Dealing with the Looming Cloud of the Possibility of Early Death

Five years ago, I had breast cancer. To rid myself of it, I had chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy.
Flash forward five years. One day, I noticed a strange, bright red splotch on my breast, the breast where the cancer had been. The doctor did a biopsy of it, and the results came back malignant. It was an angiosarcoma, and the suspected cause was the radiation treatment I’d had five years before. This was a very rare form of cancer that, again, results sometimes from the radiation itself. That which was meant to heal me, made me ill.
On June 10, 2016, I had surgery to remove the cancer.
Fine and dandy. They got clean margins. Then, something awful happened. I was told that I had to have a CT scan to see if the cancer had spread throughout my body. (Nobody told me this beforehand.)
Enter fear, despair and disappointment. Enter the possibility of cancer and, therefore, the possibility of early death.
How am I dealing with this looming cloud of grief that is hanging over my head?
Below are some of my most useful techniques.

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The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs

“Come and get your pills! We are selling pills with side effects guaranteed! Gastric bleeding, sir? These can erode your stomach lining and kill you.” Setting up a mock market stall called The Honest Pharmacy was just the start of The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (BBC One) – a blend of science documentary and social experiment which was both eye-opening and surprisingly entertaining.

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Even More and BBC link

Finnish Open Dialogue: High recovery rates leave many psychiatric beds empty

This is a guest post written by Daniel Mackler the filmmaker. His three films show alternative methods of healing people with psychosis. In all the films relationships are ultimately what heal. Loving, healing relationships. Please visit these posts to look at the trailers and read a bit about each of his films. Here and here and here. You can purchase the films here.

All the films are now available for free viewing on youtube now as well. If you’ve not seen them yet, it’s well worth taking the time to do so.

The below article was written as a result of a conversation that Daniel and I had. He revealed that the psychiatric hospital he visited when making his last film, built in the 1950s was mostly empty. They don’t need the beds because their success rate is so high!

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President Barack Obama’s ambitious 1-million-person personalized medicine study

President Barack Obama’s ambitious 1-million-person personalized medicine study began to take shape this week with the announcement of four medical centers that will recruit volunteers starting this fall. A fifth center aims to sign up 350,000 participants by blasting the general public with ads coming soon to your web browser or mobile phone.
The White House’s announcement yesterday of $55 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fires the starting gun for the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program. The plan is to recruit 1 million or more people who are willing to share their health and genetic information over many years to help researchers develop individualized treatments. Other countries have similar studies underway, but the U.S. version aims to be larger, more diverse, and more patient-centric—participants will help shape the study and be able to see their data. NIH Director Francis Collins calls it “the largest, most ambitious research project of this sort ever undertaken.”
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What’s up, doc? Tell me over my smartphone, please

This year, a German businesswoman arrived in Washington DC and promptly developed a painful sinus infection. She searched online and found a local doctor, Suzanne Doud Galli. But instead of ordering a taxi to visit Dr Galli’s office, the patient arranged a virtual consultation via her smartphone from the comfort of her hotel room, with the help of an app called HealthTap.

The app’s algorithm matched the patient’s symptoms with Dr Galli’s expertise. Dr Galli prescribed medicine and sent the prescription electronically to a pharmacy near the patient’s hotel — all in about 10 minutes.

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Home Remedies for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Some of the home remedies for chronic fatigue syndrome include the use of bee pollen, maca root, iodine, B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, ginseng, licorice, astragalus, alfalfa, oats, St. John’s Wort, and valerian root, as well as certain behavioral remedies including acupuncture and chiropractic care.
This unfortunate condition afflicts millions of people around the world, and while the small percentage in terms of the global population often leaves this disease below the radar, it can significantly affect the lives of those who suffer from it. Unfortunately, there is no clear cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, although experts believe that it can be a result of genetic, environmental, infectious, biologic, and psychological factors. That may seem like a wide range of possibilities, so most people treat the symptoms rather than whatever may be causing the condition. It is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or post-viral fatigue syndrome. Someone is diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome if they experience the symptoms of the condition for more than 6 months.

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Low Stomach Acid: The Risks, the Symptoms, and the Solutions

The multi-billion dollar antacid industry has you believing that stomach acid is bad for you.
While you may use antacids for heartburn relief or indigestion, they are not a cure for what causes these problems in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, indigestion is usually caused by low stomach acid - also called hypochlorhydria- and it affects up to half of our population.¹
Treatment that further neutralizes stomach acid can make your digestion worse.

Why Stomach Acid is Good For You

Stomach acid or hydrochloric acid (HCl), is a very powerful digestive agent, and much more important than you realize.

HCl's important functions include:

• Breaking down proteins into the essential amino acids and nutrients your body needs in order to stay healthy.
• Stimulating your pancreas and small intestines to produce the digestive enzymes and bile necessary to further breakdown the carbohydrates, proteins and fats you eat.
• Preventing disease by killing pathogenic bacteria and yeast normally present in food.

As you age, your stomach acid tends to decrease anyway. Add a poor diet of processed foods and you may find that you have both digestive and immune problems

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Six rules to help you avoid consuming partially hydrogenated oils.

Here are six rules to help you avoid consuming partially hydrogenated oils. Don't think for one minute that this is all you need to do for your heart and your health. Eliminating partially hydrogenated oils from your diet is just one piece of the puzzle. This is not the place to educate you about heart health and other medical issues. But if you don't understand heart health, then learn about it - please - for your own and your family's well-being. And if you are avoiding squarely facing up to the issue, and possibly kidding yourself, then go to a cardiologist for a checkup if you haven't already done so. That applies to women too. Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States.

Six rules to avoid eating bad fats
(and don't be deceived by
"cholesterol free" products)

1. Don't eat any product which has the words "partially hydrogenated" or "shortening" in the ingredients list.
2. If the label says zero trans fats, don't believe it. If the words "partially hydrogenated" or "shortening" are in the ingredients list, it DOES contain trans fat.

3. Be careful when consuming products with labels from outside the United States. Sometimes they contain partially hydrogenated oil but it's not on the label.

4. In restaurants, bakeries, and other eateries, ask whether they use partially hydrogenated oil for frying or baking or in salad dressings. If they say they use vegetable oil, ask whether it is partially hydrogenated. Don't be shy about asking. Assume that all unlabeled baked and fried goods contain partially hydrogenated oil, unless you know otherwise.
5. Keep saturated fat intake low too. This is very important.
6. Remember that polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fats are good fats.
To learn more about good and bad fats, click here. 
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See also 

The Approval Trap: How to Ditch the Fear You Didn’t Know You Had So You Can Find Your Inner Authority

When my daughter was two years old, she loved to draw. The funny thing is, she never asked me if it was okay to draw on the walls. She assumed it was fine. White wall, colorful crayons, good idea. She had inner authority: she didn’t stress about it; she knew just what she liked. She never second guessed herself, wondering if she was good enough. She certainly didn’t wonder if she was smart enough, attractive enough, or funny enough. She assumed that she was all of these things and more, and most importantly, she was undeterred in accomplishing whatever she set her mind to.

Read More from Positively Positive

The Davis Autism Approach

Disclaimer: This Blog is posted for interest only; this post does not advocate any particular treatment.

Within the Davis Autism Approach, in our aim for simplicity, we have chosen to use ‘Autism’ as the umbrella term for Autism, Asperger Syndrome (AS), High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). We hope this is acceptable to you.

The Davis Autism Approach is a non-invasive, gentle approach designed to allow autistic individuals to participate more fully in life. 

This one-on-one program can be conducted by a Davis Autism Approach Facilitator or by a parent or loved one who can be trained and mentored by a Davis Autism Facilitator-Coach.

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Can Autism be cured

Disclaimer: This Blog is posted for interest only; this post does not advocate any particular treatment.

Things are heating up. Last week I posted Vaccines DO Cause Autism, but That’s Not The Point, and things got ugly. But I’m not going to stop there. It’s the month where everyone lights it up blue… and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think we need to focus on more than blue lights. We should be asking the question: can autism be cured?

According to many of your recent comments, autism cannot be cured. You say that autism is a genetic, neurological disorder that some children are born with.

Well, I hate to disagree… but, I disagree.

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Psychiatric nurses threaten strike over staffing shortages

The Psychiatric Nurses Association is to vote on proposals for industrial action over staffing shortages in the profession.

Delegates at the association’s annual conference in Co Cavan voted to put a proposal for a ballot on industrial action to a special executive council meeting next month.

The union says up to 1,000 new nurses are needed to fill 600 current vacancies and to replace retiring staff across the mental health services.

General secretary Des Kavanagh said the association could not trust the HSE to guarantee a proper nursing workforce was in place. Nurses had no faith that the strategies being pursued by the HSE to recruit and train nurses would meet the “chronic shortages” faced in the coming years, he said.

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