Category: Health and Medical

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Caring for Our Neighbors

My neighbors across the street are retired and keep to themselves for the most part, although we do wave and even stop to chat once in a while if we see each other out in the yard. Whit usually drives his truck when they go out, but today his wife Janice was driving when they pulled into the driveway. That struck me as odd and when Whit got out of the passenger side, Janice rushed around the car to help him out and up the stairs into the house. So I knew something was wrong.

After lunch I headed over to see if there was anything I could do to help and they seemed to appreciate the offer. Turns out that Whit is fighting cancer, which I was very sorry to hear.

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Only The Best for My Eyes

Today’s newspaper has a bright blue post it note on on the front page promising to save me $500 off the cost of Lasik surgery on my eyes.

I’m sure a lot of people would like to save $500, but that promise isn’t going to be the primary reason why I decide to have Lasik surgery or not, and it’s not going to be the deciding factor of who I choose to perform the surgery. In fact, my motivation is the opposite. I want only the best for my health and especially for my eyes.

If I was to decide to get Lasik surgery, I would be searching out the qualifications of the doctor who will be performing the surgery. I want the best in that field, with thousands of procedures under his belt before he steps close to my eyes.

As a matter of act, this prompted me to get on the internet this morning and start researching the whole Lasik topic. I found several good things about a doctor in the Houston area, Dr. Jack Holladay. This doctor has had over 50 peer reviewed articles published in national and regional publications. That is remarkable in itself. He has an informative web site and has been certified by a non-profit patient advocacy group, USAeyes for refractive surgery techniques including Lasik, All-Laser Lasik, PRK, LASEK, Epi-Lasik, CK, RLE, and P-IOL. That pretty much covers all the techniques in use at this time.

Evidently, Dr. Jack Holladay even teaches other doctors how to perform the different Lasik surgeries. This is the caliber of care that I want for my own eyes.

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Baby Shower

Our receptionist is going to have a baby in March, so the women in the office approached me yesterday about hosting a baby shower for her. They want to take over the big conference room and decorate it with balloons and streamers, have cake and ice cream, and ask each employee to bring a small baby gift. This is obviously a female thing, as the thought of doing something like that at work had never occurred to me. My secretary explained that the women are so fond of our receptionist that they really want to do something nice for her, and they hope that after the maternity leave runs out that the receptionist will want to come back to work here.

I agreed to book the conference room for the afternoon in February and for them to put the word out that it is a surprise and that gifts should be bought. My secretary offered to buy the baby gift for me, which is a big help because I know nothing about baby shower gifts. She suggested a moby wrap baby sling, which is a popular accessory for today’s new mothers.

Baby slings evidently wrap the baby and keep it close to the mother’s body without the mother straining to hold the weight of the baby in her arms. The baby slings redistribute the weight and pressure, which is a really good idea for women with a tendency for shoulder or back pain, especially when the child gets older and puts on some weight.

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A Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is such an important human condition. Sometimes I hate the way that our bodies require sleep – it is such a disruption to the day or night to have to stop and lie down for 6 hours. But a good night’s sleep is important to your health and ability to function well the next day.

On a good night, I might be able lie down for 8 hours. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept longer than 8 hours uninterrupted. Most night’s I’m good with between 6 and 8 hours of good sleep.

There are several considerations to a good night’s sleep and one of the most important is a comfortable, supportive bed. This becomes even more important as our bodies grow and mature, with our skeleton and muscles needing proper support and rest. The right bed can mean the difference between a completely relaxing and sound sleep, or a night of tossing and turning with fits of wakefulness.

As we are moving to a larger house this summer, I have had my eye on certain pieces of new furniture that I would like to replace or add to our household. In my opinion, the most important room in the house is the master bedroom. Everything else in a house can be replaced or substituted outside of the home, but the one main reason a man comes home at night is so that he can climb into his own bed.

Shopping for a new bed is worth a little time and effort to find the right bed, considering how important the bed is to a good night’s sleep. I found a web site called www.time4sleep.co.uk with all kinds of bed types – a large variety of styles and different types of beds for every home or person.

My favorite beds on this site are the storage beds. There are different types of storage options and they make the bed very practical. Since the bed takes up so much space in the room, it makes total sense to me to make good use of the space under the bed to store items not used often. These bed make storage either attractive or hidden, at a cost similar to beds without the storage features.

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Looking Better

Talking with my sister this afternoon, we got onto the subject of cosmetic surgery and medispas, and how the whole business of looking good or looking better has really taken off this decade. I think a lot of that has to do with the medical advances, with new surgical procedures, new pharmaceuticals approved and on the market, and the development of laser technology.

My sister, on the other hand, says that the media is to blame – or to take the credit, depending upon which side of the argument you choose to take. The media shows perfect women and men, with shows all about losing weight, getting makeovers, and how to dress. The success of shows like The Biggest Loser” and “What Not to Wear” make me think that her argument has merit.

Personally, I think most people do care about how they look and they pay attention to proper grooming, coordinating their wardrobe and reflecting a certain amount of conformity to fashion and current styles, such as the new eyeglass frames or the length of skirts and even pants.

That’s why businesses like “Make Yourself Amazing” at www.mya.co.uk are creating a strong internet presence, with informational articles and photos of before and after that help convince people to seek out self improvement procedures.

Did you know that the most common cosmetic procedure is for eyelids? The second most popular cosmetic procedure is rhinoplasty – also called a “nose job.” And the third most popular is liposuction surgery.

All of these procedures have a reason they are so popular and are well accepted by society for both men and women. So the question remains – is it due to the media, pure vanity of this generation, or because the technology has improved to make it available at a reasonable cost?