Tag Archives: health

You Know What They Say, “You Are What You Eat.”

 

“You are what you eat;” that’s what they say, at least.  Yet, I never really took heed to what some consider an ominous warning.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have always watched what I have eaten.  I’m not a glutton.  I do not scarf down gallons and gallons of ice cream, nor do I over indulge in cookies or candies.  Nope.  I try to eat sensibly, and even though in the course of my lifetime, the food pyramid has been updated seven times, changed entirely in 2005, and then altered to “MyPlate” in 2011, I have tried to be sensible about my choices (Harvard School of Public Health).

Recently, however, I came across something startling that through me for a loop.

It is not uncommon knowledge that fast food isn’t good for you.  I know that.  You know that.  Who doesn’t know that?  Assuming we are intelligent human beings who will not eat fast food three times a day for thirty days and throw our bodies so out of whack that a doctor warns us we might die (If you haven’t seen SuperSize me, click the title and watch it, and you will know what I am talking about.), I have always felt like an occasional Burger King Chicken Sandwich or Big Mac is not that big of a deal.  Sure, they are chocked full of calories and fat grams, but I am not talking about eating said sandwiches every day.  I am talking about occasionally, and that means not even once a month.

Well, I thought it was all right and forgivable up until two weeks ago.  Two weeks ago, I walked into my friend’s classroom to ask her a question, and she had a McDonald’s bag on a chair near her desk.  The contents were exposed.  I looked down and I saw a small soda, a cheeseburger, and a small fry.

“What’s this?” I asked.  “Lunch?”  I giggled.  It was only 8:30 in the morning.

Her eyes widened.  I could tell she was excited I asked.  “Class,” she said to the room.  “Could anyone tell Mrs. Huffer why this is here?”

“You are what you eat,” one boy shouted from the third row.

I felt totally confused.  What is going on here.  Jen teaches English not health.  Why does she have McDonald’s in the room?

“Look at the date on the receipt,” she said to me.  I moved closer to the food and picked up the receipt: October 6, 2012.

I did a quick calculation. My mouth dropped open as I spun and looked at my friend.  “That can’t be real!” I said incredulously.  You should have seen it.  It looked virtually perfect.  The fries had not shriveled.  The bread was intact.  The meat patty seemed fine.  I did not detect even the faintest odor of decay.  I did not detect the faintest sight of mold.

“It’s real.  I read an article about fast food a few months ago and decided to do my own experiment.”  By this time every single eye in the room was staring at that bag of food.  “I have this here to remind these students, ‘You are what you eat.’   Food that does not decompose or rot cannot be good for you.”

I left her room without even asking her what I came to find out.  I was flabbergasted.  I was disgusted.  I was horrified.  Not only do I indulge in fast food, but so do my children.  When on a road trip or at the mall, when everyone complains they are hungry, the easiest way to satisfy hunger has always been fast food.  Oh, it’s every once in a while, I told myself.  I justified it.

But what was I justifying?

I came home and told my girls about her experiment and they told me to take a picture.  I had every intention to do just that, but wouldn’t you know, Jen threw out the meal because she was going on maternity leave for the rest of the school year.  Needless to say, if you Google Image “McDonald’s Meals Do Not Decompose”, dozens of images will appear.

Image borrowed from "Can a McDonald's Burger Last Forever?"

Image borrowed from an article titled, “Can a McDonald’s Burger Last Forever?”

 

The girls and I Googled it, and they were so horrified, even Lizzie who loves Chicken Nuggets, said she did not want to eat fast food anymore.

As we perused the images, Carson added on, “Even the supposed healthy food has to have chemicals.  I mean, in a Happy Meal, you get apple slices in a bag, and they don’t brown.  When you cut us an apple, Mom, if we do not eat it, it is brown in less than an hour!”

She’s right.  My friend’s tiny experiment was a wake up call.   Fast food is officially on the forbidden foods list in our household, and as for the present, no one seems to miss it!

 

Random Thoughts Day 9: Are You Faking?

Yesterday, I received a text from Tom in the middle of the morning: “Nurse called from girls’ school.  Maggie is complaining about her sore throat.”

I thought back to the morning.  She woke up and hauled her blanket out of her room and into the living room to lie on the couch.

“No, no, no,” Tom said pulling the blanket off of her.  “It’s not weekend.  No lieing around with cartoons.”

Maggie grasped her blanket and yanked back.  “My throat hurts.  I don’t want to go to school.”

He touched her forehead.  No fever.  He touched her throat.  Her glands didn’t feel swollen.  “Honey, you’re not sick.  You’re going to school.”

“Fine!” she said in an ultra-sassy-you-are-the-meanest-father-in-the-world-you-don’t-understand-voice.  She stormed into her room.

Watching this interaction, I smiled at Tom and rolled my eyes.  He mouthed, “She can be such a bitch.”  Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, sometimes we admit our daughters have ultra bitchy qualities.  We don’t say it to them, we just say it to each other.  It makes us oh-so-happy to be parents when they act in this manner.

Anyway, I went to work, the girls went to school, and Tom went to work, well, for a while, that is.

Once he picked her up, he texted me again.  “Her throat looks like it has white spots.”

Uh-oh, I thought.  Strep!  “Call the Clinic.  Get her in for a throat culture.  That sounds like strep.”

“Yep,” he texted back.

After class, I called the office to see if I could get a substitute for the rest of the day.  I only had two classes left to teach, and I wanted to take her to the doctor.  Moreover, I thought Tom might want to return to work, so I was helping him as well.

When I got home, Tom said his boss said just to work from home.  We decided to take her to the doctor together.  On the way there, she was laughing and singing.  Tom looked at me suspiciously.  “She better not be faking,” he mouthed.

I shrugged my shoulders.  It’s sad to say, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

We were seen almost immediately.  The nurse checked her, swabbed her throat, and sent in the doctor.  The doctor looked and listened, and she said she thought it looked more like an irritation from allergies.  She did not have the symptoms of strep.  We were not surprised when the doctor returned to the room and said the rapid strep culture was negative.  She assured us that the culture would be sent out for an additional test, but Tom and I were both skeptical.  We did believe her throat was sore, but we both believed she probably could have made it through the rest of the school day.

I did not want either of us to feel guilty about leaving our jobs.  “Better safe than sorry,” I rationalized getting into the elevator.

Last night before bed, Tom gave her a Claritin.  She slept well and woke up in a good mood.

“Does your throat hurt?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, but I’m not sick.  The doctor said.”  She was resigned to feeling slightly lousy because of allergies and going to school.

At lunch, I checked my phone.  Wouldn’t you know I missed a call from the Cleveland Clinic.  I listened to the message: “Hi this is Cindy from Dr. D_____ office.  Maggie’s throat culture has come back positive.  We have called in a prescription….”

I hung up.  Damn it!  We sent her off to school all willy-nilly, and now I learn she has been infecting kids all day long.  I had visions of her licking kids on the face and spreading all of her germs.  (No, she does not lick kids in the face usually, but my mind sometimes plays tricks on me when I panic.)

I texted Tom: “Maggie has strep!!!!!!!!!”

We went back and forth on what to do.  Neither one of us could really skip work, but we couldn’t in good conscience leave her at school either.  Tom decided to call the school, pick her up, and then go back to work once Carson got home.  I was tasked with picking up her prescription and buying popsicles on the way home.

What did I learn from all of this?

1. In-office rapid strep tests suck!
2. I need to give my daughter more credit.  I really thought she was bored at school and just trying to get out of the rest of her day.
3. It would be so much easier to be a mom if I worked from home.  Really, I need to work on getting published, so I can quit my job and
write all day long!  Then when the school calls, it doesn’t have to be such a production; like tomorrow: Tom is staying home in the
morning, and I am coming home midday so he can go to work.

How to Make the Best Out of a Bad Situation

I have been home with a sick child for two days.  Monday, I was calmly eating my lunch and grading Junior English Language Assessment exams when my cell phone rang.  It was Tom.

“Why would Tom call me?” I asked out loud to no one in particular.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Lizzie is in the clinic.  I am going to get her.  Her cough is really bad and the nurse says she is laboring to breathe.”

Lizzie, are youngest, has asthma.  In the winter months, it is sometimes triggered by the fluctuation in the weather.  This past week, the temperature went from close to 70 back down to 25 degrees.  If she has a cold, it triggers an asthma attack.

When I got home from work she was lying on the couch.  She looked pale, and she made me sad.

“How are you feeling?” I asked sitting down next to her.  I gently stroked her hair with my fingers.

“Lousy.”  She then coughed.  It was a gut wrenching cough that lasted for over a minute.  When she was finished she laid back on the pillow.  “My throat hurts.”  She frowned, and I could see by the look in her eyes that she was feeling real pain.

I walked into the kitchen and Tom and I launched a plan.  He would run to the grocery store and buy popsicles, and I would call off for Tuesday and get her into the doctor.  For the rest of the evening, Lizzie alternated popsicles and coughing, and she had a restlessness night sleep.

In the morning, I called the doctor’s office.  The pediatrician we usually see was out of the office, but I was able to get in with another doctor at 10:45.  We arrived early, and Lizzie sat quietly playing on my phone.  When she coughed, every person in the waiting room looked at her sympathetically.  Just by the sound of it, you could tell it was painful for her.

At 11:00 the office door opened, but it wasn’t a nurse, it was a doctor.  “Is Elizabeth out here?”

“Lizzie and I stood and walked through the door.”

“Room 2 please,” she said pointing toward the open room.  We walked through the door.  “Hi Lizzie, I am Dr. L—.  My nurse is with a patient checking her in and I thought I should get started with you since I am running a little behind schedule.”

To be honest, I was very impressed.  She could have walked to her office, drank some coffee, flipped through a Cosmopolitan magazine.  But no, she wanted to get on track, and if that meant walking into the waiting room herself, well that is what she was going to do.

“What’s wrong, Junebug?”  Lizzie coughed profusely, and I explained about her asthma and the fear that it could turn into something more.  “I hate to be that mom and run to the doctor, but her inhaler is only giving her intermittent rest from the wheezing.”

“Mom,” she said to me.  “You did the right thing.  Never worry about making an office visit.  Asthma is a tricky thing, and I would hate for it turn for the worse.  It is no big deal to check her pulse-ox and listen to her lungs.  I would rather have you come in and have it be nothing than have her have to be admitted to the hospital.”  Her reassurance made me feel that we had made the right choice not to try to just use the inhaler.

She examined Lizzie and prescribed a steroid to help clear her lungs.  She said that she definitely heard the wheeze in the left lung.  We did an asthma checklist to make sure we were taking all precautions in the home.

“No one smokes, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“What about stuffed animals?” she asked me.

I looked at Lizzie.  “What about stuffed animals?” I asked the doctor.

“Are they in the home?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

The doctor winced.  “Stuffed animals are breeding ground for dust mites.  Dust mites are bad for all of us, but especially children with asthma.  My recommendation would be to get rid of all stuffed animals in the home.”

We both turned and looked at Lizzie.  Crocodile tears fell out of her eyes.  She pulled her hands up to her face.  With a word, the doctor had just murdered her fine furry friends– all 22 of them that slept with her on a daily basis.

I walked over and hugged her.  “Can we keep a couple?” I asked the doctor.

“It would be best not to keep any, but maybe you could pick your favorite two.”  She walked over to Lizzie so she could talk with her.  “I know this is hard Junebug, but I want you to be healthy.  Your mom has to promise to wash the ones you keep regularly in hot water.”

Lizzie looked at me.  “I promise,”  I said.  I crossed my heart with my fingers.

After leaving the appointment, Lizzie started to cry again in the car.   “I can’t choose, Mom.  I love them all so much,” she said, and I knew she meant it.  I knew we would get home and she would go to her room and cry over each and every one.  How could she chose her Girl Scout bear over her Great Wolf Lodge Bear?  How could she chose the bear she got from the nice man at Toyoya over the animal she got at Christmas from Mrs. Sykes?  This situation was the worst possible situation an eight-year-old could face: making her choose who to love.  However, I also knew I could not cave.  I need to do everything in my power to protect her and get her healthy.

So what’s a mother to do?  I had to come up with a solution to make the best of this horrendous connundrum.

“Honey, how about when we get home after we have a stuffed animal funeral, we order that American Girl Doll you have been saving for?  How much do you have saved?”

I looked in the rearview mirror.  She wiped tears from her face.  “83.00.”

“Okay.  Mommy will pay for the rest since you have to give up some of your friends.  How does that sound?”

She nodded her head and smiled.

When we got home, after much contemplation and some more tears, she insisted on keeping four.  We put them in the washer to get them clean. We agreed that three will stay on a shelf in her room, and she can have one in her bed with her.  At the end of the week, we will throw the one she slept with in the wash, and she can take a new one off of the shelf to have in bed with her.  It was a worthwhile compromise.

Oh, and we ordered Saige, the American Girl Doll of the Year.  She is waiting patiently for her arrival.