WordSisters

Author: cmkraack

  • Love of a Woman

    Did you notice many people wearing red February 2 to call attention to the American Heart Association®️ Go Red for Women®️ campaign?  Has anyone mentioned to their doctors the Yale’s Women’s Health Research study on women’s lower outcomes compared to men after coronary artery bypass surgery? Keep in mind that heart disease is the #1 killer of American women and 44% live with some form of it.

    February is National Heart Health month. While political theater would keep female eyes focusing on reproductive health as women’s major issue, most of the true state of women’s health is unknown. Not only is there inequality in how the medical community treats women, but less than 11% of the National Institute of Health’s 2020 budget went towards female illnesses or conditions. Staying with heart health challenge, only 29% of cardiac artery bypass surgery is done on women, with a statistically lower success. Heart disease presents different in women and is often ignored. Select surgeons recommend that more female cardiac surgeons need to be trained to care for female patients with additional research and training on female heart disease treatment. 

    Not need to worry unless you are a woman or love a woman. That includes daughters, sisters, mothers, partners, special friends. 

    The World Health Organization found that although women in the European Union live longer than men, they spend more of their lives in poor health. Prevention is not as high a consideration in women’s health as intervention–waiting until illness has hit, a pregnancy is in trouble, a young mother cannot take care of her family. Research money in pain management is directed toward men—80% of budget while about 70% of women manage long-term pain. 

    Women are responsible for 85% of the decisions about their families’ healthcare. Marketers know a lot about women as buyers and users of healthcare. Sophisticated research can be done today by manipulating data. So why doesn’t the healthcare world know more about the differences between men and women’s bodies?

    For love of all women, healthcare research and care delivery need to immediately update thinking that treats a five-foot four-inch female standing next to a six-foot male as merely a smaller body. Someone you love might depend on more specific knowledge and care.

  • Happy Clean It All Up Season

    Plastic pumpkins should have been stored in the Halloween bin. A pilgrim waits to be moved with the other handful of Thanksgiving decorations. We’ll need at least a half day to put all the Christmas pretties in the basement. The outdoor lights are red and white, so they will wear well until Valentines Day.

    Even after reducing decorative stuff by many storage containers, there is so much stored.  It’s hard to trash or give away generations of ornaments, candles gifted by folks now passed, a goofy collection of singing stuffed animals. No family member wants to add these to their holiday decorations, but no one is really okay with giving much away.

    New Year’s Day I typically want to write, watch football, chill, but also find my hands impatient to empty the family room of gnomes and the singing animals. The dining room table could be stripped of a tablecloth and brought back to its normal size. I am done with the beloved clutter. Toss the poinsettias. Store the candles. Put away the stockings and hangers. 

    Storage bins, filing cabinets, pretty cloth baskets fill ads staging cleaning as invigorating, fun, a natural activity to fill dark winter weeks. With healthy athletic drinks and granola bars also advertised, there is some implication that marketing genius know of a heart-friendly link between snacks and organizing. The whole clean up season is filled with many opportunities to tweak a back moving boxes, many tiny paper cuts or tree hanging hook snags, eye fatigue correcting holiday card lists. 

    Forbes, the Cleveland Clinic, Simple and others cite the link between a healthy mind and a clean house. You must look hard to find anything suggesting a tidy house is sign of inferiority. House tidiness or messiness are both probably in one of those twenty-seven signs of dementia or fourteen indicators that you are wearing the wrong size shoes. 

    Let those who find new bins and organizing systems satisfying spend what’s left of the holiday dollars. If the tree is put away before friends come over for football’s great Sunday extravaganza and the boxes are near the storage area by Valentine’s Day, consider yourself owner of a moral victory. 

    Warning: The Easter Bunny will not leave eggs in red or green felt holiday socks left hanging anywhere in the house. Even those with pastel plastic grass sticking out the top. Do not insult the little creature.

  • Holiday Traditions

    I could have talked with Santa longer. Maybe left the photography backdrop, grabbed us both a few cookies, and hashed through life experiences. Could he have been the same Santa who visited our house in Luxemburg, WI sixty years ago? Was it possible this was the real guy (at least to schmooze an introvert) with gentle dark eyes, weathered skin and a medium deep voice that wrapped around those sitting nearby

    The Gibraltar Fire and Rescue of Fish Creek, WI held the annual visit and photo with Santa event as a fundraiser. Being a volunteer firefighter in a small community makes every neighbor’s life safer. A firetruck parked outside the small former town hall to answer any major fire call and the Santa team needed to leave. 

    Stuff some money in a firefighter’s boot, fill out limited personal information, and help yourself to cookies or candy while waiting in line. We were not the only people with a dog instead of a child. Thankfully the dogs seemed to accept the event as just another outing while the children struggled to keep their excitement, and hungering for more cookies, under control. 

    Adults drinking eggnog and eating more cookies than the kids, grandparents helping with a third or fourth child while the parents made each one presentable, and a warm feeling of enjoying holiday traditions started December on the right foot. We were there because our two-year-old granddaughter thought meeting Santa frightful but might smile seeing that Rocky liked the old guy. Two of her age group needed everyone’s encouragement in the town hall, including two dogs, to turn off tears and sit near the guy in red. 

    Most of us were strangers, but for forty minutes we shared happiness and hope while playing the roles most appropriate for the time—child, parent, grandparent, community protector, human or canine. Shoulders were nudged and compliments shared about sweaters or bows or big smiles while posing with Santa. “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” flew out of mouths naturally.

    May these last weeks of 2023 bring you calm, peace, health and smiles.  I hope that each of you have someone share a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays greeting. 

    The comfort of traditions brings the warmth of friendship among strangers.