I heard it from my doctor a few weeks ago. Now we're hearing it from doctors across the nation- health care reform must happen, and happen soon.
Dozens of doctors stood on the White House lawn to hear President Obama urge them to "fan out across the country" and work for health care reform.
"Nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do," Obama said. "And so if you're willing to speak out strongly on behalf of the things you care about and what you see each and every day as you're serving your patients all across the country, I'm confident we are going to get health reform passed this year."
150 doctors from all 50 states were invited to the White House event. Prompting some Republican leaders to cry foul.
Rep. Tom Price, a physician, and Dr. Donald Palmisano, former American Medical Association president, said in a conference call that physician support for the Democrats' proposals wasn't as widespread as Monday's event implied.
"We're very concerned that a handpicked group of physicians were applauding a government takeover of health care," Price said. "A random sampling (of doctors) wouldn't show quite so many people applauding."
However, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, 62-percent of physicians support a reform plan that incorporates both public and private funding.
To further the president's point, Senate Democrats released a series of videos today with a few of the country's pro-health care reform doctors:
The American Medical Association has also come out in favor of health care reform.
So why are we all still fighting about it? Don't you usually listen to your doctor?
All because the ones who forgot their lab coats were given some. It's not like they gave them firefighter coats and asked them to fake like they were something they weren't. I mean, this may be shocking...but it turns out a doctor in a suit is still a doctor.
47 million people uninsured in this country and it's come down to who remembered to bring their lab coat instead of debate about policy.
"Our principal goals -- slowing the growth in costs, enhancing the quality of care delivered, improving the lives of individuals, and helping to ensure a strong economic recovery -- are the same goals that the president is trying to achieve," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "I appreciate his partnership with the states and encourage our colleagues on both sides of the political aisle at the national level to move forward and accomplish these vital goals for the American people."
According to Reuters, no Republicans in Congress currently back the Finance Committee proposal to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, or any other put forward by Democrats.
I can't stop thinking about the story of Anita Tedaldi, who, after eighteen months of mothering an adopted special needs son, decided that the best place for her son was with another family. Anita's story hits me in two of my tenderest spots -- as the mother of a son with special needs, and as a birth mother who placed her first son in his adoptive parents' hands almost twenty years ago.
It would be easy for me to condemn Anita based on her story's two pages of pixelated type. I would be several shades beyond horrified if my biological son's mother had given him to another family after she took a sacred and legal oath to be his parent. And how about women who parent adoptive children through special needs challenges much more intense than Anita's brief account makes her son's seem, and are still holding on? It is tempting to shriek about bad examples and demand to know why she didn't try harder!
So, I could judge Anita, that other mother inside the computer -- I've got the sanctimonious positions, and I've got the ammunition. But I won't. It's unfair. I do wish she'd been able to choose differently, but I also understand that not every one is cut out to parent a special needs child, even if they think they are, even if they've done all the adoptive parents' training and received their social workers' blessings.
I also have to wonder: was Anita's concession entirely her own doing, or could it have been prevented if she'd been given enough support and information to properly parent her son? She emphasized that her struggles were not with her son's special needs but with his attachment issues, but I'd be surprised if those two issues were separate in such a young child.
She didn't elaborate on his special needs, other than delays and coprophagia; she mentioned that when she told him he would be going to live with another family, he "didn't react to her words," but supplied few other details about his symptoms. She mentions attachment therapy, but nothing else, no speech, occupation, feeding, or behavioral therapies. If she was truly his full-time caregiver, if she had little professional therapeutic support for his needs, if she didn't even have diagnoses, then how was she supposed to feel like a capable mother to him? How much more pressure was she under from her five other children, while being a de facto single mom during her military spouse's frequent deployments?
I don't know where Anita lives, but I do know that special needs diagnoses, services, therapies, and supports are spotty in many parts of this fine country of ours, especially for special needs children of very young age and/or indeterminate diagnosis. Pediatricians may mean well, but unless they are specialists are not always aware of the resources or even diagnoses their patients need. The online and social media support networks that have transformed my special needs parenting perspectives for the better, that have dragged my sobbing, wrecked, defeated self back to competence and optimism so many times, aren't always on social services agencies' or pediatricians' radars. Parents often stumble upon social support networks on their own, and they don't always do so within eighteen months -- which is all the time Anita and her son had together.
Choosing to parent special needs kids isn't something we're all capable of, even if we are fully informed and supported. Some parents aren't cut out for it but try to struggle through anyhow, becoming disengaged, neglectful, abusive, orworse. While we need to keep encouraging each other to carry on, be our best, love our children, and rally through, we also need to be aware of situations in which parents have reached the breaking point -- and do what we can to protect their children, even if this means supporting decisions for those children to be placed elsewhere.
It hurts, but it's true. Sometimes the best place for a child is not with their parents -- or even with another set of parents. My friend Rachel recently moved her son with autism into a residential home, because he needed a more structured environment than his parents could provide. It was the right decision. He's doing better all the time. But how many of you reading this paragraph are thinking, "I could NEVER put my child in a home"? And how many of you are thinking that not because it's how you honestly feel, but because of social pressure not to feel or say such things? We need to hear more stories like Rachel's, to promote acceptance of similar decisions made for the right reasons.
We need to stop assuming that putting a child into another's care equals giving up on that child. We need to stop declaring that when people relinquish their children, wholly or partially, through adoption or through residential placement, it is because the parents are selfish. We should consider that these parents may be giving away the part of their soul that will always envelop that child for the child's sake, not to make the parents' lives easier.
Parenting isn't supposed to be about us, the adults. It's about being responsible for our the children who depend on us, wholly. Anita is speaking out on behalf of all parents who have had to make decisions that broke their hearts, knowing their children's lives would improve as a result. As I did when I gave up my birth son. As do parents who work in foreign countries so they can support their children back home. As do parents who put their children in residential care. Anita Teldadi was putting her once and former son's needs above her own, in realizing that she was not the parent he needed.
To be clear: I am not arguing for more residential placements for our children with special needs, but rather for us to be the best parents we can be for them, however this manifests for each family. My friend Kristina's son's school has repeatedly asked her to consider a residential placement for him. But her lovely boy thrives at home, with his parents. A residential placement doesn't make sense for him -- what his school needs to do is work towards proper academic accommodations.
I wish Anita had had Kristina's ability and resources to provide an ideal home environment for her son. But Anita wasn't able to, and she not only admitted that but acted upon it, for the betterment of her son's life. She wrote about her decision openly, even though she knew -- how could she not? -- that an avalanche of judgment would be waiting to engulf her. I think she is brave to share her complicated story. I hope it helps other parents at crossroads. And I hope both she and her son find peace and healing.
You don't have to be a CSS guru to make a few simple changes to the styles on your blog to improve its looks and readability. Three places you can make a difference are with line-height, padding and the margins on headings.
To experiment with your stylesheet, change one thing at at time. If you don't like it, go back to the way it was before. Each time you change the style sheet, save the change and refresh the page on your blog to see how it looks. It would be smart to save a backup copy of your original stylesheet just in case of some mishap.
The CSS line-height property determines the distance or spacing between the lines of text on the page. In the print world, this property is called leading. The purpose of line-height is to give lines of text some space so that the text doesn't look unreadably dense. A little room between the lines makes the text more attractive and easier to read.
Line-height can be applied to any text element, but it's probably best to set it in the CSS rule for the big containers of your blog content. Depending on your blog, you may want to use line-height in a rule for BODY or for a container div like CONTENT or SIDEBAR. When you set the line-height rule for a big container like the content div, then everything in that section of the page inherits the line-height value.
You can find the right spot in your style sheet to add line-height if you look for a rule that mentions font-family and/or font-size. It might look something like this:
If your blog already has a line-height set, you can change the value.
I can't give you a perfect value for the line-height rule. Is it 1.4, 1.5, 1.8, 2.2? It depends on your blog, your font, the size of your font. You can find some photos of the effects of various line-height values in this article on Web Teacher. I suggest you try two or three line-heights before you decide which works the best to you.
Have you ever increased the text size on your blog to see what happens? You can find a zoom command in the browser's View menu that will let you increase or decrease text size. If you've never looked at your blog that way, it's a good idea to see what happens, because there will be people visiting you who do use zoom. Me, for instance.
A problem I have with many blogs is a lack of padding on the left and right sides. At the normal font size, this may not be a problem, but for a page zoomer like myself, it may mean bad things. I have to zoom the text size on many pages I visit to make it large enough to read. If there is no padding on the left and right, the text often bumps right into the extreme edge of the browser window after I zoom. This makes reading difficult: hard to read before the zoom, hard to read after the zoom. A little padding would help.
The place to look for padding rules in your stylesheet is in rules for individual page elements. Padding can be used on anything, but text elements like P, H1, H2, LI, and TD, are a good place to add padding if you need it.
Everything on your web page is in an invisible box. The box can have padding on the top, right, bottom and left. Each side of the box can have a different value for padding. In CSS terms that might look like this:
You might see the rule in CSS shorthand, where the first number represents the top and bottom padding, the second the right and left.
h1 { padding: 1em 2em; }
If the padding is the same on all sides, a single value covers it.
h1 { padding: 5px; }
To resolve the problem I have with some blogs that allow the page to extend all the way to the left and right margins of the page when zoomed, a few pixels or ems of padding-left and padding-right on the text in paragraphs or post-entry divs would fix it. I was going to make an example of The Huffington Post for this, but I see that HuffPo has now contained its page width in a way that keeps some white space on the sides no matter what I do to the text size. Thank you, HuffPo.
To get all the facts on padding, check Jennifer Kyrnin's page about padding on about.com. She has a couple of example paragraphs with different amounts of padding you can study.
The third CSS trick involves margins on headings. Headings are the h1, h2, and h3 elements on your page.
Margin is similar to padding. Margin goes around all four sides of any element the way padding does. But margin is outside the border of the element (even if the border isn't visible). Padding is inside the border.
In a blog, you have a page full of headings and posts. The visual hierarchy of the page should be clear in terms of which heading goes with which post, which blocks of content are related. The visual principle of proximity is what you use to make sure that headings and the content they identify appear related to the eye.
Two headings, with a difference in proximity to the material they are above are shown in the image. On the left is a heading with a reduced margin between the heading on the paragraph. On the right is a heading with no CSS margin rule applied. Here's the CSS for the example on the left.
h1 { margin-bottom: -5px; }
On the left, the margin-bottom has been reduced beyond 0 to -5px. Negative numbers are allowed. As you can see by comparing it to the default spacing between the heading and paragraph you see on the right, the heading on the left seems more related to the following paragraphs. Close proximity creates a visual grouping that makes more sense to the eye.
If you wanted more space between a heading and the end of a post just above it on the page, you could increase the margin-top value for the heading. That additional margin would make it clear that one post ended and a new topic was on the way. Again, it's about proximity.
Your blog's style rules may use some class like postTitle or postHeading to label the heading rules. If you don't see something as simple as an h1 or h2 in your stylesheet, look for a logical sounding name that would identify a heading.
For the CSS adventurers, Styling Design Elements: Five Beautiful Post Headings gives you several examples of more complex CSS rules that go beyond my simple margin tip that will help you create very attractive headings for your blog.
Put your nose in the air in early October, you'll soon catch a sniff of cinnamon. (Or maybe nutmeg, but definitely cinnamon.) That's because someone nearby, I predict, is baking an apple cake. It's that time of year! We're so ready to start baking again, after (mostly unsuccessfully) ignoring our ovens all hot-summer long. Fall is apple-cake season, no doubt. I can't guarantee the doctor bit but I can promise some tasting eating, thanks to some of the apple cake recipes from my favorite food bloggers.
Poor Girl Gourmet ~ Ricotta Apple Cake with Cider-Maple Glaze "... I'll be making this cake - perhaps two - to bring along to my brother-in-law's for the [family] celebration. It serves dual purpose, breakfast and dessert, and with twenty or so people packed into his house for three days, we'll eat our fair share of both."
The Repressed Pastry Chef ~ Fresh Apple Cake "I highly recommend this cake. It comes together about as easily as can be… the cake is moist and flavorful and the apples add a delicious top layer that can only be described as 'the icing on the cake!'"
The Wednesday Chef ~ Teddie's Apple Cake "It's got this wonderfully craggy top, all mountains and valleys of soft apples jutting upwards through the cake and slumping down gently into the crumb, and a faintly shattering crust. "
The Way the Cookie Crumbles ~ Applesauce Snack Cake "You must make this cake. I try not to say that. I know everyone has their own preferences. Not everyone likes to bake. There is no shortage of apple cake recipes. But – You must make this cake."
Smitten Kitchen ~ Mom's Apple Cake "The cake gets better the second day, when the apples juices seep further into the cake and I have seen the conviction of many a chocolate-obsessed/fruit dessert non-believers crumble upon trying a single slice of it. The apple cake, it's some good stuff."
101 Cookbooks ~ Unfussy Apple Cake "A big, floppy dollop of boozy, slightly sweet whipped cream takes this cake over the top."
Simply Recipes ~ Mrs Paxton's Raw Apple Cake "You simply cannot go wrong with this raw apple cake. The ingredients of coconut and the apples ensure that the cake will be moist and flavorful."
Eliza Domestica ~ Apple Cake "[My husband] would always go for chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, but there was nothing else for me but [my mother-in-law's] apple cake. It's rich, decadent and full of apples. I also love the brown sugar frosting called penuche, it is rich and complements the apple cake beautifully."
The Cookie Shop ~ Best Apple Cake of the Whole Wide World "This cake is very moist and tender, and the cinnamon scent will take over your kitchen when it's in the oven. The top, best part, gets this delicious and melt-in-your-mouth and beautiful and crumbly texture."
Desert Candy ~ Overnight Apple Cake "If you've ever baked you know that yeast doughs are often left overnight, and that extra rest can give the dough or sponge magical lifting power. That idea of overnight magic is what attracted me to a little recipe for an apple cake: sliced apples are layered with some sugar and baked slowly overnight. In all honesty, I was sure it wouldn't work ... "
And you? And you, what's your favorite apple cake recipe? Leave a recipe or a link to a recipe in the comments!
Can good photography change the way we eat? That's the idea behind photo activist Andrea Bakacs' work -- and it's gently shifting the way I think about food.
The eggs photo is one Andrea took at a sustainable Welsh farm with sheep that do the mowing, a compost pile that provides natural fertilizer, and a wind turbine that produces 80% of the energy the farm needs! Writes Andrea about this green energy source:
Currently, the family sells the energy back to the grid, as Britain has just again increased its buying rate. This means not only is the meter not adding any electrical costs, even though it's not quite making 100% of what its electrical needs, but it's actually spinning backwards! A few more yeas of this and the turbine will have not only paid itself back, but also provided a safe haven should uncertain times in the future require immediate access to alternative energy.
The windmill tells the story not just of the farm's eco-efforts, but about Britain's energy policies and how they can affect people's eco-choices and efforts.
The plasticky grocery aisle, too, tells a bigger story -- because that aisle's actually from an eco-friendly supermarket called Waitrose that's known for its commitment to local produce! Unfortunately, would be local-foodies had to take the plastic packaging with the yummy eats:
Every head of lettuce, vine of tomatoes, sprig of thyme, bunch of grapes, or anything else along these lines was packaged in none other than—you guessed it-- plastic.... It felt strange, knowing I was doing a good thing supporting not only the local economy and limiting my miles to table distance and therefore reducing the overall carbon footprint of my dinner, but also supporting the increased consumption of needless amounts of plastic, Satan's resin if you will.
Andrea's photography's not just about food-- She tackles many environmental issues with the hope they'll "inspire and empower other urbanites towards building a sustainable future for their communities." If great visuals are what'll inspire your eco-activism, follow Andrea's work by reading her Earthkeepers-related photo-activist blog at Changents, her blog about the intersection of photography and environmentalism at Photography for a Greener Planet, or her fine arts website, andreabakacs.com.
Related links: >> EarthPromise writes about Andrea's work: "Bakacs' photos will not only captivate you with awe and (possibly) disgust, but with enough sensibility to be effective to spread awareness."
>> Blogher contributing editor Beth Terry photo-documents her plastic trash every week at Fake Plastic Fish, as a way to track her own eco-progress as well as to inspire others.
In the aftermath of last month's news event involving deaths of a California Highway Patrol Officer and three members of his family, and the subsequent advisories by Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall more than 3.8 million vehicles to check their floor mats, one other issue comes to mind: "How DO you stop a runaway vehicle when the brakes don't seem to work?"
We've all heard stories about "Unintended Acceleration" in which vehicles are reported to suddenly accelerate on their own, and do not respond to braking by the driver. In most circumstances, cases of unintended or sudden acceleration can rarely be duplicated in vehicle testing. Often, such cases are caused when the driver accidentally steps on the gas rather than the brake.
I was recently advised by Mac DeMere a colleague and expert driver with years of experience in the automotive industry: "If you're pushing the brake pedal and the car continues to accelerate, release that brake pedal and push the one to its left." He says pedal misapplication is a very common problem. The fact is, he says your vehicle's brakes are more powerful than the engine in every unmodified, well-maintained modern car.
So what should you do if your vehicle experiences unintended acceleration?
In its recent safety advisory, Toyota offers the following suggestions:
"Should the vehicle continue to accelerate rapidly after releasing the accelerator pedal, this could be an indication of floor mat interference. If this occurs, Toyota recommends the driver take the following actions:
First, if it is possible and safe to do so, pull back the floor mat and dislodge it from the accelerator pedal; then pull over and stop the vehicle.
If the floor mat cannot be dislodged, then firmly and steadily step on the brake pedal with both feet. Do NOT pump the brake pedal repeatedly as this will increase the effort required to slow the vehicle.
Shift the transmission gear selector to the Neutral (N) position and use the brakes to make a controlled stop at the side of the road and turn off the engine.
If unable to put the vehicle in Neutral, turn the engine OFF, or to ACC. This will not cause loss of steering or braking control, but the power assist to these systems will be lost.
-If the vehicle is equipped with an Engine Start/Stop button, firmly and steadily push the button for at least three seconds to turn off the engine. Do NOT tap the Engine Start/Stop button.
-If the vehicle is equipped with a conventional key-ignition, turn the ignition key to the ACC position to turn off the engine. Do NOT remove the key from the ignition as this will lock the steering wheel."
This is a lot of stuff to remember if you're in a panic situation, so -- regardless of what kind of car you are driving -- if you can only remember one thing it's this: you can downshift the transmission gear selector into lower gears to slow the vehicle or go into neutral (N) position and then use the brakes to make a controlled stop.
If for some reason the brake pedal doesn't seem to work (see Mac's note above), once the car is in neutral, you can ease on the emergency brake to slow the vehicle. (Don't jerk the e-brake with full force: that can cause fishtailing, or snap the cable which operates the mechanism.) This is better than turning the engine off, which could shut down power to the steering and make it very difficult to steer the vehicle.
Even if the engine is revving, as long as the car is in neutral, it can't apply that force to the wheels, and you will still retain control of the steering system to assist you in coasting the vehicle to a safer stop.
Are You Afraid of Breast Cancer? If so, you're not alone. Cancer is a scary thing...And all the pink in the world can't change that. Sure, pink ribbons may be pretty, but breast cancer is ugly and scary. Here are some facts about breast cancer...
An estimated 182,800 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2000.
Approximately 42,200 deaths will occur in women from breast cancer in 2000.
One in eight women or 12.6% of all women will get breast cancer in her lifetime.
Breast cancer risk increases with age and every woman is at risk.
Every 13 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer.
Seventy-seven percent of women with breast cancer are over 50.
Many women are blogging about their breast cancer fears. From little fears to big fears. They have fears of mammograms, fears of treatments, fears or recurrences, fears of dying...and on and on. What are your breast cancer fears?
I had my own scare when I was 22 years old. One day, I found a lump in my left breast. It was scary as hell. I have a history of breast cancer in my family, and until I saw the doctor and got some answers, I did not sleep. At all. Even my husband, (who was my boyfriend at the time) became so desensitized to "feeling me up." I mean, he felt my left boob like twenty times, and said, "I don't like the way that feels."
I was petrified at the thought of the big scary monster of a machine smashing the hell outta my little skittle titties.
See, there is also the little fact that my mother's sister, my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer about 6 years ago. They found it early and she was able to treat it and it has not come back. So, there was also that deep rooted fear that maybe, just maybe it had crept into my tiny little body too. That the big scary "C" monster would get me too.
I read the survival statistics for my particular stage of breast cancer at the five-year mark and they say I have a 49 percent to 67 percent chance of making it. Every once in awhile I'll get stuck in a mode of fear and start obsessing about these grim facts. Then I realize all I can do is pop a Tamoxifin pill every day that is supposed to suppress estrogen, cross my fingers and carry on. I reason that yes, cancer could come back at anytime. But right now, I have my health back and I will never take that for granted again. So why not enjoy feeling normal as much as I can? The seasons change this week. Nothing ever stays the same, so cease the day!
I have mentioned before that the effect of chemotherapy on my fertility was the most devastating aspect of being diagnosed with breast cancer. For some women, the result is permanent infertility, others, like me, have complicated fertility issues post treatment. One of my chemo buddys did get pregnant post treatment with the help of IVF, but tragically developed a recurrence while pregnant. This brings up a lot of fears for me. If a miracle were to happen and I conceived, would this increase my own chances of recurrence. There is not enough statistical evidence as yet to answer this question satisfactorily. However, the latest research does show that pregant women who develop breast cancer do not have worse odds of death or of cancer returning than other young breast cancer patients.
"This was her body. She knew she should let go of her old self-image and make peace with the way her body was now... Mia closed her eyes and said a small prayer for strength. She had to let this fear of cancer go down the drain with the dirty water. To live fully, she had to believe she would live." (pg. 49, Time is a River)
Since the cancer had already spread, it was necessary to find out just how far it had gone. Did it travel through my nodes and bloodstream, finding a home someplace else in my body? Needless to say, the days and weeks that followed were filled with full body scans, tests, and anxiety about the unknown.
Let's face it: my son was four years old at the time I was diagnosed. Every mother knows that the will to survive comes in part from wanting to be here for yourself, but in larger part because your child needs you to be here.
She hopes this little journal will be an inspirational and safe place for a woman battling breast cancer to write her hopes and fears. And Secret Agent L sends loving thoughts to every woman battling this disease.
STAND BY HER is a step-by-step program targeted to men who want to become invaluable breast cancer caregivers to their loved ones, while at the same time helping them address and overcome their own personal fears, frustrations and anxieties caused by this disease.
During the next thirty minutes these two strangers shared their personal story with me. I learned how their world had been turned upside down. He placed his arm around her shoulder, as she described how events had unfolded and he hugged her close when her voice began to tremble. It was apparent that they were both in it together and he was as scared as she was.
Six weeks prior she had been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. She had already undergone a mastectomy. Staging revealed a large tumor which had spread beyond the original growth site. She was facing months of treatment and a questionable prognosis.
Because of new genetic testing, more and more women are finding that they are at an even greater risk for breast cancer (or a recurrence of breast cancer) than the average woman. It is called a BRCA, and it's done with a simple blood test. There is also something called LCIS which is diagnosed from a breast biopsy (although not cancerous, it does put the woman at a greater risk for breast cancer).
In some of these cases the woman makes the (what some believe is a controversial) decision to have a prophylactic mastectomy, rather than living in fear of breast cancer. What would you be willing to do to reduce your risk of breast cancer?
Greater social acceptance of double mastectomies and improved cosmetic surgery techniques are additional reasons for the growing numbers, says Simmons.
Of the 6,275 women who had prophylactic mastectomy in the study, 81% of them had been diagnosed with cancer in one breast. The rest had no personal history of breast cancer, suggesting they had high risk factors for breast cancer such strong family history and positive BRCA test results.
"For some women, their quality of life is better with their breasts removed because you get rid of the concern, the anxiety" about recurrence, said Dr. Lisa Jacobs, a surgical oncologist with the Johns Hopkins Breast Center. "A lot of women come in and say, `I don't ever want to do this again.'"
Here is an overview of my conversation last winter with my second opinion oncologsit:
ME: "I have LCIS and want to know what I should do" Oncologist: "You should go home and come back if you get 'real' cancer." ME: "But isn't LCIS something to worry about?" Oncologist: "There are a number of things that could kill you before breast cancer."
There is nothing quite like waiting for the results of a biopsy and having those results take weeks to receive. You get to do alot of thinking during that time. Your options become pretty clear as you wait. You wait. You wonder. You worry. You bargain with God. You pray. You hold your children closer. You connect with those closest to you. You pray. You worry.
-----
Well, I will know in two days if my plan for DIEP reconstruction after a bilateral mastectomy will work for me. I am meeting with a plastic surgeon in Boston and hope she says that I am a 'great' candidate for the DIEP. I am excited, scared and even more scared, but I want to get this breast cancer monkey off my back and reduce my risk to less than 10% from 50+%.
"But the doctors sat me down and said that my own breast health—having very dense fibrocystic breasts— combined with my family history suggested I needed a prophylactic double mastectomy," she explained. Margee cautioned that this isn't the solution for women who simply want to avoid breast cancer. However for someone like her, given her family history and personal tendencies, she was advised that it was a wise choice.
"Perhaps given the context of my sister's prognosis, it was an easier decision," she admitted. "There was an element of feeling a bit smug, as if I could outsmart the cancer by getting there first."
What would you do? Would you have a preventative mastectomy? Is your piece of mind more important than your breasts?
Although there are already five days under October's belt, it's not too late to consider taking part, in small or large ways, in this month's Eat Local Challenge.
Jen Maiser, who is one of the editors of the Eat Local Challenge website, describes the challenge as follows:
"The traditional Eat Local Challenge is a basic concept: commit to eating only locally grown foods for a period of thirty days. Declare "exceptions" that you will not be eating locally, and try as hard as you can to have everything else come from your local foodshed. "Local" is traditionally a 150-mile distance from your home, but can really be defined as any area near you. Some locavores choose their county, state, or region."
This year, the challenge will have a thoughtful focus, week by week. This week's theme (it runs through Friday, October 9) is Taking Stock, or, as Maiser wrote, "We'll take this week to reassess eating locally. Do the old eat local tenets hold up under a 2009 microscope? Where could we be doing better with eating locally? What should this month hold?"
In an entry at 5 Minutes for Going Green, Diana Prichard takes stock of her and her family's approach to this year's challenge—they came to it gradually, but are using this year's challenge as a jolt to their already-changing consumption patterns.
"I don't recall a fundamental shift in perception ever having taken place. Rather, it was a slow and steady evolution that led us to curb our long-distance consumption at the dinner table. It wasn't a conscious decision made, but it did turn out most convenient and achievable that way. I imagine much in the same ways that it would be most achievable for other families to go about it in the same way; slowly integrating local when and where it's most possible.
But there's also something uniquely exhilarating about a sudden dramatic shift in routine, a rush in making a big change and making it stick. That's why this year I'm participating in the Eat Local Challenge, because for as many things we've replaced with local alternatives there are just as many others — most vices, no doubt — that still need replacing. And I'm hoping you'll join me."
Jennelle of Delicious Potager is another blogger taking part in the challenge, but was already beating herself up a bit on Day 1. I'd argue she has nothing to worry about -- her approach, which includes cleaning out her refrigerator of what was already there, whether it meets her challenge guidelines or not, is an entirely practical approach to the exercise.
"I don't think it makes much sense (especially in this economy) to throw out perfectly good food," she wrote. And with local milk and beer within a 250-mile radius rather than a 150-mile radius, she decided that would be her personal distance limit for the challenge.
Have you considered taking part in such a challenge? As you take stock of your own eating habits, are there small changes you could make that would bring you closer, geographically, to the food you eat?
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