WordSisters

Tag: food

  • 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.

  • SSSHHHHHH SSSSSHHHH The Scale is in the Drawer

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACrystel came upstairs the other day and said she weighed 79 pounds. I didn’t pay any attention to this. We only have one scale in the house and that is in the basement bathroom. I just figured that she stepped on it after she was done showering.

    She had never mentioned her weight before. She is ten-years-old and not overweight. But then she did it the next day and again the next.

    I had it in my mind to inquire about her sudden interest in her weight, but then it slipped my mind. Neither Jody nor I ever talk about our bodies or other people’s bodies. We tell them … if you are hungry, eat; when you are full, stop eating. If you don’t like something, you don’t have to eat it. They have our permission to leave food on their plate.

    We have intentionally not made food a focus in our house. Though, Jody and I, do have controls on the amount of soda the children drink by having cold water available in the refrigerator and as a general rule they don’t drink soda at home. We also don’t deny them candy, but they have to ask for it.

    Our thought is … if candy isn’t taboo then there isn’t any reason for them to hoard or hide it. It is December 27 and they still have Halloween candy left.

    Jody and I haven’t ever been concerned about Antonio and Crystel’s weight—in large part, because they regularly exercise at Tae Kwon Do.

    One disagreement that Jody and I have had about the children eating cropped up when the kids were little. Antonio or Crystel said they were hungry, and Jody told them that they could wait until breakfast. I told her later, “You just need to know … if they ask me for something to eat, I don’t care what time it is, I am going to let them eat. I’m not ever going to send a kid to bed hungry.”  We head off any arguments by giving them a warning early enough in the evening … “If you want to eat, eat now.”

    One day after school, when Crystel tells me, “I weigh 80 pounds,” I remember to ask her about it.

    “Are the fourth graders talking about their weight at school?”

    “No. Why?”

    I tried again. “Are your classmates weighing themselves?”

    “I don’t know. Why?”

    Well, why the interest, I think to myself. I don’t want to make too big of deal about it, because then for sure it will become a big deal. That’s how it works with Crystel.

    I tried one more time. “Do you tell classmates what your weight is? You know some classmates might be sensitive about their weight.”

    “Who? Who is sensitive?”

    December 27 - Two Dolphins pushing Crystel with their noses in Mexico.
    December 27 – Two Dolphins pushing Crystel with their noses in Mexico.

    Hmmm. She is just like her Mama Beth, answering a question with a question. I wasn’t getting anywhere fast.

    “I don’t know,” I said. I needed to change the subject. I asked her the first thing that came to my mind, “Are you hungry?”

    Jody and I don’t have glamour magazines lying around the house, and Crystel hasn’t started getting any teen magazines. So … maybe she is just curious about how she is changing from day to day.

    Doesn’t matter. The scale is going in the drawer, in the cat room, by the litter box.

  • Tooth Fairy

    Jody and I are the parents that you hate. Your children might come home from school

    Crystel, six-years-old. First four teeth pulled.

    one day and ask you why the tooth fairy doesn’t give them a treasure hunt like she or he does for Antonio and Crystel (our tooth fairy is a boy or girl, depending on the tooth).

    Oh yes, the kids also get the dollar under the pillow. That comes with a letter. And depending on the circumstances, the tooth fairy might use the opportunity to gently remind them to be nice to their sibling or to thank them for a job well done. The fairy often goes on to explain what the tooth is going to be used for. It could be a doorbell (teeth clanging together make just the right sound), a decoration in a flower garden, or it may join other teeth and line the walkway up to the tiny fairy house. The tooth fairy doesn’t stop there with the toothless child. Before flying to the next house the fairy drops a box of candy – like Sour Patch or Mike and Ike’s – under the sibling’s pillow. I know … candy … right?

    Crystel often has her teeth pulled out in groups of four by the dentist. The first time it happened, the tooth fairy felt so bad that at the end of Crystel’s treasure hunt, there was an American Girl Doll that looked like her. Well, not quite. The fairy brought home an Indian American Girl doll that the tooth fairy thought matched Crystel’s complexion but the tooth fairy helper said No way, and the fairy trudged back to the Mall of America and got Josephina, the Latin American girl.

    Fortunately, getting teeth pulled is like scheduling a Cesarean. You know when it has to come out.

    When the kids started asking me if there actually was a tooth fairy, I asked them whether they really wanted to know. By then, they had a relationship with the fairy. They might leave a letter for her or him under the pillow, asking questions and stating that they wanted to come to the fairy’s castle.

    Antonio and Crystel hesitated. The stories that accompanied a lost tooth were so magical. Would the magic disappear?

    After the age of awakening (at seven-years-old) when Crystel was in the dentist chair getting her next four teeth out, the dentist asked her what she thought the tooth fairy was going to bring her. “A hamster,” Crystel said. The dentist looked at me. I nodded. A hamster.

    Yesterday, eating pasta, nine-year-old Antonio said he lost a tooth. There it was in his hand. I looked up at his frothy bloody mouth. My kids are not known for toying with their teeth. Teeth have fallen out while drinking water.

    By now the tooth fairy has gotten old and tired and a bit lazy. I asked Antonio if he minded if the fairy just left him money. “I don’t care,” he said, “As long as it’s a twenty.”

    Antonio, 7-years-old.

    Parents warned us that whatever the first tooth cost the tooth fairy, the ante would always have to be matched. Jody and I never worried about that. I sometimes feel as if I am experimenting with what love will do for a child. I know that giving presents doesn’t equate to love and you risk having spoiled children. So far, I feel as if we have escaped that. Antonio and Crystel are polite, kind, and giving.