Tag Archives: hope

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hope molting and growing new feathers

A friend away a friend some day
a friend can’t stay all the day
a friend won’t pray a friend can’t play
not today is what they say
a friend they say a friend always
a friend who may return some day

in a way you might say
hope molts and regrows feathers today

I think my inner four year old wrote today’s poem. I am thinking about the song my mother taught me, very young, for when I was frustrated.

My sister and I loved this song and others, Samuel Hall and “I don’t want to play in your back yard, I don’t like you any more. You’ll be sorry when you see me, sliding down my cellar door.”

I gave a young friend a book of rhymes. He looked at me with some horror. “These are nursery rhymes.” I grin at him. “Look again. It’s a book of insulting playground rhymes, suitable for all occasions.” He looked at the book again and held on to it.

The photograph is from the National Museum of Women in the Arts again. Another fabulous painting that seems to fit my theme.

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Exercise mets

Mets could be metastases, a terrible word in cancer. But this is exercise mets. I am half way through my pulmonary rehabilitation for pneumonia and getting stronger. So what is a met? “One MET is approximately 3.5 milliliters of oxygen consumed per kilogram (kg) of body weight per minute.” (from https://www.healthline.com/health/what-are-mets#definition).

Ok, that doesn’t seem very useful. I find this way more useful, a chart of how many mets are used for certain activities:

https://www.healthline.com/health/what-are-mets#examples

The treadmill I am using at pulmonary rehab tells me how many mets I am using. However, last time I turned it on and didn’t enter my weight. It uses 155 pounds, which is more than I weigh. I think that then the mets are wrong. It isn’t exact anyhow. The important thing is that I am improving and off oxygen! I am now up to 5.3 mets, going at 3.3 mph, on a 4% grade, for 40 minutes. Pulmonary rehab is twelve weeks, twice a week, with a respiratory therapist and a physical therapist.

My respiratory therapist asks my goals. To bicycle distance, hike across the Olympics, and to ski again, off oxygen. That means altitude. Once we are above 5500 feet, the body really starts noticing the thinner air. I am not there yet but I am so pleased to be improving.

On the chart, I am in the moderate exercise range. To bicycle, I would have to be able to sustain 8 mets. Not yet, not yet.

Being off oxygen (except night, flute, sustained singing and heavy exercise) is GREAT! The intrinsic problem has not been fixed, thought. Fully twenty specialists since 2012 have not figured out why I get pneumonia easily and how to protect me, other than masking and not working in Family Medicine or anything people intensive. It’s annoying, my career has been blown up. I don’t have much hope of an overarching diagnosis at this point, but I’m willing to keep trying. We don’t know everything in medicine and really, I do not think we ever will. It’s endlessly complex and fascinating.

I think the mets chart should be shared with patients. I had one couple who insisted that the woman had PMS even though she was postmenopausal. I scratch my head and continue to watch her. After months something made me suspicious and I order an echocardiogram. She had congestive heart failure, seriously reduced heart output. I promptly called the cardiologist and said, “This is new, she is on NO MEDICINES.” He saw her within a week. Sometimes things do not present in a straight forward manner. She felt much better once we got her heart functioning better. If a person is losing their ability to perform moderate intensity mets, they should see their doctor. It could be spending too many hours in front of a screen (turn it off, get up, go outside, walk daily!) but it could also be something else. Heart is the number one killer still.

Stay healthy and keep those mets up!

Ha. I did use the word certain, didn’t I? And one of my favorite exercises is dancing. Listening to this right now:

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Parasympathy

In 2013, Catherine Hodes, director of the Safe Homes Project (a domestic-violence program), started a workshop called “Is it Conflict or Abuse?” An abusive dynamic, she argues, requires one person to have power over the other, whereas conflict involves two people struggling for power. The distinction can be confusing, and in some cases “both people feel like they’re being abused, because they’re not getting their needs met or they’re not getting their way.”

From the Atlantic Monthly article: That’s it, you’re dead to me. September 2022 p. 14.

I think this is a fascinating idea, in the article that questions the internet wisdom of getting rid of “toxic people” in one’s life. When we cut off someone we consider “toxic”, we aren’t peaceing them, are we? Peace me, peace you, how do we actively peace people instead of being afraid, on guard, at war. I think everyone is more afraid after the two years of Covid 19 pandemic and all of the deaths and the Long Haul Covid and war. Everyone has a shorter fuse, everyone is stressed.

Remember that stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight system. The body makes less thyroid and less sex hormones and makes more adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol is a steroid and great for short term, but bad for long term. If we are continually stressed, cortisol messes up the immune system and we get auto-immune disorders, the body attacking its’ own cells. The adrenaline raises our heart rate and blood pressure, neither of which are good for the heart long term. When the thyroid hormone is on the low side, we feel tired. The adrenaline makes us feel wired and we have trouble sleeping. The cortisol makes us more likely to get sick and raises blood sugar too. The low sex hormones, well, women can stop menses and men start asking for viagra.

So we as a world, need to learn to downregulate the sympathetic nervous system and go back to parasympathetic. The relaxed one. The one where we have less adrenaline and less high cortisol and more thyroid and our gut works and sex works again. How do we get there?

Breathing is one way. Slow breathing: 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out. Work up to 20 minutes. One of my veterans said he was not used to feeling relaxed, it felt weird. Ok, it may feel weird, but maybe we need to practice it. He did. There is circular breathing too, 5 seconds in, 5 hold, 5 out, 5 hold. Zen meditation, facing a wall for 40 minutes, works too. We try not to follow the thoughts. The thoughts pop up anyhow, but not following them down the rabbit hole is interesting and challenging. Mindful mediation and Jon Kabat Zinn’s books and tapes work as well. It takes practice. Practice peace, practice relaxing. Doesn’t that sound like a lovely practice?

Stupid cat videos work for me too. Laughter works. What makes you laugh? I like the silly animal videos, the moose playing with the wind chimes, three baby bears rescued (with care) from a dumpster, with the truck driving off to avoid momma bear. Rocking, knitting, sewing, fishing, walking the beach, cuddling a baby, dancing, listening to music, playing music. Which works for you? Silly movies. I don’t like horror movies, and I love cartoons and animation. Engage the child at heart for the parasympathetic nervous system.

In high school my daughter said that most fights were stupid. “One person says something without thinking. The other person goes off and gets upset. She stops talking to person one, who has no idea what is going on, and they often talk to their friends. So there is this big fight over some dumb comment.”

I don’t think it ends with high school, sadly enough. And before we label someone “toxic”, maybe we need to wander off and breathe, or watch a silly cat video. Whatever works for you that doesn’t hurt others.

We need more parasympathy in the world. Yep, I just made that word up. Relax and if you can’t or won’t, consider practicing.

Peace you and please peace me.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23266-parasympathetic-nervous-system-psns

https://healthnews.com/family-health/healthy-living/how-to-activate-the-parasympathetic-nervous-system/

August 19, 2022

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growing

My son and daughter-in-law got married April 30th in Black Diamond, Washington. The young man in the photograph was the youngest in the house I rented. We had my two aunts: 81 and 86 years old, and my uncle, 85 years old. Me, my daughter, my two friends and their son. This young man and I took photographs. He taught me new things about my camera and on the last day ran a slide show from my laptop to the television. He helped all of us folks with technology and we really enjoyed having him there.

And I am delighted to hear that he told his parent that he wished we had one more day, all of us. Eight people in a household from Thursday to Monday and it went very well. Weddings always have some interesting glitches, but after putting off the wedding for two years due to covid, the bride and groom did not seem rattled by anything! My daughter-in-law is truly a delight.

Here is to the next generation, surviving this pandemic, sweeping up the pieces and growing, and thriving anyhow.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: children.