The Journey of Raw Foods-Day 1

I have been contemplating a Raw Foods diet for sometime now. I have lived a very unhealthy lifestyle for the past 10 years or so. There are many contributors to this destructive path, the main being my state of mind and what I will accept. For the past week I have been researching a raw foods diet and the benefits. Mainly because, I am tired of feeling unhealthy. I would not say that I am sick. There are no sniffles or colds, but I feel very unhealthy. 


I feel now that I am ready for this change in lifestyle. Before all I would fantasize about is the foods I would be missing. I do not feel that way now. I am not thinking about all that I will miss out on. What I feel is all that I have the potential to benefit from. I am excited to start this new journey.


The first step is the detox period, that will be rough. Not for wanting to eat but for all of the impurities to gradually leave my system. The biggest obstacle for me is getting the "greens" in my system. Sure, I love spinach cooked and with butter. But to get back to the basics that my body needs, that is now gone, and I'm okay with that. I have never been a real salad eater either. But after all of the research I think there is a solution, blending. I have found excellent recipes online for adding the greens to raw smoothies that will get the greens in me.


My past diet over the year has been the worst foods you can feed your body: pizza, pastas, EVERYTHING chocolate, buttered everything, breads, and TONS of starches. Anyone who knows me knows I love sugar and starch. It really takes a mindset to be able to begin this journey, but I am more than ready.


Since I am giving up dairy as well as meat, processed foods, and anything cooked, the biggest hurdle is my coffee. I know I will eventually give up coffee all together but that is one of my last hold-outs. Since I drank my coffee with 2% milk and truvia I had to change that. I have just started drinking my coffee with pure almond milk. It is a little different taste and is a little thicker than I am use to, but it is alright. It reminds me a little of drinking coffee with cream. I was never a cream drinker.


Currently the medical issues I have are below. I have read and viewed some wonderful results medically from what should be obvious to me at this stage in my life.:


1-High Blood Pressure (3 medications to control)
2-Migraine Headaches ( Once a month or so)
3-Knee Joint Pain (I have had this since my mid-20's. They really hurt when there is humidity in the air)
4-Back Pain when waking (unless I have my legs elevated)


I am sure there are more but those are the most pressing ones. 

I am very fortunate my husband bought a juicer many years ago. I made a juice of Granny Smith Apples and Red and Black Seedless Grapes (all on sale at Dominicks). I know I will have to have better juices and more organic, but money is always tight.


For the first week of detox fruit juices only then after the first week I can move on to smoothies (Happy to have my old blender. It may be beat-up and old but it still works) infused with greens. It's funny, I was talking to be BF yesterday and the one thing she said she would have a problem with in going smoothie or juice was not having the different textures in her mouth when eating. For me, I will be happy to no longer have to get my nutrients by chewing. I feel that this "liquid" type diet would be easier for me to handle. If you told me that a month ago I would have thought you were mad.


Sure, I would like to loose weight, but that is not the main reason for doing this. I just want to feel healthy. It feels as if my body is a full of toxic waste. The stupid thing is, I put it there.



I am too young to be this unhealthy. I am almost 42 and feel much older. I want to be around for my sons life. I want to see him fall in love, graduate University, start a family and become the wonderful man I know he will be. How can I do that when I am on this self-destructive path? It starts now. It starts today.

I will post more in the weeks ahead to see if this path is the right one, which I feel it will be. Wish me luck

Stroke at 49 part 3

Well, it has been sometime since my last posting on my husband's stroke. We hit the four month marker of post-stroke. I wish I could say that there has been a miraculous improvement but it is all so slow moving. David has been pretty positive through all of this but the cracks are beginning to appear. It is so hard for me to imagine how it must feel being cooped up it the apartment day after day. The simplest trips to the store or for physical therapy or doctors appointments are a big production that is tiring. 

To date David still has no movement in his shoulder, very limited movement in his arm and hand. He can raise his left arm to almost chest level with a great deal of effort and concentration. He can only do it for one or two repetitions. His left knee does bend but get caught in the locked position a lot. His ankle he can move with a great deal of concentration and effort. His left foot still has no feeling and both his foot and calf are constantly swelling. We have to wait until May for his third ultrasound on his leg to see if the blood thinners have broken up the clots in the four arteries that go from his foot to his abdomen. 


The hardest days for travel are when we know we are going to need to be walking for distances. I have to carry down the wheelchair from our third floor apartment and carry it back up. We do not have a handicap parking sticker so I usually have to pull up to the place we are going, get the chair out of the back seat, help him get situated, then find parking. It's funny, people seem to think that there is a lot of free time when staying home and caring for your loved one, if anyone spent anytime in my shoes, they would go to bed early every night.

There is so much more I would like to be doing but it is so difficult to find the time to do it. While taking care of him I am ever still on the job hunt. Looking for work, taking care of him and our son, doing all of the household chores alone is really tiring.

Decline of the American History Classroom

Subject Matters: Why students fall behind on history from CNN

Above is a link about a subject near and dear to my heart. By the time they figure out the importance of learning history and begin to value History Teachers again, I will be too old to teach. I truly miss teaching history to students. What I don't miss is spending at least half of my lesson time on disciplinary issues. I just don't understand how we went from having classrooms where the trouble makers were sent to the Principal or Disciplinarian. Those students did not return to class, a parent was called, and the student really got it from mom or dad when they got home. That was how it was when I was in school in the 80's. Teachers were allowed to teach.

What I knew in school was that my education was my responsibility. There was no free hand out of diploma's. If you didn't like your grade you worked harder to change it. There was no bullying of teachers as I see now in the classroom. I cannot tell you how many parents came into my classroom, when I was still teaching, and demanding, argued, yelled, and occasionally became verbally abusive to the point of security stepping in because their child's grades were horrible. It seems in the education field, yelling is what works. Principal's will bend over backwards, break set rules, to appease hostile parents. Why? Because they fear the call to the district office. They know they can be pulled from the school they are at. Often the Teacher is left to feel and look powerless. Students see this. Parents see this. Education is not education when these tactics are pulled, it is thuggery, bullying, and blackmail. Change the grade, break the rules, or you may not have a job to come back to. It makes me sick.

Stroke at 49 part 2

This is the face of a 49 year old with a stroke. My darling husband has been through hell and back and is still fighting. Words cannot describe what it is like to have a stroke at such a young age or to care for someone who has suffered through it. It has been 35 days since my husband's stroke on the right front lobe hemisphere of his brain. He has had regained movement in his left thigh and calf. To date he is still without movement in the following areas of the left side of his body:

• Face
• Shoulder
• Upper Arm
• Lower Arm
• Wrist
• Hand
• Fingers and Thumb
• Ankle
• Foot
• All ten toes

What has been the most difficult thing is to see a once proud, do it myself kind of man reduced to requesting help to go anywhere around the house, get dressed etc.

Yesterday his left calf was really bothering him. It was more swollen than usual. His foot and ankle were more swollen as well. This morning, after having no sleep the night before, he would not wake up. I spent 2 hours until he finally woke up to take his medications. Everyday is a constant study of anything out of the ordinary or new. The possibility of a second stroke can be high.

I am so tired by the end of the day I just want to sleep for a week straight.

Stroke at 49 part 1

Three days after Thanksgiving my husband got out of bed and stumbled into the dining room were I was reading the morning news online. I followed him into the kitchen and asked if he was alright. He told me he was dizzy and having a difficult time standing. I brought him to the couch in the living room and had him sit down. His face was slightly drooping on the left side but he was still recovering from Bell's Palsy three weeks before so it was not unusual. I asked him to raise his arms. He could not raise his left arm nor his leg. Right away I called 911. He kept insisting that he would be fine and not to call 911. 

After the paramedics carried him out one of the paramedics told me it was probably the Bell's Palsy. We arrived at the hospital three blocks from the apartment within 20 minutes of calling 911. At the hospital they did a CATscan and we were told he had had a stroke on the right side of his frontal lobe. They could not perform the angioplasty at the hospital and he would need to be transferred to another hospital across town. We waited over an hour and a half for the transport to the new hospital and another 45 minutes for the neurosurgeon to speak with me about the surgery. The angioplasty is where they went in through an artery on the right side of his groin and insert a balloon tipped catheter that traveled up to the frontal lobe of his brain to dislodge the clot. After waiting nervously for an hour and a half, the surgeon came and told me the results of the surgery. They were able to remove sixty percent of the clot. The clot had broken off into three clots. The first clot had completely blocked the main artery. That was removed. The main artery then branches out into two smaller blood vessels. The larger of the two was also completely blocked and the clot was removed. The smaller vessel was also completely blocked but they were unable to remove the clot.

The area of the brain that was affected was his balance and coordination. They were not sure what lasting affect the stroke would have until it settled. As the stroke settled there was slight hemorrhaging.  The night after the surgery he was able to lift his arm, leg, and squeeze with his hand. As the stroke settled and the hemorrhaging stopped he lost all movement in his face, shoulder, arm, wrist, hand, fingers, ankle, foot and toes. It has now been just less than two weeks in rehab, still as an in-patient in the hospital, and we are worried sick. They are working like mad to get him to the point where he can climb the three flights to our apartment once he is released on the 29th of December. 

My husband has always been a relatively healthy person. He eats right for the most part and yet this stroke hit out of the blue. I have no idea what the next few weeks will bring. What I do know is that there is no Christmas at my house this year. Our son put the tree up himself and decorated it. He has been doing all of the laundry, dishes, taking care of the cats and really stepping up. It breaks my heart that I cannot give him a Christmas. I have not had the time to shop. Nor the money. My days are spent taking him to school at 6:30 am and spending the day at the hospital. I return for enough time to eat, talk to the boy for an hour or so and get up to do it all over again. I have to say, on a scale of 1 to 10 of suckiness, this is the worst Christmas I have ever had. And those include my first 15 years of life when I was not allowed to celebrate holidays.


I think the saddest thing is, no one has come to the hospital to see him. My aunt who is recovering from cancer wanted to come but I cannot let her take the risk of the Chicago winter after she has just finished with radiation and chemotherapy. Her immune system is not strong enough. One of my uncles said he was going to stop by but he has been sick. The only person who has really been here for me has been my BFF. She is more of a sister to me. She has been wonderful! She is even making Christmas Eve dinner and bringing it to the hospital so we can do what we always do for Christmas Eve, spend it together. I really don't know what I would have done without her help these past few weeks.

When is enough?

I am trying so desperately to find the spirit of the holiday season. I was to feel that there is hope or even a future for me. I checked the balance of my checking account and realized that there is enough for rent next month and that is it. My unemployment deposit doesn't come in until a week after rent is due. So between now and December 8th there is nothing. Words cannot even to begin to describe the despair in my very soul. I have never felt as much isolation and hopelessness as I do now. I really have no idea what I am going to do. I have been applying for jobs all over the city from cashier to maid. I have completely given up hope of ever using my education or certification again. I am truly at a place where I have nothing. I was always the positive one for others. Tried to let things slide off my back. A few set-backs never crushed me. But how do I not feel that way now? I was really doing good at the beginning of the year. I had some money saved for a down payment on a condo, a bank pre-approved mortgage, a small savings set aside for my sons education, student loans paid off every month for the past 6 years, and a job that I loved. I have never been well off but life was, for the first time, not a struggle.

This year has brought me a loss of my husbands job, my husband leaving me for a brief time, my sons onset of bipolar manic episodes, a loss of my job, and now total financial ruin. It is not even the type of ruin where you can find a small place and live modestly. It is complete ruin. Close to living on the streets ruin. I really don't know what to do. I have talked to my family and when I was asked by an uncle to let him know if there was anything he could do I begged him to get my husband a job at his company. My uncle is kind of high up at the company. His response was, just have him go to the website. Not, give me his resume and I'll talk to a few people. I went to the website and there is nothing my husband is qualified to do.

I am really at a loss. I keep trying to think that it can't get any worse, but then another punch in the stomach happens. I'm still trying to sell off all of my possessions on e-bay but it costs money to even post them. I haven't sold off enough of my things to even make a dent. I just want all of this to end. I really can't take anymore. I am beyond having hope for better things to come.

Christmas and Father

In Chicago we have a radio station that plays nothing but Christmas songs during the holiday season. It is always my favorite time of year. This year they started playing the Christmas music on the 11th of November. I cannot tell you how much that is a big boost to my sorrow. I longed for Christmas growing up. Every Christmas commercial or the old mash-ups they did with television shows singing carols would send me to tears with an aching heart. It wasn't about presents or "getting stuff" it was about the one thing that I felt was missing, family closeness and love. I didn't celebrate my first Christmas until I was 16 years old. 

The magic of childhood Christmas was not mine to have along with so many things. There are so many little things that people take for granted that mean the world to others. The two things that can really make my heart ache and bring on the tears, to this day, are Christmas movies and of all things, the movie "What a Girl Wants". I know it is a kid movie and there is a lot of silliness, but the theme of the film haunts me. The one thing this girl wants is to dance with her father, the father she has never known. When she meets her father she is an outsider in his life and not wanted by most of those around him. Of course in the end she gets what she has always dreamed of, a dance with her father. That is how I have always felt. The difference is, I am 41 and there is no dance in my future. 

When I met my father for the first time 11 years ago I was happy beyond words. I was so much him. He had a family with 3 daughters. I was like a distant cousin. My father was so important to me. I knew that I could never have childhood memories with him, bedtime stories, Christmas mornings, and feeling protected by Daddy. Nor could I have the adult milestone moments with him, the birth of my son or having my father give me away at my wedding, those were already completed before we met. But the two things I longed for I was to be denied. At his youngest daughters wedding I physically had to leave the "hall" as he had the father daughter dance. My heart hurt so badly. It was the only dance my father and I never offered one. 

The second thing was my graduating University. I worked so hard to finish my education degree. I called and spoke with my step-mother and told her how important it was for me to have my father there. She told me he could not travel that distance with his back. I said I understood, but then they began driving to Florida in the winter which is ever farther than the trip to Chicago. My place was solidified.

It is a difficult thing to come to terms with. A battle I still fight to this day, being second place or an afterthought. I always knew I was an afterthought in my mother's life. In fact, in most peoples lives. It just hurts when it happens when you are older. You are suppose to be stronger and built up an un-scalable wall.

My Christmas wish is to feel as if I matter, feel secure, have a home I can go to when my world is crashing down as it is now, to know that I am loved by some form of family. All I feel is the futility of existence. The only one keeping me together is my son. Who all too soon will not need me as he heads to college next year. It would not even be a blip on the radar in anyone's life if I were gone.