Entries Tagged 'Health' ↓

I was watching my son and his friend at Howard Park recently and took this quick video of a kickball game.

Kickball, originally called “Kick Baseball”, was invented around 1917 by Nicholas C Seuss; Supervisor of Cincinnati Park Playgrounds in Cincinnati, Ohio.[1] Around 1920–1921 “Kick Ball” was used by physical education teachers in Public Schools to teach young boys and girls the basics of baseball. Around this time, the ball that was used was a soccer ball or volleyball. It was played by ten to thirty players and the field included a “Neutral Zone”: an area not to be entered until the ball has actually been kicked. There was no pitcher as the ball would be kicked from the home area, which was a 3 ft circle. The ball must pass beyond the 5 foot line. Base-runners could only advance one base on an infield ball. Teams would switch sides only after all team members have kicked. Wikipedia reference for Kickball »

What is the central skill of optimism? It may not be what you think.

Does positive self talk make you want to puke?

Yeah, me too. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to summon my inner Stuart Smalley on many occasions. Each one has left me feeling ill.

But there’s good news here for you regardless of whether you’re a glass half full or glass half empty kind of person.

Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and author of Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism writes that positive thinking and self talk is best used to quiet your inner critic.

“We have found over the years that positive statements you make to yourself have little if any effect. What is crucial is what you think when you fail, using the power of non-negative thinking. Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.”

A few months back I did a mental inventory on my own thinking and practices and found that my negative self talk had seized the bully pulpit! Since they I’ve enjoyed greater peace of mind by quieting my inner critic and stopping what Seligman refers to as catastropic thinking. I’ve also been able to acknowledge in my own way the things I’ve done right. What’s amazed me the most about the difference this has made is the striking speed of change that these internal shifts are having.

What say you? Are you optimistic by nature or have you found certain ways to embrace optimism?

FindingALT
Seek. Practice. Integrate. Share.

I trained for my first marathon in 2006 and completed that run in February 2007.

Running a marathon could not be more loaded with expectation – especially your first one. Will you be able to finish, if so, how hard will it be, and certainly for those optimistic souls like me, how fast will you be?

After my Marathon I began slowly backing off my running distance a bit at a time. I was tired of running so far and it taking so much time. Then, my neck started to hurt quite badly and after some months of this I was diagnosed with herniated discs in my neck. My Doc sent me to a specialist and he told me to stop running or doing anything that jarred my neck. I got pretty depressed about that. It felt like I was falling apart. That’s just self-pity and ultimately meaningless. What was meaningful to me was that I wouldn’t be able to keep up the running that I had grown to love. This physical and mental battle has continued off and on.

Since I’ve begun running a bit more again, distance has eluded me. Most of my runs are in the 4.5 mile range. A long run is a whopping half mile longer at 5 miles. Not exactly up to the form I had developed. All the training runs of 8, 12, and 15 miles that I did in preparation for my Marathon made me feel I was squandering my hard work.

Far before I even completed my Marathon I’ve contemplated strapping on my shoes and just running. What I mean is *just running* in one direction, without worrying about being able to run home. To me, this has occupied a special place in my mind. A run without limits. Not even 26.2 miles.

Running encourages free thinking and thoughts of abandon and freedom. Or at least, the endorphins and heightened serotonin levels do! I asked Shannon if she’d be OK picking me up when I had worn myself out. Of course, she readily agreed.

This past Sunday, with fresh shoes strapped on my feet and emboldened by my recent good runs and cool weather, I finally acted out that impulse. I don’t know why it took so long.

It was a really fantastic experience.

Like meditation, it was very interesting to watch my mind and ego interject goals and expectations as I ran along. I kept thinking to myself: “I have to run for at least one hour (about 20 minutes longer than I have been running). As soon as I dashed one expectation, another would replace it a few minutes later.

As I ran I would begin to stress myself out with thoughts of high mileage and long times. I had thoughts that I could run for 30 miles, or maybe even more. Be quiet fool, I told myself – just run.

Where am I going with all this?

I was interested in the impact of this attitude and mental state on my performance. Which is funny, considering that the point was to not care. Or was it? In the end I ran for 1 hour and 17 minutes. I don’t know how far I ran but it was a good long run, even compared to my training runs of the past. Compared to a normal 39 minute run it was a great effort. What fascinates me is that typical goal oriented thinking and process would suggest that this wouldn’t work. I feel that I have experienced two parallel worlds where in the first, setting goals helps you reach them, and the other, you eliminate all goals and expectations as a way to smash through the limitations that those very goals place on you.

I’ll acknowledge that I never got close to the right state of mind for the entire run. But there were a lot of times where I did find my center. Like meditation I focused on breathing. Like good running I focused on my form and not my speed. The net effect was that my run was much more carefree and enjoyable. It made it easier to run further because there was no expectation of doing well or doing badly.

I was running just to run.

I would accept any result as long as I was following my principle. Running is supposed to be fun, hard, and enlightening. This run was all these things. I also had occasion to reflect on other endeavors where this kind of mental state would benefit my performance. I considered both business and relationships but it was easiest to compare this experience with Golf.

I’ve always wanted a good Golf game very badly. I’ve also worked harder at golf than most physical pursuits, including many many hours of practice, study, play and other means of self torture. I’ve given a lot to the game of Golf and it’s rewarded me in every way, except one.

Good scores and a reliable swing.

When did I shoot my lowest scores? On the days where I was simply happy to be alive, to smell the fresh grass and the sun on my face. To thrill in the connection with the little white ball and the universe. On those rare days nothing could stop me from smiling, and from performing. On those days I hit a lot more great shots than normal. Yesterday was like that for my run. It might have been a fluke. I plan on finding out next Sunday.

As this post has unfolded I have been trying to reconcile one final point. I have the hardest time capturing the difference between not caring, and having no expectation. I feel my younger self could not have made that distinction. For the protection of my own fragile fragile ego I have been known to fall into the all too popular habit of not committing. Most of us learned this move as kids on the school yard. You know, if you never try you won’t feel bad when you can’t do it. Talk about self defeating. Failing to commit gets you no where in a hurry. Plus, if have any self respect it leads to a lot of negative self talk and criticism.  Letting go of the expectations and still caring – I think that’s the best way I can say it for now.

It’s not trivial

One last thing that struck me as very special about this experience that I want to document. Which was the most pleasurable expectation and experience of being picked up by Shannon and the kids. I guess that was one expectation that I didn’t want to kick. It may seem like a trivial thing but it didn’t feel that way. I felt so special that someone would do that for me. I know this seems strange considering that my family is exactly who would do this for me. I can’t quite tell you WHY it made me feel so special but it was a feeling of great gratitude and appreciation I felt. Giving your wife, family member or good friend a ride is trivial – but that love that comes along with it, isn’t. I guess that’s what I was tapping into.

p.s. It’s only now occured to me after publishing this that I’ve pulled a right Forest Gump.

What an amazing story this video contains. I want to thank my new Twitter contact Mike Kochansky for tweeting this. I’m so glad I watched the story about a possible cure for cancer and you will be as well if you take the time to view it.

Cheers!

- Julian

John Jack Lorenz is 5 years old today!

Our little John is not so little anymore.

Today we visited Dr. Gowda for his birthday and Doctor Gowda gave him a wonderful gift. John’s platelets are now up to 206,000!!! Woo hoo!

That’s the highest John’s platelets have ever been since he contracted ITP and the third straight week of rapidly rising platelet counts despite the fact that his steroids have been tapered back to 2.5mg every other day (he started at 15mg a day). It really looks like John may be in remission. It’s sure to be a big celebratory weekend for all these reasons. I’m including two pictures from today. The first is with Dr. Gowda. Dr. Gowda is calm, positive, knowledgeable, intelligent, and as warm as our South Florida waters. The second picture is with John’s nurse Lourdes who is the best kind of nurse – kind, thoughtful, and capable!

Went to John’s weekly Doctor visit today and lo and behold his platelets are up to 141,000. Just as last week, his platelet’s are up despite the fact that we’ve been tapering his steroid dosage down. He looks like he is on the mend for real.

Today is Michael’s 20th birthday. Happy Birthday Michael!

Aunt Jan leaves tomorrow for Cape Cod after a short stay here since Tuesday. It’s been a great visit.

Cheers

Today has been a great day all the way around.

Today is Shannon’s birthday, she’s on a rare day off from work, and we just had really good news at John’s weekly doctor’s visit.

Perhaps it was a birthday present for Shannon. As I noted on an earlier post John’s platelet levels while taking prednisone steroids have shown the strongest positive reaction out of all the treatments he’s been on. On the other hand, the steroids haven’t kept his platelet levels up any better than others. In fact, as we completed the last week of his month long prednisone course last week his levels had gone all the way from 160K down a month ago to 38K last Friday.

Dosage during the last week had gone down to 5mg a day with 2.5mg administered twice a day after breakfast and dinner. Surprisingly Dr. Gowda decided to keep John at the same dosage during this past week and Shannon and I expected to see John’s platelet levels drop even further.

John actually went back up to 47K this week even though we maintained the very low 5mg dosage. This marks a first. John’s platelet levels have never gone back up on their own or without giving higher levels of drugs. Dr. Gowda summed up our feelings perfectly “this is good news.”

We can’t predict if John’s levels will stableize, continue to climb, or go back down but this gives us the first peace of hopeful news since we’ve begun.

Happy Birthday Shannon!

Tonight, we’re off with the whole clan to Rosa Mexicano in Palm Beach Garden’s – one of Shannon’s favorites (me too!)!

Click to Play

Set List:
69 Police By David Holmes
Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie
Ms. Jackson by Outkast
Let the drummer kick by Citizen Cope
Hip Hop by Dead Prez
Cream by Prince
Feeling Stronger Everyday by Chicago
Skateaway by Dire Straits

The Easter Egg at end of movie is me Julia, Charlie and John recording a Julians.name video entry from this summer. Just because I felt like it.

p.s. I’ll never tell if I fell off the wall at the end of the movie or just ran out of memory on my camera…

p.p.s. No, I don’t expect anyone to watch this. For gods sake this is the internet and it’s a 30+ minute video!

We took John in for his blood test early this past Monday because he was showing physical signs of low platelets again (petechiae). Sure enough, his platelet levels had dropped to 39K. This time we moved on to steroids as a treatment – a short four day course with a high dose.

The goal was to test his platelet reaction to steroids and to get him back up above the 50K range. Steroids have the benefit of being administered as a simple pill – no hospital visit needed. The bad side is that they have some strong side effects. Moods, aggression, weight gain, etc. John’s appetite didn’t seem to change but his moods have. He’s just unhappy and grumpy – quite disagreeable at times (like this morning). But also even when he’s not being aggressive he just seems sad. Some good new then? Yes.

I just came from the doctors where John’s latest blood test showed that his platelets had rocketed up to 237K from 39K. That’s the best one-time rise we’ve seen in his results.

This doesn’t mean much however other than he responded well to steroids. Our expectation (and the doctors) is that his platelet levels will start moving down again and the question is how much and how soon. This game continues until his body heals itself or it doesn’t. We won’t get a diagnosis of chronic ITP until we’ve passed the six month mark with no permanent improvement.

The Doc started preparing us Monday to move on to another form of treatment called Rituxan. It’s a heavy duty drug used in chemotherapy and more experimentally with ITP (with good results). It does have the riskiest side effects that we’ve encountered in any of John’s past treatments. They actually administer the drug in the Intensive Care ward. This doesn’t sound so hot to Shannon and I.

The upside is that this drug has been known to actually cause a remission in ITP – something that the other drugs don’t really offer. Shannon found in her research that in Europe they don’t even treat ITP as aggressively as we’ve already done with John until platelets reach 5K! Here in the U.S. anything below 10K is grounds for hospitalization due to concern over spontaneous bleeding (at these levels it is possible to bleed to death without even having gotten so much as a bump). Once again, our experience just keeps reinforcing that modern medicine with ITP is basic trail and error. Let’s try A and see if that works. If A doesn’t work try B and so on. That’s what gives us pause in using something like Rituxan. We’re both in agreement that we need to do some much more in depth research and soul searching before we’re ready to go this route. Shannon made a good point this morning in saying that maybe we hold out (like the europeans do) for his results in six months and then cross the bridge then if we get a ‘chronic’ diagnosis.

Did you ever see the movie The Natural starring Robert Redford? It’s an account of a baseball player’s life and his attempts to get it right, on and off the field. He’s derailed along the way, by his own hand of course but symbolized in the movie as an evil woman that almost kills him. Life is like that, it almost kills us sometimes but if we can survive it truly doesgive us greater character.
My father shares my love of the movie and the story line. He sent me a brilliant article from the Washington Post writer Charles Krauthammer who wrote a poignant piece on real life St. Louis Cardinal Rick Ankiel.

Ankiel has claimed his own place in the annals of history of redemption and resurrection. I find great happiness not only in his story but in the reaction of the fans to him and what he has done. It brings chills to my body and tears to my eyes.

Read the full Charles Krauthammer story titled Return of the Natural here.

Well done Mate!