I apologize to my readership for having taken a three and a half month leave from writing.  I have had six deaths in my extended family since last March and the grief has been burdensome.  Add to this tragedy the joy of two new grandchildren and an emotional rollercoaster has presented itself like no other.   I come from a large family – eight siblings.  We have had three mother-in-law deaths including my own this past week, my sister, and a nephew and his wife (they are my age).   The joy is two grandsons that finally make the men in my immediate family outnumber the women.  Two son-in-laws, two grandsons, and myself makes the men outnumber the women by five to four – an end to estrogen hell! – Just kidding girls!

I had to make a decision about what is more important in my life.  There is no explanation for the logic.  The good thing for you is that these tragedies and joys have help me to understand that the most important thing in my life is to help educate the general population to the understanding that nutrition is more important than the way we are currently practicing modern medicine.  This has been made clear to me through my survival of very serious disease.  As stated by the founded of Apple, Steve Jobs, our purpose is defined by death and renewal.  Stanford, June, 2005 commencement speech: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Where does that leave me with established medical practice?  I am scared.  The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disease) was just recently changed to include depression from grief to only have an exclusion of two months.  I have exceeded that exclusion by one and half months.  Does this make me clinically depressed?  No I made choices about what to do with my time as responsibilities to my family changed significantly.  Could I have gotten drugs for my crisis?  I am sure that I could have, but that would have been ridiculous because the side effects from the drugs would have been worse than the grief that I have suffered.  This is to say nothing about being put on a new electronic list as part of medical records that seemingly all institutions now have access to.  Article from Wired: Psychiatry’s New Rules Threatens to Turn Grieving into a Sickness http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/dsm-5-bereavement/

Only in God and love can resolution be found as His desire for us is spiritual joy, peace, and love.  I leave you with the words of Jim Valvano’s Espy Speech when he was only two months from death with cancer:  “To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Valvano#ESPY_speech

Thanks for continuing to read! – Pandemic Survivor