<p>drae:
I started yoga when D got in senior year. It helped me stay healthy.<br>
When you turn to your own healing power it will help. It is not hard to make our body calm down. Like deep breath, a lot yoga movement. I will be happy to talk to you any time from my perspective.</p>
<p>bears:
“Qi Gong” in chinese is “气功”, I will say is is more similar to yoga?</p>
<p>famm:
HAPPY B day!</p>
<p>Bears…Dulles is very close by (20 min?) and I often go out there, unfortunately, for field hockey games/camps…the suburbs produce many girls with pony tails–leave the womb perfectly made for lacrosse and field hockey…consider me the saint of lost causes (and objects) particularly those lost in DC or northern virginia. Redbugs books made it safely to MN and florida so I am good, very good. Send me the contact for the hotel and I will be happy to nag housekeeping but you are going to have to help more with the description…what is an ugly?color? YOu should have told me right away. My S’s computer has been dying for a while…no battery now and an erratic hard drive. A rather cheap external drive is the answer if you can just get it so it will start up…use the external to save all documents/programs etc and you can eek a year or two more out of the computer. GOOD LUCK! Off now to enjoy the rest of my big day…so far very nice lunch and presents…my sil sent a very cute 50’s style kitchen apron–ruffles and cinch waist…not much in the back…my husband thanked SIL for sending me lingerie…D fled from the room saying eewwww!! Had a good laugh and ready to take on a movie (I hope it is the “help” and not “contagion”)</p>
<p>Well you are all lucky that my rant that I spent the last hour working on has vanished into cyberspace. I really don’t think I can redo the whole thing. I wanted to share the giant plush microbes that I found on Amazon this morning. They actually sell stuffed chlamydia and herpes dolls… and people buy them. Also stuffed sperm and egg dolls. Honest. Check it out. You can even buy a heart shaped box with a collection of stuffed germs. I kid you not. Bears, you should check into this. It might be an up and coming thing.</p>
<p>Blue, all I can say is that you have never met me or any of my kids. Not D1, not Aspie girl and not Manga girl. My first thought about what you said about healing was that nature is not static. Nature is chaos. Nobody has a perfect body or a perfect mind. A state of mind cannot change cellular structure or genetics. I think I may have skipped posting on our family drama a couple of weeks ago when I had to rush to an emergency room a couple of hours away in CT because Manga girl had eaten something at a party that had gluten in it and got so sick they had to call an ambulance and the EMT and take her to the hospital. Maybe we have to get a gluten-sniffing dog in the future. I don’t know. I’m waiting for the hospital and ambulance bills. I don’t think a qi state of mind would have made a hill of beans difference in what happened to Manga girl. She ate food. She got sick. When your body is genetically programmed to view a natural wholesome substance like wheat as a poison, there’s little that a belief system can do to change that. Perhaps this qi gong might help her heal faster. But it was her own body that caused the problem in the first place. She could be the world champion qi gong person of all time and if you give her a crumb of bread to eat, I can guarantee that she will get sick sick sick.</p>
<p>You say I rely too much on mental health professionals. I say that you have never stood in my shoes, let alone walked in them. Gosh, I had such good stuff in my rant that disappeared and now I can’t remember all of it. But I was using Aspie girl as an illustration. For years and years I was convinced that she was just a shy quiet girl who had trouble making friends and who could not draw a straight line. I used to work at her school at lunch time when she was about in fifth grade. I would watch her come into the cafeteria and choose to sit someplace with space (chairs) all around her. She would never go and sit with the other girls. When I asked her why she did this, she told me that she didn’t want to ‘force’ herself on anybody else and if there were chairs around her and somebody wanted to sit down next to her, that was okay, but she didn’t want to be somewhere where she wasn’t wanted. When her class was excused from the cafeteria and went out to the playground, I could watch what she did from the window (the next class of younger kids would come into the cafeteria for lunch so I was supposed to clean the tables and help those kids… you know… lunch duty). Aspie girl would walk in a circle. All by herself. Totally alone with her thoughts. She would look at the ground and walk in a circle. It was very sad. That year they had the ‘DARE’ program at school for drug abuse prevention. She came home all upset because the policeman told her she could never have alcohol and how was she supposed to receive communion at Mass if she could not ever have alcohol? She came home on another day all upset because her English teacher had said to her '“You know you will never get an ‘A’” and she was heartbroken. I drove back to the school to talk to the teacher to find out why she would say this to my daughter and the teacher was completely shocked – she had thought she was making a little joke with Aspie girl and didn’t realize just how literal Aspie girl takes thinigs. This same teacher gave the kids an assignment to write their autobiography… I made Aspie girl stop at thirty pages. A couple of years later Aspie girl asked me to teach her how to shave her legs. Okay, I thought. It was strange. D1 never asked me to teach her how to shave. So I sat on my bed and demonstrated how to shave your legs for Aspie girl. A few weeks later, she asked me again… Mom, can you teach me how to shave my legs? Okay. So we did it again. I sat on my bed and demonstrated the technique she should use for shaving legs. A few weeks later, I get the same question again.</p>
<p>Then there was the infamous plane incident. We were going to California for the holidays and we got on the plane and Aspie girl refused to sit down in her seat and get buckled in. No amount of ‘talking’, bribes, threats, promises … NOTHING was going to make her sit in that seat. She stood there like a deer caught in the headlights. You would think that by now we would have caught on that there was something not quite ‘normal’ here, but we already had D1 with her issues and really didn’t want to believe that Aspie girl could have issues too. We had to physically force her into the seat and strap her in… it was either that or get thrown off the plane. At this point ANY parent would take their kid to a doctor, Loveblue. It was time to take off the rose-colored glasses.</p>
<p>So we took Aspie girl to a behavioral neurologist and got a diagnosis after doing a whole lot of testing. Now I know why Aspie girl kept asking me to teach her how to shave her legs. She does not process visual information very well. If I had added a lot of words and had pretended that she was blind and TOLD her how to shave her legs, she would have gotten it the first time. Now I know that she doesn’t understand lots of types of jokes and that sometimes I have to think before I say something because she is very literal. I know her visual processing speed is 0.3 percentile and that if you take her to the city or to a Mall or to disneyland, it takes all her energy just to keep track of me and she doesn’t enjoy the experience. I know if we are in a crowd that I should take her hand or her arm so that she doesn’t have to work so hard at not getting lost. The LSW that teaches her social skills was instrumental in helping Aspie learn ‘HOW’ to make a friend and engage in ‘small talk’ and interpret all the unseen/unnoticed body language and nonverbal communication that goes on. </p>
<p>Aspie girls panic attacks are controlled with medication. Two years ago she was a hair’s breadth away from being an inpatient in a psych ward because of her panic attacks. No amount of talking from me could change her mental state. She could not, through strength of character, change her mental state. So yes, she’s doing much better on medication, particularly over this past year. In fact, the psychiatrist (the same one that treats D1) would like to get her off her medication after the first rush of getting back into school is over… so even he isn’t for keeping people on medication indefinitely. He took D1 off her antidepressants during her Soph and Junior year in HS… so I guess all I can say is that you should be very thankful that you have a wonderful healthy successful daughter and that not everybody can say that and if my stories can help somebody else out there with a launch failed kid, then I’m glad to share.</p>
<p>I heard this interview a few weeks ago the the Colbert Report and found it very interesting:</p>
<p>[Nassir</a> Ghaemi - The Colbert Report - 2011-08-08 - Video Clip | Comedy Central](<a href=“The Colbert Report - TV Series | Comedy Central US”>The Colbert Report - TV Series | Comedy Central US)</p>
<p>The author, a researcher at Tufts and Harvard, proposes that certain mental “disorders” are quite desirable in our political leaders because they come along with increased empathy and increased creativity of thought. Churchill struggled with depression, which he called “the black dog” and he wasn’t too shabby! Politics aside, I found it an interesting discussion. D2 suffers from depression, it’s been a long road and will continue to be a long road for her however much I might hope for a faster, easier cure.</p>
<p>G
your link got frozen few min into the program on my job’s mac. but now I know that his name is Colbert, not Col-bear as I always thought.</p>
<p>Black Dog!
maybe that’s where it come from!
here is Ian McEwan (my crush)
[Amazon.com:</a> Black Dogs: A Novel (9780385494328): Ian McEwan: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Black-Dogs-Novel-Ian-McEwan/dp/0385494327/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315694304&sr=1-2]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Black-Dogs-Novel-Ian-McEwan/dp/0385494327/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315694304&sr=1-2)
the protagonist is found of his recluse MIL, who sent this note before her death.</p>
<p>“Human nature, the human heart, the spirit, the soul, consciousness itself - call it what you like - in the end, it’s all we’ve got to work with. It has to develop and expand, or the sum of our misery will never diminish.
My own small discovery has been that this change is possible, it is within our power. Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless.
The work we have to do is with ourselves if we’re ever going to be at peace with each other. I am not saying it’ll happen. there 's a good chance it won’t.
I’m saying it’s our only chance. If it does, and it could take generations, the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people or set of ideas…”</p>
<p>I saved a copy of the page from library book and had it in my “til this box is full” box.
I am way jaded now than when I first read the book, but…
if we can do that by each doing our part, how about it?</p>
<p>Gmom
I had that (poof!! aghhh gone!?!?!) often too, because I’d take too long to write. There must be certain time frame you must log in to post.
try making a habit of copying entire thing before you hit submit, then even gone poof!!, you can re-log in and paste it for new box.</p>
<p>Drae-
I have a friend who attends a Spiritualist Church, and they do a healing ceremony. I attended church with my friend, mostly because I was visiting her, and this is an important part of her life. They did a healing thingy, on anyone who wanted one. It kind of involved a laying on (except not touching) of hands. I felt pretty great after, but I cant say that it was for any other reason that I sat quietly for a few moments, and I was with my best friend. </p>
<p>At another time, my mother in law, who practices qui gong (I know I am spelling it wrong) but it is kind of like Reiki, did a healing on me for a migraine. It worked, and the funny thing was when she was doing it, she thought it was my throat that hurt. I said no, its my head. She said something like, oh I can feel it in your throat…Anyway the next day I had a raging sore throat.</p>
<p>I forgot why I logged on
good news
Babo is found!!
will come back in mail or some sort.</p>
<p>bad news
he will work extra few more days. guys are tempting him with “live a man’s life” “college is for sissies” routine.
he got to “drive” golf cart that used for loading unloading stuff and that was the highlight of the day. and rescuing upstate NY toad from the massive rolling caterpillar of the forklift passing by.
“like, when you sit on the deck chair, your arms go around the thing, that what the toad was doing to my finger. he knew that I saved his life, then peed on me and went off to the pond”
so are you going college or not?</p>
<p>drama! drama!! to be continued</p>
<p>On 9/11/2001 I was working in Crystal City, just south of the Pentagon, in a Government Building. We watched the first plane hit on a video on the computer. Then they told us to clear the building and go home. I drove past the pentagon and it had smoke billowing out of it. I got about as far north as the washington monument and couldnt go much further for a long time. I stopped a policeman and asked him what I should do, and where I should go, I think we thought that the white house had been hit, or was going to be hit. He said he really had no idea what to tell me. I got in my car and drove around a block for literally about two hours, although now I cant remember why. Traffic was moving, but not in any sensible way. I picked up my kid eventually, and I dont really remember very much else from that day. I have very vivid memories of the art work the kids produced that year. My son’s bf, who is an amazing artist and very realistic, kept drawing the towers with folks jumping out of them.</p>
<p>yayayayay
switters off the iphone, switters off the iphone (sang as of nananananhnah you can’t catch me! chant. no, I mean am happy!!)</p>
<p>gawk, that (dance) was before your 911 post. sob.</p>
<p>gmom:
I am SO sorry I may hurt you in many many ways. You are right I didn’t really experience the hard situation you are in. I love what you said:</p>
<p>Nobody has a perfect body or a perfect mind. </p>
<p>We all have our own problems and the only thing we can do is reduce/avoid anything bad if we could, and make positive/better movement as we can. </p>
<p>I am very limited on mental problem treatment, my way of thinking is very limited. I really wish the best to your D1, sincerely.</p>
<p>Switters:
Glad to see your post!
bears:
you should can get the file out of your computer. You may take the hard drive out and link in to another computer to copy the file
glad to know: Babo is found!</p>
<p>I never shared my hardship to raise up D. What is the best way to describe it? I think it is like walking through a dark tunnel. I have to say I made many mistakes I wish I could avoid but never had a second chance.</p>
<p>The first year in elementary school, her teach told me she never heard D’s voice. I feel really sad, a whole year, D didn’t even speak out?! </p>
<p>When I read her college application essay, what she wrote there made me cry. She said in her whole element school, 6 years, she always thought she was the ugliest girl in the whole school since she is Asian. Iowa is really white. I even didn’t know this is my girl’s mind in her valuable childhood. How suffer that will be for her but I didn’t know. That is the root for something bad happen.</p>
<p>Culture conflict, teenage rebel and my neglect to her emotional need all came up to bite me later after D got in junior high and high school. What I can do to help her to build her confident? live a happy life?</p>
<p>I kept on asking God to fix all my mistakes. What I shared here is my experience with my D. D is fine now. She is still shy like one of our conversation this summer:</p>
<p>D:“mom; how to make friends? it seems it is so easy for you.” I cried in my heart, but still smile in front of her: “Talk to them in class, after class and then you got new friends.” and she said “I got really nerves if I talk to people”. </p>
<p>But she is getting better. I can share another conversation this summer:
Me: I always want to do my way, lead in the project bud… I got frustrated
D: I may get that from you. When we have team project I want to lead
Me: any chance in school?
D:Yea … …</p>
<p>Loveblue, you did bring up an interesting point and my experience in some ways echoes switters’. I think people in the medical field treat in ways they have been taught. If you are taught to diagnose and treat with pharmaceuticals and surgery, then it follows reason that you will recommend that treatment. </p>
<p>A few years ago, I had this crazy dizziness that came and went. I went to the MD, had head scans, went to ENT and no good answers. Just a chronic condition I would have to live with. A friend said that he had the same thing and recommended an accupuncturist and Chinese herbalist who cured him. Incredibly, the treatment worked for me too - along with getting rid of the chronic lumbar pain I thought was just part of my life forever. So, when it comes to chronic, non-life threatening things, I check with my accupuncturist. But if I had ALS or broke my leg, I would want the MD first and maybe the accupuncturist to help with symptoms. My father, a scientist, told me to be careful of the chinese herbs because they are stronger than the medical profession in this country would like to have us believe. So, I guess I look at that as being a kind of drug, but one that is not regulated by the FDA or synthecized in a lab. </p>
<p>What is great about this forum is the ability to learn from others. You have given us another perspective on medicine and the discussion on major depressive disorder has hopefully given you and others another perspective on depression.</p>
<p>One of the unfortunate things about celiac disease is that it is very underdiagnosed in this country. There are many many people with celiac disease who get the diagnosis of ‘Irritable Bowel Syndrome’, which in M.D. speech is ‘we really don’t know what’s wrong with you, take some expensive medicine and go away’. When some of these people get sicker, they go back to the doctor, or a second, third, or even fourth doctor and still get a pat on the head or a referral to a psychiatrist. You can’t totally fault the M.D.s, they are taught in medical school that ‘rare’ diseases are ‘rare’. So they don’t let rare diagnoses up the ladder of what should be ruled out first. When manga-girl was diagnosed the pediatric gastroenterologist told us that celiac disease was very rare and affected only 1 in 4500 people in the U.S. Later that year a study came out showing that the actual incidence is 1 in 133. Epidemiological studies in Europe and North Africa pegged the incidence of celiac disease as between 1 in 70 (in Algeria) to around 1 in 300 or so in Northern Europe. Some ex pat M.D.s here in the U.S. - an Italian, an Irishman, and an Australian, primarily - were curious as to why the U.S. should have such a marked difference in incidence in celiac disease.</p>
<p>To further compound the problem, most medical research here in the U.S. is funded through pharmaceutical companies. So when you look in mainstream clinical and scientific journals around that time you find little mention of research regarding celiac disease – it’s well managed through diet, it was ‘rare’, therefore zero interest in researching any sort of treatment. My background is in clinical research and that was the first thing I asked… where’s the treatment? Ha ha on me.</p>
<p>Anyway we get lots of newly diagnosed patients (hubby and I run a support group for celiac disease) who have had their fill of conventional medicine and go the alternate route. What they don’t realize is that the herbal supplements are not regulated and when you have an autoimmune condition like celiac disease, taking something like echinacea for a cold can be very dangerous. I won’t even get into the weasels that advertise ‘eat wheat and be merry’ our herbal supplement can ‘kill’ gluten and you can forget about your gluten free diet… grrrrr…</p>
<p>In the same vein, lots of research is now done on a global level (hence my jaunts to Spain and the UK and China earlier this year) and you run into problems with having cancer patients taking fifteen or twenty different herbs, along with the drug you are trying to test, and let me tell you it can really make for messy data. I sure hope the patients at least go the benefit of feeling better.</p>
<p>I am not totally discounting the effects of alternative medicine, I just believe that they should be as rigorously researched as mainstream medicine. Until regulation of herbal supplements occurs, we aren’t going to see that. But there’s definitely a place for things like acupuncture and biofeedback and those sorts of things. Particularly in cases where there isn’t a good standard treatment or the standard treatment has side effects.</p>
<p>For our family I have to say that we would choose to continue on the gluten free diet rather than take a daily dose of some medicine. A medical treatment or prophylactic treatment that you could take that could prevent the reaction that put manga girl iin the hospital a couple of weeks ago would be welcome – something you could take if you were going to eat out or go to camp or something that was relatively short term. But living gluten fee, especially at home, isn’t that difficult for us. We would actually rather just eat safe food than trust that some medicine is really working and not doing something else.</p>
<p>mom4art:
Thanks, it is just my limited view on things around us.
I did try hard to talk to younger mom around me if whatever they say in front of their kids may have negative impact on the little ones.
For example: there is a two years old little girl in our church, she came to mom want some food. the mom talk load in front of every one “she eat SO much, she seems never stop eating …”, and then she get some food for her. I say hi to the little girl and she is shy and didn’t response to me, the mom continue :“she is not polite and so shy…”</p>
<p>I did talk to the mom : “be careful what you say to her, don’t tell her she eat too much. don’t let her feel guilty to eat. Don’t let her know she is shy. you are really remind her that she is shy”
you can tell her that she is very sweet and I see your smile at my friends. Tell her we all love her and then she may speak out.
The mom now speak to her little girl, carefully and she started smile more and play far away from mom …
This is just me now. Maybe too careful though.</p>
<p>Very brave of you loveblue. I would find it hard to initiate that kind of conversation but I’m very glad that you did. That little girl must be glad too! So often children will mirror what their parents say about them, or get rebellious and do the very thing their parent is saying they do too much of, to show the parents that they don’t really care. It can be very self-destructive.</p>
<p>Launchee checked in. She likes her roommate, has made friends, says people there are alot like her (woohoo from mom!) and LOVES her homework(double woohoo!!). She is eating, sleeping and wants to come home for mid-term break. So far so good!</p>
<p>whoa…an art school launchee that eats and sleeps! Congratulations! I would do a lot to have a S that did either of these…he won’t come home until Thanksgiving but fear of getting a skeleton back means that I am already stockpiling for a visit in October to take him some home cooked meals. He trolled all the new student parties–says the korean and indian student associations have some very good food to entice the freshmen–there are free pancakes offered by religious groups on Friday. He comes from a long line of scroungers…I used to take advantage of Hari Krishna free lunches on the lawn at UW–a few minutes of singing and mantras and you could get a great vegetarian meal. I would go for that now–cheap eats in DC are hard to come by. </p>
<p>Welcome back Switters…how did second year launch go?<br>
Bears…he will launch…keep fingers crossed. so glad that lovey toy was found…luckily your S did not decide to keep toad for pet to make up for lost of stuffed pet. Last year I rescued a turtle (very very large) somehow lost on road in florida and D thought it would be a “cool” pet…it happily slipped into the pond nearby but left eau d’ tortoise in the rental car for the rest of the trip.</p>
<p>Eating and sleeping??? Wow, that is amazing!! Mine eats ok ,altho she has a citric acid intolerance that kicks in here and there, so she has to watch that she doesn’t overdo it. Sleeping on the other hand, is another matter. You see her lamenting on facebook “Why am I not sleeping?” after posting a picture she’s worked on half the night. My answer to her - you’d rather draw than sleep!</p>
<p>last weekend was like, TJ food desert. shelves were EMPTY. they can not re-stock during day so by the midday, popular items are gone. as of, entire edamame family nearly sold out.
today, however, bright and early.
YES!!! They are back.
and wall of salt caramel chocolate. thanks Joe-san.</p>