Need solutions for the medication, medical appliances and/or medical travel that you can't afford? READ EMPOWER Yourself.
A Health Information Management professional, I survived a life-threatening emergency with information that only a person of my professional experience would know. And I’m sharing it!
It’s one thing to meet me, then to gradually realize that something is different but hard to identify. People sometimes remark on that, saying “What’s unusual about you? You’re so… upbeat. But I get the sense that you struggle with something.” That “something” resulted in my making medical history, though that was not my goal. Surviving a life-threatening medical problem and the risky emergency surgery to save me from it, was my objective. It all started when I didn’t feel well in 2003.
Doctors mentioned that they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, though I was stumbling from the effort to walk correctly, struggling to prevent food and drinks from dribbling out my mouth, and feeling tired all the time. I even struggled to read or to write, and that’s not a good situation for a writer. When I ended up in an emergency room after waking up completely blind one day, life took a dramatic whip into a whirlwind of activity focused at saving my very endangered life...
B'SD 2 Tevet, 5778 Traveling with special needs is a challenge on many levels. Here's the positive result of one mother's determined effort to remedy the problem:
B'SD 26 Cheshvan, 5778 Another shooting of innocents (in California, this time), more heartache and inexplicable misery at the hands of malcontents. The world at large, including the USA, is in desperate need of mental health skills education programs throughout schools, businesses, and the rest of society. Meanwhile, the rest of us need some comforting. I hope that this motivational message soothes you.
B'SD 17 Sivan, 5776 As I learn how highs temperatures have soared in various locations, I realize that many of my readers might need some help to cool down. Perhaps you'll find helpful information with...
Summer announced its arrival this week by bringing record high temperatures around the country. To help you keep your cool, we’ve compiled some expert advice for coping with the heat.
Now you don’t have to feel guilty about buying your kids that convenience-store slushie. Pre-cooling before hot-weather exertion improves the body’s ability to cope in the heat.
We don’t advise wearing an icy collar like the athletes in this study, but it’s good to know that putting an icy compress on your neck on a hot day will cool you down.
Need good solutions for your medical or mental health issues? Read the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your life with helpful solutions.
B'SD 11 Tamuz, 5775 One of the things I advocate for well-rounded emotions is having a hobby. I enjoy several, and thought to let you have a look at some of my dried flower arrangements
and candelabra plate
creations.
Care to guess which hobby I longed to resume though 2005 brain surgery had resulted in my surgically broken jaw (and my need to learn how to speak, all over again)?
There's a reason that I whistle as I walk. I've needed to strengthen my damaged emboucher (the relevant muscles of my face and lips) so that I can resume flute-playing. As of this past April, I've been able to get sweet sounds from my flute. Now that I've recovered from moving across the country, I hope to hire a music instructor so I can play in a pleasant manner. Stay tuned for developments. I'm still thrilling to the fact that my recent singing performance was well-received despite a long time off the community theater stage.
Please share the fun. Let me know what you do to stay grounded and joyous despite inner or outer pain. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Find the coping mechanism that soothes you.
B'SD 5 Shvat, 5775 Sorry about last week's silence; I was busy with international company and putting some long-pursued goals into motion. Stand by for updates about that ;^ ) Shvat is the month of spring, when Israel's trees and flowers bloom despite bracingly cold temperatures. Our skies are sunny and clear, after months of rain.
A time of renewal, this is a propitious time for beginning new projects and reaching for new goals. As we learn from this Temple Institute post, Shvat is a time to recharge our inner growth, too. Here's a helpful infographic about the Jewish New Year Holiday for Trees, coming up in about 10 days. With all that spiritual and emotional energy running in your body and soul, how about recharging your health efforts with humor, cost-cutting information you need and tips for getting along with everybody involved?
B'SD 23 Kislev, 5775 Sometimes there's a weekly theme to this blog. This week the theme is "Super." Sometimes the shock, pain, fear, despair and/or inconvenience of a diagnosis leaves us feeling anything but "super" in the sense of "good." We tend to feel super-horrible, super scared, and super saddened by a medical challenge, not super terrific by any means.
Hold that thought as you read the blog this week.
I have a bit of a surprise coming up for you on Thursday.
But let's begin with the super-wonderful, super-heartwarming Sommers family who dealt admirably with a severe blow to its happiness.
The enthusiasm that the family generated resulted in a Rabbis Shave for the Brave event. There was even a
If you need a how-to guide for figuring out how to feel at all positive despite grim medical news, read several passages about that, spread throughout
Post traumatic growth is about putting a life-changing, or any significant event, in perspective. That promotes emotional progress and more. Figure out how to supercharge your ability to cope with your medical challenge, or someone else's.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism. Facing fear with growing courage empowers you to make progress.
Several people have asked me to excerpt comments from my public appearances at this blog. They mentioned that most of us don't know how to beat the odds, how to persevere past adversity, let alone how to be happy when life seems so saddening.
I agree. Most people feel miserable too often and for too preventably long.
Need a How-to-Do-This Kit?
Read on for the words I've said
in front of live audiences.
Remember when I fainted upon realizing that I had a benign but deadly brain tumor? I eventually rose from the floor, with assistance. The MRI-giver explained to me that he was launching a world-wide search for the brain surgeon able to remove the large tumor without killing me in the process. But until that surgeon would be found, I would have to return home. I could not stay in the hospital though all my nerves were being increasingly crushed by the benign-but-deadly brain tumor. I asked if I would awaken after I fell asleep for a nap or for the night, and he responded “I don’t know.”
I learned that my optic nerves had been crushed, causing the blindness. But whenever the tumor moved in a particular and uncontrollable way, I was able to see a bit. With good luck, my sight would be restored after tumor removal.
I realized that I’d survived this long and needed miracles to survive until, and past, life-saving surgery. I had one chance to stay alive and I chose to take it: I needed to become a powerfully positive person in nanoseconds. I needed to make it to surgery day, whenever it would be. Once home, neighbors helped me to contact friends nearby and abroad.
US friends contacted me within days. They would pay my airfare and hospital bill in order to have surgery from a highly regarded surgeon in America. But I had just learned of a brain surgeon in the same Israeli hospital where I’d had MRIs. He was willing and available to make the effort to save my life. “I’ll remain in the Holy Land,” I announced. “My life is here. GOD is a local call.”
Stunned and dismayed by my reaction, my phone-callers begged me to reconsider. “No, I have it figured out. International travel now is not going to help me to be better; I’ll be exhausted, in flux, and dependent on others. I need to have surgery at home where I can more easily recover. GOD gave me a chance to prove that I believe what I’ve practiced and studied lifelong: He’s in charge. He wants to bless us with life and other goodness. I need to let Him, not to interfere with the process. I’m going to be fine. Think of all the miracles, not the shock to our system: I’m alive despite BIG odds. There’s a reason for that. I’m going to work with GOD, not against Him!”
I apologize for using masculine terms when I refer to GOD. In Hebrew, GOD is referred to in the feminine gender also. A Hebrew speaker switches those genders to indicate which aspect of GODliness we’re referencing (All-knowing, Compassionate, Judgmental, Slow to Anger, Sovereign, Wise, etc).
OK, back to the survival plan I explained to my US friends holding the phone and wondering what I’d say next: It was a four-step plan of action designed to convince my mind and every cell in my body that I would heal from the forthcoming, dangerous surgery. The neurosurgeon in charge had already told me that I’d be left with double vision, in need of intensive physical and occupational therapy for two months following the harrowing surgery. He was confident that I would recover my strength and learn how to move about despite all the problems that the tumor and life-saving would cause: Industrial-strength vertigo, difficulty seeing let alone reading, unemployment until I could master some necessary tasks, and a lifelong tendency to tire quickly, unexpectedly and rather inconveniently.
I do not recall hearing him say that I’d also need speech therapy and to learn how to live with facial droop, a form of Bell’s Palsy. It turns out that my jaw had to be broken in order for the neurosurgeon to reach and to remove the brain tumor in the back of my head. He’d planned the procedure with medically savvy me, an experienced medical coder who understands anatomy and surgical procedures plus medical processes. We chose the best of two possible surgical routes, the one that would take less time and minimize the danger of killing me on the operating table: Accessing the tumor from a different direction via the hollow sinuses in my brain rather than opening my skull in back (during face-down surgery) and struggling to disentangle the nerves embedded and crushed within the tumor.
My appearance was so altered by the surgery that I shuddered to see my mirrored reflection. Once I began to see again (a BIG surprise to the entire medical team), I covered my mirrors at home to prevent a sense of discouragement. What I would learn by surprise is that my four-step plan would repair the problem:
Step 1 – Refuse to speak, think or listen to negativity. The trauma of the tumor, medical professionals betraying me and brain surgery were traumas on their own. I needed to prevent new and to possibly reverse old psychological damage that could prevent my physiological recovery.
Step 2 – Decide once and forever that failure to improve my character and my health hour by hour, day by tiring, painful, frightening day, was not an option. I needed to become an extraordinary optimist despite knees and a heart that felt like jello.
Step 3 – Focus on the future with forced positivity. I had to fake it to make it to the finish line alive. I needed to praise people helping me with laundry, cooking, around-the-clock companionship (it was dangerous to leave newly blinded and very weak me alone at home), and transporting me to various medical or therapy appointments.
A former instructor of Dr Miriam Adahan’s EMETT system (http://www.miriamadahan.com/), I knew that repeated efforts at being grateful, happy, and open to positive developments would inscribe them on my psyche until I actually became that positive person. And I knew that I’d fail sometimes, and be able to renew my efforts.
Step 4 – Engage the world, the universe and GOD to bless me with healing however possible while finding out what those possibilities could be, then USE them!
That’s it, the whole survival kit. Repeat your efforts until it works for you. Modify your efforts to suit your needs but NEVER abandon your goal to see, think and behave positively. Keep that door to miracles open so GOD has something to work with. If you slam it shut in anger, bitterness, self-pity or something else negative, you’ve ended the communication and any chance for improvement.
But hang on – Judaism teaches that GOD is slow to anger. You just might merit a miracle or more based on past behavior or someone’s prayers. Try and try again to be in the best possible frame of mind and physical condition. Promote and protect yourself. Let miracles into your life.
Want to learn more ways to be upbeat despite your fear, pain and anger? Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism. Fill your life with pleasant possibilities.
