Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Let me tell you a little story of why I'm a baby. As an almost grown child, not yet a teenager, I spent enough camping trips in the White Mountains to not be afraid of bears. There were bear traps everywhere, some containing bears that we were able to oogle at, and signs on every other tree warning you to drop to the ground if a bear came. Act like you're dead and it'll think you're dead. Because of that, I was not afraid of bears. Just act like I'm dead and I'll be fine? Easy! No worries about being ripped limb from limb!

Until last week when a friend ruined everything. Everything, I tell ya! We were on a hike and got to talking about bears and mountain lions, both of which we have in Flagstaff. We were talking about various people we know who have seen both animals while on hikes or mountain bike rides, which made them kind of real to me. I had heard of mountain lions occasionally being in peoples back yards and bears being seen on bike rides, but no real firsthand experiences. All stuff read in the paper until my friend told me some stories. At the end of our hike, I didn't think I was scared or anything and still felt the same un-afraidness of mountain lions and bears as before.

Queue to a week later when I went on a run/hike with Vince while he rode his bike. After a while of exercising together, we split paths so he could go one way and I could go another. I was good for the first 1/2 mile, then realized I was all alone at the top of the mountain where I was most likely to run into a dangerous animal, it was stormy and dark and sprinkling, and I was totally going to get eaten by a mountain lion or bear. Calm down, I didn't actually see any animals, I was just scared. And was so sure one was stalking me right then. What am I even supposed to do if a mountain lion attacks me?! So I ran. And ran. And kept running. Which in turn kind of scared me more because I was wearing a rain jacket that got noisier the faster I ran. I'm not very good with loud noises, let alone one that's right next to my ear, and my heart-rate just kept accelerating.

Finally, I ran into Vince after a couple miles alone and started to relax. I laugh at myself now thinking how silly I was, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to run like that otherwise!

Anyways, here are pictures, a mixture of iPhone and my 'big camera'.

Before we started I made Vince take a picture for our photo album, and of course he had to mess around for 20 shots before I yelled and started to walk away saying, 'SCREW IT, I DIDN'T CARE ANYWAYS.' One of the shots he put a banana on my head and laughed like a five year old.

This was when I was alone, at the outlook overlooking the city, which you can't actually see. It started raining more and I hightailed it back to the car. 

Dark and stormy!

After the run with my favorite girl.

By the way Beth, if you're reading this, I don't blame you. Or maybe I secretly hate you now.

James "Rhio" O'Connor Memorial Scholarship

This essay is for the James "Rhio" O'Connor Memorial scholarship. To learn more about mesothelioma and it's survivors, click here.  

James ‘Rhio’ O’Connor was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of cancer, and was given a year to live. He was an optimistic and determined man and took it upon himself to research multiple methods of treatment, from conventional to alternative treatments, and because of that lived another six years. He faced many hard choices regarding the kinds of treatments he wanted to receive and the side affects of each one and ultimately gave himself the opportunity at a longer life.

Rhio’s story hits close to home because someone close to me is going through a similar situation. He has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and after being told he possibly has only a year or two left to live, he took his life into his own hands and learned about alternative treatments. In his case the alternative treatment is following a vegan diet with no animal products because animal proteins feed his cancer differently than plant proteins. In just a few shorts months it has drastically reduced his doubling time of the cancer and he is now expected to live well beyond his original prognosis. This inspired me to look more into diet and health so that hopefully I could prevent cancer in my own body based on the food I eat and also find more information for people around me who have cancer.

Within my research, I have learned that diet is extremely important to the health of your body. Nowadays there are so many toxins and chemicals in almost everything we eat. Some foods are genetically modified to the point where your body cannot even recognize it as food! It is hard to know what you can and cannot eat because everyone tells you different things. The government recommends high amounts of grain in your diet and low amounts of meat, but the paleo lifestyle discourages the consumption of grains and encourages high meat intake. Who am I to believe? The government, who also hands their hands in the pockets of grain companies, or real people who live the paleo lifestyle and are healthy and happy? Personally I choose to eat based on what my body tells me it likes and what makes me feel healthy, but many people are bombarded with all these different people, media, and organizations that tell them contradicting information. It’s hard to know what to do.

Something that has to change soon, and I believe it will, is that people need to do more research on their own about their health. If you are healthy to start with, the chance of getting cancer is low and is a good way to prevent it. People should not just blindly go about their life and not be concerned with what they put in their bodies and how it affects them. They need to be proactive and strive to be as healthy as possible if they would like to continue living a long and healthy life.

In order to assist people in research, I believe that doctors and scientists also need to offer information that is not backed up by the pharmaceutical companies who are making millions or billions off of their products. Doctors should not be able to receive any kind of compensation or incentives from pharmaceutical companies to promote specific medications or treatments. Rather, they should simply make money from healing someone in the best way they possibly can. Scientists should also do studies that are unbiased and not in favor of the company who is paying for the study. All studies should be independent of the company it is for so that pharmaceuticals are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration when really they are not safe. If doctors and scientists did their work to only heal people and not make money or answer to big pharmaceutical companies, people may not die so frequently from cancer.

Alternative treatments also need to be funded. Pharmaceutical companies do not want to put forth money into something they cannot patent and make money from. Understandably, they should not have to be the ones to do so because they are a company who is trying to make money. They are a business. What should be happening is for universities, organizations, governments, and communities to put forth funding. It is not the responsibility of a big pharmaceutical company to validate or disprove alternative treatments, it is the responsibility of people who want to stay healthy and people who care about the health of themselves and their community.

Due to the research I’ve already done and the lifestyle I live, if I were to one day get cancer I know I’d try and fight it any way that I could, like Rhio chose to do. I would research my cancer thoroughly to know exactly how it works and how it is affecting my body. I would try and get in contact with survivors of it to see what kind of treatments they did, as well as get as much information as I could about those who have passed away from the cancer to see what treatments they did. I would talk to those that tried the conventional way of treatment with chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery, as well as those who tried alternative treatments and their doctors.

I do not believe there is just one way to treat cancer and that different circumstances call for different measures. Some cancers may not benefit at all from a change in diet because it is too advanced, some may benefit simply from a drastic change in diet, and others may need a combination of conventional treatments, homeopathy, and diet. There really are so many different ways to treat cancer so after researching all my options I would just have to go with what I decide is best.

I am a nursing who plans to possibly become a pediatric oncology nurse and so far in my studies and experience in the medical world I have realized that alternative options for cancer treatment are extremely rare. I find that very upsetting because things we find in nature can be very powerful and have true healing abilities! How is someone with cancer supposed to heal when they are so sick from chemotherapy that they can’t eat anything? Why not give them the nutrition they need instead to be strong powerful human beings that can heal themselves with the help of alternative remedies? If there are alternatives to putting toxic chemicals in our bodies that will work just as well, if not better, then it should be an option that every doctor should provide.

While I hope to never have cancer at any point in my life, it is inspiring to read success stories like Rhio’s. It encourages change in the way the health industry is run and proves that alternatives to conventional treatments can work.  To share his stories with people hopefully inspires others to open their eyes to this world we live in and question the way treatments are done and the way patients are handled. Maybe more people will take their lives into their own hands make a change.

Heading to the big leagues with a career change. Again.

The end of the semester always has those couple weeks of panic as you question whether you've learned anything that semester, or at least enough to pass the final. You always feel kind of stressed out and the need to study, study, study. Well my miscarriage happened about a week and a half before finals and I had NO motivation to study. So I didn't. Sure, I stressed about it, but I can honestly say I studied less than an hour for all my classes combined. You can imagine my stress as I sat in class getting ready to take finals with my brain screaming, "WE'VE WORKED SO HARD ALL SEMESTER FOR AN A AND I'M PRETTY SURE WE'RE ABOUT TO LOSE IT. WAY TO GO, DUMBASS." Fortunately I did not lose my A's and passed with a 4.0 semester, leaving me with a 3.92 for my overall GPA for my associates degree. This also means that since I did absolutely no preparation for finals, I feel like the semester is not over, like I'm still dreading the long week before finals that is filled with studying.

But it's over! I won't have to do that! My brain doesn't understand that though so I'm in this perpetual state of anxiety in a way. I think I feel this way every time a semester ends and then I start summer school right as it's starting to wear off, but this summer I don't even have classes. Hot damn, it's going to be a good summer.

So this is where I stand with school: I am joining the big leagues (why is there a u in that word?) next semester and am finally at NAU. I will be applying for the nursing program in October (yes, nursing, I'll get to the explanation later) with the hopes of being accepted into the undergraduate program to start the nursing program in January. Then I have two and a half years of that and I have a bachelors in nursing! I'll probably work for a fews years, pay of loans, then go back to school to get my Nurse Practitioners license and do a lot of doctor stuff without having to actually be a doctor with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

You may question my sanity at this point, wondering why I've gone from teaching, to nursing, to med school, to possible naturopathy school, then back to nursing. In the short version, med school is not worth it to me and I'm not passionate enough about it to make it worth it to me. Now for the longer version.

Before I was pregnant, when I thought about going to med school I knew it was going to be tough with a child, but didn't think it would be that big of a deal to have Vince essentially be the sole parent for a few years while I made it through the tough parts. He was fine with that and was willing to compromise knowing that it wouldn't last forever. Then I got pregnant and was like, 'Hellllll no, I'm not having Vince be a single parent. I'd like to raise our kid together, thank you very much.'

I read a lot of forums with women who were in med school who decided to have children, and almost all of them said being a doctor was ultimately the most important thing in their life and that they would make it work in any way possible because it was a lifelong dream. They were ok missing years of their children's childhoods because in the end, they'd be a doctor. Unfortunately, I do not feel that way at all. My family will always come first, no matter what, and I feel like that is not an attitude you can have and successfully make it through med school as a female. How can I say I won't be in class because my child has a kindergarten play coming up? It just wouldn't work.

I lived with my grandparents for a few years growing up and would go back and forth to my dad's house, depending on his work schedule. He didn't want to miss out on our lives so much, but as a single parent, he had to. He had no other choice but to work 24+ hour shifts or overnight shifts. Luckily us kids turned out just fine, but it's not something I have to do. I don't have to go days without seeing my children so I can put food on the table. I'd be choosing to do that, and for what? To say I'm a doctor? That title isn't that important to me and I know I can me a much more useful person as a nurse and make just as much of a difference in this world.

"Why don't you just postpone having kids," you ask? Simply put, I married an old guy and I want babies. Lots of babies. If I were to wait until I was out of med school, not counting residency, that would be at least six years away. Depending on what field of medicine I go into, I have a minimum residency of three years but if I do pediatric oncology, up to six years. So total time, I have 9-12 years of hard work left. That's a million years in uterus time and Vince will be in his mid-late 40s. I've got nothing against older dads, but I'm not going to choose to have my kids have an older dad if I can avoid it because by the time we got to kid two, three or four? Let's get real, he'd be grandpa's age.

So that's that. I'm happy with the decision, though not happy I've taken so may extra classes towards a different major. Ya, I now have an associates, but that doesn't mean anything except extra debt at this point!

Happy Things

I didn't mean to leave such a sad post up for so long! Here's a happy one to counteract the heaviness of the last post. It's good to focus on the happy things in life.

// Avocados have been 3 for $1 which means SO MUCH GUACAMOLE. Like so much I want to cry from happiness. As I'm writing this I'm eating a bowl of guac made from not one but two avocados and I don't have to save any for Vince. I get to eat the whole bowl tonight with some cucumbers and mushrooms because we have six more avocados on our fridge. I think Mexico might be heaven if it means fresh guac every day.

// Chia seed pudding that is soooo easy. And it is paleo. Tonight I'm making it with raw milk and it'll be even better.

// Laundry is finally finished. I know it seems like a simple thing to do, but I won't admit to how many times we've done (or haven't done) it in the past two and a half months. Once I was pregnant my body was like COUCH BED KITCHEN FLOOR ANYWHERE TO CLOSE MY EYES so I did nothing. When I say nothing I mean nothing at all but eat Hot Cheetos, apples, and drink insane amounts of water. I may have cooked once or twice when I felt so overwhelmed with guilt for making Vince do everything. And since Vince was doing everything, including delicious dinners, as well as working full time, we never got around to laundry unless we were out of underwear. And then we only washed underwear. (Gosh, I can't seem to just write a simple thing I'm happy about, it's like I'm writing a book.) Anyways, we never did laundry, it is now done, and we can now give away a ton of clothes to the thrift store so it's not taking up space and I can give it away clean instead of dirty.

// The semester is over. I shouldn't have to say more than that but I will because I can. The semester is over. The semester is over. The semester is over. I can't believe it. Once again it went by way too fast and I feel like I've learned nothing new but at the same time my brain is so full of anatomy and chemistry terms it might just stop working any minute. I also have all A's to prove I learned something as well as an associates degree. Oh, and this happened:

Yep, I've officially reached nerd status and it happened without my knowledge; I received the CCC Science Student of the Year award. Thanks to my mama for the beautiful flowers!

(Oh, and my hair? So frizzy here! I had to dry my hair with a blow dryer which I rarely do and clearly my hair didn't appreciate it. The picture on the right showcases it beautifully.)

Fellow Sci Club nerds and friends Jenn and Molly. We're all such awesome people.

// Mangos are also $.69. And they're organic. Not that it matters since I cut off the peel anyways. But $.69 mangoes means lots of mangoes being peeled and eaten like apples.

// This face.

// Raw milk is now at our local farmers market which means I can buy it whenever I please between the hours of 7am and 6:30pm. (5pm on Sundays.) It's a bit pricier than when I was buying it through the co-op, but unfortunately the lady running it had to move out of town but luckily she set everything up with the farmers market. Ultimately it's worth the extra price to have a consistent supply of raw milk instead of every couple weeks!

// I'm feeling good. I'm still having some physical side affects from the miscarriage, but overall I'm doing well. I'm extremely happy that it's getting warm outside so I can get my body back in shape and get healthy again. As I stated above, I had the appetite of a five year old and my body really didn't like it, even though it was forcing me to eat those things. So it's nice to finally get back on the mostly paleo bandwagon and be healthy. I had a little breakdown the other day because for .2 seconds I was so happy to not be pregnant and to be able to go on long hikes and eat normal, and then I felt so guilty for feeling that way. It was like I was happy to no longer be pregnant, which in a way I am!  I would have much rather become normal because I actually had a baby, though.  Luckily the feeling passed pretty quickly and it's something that comes and goes.

// Juice, possibly my favorite one yet. Lime, cabbage, apple, cucumber and kale. The lime just puts it out of this world.

 Tell me some happy things that have been going on in your life.

And then miscarriage happens.

Just wanted to give you a brief update on my life to let you know I'm alive.

I haven't been posting because I was pregnant and when you are trying to keep it a secret but want to start every post with, 'Boy, do I just want to barf on everyones shoes,' it's hard to write. So I just decided not to write.

Over the past week, however, I've been dealing with a miscarriage (it sounds like it should be a simple thing that happens and it's done with, but it's been kind of the worst eight day of my life that seems to continue dragging on forever) so now I'm able to write again because I have no juicy secrets I want to share. I wrote up a more detailed post about my miscarriage because I believe it is something that shouldn't be so taboo, I'm just waiting for Vince to read through it because it's not just my experience to share.

For those of you that Vince or I have talk to about this and shared your own stories, THANK YOU. It's been oddly comforting to hear about how we aren't the only ones who have gone through this. With 20% of pregnancies ending in miscarriage, it's hard to feel alone!

For the family and friends we haven't told about this and are upset that we haven't come forward with this information, don't be. It's been rough and we've only told the people we've had to tell because they had to know about the pregnancy for some reason or another.

Other than that we are happy and healthy, and I'm ready for the semester to be over after finals next week. Then I'll have three glorious weeks off of work to do whatever the hell I want. I have a zillion posts that are half finished that I hope to get to. And camping and hiking? I think yes. Let me know if you want to get together.

Spring is here and I'm off to watch my 8 year old brothers baseball game, take hime out to froyo with Vince after, and help him make a wizards hat.