Things have been quiet on the Avon walk front. Our last fundraiser was several weeks ago, and I’ve received one huge donation since – my sister sent me $250! (This seems like a good time to mention that you can donate to the Avon walk and choose a flexible payment option which allows you to split up your donation over several months. It makes things less painful on your purse.)

Anyway, with the walk looming on the horizon, it seems like a good time for me to start thinking about my health – before, during, and after the walk. You’ll remember that in the first year of my breast cancer walking, I ended up at the doctor a week or so later, with unbearable pain in my knee. He chalked it up to walking 60 miles in 3 days and prescribed a brace for me to wear. With my cheap health insurance, the whole visit, including a quick x-ray, only cost me $40!

In 2007, I knew what to expect and wasn’t surprised when my legs started hurting during the walk. I spent a lot of time at the medical tent icing and wrapping my legs. No visit to the doctor needed.

This year, I’ll be in New York for the walk. It’s a shorter distance, so I’m hoping that means less pain.

Before the 3-Day walk this year, I went off to the drugstore for supplies to carry with me. I needed to get blister band-aids, plenty of Advil, and my very own tube of Freeze It. I knew from doing the walk in 2006 that my calves would be killing me by the end of the first day, and I also knew I didn’t enjoy using greasy pain relief creams. Sure enough, my calves were screaming at me with every step I took on that first day of walking – step after step after step will bring on that kind of pain quickly! When we were done walking for the day, and all showered, I grabbed my tube of Freeze It and rubbed it all over my calves. Freeze It Gel is amazing – I already mentioned that it’s not greasy at all, and it doesn’t have that old lady smell like the other pain relief gels have. I’m too young to smell like a nursing home!

By the end of the 3rd day, you can see I was a mess. My ligament was hyper extending, and my shin splits were marching to the beat of their own (very slow) drummer. I was rocking an awesome farmers tan, and had dunked my hat in cold water so many times it permanently shrunk. And I’m planning to walk AGAIN next year? Let me tell you, I see a lot more Freeze It in my future! You can use it for a muscle strain, or sore, over exerted muscles, arthritis pain, or for an aching back or neck. So…I can use it during the walk, when my calves revolt against me, and after the walk, when my back aches from camping for 2 days Just rubbing it on feels good – it tingles and it’s warm, and then cool…it’s instant relief!

What do I have to do to get Freeze It to sign up as a walk sponsor??

Ok, so after a few weeks of using the CPAP machine and it working wonders, it started to rub the bridge of Jim’s nose raw. Literally, raw. He mentioned it to his doctor and he had him switch to a new style of mask. ::shakes first at doctor:::

The new mask looked like this:

The big difference between the 1st mask, and the 2nd mask is that the 1st mask completely covered his mouth. The 2nd mask obviously was a little more comfortable for him to wear, but he had to train himself to sleep with his mouth closed, or else he couldn’t breathe. Despite wearing it for a few weeks, I constantly heard his mouth open at night, and then he’d gasp for air. He was also able to snore again, since his mouth wasn’t covered. Obviously, that wasn’t working too well for either of us, and when he saw his doctor last week, he decided to switch back to the old mask.

Last night was his first night of using the original mask again, and all is right in my world, once more.

I mentioned some time ago that Jim had a sleep study done. The end result was that he got a CPAP machine, and what a difference it’s made in our lives! I was worried at first about sleeping with the machine going in the room, because I had heard they were noisy. HA! I shouldn’t have been worried, because as loud as Jim snored, nothing could be worse. In fact, the CPAP is kind of a relaxing white noise, and it’s rhythmic, too. It actually reminds me a bit of waves crashing on a beach. I have no problems falling asleep with it on, and I actually noticed that I can’t fall asleep as quickly if he’s not in bed with me – I guess I’m used to the sound!

Jim wore the mask for a few weeks and noticed a big difference in how he felt during the day. No more falling asleep at red lights for him! His only complaint was that the mask was rubbing the bridge of his nose raw. He mentioned this to the doctor and a new mask was prescribed…and things didn’t go so well from there.

This was what his original mask looked like:

Someone in the family may be going through chemo soon, so I was interested in this medical news site, that happens to have information on cancer. Of interest is the piece about music during chemo, and that listening to music can help with the pain.

The site is a great source of info for all cancer news, as well as other medical topics.

Please keep my sister (and fellow 3-Day walker) as well as my other siblings in your thoughts and prayers. Cheryl’s mom had a surgery today that was to remove a tumor. I just heard an update, and the news is not good. The tumor was much larger than expected and the doctor said it is pancreatic cancer, and there is no treatment that can be done to cure it. Their mom is a strong, healthy woman, and this end result was not what was expected.

When I was slathering on Ben Gay during, and in the days following the 3-Day walk last October, I never stopped to think that what I was doing was unsafe, or that too much Ben Gay could be harmful to me. But that’s exactly what caused 17 year old Arielle Newman’s death. The New York runner used the muscle cream obsessively, and wore pads containing it in addition to rubbing on the cream several times a day. The medical examiner said that Arielle died from Methyl salicylate poisoning. Methyl salicylate is the main ingredient in Ben Gay, and exercise and heat can increase the rate at which it is absorbed into the body.

I was reading some of the gossip magazines I’ve got around here today at lunch, and seeing all of these pictures of super skinny celebs (Nicole Richie looks malnourished) reminded me of a discussion I recently had with some coworkers. Overall, the guys I work with much preferred the body of someone like Catherine Zeta Jones – curvy, nice legs, boobs, and rear, over the body of someone skinny like Paris Hilton or one of those waify looking twins…Mary Kate and Ashley.

I brought up how Kate Winslet’s body was airbrushed (heavily) when she was on the cover of a magazine recently, and she was not a happy camper. Good for her for being proud of her curves and who she REALLY is!

You’ve probably heard of “cancerous” small towns and sick houses. These things happen because businesses treat the area they’re in as a personal dumping ground for contaniments. Businesses have been dumping waste in places you wouldn’t even dream of for years, and it’s making people sick, it’s ruining clear streams and healthy trees, and it’s contributing to the overall air quality of the world we live in. Thankfully, some companies DO care about the effect they’ve got on the environment, and they use EHS Compliance Software (Environmental Health & Safety) to make sure they’re staying in compliance with government regulations.

EHS software implementation is being done in wastewater treatment plans, for airlines, and for companies storing hazardous materials to ensure that outdated chemicals are no longer used (and disposed of properly). This EHS Metrics Software ensures that emissions are low, to ensure that spill prevention is done, and to make sure our environment stays as clean as possible.

I rescheduled my son’s laser surgery. We had planned it for last weekend, and my husband and I were going out of town. I didn’t want to leave him the day after it, so I reschedule it for next month, without looking at my calendar. And yep, I rescheduled it for the day before our next trip out of town. The receptionist at the dentist office is going to think I’m nuts when I call to reschedule this procedure a 3rd time!