back

You can link to the image in a previous post.  The idea is to perform gentle pelvic clock motions to open up the pinched passage so the nerve endings can communicate with the feet and lower legs.  At home I use the Back2Life machine every morning.

Limousin cows
Limousin cows protect their young vigorously

The Writers’s retreat gave me plenty of opportunity to be quiet, write and read aloud.  The countryside was filled with Limousin cows, prime beef, and riotous wildflowers.  I managed to explore the Lascaux caves and canoe with my friend after the retreat.  The trip home was uneventful.  Because I had no phone, no phone money and no phone numbers, I took the light rail, the C Rapid ride bus to west Seattle and walked to my house pulling my suit case.

Keep moving, is what I say.  It would have been tempting to avoid stepping out into the streets of Paris, the roads around Villefavard, the deep caves and the castles of the Dordogne, but I did not.  I trusted my body would not fail me and it did not.

Be well, leave me a comment, Do well and Keep moving.

Betsy

206 933 1889

 

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Out of the exercise habit: bad for arthritis pain

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Gentle Reader,

Funny how you can be diligent with your daily back health exercises and stretches when you are traveling, IMG_0520but get too busy at the desk to do them when you get back home.  Then suddenly the pain shows up.  I do know what to do:

1.  Get to bed earlier so rest can heal.

2.  Walk every day, no matter what

3.  Weight lifting and other core strengthening exercises are a must

4.  Get back to the sugar and gluten-free diet

New York was a blast with Ellie. Here are some pictures.

Ellie and I hung out in Times Square’s hustle and bustle visiting the Disney store, Toy R Us where we rode the ferris wheel, the M&M store with irresistible branded items from coffee mugs to bed linens (she bought an M&M covered basket ball!).  We sat on the bleachers and watched the flashing lights from every building and all the people speaking every language on Earth.  She got herself on the big screen for a few seconds. IMG_0457 Madame Tussaud’s wax museum is a history/pop culture lesson.  For her, American giants from George Washington and Lincoln to the Obama’s came alive.  For me, she introduced me to the TV stars, singers and comedians who perform today (and I never watch).

We went to see Annie on Broadway, her first such production.  Fabulous.IMG_0453

A friend of mine who volunteers as a Big Apple Greeter toured us around China town, but the real thrill for this girl who has been exposed to Mandarin in her elementary school since she was in kindergarten, was recognizing the spoken language as we waited in line for the New York Harbor tour.  In her extreme shyness, she managed to say a phrase in Mandarin to the young woman who just graduated from a US university and her parents who came from Shanghai to witness this big event.  They were thrilled and I think she was, too.   IMG_0555

Central Park and the Museum of Natural History were walking distance away from my friend’s Riverside Drive apartment and the IMG_0451weather was wonderful for strolling.  Probably the most exciting thing Ellie did was make a Muppet at FAO Schwartz.

Our host, Mary Ann, has two lovely cats which Ellie befriended.  One afternoon several writing friends came to “write with Ellie” whose teacher often had the 5th grade students write on topic, never lifting the pen until the time is up.IMG_0542

A highlight for me was our trip with Mary Ann and her friend Jan to Brooklyn for brunch in a funky restaurant that had been completely under water during the hurricane and served the best breakfast we’d ever eaten out.  We also visited the Brooklyn Art Museum where we spent time with the extraordinary women IMG_0523depicted in Judy Chicago’s famous Dinner Party.  On our last day there we went out to Saint John the Devine.  Blue-gowned graduates of Columbia Teachers’ College were just leaving the Cathedral and their ceremony.  Proud parents and grand parents took pictures as we sat on the steps.  Later when I asked Ellie if she would ever come back to New York, she said maybe she’d go there to college.

Ellie is the next to the last child to take on a trip.  Charles Grant Finney is 10 so it will be a couple of years.  Perhaps her older sister will decide she’d like to take a trip with Grandma, but so far it hasn’t seemed like a good idea to her.  What a glorious series of adventures it has been.  Sixteen children altogether; 13 trips so far.  I am one lucky grandma. For more pictures, click here.

My hope for you is that you, too, will be able to keep moving into your 70s.  Don’t let your busy-ness distract you from those exercises that keep your core strong so your back and joints don’t have to do all the work.  Our bones and joints get tired and worn out, but the capacity of our muscles depends on our diligence.  We keep them supple and strong or let them get flabby.

Take a moment to leave a comment about travel and managing your arthritis when you are on the move.  Or about anything else you care to share.

Fondly, Betsy

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving

206 933 1889

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Can an ADD/ADHD study help us?

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Gentle Reader,

I just read Dr. Steve Chaney’s most recent post which concerns food sensitivities and ADD/ADHA.  The study is carefully done with cross checks for biases and the resultant information is extremely helpful for the parents of children who once might have been identified as “figgitty” and now are sent home for a prescription.

For years I have been writing about diet to alleviate the aches and pains that come with osteo-arthritis, as well as other forms of arthritis.  We sufferers are at the other end of the age spectrum so this comparison may seem like a stretch.  The reason I share Dr. Chaney’s post with you is because of the methodology used in the study of 4 – 8 year olds.  The children were given food sensitivity tests, but Dr. Chaney states that is not necessary if you follow the protocal.  You can read his entire post here. Before going on medications that have serious side effects (that includes aspirin which causes stomach bleeding), perhaps you would like to try the same elimination diet these children secumbed to.  Perhaps foods exacerbate your pain and you could reduce your dependence on drugs by this simple, inexpensive and side-effect free process.  Keep a food and pain diary. After five weeks of nothing but rice, meats, vegetables, pears and water  (An elimination diet is the “gold standard” for evaluating food sensitivities because it eliminates almost every food known to cause sensitivity from the diet).  Add foods in slowly and make careful note of your pain level as you add them.

If you decided to try this, let us know your results. This could be a break through process for many arthritis sufferers.  Please take time to leave a comment.

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

4 1/2 hours of driving…Oh, my aching back

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Gentle Reader,

Six hiking buddies escaped to the cabin of one of us on the Oregon coast just sound of Canon Beach.  The sun shone and the sand was warm, inviting surfers, families and dogs to play even though it was mid week and basically empty of tourists or locals.

I was really hurting from the long hours of driving and didn’t want to miss a minute out doors.  I had no Back2Life machine with me.   But I got over my aches and pain fairly easily with a technique I’d like to share with you.  In addition to several Pain Relief herbal tablets that inhibit the pain path nicely with no side effects.

Lie on the floor with your butt up against the front legs of a chair and your bent knee legs on the chair

seat.  While in this restorative pose position, move in the very tiniest motions, a pelvic clock.  Ten up and down movement between 12 and 6, then 10 between 1 and 7, then 2 and 8, then 3 and 9 and so on around the clock face.  The pelvic tilt

is a miniscule movement using your abdominal muscles to produce a small swing from up to down.  You can look it up under Feldenkrais.  It works miraculously to unwind and restore balance to the lower back.

For a little eye candy, here is the sitka spruce forest we hiked in, a herd of elk crossing the dunes, the sunny beach and the wild flowers blooming their little spring hearts out.

2013-5-5sitka22013-5-5Opaint brush2013-5-5beach_01

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

Before you go, tell us what you have done to get the kinks out after a long drive or hours in a chair.  Leave a comment.

Fondly, Betsy

206 933 1889

www.DoWellWithBetsy dot com
 

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

I did not know him: a cycle of pain

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My brother died.  I went to Boston to be with his wife and children.  At first the pain and suffering was all about my loss.  In Boston I became one grieving sister in a sea of grief.  I did not know all these other grieving people.  Not his wife of thirty-five plus years and their three children, and all of his wife’s siblings, their spouses and their children.   And then his friends from high school and college and his medical practice and their church and his men friends.  Six hundred people in various degrees of pain.

I listened.  I discovered that I have not listened well; I let the stories of others come in unfiltered.  These stories gave me my brother.  How bitter sweet to have him and lose him at the same time.  The acute pain is mediated by the truth, the fleshing out of the man he was these years we had been separated by a continent and our too-busy lives.  Today back in Seattle, I feel less pain.  I also have far more compassion for his wife and their children who now begin the work of knitting a life without him physically present.

How are emotional pains like our body pains?

I recently found an interesting web site called the Arthritis Management Program. They published a graphic of the pain/fatigue cycle which you may find helpful. arthritis pain cycle In a closed loop, each new painful experience pulls you further down into the pain and suffering.  In this downward spiral, pain leads to depression which makes exercise difficult.  One abandons the good diet.  Sleep is challenging.  All of these challenges occur while a loved one is struck down and then dies.  Each of these symptoms can by themselves contribute to the other symptoms, and all can make pain and fatigue worse.

Even worse, they can feed on each other. For example, inflammation from the arthritis can cause pain, which causes stress and anxiety, which can cause poor sleep, poor sleep can cause depression, depression can sometimes make it hard to eat as we should, and these can lead to more pain or fatigue, and so on. The interactions of these symptoms, in turn, make our arthritis or fibromyalgia seem worse. It becomes a vicious cycle that only gets worse unless we find a way to break the cycle.

A support group for arthritis sufferers, a good blog (hehehe) or web site can trigger a cycle-breaking strategy.  A memorial service in which all the sufferers participate can show the way to break the grieving cycle.  Neither strategy is permanent.  I have lost two husbands and this loss brings all that pain back.  It was hard to sleep, to focus my mind on anything.  I felt as though I was spinning.  How must those much closer to my brother have suffered from the physical and emotional disruptions of death.

I always go back to my mantra of Keep Moving.  If your arthritis pain gets too great to move in the usual ways, find new ways to move.  A warm-water pool and a class for arthritics; gentle Feldenkrais movements;  a quick trip to the Korean foot massage place (that was my strategy when I couldn’t sleep from the anxiety of my brother lying in the ICU with a stroke.)  Call a friend and ask them to help you get out of the doldrums.  Eat a salad with toasted pine nuts instead of chocolate cake.

You no doubt have been on this closed circuit pain path. How did you get out of it?  Let us know.

If this has been helpful, pass it along, post it on your face book page, and like my business page while you are at it.  🙂

Fondly, Betsy

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

www.grandmabetsybell.com

www.dowellwithbetsy.com

 

Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness

The last man standing

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Gentle Reader,

The focus of my weekly blog is health and how to prevent disease.  Sometimes nothing we do can prevent a health disaster.  A stroke taking down a healthy man is hard to understand.  I refer you to a TED talk by Jill Bolton Taylor, a research scientist who survived a stroke and recorded what was happening in her brain as she observed it taking her down.  If you have ever wondered how a stroke does its damage, listen to her talk.

I have posted many blogs on diet and exercise to prevent disease.  Many people who follow these suggestions, which are not original with me, still have strokes, heart attacks, or develop cancer to the head-shaking dismay of their closest relatives and friends.  Things like “It’s so unfair.”  “How could it happen to him/her?” are uttered in disbelief.  I recommend another reading of those previous posts to refresh your memory about life style choices for yourself.  There are no guarantees.  No matter how hard we try.

Today’s post is about me and how it feels to be the last man standing.  When my brother Eric died a few days ago following a massive stroke, his departure from this life left me the sole survivor of the original family of origin, two parents and three children.  His wife and children carry the greatest burden of pain, loss and suffering.  Their lives will be impacted daily by his absence, as will the circle of close friends, professional associates who saw or were touched by him.  His kindness, intelligence, generosity and quiet humor will be missed.  Profoundly.

A sister’s loss is different.  I was not part of his life these last 60 years.  We lived far apart and saw each other only occasionally for the FOO (Family of Origen) gatherings, Christmas, birthdays, weddings, funerals.  We didn’t talk on the phone much, once or twice a year.  So why do I feel this slicing away of part of myself?  This aloneness?  We never agreed on the family stories.  Now there is no one left to curb my tongue.  It feels vulnerable, frightening to be the keeper of the stories.  They will always be “Betsy’s fiction” because memory is particular.  This is not the collective memory of a people with an oral tradition.  My recollections of Eric will be as far from Homer’s of Ulysses as two stories can be.

As very small children we were together much of the time.  We made that migration after the war (WWII) from Westchester County in NY to the Great Lakes Navel base where our father was mustered out of the navy.  That winter we woke up early on clear cold days, strapped on our roller skates and raced around the flat streets of Waukegan, IL.  Once I rushed into the kitchen to tell Mommy that Eric was hanging from the tree.  She flew to the back yard where his jacket pocket had caught on a limb and he was dangling upside down.  My fear of heights probably originated from the time I was walking with my parents down the flat stone steps in Watkins Glen, NY.  They spotted Eric running full tilt, Lyman right behind him, along the top of the low flag stone wall beyond which plunged a waterfall crashing 60 ft below.  My mother whispered in that heart-stopping panic, “Port, do something.”

After Waukegan, our family made our way to Oklahoma City.  Eric and I were squeezed together, the fillings of a sandwich formed by our belongings and the roof of the station wagon as the family drove south stopping in St. Louis for the night.  Our little brother sat between our parents in the front seat.

In Oklahoma City, we rented in a neighborhood peppered with giant grasshopper-armed oil rigs, pumping oil night and day.  I remember sitting with Eric, our noses poking through the chain link fence, watching the workmen change out the pipes from the top of an oil derrick.   One of the men lost his footing and plunged to his death on the ground a few feet from where we sat.  I remember my first thought was to protect and comfort Eric, too small at 7 to witness such a thing.  I would have been 8 ½.

My playground memories from that year figure Eric pulling my braids, my back up against a small tree in the school yard, his feet pressed against it, one braid in each hand, laughing sardonically at my surprise and pain.

We often sat on either side of our Grandpa, our little brother in his lap.  Gramps took us to the library each Saturday and read us book after book in his deep voice.  We stood together at his bedside when he died on Easter.  I was 9, Eric was just turning 8.

We finally settled in Eastern Oklahoma, Muskogee, where we lived those formative junior high and high school years.  He and I often rode our bikes to a dirt bank by the railroad track, sacks of match box cars and trucks dangling from the handle bars.  We spent hours building roads, tunnels, villages in the perfect hard sand.  Swimming on the swim team and playing the flute kept us together in high school when our lives were otherwise separating.  Eric spent more time with our younger brother Lyman than with me as I began dating and spending time with girl friends, loathing the annoyances of younger brothers.

Why are those early formative experiences so vivid and important above all else?  None of them matter to the people who weep at his funeral next Monday.  They have little if anything to do with the man he became.  His passing leaves them with me and me alone.

Is it totally weird to have this acute pain as if your childhood takes on a surreal, ghostly quality because one of the key players is no longer a phone call away?  I never asked him to corroborate any of these stories—and I could tell many more—so I do not know if he even remembered them.  There is something so final in the passing away of that one who could have said, “Yes, I remember that.  Wasn’t it scary?  Wonderful? Awesome?”  The mirror is broken.

I would love to hear your stories of your siblings, whether gone or still among the living.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

Betsy

206 933 1889

www.DoWellWithBetsy.com   Would you love a ready-made blogging platform that could earn you money?

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