Hardcover edition with color illustrations

Have you ever felt like a  totally bewildered patient when you visited the doctor? Is something wrong with your body? If so, what should you do about it? Is the doctor telling you everything you should know? Has she spent enough time with you to figure out what’s wrong? Why did the doctor order those tests? What does he mean when he uses certain words? Can the doctor fix whatever is wrong?

These are normal questions and anxieties that may arise when you visit your health-care provider. Do you feel comfortable and confident enough in your patient-doctor relationship to seek answers? If not, The Bewildered Patient’s Whole Body Health Guide can help you learn how to ask questions and how to understand the answers your doctor offers. This book will be an enormous help as you strive to stay well. And, it will be of great value in navigating the medical system if you become ill.

What mysteries lie beneath the skin you live in? How many organ systems do you have? How do they work together? The information in these chapters will enhance your understanding of how your body works and what you can do to keep it in good running order. The book also offers tips and strategies for interacting with health-care providers.

A prior blog post offered a quick overview of the respiratory system that can give you an idea of just how beautifully organized a complex system of the body can be.

Paperback edition with black-and-white illustration

The US health-care system is in crisis. Politicians and insurance companies churn the rules and play a shell game with insurance and taxes intended to support public health. The Bewildered Patient’s Whole-Body Health Guide will help you understand your body and take charge of your personal health.

The Bewildered Patient’s Whole-Body Health Guide offers more than 300 manuscript pages of information on the inner workings of the body and a glossary of terms commonly used in biology and medicine. It includes nearly three dozen informative illustrations, in either black-and-white (paperback) or color (hardback)

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Garage mess

Luckily, my gandson, Blake, has helped me clear and has prodded me to dump stuff during his two visits to Charleston this past year. One was over his college Christmas holiday vacation and the other during spring break. We cleared a lot of stuff and tossed and organized. But there’s still a lot left to do. So he will be arriving in Charleston again in about a week, shortly before he returns to college this fall. Hopefully, we can finish the major clearing tasks.

More mess

Blake was here in Charleston for three weeks the first time. For the first two weeks or so, we accomplished a lot. Then we had the BIG SNOW storm (certainly big for Charleston). It snowed for nearly two days, and there was more snow on the ground than I had ever seen in nearly fifty years living in this city. So our clearing efforts were somewhat hampered during his last week here.

Still, we did manage to bag up a lot of trash, mostly mementos and papers, old magazines and rough drafts of papers. And we took some books to the library.

Some bagged trash.

Altogether, we discarded three big bins of recycled paper and two trash-cans of unwanted or unusable stuff. But then came the snow. So we had to modify our plans. In many ways, we were both just as happy about not having to keep on clearing out the garage. The snow was amazing

The snow came down in globs!

So the garage-clearing saga was to be continued during Blake’s spring break! He was happy to come to Charleston in the spring. And I was happy to have his help again. And, of course, I paid him well for his efforts. A college student can always use some extra cash!

The eerie stillness of the neighborhood.

To be continued…

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Grandchildren, Judson, Landon, and Ella Diane at California Dreaming, in Charleston, July

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for a Wonderful New Year to friends and family – and to all others of good will!

This year, 2017, has been busier than an old lady with respiratory problems would have liked. I’ve begun to feel a bit desperate about getting my life in order before kicking the bucket. I want to finish several projects – mostly writing projects and photo-album scanning. I’d like to clear out my house and sell it in the next year or two, and then move into a long-term care facility near one of the children, most likely Elisabeth.

Friends Ellie and Jane at Jane’s house

This year, I’ve continued sorting, scanning, and distributing photo albums. I discovered an album of my father’s, with photos that go all the way back to when he was a baby (1912). That’s the oldest album yet! Childhood photos of my sister, Virginia, really resemble Dad as a child.

Another photo album I’ve discovered recently is from a tour of the Eastern Mediterranean in 1997 with Ellie Setser. This was probably one of the first commercial tours I’ve taken. The photo album included several slides; some have been taken to a local photo professional for digitizing. Also found the journal for that trip and I’m transcribing it. Don’t know if I’ll try to make a travel booklet of that trip or not.

Book signing with other UU writers

This year, two books I’d been working on were published – a short story collection, Speaking with Strangers, and an autobiography, Saving My Life. They’re both available on my Amazon site.

In the past three years, I’ve been trying to find an agent for a book that’s been in the works for more than six years. (I’m basically a multitasker – sometimes called scatter-brained.) The book is a self-help health-care book for lay readers, intended to help folks understand and care for the only body they’ll ever have. It also offers tips for communicating with physicians. The tentative title is Body Wisdom, Body Care. Dr. Susan Reynolds, a former student, has been medical consultant for the book. Many friends, fellow writers, and a couple of editors have offered input on this endeavor over the years. I intend to get it out into the world next year, whether through a commercial publisher, an academic publisher, or by self-publishing. I spoke with an agent about the book at a SC writers’ conference in late October. He asked me to send him a copy of the manuscript, which I did in early November. I haven’t heard back from him, yet. I won’t contact him again until after the new year. A couple of other books are in the pipeline for next year: another short story collection and some essays “on being a woman.” One good thing about not being able to travel much is that I can stay at home and write – and revise. I did take one short trip this year, though.

Danny and Judi with Elisabeth and Trey, Landon and Ella, Nolensville High School

In July, I drove to Nolensville, TN (outskirts of Nashville), to visit daughter, Elisabeth, and her family in their new home. Her Aunt Judi and Uncle Danny were also there to see Judson play and march in the high-school band. The grandchildren – Judson, Ella Diane, and Landon – have grown so much! The two older ones are now really teenagers. Several scanned photo albums, including a couple from my mother’s youth, were given to Elisabeth to keep and pass down in her family. I’ve sent a few pwithhoto albums to Briana and Maria, as well.

With Fran in Conyers, GA

On the way up to Tennessee and back, I stopped in Conyers, GA (outskirts of Atlanta) to visit a friend from days past at MUSC. Fran Cameron, who is still going strong in her late eighties, is an inspiration!

Notable natural events of late summer and early fall were Hurricane Irma and the Great American Eclipse of 2017. Irma gave us a LOT of rain and a few downed tree limbs, but no major damage.

The eclipse, a brief, brilliant experience, passed over Charleston as well as across cities where two daughters, Briana and Elisabeth, live. I did a couple of blogs on the eclipse, and posted some photos of the flooded back-yard on Facebook.

Imagining the eclipse with friend, Nancy.

The year has been sprinkled with lunches and dinners and other get-togethers with wonderful friends – too many for me to detail here. One was a birthday party for Sue Prazak, a woman who has been a member of the UU Church in Charleston for longer than I have!

Birthday party for Sue Prazak (right) organized by Toni (next to her). Other friends around the table: Gail , Susan , Marilyn , and Susan

Another pleasant surprise was a meet-up with two friends from many years ago, Ann Baker and Susan Kay, who came from out of town for the Spoleto Festival this year, and they invited me to lunch with them.

With Ann and Susan, friends from the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. Sigh…

Grandson Blake is scheduled to fly to Charleston today from the cold North Country (Duluth, MN, not too far from where he goes to college in Ashland, WI). He will be spending three weeks in the “sunny south” to help his grandma clear out some of the stuff she can’t bring herself to get rid of on her own – mostly books and mementos. He will earn some spending money and I’ll have both help and motivation. It should be a wonderful chance to spend time together! I haven’t seen him for more than two years. We used to take trips in the RV during summers when he was young.

Despite the current political turmoil, 2017 has been a pleasant year in Charleston.

Photos, 201

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This question showed up recently in my email box. I’m a volunteer responder on the website, Quora, an online question-answer site (of somewhat uneven quality). As a retired biomedical scientist, sharing information is a form of payback for my good fortune in having had an excellent education, a reasonably well-paid job teaching medical students, and the opportunity to do interesting research for more than three decades.

Of the many questions from Quora in my email box, I’ve answered several. I’ll share a few of those responses here on this blog. Having recently finished a book on self-help health-care, I’m currently seeking an agent for it. It’s designed for motivated readers who want to understand and care for their bodies over a long and healthy lifetime. It’s also aimed at people who are trying to navigate our complex health-care system more efficiently.

This was my answer to why breathing is so complex

Breathing is a complex process because it must be both automatic (normally controlled by the autonomic nervous system), and voluntary (controlled by the voluntary nervous system). Moreover, unlike most other organ functions except the heartbeat, if it is interrupted for even a very short time (a few minutes), you’re dead.

So the nerve centers that control normal breathing are in the deepest part of the brain, the brainstem (pons and medulla), and they have a double back-up system. This part of the brain – the “reptile brain” – normally directs our unconscious functions.

But the nerve fibers that go to the diaphragm (via the phrenic nerve) are myelinated, which means that they are fast-acting. And they’re under voluntary control, which means you can choose when and how to breath–if you’re awake, that is. You can see the nervous control of breathing muscles illustrated below. Moreover, those muscles that control breathing – the diaphragm and intercostal muscles – are voluntary, striated skeletal muscles, unlike the cardiac muscle that causes the heart to beat, or the smooth muscle that controls peristalsis (movement) in the gut.

Still, when you’re thinking about other things–and especially when you fall asleep–the automatic breathing function takes over and you don’t even have to think about it.

So breathing is a physiologic activity that you can control when you’re awake but that continues to happen under involuntary control while you’re asleep. Breathing is so complex because we must breathe whether we’re awake or not!

I believe that respiration is the only bodily activity that is normally both voluntarily and involuntarily. That’s pretty amazing!

Nerves and muscles that control breathing

Here’s an illustration, from Wikimedia Commons.

Respiratory centers and nerves for breathing

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Probably the last of my friends to post eclipse photos on Facebook, I had decided to take a social media break on August 21, “Eclipse Day.” When not viewing or thinking or writing about the sun, our distant, dangerous life-giver, I took care of other tasks like dishes and mail–minor things that needed to be done but didn’t require mental focus.

Beginning of totality – flare beads

Finding Eclipse Glasses

I had ordered two different sets of eclipse glasses from Amazon. One of them didn’t meet standards and was never shipped. The other set was supposedly shipped, but never came to my post-office box. So I seriously considered making a pin-hole viewing box. But the day before the eclipse, a friend sent an email offering extra solar viewing glasses because she had a surplus. I went by her place and picked up two, just in case.

What happens during an eclipse?

Why did the eclipse move from west to east?

While at her house, I tried to explain to her and her grandson why the eclipse would be moving from west to east, while the sun and moon both seem to move from east to west in their orbits. It’s not a trivial issue. Both the earth and the moon are rotating toward the east, and the moon’s shadow was moving just a bit faster than the earth’s rotation, so it moved across the American continent from west to east.

I may try to do some diagrams and calculations for a later blog post. The rarity of the phenomenon is a consequence of the vast expanses of space, orbital tilts, and the very small probabilities that everything will align so that such an event can even occur.

This could be the only time this century that Hawaiians have envied those of us on the US mainland.

Monday afternoon (August 21), we were lucky in Charleston, SC. Although rain was predicted, and clouds covered more than half the sky, swatches of blue sky interrupted the thicker clouds, and the sun often appeared in those spaces.

The actual event!

Comparing eclipse T-shirts

My eclipse viewing station was the front lawn of the house, from which the sun was easily visible (when it wasn’t covered with clouds). With the new eclipse glasses, I could look at the sun from there and record observations and thoughts in a journal and take a few eclipse photos. Didn’t try to take photos of the partial eclipse; that might have fried the camera.

A simple Cannon digital camera was all I had. No fancy lenses or filters, so the resolution was not terrific. Some loss of resolution probably resulted from the high relative humidity—vapor saturation—in the air. But then, Charleston is like that!

The eclipse glasses truly did block out everything but the sun. Looking through them, everything was totally black except for a small orange circle with a bit of a bite out of the right side. Amazing! Of course, I took the glasses off to write.

Totality

And then I took them off again when the eclipse reached totality. At the beginning, bright flare beads were obvious, mostly on the lower left of the black disc. An odd phenomenon happened just after the flare beads lit up briefly.

The sun’s rim jumped around in the sky

The sun’s rim began dancing around in the sky, and I had trouble centering it in my view finder. I snapped a couple of photos anyway, and got some strange shots. I wonder if it wasn’t some sort of diffraction phenomenon of the rimmed light passing through water or ice in the thin haze of cirrus clouds overhead.

In the photo of totality, I wanted to get the full surrounding scene, including a nearby tree, so that photo was not zoomed nor enlarged. However, the photo was so dark, that when I tried to upload it into this blog, almost nothing was visible. Odd lights were playing on a nearby tree. It looked like leaves on the lower branches were illuminated from below.

The other side of totality

As the sun began to come out of totality, the red flare beads appeared again, this time on the lower right of the blackened disc.

It’s over so quickly!

Then a signet ring figure appeared as the sun began to emerge from the moon’s shadow. The photo below shows how much moisture was in the air. Thunder rumbled in the background. We were lucky in Charleston that the overhead clouds parted long enough for us to see the spectacle!

The signet ring sun.

Shortly after the sun began to emerge, heavy clouds rolled in, the sky darkened, thunder grew louder, and rain began. The remaining sun’s spectacle became invisible.

It’s a wonderful world!

Although I’d seen a couple of partial eclipses previously, this was the first full solar eclipse of my eight decades.

As the sun came out, clouds rolled in

The song “What a Wonderful World!” flits through my mind from time to time. I understand why the ancients were so awestruck by eclipses, especially an eclipse of the sun. I’m so glad to have witnessed this one!

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I was vaguely annoyed, because the vehicle interfered with two-way traffic in front of the post office, as did two other cars parked on the opposite side of the road. That left a single, jagged lane; moving cars had to slalom around the parked cars in order to drive through.

Now, I was parked in one of three handicapped sites near the post office, and other cars occupied the two other slots. So I thought perhaps the person in the SUV might be handicapped.

Just then, a man with a cane emerged from the post office and walked unsteadily and carefully toward the SUV. Thinking he might be its passenger, my annoyance lifted, briefly. But no, he had to maneuver around that SUV to get into his car, which displayed a veteran’s license plate and was parked in one of the other handicapped slots.

Soon, a youngish woman emerged from the post office carrying a piece of cardboard of the sort that can be folded into a shipping box. She bounced across the single open lane and opened the passenger door of the parked SUV. She swung her body into the passenger seat with little trouble, and the car drove away.

That whole scene felt really off.

My first thought was, She’s not even willing to walk fifty steps from a normal parking space to her destination and back. AND, she has no concern for the inconvenience of others.

As my mind roiled indignantly, I thought this might be worth a blog post–about selfishness in the commons, the public spaces we all share–roads, parking lots, public buildings, and parks.

Has this type of selfish obliviousness increased since Trump has been in the White House?

Maybe not. I remember many times during previous administrations when thoughtless drivers have parked in places that caused inconvenience to others. But it now seems more blatant, more in-your-face, more contemptuous of others–beyond mere thoughtlessness.

Why does this behavior annoy me so? It seems to display a sense of privilege in the perpetrator as well as a callous obliviousness to others. Such behavior signals a breakdown in the mutual consideration and respect essential to a functioning democracy.

Certainly, this type of behavior is typical of an aristocracy or an oligarchy, where the privileged few ignore the well-being of the much-less-privileged many.

Is that what we’re coming to? In the United States of America? The original bastion of democracy? Here? Now? The wealth disparity increases as the wealthiest have grown wealthier and the middle class and poor have stagnated or become poorer.

Are those the folks who support our current oligarch-in-chief and his minions? The ones who want to dismantle assistance and protection for compatriots with little or no power and privilege?

It is heartbreaking to see the fabric of our culture fraying at the edges. Perhaps it began with shipping manufacturing overseas, using cheap foreign (or slave) labor to further enrich the wealthy of this country.

So many don’t notice what’s happening. Or they don’t care. Like the lady in the black SUV.

Why did it annoy me so much that the lazy, thoughtless person in this scenario was a woman?

Happy Independence Day!

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Speaking with Stangers

BLACK WATCH

We went to see Her Majesty’s Royal Highland Regiment at the Citadel Field House one early autumn evening. Do you remember? You with your Scots ancestry and I with my fondness for all things male. The band was rousing and disciplined, but it was the pipe and drum corps we came to see and hear. And we weren’t disappointed.

After a warm-up by the band, and without a pause, the pipers marched onto the field house floor, applause mounting. One might almost say they flowed onto the floor. They did not so much march as move like oil to the hum and moan of the bagpipes and the drummers’ haunting, muffled cadence. The corps and their instruments seemed the very essence of manliness—the cockiness of their strut, the Celtic kilts with elaborate ermine codpieces, the bare and knotty knees, the peacock showiness of flowing shoulder tartans, the unyielding drone of the pipes.

They epitomized centuries of going to war, their uniforms binding together those of a kind to intimidate the adversary—vulture feathers like streaks of blood in black, bobbing head gear, leopard skins slung across drummers’ shoulders. How well trained. How beautifully controlled. What awe they would inspire in battle.

Ah, the ancient art of war. The fragile spirit of solitary man inflamed by the pomp and pageantry of the corps, wound like a coiled spring, intense potential power intent on victory. Thus seemed those glorious pipers as they strutted in file across the field-house floor.

But then a terrible imagining overcame me. I saw the Abomination of Desolation overtake this magnificent manhood. I saw modern war, unimpressed by spectacle or skill or courage—unseeing, unfeeling, unyielding, unknowing—blow a hole in the field house floor, ripping apart the pageant. Remnants of men flew through the air, kilts billowing, limbs flailing, grace and order gone, beyond all symbology or retrieval. And I knew at once—as I know still—that war is no more mere sport for men.

Pipers marching

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What’s in the works?

In press right now are two books. One is a collection of short fiction that I hope will be of interest to many readers. The other is an autobiography that will be of interest primarily to family and close friends. I’ll write about the latter in a later post.

Cover Image

I just received the cover image for the short story collection, Speaking with Strangers, and would like to share it–along with some back-cover blurbs.

COVER REVEAL

The image on the right is from a photo taken a few years ago at the British Museum. A man gazes intently at a sculpted glass skull in a museum display case, as if trying to fathom and interact with that strange human image/artifact. I thought it might be an appropriate metaphor for stories in the book.

Book Blurbs

Back cover blurb: This eclectic collection of short fiction centers on the theme of revelations that can occur during unplanned encounters with those we don’t know or don’t understand, including ourselves. The poignancy of each story arises from the flash of understanding, sometimes tempered with despair, that may be triggered by such chance interactions.

An editor wrote: “a truly remarkable collection of short stories. There are many arresting, alarming, disorienting, disturbing endings and junctures. The range of characters, setting, themes, moods, and plots makes it a riveting page turner—not like a suspense novel—more like an art museum full of quiet, unpredictable surprises. . .”  Mary Johnston, editor, Wordworks.

This book will be out and available in a month or so. When it comes out, it should be available on Amazon. I’ll update you on its progress.

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Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars: Love conquers War

February 14, Valentine’s Day, is a holiday of the heart, a day when we celebrate Love and give gifts and send greetings to those we love. This has always been a special holiday for me, because my maiden name was Valentine, a name I was sorry to “give up” with marriage.

We usually think of Valentine’s Day as a holiday meant especially for lovers. But what is love? And who are lovers? Is love just a feeling, or is it a social contract? How is it experienced? What has been its significance in human culture and human history? Why is it such an important emotion? How does love drive so much of what we desire and what we do? How does love differ from passion? From lust?

Love as Emotion

I only speak for myself when I write about love as an emotion, because emotions are private experiences. Others cannot truly know or experience the way we feel; they can only experience the ways our emotions drive us to act. I also suspect (in fact, I feel quite sure) that the experience of love is strongly colored by hormones coursing through the bloodstream that bind to receptors on neurons in the brain. So men and women no doubt love differently, and this can lead to endless misunderstandings.

Love is probably the most positive of all emotions, and it can take many forms: romantic love; caring deeply for others; awe of the surrounding world; love of the ineffable (sometimes called “God”). The apostle, Paul, wrote about love eloquently in Chapter 13 of his first letter to the Corinthians. His understanding of love in this passage is caritas, the love that cares–charity in its original sense. 

The love object may be another human being, or it may be another living thing or an inanimate object. It may even be an idea. Whatever its object, love motivates us to be near and to care for the beloved. This desire to be near–to care for–another, can lead to a possessiveness that becomes destructive to both the beloved and the lover. Selfish love is best described as lust.

Love is experienced as awe and admiration; lust is experienced as the desire to possess. They both seem to arise from a common instinctive, emotional well. Love may be desire tamed by a civilizing consideration for the beloved.

How Have I Experienced Love in my Life?

With Sporty, my childhood companion.

As a child, I loved my mother, of course; my feelings for my father and my sister were more problematical. I also loved our pet dog, Sporty, whose very being gave me joy—her unrestrained enthusiasms: for a walk into the nearby woods, for a boat ride across the lake, or for simply skittering along behind us on childhood adventures.

And I loved the wilderness within walking distance of our home. It afforded an endless experience of soul-expansion—watching the clouds form and disperse, smelling the fermentation of early spring on a newly green hillside, exploring the endless life-forms on the forest floor.

On becoming an adolescent, I felt a new kind of love, the stirrings of romantic love. This began around age ten, with a grade-school crush that lasted through junior high. In high-school I became enamored of a guy who sat near me in study hall. He elicited the confused emotions that inspired a personal journal I have kept, albeit irregularly, throughout my life. Then, in college, I had a full-blown, heart-stirring and heart-wrenching romance that lasted a few years, but it didn’t survive graduation.

Shortly thereafter, I was wowed and wooed by the man who became my first husband and with whom I had my first child. I loved my husband, yet the love for my child was even more intense and compelling than the romantic love that had created her. Moreover, my husband’s love soon became a possessive, controlling love, and I fell out of love.

Many years later, that pattern repeated itself with my second husband. We had two children, and the difficulties took much longer to develop. But in the end, control and possessiveness drove me away.

Between the two marriages, I experienced several types of romantic love – some requited and some not – and came to understand how complex and variable love could be.

A Meditation on Love

In one recently rediscovered journal, I found a long entry relating to a particular love object that had motivated me to write about the complexities of love. A paragraph from that meditation is below.

“I experience it (love) as a heightened awareness, being alert, tuned in to everything around me, on edge, filled with diffuse nervous energy. I noticed things, details, that I might not usually pay attention to. Any experience—gazing out the kitchen window at trees in the back yard, watching children tossing leaves, observing oddly dressed people pass by while I’m standing at a train station or walking down the streets of a city—any of these experiences might become so intense as to be almost painful. Small things, like the sight of a child’s delicate, trusting hand, the spreading and disappearance of rain-drop rings in a puddle, the sweet smell of wet, decaying leaves, any brief encounter with external reality could become incredibly poignant, as if sent to enliven my imagination or to torment me.”

I suspect that those experiences motivated me to write, to write out the awe and the pain and the confusion of love. Those images have been incorporated into fictional narratives, and some of those stories have nothing to do with love.

Mature Love

Threading through these human loves have been both a love for the natural world and the love of learning/understanding. These loves have motivated a constant exploration—of the world itself and of the world of ideas.

Since menopause, I’ve experienced love as a sense of awe toward the world around me coupled with gratitude that I’m a part of it. And that feeling, which may be what people mean when they use the term “grace,” is with me most of my waking hours.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY 

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Russia, River Cruise, continued.

On deck, the sun is shining, the boat is churning smoothly across Lake Onega, the wind is a little brisk, the cirrus clouds divide the sky into deep blue above and a beautiful turquoise swatch  nearer the horizon. This cruse part of the trip has been utterly delightful. On deck, the sun is shining, the boat is churning smoothly across Lake Onega, the wind is a little brisk, the cirrus clouds divide the sky into deep blue above and a beautiful turquoise nearer the horizon. This cruse part of the trip has been utterly delightful.

Continued here:

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