Tag Archives: health

Undercover

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I wrote a first draft of this based on a promt at WriteToDone.com. It’s posted, along with many other stories based on the prompt, in the comment section there. Then I did a couple more rounds of editing before posting it here.

Undercover
By Laura McHale Holland 

I’ve seen plenty in my thirty years here. There was the time I arrived to open the bank, and the display windows were smashed. Glass shards littered the sidewalk; glass was on the floor inside, too. The work of young anarchists prowling the night before.

Another time, it wasn’t glass on the floor; it was everyone in the bank. Except for the tellers. They were pulling money from their cash drawers with trembling hands. But then a customer realized the gun the robber brandished was only a toy. He wrestled the culprit to the ground. I pressed the alarm. Soon enough Officer Kaufman had the man in a paddy wagon.

Photo by H.Adam

Yes, I’ve seen plenty over the years. But today takes the cake. I can’t work. Clothes racks and shelves clutter the waiting area. And a checkout station is right where my desk should be. A girl behind the counter is waving at me. Our tellers would never have tattoos all over their arms like she does.

 “Hi, Mr. Walker, are you lost again?” she asks.

 “I’m not lost. I work here.” 

 “Of course you do. Why don’t you have a seat by the window? I’ll sort it all out, okay?” She picks up her cell phone. I stand my ground.

 A few minutes later, Officer Kaufman walks in, smiles at me. “Francis Walker. You’re just the man I’m looking for.”

 “Hi there Officer. Do you need another loan?”

 “No, Francis. I’ve come to take you home.”

 “Home? Is something wrong with Nancy?”

 “Nancy is in heaven now, Francis. You and me, we’re both widowers long retired. We live at Happy Hills, and I’ve come to take you home.”

 I don’t believe a word he’s said, but he is an officer of the law. I’d better go. This must be some undercover operation; he’ll fill me in once we get outside.

 

Click to visit H.Adam’s flickr photostream.

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I’m flagging, my friends

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When I was a youngster, I used to tear down our block, jump over our neighbor’s small evergreen tree (which grew from about two feet to four feet tall in the years that I did this), run diagonally across our front lawn and then leap over four stairs to our front porch. I did this routinely and with much delight.

One day my foot slipped at the bottom of the stairs, and my knee slammed into the edge of one of the stairs. Actually, it was the top of my tibia that met the stair. The whole knee area was a swollen mess for a while, but eventually it shrank to its normal size, except for a bump on the tibia.

Since then, the bump has caused me no problems unless I try walking on my knees or do some kind of dance activity that uses the knee joint in ways it’s really not supposed to be used. And I went for 49 years without further injury to that spot.

Unfortunately, last month I injured the knee in the very same place. The leg can bear weight, so my doctor deduced no bone is broken. The skin is healing, the swelling is going down, but the joint is not working well yet. The bump on my tibia is a bit larger; the soft tissue around it is stressed. To avoid pain, I have to poke along like my arthritic grandmother used to do.

This has slowed me down more than I would have ever thought. Last week I had oral surgery, too, which has slowed me down as well. Recovery from that is going very well, though. No problems there (except eating is difficult for the time being).

So, my friends, I’m flagging for a bit. I’m of necessity focused on healing. I’m down but not out. I’ll be back to posting soon.

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Music for ghosts

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Music for Ghosts
By Laura McHale Holland

Sleepless and in pain, Mireille hears murmuring by her bedroom window. She looks outside and sees familiar translucent forms gathering in the darkness along the backyard fence. She angles into the wheelchair at the side of the bed, lifts a mandolin from her cluttered dressing table, and maneuvers out of the bedroom through the house and down the ramp into her yard.

There she sees them, swaying like silver leaves blowing in the breeze: her mother and father, husband, grandparents, sister, brothers, best friends from childhood, the son who died while a babe in the crib—all her loved ones lost from the many stages of her long life.

She picks up the mandolin and begins to pluck as though arthritis had never invaded her fingers. Her loved ones surround her and dance—she strong as the maypole, they light as ribbons. She plays on until, hours later, she closes her eyes and drops the mandolin into her lap.

Mireille’s daughter stops by later and finds her mother in the yard, sleeping to the rising sun. As daughter pushes mother back into the house and then makes hot tea, Mireille promises to stop playing music for ghosts every night. She promises to take her sleeping pills and her pain medication. She promises to play bingo at the church on Mondays and Wednesdays and attend the water aerobics class at the Y on Thursdays. She promises many things to get her daughter out of her hair and off to work. Then Mireille sleeps the day away in her chair, hands at peace on the mandolin resting in her lap.

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I don’t suppose

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I Don’t Suppose
By Laura McHale Holland

The coleus on the counter caught my eye. It was in my kitchen, but I’d never seen it before, and it looked ghastly with my blue and yellow decor. I called my long-time neighbor Layna and told her a stranger was in my home and she’d better come over quick and save me. She asked, “How do you know there’s a stranger there?” I said, “Because there’s a coleus on my counter, and I know it didn’t walk in by itself.”

She told me she’d seen the plant just yesterday when she’d come over to borrow my Shark mop. I told her she was mistaken and that it was three days ago she borrowed the mop anyway, not yesterday. She told me I was full of you know what. And we went on arguing like that until I said, “You bring back my Shark right now or I’m gonna throw this damn plant at your picture window.”

Now I’m sitting on my front porch steps, plant in my lap. She’s standing on her porch, Shark in hand. I was all set to march across the road and let her have it, but I just noticed there’s this pink, plastic rabbit stuck smack in the middle of my rosebush hedge, and I swear I’ve never seen that critter before. What if this is the beginning of my end, what if I’m slipping terrified into that good night? Layna’s my best friend. I don’t suppose I ought to brain her.

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What to pack for healthy travel

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Jim’s watching “Quantum of Solace” while I tap away on my iBook. The crashing, jolting soundtrack is the opposite of the soft, flowing music Naomi Caspe turned on just before she left me for a while, stuck full of needles, in the treatment room this afternoon. Acupuncture isn’t for everyone (nor is James Bond), but since the treatment, my pain is greatly reduced. (I wrote about aggravating an old whiplash injury this morning if you want the back story).

After the treatment, Naomi and I ate lunch at Bombay Garden, an all-you-can-eat, Indian buffet-style restaurant at Fourth and Lootens streets in San Rafael. The food was fresh and yummy. I didn’t take notes about the food though because I was collecting advice from Naomi on how to stay healthy while traveling. And here are five tips she passed on to me:

1. Pack White Flower Oil. You can find it at any Chinese grocery, and it comes in small (even tiny) sizes, so it’s easy to take on planes. It’s a mixture of lavender, eucalyptus and wintergreen oils and is used to stop the spread of germs and prevent colds and infections. When in an airport or on a plane, dab a drop under each nostril. It is also good for soothing headaches; just put some on your temples.

2. Pack Po Chai pills to treat travelers’ diarrhea. These are tiny pills sold in any Asian grocery and are renowned for their ability to rebalance the digestive system.

3. Don’t pack your !#X? with you, i.e., have a bowel movement before you board a plane. This will greatly reduce or even eliminate jet lag symptoms and contribute to overall well being on the trip. Eating lightly the day before your flight will help with this, as will drinking lots of water. (If elimination is a problem, acupuncture directly before the trip might also help.)

4. Pack Bach Rescue Remedy. This is a calming flower remedy that can reduce emotional stress while flying (turbulence, fear of plunging into the sea, all that awful stuff). It’s also handy to keep in the glove compartment in the car in case you have a near-accident on the road (caused by someone else, not you, of course).

5. Pack No-Jet-Lag, a homeopathic medicine sold at Trader Joe’s and some drug stores. Naomi recommends taking it just before any flight and every two hours on a long flight.

That’s the end of the post containing Naomi’s advice. To see more of my work at examiner.com, please visit www.examiner.com/x-7978-SF-Sonoma-County-Examiner

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I lowered my cholesterol 58 points in 2 months

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When my doctor gave me “lipid panel” results from a Dec. 12 blood test, he suggested I consider taking statin drugs because my total cholesterol was at 261, and I have a family history of heart disease. I rarely even take cold medicine, so taking drugs every day to keep my cholesterol down isn’t something I want to do.

So, here’s what I did:

Stopped eating cheese almost entirely. I ate it maybe three times between Dec. 12 and Feb. 5, when I had my second blood test.

Starting having oatmeal every other morning for breakfast.

Added a whole clove of fresh garlic to a meal (after the meal was cooked so the garlic was raw) on the days I didn’t have oatmeal for breakfast.

Cut way back on eating omelettes and egg salad, having a serving of eggs less often than once a week.

Began incorporating a monounstaurated fatty acid (MUFA) into each meal. I used avocados, olives, peanut butter, almond butter, mixed nuts, pumpkin seeds and very dark chcoclate.

Got a pedometer and upped the number of steps I take in a day from about 3,000 to about 6,000.

Started using the elliptical trainer in our family room, maybe four times a week, sometimes only doing 10 to 15 minutes, other times doing 30 minutes.

Started listening to Learning Strategies Corp.’s “Perfect Health” CD either before I fall asleep or upon waking almost every day.

So, that’s it. This was fairly easy to do. I feel better overall, lost 10 lbs. in the process, and now have LDL at 127 and HDL at 64, which is a very good ration of “bad” to “good” cholesterol in addition to being what is considered to be a normal level of cholesterol. And it took less than two months.

I just thought it might be helpful information for anyone else whose cholesterol needs to come down.

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Little by little big things can get done

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There’s nothing quite like taking a walk, especially on a crisp, sunny morning when you’re not in a hurry, and there are plenty of trees, shrubs and flowers nearby and hills to please the eye in the distance. That’s what I did Saturday morning on the way to downtown Cotati to get a hair cut. Most days it’s rush, rush, rush, feed the dogs, write a little bit, shower, water the pansies in the yard (how I love their colors!) and try to get a few other things done before work, where I sit in front of a computer for hours, editing articles and managing a small editorial/writing staff. After the hair cut, I bought “Chicken Soup for the Father’s Soul” for my husband, Jim, for Father’s Day, which we celebrated with two of our children today, like so many other families. We were thankful to be together in our home, everyone smiling and healthy. It’s quite a contrast to last year when we were all in Kaiser Hospital, San Francisco, and Jim was recovering from his second surgery for colon cancer in 10 days; more followed as the months went on, one setback after another, some cancer-related, others having to do with other conditions that manifested. But the worst has passed, and nothing felt better than to be sitting in the living room today, no crisis, no pain, lots of love.

I wonder if there’s a Chicken Soup book for people who are trying to do too much. There are so many variations on the theme, something along those lines is probably in the mix. A Chicken Soup book for people who stay up late whenthey have to get up early in the morning would fit my situation right now, too. That’s what I’m doing at the moment, staying up too late. Jim’s already sound asleep; our daughter’s in bed, probably talking on her cell phone, but will be sleeping soon. Our little dogs are sprawled out on the floor, sound asleep at my feet; I can hardly keep my eyes open right now, but I don’t want to go to bed, don’t want to say farewell to June 15, 2008, yet. In less than an hour I won’t have a choice; the day will be gone, never to return. Did I make the most of the day? Did I live the best life possible? Probably not. I did write a little bit on the sequel to Reversible Skirt (which will be published by RockWay Press), and so far I’ve got about 50,000 words on the first draft. I don’t think this second book will be more than about 80,000 words. It feels good to be moving along with that project, despite all the other things going on in my life. Little by little big things can get done.

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