Day 10 – HAWMC – Les Apparences Peuvent être Trompeuses

It’s often hard to like pictures of ourselves – post your favorite picture of yourself. (Extra points if you can guess where we are 🙂

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Day 18: Open a Book and Train a Dog

Open a Book. Choose a book and open it to a random page and point to a phrase. Use that phrase to get you writing today. Free write for 15-20 without stopping.

“Dogs are social animals, and they need to be included in a pack. Since we have deprived them of their normal pack – animals of their own species – and the freedom to set up social structures of their own, we must include them in our pack and help them adapt to human social structures.”

This is an excerpt from How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend by The Monks of New Skete. It’s the second time I’ve read it and it’s just incredible. The first time I encountered this book was when I got the news that Zulu would be ours forever. I went to the library to look for training books and there it was. After reading it once, I bought myself a copy and am now reading it again and dog-earing (pun intended) pages I want to refer back to when training Zulu.

If you have a dog, it’s a must-read.

The above excerpt, in particular, is such an important part of dog ownership. There are dog owners and then there are families where a member or two or more happen to have fur and a tail. There’s a big difference between the two. I consider our dogs our children. And don’t tell me that once I have children I’ll feel differently. I have a child and my dogs are still my children.

I try to make sure they get attention, love, decent meals and exercise every day. I worry about their health and behavior and I talk to them – a lot. No, I do not value them above my child but I do value them. A lot.

I’ve had nightmares where something terrible happens to them. So even in sleep they’re on my mind, just like my daughter.

On the other end of the spectrum, in the neighborhood where we live we have quite a lot of dog owners. They own dogs, and in the case of one neighbor – five dogs, but they don’t treat them like a member of their pack. With this one particular neighbor, she leaves them outside all the time. Even at night. These dogs have formed their own pack. Picture something along the lines of Lord of the Flies but with sharper teeth and awakening wolf instincts and you’ll be close.

These dogs snarl and fight whenever they hear a noise and this happens several times during the night. We have a white noise machine in our bedroom and our daughter’s bedroom. It helps a lot but when guests stay with us they can’t sleep. One day while some family was visiting we figured we’d go over to the neighbor and see if we could figure out a solution. She was nice, sweet even, and was very sorry to hear that the dogs kept us up at night. When we asked if it was possible to bring the dogs in at night she responded with, “Oh no, they’d just bark all night!”

Um.

Well.

How exactly does one respond to that? My husband was dumbfounded. Further conversation resulted in her promising to see what she could do. Which has been nothing.

The noise is annoying, but we’ve learned to live with it. What I think about most is those dogs. Why have dogs if you won’t interact with them? Get a garden gnome if you wish to fill your backyard with something. Don’t choose a living, breathing, loving creature and then only fulfill it’s most basic needs and nothing else. Dogs worship their people. How cruel is that to step on that adoration? Listen to The Monks of New Skete and include your dogs in your pack. The rewards are endless.

A photo of two of the members of our pack.

The Monks of New Skete, How To Be Your Dog’s Best Friend (Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 131.

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Day 17: You Are Your Medical Advocate

Learned the Hard Way. What’s a lesson you learned the hard way? Write about it for 15 today.

In medical schools, doctors are taught a saying, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses – not zebras.” In theory it is good practice. Don’t look for exotic causes to symptoms, rather look at the obvious – it’s likely that. However, it sometimes causes perfectly good physicians to refuse to think outside of the box, and therefore miss medical issues at first glance.

When you have a chronic illness like type 1 diabetes that effects every cell in your body, it is so easy for doctors to blame everything on that evil and obvious disease. Your head hurts? You’re probably having too many hypoglycemic incidences. You’re tired all the time, it’s due to your diabetes, fever of unknown origin? Yup, diabetes again. I leaned the hard way that it was up to me and me alone to fight to get my voice heard and force doctors to look around the diabetes elephant sitting in the room.

The first time this happened, I was 13, about to enter high school and came down with a debilitating fever that landed me in bed for over a week. My doctor questioned me extensively. “Are you doing your blood sugars? Following your diet? Getting exercise? What was your last A1C?” I was so offended and actually used my voice for the first time.

“Have you considered the fact that it might NOT be due to my diabetes?!?!” I yelled.

The doctor looked annoyed, my mother looked horrified. But my father (a physician as well) spoke up too, “Have you tested her for Valley Fever or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever?”

A discussion ensued about travel and symptoms, tests were run, answers were found and I learned that I had yet another job to do when it came to my diabetes. My new job was to make people look past it when needed.

This became a pivotal role of mine on several other occasions. Another fever in my 20s combined with a case of erythema nodosum and I had to redirect doctors to do a chest x-ray and discover it was truly Valley Fever this time. In my 30s, pain in my fingers, swollen knuckles and painful joints in my feet and I had to redirect doctors away from neuropathy and to Rheumatoid Arthritis. It seems, like the non-guilty disease, a never-ending battle – one that you have to fight as no one else can do it for you.

One thing I didn’t realize until later in life was that it wasn’t just the case with me and it wasn’t just due to having a disease like type 1 diabetes. I have to be the fierce medical advocate for my daughter too. I didn’t expect that at all. My daughter is healthy (knocking frantically on wood here). She doesn’t have any chronic diseases (STILL knocking). So why would I need to fight?

The first time I had to was when she was about three and came down with a fever (are you noticing a trend yet) and was obviously sick. I was sure she had Strep. Her pediatrician did a rapid strep test which came up negative. We went home with instructions for bed rest and fluids and ended up in the ER that night because she looked like she had been boiled. Her skin was bright pink the fever was worse. Scarletina was the diagnosis and she did indeed have Strep. I leaned that day that she might not always test positive for strep using the rapid test and I needed to demand the conventional culture every time. I’ve had to do this three times already.

The most frightening however, occurred  just over a year ago. My daughter jumped in a puddle and fell, banging her head on tarmac. She cried (understandably) but it didn’t seem like a big deal. Until she started throwing up. Knowing that was a sign of concussion, my husband and I took her to a local clinic for a work up. They advised against an “unnecessary MRI” and sent us home with the advice to bring her to the ER if she throws up again. Later that night she did. We immediately went to a local ER where she was given an MRI and we were told that she had a skull fracture with bleeding into the brain. Words cannot convey the emotions that went with that pronouncement and I won’t attempt to illustrate the drama here, but I did something that surprised my husband and the doctor.

“I want to see the MRI results.” I said.

The doctor (GOD BLESS HIM) took me back to a room where he showed me the scans and pointed out the bleed. I could see it clearly. It was horrifying. However, it was now the evil I knew.

We were transported via ambulance to a medical facility that had a pediatric neurologist on staff. Upon arrival we waited forever. My daughter slept nearly the entire time and finally at around four in the morning the neurologist took a look at her scans. Surrounded by some obvious residents, the disheveled and seemingly sleep-deprived neurologist told his charges that he didn’t know why the patient was transported – he didn’t see any bleed.

You know what I saw? RED.

“I SAW IT,” I stated through gritted teeth, “and I’m not a doctor.”

The entire group turned around and blinked at me. I had to try again.

“It’s there. There’s one scan that shows it clearly. PLEASE look at EVERY SINGLE IMAGE before you say there’s no bleed.”

They went off – I’m sure to get away from the crazy lady – and we were in for another interminable wait. However at the end of this one we got a room and a week’s stay in intensive care. After further review and consultation with the head of neurology, they finally found the bleed.

I shudder to think of what would have happened if I hadn’t asked to see the scan and didn’t know there was a battle to fight.

Regardless of your condition, find your voice. No one else is going to fight these battles for you and they’re worth fighting. You’re worth it. I found it out the hard way, hopefully you won’t have to.

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Day 13: 10 Things I Can’t Live Without

10 Things I Couldn’t Live Without. Write a list of the 10 things you need (or love) most.

In no particular order other than what came to mind first:

1. My daughter
2. My husband
3. My dogs
4. Chocolate
5. Coffee
6. Insulin (not that I love it, but I actually CAN’T live without it, I tried)
7. My MacBook (I could live without my iPhone if I had to, but not my computer)
8. My parents
9. My car
10. BOOKS (How could I almost forget BOOKS!!!!!?????)

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Day 11: My (Losing My) Mind Map

Well, I didn’t much like the idea of empowering my health issues with their own theme song. So today I chose another bonus post:

Mind Map! Make a mind map of what you think about, your personality, your condition, your life, or whatever you like.

Not knowing what the heck a Mind Map was, I headed on over to Popplet.com to take a look. At first I was a bit skeptical, but then I thought it might be a neat way to better illustrate why I may seem so distracted or well, ADD, to those who don’t know what’s going on inside my head.

So, welcome to my quick little Mind Map – Beware All Ye Who Enter Here…..

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Day 7: In Which I Write About What I Want

In today’s The Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge 2012 the prompt says I can write about whatever I want – nanny nanny boo boo.

Free! I’m free!

So of course, without a prompt, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. Typical. Maybe I’ll just free write and see what happens. Right at this very moment, it’s 6:44 PM and as I type I’m listening to my daughter play Temple Run on my husband’s phone, my 10-month-old puppy pant after a hard day and my husband talk to himself as he does whatever it is that he does when my daughter and I are both occupied. If you haven’t heard of Temple Run, it is the most addictive game that I’ve found so far and my daughter and I are hooked. “I’m on blue coins!!” she just yelled from the vicinity of the kitchen. I’m also trying desperately not to itch the mosquito and/or ant bites on my ankles. It’s spring time in Texas and the bugs SUCK. They also love me with a passion.

(If anyone has a great bug-bite remedies, please PLEASE comment and share – I’m desperate.)

My daughter borrows my or my husband’s iPhone to play games or text with her friends. She’s eight. I think it’s too young to have a device like an iPhone, but several of her friends have iPods that they can use to text, e-mail, etc. I’m torn on this topic – part of me feels like I should cave on the technology limitation and get her an iPod so that she can communicate with her peers in the manner in which they’re accustomed.

However, another BIGGER part of me feels that at eight years old, there are other ways to play. However did our generation survive without technology? It’s not necessarily the lack of activity that worries me, my child walks a mile to school and then back again in the afternoon, today alone we bike rode two miles and played at not one but two parks. She does 5Ks with me and bike races. I’m not afraid that she’ll turn into a couch potato, I’m just worried that her childhood memories will be less about interacting with others and more about Tenple Run and Fireball.

But how to enforce technology restrictions when literally every one of her friends has an iPod (no, I’m not exaggerating). I assure you that I have utilized the ever-useful, “if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” to no avail.

(Now my daughter and husband are yelling excitedly as they make Jiffy-Pop on the stove. See, THAT’S a fond memory from my childhood and no batteries are required.)

Sorry, just took an almost two hour break for hanging out, reading and bed-time routine. It’s now 8:23 pm and I reread what I’ve written and wonder how many people I’ll put to sleep tonight. You know what else I noticed?

How ironic is it that I’m blogging about fearing about my child’s exposure to technology. G’night y’all (when in Texas….) the hypocrite is signing out.

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