by Taru Fisher on August 10, 2009
There must be something in the air in the Fall because my husband, James, has had a bout of atrial fibrillation each Fall for the past three years. Not fun; not fun at all for him, or for me, or even our dog. Bodhi senses that something is not right with his “Dad” and he’s been particularly quiet today — no mean feat for a one year old Labradoodle. I, on the other hand, have not been calm and quiet. I’ve been worried, impatient with our delightful health care system, and just feel off center. The only activity that’s been distracting me from constant concern has been checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This tells me I have become a social media junkie.
This time it seems to be resolving without the need for an ambulance, an ER visit, and close to $13K for a 7 hour stay. And folks wonder why we need universal health insurance! Everyone needs some kind of health insurance or risk financial suicide. I know why Medicare is going broke. Take my last bill for two visits to a Dermatologist, one punch biopsy and a lab test — over $1300! I was floored. And they couldn’t even figure out what it was. They just tried to prescribe some heavy duty medicine (just in case) that had the potential to kill my liver. Eeek! So, I went to my favorite “safe medicine” doctor, Dr. Damon Miller, MD who fixed me some homeopathics, gave me some supplements and herbs, and lo and behold, in a few weeks the gunge disappeared. My body actually had the wisdom to heal itself with help from nature and a brilliant diagnostician. Of course, none of this real medical treatment was covered by Medicare. Oh, and it cost me all of $300 max!
Off my soapbox and into the car. Time for dinner!
Tagged as:
atrial fibrillation,
cardiovascular,
dogs,
health,
Labradoodle
by Taru Fisher on April 1, 2008
My mind was racing – again – as I thought of the thirty odd things I had to do; all of them seemingly critical to our success. As I talked on the phone to my friend Patty, I whined about how much work I’d had to do on getting her courses up and running on our online scheduling system; I whined to my other friend, Carol, the organizer extraordinaire, about a visit from an old friend that had created more unfinished work for me to do. In retrospect, It seems like I whined to every unfortunate soul I came in contact with today – ick!
As I listened to myself, I began to feel uncomfortable at how un-resourceful I sounded, how I sounded like a freaking victim — which I definitely am not! I stopped in my tracks and looked at what work I was doing and realized how much I had accomplished and that much of it I actually enjoyed; I could even say it was fun and challenging.
I had allowed an old habit of not being present to what was actually happening sidetrack me from noticing what I was doing in that very moment, moving from one task to the next intuitively and gracefully and enjoying myself.
As I let my ideas and old habits drop away, I became still and saw the absolute perfection in what I had chosen to do in that moment. Past moments dropped away, future tripping stopped and I took my dog, Max, for a walk — I simply let go and followed the flow of what was right in each moment, and it was perfect and effortless and fun.
The older I get, the better I get at seeing the unconscious moments and moving out from them. I really like aging!
Tagged as:
dogs,
presence
