Tag Archives: health

Plane Germs

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I fight off a cold I may have caught enroute from Boston to Phoenix.

PhotoLike most people, I hate getting sick. It isn’t just the feeling like crap part of being sick. It’s the knowing that I have so much to do and that doing any of it will exhaust me and prolong my illness. Mike and I took a vacation in Maine last week. We stayed with our friends, John and Lorna, who have a wonderful piece of property on a stream with a dam surrounded by tall trees. The weather in Maine was mostly foggy while we were there, but every once in a while, the fog would lift or clear away and we’d get an outstanding view of the New England countryside or coast.

We left on Friday for Amhurst, MA to visit Mike’s niece, Molly. The drive was wonderful through Maine, with the fog clearing out enough to make it a very pleasant drive. But when we hit New Hampshire and Massachusetts, it became overcast. By the time we reached Amhurst, it was raining. It was terribly humid on Friday — the kind of humidity that makes you sweat no matter how cool it is outside. On Saturday, it was pouring and very cool. But not quite cool enough to give me the chill I normally need to catch cold.

So it must have been the plane ride. Five and a half hours on board, from Boston to Phoenix. Stuck in coach, crammed into a window seat beside Mike on a plane too full for anyone to stretch out. I spent most of the flight reading, despite the nagging headache I’d had since the previous afternoon. I couldn’t even listen to my iPod very long. My head ached.

The air was typical airline air. Who knows where it came from or where it had been? How much of it came from outside the cabin? How much of it was laden with the germs the 100+ other passengers had brought onboard with them?Now don’t get the idea that I’m paranoid about germs. I’m not. I fully believe that everyone should expose themselves to a certain amount of germs just to keep their immune system working. That’s why I don’t go out of my way to use antibacterial soap. And I never really believed that the germs on airplanes could make you sick. To me, it sounded like just another fear fed into society by the media, which loves to keep us scared and tuned in for details.

But now I’m not so sure.

I arrived home at 10 PM on Saturday. I was fine on Sunday. I woke up a bit early on Monday — okay, so it was 4:00 AM — but felt fine. At about 7 AM, I had a nasty sneezing fit. By 10 AM, my nose was running like a faucet. By noon, my head was aching and my nose was sore from blowing it. By 2 PM, I was at the cold medications counter in Safeway, asking a pharmacist to please help me find the right medicine for my symptoms.

My condition continued to worsen. Mike made us dinner and it took me forever to eat. Ever try to swallow food when your nose is completely stuffed?At 7:30 PM, I went into the bedroom to read. I was asleep 10 minutes later.

I slept sitting up. I know from experience that a postnasal drip can give you a sore throat and cough. I didn’t want to go there. So I slept with my head up and tilted to one side. Thankfully, the nasty stuff in my nose had thickened a bit from the medication and wasn’t drippy. As I write this on Tuesday morning, I still don’t have a sore throat or cough.

But I am on medication. And I decided to take the day off to rest up. That’s the only way I’ll recover.

But why now? Why couldn’t this have happened over the summer when I was goofing off most of the time? Why does it have to happen when I’m working on a book revision and have two editors nagging me for articles? When my helicopter needs to be run up after maintenance so I can do a tour for a woman and her grandson this weekend? When I’m trying to launch a podcast and my voice is too nasal to make recordings?No need to dwell on it. I’ll just settle down on the sofa with a box of Puffs, glass of orange juice, and a good book. I’m taking today off so I can get back to work tomorrow. I’d better be at least a little better by then.

Maria Speaks Goes Online

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I finally start publishing my own podcast.

Maria SpeaksI’ve been wanting to do it for weeks, but I just haven’t found the time. You see, I don’t want to sound like an idiot, so I need to compose everything I want to say in a podcast episode before I record it. So I need time to think things out, write them down, and record them. I suspect I’m not the only one who does this, although I’m willing to bet that a lot of podcasters skip the first two steps.

I published two back-dated podcasts this evening. One is an introduction to the podcast. The other provides information about my eBook on podcasting. I’m working on another one now, about using the Mac OS Command key. Maybe I’ll get that online this week, too.

Interested in podcasting stats? I found this information in the most recent issue of Technology Review.

  • By the end of June, there were over 25,000 podcast feeds. That’s up from less than 2,000 in January. Wowser!
  • The iTunes Music Store’s Podcast Directory listed about 6,000 podcast feeds with about 6 million subscribers as of July 18.
  • Most podcasts categories have more listings than views (percentage-wise, anyway). The notable exceptions include radio (such as KBSZ), News, Health/Fitness, Books, Hobbies, Games, Food/Drink, Travel, Art, Erotica, Environment, Variety, and Fashion.

Jeez, I love stats.

Want some more stats? Here’s a quickie: the KBSZ podcast I set up in August now has 20 regular subscribers. That’s not bad for a radio station on the edge on nowhere.

Anyway, if you want to subscribe to my Podcast, here’s the URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/mariaspeaks — just pop that URL into iTunes or another Podcast client to tune in. Or use your Web browser to access the RSS feed and click the title of an episode to download it.

Ah, For a Good Night’s Sleep!

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Jack the Dog defends his territory.

I’ve been living at Howard Mesa for almost a full month now. And it’s been almost a full month since I’ve had a good night’s sleep.

The problem is Jack the Dog. You see, he feels as if he has to protect me from animals of the night. I’m talking about coyotes.

Howard Mesa is home to a wide range of wildlife, including rabbits (cottontails and jackrabbits), antelope, elk, coyotes, ravens, hummingbirds, nighthawks, and a variety of other birds. Since our property is fenced-in, we don’t usually see antelope or elk. This year, we haven’t seen any coyotes (yet) either. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t heard them.

Every night, packs of coyotes on various parts of the mesa, howl. They do it around sunset and then at various times throughout the night. The sound is distant and rather pleasant in a wild sort of way. It doesn’t usually wake me. It isn’t usually close enough to be that loud.

But it’s loud enough for Jack the Dog to hear, even in the dead of night when he, Alex the Bird, and I are sound asleep. And every time he hears those darn coyotes, he reacts the same way: by barking.

So, in the middle of the night, I’m likely to be awakened by my own dog barking at least two or three times.

The other night, he barked so suddenly that I heard Alex the Bird fall of the perch in his sleeping cage.

I don’t know why he barks at the coyotes here. He doesn’t do it at home. There’s no threat of coyotes attacking us in our camper. And they really aren’t very close.

Tonight, I’m bringing a cup of water to bed with me. When Jack barks, he’ll not only get yelled at, but doused. We’ll see if that makes things any better.

I’d like to sleep a whole night through.

Bird Biscotti

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A recipe for parrot treats.

A while back, I surfed the ‘Net and found a bunch of recipes for bird treats. I wanted healthy, homemade treats for my parrot, Alex the Bird.

I followed one of the recipes, called “Bird Biscotti,” to make cookies for Alex. I had to substitute a bit, using Avian Essentials in place of wheat grass and egg shells. And the batter turned out too thin, so I added more cornmeal and flour to get the right consistency. The resulting creation was very green. Alex, however, liked them quite a bit.

That one batch of cookies lasted about two months. I stored them in the freezer to keep them fresh. When it was time to make another batch, I decided to experiment, adding ingredients that another recipe suggested. Here’s my concoction:

1 cup granola cereal
1/4 cup 7-grain hot cereal, uncooked
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon Avian Essentials
4 eggs
4 eggshells, washed and ground
2 large carrots, cooked and finely chopped
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup flax seeds

A few notes about all this.

The 7-grain cereal is a hot cereal mix I bought at Safeway supermarket. It’s something I happened to have in the house and figured I’d throw in. If you can’t find that, skip it or use oatmeal.

Avian Essentials is an off-the-shelf bird supplement you should be able to buy in a good bird or pet store. It contains spirulina (which is why it’s green), cuttlebone powder, and wheat grass.

These provide beta carotene (vitamin A), essential amino acids, and calcium.

Ground eggshells also provide calcium. Frankly, I could have skipped this, since I used Avian Essentials — I actually did skip it in the first recipe. But I wanted to see how hard it was to prepare the eggshells. So I washed them, let them air dry, and used my mortar and pestle to grind them up. It took about 10 minutes total. The resulting powder didn’t look anything like eggshells.

The carrots were easy to prepare. I cooked them up in the microwave, drained off the water, and ran the carrots through my food processor. If I’d added other ingredients with them (or had used the smaller food processor bowl), I could have turned them into a paste. But that didn’t really matter. The original recipe called for carrot baby food, but I didn’t feel like running to the store to buy it.

I’d bought the sesame and flax seeds at my local health food store. (Yes, there is one in Wickenburg: Ginny’s Vitamin Village.) According to another bird treat recipe I’d found online, these two ingredients provide nutrients that help prevent feather plucking. So why not throw them in, too?

If you mix this all up, it should result in a green, dough-like mass with orange flecks. (Sounds good, huh?) If it’s too runny to work with your hands, add more whole wheat flour to thicken it up. If it’s too thick (unlikely but possible), add unsweetened fruit juice or water.

I split the dough into about 5 pieces and used my hands to make long cylinders. I put these on a lightly greased cookie sheet and baked them for 30 minutes at 325°F. Then I pulled them out, cut them into 1/4 to 1/3 inch pieces, and laid the pieces flat on the cookie tray for another 10 minutes of baking. Alex likes his cookies crunchy.

When the cookies cooled, I gave one to Alex to sample. He loved it!

Living Will

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I pass along something amusing (and rather sad) to readers who think.

This morning, I got an e-mail from my cousin Kathy who lives back in New York. Kathy teaches school and is one of the family’s more thoughtful members. (Sadly, she’s related by marriage, so it doesn’t help us score points in our bloodline.)

Kathy often passes on funny things she receives via e-mail. Unlike a lot of folks who forward stuff to me, the ones I get from Kathy that aren’t related to menopause or the stupidity of men are often quite well written and funny. This one was like that. I want to share it with readers here.

Sadly, I don’t have a by-line for the piece and don’t know who wrote it so I can’t include credit for it. I did not write it. If anyone out there knows the original author of this piece, please let me know. And obviously, since I respect copyright, if the author has a problem with me sharing this, he should contact me so I can remove it. Frankly, if I’d wrote it, it would be…well, right here. And I’d be proud to put my name on it.

That said, here it is. Read it and think.

Below is an example of a LIVING WILL you may want to draft in light of recent events:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn’t be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I’d be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers – oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on – to start calling me “Bobby,” as if they had known me since childhood.

* I’m not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a “Bobby’s Law” that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the “Bobby’s Law” idea doesn’t work out, I want Congress – especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in “less government and more freedom” – to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country’s attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I’d want President Bush – the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas – to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best “to err on the side of life.”

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF’s care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what’s best for me, I won’t be in any position to argue.