A Caregiver's World

A few hours ago when I was window shopping in the mall (aka: my walking exercise), I suddenly felt a nerve pinch kind of pain from deep in my upper inner left arm, which also immediatedly shot to my heart. The pinch pain level was a 3 on a scale of 10 and it was intermitten at about every 5-6 seconds. After each intermitten pain shot to my heart, I also felt a jump ( a noticable off beat) in my heart.  I at first just put up with it, but after such pinch pain continued for about an hour, I went into panic mode. It's because I suddenly remembered how I read about the symptoms of a heart attack for women were unlike the classical ones for men and that pain on the left arm that raidated to the chest can be a symptom of a heart attack for women.  I felt so panicky, I started to feel dizzy, and shortness of breath and I felt like I was going to pass out in the mall.  The more panic I became, the more I felt the symptoms related  to a heart attack, and then the more p...

Harvard University: When it comes to overall health benefits, it seems that dairy is neither a hero nor a villain.  For years, my chronically sick husband has been on a diet that is heavy on cheese, butter, milk, sweet yogurt, sweet juices, bread, cakes, extremely sweet fruit juices, Haagen-Daz ice cream. He can drink a whole bottle of sweet orange juice from the grocery store in just one day.  I have been unsucessfully trying to make him eat a more balanced diet.  This is why when my husband's rheumatologist asked me if my husband had been eating well, I was dead silent.  I saw an expression of wonder on the doctor's face when I didn't say anything.  I felt like I was being judged and I felt uncomfortable.  But what could I say? In retrospect, my husband has always been very radical on his diet. When I first met him, he was eating nothing but the packaged protein bars, drinking protein shakes made from canned protein powder that tasted awful and...

Click here to visit the author's website. I bought this book when I went to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription and saw this book on the book shelf there.   The book cover and the phrase "How far would you go to find happiness?" caught my eye.  After I read the synopsis on the backcover, I was sold.  Even though the book cover design and graphics have absolutely nothing to do with the story of the novel,  I often bought a book by judging the front cover and also the back cover.  Had this book been in another cover that is currently on Amazon, I wouldn't have picked the book up at that moment. I found reading a book provides me an escape from my stress and worries as a caregiver. According to research, reading can reduce stress by up to 68 %, and the University of Minnesota recommends reading a book that I enjoy for 30 minutes everyday.   I had recently finished reading the above book and it's in a relatively new condition. If you are a ca...

Today I went to a cafe to get lunch for take out.  May be it's a sunday so the cafe was a lot more crowded than usual.  There were a lot of people standing around waiting to order or waiting for their spouses or family to order.  I personally had never seen a crowd standing in front of the cashier before.  As a caregiver, my mind is always occupied and I often am not mindful at the present as I need to be. Today is just one of those moments when I walked into the cafe, seeing such a big crowd that I had never seen before.  I had no idea where the line ended and I just stood at a spot that I thought was the end of a supposedly queue, waiting.  Suddenly I noticed a guy moved up to my left and he murmured something about the end of a line. I thought he just arrived and asked me if I was standing in line, so I said, "Yes"....  I honestly didn't know exactly what his entire question was about, I just assumed.  My mind was preoccupied with the rest o...