My Wife

This is my wife Heidi. I took this photo at Lake Mead National Park, one of our favorite places. If I remember correctly at the time she had a tumor in her lower back growing but we were yet to find out it was cancerous (see www.helpheidi.com).

Wow! The journeys we have traveled since then and the ones we are traveling today. Crazy stuff.

Heidi can be the most incredible woman you'll ever meet. She can be so brilliant, talented, loving and beautiful. Yet, she has literally brought me to the edge of insanity multiple times.

Think about that. Heidi has nearly brought me to insanity. ME! I am quite possibly the most annoying guy you have ever met. I know I have driven several people insane and might seem immune to the obnoxious acts of others. However, this gorgeous woman has my number.

But I love her. Why is that anyway?

Hospice Care

I have a strange job. As a social worker for a hospice agency everyday I meet with men and women who will soon be dead. Occasionally, we have a patient that is discharged for extended prognosis but those are few and far between. The vast majority will be gone soon leaving behind grieving family, friends, and significant others.

I believe in hospice. It has been proven not only good for the patient (they live on an average of 29 days longer) but it is cost effective too. Over the past year I have spoken with probably a couple hundred people that are no longer on this earth and that realization has put me in a reflective mood.

Don’t get me wrong, like any job mine has downsides. I have finished my day many times saying to myself, “My job sucks.” But I get up the next day and go back to work because there is a possibility I might help someone that needs it and that makes the effort worth it. Plus my job is never dull.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few of my observations and maybe correct a few myths that might exist regarding hospice care.

• Most patients are at home and we provide intermittent care. Others live in nursing homes. Hospice is not necessarily a place although some pass away in our small, short-term hospital unit.

• Sadly were all going to die and some of us die at an earlier age than others. The youngest I have served was 20 years old (brain tumor) and the oldest turns 105 next week.

• In order to begin hospice care a patient’s physician must write an order giving the patient no more than 6 months to live. Naturally some live much longer while others are gone within days, even hours. Point is hospice is an option and helpful tool for those who want it, if someone wants to stay receiving aggressive treatment up to the day they day it is their right.
  

• God bless the only form of socialized medicine in this country. Medicare and Medicaid do a great job paying for hospice care and they realize some patients will not be dead within 6 months. However, private insurance frequently gives a patient 180 days and if they are not dead within that time their paying their own bills (I’m proud to say we have never discharged a patient because they were non-funded).

• Some idiot right-wing politicians started spreading rumors that if the new healthcare bill passes someone will come to their home and ask how they would like to die. Well, they were talking about Advanced Directives and Do Not Resuscitate Orders if they want one. If they want to call 911 they are more than welcome to do so but most patients are ready to face their maker when that day arrives and would prefer not having their chests crushed and tubes stuck into their bodies.

• The most attentive families in my experience and the last ones to put their loved ones in nursing homes are first place Asians, then Hispanics, followed by African-Americans, and in last place are Caucasians.

• Right now our daily average is about 70 patients. About 17% have a tobacco related illness, 10% are diet related, the biggest group is dementia patients at 34%, 3% have an alcohol related diagnosis, and 27% have some form of cancer. Among patients under sixty years old most have a tobacco or diet related illness.

Fun stuff! In many ways it is a rewarding job but I have come across a lot of dysfunction too. I don’t think I’ve been brought to tears but I do get choked up on a regular basis. I have had the privilege of meeting people of every faith imaginable, all sexual preferences, the mentally challenged, mentally ill, and the very well educated and some who can barely read. Point is were all going to die, only my patients have been warned that their days are numbered. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!

A Walk For Farm Animals

This past weekend we went to Austin to WALK FOR FARM ANIMALS with one of our favorite charities, Farm Sanctuary. We had so much fun! We walked, talked, were filmed for a documentary and then ate at a delicious Vegan potluck. We heard horrible stories of animal abuse and even better stories of their rescue and recovery.

Henry had a great time.

At the same time that we were walking, there was also a heart walk (put on by the American Heart Association, as far as we could tell.) We found it ironic that if those same people were living the lifestyle we that were promoting, most of the heart diseases that they were walking for would be eradicated.

Henry posing by the signs we carried

Walking up to the State Capital

Dan and the dogs at the starting point...check out the cool shirts we got.

Of course no trip to Austin is complete without going to Red Bud Isle.
It was so lovely.

We had so much fun and we can't wait to do it next year.

On our way home we drove by these sweet cows and I had to get out and take some pictures. I just loved the black cows contrasted by the yellow flora. Just beautiful.
God's creations are great!

Us versus Internet

You might have noticed that Heidi and I have not been writing as much. Let me explain. Since we have lived in this apartment when we opened our laptops, presto, connected to the Internet. Then our neighbors moved.

So now we have to limit our Internet use to the library, Panera, Starbuck’s, Heidi’s school, or heaven forbid we walk the 100 feet to our clubhouse where we have both PCs and Wi-Fi for free and at our disposal anytime.

But I have learned a few lessons since losing the Internet in our home. For starters, the first few days seemed really long. I had a lot of extra time and I could not figure out why.

Second, I’m a news junkie but you know what, it's nice being away from seeing news progress one excruciating minute at a time.

Finally, I just keep asking myself, do I need or more importantly do I want to be that connected to the world? In other words, am I a better person as a result of having everyday, all day, and immediate access to the Internet?

In a recent article in Entertainment Weekly (another guilty pleasure of mine), Stephen King quoted a study that found the average American adult spends 8.5 hours a day looking at some sort of screen whether it be a cell phone, TV, computer, iPod, etc. This made me do some math in my head – my total is lower but still nothing to be proud of.

But it was King’s final comments that really hit home. “I’m closing in on 62,” he wrote, “I might have 10 productive years left, 20 if I’m lucky…When I ask myself how much of that time I want to spend playing online cribbage or watching cute-kitty videos instead of visiting with my family and friends, goofing with my idiotic dog, or out riding my motorcycle, the answer is not too much.”

“When I read that 8.5 number,” King concluded, “I thought about the old saying ‘No man on his deathbed ever said, I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ I don’t think any man or woman on his or her deathbed ever wished he or she had spent more time sending IMs or playing online poker, either. But hell, I could be wrong.”

Well, what do you think, too much screen time? Mine is definitely too high but it could be worse – I could be a Facebooker! Yep, I said it. I am yet to join any social networking sites but mostly because Heidi threatens to quit Facebook everyday.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, journalist Elizabeth Bernstein (hey – that was the name of Heidi’s oncologist…good guy) acknowledged that there are a lot of benefits from all of this electronic communication but demurred that there are plenty of concerns as well. “Like many people, I’m experiencing Facebook fatigue,” she wrote, “I’m tired of loved ones…who claim they are too busy to pick up the phone, or even write a decent email, yet spend hours on social-media sites, uploading photos of their children or parties, forwarding inane quizzes.”

It feels nice and bit liberating to not have access to the Internet at freewill. I’ll admit it; it has taken some adjusting. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep blogging (it’s therapeutic plus it helps me sort out my over active brain), using my Yahoo account, checking out MSNBC and Huffington Post, banking online, browsing through LDS.org and watching shows on Hulu but I like the fact that now I cannot do those things whenever I want to.

Well, how about it? Anyone interested joining Heidi and I? Or who out there is already limiting their Internet use? Now I admit it, our change was not done voluntarily but is there anyone out there that willingly took the Internet out of their home?

A Clockwork Orange Mystery

Recently, for the first time, I read the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Several years ago I saw the movie and was deeply disturbed by the morbid tale but I figured I’d give the book a chance. Well, it paid off.

First, let me give you a synopsis if you are new to the story. It begins in the not-too-distant future in England where violence is rampant. The main character, Alex, is in his late teens, still in high school, a leader of a violent street gang, and on parole. His fellow gang members get him arrested and after writhing in jail for a couple years Alex agrees to an experiment that will alter his mental state but get him out of prison.

When he is released if he even thinks about violence, sex, or listens to Classical music he begins to wretch violently. He becomes a drifter and unknowingly takes refuge in the house of one of his victims from before his imprisonment. The host eventually remembers who Alex is, locks him in an attic and begins to play Classical music as loudly as possible. Alex wretches to the point he can take it no longer and chooses suicide by jumping out the window.

As Alex recovers in the hospital a civil liberties organization gets him his freedom but the big news is that the fall reset his brain, and with the chilling words Alex says, “I was cured all right.”

And that is where the movie and the 1962 US edition ended. But the original version of A Clockwork Orange ended differently. Perhaps for some of you this is old news but I just recently learned of this literary flaw. Apparently the entire last chapter, Chapter 21, was left off of the US 1962 edition. Why? According to the 1986 introduction American publishers thought Chapter 21 was a “sellout.”

The final chapter was too British, an “unwillingness to accept that a human being could be a model of unregenerable evil.” Americans were “tougher than the British and could face up to reality.”

So what happened in Chapter 21 that was too unbelievable to include in the American edition? Well, after being freed from prison Alex goes back to a life of crime but then something happens. Now in his early 20s he realizes violence and a life of crime was adolescent and immature. He decides – on his own – that it is time to grow up and put away his youthful indiscretions. The original text ends with Alex moving on with his life as a redeemed man.

Burgess noted that his book “was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted [by American publishers] was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it. Let us have evil prancing on the page and, up to the very last line, sneering in the face of all the inherited beliefs, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Holy Roller, about people being able to make themselves better.”

WHAT THE CHORT IS WRONG WITH US?! You mean to tell me we [us U.S. Americans] would rather have a story of never ending cruelty than a “Christmas Carole-esque” tale of personal redemption and change?

So that brings me to my question, are we really like this or was the publisher wrong? Would Americans have actually preferred the original version? Can a man change, or more importantly can a man be forced to change or do we have to do it on our own like Alex? This has been on my mind for the past couple weeks and I’m trying to be optimistic but I don’t know. Do you?

Thanksgiving for the Turkeys

It's that time of year again for us to adopt a turkey! Last year we adopted Hannah. Her picture hung on our refrigerator as we ate our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. It is so freeing eating a wholesome bounty without killing one of God's great creatures.

Did you know that between 250 and 300 million turkeys are raised for slaughter every year in the U.S. – more than 46 million alone for Thanksgiving. U.S. turkey consumption, which has increased by 108 percent since 1970, averaged at 17.6 pounds per person last year.

Packed by the thousands inside huge, factory farm warehouses, female turkeys raised for slaughter in the U.S. are typically allotted one square foot of space per bird, while toms are given little more than two square-feet, according to the National Turkey Federation’s guidelines. The overcrowded birds, who are unable to comfortably move, or exhibit natural behaviors, are driven to excessive pecking and fighting. Rather than altering the birds’ living space to prevent these injurious behaviors, producers cut off the ends of the turkeys’ beaks and toes, practices know as debeaking and detoeing.

Please join Farm Sanctuary in saving a life, rather than ending one on Thanksgiving Day. You can spread compassion for turkeys and promote cruelty-free alternatives through the Adopt-A-Turkey Project.


We are thinking of adopting Gideon. He lives in California with Hannah, so that way we can go visit both of them at the same time. I hope that adopting a turkey becomes a Thanksgiving tradition in our house, and I hope that this Thanksgiving you reconsider your recent traditions and have a Thanksgiving for the Turkeys instead.

We went to New Orleans...a month ago...

We went to New Orleans last month, and I am finally blogging about it. We had so much fun and we got to spend some time with our good friends Kelly and Kristi. Plus- we love New Orleans...the offer stands, come and visit us, and we'll take you to New Orleans-you won't be disappointed.

We went to this battlefield...where the last battle of the war of 1812 was fought....I don't know much about it, ask Dan, he's the Master in History

We went to Lake Pontchartrain
And it was pouring rain

We went to The National WWII Museum

Notice Henry is eating his foot...

Heidi by a mini tank named 'Heidi'

We went to Aubdurn Park. The park is right by Tulane University and it is surrounded by these beautiful Southern style homes.

Henry loved the ducks

And there was so great big lovely trees....awesome!

Henry was such a good baby at the hotel....

We had so much fun! Until next year!