People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and read!!

My piece on MindBodyGreen gives 10 tips to help a child with anxiety. Happy to be part of this awesome online magazine!

Programs to help kids in poverty are imperative to break the cycle, and Patricia Mainer is the living embodiment of that. Her story is so inspiring, and I'm glad she chooses to speak up and advocate.

Patrick Stewart tells his personal story of how the physical abuse of his mother affected him as a boy. He wants change. Make it so.

I have linked a few articles on breast cancer and the changing ideas about it's detection and treatment. This woman's blog chronicles her story and what is a perfect example of the ideas being discussed. She was diagnosed with DCIS and ended up going a different way for treatments.

A woman with bipolar discusses the movie Silver Lining Playbook and her decision to go public with her diagnosis. We watched the movie SLP a few weeks ago and I liked it- a realistic recounting of one story of bipolar.

I love this interview with Ian McEwan by Zadie Smith in The Believer. Ian McEwan's Saturday is one of the most engrossing books I've read in a while, and Zadie Smith's On Beauty is one of my favorite novels in general. Their discussion about writing is geek heaven for me.

Ice Cream Man To Rival: ' I Own This Town'   oh I love this.

Fellow blogger, writer and mother Jane Roper wrote this great piece for The Millions on publishing her book and the diagnosis of her daughter with leukemia.  

My piece on Budget Fashionista lists the 20 best pieces of fashion advice ever!

geez, you really like your kids

$3 flowers from the Saturday morning Farmers Market
one block from my house
a stroller walk away

Ever Elizabeth took this of her Daddy

Ever and Daddy looking at the puter together
and Ever with my daycare kiddos playing on our very very very very
used front porch
Ever is obsessed with making 'chocolate soup'
ie mud, leaves, twigs, berries, chalk, etc.
' BELISH! ' she says

Ever and Daddy looking at the kitty who lives next door
probably because we don't have one, Kinny is obsessed with cats
and that thing?
oh that's just the pee inducing lizard that keeps surprising me on our porch.
he's huge and mean.
and that last picture,
that's what i do a million bajillion times a day
so that Lola's best friend said
geez, you really like your kids

Just So-So Stories

-I drove by a big white truck painted across the side with red letters SIEMENS What an unfortunate name for a company.

-Ever is fully potty trained minus pooping in her underwear the last two days. Cleaning poop out of underwear is five million times more gross and difficult than cleaning poop out of diapered butts. There is the underwear creamed with poop, first of all. Yesterday after dumping out Ever's poopy underwear into the toilet, the toilet clogged. I got the plunger and began working away at the clog. The plunger curled up on itself and I had to use my bare hand to uncurl it, and as I pushed at it, it uncurled in one big Snap! and flung poop water all over my face.

-Ian gave me an awesome mother's day card, with a sweet sentiment in it that ended:
 Keep it up! 

-I am watching Mad Men from the very beginning on Netflix. I'm now on Season 3 in the first few episodes. When we head toward bed at nite, Ever says ' Momma you watch Mad Men? He falling! '
And as he falls and falls and the camera pulls away to reveal Don Draper sitting with his arms out, drink in hand, and the music skitters and lands delightfully, she says ' He's OK! ' I'm loving this show.

-It was- is?- almost 90- degrees here today. The kids have been in the house most of the day, minus an hour in the morning and now an hour in the later afternoon. I'm running out of ways to keep them occupied. Ice cubes only go so far. Oh, I need to buy shaving cream! Thank you. Your welcome.

-Mr. Curry made a wonderful mother's day for me. I felt happy, loved, and lucky. Which was good because I've been in a state of constant anxiety the last few days. I needed a break. Today, back to the fear. Someone must sing me Soft Kitty.

-Ever has pneumonia. Thursday we went to the pediatrician- a new one- and left with antibiotics, albuterol for breathing treatments and a liquid steroid. She's much better now. The first few days were upsetting. Watching her breathe like that brings up the emotions of her first month of life when she was hospitalized with RSV.

People In Your Neighborhood: Mental Health Edition

take heart, and read

My post originally up here at Flux is now up at Huffington Post: Wabi Sabi { Scenes From A Marriage} on bipolar, marriage and the story we make of our lives.

A brave, beautiful essay from Edenland on her recent hospitalization and diagnosis of Bipolar 11. 

What would have happened to Sylvia Plath with proper treatment and medication? Seeing Sylvia Plath With New Eyes

Depression, Anxiety and Me 

This article on helping the siblings of mentally ill or atypical kids is informative and compassionate.

Fish oil supplements 'beat psychotic illness' : I give my children fish oil supplements from the time they are toddlers, for a variety of reasons, but the preventative and stabilizing effect on mood is definitely one of them. I think anyone with a background of mental illness in their family is doing their children a huge favor by providing this. The study I link is not the only study to link fish oil to mood stabilization. There was a major study done in a prison, for instance, over a span of a year or two, that showed a great reduction in violent acts and behavior in the population after daily fish oil supplementation was introduced.

Natasha Tracy's informative, updated and honest blog, Bipolar Blurble

The blogpost everyone is talking about: ( at least, all the COOL mentally ill people, like me! ) Depression, Part Two from Hyperbole and a Half

pneumonia

blue mask grab her face 
a small grunt in sleep
mole baby, tuck to my nipple.

seal the steroid air,
tongue of clean oxygen
- a bronchial rape.

' rape me, rape me my friend
rape me, rape me again
am i the only one? '

wake! wake! 
she's not breathing cold am 
there is is a train tunnel 

coming like freight off the moon-
in the desert you hear this
warning all night:

i am the one thing
i am the one thing
i am the one thing

tiny exclamations of surprise
bubble from her heated mouth:
where is the air?

all the midnight trucks pulled over.
the sirens mute, every dog muzzled-
they wait for this child to breathe.

Be Here Now

An overcast moody day after two days of rain; no matter how many times I press my forefinger into the divet on my forehead it remains with the slightest emotion or slant of sun. I have my father's squint without the masculine, bristling eyebrows. I smoked for a long time. I want a cigarette. Every day I wake and touch the blanket, press my feet against the pillowy mattress, address myself to the physical world. I am not here, though. That last picture of me looks like someone already dead. A photo of someone you remember. Time slips by and I spin untouched in its endless encompassing everything always forever. Where am I?
Today, I was at the park.

Lola Rules and Chores at Eleven Years Old

I

I usually make dinner. Sometimes Mr. Curry does, but usually it's me. We've role reversed- for a few years there, he was the cook. Lola's in charge of cleaning up afterward. This includes sweeping the kitchen, wiping down the dinner table, the counters and the stove top, rinsing off the dishes and putting them in the right side of the sink and putting away any leftovers. Please Lola, don't wipe the crumbs on the floor!

We don't have desserts until Friday, with occasional exceptions. Friday night we get cheap takeout and usually have dessert, too. I always have my kids look and see how much sugar is in products. If we buy yogurt, Lola sees it has 11 grams of sugar in it. That's half of what you need in one day, in one yogurt, I point out. I explain to my kids that bodies are just fancy engines, and if you put a bunch of mud in your engine every day, eventually it's going to break.

Lola's teacher isn't big on homework, but she does have a little every day, plus I have her study basic math facts for 20 minutes daily. After forgetting this often, I had her make a sign to reminder herself. Same for cleaning up after dinner. I'm big on signs as reminders, we ( including the adults ) are big forgetters, so writing things down is imperative.

She also has to do self care. Since Lola has generalized anxiety, when it rears its head we make sure she stays on top of it so it doesn't get too bad. So far this works. Her self care includes exercise ( Wii Dance or a run ), quiet, uninterrupted time to do whatever she wants, low sugar and dairy, comfort reads and shows, meditation and breathing exercises and getting outside. At bedtime, she has cuddles and then thinks of three happy things to look forward to as she falls asleep. These are all done daily until the anxiety is quelled.

Once every weekend, usually Sunday, she participates in cleaning the general house. Usually she does something like wash windows, pick up her room, empty bathroom trashes and brush the dogs.

Lola regularly helps with Ever but I've been careful not too ask too much. A good half of what she does for Ever is self initiated. They are as close as I ever dreamed. Maybe three days out of the week I ask Lola to watch Ever for a half hour or hour after the daycare kiddos are gone, always so I can write. They usually go on the porch and play, or upstairs and play dolls. Lola bathes with Ever a few times a week too. 

Lola has Girl Scouts once every other week. Her guitar ended when she broke her arm, she just didn't want to go back, and since I had made her finish out the lessons with protest for months, I let it go. She's doing dance soon.

She has an Ipad from school ( they all have to use one for school ) and the iPod she bought; after fiddling with the rules for the first month, I landed on keeping her at one half hour of use a day, with Friday being the day she can use electronics as much as she wants. She has to be in bed reading at 8:30 every night, and goes to bed at 9pm. In my dream world she goes to bed at 9 every night. In reality, it's more like 9:30.

I start my kids out playing outside from littles, and so at Lola's age I don't have to kick her outside to play- it's just part of our life: of course you play outside every day! If she started hermiting, I would kick her out though. Fresh air, grass, seeing the leaves blowing in the wind, the sun, the cold air, goosebumps, aloneness while throwing rocks, playing with friends in the bushes, watching ropy  polys...all of this is important to being alive.

Her newest project/idea is awesome. She wants to do a dance a thon for Rady Children's Hospital. Her Girl Scout troop recently went and donated used books that all the girls pitched in, and Lola was really moved by the parents living there because their kids are so sick. She is thinking people could pledge $10 an hour for every hour their person keeps dancing.

Basically, she's totally major.

Park Reverie

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance. -Yoko Ono

Review: In the Kingdom of The Sick

When Laurie Edwards asked me if I was interested in receiving an early copy of In the Kingdom of the Sick ( a social history of chronic illness in America ) I thought it was a great match- I have endometriosis and hypothyroidism, both chronic illness. Since my diagnosis years ago I have been an avid student of how our culture responds to chronic illness- especially in women- in all facets.

Mrs. Edwards herself is has a serious and very rare pulmonary disease- PCD- that acts similarly to cystic fibrosis in the lungs and requires daily physical therapy and medications. After a childhood spent with a then unnamed, overwhelming illness, Mrs. Edwards ended up with a diagnosis and a career path: she is a professor teaching health and science writing, an author of books and a freelance writer- an ' inevitable generalist ' as she calls it. In The Kingdom of the Sick is, in Mrs. Edwards own words, ' a combination of research, literature,  and stories from patients across the chronic disease spectrum. ' This includes those with a more simple disease, like my hypothyroidism, all the way to AIDS or even certain cancers that act like and are treated as a chronic disease. 

The personal stories of chronic illness scattered throughout the book are familiar and yet, still scary, still heartbreaking. Lives that were full and vibrant reduced inexplicably to a roar of pain, doctors, misunderstood symptoms and blame. Mrs. Edwards addresses the question of blame throughout In The Kingdom of the Sick: the deep roots illness and blaming the patient has in our culture, the way that misinformation or lack of knowledge translates to blame, the way that blaming the patient transforms an already life changing disease into a socially isolating burden and the way that blame might change the treatment a patient does or does not receive- especially women.

Laurie Edwards looks at the way women in pain are thought of and treated in America, looking at both research and personal accounts of how women's pain is too often under treated and/or considered a psychological disorder. She points out that 'Putting individual experience into broader context is what enabled change to happen. ' in regards to AIDS treatments, and it is clear that she is attempting to do the same for chronic disease. The lack of true advocacy for chronic illness is a recurring theme throughout this book, something that I myself have troubled over. In my own experience, I've found that engaging people to advocate or work for most any cause ( outside of notable exceptions of animals and breast cancer ) is difficult, and while Mrs. Edwards does not come up with an explanation for our country's lack of social protest, she does reiterate the cost: no change, or impossibly slow change. 

As the book moves forward in a chronological order, social media looms as a major player in the experience of chronic illness for patients. With access to information both scientific and personal, patients can be empowered to advocate for the best treatments, and to insist that something is wrong with them when told that classic condensation: It's in your head. In the years before my endometriosis ( Stage Four, lesions and adhesions all over my abdomen and a 6 cm. endometrioma on my left ovary ) my ongoing struggle with fatigue, IBS and all over body pain was as much a psychological trauma as a physical one. In my mind I let the guilty thought cross my mind more than once: I almost wish I had cancer or something they could find, because then I'd get treatment and understanding.  Of course I did not really want cancer; what I wanted was to be allowed to have the intense symptoms of my disease understood in the work place and at home, instead of the constant worrying that I was thought of as lazy, unstable, mentally ill or maybe a secret drug addict. The skeptical, dispassionate looks and comments I heard from doctors over and over again only added to the feeling that I was a failure as a patient: I wasn't the good kind of patient, the kind that could be labelled and treated. 

In The Kingdom of the Sick is an important and interesting read for anyone living with or living with someone who has a chronic disease. With chronic disease patients making up a larger and larger portion of our population, The Kingdom of the Sick is almost a majority.

INFORMATION AND TO BUY

To Buy The Book: In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America

The NPR interview with Laurie Edwards

Laurie Edwards BLOG