Want to Remember What You Forget?

14 Tamuz 5768

Whew! I've received several requests to comfort people who feel frustrated at their memory skills - or the LACK of them! The petitioners want my humorous take on the problem so they can relax. Fasten your seat belts, here we go:


I often caution people to chill when they become hotly angered over their struggle to recall some bit of trivia about movies, books or events. "Your inner filing cabinet is full," I laugh.

"Your brain has to hold important details, and like all competent secretaries it threw out junky stuff. You've been left with what's important in life."

So much for the laughs. What about the inability to remember information you NEED? Here's the FYI I give to anyone struggling to remember important facts:

Set priorities.

Spend time focusing on what is IMPORTANT versus what is trivia.

Learn to toss mental junk from your head. Clean out your inner filing cabinets when you toss the garbage hiding the information you need.

Reduce the time you spend on mindless TV shows or mind-numbing radio shows. They tend to put your brain cells on Sleep Mode.

Don't add to your memory challenge by holding grudges (That NEVER solves problems, but it just might give you and everyone around you ulcers or migraines while it ruins your relationships).

Here's another thought to raise your damaged pride: I doubt that you're any worse off than your local teenager. I mean, really, do YOU always remember to take out the garbage? Do your homework? Return borrowed property? Say "Please"?

Seriously, teens do forget. They're not always exaggerating the problem. The adolescent brain goes through an adjustment period with that hormonal flush fill-up, increasing academic expectations and more adult responsibilities.

Adult brains actually start showing wear and tear at about age 18. You have lots of company in the "I Forgot" department. It's not a reason to insult yourself over your age. Forgetting is part of life, not a reason for emotional theatrics. It might very well be the reason that GOD invented paper and pencils ;^ )

Nobody wants a brain that resembles a mess, right? Learn to let go of trivial facts and figures. Keep reciting important details in your mind and out loud. And UPDATE your day-planner whenever new details develop!


Want relatively quick fixes for your memory cells?

Blueberries and green tea seem to be memory-boosters. Fill up on those delighful foods as a pleasant dessert.

Need more serious techniques for getting your medical (and the rest of your) life together? Want to remember appointments, good advice, someone's name, and other information you need to keep up front and center in your daily awareness?

Read my book for lots of excellent advice about how to stay organized AND how to boost your memorization skills (hint: one leads to the other).


BUY YOUR COPY OF

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

CLICK HERE AND ORDER IT TODAY!

To your optimal health,

Yocheved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life.

Incremental Improvements: Adding Up One Victory at a Time.

14 Tamuz 5768

I recently shared some insights with a woman whose husband is recovering from major surgery. She'd been upset at his non-stop television watching and bored behavior. My remarks are true for this couple and for anyone trying to cope with a medical challenge or crisis. I hope you'll benefit from them:

" ...it's not simply your husband's thoughts that are adjusting to his post-operative reality, it's his body's readjustment period, too.

"He's been zapped of a lot of physical strength and he's facing the emotional shock of it all. Remember: men don't identify well with being helpless, ill, or dependent (women are mentally prepared for it cuz that's how we recover from giving birth). Meanwhile, his muscles and nerves are learning to work together again after being heavily drugged. The surgery itself was a trauma to his body, let alone the tumor's influence on his body functions. What a mix to master!

"What you need to do is to think of incremental improvements over time. It goes something like this: one day he walks to the end of the lawn. A few days later he reaches the end of the block. One week he endures walks to the end of the block 2 or 3 times that same week. A month later he's increasing his speed, sense of balance and his smile. He gets the mail and the paper, maybe runs errands to a corner grocery. He might gradually increase the time spent reading a newspaper or book. Eventually he starts doing the things he always did, at a pace that accommodates his present strengths. Play his favorite music. Maybe he'll dance with you or sing to favorite tunes, stuff like that.


"Be sure to have nutritious food on hand for snacks and meals: fresh fruits and veggies, lots of fresh (not sugared) juices, water, some of his favorite meals to perk up his appetite and sense of joy. Help him to build himself back up from the inside out.

"PRAISE HIM for every improvement he makes. One day at a time, each improvement as it develops. Keep reassessing your husband's progress over the long term, not moment-by-moment. Keep a progress journal if that appeals to you. It can fill gaps in your memory as you cope with competing details. That can be sooooo reassuring."

To summarize the above, here's what you need to focus on in someone recovering from serious medical treatment:

Incremental Improvements: Adding Up One Victory at a Time.

Okay, readers, there you have it. Medical setbacks cause us to behave less lively than we once were.

We go into the future one accomplishment at a time, celebrating individual victories. Those celebrations offset/cancel out the unhappiness from previous setbacks. And the victories add up over time into MANY victories.

My book includes humorous stories and jokes from famous people throughout time.

They overcame personal tragedies and pain, too.

Share the laughter with them when you

BUY YOUR COPY OF

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

CLICK HERE AND ORDER IT TODAY!

To your optimal health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life.

Cure Your Crankiness!

13 Tamuz 5768

Some days, coping with an illness or medical problem just seems to be too much to ask for. You want to SCREAM! You want to holler words that would make your mother blush.

And you want to throw a pity party that could fill the headlines of gossip columns.

Ready to eat that yummy bowl of ice cream or bag of french fries that will cause pain you never knew existed, despite that loss of your fat-processing spleen or gall bladder?

You gonna skip the tiring, boring exercises that let you move your arthritic or somehow sore back, legs, arms and neck more easily? Uh-oh! You know what physical therapists say: "Motion is Lotion!"

Want to let your doctor hear some really AWFUL vocabulary and a threatening tone of voice from your throat and telephone?

TIME OUT!!!

Don't let your blood pressure percolate out of your head.

Read my book to soothe your psyche & soul.

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

teaches you how to sort out your emotions, to deal with conflicting issues and to regain your sense of humor in one colorful paperback workbook.

Share it with someone you love and trust, or read it by yourself. Cure your crankiness. And for extra protection against your next temper tantrum, keep a copy near the refrigerator or phone.

You and everyone around you will be better off for it. Promise ;^ )

To your good health,

Yocheved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life

Communicate with Companions When You See the Doctor (or, How to Get Your Medical Story Straight)

12 Tamuz 5768


According to Johns Hopkins University's expert on such matters, Jennifer L. Wolff, PhD, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and
Management, older patients do better when someone takes them to doctor visits and participates in communication efforts with relevant medical professionals.

Wolff says, "We found that patients were more satisfied with their care when visit companions were actively involved in the communication between patient and provider."

Gosh. My book explains why EVERYONE is better off taking a friend or relative along on doctor visits: The STRESS of facing an illness (pain, fear, sadness), coupled with the complications affecting the patient's health (dietary and medicinal changes, a body that's working in negative and embarrasing ways, endless phone calls and faxes, the tiring and maddening efforts to reach medical appointments etc.) tends to dominate the patient's focus. Memory banks seem to need help for handling added information.

The patient needs a sympathetic, attentive listener on hand to clarify matters with medical professionals and to keep the patient informed of ever-changing realities. Many of those realities cause further emotional turmoil. The sick person needs a "time out" so to speak, to make an emotional recovery while someone else records new appointments for medical tests, figures out how to finesse necessary paperwork and all that other dreary stuff.

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

lists suggestions for making the most of medical visits with a little advance preparation and wise follow-up ideas. Having a companion along for doctor visits is only one piece of medical and mental health professional-approved advice in the book.

Read It's MY Crisis! to learn why medical and mental health professionals find it so helpful for making medical progress.

My can-do strategies for improving communication with medical professionals are effective, low-cost, and easy to accomplish!

Need to improve YOUR doctor-patient communication efforts?

My book is an equal-opportunity read. It helps everybody on both sides of the exam table ;^ )

CLICK HERE

to Buy your copy of

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

TODAY!

To your ever-improving health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life

Scoliosis Relief! And Did Your Drugstore Give You the WRONG Medication? Double-check that Prescription!

11 Tamuz

Interesting news in the medical world today. Kids will love this one, because it involves an exciting sea creature: Scorpions!

Scorpion Surgical Technologies is an Israel-based research company that found an innovative way to improve back surgery. It involves the spinal fusion procedures used to treat degenerative disk disease or scoliosis. It might improve the quality of life for people with other forms of congenital defects and for people with spinal injuries, too.

Based on the spiny stuff sticking out of those sea creatures, the new bone attachment system prevents the implanted screws from loosening and/or falling out. THAT's a BIG improvement over present technologies.

Click on this quote:

"The result is an implant that pulls together vertebrate in a triangular shape which is "strong and resistant to vibration and loosening,"

for the rest of this health story.

In late-breaking news, a New York senator has publicized the scary truth about pharmacies that make mistakes when "filling" prescriptions. Take no chances! Double- and triple-check your medication with your doctor and your pharmacist. CLICK HERE for important information.


My book helps you to learn about innovative medical developments and how to benefit from them.

CLICK HERE

to buy it today!





To your good health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life

Learn How to Be an Optimist

10 Tamuz 5768


You might recall that a US-based woman with a meningioma had contacted me months ago, seeking advice and reassurance.

We've been communicating with each other since then. She accepted the responsibility to A) calm herself down and B) to inform family members of her diagnosis PLUS her need for compassionate help.

Her husband felt immense relief about facing reality, and helped his wife a great deal. The children lost the stress over a family secret that no longer threatened anyone. Mom's cured. She's feeling more cheerful each day. That's a big change from the terror she'd felt long ago. More importantly, her improved attitude let her and her family heal!

Another of my readers, helping his brother to overcome Glioblastoma Multiforme, also keeps an open line of communication with me. They remain hopeful, looking toward a better future. The upbeat attitudes enable the diagnosed brother to live for a cure.

I hear from some of my other book and blog fans, too.

This past weekend, I was doing some rapid-fire E-mails with a man whose son has suffered with RSD/CRPS for more than a year. I updated Dad on several strategies for beating back the pain and for promoting his son's total recovery from the problem. Father and son are already pursuing two of the strategies I recommended. Time will tell if these responses will resolve the RSD, or if another option is called for.

Those people and others I haven't mentioned are making progress at coping with, and at recovering from, medical crises.

Are you wondering why they're doing so great in a medical crisis and how you can, too? Read on to learn some answers.

As I know from my counseling coursework and from live counseling sessions, the key to making progress is mysterious to many people. That key, however, is hiding in plain sight. Here's part of it, a saying that you can copy down and post on your bathroom mirrors, on your refrigerators, and inside your day-planners:

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist. - Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Poet

What Leopardi meant is this: A sense of shame, embarassment, concerns about status et cetera, hold us back from healing emotionally and physically. So does refusing to do hard work that leads to healing and/or coping skills.

The average human being needs to hear an important idea repeated many times so they can "get it." Scroll to the next paragraph for a quick review.

Famous emotionally/physically healed people such as Bernadine Healy (the former head of the National Institiutes of Health and of the American Red Cross), Morrie Schwartz from "Tuesdays with Morrie" or Norman Cousins from "Anatomy of an Illness" had something in common. You can have it, too. It's this:

• They faced the reality of their disease(s) or other health problem(s) honestly, with a growing sense of humor and intentional optimisim.
• When they did not feel well or optimistic, they faked it. Practicing optimism teaches the brain to remain in Optimism Mode. Ask a shrink. It's true.
• The optimism facilitated their coping mechanisms and physical healing.

These individuals had faced cancer or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) aka Lous Gehrig's Disease. They're complicated diseases with hard-to-endure consequences and treatments, and all the emotional strain that comes with those problems.

By focusing on solutions rather than on the difficulties, Healy, Schwartz and Cousins brought improving mental and/or physical health into their lives. Look in the mirror and see much of the answer to your question about how to cope with medical crises.

I did the same thing with my meningioma diagnosis, with my very complicated arm fracture worsened with RSD/CRPS, and with all the recovery I've done since then (correcting vision problems so much that my eyewear prescription was lowered 10 times in 2 years; rebuilding damaged muscle and bone; regaining physical strength and retaining my IQ despite the onslaught of neurological issues before, during and after surgery). Remember: medical professionals expected me to remain very disabled after my emergency brain surgery. Alive, but disabled. I CHOSE to overcome as many setbacks as possible. Doctors did what they could. The rest was up to me (and GOD).

My health is at the point that observers must be told what I've endured. They can't tell from spending time with me. My medical team is impressed (to say the least) about my physical and emotional condition. Some doctors are preparing articles about my medical miracles because they're pleased to have been part of them.

Now, back to you.

You want to know how to heal, too. And you don't know how to mimic what I or those famous people did to cope with or to heal from medical crises.

Here's the other part of the key I referenced above:

You MAKE A COMMITMENT
to coping and to healing

AND STICK WITH IT.

Stay on task: Focus on healing. Do not sabotage your efforts with tantrums. Do the painful exercises. Remain on the limited food diet that your health requires. That's called COPING, and it lets you HEAL.

It's My Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge

teaches you, step-by-step, how to develop the mental/emotional skills for creating that sense of commitment and how to carry it out. You'll learn to live an optimistic life by reading my book.

Buy YOUR COPY today!

To your good health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life.

Making the Best (and the MOST!) From a Difficult Situation

7 Tamuz 5768


One of the main reasons that people take jobs seems to be so they'll have something to complain about (I'm kidding).

Normal human beings get cranky over their jobs. Sometimes they have good reasons to be that way. So, I'm making an effort to help you out with a helpful suggestion and with a real-life example of how to make lemonade from the lemons in life. Here we go:



1. Eye Strain from Computer Monitors can be quite a worksite problem. The Mayo Clinic offers some suggestions about how to minimize the hazard. I suggest that you CLICK HERE to find out why it's important to position your keyboard correctly and to learn other techniques for preventing those itchy, watery eyes annoying you right now.

2. OK, here's that "Lemons to Lemonade" (or, as we say in Hebrew, "Limonada m'limonim") idea referred to above: Remember that badly (really BADLY) broken arm I had back in December? It took months for my surgical, occupational/physical therapy, and personal exercise regimen team to heal it.

I also needed to recover from the loss of my pending book tour income. And I sure wanted a way to feel that I was still a vital part of life at large while I was incapacitated. I needed to pull a trick out my hat or thinking cap, so to speak. Kinda like Bullwinkle here, but more effectively...



One of the keys to my recovery was the dynamic splinting device/brace I wore. Designed to help my stiffened body parts to loosen up so I could use the affected arm and hand correctly, it is not made or sold in Israel where I reside. My medical team was desperate for me to get the specific device my arm sorely needed (pun intended). I did get hold of that particular item, and the rest made medical history.

And while I was in months-long recovery, I had time to think.

I thought hard about how I'd been blessed to acquire a hard-to-get medical appliance and about the thousands of Israelis who need dynamic splinting devices for their recoveries from complicated fractures, other trauma or disease, too. So, I followed my line of thought to the end and contacted the manufacturer of my appliance, an adjustable (dynamic) elbow splint. I will soon be importing the entire line of those dynamic splinting devices to Israel. Stay tuned to this blog for helpful information about that. I plan to post an official announcement at the appropriate time.

Meanwhile, consider your medical situation and how you can make the best of a difficult situation. I faced possible amputation of my arm or the permanent loss of use in that arm/hand. I turned the situation around into something good for me and for my fellow citizens.

Now, what can YOU do to make your life, and that of other people, sweeter? Let me know your success stories so I can share them here ;^ )


To your good emotional and physical health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life.