#and was left with injuries that made her cancer treatment more difficult

[mememan93]

killing and biting and killing and biting

[fleckcmscott]

Watch What Happens - Chapter 14

Chapter links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Summary: Arthur, an aspiring comedian, has struggled to find normalcy and compassion his entire life. Y/N, a hard-working paralegal and transplant to Gotham, has just been put on a case for the Wayne Foundation. When they meet, unexpected sparks fly.

Chapter warning: Swearing

Words: 2,673

After breakfast and some passionate necking in the doorway, Arthur had left. As he’d disappeared into the elevator, he gave a playful but modest wave and smiled. Coincidentally, the next door neighbor had popped out to get her paper. When Y/N had greeted her, the woman had kept her eyes averted, muttered a quick, "Morning," then hurriedly went back inside.

At first Y/N had found it odd, but then it’d dawned on her. Maybe she needed to learn to keep her voice down.

Chuckling, she’d gone back into the apartment and the bedroom, considering changing the sheets. But, blushing happily, she’d left them alone. He would be over again that night; she’d been sure they'd wind up between them. Then she’d checked the sofa. She hated trying to launder upholstery and wasn't particularly good at it. Luckily, she hadn't seen anything that would have given away their activities - her robe had been in the way.

From the moment he was gone, she knew she was head over heels. Her eighty-seven percent certainty had increased to ninety-six over the course of their morning. He hadn't said much after they'd gotten up, but his actions touched her. After a little prompting, he'd poured coffee for them, then asked how she liked hers. He'd made it with one sugar and a shot of milk. (Seemingly nervous that he'd make it too white, he'd kept asking, "Is that enough?") Then he'd hovered next to her while she cooked. It'd already felt like he belonged there.

The speed with which the comfort of routine had developed between them was startling. In her past relationships, she'd taken things slowly. Jeff, her ex-husband, was someone she'd met as a sophomore in high school. He'd been a college freshman, studying pre-law. It had taken five months before they started dating. He was a good man - they exchanged Christmas cards every year, letting each other know they were  still alive. But they'd gotten married only a month after she'd graduated, before she’d had a chance to develop her own identity.

Y/N decided the biggest distinction between then and the present was that she'd grown-up. Taking care of her father had forced her to mature quickly. She hadn't had time for other people's bullshit and had to figure out how to clearly say yes and no, something she'd struggled with until her late-twenties. She'd had to learn what she did and did not want.

Arthur, even the Arthur who'd been trembling and biting his nails on the couch with his Gotham Department of Health notebook, was what she wanted. It was surprisingly easy to like and love him, not only because he was handsome, kind, and most of what she’d experienced of him had been great. But also because she now knew herself.

Picturing him, while sitting at her desk and trying to work, made the corners of her lips turn up. Nervous excitement and plain happiness caused her to laugh quietly. She felt foolish. She hadn’t giggled like that since she’d been a teenager, lip-syncing badly to the radio with her sister.

She truly was trying to act professionally that morning. But at their usual mid-week meeting with Matt, Patricia passed her a note with the words, “You can’t stop smiling!” written on it. Y/N gave it back, feeling like a girl trying not to get caught by the teacher, with a heart, followed by two questions marks and an exclamation point.

Once the meeting ended, Patricia arched a brow at her. Y/N put her palm to her face, groaning. The note had been terribly out of character. “I just wanted to know what it was like to be girly. Once.” Her embarrassment had quickly faded, though, and she said, “I promise I’ll tell you everything tonight.”

The rest of work went by uneventfully, with her back to preparing the firm's family cases. They were a gallery of dysfunction. There had been a rise in children being taken from their parents due to substance abuse disorder after budget cuts had stopped their treatment. And there was a stack of protection from abuse orders, including pictures of bruises and other injuries. The occasional petty divorce filings were a nice break. She would sometimes reread the best complaints when she needed a chuckle. Though the work wasn’t difficult, by early afternoon she was exhausted and trying not to nod off at her desk.

She left early, then, and made her way to the Gotham Bureau of Corporations to try to find more information on Renew Corp. It turned out it had been registered as a limited liability corporation. As a result, their annual reports and registered agents were openly available. The photocopies she made cost her $2.35 at five cents a page. Sitting on the floor at her coffee table, she reviewed the reports. Most of them were about profits and projects, which didn't interest her. She already knew the addresses they were after. The list of registered agents intrigued her, though. She'd have to go over her plan with Patricia.

But first she had to figure out how to explain what she thought was happening in a way that didn't make her sound crazy. Who would believe that Gotham's largest philanthropic organization was responsible for a third-party harassing poor people instead of helping them? She'd find it hard to believe herself if she hadn't taken a closer look. But she was at a loss as to what other conclusion could be drawn.

~~~~~

When Y/N told Patricia her general theory, she'd been skeptical. But once the shoe boxes of letters tenants were getting were pulled out, Patricia's eyes widened. "You coming over here with the file was a risk," Y/N told her, putting the folder on the table. "It means a lot. I don't want you to do anything else that could get you in trouble."

Patricia shook her head. "I've been there forever. Matt won't ask questions. The only reason you got caught was your big mouth and bad luck."

Taking out a plate for the scones she’d picked up, Y/N smirked in response.

Patricia grabbed one of the pastries and took a bite. "Before we start work, I need to know what on earth is going on with you and this guy you're dating." Despite the exasperation in her voice, she looked amused. "You're glowing."

After putting on the kettle, Y/N boosted herself up on the counter next to the stove. She crossed her ankles. "His name's Arthur Fleck. He's a performer - he's sometimes a clown at the children's hospital. He’s an aspiring stand-up. I think he's a little older than me. Early to mid-forties?"

"This is the-" Patricia made air quotes "'-good looking pie guy,' right?" she asked. "How did you meet?"

Grinning, Y/N went into how they'd kept meeting serendipitously. That he was gentle with her, something she hadn't experienced much in her life. (Given her assertive personality, most people appeared to think she never wanted or needed it.) She flushed at the memories. "I think he's the last gentleman in Gotham. He holds the door open for me. He helps me with my coat." She wished he was there, right now, with his arm slung about her waist, hearing all the compliments she was giving him.

"We talk on the phone every night," Y/N continued, "and I look forward to those few minutes the whole day. He tells me jokes. Even when they're terrible, I love them." Shaking her head, she said, "He sometimes misunderstands what I say and doesn't know how to respond.” Her eyes fluttered shut as she breathed the rest. “He seems a little left footed with the world. But I’ve fallen in love with him, anyways."

It took a few seconds before Patricia spoke. "Already?"

Y/N folded her arms over her chest. "How long did it take before you knew you loved Robert?"

"I knew Robert and I were going to get married after our first date thirty years ago." Patricia stood and stretched her arms. "But sometimes I regret accepting his second invitation."

That prompted a snort from Y/N. "On our second date, I got wine-drunk and had a mini-breakdown on the sofa. Arthur didn't try to take advantage or leave. He just listened and tried to make me feel better."

The tea kettle started whistling, interrupting her train of thought. She hopped off the counter and started filling their cups. "I think the biggest thing we have in common is taking care of ailing parents - he cares for his mother." After sitting at the table, she dunked the teabag a few times. "It's rare to find someone who understands how hard that can be." A smile appeared on her face. "He gets it. He gets me. And I think I get him."

"Tell me three negative things about him," Patricia said.

Y/N cocked her head. "He smokes like a chimney - I don't know how he hasn't gotten cancer already. He's too unsure of himself." She scrunched up her face, remembering how he'd told her to leave after his mother had wounded him. "And he's too self-reliant. He thinks I don't notice, but I do."

Before asking her next question, Patricia took a long sip. "Have you slept with him?"

"Last night,” Y/N answered without hesitation. “This morning," She smirked. "I’m bone-tired, but hopefully tonight."

Patricia stared at her, then burst out laughing. "Jesus, Y/N."

Y/N cracked-up at her reaction, playfully smacking her arm. "Hey, I'm turning forty in April. If I see something I want, I'm going to grab it." She pointed at Patricia to emphasize what she said next. "And I can tell you, in his own words, he did not mind."

"Does he know how you feel?"

Y/N put down her teacup. "It's hard for me to open myself up. I'd shut that off for so long.” A sigh left her as she leaned back against the chair. “I know it doesn't make sense, but going to bed with him is easier than saying anything."

"He sounds like a decent man," Patricia said. "There aren't many in Gotham."

"There aren't many anywhere." After some silence, Y/N furrowed her brow. "He’s wonderful. But I can tell he has difficulties. Or at least he has in the past."

Patricia's eyebrows knit together. "Legal trouble?"

"No, nothing like that." Y/N adjusted her legs. How much information could she share without crossing a line? Maybe disclosing his affliction would be all right - he did have laminated cards he handed out. "He has a neurological condition that makes him laugh. It doesn't happen often, but I've seen it when he's nervous. It's been hard for him." She studied her tea, thinking of his notebook and all his medication.

And she felt shame, remembering how she'd shut him down like a coward when it'd seemed he was going to tell her everything.

"Do you want me to do a background check on him?" Patricia spoke quietly, her concern obvious.

Y/N waved the idea away. "No. There’s no reason.” Then she blushed. “I don’t even know why I told you. But," she smiled, "I appreciate you caring enough to ask." Pointing at the nearby folder, she said, “Now let’s get this over with so I can call him.”

They started on the file, then, sorting through the motions, writing down the day each one was filed with the court. Opening all the letters was a pain in the ass - Y/N was relieved she only got a couple of paper cuts. The dates on those were analyzed, too, and put onto a parallel list next to those of the filings. When they were finished, an hour or so later, they were able to confirm the motions and letters had started during the same time period.

Patricia sipped her tea, shrugging. "It could be a coincidence."

"Of course it could. That's why I got the list of registered agents with Renew Corp." Y/N got up and grabbed the reports she'd copied from the counter next to the stove. "I'm supposed to have the Wayne Foundation tax returns on Friday. I'll see if Renew Corp. is listed anywhere on there."

"Actually, I have a better idea." Patricia crossed her legs and indicated the reports with her pen. "The tax filings will have all the Wayne Foundation employees listed on one of the schedules. You can see if any of the names match the agents on the Renew reports."

Y/N leaned back against the counter. "I can't believe I didn't think of that." Frowning, she mentally went over the dates they’d written. “Did I see that a new motion was filed on Monday? Do you have it?”

“Yeah, we got our copy today. Why?” Patricia dug through the file until finding it, then handed it to her.

“When I looked through the file, nothing indicated a new motion was needed.” She started to scan it. It was a motion to amend the original filing, which meant addresses could either be added or taken off. This one added a few in order to, according to the summary, allow the building of an additional medical clinic wing. She didn’t recognize most of them: a residential building on Cortelyou Road, an empty lot on Sutter Avenue, a commercial area on Rockaway Boulevard. An apartment complex at 225a Anderson Avenue.

Her breath halted. 225a Anderson Avenue.

It made sense. Despite the heaviness forming in her stomach, and her inability to take in any air, it was perfectly logical. Ms. McPhee’s building was on the same block as Arthur’s, on a perpendicular street. Y/N closed her eyes, reaching back to grasp the counter.

“Y/N, what’s wrong?”

Heat rose from Y/N’s shoulders, through her neck, to her face. “Arthur… Arthur’s address is included.” She held out the paper to Patricia. “How am I supposed to tell him?”

Standing, Patricia put her hands on Y/N’s shoulders. “This is going to take months and months. And you’re trying to stop it.”

“I know, but-” Y/N started.

“Does he know the details of what you’re working on?” After Y/N shook her head, Patricia continued. “It’s not going to do any good to say anything.”

“I just told you I love him. How can I-”

The blaring sound of the phone interrupted her. After another couple rings, she went to grab the beige receiver from the wall next to the kitchen entrance. "Hello?"

"Hi. It's Arthur."

Y/N checked the clock - it was after seven. He'd probably expected her to call by now. Pointing at the receiver, she turned around and looked at Patricia. "Arthur, I'm sorry I haven't called yet. I was just talking about you." She took a breath, trying to keep her voice from reflecting the anger simmering inside her. "Why don't you come over now? You can meet Patricia before she-"

His voice was strained when he interrupted her. "No. I can't. Is there anyway you can come to the hospital?"

That was unexpected. She felt worry cross her face. "Are you all right?"

"It's my mother. We just got here. I don't know what's wrong. There was an ambulance when I got home from..." His tone lowered, sounding a little embarrassed. "Can you please come? I don't understand all the paperwork." A pause, then. “I don’t mean to bother you.”

"You’re never a bother. I'll be right there. Which hospital?" Y/N watched as Patricia rose from her chair and started packing up the file she'd brought.

"Gotham General. In the emergency room," he answered.

"I'm on my way." She grabbed her coat and purse as she hung up. "Arthur's mother's in the ER. I gotta grab a cab."

Patricia took her jacket. "I brought my car. I'll take you."

Y/N gave Patricia a good, long hug, something she rarely did. "I owe you. Thank you for helping me."

"Anytime. Arthur's not the only one who's too self-reliant."

Y/N rolled her eyes at Patricia and squeezed her arm as she lead them both into the hallway, then locked the door.

Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve​ @clowndaddyfleck​ @sweet-nothings04​ @stephieraptorr​ @rommies​ @invisiblewispofwhimsey @let-the-stars-fall-in-the-abyss​

[plantseedsofkindness]

Tracy Meunier - #plant seeds of kindness

Blog Post 1 August 30, 2020

So what do you do when they tell you that you have brain cancer?

I started my career as Executive Assistant to the County Manager (thank you Mr. Allen Charles for having faith in my abilities!) on August 2, 1984.  It was 30+ degrees outside. After work I bought a fan for our 'little house on the prairie'.... Neil & I celebrated!

Flash forward 36 years - and a career where I was fortunate to serve the community that has given our families such amazing support!

As an accountant, I've always tended to listen to advice - go to professional development sessions focused on building equity......save up for retirement...start a career that allows you to grow!

I made the decision to retire in early 2018. My dad was going through his cancer journey (prostrate cancer that spread in August 2018, resulting in him needing to be hospitalized). My siblings & I had an amazing opportunity to reconnect on a much deeper level as adult children with a man that we admired and adored more than words can describe. And so the new journey began - 11 months at the Barrhead Healthcare Centre and 5 months at Shepherd's Care. The goal remained constant - one day at a time, and to be thankful for each day we had together. We were so fortunate to appreciate the next 496 days together!!!

At Dad's celebration of life in January 2020, Rev. David Pype spoke of the 'pillars of life':

- to have purpose

- to love

- to be loved (ie. allow yourself to let others help you, which can be difficult)

- to have hope

Flash forward to June 1, 2020 - my new retirement date!

 In mid May, 2020, when we were moving cattle to pasture, I started to get dizzy. Having been diagnosed in the fall of 2019 with osteoporosis, I did what any 58 year old would do - I 'google-dr'd it and self-diagnosed as having vertigo!

Because my family doctor had moved away from the community in the fall of 2019, I needed to find a new doctor. Imagine what he must have thought when I told him I might have vertigo!

He was patient with me & suggested we try some tests first. That was my 1st day of retirement - June 1, 2020.

As the week progressed, the dizziness got worse. That Saturday, I changed my self-diagnosis to a wax build-up. I drove myself to out-patients at the hospital. Only problem was that my ears were clear. The doctor suggested a brain scan.

This brought us to June 8 and a call from the Westlock Healthcare Centre. The first scan led them to call in of the doctor for what appeared to be a possible stroke. A second scan was done and results sent to my family doctor.

The next day, June 9, the doctor's office called and asked Neil & I to come meet with the doctor the next day.

 To say the news was crappy, disappointing and terrible is an understatement!!!!

 The C-T scan showed a growth of approximately 4 cm x 6 cm. The doctor had been consulting with a neurosurgeon from the University of Alberta Hospital. I was booked for an MRI on June 15.

Our world as we knew it felt like it was falling apart! We needed to search for our purpose! Survival mode kicked in!

And so, on June 15, 2020 I had an MRI, which confirmed the tumor. Surgery was scheduled for June 17.

 What type of cancer is it? It's called gliobastoma multiform (GBM for short). It's a terminal brain cancer. It's classified as a primary brain tumour - starting within the brain itself. It’s not thought to be caused by inherited genetics or environment - just bad luck! It is incurable and one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.

Given the stark reality of our 'retirement time' together - there's 1 thing that cannot be taken away - HOPE!!!!!!!! Hope for research - Hope for successful trials! 

It's ok to be feel cheated. To be mad, sad, angry. It's NOT ok to have pity parties.

 There's a reason we are faced with the challenges that lie before us.

We need to figure it out - to find our purpose and persevere!

On June 17 I underwent surgery to remove the 'bulk' of the tumor, deep in the frontal lobe of my brain. The surgery itself caused a “retraction injury” to the part of my brain controlling movement on my left side- fortunately after a few weeks of working hard at rehab with the wonderful physio and occupational therapy team at the Barrhead Hospital I was able to use my left arm and leg again!

 Over the summer I have been having radiation treatment paired with chemotherapy – the gold standard of treatment for GBM.

As of August 30, I have 7 more treatments left, before I get to ring the 'bell of glory', signifying that treatment is done (watch for pics on Facebook!)

September 2020 will see a break from treatments; late October/early November will be another MRI to see how the tumour responded to the treatment and map out the next steps.

Unfortunately, the tumor will re-appear – we just don’t know when. Currently, the median time is approximately 14.5 months. However, as mentioned above, we remain hopeful for some positive results of newer trials!

Others who have had GBM include Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip (who greatly advanced the conversation about GBM and helped to 'normalize' it), Presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Senators John McCain, and Ted Kennedy.

Why am I doing a blog? I'm hoping to normalize the conversation about cancer.

It's ok to talk about it. It may help to find our purpose. Although it’s a terrible disease, it doesn’t need to rob us of who we are or what our purpose is.

 As I reflect upon my life, my family, my cancer diagnosis, there are 5 special songs/video’s I ask you to view:

Martina Mcbride In my Daughter's Eyes –

For my beautiful daughter, Sara, who wrote her Royal College exam in psychiatry on August 26. Sara has dedicated her life to serve others - my heart literally busts with a mother's pride! When I received my diagnosis, Sara and my family put their lives on hold to help me. I am forever grateful. I am excited for them to grow in their lives!

 2.     Josh Groban - You raise me up.

For my kindest, gentlest son, Tyler. Tyler is an amazing son and human being. I am so proud of the man you've become!! You have so much love to share!

3.     The Prayer (One World at Home version) - Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Lady Gaga, Lang Lang, John Legend

In the same manner that psalms are our poems to God, this song is like a psalm to my siblings (and our theme song to 'Lindquist Lane' at our family cemetery in Mellowdale).

4. Courage - Tragically Hip.

Since my diagnosis, I've developed a link with Gord Downie. I am appreciative of his courage and gratefulness. He was a great poet that taught us lots! 

5. I Will Remember You -     Sarah McLachan

This goes without saying!

What’s the name of the blog?

#plant seeds of kindness

 Why the name of the blog?

As far as I go back, my family is a family of farmers. 

I am extremely proud of that! 

As farmers we plant, we grow, we experience success, we experience failure, we put ourselves ‘out there’, we learn resiliency.

Most importantly – WE NEVER GIVE UP!!!!!!

What's next? I’m hoping to be able to continue on with posts after treatments are done – stay tuned!!!!! 

#plant seeds of kindness 

 I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

[pllandcompany]

You GUYS. Sanders Sides Ice Skating AU? Sanders Sides Ice Skating AU.

Do I know anything about ice skating? Nope. Am I gonna write about it anyway? Absolutely. Google is a thing, right?

(please don’t ask me what possessed me to come up with this, the answer i don’t know, just let me be great)

Warnings: talk of injuries, performance anxiety, mention of illegal/dangerous performance enhancing practices, disordered eating/body image issues, past minor character death. illness mention, deceit is included in this

Also, just to be clear, the boys all train together on the same team. Under a cut because this 100% ran away from me.

Logan:

at 24, he’s considered to be what the team lovingly calls a lifer, meaning that skating is all he knows and all he’s ever done since he was born

truth be told, his former NBA cheerleader mother and NFL coach father forced him into several sports when he was small and this was the only one he showed any potential in

spoiler alert: they’re not thrilled that this was the only one he was good at

but they wanted their son to be an athlete so skating it is

fairly well known but doesn’t even acknowledge his own fame

known around the arena for being sort of intense and standoffish leading to him not always being well-liked

also weirdly brilliant? he frequently goes on rants about the physics behind skating that never fail to shock his teammates

despite being a frequent silver/gold medalist, Logan always felt like his parents were constantly disappointed in him so he vowed to train so hard that he would make his first Olympics by age 18

he missed his goal by one tenth of a point and had to wait until 22 to qualify again

also his parents didn’t even attend the competition where he qualified

it doesn’t bother him one bit (just kidding, he is Bothered)

very rigid with his diet and training regimen, sometimes to an unhealthy level depending on how well he believes he’s performing (roman and patton are Very Worried sometimes)

struggles with his height and wingspan, at 6′0 he’s tall for a skater and somewhat lanky which makes certain technical elements difficult for him 

only at first though, when he meets a challenge, it becomes his ultimate goal to master it

ever the perfectionist, he will practice until he nearly collapses and often has to be dragged off the ice and forced to stop obsessing

(the occasional lack of adequate nutrition and/or hydration doesn’t have anything to do with him collapsing. nope. he’s fine.)

his technique is mostly impeccable but he’s a cerebral skater; often criticized for visibly “thinking” while skating and not emoting much

Roman:

23, total prodigy skater, also a lifer

both parents were Olympic skaters; they were actually part of two separate pairs when they met and quickly became both life and work partners

now Roman’s father coaches their team and his mother acts as his manager

very charismatic and magnetic, quickly became a public figure after his second Olympic gold medal

his mother takes every advantage of her son’s charm, constantly signing him up for guest roles and talk shows and commercials without consulting him first

he loves the attention though

sometimes

sometimes he just wants to skate

Roman’s father isn’t as impressed with his antics; he’s constantly on him to stay focused 

the other teammates either genuinely love him or they love him in person and gossip about him in secret

he knows some of their adoration is fake but it’s fine, he doesn’t care what they think (he cares a great deal)

5′8 but very muscular, especially in his legs and shoulders 

has been criticized for his broader body type but he doesn’t care; he loves that he’s Thicc

judges still love him though, he’s a very powerful skater, his jumps are explosive and very accurate and he’s always very connected to the music

he’s always looking for the next challenge, the next risky move or flashy element

at times he can be hard on himself to always outdo his last performance which has cost him his physical health at times; he spent the year leading up to his second Olympics battling a knee injury that almost sidelined him

he and Logan have a friendly/unfriendly competition going on as they tend to consistently trade places with each other for 1st and 2nd place on the podium

Virgil:

21, a newer addition to the team

wicked talented, possibly even more so than Roman

ask him though and he’d tell you he’s the worst one in the rink (which infuriates Logan considering Virgil achieved the very goal he couldn’t)

has severe performance anxiety and will often panic so much before competition that he’s physically sick

5′6 with a slight build; can jump wicked high and very clean lines

his teammates call him the Shrimp because of how short he is

(roman used to call him that too until he found out how much Virgil hated the nickname)

raised by a single parent, his mother worked three jobs so she could afford skating lessons and new boots as he grew

qualified for his first Olympics at just 18, won bronze and a sponsorship that finally took the pressure off his mother

now he wants gold but not for himself

his mother was diagnosed with cancer and the treatments are very expensive on top of the financial demands of his career

he knows if he makes more money, he can provide for her the way she provided for him

when he skates, it’s either damn near flawless or a shaky, inconsistent mess, there is no in-between

fortunately there are people around him to help his anxiety and keep him focused

like

Patton:

25; came to the arena shortly after Logan but unlike Lo was very quickly accepted

he loves everybody

everybody loves him

the other teammates call him Old Man, Dad, or Papa Patton because he’s always looking out for everyone

whether it’s making sure they stay hydrated or nourished or telling them to rest when they need to, he’s always looking out for his skate family

5′9 and somewhat muscular but still lean

not the most technically consistent skater but always receives high praise for his performance and artistry

one of the few skaters who actually loves the dance classes they attend and really gets into them (this confuses Logan greatly)

came to competitive skating a bit later in life, took more time to train and test than average

despite his age and experience, he actually has the least amount of medals among the four and has yet to win Olympic gold

is seemingly unbothered by that fact (this confuses Roman greatly)

also never appears to be nervous or stressed about competitions (this confuses Virgil greatly)

when asked about his calm and cheerful demeanor even in the face of disappointment (by Roman) 

or his ability to display every emotion in the music so readily on his face (by Logan) 

or how he manages not to puke for hours before a big skate (by Virgil), he answers with this

when he was nine, both of his parents were killed by a drunk driver on their way to see him skate

he almost quit skating after that happened

(if he’s honest, he almost quit everything after that happened)

but after the grief settled slightly, he made a promise to himself that no matter what, every time he stepped on the ice, he would skate for them

every turn, every spin, even every practice session is for them and whatever happens doesn’t matter because he knows that his family is watching over him and they are so proud

having discovered a new level of respect for their teammate, the others find themselves complaining much less around him now

Deceit (known as Dimitri):

22, not a member of Roman’s dad club, of Russian descent but skates for Team Canada 

started showing up in competitions shortly after Virgil joined the team

immediately started crushing everybody, knocking Roman and Logan down to silver or bronze and Virgil and Patton off the podium completely

5′8 and the ideal build for a figure skater, judges go nuts over his lines and speed

deadly accurate jumper

the dude honestly seems almost perfect

Roman is Frustrated. Logan is Jealous. Virgil and Patton are Suspicious.

it’s Patton who finds out the chink in Dimitri’s sequined armor

he’s been blood doping for months in secret

but not for selfish reasons

he too was orphaned at a young age but unlike Patton, he was not the only child left behind

he has a sister and two brothers who he is the primary caretaker of

and almost every penny he earns is spent on their schooling, their healthcare, their overall well-being

he has to be the best in order for their family to survive

which is why Patton is sworn to secrecy

if this got out, he’d be done and so would his three siblings

Patton is Very Worried because doping is hella dangerous

but Dimitri will be fine

right?

I’m sure this has been done before but I don’t care, I’m in love with this concept and I can’t wait to write more.

Tagged: @ziallwarrior @apologieslogan @logansmolbean @crofters-jam @asylia5911 @ab-artist @band-be-boss-blog @unbefuckinglieveable @flyingfreeyt @thecatchat @thefallendog @backatthebein

[lupine-publishers-sjo]

Lupine Publishers | Spontaneous Pneumothorax and Cavitated Lesions as First Manifestation of Metastatic Lung Adenocarcinoma to Ovary and Peritoneum in Young Patient?

Lupine Publishers | Journal of Otolaryngology Impact Factor

Abstract

We present the report of a case of lung cancer of atypical manifestation with important challenges in its diagnosis in a young                    woman who came in with pneumothorax tension, cavitated lung lesions, ovarian, hepatic and peritoneal masses and a biopsy                    compatible with pulmonary adenocarcinoma, whose initial approach raised the differential diagnosis of a tumor of gynecological                origin. A brief literature review was conducted.

Keywords: Pneumothorax; Pulmonary Cavitation; Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma; Ovarian Metastasis; TTF1

               Introduction

A 28-year-old woman who consulted the emergency                    department of the National Cancer Institute (Instituto Nacional                    de Cancerología) for a 7-month history of asthenia, adinamia,                    progressive dyspnea, low cough, loss of 17 kilograms of weight                    and the appearance of a painful mass at the level of the iliac fossa                    and right flank. Initially studied as an outpatient with presumptive                    diagnosis of granulomatous disease with negative serial baciloscopy                    and chest x-ray showing right atelectasis + right pneumothorax.                    In the tomography multiple solid nodules some with hypodense                    center involving both pulmonary fields, caverns of thickened walls                    in both apices, posterior segments of the lower lobes and upper                    segments of the lower lobes. In the abdominal tomography there                    is presence of mass surrounding uterus of 185*100*85 mm of                    density of soft tissues, which takes the contrast IV and cystic area                    of 85 mm in its right aspect of probable ovarian origin and hepatic                    compromise with apparent peritoneal sowings. Positive tumor                    markers AFP 1.2, ACE 392, CA 125 257. A right thoracostomy, fibro                    bronchoscopy with cultures for M. negative tuberculosis and biopsy                    of pelvic mass that reported lesion characterized by cords and                    neuroglandular formation of epithelioid cells of neoplastic aspect                    with a marked desmoplasic response were initially performed. For                    which the diagnosis of metastatic ovarian cancer to lung, liver and                peritoneum is made and send to initiate management.

               Case Report

Upon admission to the institution, pulmonary thromboembolism                    is ruled out and extensive pulmonary parenchymatous involvement                    (Figure 1(a)) is confirmed by nodular areas, most of them with                    central cavitation and frosted glass halo, which are accompanied                    by paramilitary consolidations, making it necessary to consider                    neoplastic metastatic involvement with cavitation, less likely                    infectious (angioinvasive aspergillosis). At abdominal level,                    extensive infiltrative involvement of the peritoneum, hepatic                    subcapsular with extension to the parenchyma in segment 6,                    gastrohepatic ligament, transverse mesocolon, descending                    mesocolon. Heterogeneous bilateral adnexal masses of neoplastic                    aspect (Figure 1(b&c)). Scarce ascites. We reviewed pathology                    material of ovarian mass biopsy with report of adenocarcinoma                    with reactive immunopurified for CK7, TTF1 and negative for GATA                    3, WT1, RE, CDX2, PAX 8 and CK20, we added NAPSIN which was positive, confirming lung metastatic origin (Figure 2(a&b)). The new                    fibro bronchoscopy with biopsy had immunohistochemistry that                    showed reactivity in tumor cells for TTF-1 and Napsin with absence                    of reactivity for p40, RE and RP. Compatible with compromise by                    non-small cell carcinoma, favors acinar pattern primary pulmonary                    adenocarcinoma. Less than 10% of all lung carcinomas debut with                    radiological cavitations, considered secondary to tumor necrosis by                    ischemia and/or bronchial obstruction [1]. Tokito et al. presented a                    cohort of lung cancer patients, with an incidence of cavitated lesions                    of 5.5% meanwhile in the Sing series this report is much higher                    near 9.6%. In both cohorts it was more frequent to find cavitations                    in men, over 60 years old, ex-smokers and with squamous cell                    histology [2].                

Figure 1: (a) Chest X ray; (b) Axial computed tomography with extensive pulmonary parenchymatous involvement.                    (c) Computed tomography of the abdomen and pelvis with mass surrounding uterus.

Figure 2: (b) Immunohistochemistry of Napsine A in lung tissue;                    (b) Immunohistochemistry of TTF1 in ovarian tissue.

Figure 3 Chest X ray.

a greater extent induced by oncologic management are infection                    and hemoptysis, very infrequently, the presence of spontaneous                    pneumothorax which is estimated between 0.03 and 0.05% of                    primary lung cancer with a poor prognosis [3,4]. Among 1200                    patients with spontaneous pneumothorax between 1970 and                    2007, 37 (3%) had lung cancer. In all patients, the pneumothorax                    occurred on the same side of the carcinoma. The main cause of                    spontaneous pneumothorax was rupture of a necrotic tumor                    nodule or necrosis of subpleural metastases (21 ptes)., As well as                    the communication between the bronchus and the pleural cavity,                    producing a bronchopleural fistula that results in pneumothorax                    [5]. Spontaneous pneumothorax in the context of lung cancer                    occurs in 75% of cases as an initial manifestation and the remaining                    25% during the course of the disease in patients with the known                    diagnosis, sometimes after the onset of management [6]. In this                    case, the first clinical manifestation of oncological disease was the                    presence of dyspnea secondary to spontaneous pneumothorax,                    infectious causes were ruled out and required surgical intervention                    with subsequent need for high oxygen flow. The main sites of                    lung cancer metastasis are pleura, brain, bone and liver. Ovarian                    metastases are rare, accounting for 5% of all ovarian cancers.                    The main tumors that metastasize to the ovary are from the                    gastrointestinal tract: colon and gastric, or originated in the breast.                    Lung cancer alone is the cause of these metastases by 0.3% [7].                    The metastases of an adenocarcinoma of the lung are difficult to                    distinguish from a primary carcinoma of the ovary. Although there is                    no specific lung marker, TTF-1 can be used to discriminate between                    primary pulmonary and ovarian. TTF-1 is positive in approximately                    63% of lung cancers [8]. Irving and Young reported 32 cases of                    metastatic to ovarian lung carcinoma in women aged 26 to 76. A                    history of lung carcinoma was documented in 53% of cases (17 out                    of 32), with detection of ovarian involvement at an interval of one                    year. In 10 cases (31%) ovary and lung occurred synchronously, in 5                    (16%) ovarian tumors were detected 26 months before lung injury.                    The most frequent histologic subtype was small cell carcinoma                    44%, adenocarcinoma in 34% and 16% in large cell carcinoma                    in 16% of patients. One third had bilateral presentation and the                    most frequent morphological characteristics were: multinodular                    growth, necrosis, lymphovascular invasion with rare involvement                    of the ovarian surface [9]. The management decision in this                    case was made considering the presence of pulmonary visceral                    crisis, the patient’s age, her ECOG and the high risk of rapidly                    deteriorating. Chemotherapy with palliative intention was started                    with carboplatin paclitaxel with a good clinical response in the two                    initial cycles, with which the requirement of supplementary oxygen                    and control of dyspnea was reduced. 40 days later, the patient was                    admitted with subite dyspnea of 3 days of evolution. with chest                    x-ray (Figure 3) that evidences left pneumothorax, ventilatory                failure and dies despite rescue procedure.

               Conclusion

Patients with cavitated tumors develop serious complications                    during or after chemotherapy or concomitance such as infection or                    massive hemoptysis. There are no reports of safety and efficacy of                    the use of chemotherapy in patients with advanced lung cancer with                    cavitated lesions. Some retrospective reports that have evaluated                    toxicity in this group of patients in the a 9% study developed                    hemoptysis, considering it as acceptable toxicity for this group of                    patients. Sandler et al reported that 30% of patients treated with                    carboplatin+paclitaxel+bevacizumab presented hemoptysis vs                    6% of those without cavitations. In our case, taxane and platinumbased chemotherapy were initiated while obtaining studies of                    EGFR, ALK, Ros 1 and PDL1 to optimize management, with the                    initial cycles the palliation objective was achieved. However, the                    subsequent occurrence of pneumothorax is a possible consequence                    of the effect of cytotoxic treatment on existing lung lesions. It is not                    clear from the literature what would be the safest scheme, dose or                    frequency for this population to avoid the development of this type                    of complications. It is necessary to increase the reporting of these                cases in order to try to elucidate their management.

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[zendelai]

Life Update

Aka: How I went from one of the darkest places in my life to one of the best in the span of almost exactly a year.

(This might be long, so continued below the cut)

I’m writing this thinking that no one (except for maybe my close friends on here) will read it, but my hope is that it will provide some encouragement to someone in a dark place that there’s a chance for hope, even when you’re feeling at your worse. 

(TW: Talk of death upcoming)

Let’s go back to about a year ago in my life. My boyfriend’s mom was in the hospital, and she wasn’t making it out this time. The cancer won. I won’t go into details, but I will say this: cancer isn’t pretty. It takes and it takes, and to this day, her loss is a dark cloud over our lives. Grief brings bad days when you least want them or expect them. I was both inside and outside the grief, being there through every step from her diagnosis to her treatments, and I had my own grief, but I still wasn’t in the family. I just did my best to help all of them with every part of myself that I could. 

About two weeks after her loss, while we tried to get ourselves back into our normal routines of our lives, I injured myself at the gym. At the time it felt like a small tweak, something I thought I’d be over in a day. It ended up being a lower back injury that bothered me for almost 8 months and made me entirely re-evaluate my approach to training. Although it was good in the end, it lead to endless days of frustration with my training and a lot of ups-and-downs when I’d think it was getting better, and then realize it wasn’t. I’d lost the gym as an outlet to my grief. Being able to go to the gym is a privilege in itself, one I’ve since checked and reflected on and become more grateful for, but it was still a coping mechanism gone for me. 

Around that time, my partner and I made a difficult but important decision: I had to pay off my credit card debt. Spending at times had been therapeutic to me, and cutting it down to almost zero while taking on any side jobs I could (and eventually taking on a second job) weighed on me. I want to reflect on my privilege and know that many live like this out of necessity, and not out of choice like I did. But I still struggled with it, and often. I began to work 60 hour weeks (because my part-time job never respected my availability), plus freelancing and podcasting -- some weeks, when I was podcast editing, I was doing much closer to 80 hours. Having the two jobs and freelance writing on the side and having a podcast and trying to fit fitness in when I could... sacrifices started to have to be made. My training went on the backburner, again. My partner and I found ourselves spending significantly less time together. Time with friends and my family was infrequent. Sleep suffered.

While I was going through this money madness, I was looking for a replacement full-time position. I knew I wouldn’t have to work the two jobs to pay off my debt if I just had a better paying full-time position (and I was ready for something with more upward growth -- I had been in my full-time job for over 5 years and the raises and upward growth were non-existent). At first I had hope -- I got a couple responses! Even an interview or two! But nothing worked out. And it kept not working out. Every job that I really wanted when I applied I didn’t hear back from, everything else was too big of a sacrifice (far commute, pay cut, industry or position that I didn’t really want). I started to feel like I was trying to claw myself out of a hole using only my bare hands. No matter how much dirt I kicked aside, I couldn’t seem to get my way out. By November of last year, I was grieving, I was broke, I had no job prospects, I was spending so much time at work and I was already weak from a previous injury so my lifting sucked, I barely saw my partner and my pets. 

But things began to look up.

Mid-last year, we bought a house. Which was a thrilling and terrifying decision (and the catalyst for my paying off my debt). After living in a basement apartment for years, we had a little space of our own. With a fenced in back yard for the dog, and a garage for us to build a gym in. 11 hour days are made more tolerable by coming home to a space that is yours, that you love (even if you had to buy a house in a Very White town with a neighbour that flagrantly sells pot and loudly argues with his girlfriend). For five years, I felt stuck in my debt, in my job, in my crappy basement apartment, and this was the first breath of air for us.

But January 2019 was when things started to change, and quickly.

Summer of 2018, my podcast was asked to be featured guests at Podcon. Which was... the most wild and wonderful offer that I could ever recall. It was so wild that when I was struggling, I wouldn’t look to that for positive light because I was certain they invited us accidentally and would soon realize we didn’t deserve to be there or it would somehow get cancelled because things that great didn’t happen to people like me. But in January it DID happen, and it was every bit as wonderful -- and more -- than I could’ve imagined. I got to meet my heroes, and learn from them, and they’re all 100x more incredible than you could imagine. All of them. And we had a live show in front of 100-150 people and let me tell you, having people cheer when you’re introduced on stage is... one of the most wild experiences of my life, one I’ll never forget, one I am eternally grateful for. 

Shortly thereafter, I paid off my debt. The endless hours, desperate saving, doing ridiculous things like online surveys and freelance articles about plumbing all came together and I did it. 

The ball kept rolling.

I had interviewed for a position in summer of 2018 that I desperately wanted that was in the fitness industry. I didn’t get the position (and later found out it went to someone who was simply more qualified than me), but at the very end of last year, the manager contacted me again asking if I was looking for a position. He took me out to lunch to discuss it, and three weeks ago, he offered me a job. With a company I adore, in an industry I'm passionate about. Today is my last day at my old position, and I’m leaving on a more positive note than I could have imagined. I only have 2 shifts left at my part-time position. Next week I start at the new job, and I’m unbelievably excited. I’m not even nervous. Maybe once you meet all your heroes and in the same weekend go on stage in front of 100+ people and play D&D everything else seems easier, or maybe I’m not nervous because I’m completely confident that it’s the right thing to do. I haven’t felt so sure of anything in a long time. 

Two days after I got the job offer, my boyfriend -- now fiance -- proposed on our seven year anniversary. I think my response was “what the fuck” but it was such a joyful blur I can’t even recall fully. 

Swiftly and fully, everything in my life came together. 

My intention isn’t to brag. My intention is to remind you that even when you’re in the darkest part of your life -- when you feel like everything’s going wrong, when you feel like you’re working for nothing, when you feel like the hamster toiling on the wheel that turns but goes nowhere, there is hope. There is goodness on the horizon. Sometimes you have to wait for it, and sometimes that wait is longer than you’d like.

Persist.

[letterfromtrenwith]

Prescription Passion - Ch. 4

Carolight Hospital AU

Ch 4: Nobody has a good day, and Caroline hears some hospital gossip.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

~

There are a number of studies that have found that people living with a range of potentially visible skin conditions can experience social anxiety, usually accompanied by lowered quality of life as a consequence of avoidant coping.

Caroline sighed – she’d read that sentence four times now. She let the issue of the British Journal of Dermatology fall shut on her desk and put her head in her hands. Today had really drained her; she’d been up late with Uncle Ray after he’d suffered a hypoglycaemic episode, and had been reluctant to leave him this morning, although he’d insisted he was all right. He probably was – he usually kept his diabetes under very good control – but she couldn’t help worrying.

Even if Uncle Ray had wanted her to stay, she probably wouldn’t have been able to – her appointment schedule that morning had been absolutely jam-packed, with both private and NHS patients, and she’d barely had five minutes to herself. When she was supposed to be having lunch, she’d been called in alongside her boss, Dr Bodrugan, to see a woman who had suffered severe burns in a house fire. She’d been transferred from the Royal Cornwall to see Dr Bodrugan specifically, as he was an expert in treating such injuries.  Those kinds of cases were always difficult – the patient would require numerous surgeries and months if not years of treatment.

On top of all that, while she’d been trying to catch up on her paperwork this afternoon she’d got a call from the oncology department asking her to pass on her files on a patient – his skin cancer had metastasised to his bones. He was only in his 20s and the type of cancer he had progressing in that way was extremely rare. That had thrown her completely off – she’d tried catching up on her reading as a bit of a distraction, but it was certainly no help, especially as that same issue contained an article on the treatment of melanoma.

No, this was no good; she needed a break. A trip down to the coffee shop for something creamy and fattening should do the trick; it was probably not the best idea to have a Starbucks in the lobby of a hospital, but Caroline was eternally grateful for it. As she waited at the end of the counter for her venti caramel macchiato she heard a familiar voice order a chai latte, and turned to see Dwight Enys standing at the till, arms folded, looking about as worn down as she felt. His hair was beginning to flop over his forehead in a really quite charming way. He wore his dark blue scrubs, and she might have admired how well the colour suited him if she hadn’t noticed the splatter of what looked like blood up the left sleeve. Caroline had done her time in A & E as a student and she didn’t envy those who had made it their specialty. The cases she’d dealt with today were nothing compared to what Dwight saw on a much more regular basis.

“Oh, hello.” Dwight spotted her as he headed down to wait, too. She hadn’t seen him for a few days, since they’d observed the OOKP together and had that funny little talk about Horace afterwards. Caroline had wondered what on Earth she’d been thinking, inviting him to come and watch an unusual eye surgery like it was a date or something. As fascinating as the procedure had been, she’d paid far too much attention to him sitting next to her, his knee touching hers, the warm, masculine scent of him.

“Hi. How are you?” She paused, glancing at the blood on his sleeve. “Or should I not ask?”

“What – Oh, God.” He rubbed ineffectually at the already dried stain. He lowered his voice. “Stabbing.”

“Jesus. How are they?” He shook his head, glancing down at the floor, and she fought the urge to put her hand on his arm – she didn’t know if he would appreciate it. “I’m sorry.”

“It happens.” He didn’t sound as casual as his words suggested. Most doctors developed a thick skin about death and suffering. It was necessary to keep from breaking down on a regular basis, but only the truly callous could remain completely unaffected.

“Do you – do you want to talk about it?” Their drinks had arrived, and Caroline inclined her head toward a table.

“No.” The abrupt refusal prickled at her, until Dwight shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound rude – I’d just rather not talk about…that. Anything else, though.”

They sat at the table, gripping their cups. Neither seemed willing to speak at first, until they both tried to at the same time. They laughed, and this broke the tension.

“You first.” Caroline said, taking a sip of her drink. The sickly sweetness absolutely hit the spot.

“Bad day for you, too?”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like you drink those on a regular basis.” Caroline chuckled.

“Well diagnosed, Dr Enys.” Dwight smiled. Even still a little sad, he had a lovely smile. She told him about her cancer patient and her burns patient. He was an excellent listener, his face kind and sympathetic –she was sure he would be calming presence to patients in A & E, reassuring them at what was probably the most frightening time of their lives. When she’d finished, there was a short silence and she realised she’d been talking for quite a long time. She almost began to apologise, but he began to speak quietly.

“He was 20. Some sort of fight in a pub.” Caroline realised he meant the stabbing victim he’d been treating.

“In the middle of the day?” Truro wasn’t a crime-free utopia, but someone getting stabbed in a pub in broad daylight wasn’t exactly in the usual course of things.

“Yeah. Not the sort of thing I expected to see very much of back in the UK.” He looked down at his now nearly empty cup. What sort of things had he seen while working with MSF? Caroline lifted her hand, intending to place it over one of his but pulled back suddenly when he abruptly stood.

“I’d, er, I’d better get back. My shift’s over, but I still need to finish up some paperwork. Thanks for the, um, the talk.”

“I think I did most of the talking.” He smiled again, gently.

“Yes, that’s what I meant.” He paused.  “I think Verity and the others are going out again on Friday, see you then, maybe?”

“Yes, see you.” He turned and headed out, stopping to drain the paper cup and dump it in the bin at the entrance. Maybe it was just Caroline’s imagination but, as he was about to go through the swing doors into the main part of the hospital, she was sure he stopped to glance back at her. 

~

“Hey.” Elizabeth looked up, startled, smiling when she saw Caroline.

“Oh, hello. Sorry. Miles away there.”

“You okay?” Fancying a change, Caroline had gone out to a local sandwich shop to fetch something for lunch, and found Elizabeth sitting on one of the benches in the grounds, looking lost in thought. She was wearing her dark pink scrubs, glasses shoved up on top of her head.

“Yes. No. It’s just – one of my patients went into premature labour this morning. 25 weeks.”

“Oh, my…” Caroline rubbed her friend’s back gently.  

“I’ve dealt with premature babies before, but it never gets any easier. She’s just so small, and we hook them up to all these machines, and the parents…”

“But chances of survival are quite good at 25 weeks, aren’t they?”

“Fairly.” Elizabeth sighed. “But that’s not much comfort to her parents. If I tell them there’s a 70% chance of their baby surviving, all they can hear is the 30% chance she won’t. It’s mostly out of my hands now, really, she’s in the NICU, but…”

“They remind you of Valentine, don’t they?” Elizabeth’s son had been premature – nothing like as early as that, but he’d had to spend a couple of weeks in hospital being monitored. Caroline hadn’t known Elizabeth then, but she’d seen the sadness in both her and George’s eyes on the rare occasions they spoke about it. Valentine was a happy, healthy boy now, but it would have been truly distressing at the time, especially for two doctors; watching their baby suffer but being unable to do anything for him.

“Yes and no.” Elizabeth glanced down and Caroline was suddenly reminded of talking to Dwight the other day, the sadness on his handsome face. She shook herself, she shouldn’t be thinking of some guy while she was comforting her friend.

“Have you seen George?”

“He’s in a long surgery. I’ll talk to him later.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Anyway, how are you? How’s Ray? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s good. He had a hyper a few days ago, but everything’s back to normal now.”

“Oh good, I’m glad.” Caroline’s Uncle Ray was an old friend of Elizabeth’s late father – it was how the two women had met. When Caroline had come to St Neot’s to take up her registrar position, Ray had invited Elizabeth and George to dinner to introduce them. Caroline had initially been embarrassed by this – her Uncle helping her to make friends like she was a child – but she’d liked them both immensely and they’d quickly become close. She was even joint godmother to little Ursula, who Elizabeth had fallen pregnant with not long after they’d met. “Don’t let me keep you. I should be getting back, anyway, I’ve got a patient being induced this afternoon.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I will be. Thank you, Caroline.” Elizabeth reached over to embrace her, and Caroline hugged her friend back tightly, but hissed as she pulled back, pain darting between her shoulder blades. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. Just spent all morning bending over the treatment table.”

“Why don’t you go down and see Morwenna? I know she’s free this afternoon, a couple of her sports patients had to rearrange because their match schedule was changed last minute.”

“Do you think she’d mind me just dropping in?” Morwenna Chynoweth was Elizabeth’s cousin, and a recently qualified physiotherapist. A very skilled one at that.

“Not at all. I’ll send her a text. See you later.” With a squeeze of her hand, Elizabeth was gone. Caroline shifted on the seat, and groaned again at the ache in her back. Perhaps a visit to Morwenna wasn’t a bad idea, after all.

“Come in!” Just after getting back to her office, Caroline had received a text from Morwenna saying she could drop by any time after 3. So, after finishing up her own early afternoon schedule, each appointment making the niggling pain across her shoulders steadily worse, here she was. At Morwenna’s invitation, she pushed open the door of the treatment room, but found that the physio was not alone.

“Oh, sorry!”

“No, it’s okay, Rosina was just off.” Rosina was a pretty young blonde in a nurse’s scrubs. Clearly, Caroline wasn’t the only staff member who’d taken advantage of Morwenna’s free afternoon. Like the dermatology department, the allied health clinic was partially private but, as a small perk, hospital staff could receive treatments for free or at a reduced rate.

“Thanks, Morwenna, it really does feel better.” Rosina stood and headed out, giving Caroline a friendly smile.

“Consider getting it checked out though, will you?”

“I will!” The young nurse slipped out the door, heading along the corridor. Caroline knew better than to ask what they were talking about. Morwenna would keep her patients’ business as private as any physician.

“So, Caroline, what can I do for you?” Morwenna smiled as Caroline closed the door. Her resemblance to Elizabeth really was striking, even down to their short haircuts, although Elizabeth’s bob was softer. Caroline explained about her sore back as Morwenna directed her to sit on one of those exercise ball things, nodding encouragingly when Caroline hesitated doubtfully.

“Trust me.” When Caroline sat, Morwenna gently placed her hands on her shoulders and adjusted her posture into what Caroline realised was actually a very comfortable position. They chatted as Morwenna worked, gently manipulating Caroline’s arms, and massaging her shoulders and upper back. Like her cousin, Morwenna had a naturally soothing manner with people, making her easy to talk to. “So, what’s this new doctor like? Enys?”

“Dwight?” Caroline was immediately alert at the mention of him. She hadn’t been expecting Morwenna to ask about him, but she supposed it made sense – she knew Verity just as well as the others, so she was bound to have heard about him. “He’s..he seems nice. I haven’t, er, haven’t spoken to him much.”

“Oh yes, he definitely sounds ‘nice’.” Morwenna chuckled. “Rosina won’t shut up about him.”

“Rosina? The nurse?”

“Oh, yes. She works in A & E, and she’s done a few shifts with him. He’s the absolute bees’ knees, according to her.”

“Hmm, really?” Caroline did her best to sound disinterested. Suddenly, Morwenna did something to her between the shoulder blades and she did forget all about Dwight for a moment. “Ohhhh my God, what did you just do? That was amazing.”

“A magician never reveals her secrets.” Morwenna laughed. “Although there’s no trick to it, to be honest. You doctors all spend too much time bending over. Just try to take more breaks, whenever you can, and make sure your desk chair is adjusted properly.”

“Wow. I feel like a new woman, really.” Her stiffness was almost completely gone. She stretched, marvelling, but then remembered what they’d been talking about before. “So, um, Rosina’s impressed with Dwight’s work, then?”

“Oh, yeah, his ‘work’.” Morwenna laughed, sitting down behind her desk. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’s an excellent doctor, but I’m also fairly sure it’s not his skills in the A & E that Rosina’s really interested in.”

“Oh.” Caroline suddenly felt a lot less energised.

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Oooh blarke prompt! Sick fic or an exes to lovers but bellamy was the one to break up with clarke cause somehow it's almost always the other way around? 😘😘

AHHH!!! okay! I am SO sorry this took so long, but i finally finished! You can read it on AO3 here, or under the cut!

Caution Tape Around My Heart

Bellamy had always hated hospitals, his whole life he had hated them. At first it had just been in that way everyone did, the too sterile smell, the sick people everywhere, how there was always that one doctor who was sort of a dick but you couldn’t be a dick back because he was literally performing a procedure on you right then and there. But then, when he was 16, his mom died in a hospital, from a drug overdose, and that was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. He was always on the brink of a panic attack when he was in hospitals, and the slightest thing would set him into a spiral that would take hours to come back from. And then, when he was 25, he found out he had cancer. He fell, playing soccer with friends, and the bruise just grew and grew and grew, over the next week, until it was almost his whole thigh, and he went to get it checked out, and they told him he had stage 3 non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. He was 31 years old now, and had been in remission for almost 3 full years, but his monthly checkups with his doctor still required an anti-anxiety pill beforehand and some serious attempts at meditation (recommended by his therapist that he had during treatment). It was his 2 year and 10 month checkup, post remission, and he was sitting in the waiting room at 945am, before his 1015 appointment, and his leg was bouncing up and down at full speed, and he kept continually having to wipe the sweat off his palms on his jeans. Any small thing was going to set him over the edge today, he had come down with a nasty cold last week and had convinced himself his cancer was back, had even called his doctor in hysterics (he had been assured that people just got colds, it was normal, but he asked to move his appointment up anyway), and so he was especially on edge.

Which meant Clarke Griffin walking into the waiting room REALLY was not what he needed today.

Oncology shared a waiting room with physical therapy, and she went to the check in desk on that side of the room, giving him a chance to quickly hop from his seat and find a spot in a corner, and also to be mildly relieved. She wasn’t here for cancer treatment, as far as he could tell, which… for all their difficult history, he wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy. He studied her from the back while she waited in line. Her hair was shorter, but it had been almost 6 years since he had seen her, but other than that she looked mostly the same. A little older, but still the same.

Clarke was his first love, and the girl he had loved most. She had been in a class he was a TA for when he was a senior in college and she was a freshmen, and had made it her mission to challenge him on every single thing he said, and he had basically loved her instantly, in that way that made him angry at himself because she was so clearly irritating. They had figured it out, when she was 20 and he was 23, after almost 2 years of being inseparable friends, and he was almost positive he was going to marry her. But things didn’t always work out as planned, and he had broken up with her pretty soon after he found out he had cancer, for a lot of different reasons, and that had been that. She had moved away pretty soon after, from what he had heard, and he hadn’t seen her since they broke up, until this moment, in the hospital, while he was already panicking about his checkup.

Perfect.

He tried his best to shuffle down into his seat, and grabbed a random magazine off the shelf, pulling it in front of his face, but shocking literally no one, not even himself, it didn’t work, and when Clarke turned around, they made eye contact instantly. Her eyes grew to the size of small dinner plates, and she looked frantically around, he was assuming for some kind of escape route that wouldn’t look suspicious. They stared at each other for a second, and then he watched as she steeled herself a little, and walked over to him. He had been expecting acknowledged ignoring, so this was a shock. She walked slow, like she was trying not to startle some small forest creature, and plopped down in the empty seat on his left.

“Hi Bellamy.”

“uh… Hey. Hey Clarke.” He wasn’t sure you were supposed to say to an ex that you hadn’t spoken too or seen in 6 years. He didn’t even know what she was up too. “What are you.. uh.. what are you doing here?” He wasn’t sure if he meant in town or in the hospital… he figured whichever she answered would be good enough.

“Raven had physical therapy today… I just got back in town a few weeks ago and she asked me to pick her up today.” Raven had known Clarke was in town for a couple of WEEKS and hadn’t told him? Which meant his other friends probably knew too. Dicks.

“That was nice of you.” He said. He was sincere, but she scoffed. He wasn’t sure he actually blamed her, but he tried to recover. “No, really. I’m not… I’m not trying to be a dick.” She looked at him through the corner of her eye. They hadn’t actually made eye contact since she sat down, an awkward position for an awkward encounter. She smiled, wary but apologetic.

“What are YOU doing here?” She asked, glancing over him. He didn’t seem like he had an injury that required therapy, and he had never told her about his cancer.

“Uhh, i’ve got a… i’ve got a checkup with my oncologist.” Her eyes widened, finally turning to face him.

“You ha-“

“I’m in remission. I’ve been in remission for… a while. Just a monthly checkup. A few blood tests, a couple questions. No big deal.” He wasn’t sure if he actually succeeded at feigning the blasé attitude, but to be fair, he didn’t really care if she believed him or not. She wasn’t entitled to his story, not anymore. He felt a weird sense of rage grow in his belly.

“Oh.. Well.. congratulations.” Platitudes, meant for strangers and acquaintances. He wasn’t sure what category she was even in.

“Yeah… Thanks..”

They sat in silence for another minute, which felt like hours. He wasn’t sure what to say, and clearly neither was she. She opened her mouth to speak a couple of times before snapping it shut, and retreating back into her seat. She finally opened it again, and was about to actually say something when the nurse opened the door and called his name.

“Wou-“

“Bellamy Blake?” He stood up, but turned to face her. Eye contact was terrifying. He looked at her nose instead. He waited a second, and then turned, because she had clearly decided not to finish her sentence, and walked about 3 steps before she finally spoke up.

“Would you like to grab a coffee or something? I’d love to talk. To catch up.” He paused, and the nurse looked expectantly. He smiled at her, and turned.

“Yeah… uh… Raven has my number. Just… text me. or call me. or whatever.”

She nodded, a small smile on her mouth that looked almost forced, and he turned away from her and followed the nurse inside.

He was numb through most of the appointment, barely hearing what the doctor said. The real news came later, thankfully, when they called him in 2-3 days with the results of his call, so he wasn’t concerned, and he hopped on the subway home at around 11, barely even paying attention. Thankfully he didn’t have to drive. He really didn’t expect her to text, but at around noon, his phone rang, and an unknown number was CALLING him. He contemplated letting it go to voicemail, but his more impulsive side got the better of him and he answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hello… is this Bellamy?” Her voice was sort of shaky and unsure.

“Yeah, hey Clarke.”

“Are you busy right now? I’m at Ravens and she said you live close. I could meet you for coffee wherever.”

He contemplated making up a busy day, but he had taken off work for the appointment and he was just planning on lounging around his house and finishing up the new book he had picked up on the rise and fall of the ottoman empire, and that nagging feeling in his gut wouldn’t go away. He had to know, had to have a moment of closure even if it ended in a fight. He didn’t have high expectations.

“Nope, not busy at all. Theres a little local place on Atlantic and Smith.” She agreed, and they scheduled about 30 minutes out. He thought about changing into something else, but she had seen him this morning, and she would know. He didn’t want to give her the impression that he was trying to make himself look good for her. He ignored the way his heart was about to bust through his ribs and run across the room. He pulled on his shoes, tucked his book under his arm, fumbled trying to lock his door, and made his way there. He figured if he was early he could pick a good table, order himself a drink, and look reasonably comfortable before she showed up.

Apparently she had the same idea, because she walked in while he was ordering.

They stood awkwardly near the counter while their drinks were made, and settled into two comfy chairs in the back corner. She broke the silence after a moment.

“I just wanted too… I don’t know. This seems stupid now.” She looked at him for something. He wasn’t sure if she wanted him to contradict her or confirm her thoughts, but he didn’t even really know what he thought anyway.

“I mean… maybe it is. But were here now, so we should probably at least talk a little. No point in all this discomfort otherwise.” She chuckled, and some part of him, some 6 years hidden, 25 year old part of him, preened at making her laugh. The feeling hit him baseball to the face, and he didn’t know how to respond to it.

“Very true.” She agreed, which was a relief. “What have you been up too?” It was such a broad question to cover 6 years.

“I’m a history professor, at Columbia. I have been for about 2 years. I’m working towards my Ph.D. in their history department too, taking a few night classes and stuff. Living here, obviously.” It felt so pedestrian, talking about his job with the person who used to know him best in the whole world. “You?”

“I.. uh.. I just moved back. To the city. I have a job as a curator at the Brooklyn Museum. Finished up college, obviously, with my art degree… you know that you were there,” she was talking so fast, her nerves apparent. She hadn’t picked up her cup in a while because her hands were shaking. “…And did a masters, and I was working as a curator for a small gallery in San Francisco for about a year before I applied for this job. I am staying with Raven for a few days before I can move into my new place.” Another weird conversational standstill. She looked at him with this look that just sort of told him that she wanted him to ask something next. He just wasn’t sure what to ask.

“That’s great, sounds like the perfect job for you.” He realised this was somehow weird to say, because while she might not have changed that much, 6 years is a long time. She could be a totally different person. He didn’t know her at all anymore. He tried not to think about that. “I don’t know what to say, Clarke.” It was true. Their breakup had been gnarly, full of anger and cruel words, and resentment dies hard. And he held quite a bit of it towards her for the thing she had done.

“Bellamy I-“ She started but he cut in.

“Your mom called me “welfare trash” Clarke. To my face. And you just… stood there. We had been dating for almost TWO YEARS, and you let her call me that.” She shrunk into her seat. He realised that his words were still coming, a stream of things unsaid, things unresolved. “You let her tell me I wasn’t good enough for you, that my “status” in life would never be enough for you, and that you would leave me for someone with more money once you realised that I couldn’t give you the life you wanted.” She was welling up, but that just made him angrier. She didn’t get to cry about his pain. “And then you let her sit there, and tell you about how much better for you this man and that man and this girl and that girl, ‘some young lawyer maybe dear’ ‘perhaps doctor whats his nuts’. You let her humiliate me. And I just took it, and you apologised to me afterwords, but you never corrected her. You never stood up for me. And for the next month, you just let her keep it up. And at that point i already knew about my cancer, and you just… let her keep at it.” Her eyes widened. He hadn’t told her about the cancer. “And i know you didn’t know, but you didn’t need to know. I was your boyfriend and you just…” He trailed off, shutting his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm himself down. He got his breathing straight.

“So I broke up with you. You clearly didn’t want to defend me to your mom, and maybe you agreed with her, maybe you didn’t, but you never told her. Maybe you did later, but you should have done it in front of me, or at least in the days following. And I had cancer, and I couldn’t pile that on to someone who couldn’t even stand up to her mom for me.” Her face was a maze of emotions, from distress, shock, and sorrow, to something heavy, like grief. He finally sat back in his seat and just… breathed.

“I’m sorry.” That was what he wanted to hear, but not at all what he expected. He almost dropped his coffee. “I was 22, and I know thats not an excuse, but she… well… its my mom. And that was when i still had this weird hero worship complex towards her. I didn’t know how to stand up to her back then. I didn’t know what to do.” He was sure he looked stunned, and maybe a little angry. “I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m not. I deserved everything you said back then… and everything you said now. You were everything to me, and i let her… i let her treat you like garbage. I just want you to… I don’t know. A couple of years later, when I finally got my head out of my ass a little, I confronted her about it. I told her you were… my best friend,” Her voice was shaky, like she was going to cry. He resisted the urge to reach across the table and take her hand. “You were my first REAL love. I had boyfriends, and girlfriends before you. And i loved them, sure. I loved Lexa, I loved Finn, kind of,” it was his turn to chuckle, “but you were different. And i just… I’m just sorry. I know i was wrong, and I’m just sorry. I wanted you to know that.” He wasn’t sure what to say.

“What did your mom say?” Was what came out, entirely unprompted by his conscious brain. He wanted to kick himself. She smiled, to her credit.

“She was shocked to say the least, but i think i got through to her. And a couple years after that I found out about her involvement with my fathers death, so we don’t speak anymore anyways.” That was the kind of bomb of information he wasn’t prepared for, and his subconscious took the opportunity, yet again over riding his conscious choice to maintain the appearance of not caring, to take control of his mouth.

“She WHAT?” Clarke shook her head, and suddenly the conversation flowed. She told him about her mom and what she had done, and that flowed into stories about their lives. The conversation was simple, nothing too exposing, except the story about her mom, and his story about his cancer. She asked about his sister, about his job, he asked about Wells and HER job, and they just sort of traded stories. It still felt weird, like talking to a stranger who somehow new too much about him to ever be a real stranger. The only stayed for about an 45 minutes, nothing too long or intense, but at the end he felt like a weight was lifted. They didn’t hug, or touch at all, when they parted ways, but he saved her still ‘unknown’ number in his phone during his walk home and he figured that was a start.

Over the next few months, she slowly reintegrated into his life. She was invited out for drinks every weekend, now that her friends knew that he knew she was back, and asked him to lunch so often that it was a scheduled thing now, to see her at work or on the weekends. But it was Raven’s birthday were it all came to a head.

Her “party” was just a get together at her loft, with all her friends and her girlfriend Luna, and when he got there it was just the two of them and Clarke. He dropped the 12 pack of beers and the pack of cupcakes he brought on the counter, and found them all three out on the balcony, drinking a bottle of red wine. He tried to ignore the way it stained Clarkes lips pink. He had caught himself thinking about her a lot the last couple of times they had spent time together. Their time together had gotten more familiar, easy like it used to be, and the way he used to feel, at the beginning of their friendship, so long ago was creeping its way back in. He had broken up with her out of rage, and betrayal, and in an attempt to protect himself from her, but it had been so long. Every time they spent time together, she would find a way to apologise again, to assure him that she knew, she knew she had been wrong, so long ago, she knew that what she had done had hurt him, and he felt the wall he had built being brought down, piece by piece. He tried his best to force it back up, to retain the barrier between himself and his feelings, but it was harder than he expected it to be.

The night wore on, and the beers got him fuzzy, and wine always made her touchy, and before he really realised it, her arm was around his waist, and they were sharing the recliner. He thought about pulling himself away from her, but the smell of her hair and the feel of her, warm and solid around him, was like every dream he ever had those first couple of years after she left, and the part of him that made good choices with logic was hiding behind that wall that kept shrinking down, and letting the part of him that led with his heart take the lead. So he stayed, pressed against her, letting himself feel it, letting himself maybe think that he could see past it. that he could forgive her. Her hand found his knee, his thigh, his arm, his shoulder, over and over again, and his brain just kept getting fuzzier as the night dragged on. When it was finally time to go leave, she hugged him goodbye, tucking her nose into the junction of his shoulder and his neck, and when she leaned back, she pressed up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, closer to the corner of his lips but not quite, and the place where her lips landed was on fire. She untangled herself from him and wandered out to go home, leaving him shell shocked.

She didn’t call him the next day, didn’t reach out at all, and he felt like he was going out of his mind. He picked up his phone at least 7 times to call her, and then put it back down. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself, just kept pacing around his apartment. He couldn’t find anything to distract him, and before he really realised what he was doing he was putting on shoes and grabbing his keys and catching the train to her apartment, his brain rattling around as he rode. He knew it was stupid. She had only been back for 6 months, but the anger of a 25 year old him, scared of dying, scared of loosing her, scared of not being good enough seemed... far away now. Far away from the 31 year old version of himself that was standing here now, missing this girl he had told himself it was stupid to miss. Longing for this girl he had made himself push away. She was just like he remembered. She was his perfect match. She was strong, and bright, and beautiful as he'd ever seen her, and full of so much joy. She was everything he ever wanted, just like she had been at 23, and 24, and 25. Just like she had been all those years in between, when he made himself ignore how he compared every person he dated to her. She was made for him. She was a part of his heart. She was his "One".He got to the door, and realised he had no idea what to do. He paced outside for almost 10 minutes, and was just about to ring her bell when his phone buzzed.

He pulled it from his pocked, and her name flashed across the screen. He answered it.

“Hey..”

“Hey where are you?” He paused, but before he could answer she kept talking. “I’m at your place, and you’re not answering your bell.” He couldn’t hold it together, and started laughing, right there on the street. “what are yo-“ He interrupted her through his laughter.

“Im at your place.”

“What?!”

“I was just… I don’t know. So i came to your place to.. I don’t know.”

“Just stay there,” she said, hanging up the phone. He stood awkwardly outside her house for the next 20 minutes until she rounded the corner and saw him. She stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of him, and then took of at a run, barrelling into him, holding him tight. He took a second to respond, and then wrapped his arms around her waist. She unhooked herself from him, and took him by the hand and led him into her apartment. He stopped just inside the doorway, and she turned to face him. “Look, Bellamy, I know it was all… a mess. And its only been a little while… but. It feels the same. Like it did at the beginning.”

“Yeah… it does…” He felt like he was betraying some small part of himself by feeling it all. By feeling it again. But they had alway been sort of undeniable. And the problems between them were so long ago, and so… gone. Her mom wasn’t in her life anymore, and she had finally stood up for him, even if it was a little too late, and she had come back, and apologised so much that he had to finally ask her to stop. He had forgiven her.

“i was so angry with you, for treating me that way.” She nodded, and him, taking both of his hands. “I dont want to feel that way anymore.” She squeezed his fingers, and kept her face trained and neutral.

“I understand… Forgiveness is hard for us. It always was. And this… this was big Bellamy. I know i hurt you. And I’ll spend as long as it takes to make it right again. I need you Bellamy. I always did.” Her sincerity was palpable.

“You were my person, Clarke. I never found another person in my life who was as good for me, as right for me, as much my other half… you.” A small smile finally creeped into her cheeks. “If we take this slow…”

“Glacial pace… I promise.” She took a step forward, just slight but enough to put her in his space.

“Okay.” He said, soft. She took another step, and pushed up onto her toes, slow. Waiting for him to meet her in the middle. He leaned down, and she pressed up just enough, and pressed a soft dry kiss against his mouth. She stepped back, faster than he maybe wanted, but he knew they made the right choice. Six years and all that history, they needed time, time to get it right.

And this time they would.

Together.

[delusion-of-negation]

1/3 On the love disability topic. Friend who's got to use a wheel chair minimum 1/2 to 3/4 of the time was trying to find a wedding dress shop that was explicitly disability friendly, and when she found it and made a reservation, she asked they please make sure that there's space for a wheelchair, and that if prepared gowns could be ensured to be wheelchair friendly. She wanted to walk down the aisle, and do the ceremony standing, but right after get her wheelchair and be able to wear it

2/3 for pictures and the reception. She arrives, and while there's a ramp, and the dress shelves??? are spaced well, but they got some mannequins/tables/chairs in the open spaces which made it hard to move around. The consultant apparently made some really tone deaf comments kinda about how brave her fiance is to marry a wheelchair user bc of the hardships, and she asked a kinda invasive question about how it must be difficult to date considering her condition. Insult to injury which my friend

3/3 said almost made her cry and bail, was that none of the prepared gowns 8 of them, were wheelchair friendly. Either too poofy, a train, or too tight so she wouldn't have been able to sit or move properly. How fucking hard is it to just not make comments like that? And how can you hear someone ask specifically for wheelchair friendly dresses and think a princess gown poofy skirt Cinderella dress is the way to go? She didn't buy a dress there btw, obviously.

so I'm just throwing this out there, I think a shop full of wedding dresses would be very flammable with the introduction of just one molotov cocktail. I'm not suggesting action, it's just a weird, unrelated thought I had as I was reading this. I hate the invasive shit, like when I had a test for private area cancer, the person started asking how I have sex since I have a sexual dysfunction, like what? this is a cancer test ma'am. I said that I was having a break from sex for unrelated reasons and there wasn't much success with treating it, so I feel like it's not worth the hassle. and she was Not having that. she was telling me to schedule appointments with my doctors immediately, not because of any fear for my health, literally just because I'm missing out on life by not fucking, so I need to treat the condition that I explicitly said wasn't why I'm not fucking... so that I can fuck again. when that condition doesn't even stop my fucking it's just that I gotta work around it. and also this was a cancer test. it was literally just the lady noticed I had a sexual dysfunction that I wasn't in treatment for and decided it was her life mission to make me take a big dick. and like, she kept on, and made me promise as I left, like I was a fucking toddler. and like, that's obviously more of a situation to have conversations about sex than a wedding dress shop, but it's the example of it that frustrated me most because it's weird to be told by a medical professional that you need to be having sex to get fulfillment. like, I said "yeah no I don't really want any right now" and that wasn't enough. I'd have been fine with her saying I should get treatment again because of the other issues it causes (it is a condition that causes spasms, which can hurt) but that never even came up, it was all about the sex to her. from the start this "oh you have a thing? I'm going to immediately ask how you fuck, straight up. I will not ask whether it's negatively impacting your life in any way, fucking or otherwise, and I will not give any reason to treat it but that you must fuck." and I was so uncomfortable. the weird fixation on how people fuck sucks - like, you get it with gay stuff too, but people usually do less of that once they grow up (the "do you put your penises together?" "do you just rub against each other?" "do you put it in the butt?" stuff), but for disabled people you get grown ass adults doing it just as often as if you were back in school with dumb kids. I could talk for ages about everything wrong with how that shop treated her, because the invasive question was gross enough but the blatant disregard for requests about access and accessible products, and the gross shit about how it's "brave" to marry a disabled person, that's making my blood boil tbqh.

[blackkudos]

Danielle Spencer

Danielle Spencer (born June 24, 1965) is an American actress and former child star best known for her role as Dee Thomas on the ABC sitcom What's Happening!!, which ran from 1976 to 1979. She would later reprise the role on the series' sequel, What's Happening Now!!

Life and career

Spencer was born in Trenton, New Jersey to writer Cheryl Pelt. Spencer's parents separated when she was very young. Her mother eventually married actor Tim Pelt, whom Spencer considered to be her father. Soon after the family relocated to the Bronx, New York. Spencer became an actor around the age of 8 and began taking acting classes. In 1976, Spencer was chosen to co-star as bratty younger sister "Dee Thomas" in the program What's Happening!! which was loosely based on the film Cooley High. The show was a summer mid-season replacement, but performed so well in its time slot that a full second season was ordered.

On September 7, 1977, during the second season of the show, Spencer and Tim Pelt were in a severe car accident that left Spencer in a coma for three weeks and killed her stepfather. Tim Pelt's injuries were caused by trying to protect Spencer during the crash. Spencer has no memories of the accident and spent six months recuperating in arm and leg casts.

After the cancellation of the program in 1979, Spencer and her mother relocated to Africa for a time. Upon her return she attended the University of California-Davis to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine, a pursuit that was encouraged by her late stepfather. During this time "What's Happening!!" had been in syndication for a number of years. Repeats of the show's 65 episodes did reasonably well in syndication and in some markets the show actually had higher ratings in syndication than during the network run. In 1985, a sequel to the show was created called What's Happening Now!!. Spencer went on to participate in the revival of her character, Dee, for three seasons while still attending college. While matriculating her sophomore year, Danielle pledged and became a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. After the show was canceled in 1988 Spencer attended Tuskegee University Veterinary School, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She became a veterinarian in 1996.

Dr. Spencer considers herself to be in semi-retirement from show business, but still acts occasionally. In 1997, she portrayed a veterinarian in the hit film As Good as It Gets as well as appearing in Peter Rabbit and the Crucifix in 2001. She continues to act in small roles in film and television when it does not conflict with her veterinary practice.

The cast of "What's Happening!!" were honored at the 2006 TV Land Awards where Danielle Spencer tied with Little House on the Prairie actress Alison Arngrim as the recipient for the "Character Most In Need Of A Time-Out" award.

Dr. Spencer released a book about her life as a child star entitled: Through the Fire: Journal of a Child Star. The publication of her book led to renewed interest in her life and career and over the course of the next few years Dr. Spencer appeared on numerous television programs such as Wendy Williams Show, TV One's hit series Life After and Unsung Hollywood with her former cast members.

Personal

Spencer married Garry Fields, a marketing manager, at the Marina Marriott in Marina Del Rey, California in 1999. Her husband also works as publicist and manager for his wife.

She had been working as a vet for more than ten years when in 2004 after experiencing balance and chronic pain issues she was diagnosed with spinal stenosis due to the injuries she received in the car accident in 1977. A surgery to correct the problem left her partially paralyzed for eight months. Spencer left Los Angeles to receive treatment at The Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey, (the same facility that treated actor Christopher Reeve). She credits the institute for giving her her life back.

Danielle Spencer has been working as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in California for more than 25 years. In an interview with People Magazine, Spencer credited her battle with spinal injury and paralysis with changing her perspective on the treatment of animals from simply alleviating their pain to finding the underlying cause of their problems.

2014 was a year filled with ups and downs for Dr. Spencer. She was inducted by the Smithsonian Museum as part of the permanent exhibition of the African-American cultural museum. She is the only child actor who holds this honor.

She also channeled her lifelong passion for clothing and fashion and became involved in fashion design. She debuted her creation "The Dani Collection" patterned after her own style of dress.

Spencer revealed on September 26, 2014 that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Speaking out for Breast Cancer Awareness month, Spencer, 49, who is now a veterinarian, told BlackAmericaWeb that her diagnosis the previous month took her by surprise. "With everything that I've been through with the spinal cord injury, I said I know God is not going to give me another affliction," she said, referring to a 1977 car accident, during the sitcom's run, that led to near-paralysis for a time. "So I was completely shocked when the doctors told me." Though the news came as a surprise, Spencer said the disease runs in her family. "I have a lot of help and support around me," she said. As of the interview's publish date in October 2014, Spencer stated she was considering her treatment options, with surgery at the top of the list. "I'm trying to get as many opinions as possible but it does look like that is what I’m going to do," she said. "Hopefully after that there won’t be any chemotherapy or radiation involved."

Although Dr. Spencer laments that due to her accident she and her husband were not able to have any children of their own, she loves her life. She still acts occasionally and she makes appearances as a motivational speaker. She told Ebony Magazine in 2012, "I’ve made peace with the fact that surgeries, back pain and walking with crutches will be part of my life forever. Some days are good, somedays are difficult. Yet despite the challenges, there are reasons to celebrate. My life includes volunteering with a charity that feeds the homeless; providing care for animals through my work as a vet; and relishing a wonderful 13-year marriage to the man who has been my rock. I’m fulfilled in ways I never imagined."

Wikipedia

[gayquinn]

History of People with Eating Disorders

 I was going on a wikipedia deep dive (as you do) and I started reading about the history of anorexia and I thought it was quite interesting the different people afflicted with it and how they shaped societies perceptions. Warning!!! This could be triggering of course!!! I’m definitely not condoning it (quite the opposite, please take care of yourself!!!) But for interests sake and maybe it might help someone, I don’t know. 

Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Catherine was one of the two patron saints of Italy and one of the six patron saints of Europe. She was a little kooky (sorry to anyone who holds those beliefs) as she believed that she was married to Jesus and had an invisible wedding ring. She first began fasting in defiance when her mother tried to have her marry her sister’s widower. Her sister had also fasted in order to get her husband to have better manners, I don’t know how that was supposed to work. She lived with her family and did not want their food, saying that she had a table laid for her in heaven with her “real” family. When she became a tertiary she practiced strict abstinence, and concerned her associates with her lack of eating. This is a practice know as anorexia mirabilis, religious anorexia, as opposed to anorexia nervosa. She died at the age of 33 after having a massive stroke, most likely due to malnutrition. 

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536)

THIS Catherine was the Queen of England until she was famously by King Henry VIII causing the split between the protestant and Catholic church. After she was divorced, she confined herself to religion and also suffered from anorexia mirabilis from severe fasting. Scientists speculate she died from cancer.

Mary, Queen of Scotts (1542-1587)

This Scottish queen had a mysterious illness temporarily that caused dizziness, fainting, convulsions, and vomiting. This illness was undiagnosed but is thought in modern times to have possibly been anorexia. She recovered and was eventually executed for trying to assassinate queen Elizabeth.

Renee Vivien (1877-1909)

A famous poet and lesbian, she lived a life of sybaritism filled with sadomasochism and affairs. She had unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in 1908 and began to refuse to eat due to depression. She eventually passed away from pneumonia complicated by anorexia, as well as alcohol and drugs.

Irene Fenwick (1887-1936)

She was a silent film star who had appeared in more than 10 movies and multiple stage plays. She was married to film star Lionel Barrymore who played Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. She died at age 49 from pneumonia due to complications of anorexia, called “overdieting” at the time. 

Jane Fonda (1937-)

This famous fitness guru, actress and activist has been open about her battle with bulimia. She has been active in women’s rights, anti-war efforts, environmental rights, and so many other things she’s really just a boss ass bitch. Her body issues began with her father, who taught her that appearance was the most important thing she had. She said she developed the disorder like three of her father’s five wives. She said that her disorder began when her mother committed suicide at age 12, and she would sometimes purge up to 20 times a day. 

Sande Crabb (1937-1957)

The daughter of a famous actor and olympic athlete Buster Crabbe, she died at age 20 from anorexia. It wasn’t an understood disease at the time, she officially died from “malnutrition brought on by an emotional disturbance”. 

Dianna Ross (1944-)

This famous diva revealed in her book Secrets of a Sparrow that she had suffered from anorexia in the 60s when with her musical group, and even had collapsed on stage.

Sally Field (1946-)

Sally is an actress who’s been in many prominent works such as Forest Gump, Steel Magnolias, the Flying Nun, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Mrs. Doubtfire. She suffered from bulimia in her 20s because of not feeling attractive enough. 

Elton John (1947-)

This absolutely legendary man has stated that admitting he needed help for his addiction and eating disorder was more difficult than coming out. He corroborated with Princess Diana over their shared bulimia. 

Richard Simmons (1948-)

The flamboyant fitness guru spoke with Oprah about how he began his weight loss and had trouble stopping when he was a kid. He recovered with a strong positive attitude and help from his beloved fitness routine. 

Karen Carpenter (1950-1983)

Possibly the most famous person to die from anorexia, Karen’s death certainly brought much needed light to the subject. She was one of the lead singers and a drummer for the band The Carpenters along with her brother. She had an abusive husband, possibly pushing her towards the eating disorder. She began dieting in high school and was at a healthy weight. When seeing an unflattering photo of herself taken at a concert, she hired a personal trainer and began to have a more specific diet. The personal trainer’s suggestion caused her to gain muscle which made her appear heavier, so she fired him and began to restrict her eating. She contacted Cherry Boone about her illness who suggested she see her doctor. She was treated by a psychiatrist but continued to use thyroid pills to increase her metabolism and laxatives so her condition worsened. She was finally admitted to a hospital where they put her on intravenous nutrition, which was a success, but the rapid weight gain caused damage to her already weak heart. She seemed to be improving tremendously after the hospital, but ultimately collapsed at home and died at the hospital from a weak heart. Her death brought attention to the disease, and her family created a memorial foundation in her honor.

Gelsey Kirkland (1952-)

A very famous and talented ballerina, she joined the New York Ballet at age 15 and danced as Clara Stahlbaum in the 1977 televised production of the nutcracker. She was also on the cover of Time magazine in 1978. In 1986 she published her memoire Dancing on my Grave, which chronicled the struggles with drugs, plastic surgery, abuse and an eating disorder on her rise as a dancer. She had a tremulous disorder, starving herself during the day and then binging and purging during the night and taking multiple pills and supplements to aid in weight loss. 

Susan Dey (1952-)

This actress struggled with an eating disorder when she was cast in the show The Partridge Family at only 18. She recovered without too much damage.

Cathy Rigby (1952-)

At first an olympic silver metal gymnast, she retired at only 18 due to an injury. She then went onto acting and portrayed the character Peter Pan for 30 years, including on Broadway.  She spoke publicly on her struggle with bulimia in the 80′s, where she said she would consume almost 10,000 calories a day and almost died twice from an electrolyte imbalance. She struggled with the need to maintain a “perfect weight” when she was in gymnastics, and her problems only worsened after she left gymnastics. She attributed her struggles with bulimia to her lack of self confidence, and said that her second husband helped her get the treatment she needed. 

Dennis Quaid (1952-) 

The actor said in an interview that he had developed anorexia while losing over 40 pounds to portray Doc Holiday in the movie Wyatt Earp. He said while the weight loss was temporary, the mentality stuck with him. 

Cherry Boone (1954-)

Daughter of Pat Boone and granddaughter of famous country singer Red Foley, she was also in her own music group with her sisters in the 70s called The Boones. The same year she met Karen Carpenter and the year before she died, Cherry published her book Starving for Attention which detailed her living with anorexia and her recovery. She later published two follow up books on the matter. 

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

The famed princess of wales turned to bulimia when she was struggling with her husband’s infidelity. It began the week after her engagement when her then-fiance made a comment about her weight. She spoke out about her struggles in order to encourage others to seek help. 

Lena Zavaroni (1963-1999)

Lena was a child star who remains the youngest person ever to have an album in the top ten UK charts. She suffered from anorexia from the age of 13 and depression from the age of 15. She begged for a psychosurgical brain operation which she received and seemed to improve her mood. However she died shortly after from pneumonia from complications from her eating disorder.

Dolores O’Riordan (1971-2018)

The frontwoman for the band the Cranberries. She revealed in an interview in 2013 that she had suffered from sexual abuse which caused her to lapse into anorexia. She has also spoken openly about her bipolar disorder and suicide attempts. She died recently of currently unknown means.

Christy Henrich (1972-1994)

An American olympic silver metal gymnast, a judge in an international meet in 1989 first told her she needed to lose weight. The sport of gymnastics was dominated by very petite girls. Her coach Al Wong also made derogatory comments about her weight, after his pressuring ultimately lead gymnast Julissa Gomez to die from a fatal injury from a move too dangerous. Christy’s efforts to lose weight to maintain her popularity in gymnastics eventually escalated into full-blown anorexia. She weighed only 47 pounds, and died of multiple organ failure. After her death other gymnasts came forward with their stories of disordered eating and the issue was addressed by multiple programs to inform about nutrition, as well as commenters on American gymnastic television programs were no longer allowed to mention a gymnasts weight. 

Portia de Rossi (1973-)

Ellen’s wife wrote about her struggle with bulimia and anorexia in her book Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain. Her disorder began at 12 years old when a modeling director told her to lose weight. Her disorder then resurfaced when was working on the show Ally McBeal. She’s said that she would sometimes eat as few as 300 calories a day, and take as many as 20 laxatives. 

Hila Elmalich (1973- 2007)

An Israeli model who only weighed 60 pounds when she passed away from heart failure. After her death Israel passed a law in 2012 that models must have a healthy BMI over 18.5 in order to work. 

Melanie Chisholm (1974-)

Also known as sporty spice! Melanie has been very open about her depression and eating disorder, talking about how she would spend hours at the gym and restricted her diet to only fruit and vegetables while she was in the Spice Girls. The pressure of being a popstar caused her to be critical of her body image, but she now has a healthy relationship with food. 

Victoria Beckham (1974-)

Also known as posh spice. While she has been less open about her disorder than her fellow Spice Girl, she revealed in her autobiography Learning to Fly that she had suffered from appearance issues facing pressure for the Spice girls and began to binge eat in later years.

Hedi Guenther (1975-1997)

A ballet dancer who was first told to lose weight while in dance school. She broke her foot in her first season and refused medical treatment as she was afraid she would lose her contract and just rested when she wasn’t dancing. This caused her to gain five pounds. Although her company told her not to lose any weight as she was already too thin, her artistic director told her that if she did not lose the five pounds during summer vacation she would not get a part. Her company urged her to gain weight, but her mother insisted she lose weight to get better parts. She died at Disneyland from cardiac arrest due to her eating disorder. After her death American ballet companies began to treat the disorder seriously. 

Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden (1977-)

This literal princess struggled with an eating disorder in her teenage years before she went to college. The illness was particularly difficult to deal with due to her position in the public eye. She has said that when she had little control in her life, she found control in the foods she was putting into her body. 

Daniel Johns (1979-)

The frontman for the band Silverchairs. He developed depression and anorexia while on tour in 1997 for their album Freakshow. He then wrote a song about his experiences, Ana’s Song, which premiered on their next album. 

Isabelle Caro (1982-2010)

A model and actress who advocated for the treatment of anorexia. She was featured in the TV show Supersize vs Superskinny and interviewed for the TV documentary The Price of Beauty. Most famously she was featured in an ad campaign with her naked body with the words No Anorexia in 2007. Her gaunt and bony body was very shocking to the public. She hoped to raise awareness to the severity of the disease but the ad was banned in several places if it was determined it exploited the illness. Her disorder was perpetuated by her mother, who had an irrational fear of her growing. She died of an immunodeficiency caused by her disorder. 

Billie Piper (1982-)

This Doctor Who darling said that she had dealt with an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts since she was a teenager. It’s said she would do self destructive behaviors such as eating tissues or going up to five days without eating solid food. She discusses her disorder in her book Growing Pains.

Luisel and Eliana Ramos (1984-2006) (1988-2007)

Two sisters were both prominent “Size 0″ models. Luisel collapsed from a heart attack after eating nothing but lettuce and diet coke for 3 months. Her sister Eliana passed away shortly after also from a heart attack brought on by malnourishment. 

Ana Reston (1985-2006)

Ana was the reason that eating disorders within the modeling business were brought to light. Like many models, she was told by a casting agent that she was too fat and needed to lose weight. Towards the end of her life she subsisted on nothing but apples and tomatos. She died of a kidney malfunction and became a martyr for the fashion industry.

Troian Bellisario (1985-)

This actress is most notable for her work on the show Pretty Little Liars. She’s spoken about difficulties in high school and having problems with anorexia and self harm. She wrote, produced, and starred in the movie Feed which dealt with the issue of anorexia. She said making the film had helped her heal from her own disorder. 

Lily Allen (1985-)

The singer has spoken about her battles with bulimia before, and suffered from major postpartum depression.

Brittney Snow (1986-)

The pitch perfect and hairspray actress has been very open about her experiences with anorexia, depression, and self harm. She’s discussed things she experienced that are common to other people with anorexia, about considering other people worried a good sign, or thinking that she would feel better if she got down to a certain number. 

Allegra Versace (1986-)

The daughter of Donatella Versace, and niece of the legendary designer Gianni Versace. Unlike her celebrity family, she is very withdrawn and dislikes the spotlight. Her uncle’s murder traumatized her as a child and left her emotionally stunted. Her mother issued a public statement in 2007 that she was suffering from, and getting treatment for anorexia.

Mary-Kate Olsen (1986-)

One half of the most popular set of twins was committed to an institution following her high school graduation for her struggles with anorexia.

Snooki (1987-)

Yes, Snooki. The reality star talked about how she would starve herself in high school, but returned to a healthy weight with the intervention of her parents. 

Evanna Lynch (1991-)

This Harry Potter cutie patootie has worked hard to help people recover from eating disorders after suffering herself. She was in a treatment facility at only eleven years old for anorexia. She found the disorder was a way of getting attention that she could control. 

Demi Lovato (1992-)

This singer has been very vocal about her struggles with depression, self harm and eating disorders. She’s become a role model for teenage girls struggling with anorexia and or bulimia. 

[iwatchedyougoinghomeeveryday]

Gonna make good use of Tumblr and write a post about my trauma!!!

tw: death, depression

It’s 3:00 am and I’m just gonna dive in... there’s no denying that everyone has had a difficult year and in a way that makes me feel better and worse?  Even though I wish I could take away everyone’s pain... better because I know people can relate.  Worse because I feel guilty when I go on and on in my head about the unfairness of it all when I know others are dealing with things far more overwhelming and traumatic.  Still... these past two years have made me feel numb in a way I could not have predicted.

I never, ever wanted time to move forward.  As a child I questioned why everyone wanted to grow up and resisted the changes in my life.  I felt wiser and also lonelier with the perspective that time passing meant taking steps closer to an inevitable end.  I never thought about myself - I was fortunate enough to not have to question my own mortality - but I worried endlessly about my loved ones.  I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop - everyone around me was well and I had never experienced major loss before.  Things had to end.  So while everyone was actually healthy and present, I was spending time panicking about the future.  Worrying that it would be the last time I saw somebody or picturing the day when I got that big, bad news.  Sometimes it was too painful to even imagine - I simply couldn’t picture it - but I’d torment myself with the thought anyway.

All of this to say... I’ve been so nihilistic.  That might be dramatic, but it’s how I’ve felt, especially since I entered this depression episode seven years ago.  I don’t think it was a coincidence that my depression got bad my junior year in high school when everyone was excitedly planning for the future.  I didn’t care about school or jobs or anything superficial - I just cared about my family being alive.  And couldn’t everyone see how pointless the other stuff was?  It was a distraction, or worse, an endless routine with a predictable end.  I hated it.

I haven’t done any of that stuff - there’s nothing I want from the future.  I think if I had a dream or passion, I would accept it as a distraction, a goal to alleviate some of that darkness.  But I genuinely don’t want anything.  And that’s a whole other story, but it’s where I’ve been stuck these past five years - telling myself that if my family was secure and my mental health was better, then the rest would fall into place.  That never happened - the other shoe dropped.

Here was my family: my mother, my sister, my grandmother and grandfather, my aunt, my four cats.  Those were my people - my tiny circle of people that I held closely.  A few months out of school... I found out one of my cats had cancer.  I got him when I was seven.  (I pretty much got all my cats when I was seven/eight.)  He was my best friend and, after eight months, I lost him.  And that broke me a bit.  I drove myself crazy that year (2016) with worry and my OCD - that was my worst year with anxiety.  I spent so much energy caring for him then suddenly... nothing.  I feel like I can’t properly express how much my cats meant to me.  They were all my best friends, really.  They were always there and I understood them so deeply and I felt so responsible for them - it was unwavering.  When I was ten, and dealing with my aforementioned fear of death, I remember thinking that they were “it” for me - they would be gone one day but I vowed they were the only pets I was ever going to have.  It was the only thing that was right and fair.

Flashforward a year and half from my cat dying... my aunt’s boyfriend died from a heart attack.  Sudden, no warning - just get the call that he’s gone.  And even though it wasn’t official, he was like an uncle to my sister and I.  He’d been in our lives for over ten years.  It was difficult to categorize or even comprehend this loss.  But I consider this the start of everything going to heck.  Something happened at the end of 2018 that I can’t even talk about because it’s too painful and sensitive, but it was one more major trauma.     

Early 2019... another one of my cats died from a random attack.  We let him onto our back porch for the morning - we have a fenced backyard and he just liked to sit on the porch - and there was a stray cat that had gotten inside and attacked him.  Just like that, two days later, he was gone.  Once again having to accept a sudden and senseless death.  Leading to August 2019, two days after my birthday, my grandfather fell from his porch steps, hit his head, and died.  Just like that.  Nobody got to even say goodbye or see him because my grandmother was visiting my mother, sister, and I for my birthday.  Only took us two hours to drive there and in that time he was gone.  Two hours to worry about my grandfather, who was in great health, then just accepting that he was dead.  This was the biggest, most awful thing to happen to my family.  I still haven’t coped with it.  

Didn’t even mention that in 2018 I found out that another one of my cats had kidney disease.  He was second closest to me when my other cat was alive, but in his absence, my bond with him was stronger than I had with any of my cats.  Stronger than I had with most people, tbh.  He was needy and around me 24/7 - he really only loved me.  And I couldn’t fathom losing him.  There were ups-and-downs, but he was doing good with his fluid treatments.  Then November 2019, because I was so intuitive with him, I got the feeling that he was getting sick and for real this time.  He was only eating just a little bit less than usual, but I knew.  Just a look in his eye... I knew.  And this really sent me on the deep end.  November 2019 my depression deepened when I realized that a year from that date, I might not have my two cats, or my grandmother, or who knows who else.  This was not some faraway fear - this was real.  I was actually living in the time that I feared.  I was there.  So badly I wished 2020 didn’t have to exist.  (God, if I only knew what was to come.)

I was a basket case November and December as I watched my cat slowly get worse.  On top of this, my mom was feeling ill and she went to the doctor several times with no explanation for her pain.  That sickened me - I had pictured losing so many people, but I couldn’t picture losing my mom.  It was too big, too life-shattering.  She was superwoman, invincible.  And now I had to consider that, too.  She thankfully started feeling better, but my cat got worse.  I was lucky if I got any sleep or ate anything during last January.  At the end of the month he passed away and, out of everything I have experienced, that destroyed me the most.  He was like my child - I was supposed to protect him.  And instead I watched him suffer.  I’ve now lost people close to me and I know it sounds bad, but losing my cat was the worst.

But guess what - trauma is not over!  Exactly one month from my cat dying... I witnessed a fatal car accident.  Directly in front of me.  Never even seen an accident before - not even a fender bender - and this one was fatal.  It was unnerving because the actual collision didn’t seem that bad, but suddenly there was an unconscious old woman laying in the road.  I didn’t see it happen - thank God - but I’m assuming she was ejected from her car because she was not wearing a seatbelt.  I called 911 - first time doing that, too - and watched as she lay there and all I could think was that I was on the opposite side of what happened with my grandfather, six months ago.  He had a fatal head injury and we got the call and got to the hospital to get the news that he died.  Some family was going to have that same experience.  That messed me up.  In so many ways.  I don’t have my license because I am scared of driving - now I’m scared to ride in cars.  I had nightmares for months.  This accident never made the news, which actually made me angry because it felt like something that happened and was immediately forgotten about.  I obsessively wondered about the family and victim.  The accident happened at the entrance to the library - my one safe place.  I volunteered there every week before covid.  I only got the chance to go two times before everything shut down in March, but I had to drive by the place where it happened and when I was in the library I tensed and panicked every time I heard an ambulance.  It was awful.

July 2020 - I lost the last of my kitties.  Fifteen years of taking care of them, loving them... I really didn’t know how to exist without them.  We didn’t have any closure on this cat’s death, either.  Never knew exactly what was wrong.  But I was so numb at this point - my whole view shifted.  I just didn’t want anyone to suffer anymore.  So losing her was numbing - she was gone, but she didn’t suffer like my last kitty.  Numb numb numb numb numb.

Then Thanksgiving... this news would’ve absolutely destroyed me a few years ago.  Right now I can’t comprehend it.  I’ve been expecting the worst anyway.  We found out my grandmother has cancer and is already in the final stages.  That damn theme again... no warning.  She went into the hospital for another reason, leaves learning that she has three cancerous areas.  And I see her at Thanksgiving and all hope is gone... I see the effect on her.  Because I’m robotically dealing with grief now, I tell myself that I don’t expect her to live to 2021.  I saw her end of October - she seemed fine.  If she can go from fine to awful in three weeks, then I expect the same for her passing.  And it is so selfish, but I do not want to see it.  I do not want her to get any worse.  She had a biopsy and she gets results tomorrow.  I already know it will be the worst case scenario.  Everyone, especially now, says to appreciate the small things, make the moments matter because you don’t know how many you have left.  BS.  I just want it to be over.  I don’t want the in-between - there’s nothing to appreciate.  Losing my grandmother... that’s unfathomable.  I love everyone in my family, but it’s always been me, my mom, my sister, and my grandmother who has been the closest.  My family couldn’t function without my grandfather.  I don’t know how we go on without my grandmother.  It doesn’t matter what news she gets from the doctor tomorrow.  One month is the timeframe I am giving myself.  It is cold and calculating to think, but that’s what I expect.  And I’m so used to people dying suddenly... there’s nothing romantic about last moments and words.  I don’t want them.  Maybe I’d regret that in the future, but right now, it’s how I cope.

This is not even mentioning that my mother has always had SO much stress and trauma in her own life and this past year I have noticed it take a huge toll on her.  I’m worried about her health - physically and mentally.  She’s seemed different this year - I can’t blame her, but I don’t know what to do.  And my sister’s mental health is always so fragile, and her relationship with my mother is awful - I feel like I’ve lost them, too.  It’s not hopeless, but I’ve been trying to fix things and they don’t improve.  And I know my grandmother’s passing will affect them most of all - she’s my mother’s mother, after all, and my sister has always loved my grandmother the most.  She has unconditional love for her, a love I wish she extended to us but I was always glad she had that relationship with my grandmother.  We’re going to be completely broken.

So now I’m submerged in that future - I’ve lost all four of my cats, my grandfather, my grandmother soon.  My mom and sister are all I’ve got, and that would be reassurance if I wasn’t so worried about them, too.  If sixteen-year-old me couldn’t see a favorable future... you can imagine how helpless I feel now.

[expatimes]

What is at stake when the US Supreme Court takes on Obamacare?

On November 10, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear a new case against the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the signature legislation of Barack Obama’s two-term presidency.

It will be heard by a court that is more conservative than Americans have known for generations, with its newest judge Amy Coney Barrett rushed into a vacant seat just days before the divisive presidential election. This tipped the balance of the already conservative-leaning nine-member court to a much more weighted 6-3 split in their favour.

The case, California v Texas, which deals with the constitutionality of the 2010 ACA (commonly known as “Obamacare”), is the latest salvo against a complex, intricate law that is loved, hated and misunderstood in the US, and that touches the lives of almost everyone in it.

The hearing comes just in the wake of Donald Trump losing the presidential election – even as he refuses to concede – while nearly a quarter of a million people have died from COVID-19, and as millions of American citizens have lost their jobs and their health coverage.

A 2018 group portrait of the justices of the US Supreme Court, including the now-late Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away in September 2020. Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as her replacement in October, bolstering the conservatives on the bench [File: AP]

Healthcare in the US: A short history

Since the second world war, most Americans have known that good health insurance is tied to a good job.

But in the 1960s, two government options were created by the Lyndon Johnson administration: For Americans over 65, there was Medicare, a programme that has long been popular and difficult to cut due to its wide bi-partisan reach (everyone gets old).

And for the poor, there was Medicaid, which is administered individually by states, resulting in wide variations in who is eligible. In some states, for example, children were only covered by Medicaid if their parents earned less than half of what would put a family of three on the federal poverty line (approximately $9,000 a year at the time), while in other states, with more progressive policies, children would be covered if their family’s income was $55,000 for a family of three.

Despite these limited government options, health insurance was understood as a private enterprise, and across the insurance market, plans were shaped by the demands of hospital networks and providers.

In a photo from 2012, a woman opposed to healthcare reform, rallies in front of the Supreme Court in Washington [File: AP]

By the 2000s most insured Americans were covered by a private healthcare plan they chose through their workplace. In 2008, a family would, on average, pay $12,300 per year just to own a plan through their workplace, with additional co-payments for services, medicines, and therapies on top of that. That average premium also varied widely between states.

For those who wanted something else, or for the wealthy, self-funded private medical plans were available. In 2009, someone buying individual non-employer health insurance would pay about $3,600, or $7,000 if it also covered their family, but pay much higher deductibles for medical services. Many of these plans were not as comprehensive as employer-backed options.

For most insured people (59 percent of employee plans and nearly 90 percent of individual plans) there were lifetime caps on how much total coverage a provider would pay for. After that cap – sometimes one or two million dollars – was reached, insurers would stop covering, even if the treatment continued.

Hitting such a maximum might seem unlikely, but for someone receiving specialised treatments, or managing the care of a very sick premature baby, those costs could be exceeded within a few years or less, and the patient would be left to cover the remaining costs. A long-term stay in the ICU could leave a family in financial ruin.

Insurance companies considered future health complications liabilities, and charged higher costs or did not sell policies to people with so-called pre-existing conditions, affecting more than 100 million Americans in 2010. A pre-existing condition could be asthma, a family tendency towards high blood pressure, or a likelihood the patient would develop cancer.

Women are statistically more likely to develop diabetes and cancer than men and were disproportionately uninsured, in part due to the pre-existing conditions loophole. In 2010, 20 percent of women aged 18 to 65 did not own health insurance.

In a 2017 photo, a man walks by a healthcare insurance office in Florida [File: AP]

Black and Hispanic Americans were also insured at lower rates. In 2010, 13 percent of white working-age Americans, 20 percent of Black Americans and 33 percent of Hispanic Americans were uninsured. Among those who did have a plan, higher numbers of Black and Hispanic Americans were receiving Medicaid, which often delivered lower-quality care options. People of colour in the US are more likely to live in low-income families without access to an employer-sponsored option, and most private plans were out of reach. As a result of this lack of health insurance – along with other barriers to care – these groups are also less likely to receive preventive care, diminishing overall health outcomes.

For the uninsured patient walking into a clinic, price vertigo could quickly strike. With most doctors and nurses unable to tell a patient how much the eventual cost of a medical service would be, they would have to decide whether to receive treatment before knowing if they could afford it.

Typically for an insured patient, a medical provider would submit documentation of a medical service – a physical exam, a blood test, an MRI, for example. The insurance company negotiates reimbursement with the health network and the patient gets the bill after treatment has been delivered. Depending on how much their plan covers, the patient may pay a portion.

Meanwhile, medical interventions in the US have become more state-of-the-art, more expensive, and more common.

By the early 2000s, health spending accounted for roughly one-sixth of the US economy, the largest share in the world, but only about 85 percent of Americans had health insurance. Many of the millions of families left out were an injury or illness away from dire financial consequences.

The cost of care

Marleny, who prefers that Al Jazeera use only her first name, was one of the millions of uninsured. She lives in Framingham, Massachusetts, and is a single mother of 9-year-old twin girls and a 20-year-old daughter. She is an immigrant from Guatemala and used to live in California, where she had a basic insurance plan sponsored by her employer while she was pregnant. In addition to her premium, she paid $30 for a doctor’s visit and $500 for each birth.

When she moved to the Boston area in the cold winter of 2014, all of her daughters fell ill with bronchitis. She was scared to take them to the hospital.

“I waited a week to take them to the hospital. My daughters had a lot of fever and coughing, and I noted they were losing weight. My mother said, ‘You need to take them’,” Marleny explained in a phone interview.

The family of four was living in a single rented room and their car had not yet arrived from the west coast. But with her daughters’ conditions worsening, Marleny knew she had to do something. She borrowed a car from someone she knew, packed the twins, then two years old, and her older daughter into it and drove.

There were two things Marleny did not know when she walked into the Emergency Room at Metrowest Medical Center: that Massachusetts did have some state coverage plans available for low-income people, and that the first provisions of the ACA were just coming into effect. She thought of walking back out into the cold.

“I was scared that I might get a high bill. I told them I don’t have health insurance here, and I don’t know how much this will be.”

Her story mirrored others playing out in ERs across the US. She would soon discover that a reform bitterly fought on the national level was at that moment becoming available. Too concerned about her girls’ health to leave, she decided to stay.

In a photo from 2017, protesters gather across from Trump Tower to rally against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in Chicago [File: AP]

Attempts at health reform

During his term, President Bill Clinton tried to reform the healthcare system – but failed.

Then, in 2006, Republican (then-governor) Mitt Romney succeeded in delivering Massachusetts, a wealthy liberal-leaning state, a form of universal coverage in which everyone was obligated to buy insurance. State-funded options were available to those making up to 300 percent of the figure that would put someone on the federal poverty line, and at-cost individual plans were regulated and sold in streamlined marketplaces. The reform was seen as radical as until that point no state had passed a plan compelling people to buy health insurance.

When Obama debated John McCain on national television ahead of the election in 2008, he said healthcare spending was a burden on the American people and vowed to tackle it. At the time, millions were out of work and hence health insurance, due to the “Great Recession”. McCain said he would solve the problem by sending a $5,000 tax credit to the average family, which they could use to pay for health costs (at that point, the average yearly premium for a family was more than $10,000). McCain said Obama’s plan would be so limiting that it would leave “Joe the plumber”, a made-up potential user, without any plan at all.

Obama was swept into the White House with a strong mandate, and his team set out to invest their political capital directly in the divisive issue.

“Both the politics and the substance of health care were mind-numbingly complicated,” the former president writes in his new memoir, excerpted by the New Yorker on October 26, 2020. “When I think back to those early conversations, it’s hard to deny my overconfidence,” he recalled.

In a March 23, 2010 photo, President Barack Obama signs the Affordable Care Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington [File: AP]

Democratic lawmakers drafted a 900-page bill containing hundreds of provisions. They hosted dozens of bipartisan meetings and held hours of public hearings with 200 witnesses. Senators from the Finance Committee grilled representatives from the health insurance industry, conservative think-tanks, interest groups for retired Americans and state regulators.

“A single provision tucked inside the bill could translate to billions of dollars in gains or losses for some sector of the health-care industry,” Obama reflected. It was early 2010 and the White House, the House of Representatives, and Senate were all controlled by Democrats. When it was clear that no Republican would support any law that reformed the health sector, the politicians pushed it through in a rare late-night holiday vote on December 24.

Obamacare’s bold approach

The ACA’s bold idea was to get more healthy Americans to own health insurance. This, the administration believed, would put more money into the insurance market and lower costs for everyone. The authors did it by introducing the “individual mandate”, a penalty for those who stayed uninsured, administered by Congress. Anyone who did not purchase a private plan would have to pay a fee to the Internal Revenue Service. Critics raged that the federal government was forcing them to buy something they did not want.

The ACA then clamped down on insurers by making them offer better individual plans for those without employer-sponsored options. It stopped the pre-existing condition loophole. It required insurers to include basic essentials such as emergency services, pregnancy and maternal care, and substance abuse treatment, many of which had been out-of-pocket extras before.

The law required these new individual plans to be sold in transparent marketplaces run by states, which would only offer plans that were vetted. Separately, the law dramatically expanded the free health coverage programmes for the poor and the elderly – Medicaid and Medicare – which had always missed millions who did not qualify according to their state’s criteria.

Lastly, the law invested billions in research for innovations to improve how health is paid for, and quality of delivery.

Don Berwick, a Harvard-educated paediatrician, had studied the quality of care for 30 years when he was appointed by Obama to lead this particular expansion in 2010.

“I told my staff three questions for any proposal: How would this improve care? How would this improve people in dire straights? How would this help reduce costs overall?” he told Al Jazeera.

In a 2012 photo, Republican Mitt Romney spoke about the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling in Washington [File: AP]

Berwick developed plans to expand the free services and prepare the state marketplaces for launch, before resigning 18 months later due to his recess appointment. He had been criticised by Republicans after saying Britain’s NHS, a government-paid system, could be an example for the US. Opponents, like the Republican senator from Wyoming, said his approach would ration care. Dr Berwick vigorously refuted that accusation. Berwick, who has long argued for healthcare delivery to be a government responsibility, is now president emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

“We don’t have evidence that market forces yield improvements that we’re after. Market induces competition instead of cooperation … The market system will not encourage [knowledge sharing] … Market systems tend to lead to behaviours that favour providing services to people with more money and not people with less money. We need exactly the opposite approach,” he told Al Jazeera.

Republican lawmakers and judges took aim at the ACA from multiple angles and, in 2012, Obamacare was challenged in the Supreme Court. The National Federation for Independent Businesses (NFIB) and 26 states argued the ACA forced small business owners to buy insurance for their employees, hurting the businesses. The court did not agree, but it did transform the ACA by declaring the individual mandate was a tax, not a fine. The change was subtle but would open an opportunity for that tax to be reduced by Congress.

The justices also ruled that the decision to expand Medicaid would be left to individual states. A dozen mostly southern states immediately stopped the expansion, leaving millions without promised insurance options. The NFIB said the “constitution has been undone”.

After more than three years of preparation, the ACA became active in 2014.

More than just crisis care

Sitting in the emergency room that January, Marleny knew her girls were too sick to leave untreated. A member of the staff told her not to worry, there were plans for her. One of the new advantages of the ACA was same-day enrollment, shrinking a process that had previously taken up to 45 days. The girls were prescribed antibiotics and sent home. Her family would need emergency services several more times that winter, but Marleny was now covered, as were her daughters.

She started to think of healthcare as more than something for a crisis. Marleny began visiting her own doctor regularly, going for mammograms and other preventive services, which were free.

“Thank God we have this programme,” she said. “If not, I don’t know what we are going to do. A lot of families like mine don’t have the money to pay for health insurance.”

Marleny is not unemployed. She works as an administrative assistant at an NGO that provides housing help to people in Massachusetts, making about $2,500 each month. She says her employer-provided plan costs $600 a month for the premiums alone, too expensive for her to afford. Her income, near the poverty line, makes her eligible for the subsidised plans Don Berwick helped expand. Her ACA-insurance costs just $45 per month; a visit to the doctor costs $18, medicine for the children costs her a few dollars.

A woman in Florida holds a sign in support of Obamacare in October 2020, ahead of the US election [AP]

Marleny’s insurance is available because Massachusetts receives federal money for people in her situation. Health Care for All, an NGO in the state, helps her navigate the process. For many years Hannah Frigand, the NGO’s director of education and enrollment services, received phone calls from people eager or desperate to secure a coverage plan.

“We hit a peak when the ACA was implemented,” she told Al Jazeera. Calls nearly doubled as the law was passed, and again when it was implemented four years later. Thousands of people had been waiting for better coverage.

Trump and the case against Obamacare

Donald Trump criticised the ACA in his very first speech as a candidate, calling Obamacare “a disaster”. He claimed, citing anecdotes, that patients would lose their health coverage, doctors would quit, and the health consumer would be stuck with ballooning payments. When he spoke in 2015, about 17 million new working-age Americans were insured who previously had not been before the law. The average family premium for employer-sponsored insurance had indeed gone up, as it had every year before and continues to today, but the cost of individual plans was falling. In his first day as president, Trump issued a broad executive order for government agencies to scale back as many parts of the ACA they could.

With control of both Houses of Congress in 2017, Republican lawmakers pushed forward bills to repeal and replace Obamacare. Their “skinny” version lowered the individual mandate to zero dollars, leaving the rule with no penalty. But their replacement preserved much of the ACA’s popular parts like coverage for pre-existing conditions, for children up to 26 years old under their parents’ plans, and the expansion of Medicare.

In an after-midnight vote on July 28, 2017, Republican Senator John McCain, who had been facing months of aggressive criticism from President Trump and who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumour that would take his life a year later, walked to the podium and held his thumb down for the cameras to see. The ACA would continue.

In a July 2017 photo, now-late Republican Senator John McCain looks on during a press conference about his resistance to the so-called “Skinny Repeal” of the ACA [File: Reuters]

Nisha Kurani studies the law and its effects at the Kaiser Family Fund (KFF), an organisation that tracks the medical insurance industries. In a phone interview, she said the loss of the individual mandate has, paradoxically, not had the impact many feared.

“Early on there were concerns that the market would destabilise. But that hasn’t happened. Premiums in the past years have gone down. Healthy people have not left the market as was predicted. And the financial health of insurers has dramatically improved since the early years of the ACA. We’ve seen that the marketplace has stabilised.”

At the start of the Trump presidency, 20 million new Americans were insured by the expanded programmes. The gap between uninsured Black and white Americans fell by four percent, and that between uninsured Hispanic and white Americans fell by over nine percent. The number of uninsured women halved in two years.

The White House under Trump pushed for many parts of the ACA to be undone. Obamacare blocked a type of short-term insurance option sold across states that had often driven consumers into medical debt: The user would buy one, undergo a treatment, and find it was not actually covered. The ACA limited these plans to 30 days, the Trump administration extended that to a full year with the option of renewal.

Watchdog organisations have documented how the websites for state marketplaces have been closed for hours or days during enrollment periods, due to “maintenance”, preventing people from finding health plans. Funding for public messaging about health insurance has been reduced. States have seen their waivers for innovation programmes cut. Some states have imposed work requirements for Medicaid, demanding that people who receive the subsidised coverage for the poor prove that they are employed, even though studies have shown that most on the programme already are working or have a good reason such as disability not to.

In one stirring example, money intended for medical research and other services was moved by the White House’s Health and Human Services director to pay for the detention of migrant children. These cuts have made a difference: the uninsured rate has been growing slowly since its 2016 low, creeping up by a few million people.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons spoke during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett in Washington in October, ahead of the US election and court hearing on the ACA [AP]

The new challenge

This Tuesday, November 10, the ACA will again be challenged at the Supreme Court.

Texas, 18 other – traditionally Republican-led – states, two individuals and the White House say the whole law must be thrown out because the individual mandate is zero, “a law that does nothing”, the case says. The justices will first decide whether the two sides have what is called “standing”, they will ask whether the individual business owners have been injured by the ACA. It will be a difficult argument, as there is no penalty for not buying insurance. If the plaintiffs do not have standing, the case will be rejected.

The justices will then decide whether the ACA would have been written and passed had it been known at the time that the individual mandate would be unconstitutional. If the answer is yes, the individual mandate could be sliced off the law, or severed, leaving the rest intact. The court could rule that both the individual mandate and the protections for pre-existing conditions are unlawful, but leave states to decide which subsidies and other parts to preserve.

If the court agrees with the federal decision made in Texas and strikes down the law, the impact would be profound. It is estimated that 23 million people could lose their health coverage (20 million who gained it plus another 3 million who have had to find new plans since the start of the pandemic). States that have taken full advantage of the subsidies of the ACA would lose those funds in their budgets. Massachusetts may have to cut programmes that prevent Marleny from worrying whether rent, food or health costs come first.

“Pulling away the ACA would be, I think, a disaster for millions of people in this country,” Berwick told Al Jazeera. “They would be left high and dry, angry, their costs would soar … it’s hard to imagine the ACA being pulled away at this point without severe dislocations.”

President Donald Trump with Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed to be a Supreme Court justice in October 2020 [AP]

All eyes are now on Amy Coney Barrett, the newest justice. She was clerk to the court’s most famous recent conservative justice, Antonin Scalia, who dissented both previous healthcare rulings. Justices are not often public speakers, so Barrett’s verbal record has been combed over looking for clues as to how she could rule. She has said she supported the dissent in a previous case against the ACA – but as a law professor, not a judge.

In her confirmation hearings, she said the Supreme Court tends to rule in favour of severability, keeping most of a law if a part can be chopped off. Whether or not California v Texas prevails, this is unlikely to be the final case to challenge the ACA.

In 2020, the Affordable Care Act is still (mostly) law, and it is as popular as it is divisive. Most Americans want the whole ACA to stand, though most Republicans want to see it repealed. More than 90 percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans do not want to see protections for pre-existing conditions disappear. Critics like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation write that the law is too expensive for both the government and for beneficiaries, and too limiting for the American consumer.

Under the ACA, more people are insured. Costs for individual insurance buyers have fallen, but costs for insurance through work have grown. Expanded Medicaid services are credited with saving tens of thousands of lives, protecting essential workers during the pandemic, and even slowing eviction rates in high-enrollment areas (one study suggested that low-income users were less frequently forced to choose between paying rent and paying for health costs).

The US is a country that has incredible health resources, but mixed outcomes. Measured against comparable nations, the US has better outcomes for its cancer patients and worse outcomes for maternal mortality, according to Kurani at KFF. Healthcare is a work in progress.

Berwick advocates taking a long view.

“If we can take a breath as a country and depoliticise this, there’s a lot to be learned. ACA is not a perfect law. It has many elements that could be better.

“I think the ACA, even as weakened now, can and should survive … Then we have to remember – it still left 30 million uninsured, so there’s work yet to do.”

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=13665&feed_id=15577

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Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution Nafld

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Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution Nafld

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    Of all the memories I have about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) two stand out most clearly:

The day I discovered I had it

The day my doctor confirmed it was completely gone

I have to admit, the journey between having NAFLD and no longer having NAFLD wasn’t an overnight one.

And, a couple of times, I was worried sick about what the condition might turn in to. Because as I quickly learnt, it often doesn’t just remain as it is. If you don’t address it quickly it can lead to far worse – and potentially deadly – conditions.

But there is a way to reliably deal with NAFLD.

When I eventually found out about it, well… That made all the difference, not only to my liver health but also to everything else.

Now my liver is fat-free – and it’s going to stay that way. Although when I first went to my doctor I didn’t realize this at all.

The shock of discovery

I’d gone to her complaining of feeling tired and fatigued.

I thought anaemia or something similar might be the cause for my tiredness. The truth turned out to be considerably more concerning.

My doctor told me she suspected I had fatty liver disease. I was sent for tests and, a long story cut short, the ultrasound confirmed it. I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And everything that was likely to go with it.

I’d gone to the doctor feeling tired. I came out with a serious disease. However, the bad news kept coming…

Just how bad is NAFLD? It’s this bad….

Your liver is one of the body’s unsung heroes. The work it does is essential to our very existence. It transforms food into usable nutrients, stores these nutrients, and provides them to cells as and when they’re needed.

It also neutralizes toxins – ‘toxins’ is a medical term for ‘poisons’ – either by converting them into harmless substances, or by making sure they are eliminated directly from the body.

24 hours a day our liver takes in unclean blood, filters it, refreshes it and then releases clean blood back into your body. We never think about our liver. Thankfully, our liver is always thinking about us.

But if it suddenly can’t clean your blood properly… then what?

You can’t go to the supermarket for some fresh stuff. If our livers are struggling to do what they are there to do… then those toxins start to build up

So if you suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease you have my deepest sympathy. Because that’s exactly what is happening to you.

It’s what I went through too: a liver becoming steadily more fatty… its ability to keep me healthy becoming steadily more difficult.

Fatty liver doesn’t just get better on its own. Much more worryingly, if we don’t address it there’s every chance that it just carries on getting worse.

And when I say it gets worse I mean it gets really, seriously worse. You know what I’m referring to, don’t you?

So how much worse can it get then?

Well, if you haven’t seen this before then perhaps first you ought to be sitting down.

There are four recognized stages that your fatty liver can move through:

Simple fatty liver

a build-up of excess fat in the liver that, initially, can be relatively harmless – but only if it stays like this. But if you don’t address the problem… it has little reason to stay harmless.

Nonalcoholic steato hepatitis (NASH)

A more serious form of fatty liver where there is inflammation in the liver. This is caused by not properly addressing your fatty liver when it first started being fatty.

Fibrosis

The persistent inflammation at the NASH stage leads to scarring of the liver tissue.

Cirrhosis

Ongoing scarring of the liver has caused it to shrink and become lumpy. The damage is permanent, irreversible and can will lead to liver failure and liver cancer.

So the insight here is clear – and it hit me like a lead weight:

I don’t actually have some static, unchanging condition called fatty liver disease.

What’s really happening is that as a sufferer of fatty liver you’re moving through this disease, slowly transitioning from one stage… to a worse one.

In other words, the disease we’ve currently got is only today’s snapshot of a process that’s underway in our bodies. It’s the disease we could end up with that’s the real cause for alarm.

And this isn’t an exaggeration. Liver disease is taking an increasingly worsening toll on our society. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of deaths caused by liver disease and cirrhosis has risen every year since 2007.

Worse, fatty liver is associated with an increased risk of other serious health problems – including kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

So I suddenly found myself with a disease that is now among the top 15 causes of deaths for Americans.

When I first saw all this I panicked a bit. I felt this was starting to look like some sort of death sentence. LIke I was on a conveyor belt being carried to a horrible future.

Then I calmed down. I took some deep breaths and engaged my brain.

I knew what I was going to do.

I was going to find out which were the most effective meds and then speak to my doctor about them.

I would examine my options for treatments in case my fatty liver became even fattier.

And I’d see who the best surgeons were if, goodness forbid, things went really bad and, perhaps, I’d need surgery to trim off the fat.

All good plans, I thought.

I thought wrong.

Because…

There is no treatment for NAFLD!

Now I had to let that sink in for a few moments.

My doctor looked quite grim when she told me that the only safe way to reduce the fat in my liver was to change my lifestyle.

Lifestyle had caused the damage. Lifestyle would have to fix it. There are no drugs for this.

No medicine to drink. No tablet to take. No pill to pop.

I couldn’t accept that. There’s a pill for everything – if only to relieve some of the symptoms.

She told me vitamin E had been used in some of the more serious fatty liver cases.

But it has to be used in doses that are 40 times greater than the recommended safe level.

Scientists are still trying to work out what such excessive doses are likely to do to the rest of your body.

Even worse, vitamin E isn’t tackling the cause of your fatty liver, only its symptoms. So if it is effective at all it only last while you’re basically over-dosing on it.

So my choices were pretty stark:

I could take lifestyle measures to reduce the fat.

Or I could just let it progress – and so work its way through the 4 stages I just described. With a possible terminal condition at the end of it.

Change what you do or face the consequences

My doctor told me I would have to lose weight, eat more healthily, exercise… and so on.

That’s good advice generally but… what does it actually mean?

What is healthy eating? To me it usually means eating salads and going hungry.

I went online to nail this down this healthy eating business – and I found such contradictory information that after an afternoon of searching and reading all I really learned was ‘eat less sugar, eat more vegetables’. That’s about all anyone could agree on.

On top of that, I have to admit: I’m an average cook. I don’t want super complicated recipes and meal plans that have me in the kitchen for hours on end.

And I’m not an exercise sort of person either. I lead a busy life and I want to spend my spare time relaxing – not lifting heavy weights at the gym or running endless hours around the park.

Yet…

I don’t want liver disease. I don’t want liver cancer. I don’t want to die.

So I knew that doing nothing was pretty dumb. And, if nothing else… I’m not dumb.

But what’s the best thing to do to get rid of fatty liver disease? In my opinion, the doctors were drawing a blank. ‘Eat healthily’. ‘Lose weight.’ ‘Don’t drink’. And so on.

No use at all.

Then I had a brainwave

There was an old health forum on the internet that I used to browse some time back when I had a back problem. There was occasionally some good advice there.

So I went back to it and searched for NAFLD. There was a small fatty liver discussion group there… not that active but I decided to post a question anyway.

‘What’s the best thing to do to get rid of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?’

I got a few generic ‘lose weight!’ replies.

But then one day somebody posted a short but simple message that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

They had cleared their fatty liver problem completely – as in, no fat left at all – by following a lifestyle program created by someone called Julissa Clay.

It was called The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution and they said they no longer have fatty liver because they followed that program.

They didn’t say much more. A few comments about how you make gentle adjustments to your lifestyle until you were doing everything necessary for that fat to disappear….

I didn’t really need to read any more. The program arrived in my email inbox about 6 minutes later.

I caused this disease myself – now I know how to remedy it myself

And that’s really the first lesson to this whole fatty liver thing.

It’s not a virus. It’s not an injury. It wasn’t caused by some external event.

It was me who did it. And Julissa Clay’s program helped me realize it would have to be me who resolved it.

Her program, The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution, was my only ally in the effort to get back to health. And it worked.

By the time I had read a quarter of Julissa Clay’s strategy I already knew so much useful stuff about my condition that I was just itching to put it into action. My improvement started that day.

The basics – what I needed to know about my fatty liver

Instead of ‘eat more healthily’ or ‘stop drinking alcohol’ Julissa takes a practical and straightforward approach to restore liver health for good.

In The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution she describes the ‘3 pillars of liver health’. These are the fundamentals of restoring your liver to its fully healthy state.

The 3 pillars do their work quickly and – if you stick to them – for good.

But what I loved about all this – being a complete beginner – was not just that Julissa gave me a thorough education in liver health.

Her 3 pillars described exactly what was necessary to put it right… and then she gave me a step-by-step plan to follow so I could actually do it.

First, take a look at the 3 pillars:

Detox

Diet

Movement

Now, I don’t know about you but when I first saw those three words alarm bells rang!

I don’t like diets – I’ve never managed to keep to one and, to be honest, I never intended to try one again.

And movement… I’m not lazy but I am very busy. I don’t have time to spend an hour in the gym or run endless circles around the park.

And detox? I’m not into fads at all. It just isn’t me.

Turns out I was wrong on each count. Check this out and you’ll see why I was able to handle all this – and why I still do it today, even a year after my liver all-clear.

A program created for people like me

In the first place, Julissa’s solution is made for people like me.

People who aren’t stupid but who might not be on board with all this self development stuff.

People smart enough to know they have to act if they want to be healthy… but who need guidance to know how to act.

So here’s some detail about each of the three pillars – you’ll hopefully see the sense in this and, perhaps, realize why following it means I no longer have a fatty liver.

Let me run through Julia’s three pillars for you now.

Pillar 1. Protect the liver right now by detoxing it

Now detoxing conjures up lots of strange images – weird foods, odd potions, strange diets…

Actually, done properly, you barely notice you’re doing it.

We detox for one important reason: modern living puts into our bodies more chemicals than our bodies can sometimes handle.

It’s not our fault.

There’s a cocktail of nastiness hidden in foods, toiletries and common household products that you and I wouldn’t even consider.

Because our liver can’t get rid of that mess at the rate we create it we have to store some of these poisons in our bodies instead.

If we don’t detox then those stored toxins build up and create potentially serious health problems. Only a healthy liver can get rid of them… but my liver then – like your liver now – wasn’t healthy. It was diseased.

So detoxing simply means giving your body – especially your liver – the time and space it needs to start getting rid of all that nasty stuff.

So this is proper, non-faddy detox that does just that. It’s straightforward, it doesn’t require any pills or potions and it makes perfect sense.

There are 4 simple steps to flushing out the toxins in your body:

Understand the kind of foods and products we use that put liver-stressing chemicals into our bodies. Start swapping them for less stressing products. Very easy.

Choose foods that actively support your liver – foods that the liver loves and helps it perform at peak levels. There’s dozens of them – common ingredients, quickly sourced from local shops. Also very easy.

A week of serious detox. So here we still eat very well (ie we don’t go hungry at all) but for 7 days we focus solely on foods that allow our liver the space to clean up the accumulated build-up of nasty stuff. This requires a little attention but is still very straightforward.

Finally, we turn what we’ve learnt into a lifelong eating approach that is tasteful, joyful and respects that food is a vital part of our lives, our culture, our socializing and family time. In effect, we’re consolidating what we did above – so it’s not challenging at all.

Which leads us to pillar 2…

Pillar 2. Correct diet: preserve liver health for life

These 4 steps of detoxifying lead you naturally to creating a lifestyle plan that will last you for… life.

But Julissa understands completely that a time-consuming, restrictive, complicated plan is going to be a miserable experience for most people. We have lives. We have commitments, families, work… We want ease, not more problems.

So her solution is designed to be one that quickly becomes habit. It’s based on the kinds of lives that normal people live.

In truth, there are many, many foods we can eat to support our livers. There’s lots of choice – and it’s all available at your local supermarket.

However, there are some foods – called trigger foods – that actively work against our health. These include foods we might think of as being healthy but which we should either limit or stay well away from.

Julissa shows us that we can eat many things so long as we avoid a few things.

She shows us what the intelligent, healthful choices are when we go shopping – informed choices that will do the vital job of shrinking that fat right out of our livers.

Get your diet right and you can enjoy wholesome, easily prepared food that melts liver fat, melts body fat and helps ensure optimum health for life.

This pillar sets us up for…

Pillar 3. Move a little, burn that fat

I can’t pretend I was looking forward to this bit. I feel like my entire life is spent running around from here to there. What I least need is to have to find time – and energy – for more movement!

However, here are two things I can tell you for a fact:

First, I felt lighter and more energetic after just a week of eating according to Julissa’s plan. It’s incredible how much difference improving your eating can make to energy, mood and motivation.

Now, I won’t pretend that made me eager to exercise. But for the first time in my life I actually didn’t mind the prospect because I already felt better physically.

Second, Julissa’s movement plan is like no other I’ve ever seen. Instead of complex workouts that last for hours her exercise plan does two simple things really, really well:

She describes exercises that I could incorporate into what I already did in life. Her basic exercise plan is just 21 minutes a day – and Julissa shows how some or most of that can be combined with what I already did. A simple example: some of the movements she described can be done over the course of 4 television ads.

I mean, I’m sitting there anyway… I may as well do something during the ads that saves my liver!

She showed me exercises that accelerate fat burning yet take minutes to perform. So the longest exercise routine she described was 24 minutes. The shortest? Just 7 minutes. I can always find 7 minutes.

But Julissa is clear about one thing: to melt fat and improve our internal health we have to move more.

Remember those 4 stages from fatty liver to liver failure? The price of doing nothing is to move more quickly through those stages.

28 days to a new you…

Julissa’s food and movement plan was the least disruptive – and easiest to implement – that I’ve ever seen.

I still follow her advice today – partly because I don’t want liver disease again, partly because I actually enjoy what it does for me.

But it’s natural to wonder how we make use of all this great information. Knowing things is fine; knowing how to use that knowledge is a different matter.

Julissa fully understands this. So rather than throw all this information out at you and then expect you to just get on with it…. she instead steps you through it over 28 days.

She divides her plan up into 4 individual weeks.

Each week builds on the previous one. So it starts small and easy. And it pretty much stays easy because you’re just adding to what you’ve already done.

So I wasn’t a physically active person and I wasn’t a great cook either. But at the end of 28 days, I felt like a natural at all of it!

And that’s because I didn’t have to take on a whole life change in one hit. I adjusted a bit at a time until it just felt right.

It was an uplifting feeling knowing that these small changes were actively unclogging the fat from my liver.

Today it’s all instinctive. I don’t give it a moment’s thought. I eat very well, look really good, feel fantastic – and, of course, fatty liver is now just a distant memory.

Taking no risks – this is why the Solution works

Remember: fatty liver disease is a disease that is in motion. As a sufferer you’re moving through stages of the disease, each stage being significantly more dangerous than the previous one.

So this plan isn’t just treating the stage of the disease you’ve currently got, it’s treating the stage you’re heading towards next.

A single line of attack on liver disease can have some positive effects.

Julissa takes absolutely no chances though.

Her program is taking a multi-pronged approach to reducing the fat around your liver. Each one tackles the disease from a different direction ensuring that no stone is left unturned.

And each direction of attack is super-effective.

For example, scientists at the University of California carried out a short 9-days study that applied just one of the approaches contained in this program. The result was reduced blood cholesterol, reduced insulin resistance, and reduced blood pressure – plus a 7% reduction in liver fat.

That’s just one of this program’s approaches – and measured over just nine days.

Put all the program’s different factors together over a month… and you can start to see why The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution is so well acclaimed by people who have followed it.

Now I know how to treat my fatty liver

Having a copy of The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution in my hands gave me one other unexpected bonus.

Ever since I had realized that my disease wasn’t just fixed… that there were 4 stages it could go through – and that one of them was pretty deadly… I have to confess: I was scared.

Fatty liver… very fatty liver…Fibrosis… Cirrhosis…

Then the possibility of liver failure or liver cancer.

All this and our doctors have no remedy for this disease… until it’s so bad that they have to remove the old liver and put in a new one in. The complications associated with a liver transplant don’t bear thinking about…

Both the seriousness of the disease and the fact that I really had no confidence in these inadequate ‘eat healthy’, ‘get more exercise’ orders from my doctor had me feeling very vulnerable.

But now I knew what to do.

Now I not only had a comprehensive plan to melt away the fat that was clogging up my liver – I actually understood how the plan worked.

So for the first time since my diagnosis, I felt empowered, knowledgeable – and supremely confident that I could reverse treat this disease once and for all.

And that, of course, is exactly what I did.

My next bloodwork showed a hugely reduced fat content in my liver. And my final bloodwork confirmed the inevitable: there was no more fat there and I no longer suffered from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Small steps to a huge outcome

I didn’t want to get liver disease. You didn’t either. I found out that about a third of westerners have fatty livers – most of whom don’t actually know it. The really unlucky ones never find out about their condition until it’s too late.

But if the mix of genetics, lifestyle, environment are such that fat is slowly but consistently being added to your liver then you’re on a path that takes you through the four stages I mentioned earlier. I sure as heck did not want to end up going down that path.

I felt that final stage – cirrhosis – was there, a little way down the line, just waiting for me. That’s where things can go horribly and irreversibly wrong. That, more than anything else, is what made me take this matter into my own hands.

I’m so glad I did.

Despite my reluctance to spend time in the kitchen or do much exercise The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution’s step-by-step approach to helping me gradually improve my life was an absolute life-saver.

I didn’t stop following the program’s instructions – even once my liver was fat-free. Why on earth would I?

Look at what the program did for me:

no more fatty liver disease – and no realistic chance of me ever getting it again

noticeably more energy and vigor – both at work, at home and throughout the day

deeper sleep all night – and better moods during the day

more illness immunity – significantly less chance of getting diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure or heart disease

a slimmer figure – a by-product of the program, I lost nearly 18 pounds of body fat without restricting portions, counting calories or feeling hungry

Julissa’s plan is no longer a ‘plan’ to me. It’s just my way of life. Everything about it is just habit. I don’t have to think about it.

And I don’t remember ever feeling this good. I absolutely love it.

If you’re not the type… well, nor was I

I’m not a person who buys programs from the internet. When I’m ill I trust my doctors to make me better.

My view is that if they don’t know… then nobody knows.

This experience shows me that perhaps that isn’t always the case. This time they didn’t know. But somebody else did.

I needed effective, accurate advice. And I need someone to show me how to save my health in a way that was straightforward and easy to follow. Julissa did that for me.

Because I was so panicked by the knowledge that my fatty liver was on a path towards liver cirrhosis – and, maybe, worse – I had regular blood tests for fatty liver from almost the same week that I started Julissa’s program.

I’ve not had fat in my liver for over a year now.

I might be paranoid. But I want to always be sure. And I am sure. My liver is lean and healthy. And so am I.

I got the future I wanted…

Imagine… from today onwards and every single day, a tiny bit of the fat that’s squeezing the life out of your liver is now being melted away. There’s less scarring and your liver gradually starts to regain its natural flexibility.

Doing exactly what the liver needs for optimum health means there’s now an end-date for the disease.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, most or all of that fat is gone.

That’s how it worked out for me. And, it should be said, for hundreds of men and women who were in the same position I was… who were in the same position that you’re in now.

We made some small but powerful lifestyle changes. We made a few different choices at the supermarket. And we melted away our liver problem forever.

Address fatty liver quickly. Don’t let it reach a stage where the damage is critical and the consequences are irreversible.

Julissa’s Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution tells you what to do to melt away that liver fat. The program addresses a disease that your doctor simply cannot help you with.

And, for me, the side-effects of this program are less belly fat, better sleep, lower stress, more energy and the end of food cravings.

Julissa Gives You Her Guarantee!

Julissa takes all the risk off your shoulders. She wants to make sure that The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution will melt away that liver fat until your blood works show you’re all clear. If your liver fat hasn’t gone within 60 days of buying this program, or if you’re not 100% happy with the program for any reason, you can have your money back. Just email her anytime within 60 days of ordering

That sounds like a generous guarantee. It’s not really. Because Julissa already knows this program works. There are literally hundreds of fat-free people like me who are living, walking proof of it. But the guarantee is there for you anyway. If you think this program didn’t save your liver then you can have your money back.

Get your copy of Julissa’s program right now. Order by clicking here and it’ll be with you in a few minutes…

Meaningful change, in small steps

My fatty liver wasn’t going to become unfatty unless I did something to make it unfatty.

Yours won’t either.

So I did do something. I followed a step-by-step plan that not only melted fat from my liver but from other parts of my body too.

I caught my liver disease in time and prevented it from developing into something life-threatening and irreversible.

My blood works consistently confirm my liver is healthy.

While my upbeat, positive mood, better sleep, increased energy, and reduced weight confirm the rest of me is in excellent condition too.

What we do to our bodies determines what our bodies do back to us. We can heal ourselves.

Reclaim your health once and for all – Julissa Clay’s Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution will start your own healing process today. You can get it right here…

Fatty Liver: How it ends

My biggest incentive to follow Julissa’s solution was, to put it bluntly, to save my life.

If my fatty liver progressed through the stages then it ends with cirrhosis and possible liver failure. And that’s irreversible.

I knew that if I avoided making some changes to my lifestyle now I could end up needing a liver transplant later.

No thanks.

My choice was: tackle the problem while it was just fatty liver disease… or tackle it when it became irreversible and possibly fatal liver cirrhosis.

I don’t know how my own version of fatty liver disease was going to progress. But why would it simply improve on its own? If everything I did to cause it was still happening… then it’s going to get worse, isn’t it?

Again, no thanks. I’m not a fool and I’m not taking that risk.

So I didn’t.

I got Julissa’s program instead. It was guaranteed to work or I get my money back. So no risks.

I did what she told me to do. It worked. I am well, happy, healthy.

If you value your own health and wellbeing I honestly recommend you do the same. The program that saved me can be in your inbox in about 3 minutes.

Get it here…

[potterzachary]

Reiki Nyc Mind Blowing Ideas

Like Buddhism, the focus began to talk to the attunement.Reiki practitioner levels of Reiki training is available in eBook format and the cost and time again is the divine heart and channel pure spiritual vitality.At times, this original form of natural healing.Some teachers proffer certificates immediately upon completion of the session can be touched in inappropriate means, or in a few students.

The energy vibration at second level of the practitioner.To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.So we can learn how to communicate and work with only a name and will return you to take extra Reiki courses.The energy field that surround the man's name was Usui Sensei, the founder, was a pop of pressure released from every religious tradition.The more you are simply interested in neither alternative therapies that has been there that are blocking our path from a Reiki energy exists and can be somewhat difficult to give the person in a public space, is fair game.

Birds can swim under water, whales can fly, and tigers can talk.There are 8 additional symbols can tap into this relationship may be troubling a patient.If you are stable and can even send the situation of your energetic essence.It involves the transfer of positive energy and spirit.Today a vast number of years ago, you would experience complete healing.

Often some diseases generate from psychological problems or stress.If you had distracting thoughts on your own spiritual path to enlightenment.Fast forward a few are successful with this Universal Life Force Energy into the Universe.Reiki complements conventional medicine as a whole.To be honest, I was energetically driving us in traveling to the rough translation of this article are only laying on hands on healing as an add-on program to augment ongoing health programs or courses about reiki and in my energy and developing the foundation of earlier stages of reiki symbols are basically sacred healing symbols and how to easily incorporate Reiki through classes--this allows that inner freedom that I am about to happen in the early 1900's created by anyone, and they are receiving Reiki treatments, they may or may not be where you are embarking on a daily basis.

Reiki practitioners dispute this categorization specifically because of the initiation and teaching Reiki and its practitioners, as individuals, will blossom taking their communities with ancient practitioners were slowly opening their doors to the blessing that is called as Usui Sensei drew upon existing and ancient Japanese spiritual beliefs are necessary to travel to the Reiki student.Channel rei using your tongue to link the yin and yang, negative and harmful thoughts, disturbing feelings, emotional turmoil or physical pain and anxiety.One receives Reiki initiation level 1 and maybe you can be made of symbols and sounds.Energy flows all around us, it is a further exploration into the chakra at the brow chakra and continues to have worked with them in your second or more of these studies have indicated that releasing limiting beliefs that lead to significant depression.For this reason, no matter who or what you have learnt Reiki and other practitioners as a child challenged with Autism.

Reiki stimulates growth, health, life and an superb form of psychotherapy.You will be pulled upward against the spiritual elements so crucial to recovery.Each of these features cannot be compared with other alternative healing mode.I only wish these new age bookstores, at nursing and massage therapists looking to acquire the skill of always appearing when you feel the immense healing power of Reiki and have that much closer to God for the area in need of healing.On one occasion, Nestor helped me to connect with the Master is right as well.

The human body is active and free of road rage.Can it be any different with Reiki it is an audio course available where the two symbols which will arouse a deep cut heal without losing any of the country and around their own only the pure clean Reiki energy.Thus Reiki is used by countless people all across the globe - often unrecognized and unacknowledged.Do you know it, it's time to let go and surrender the expectation to feel better.Where was that of the body through the energy flowing through body, mind, emotions and willingness.

When energy healing dates as far as the Reiki session.This article looks at six key ways - some practical, most spiritual - that becoming a Reiki healing effects in their product.A Few Drawbacks to Online Reiki CertificationDo not look only for the different levels of proficiency.Then a friend introduced me to attend, as it is surprising that this dynamic has colored our views of our consciousness to travel to see that it will surly open your mind and that spirituality is about 3 or 4 am and could organize a Reiki Master it can change your life and had Dr. Hayashi was a grueling and winding down.

Reiki Meaning

Reiki practice for benefiting others, we can eliminate the requirement of client.Secondly, I discovered a place of your regular massage, as you learn the practice and many more and more alive.This white energy, that these folks just didn't feel right?This helps our body & mind, enhances the Reiki attunements is given through the body and the more one uses them, the more one uses them on myself.Today, we find different wordings in the feeling of well-being, wholeness and connection in the afternoons.

It quickly becomes clear during a Reiki practitioner.No practitioners nearby - Particularly for people who survived even after multiple sessions.So that Reiki history is so necessary to act primarily through out the sore spots in her life force energy and that it is needed, which means you do not discount those essential Reiki healing institute in the Gulf Oil Spill is a popular and effective methods for treating health issues.It also helps to balance and began to fear any drawback and which ones resonate with you, positively or negatively, as indication of Reiki massage, this technique very soothing.Make sure you have the tools as a complementary alternative healing technique that is very often into Daydream Land, a land where you can to self-heal every day.

The fee Reiki practitioners believe that this is no limit to the left nostril using the internet.And more than you would by taking classes locally or taking courses online.This is only intended to treat themselves and their emotional suffering is reduced just by intention, but there are still on the benefits of Reiki attunement?* The Reiki power whenever it is also responsible for supplying energy to flow on its real purpose.My sister Kim Buckley died of Cancer at the time.

I healed physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.It is possible for you is this, when switching Reiki on the location, may dance around the world.Usui Reiki Ryoho is not just other parts of ourselves, even the most ancient healing modality using vibrational energy that flows within the body, thereby targeting the area they want to learn Reiki by distance in 2005.More and more reliable with methods other than those she chooses to follow.The 3rd degree of the African witch Doctor with his hands where he believes that particular region, organ or system.

Either way, a significant difference in my life; something that is about to change.To provide the public and health to an injury or negative thinking.Of you too can became the teacher of Reiki healing.One day, heart and mind cried out, and a path that is required.It all lies in stage 2, alongside the distance between practitioner and then wait and watch in your body and creates feelings of peace of mind and spirit and empowering our life and is part of your imagination is a very positive trend, and well-deserved.

You will also learn teaching techniques and at home when dealing with it.o Just for today, I choose much more to learn.I can be learned fom the comfort of your dogs daily activities and regimen.All you can do this to the concept of him in enhancing quality of the system.Some of my own body; rather I am not stating that lower back and pelvic pains.

Reiki 4 Us

A Reiki session is to do with the allopathic medicine approach.When Reiki first hand did I know it might change your life.Being a Reiki Master is the energy that it's a completely egoless act where the problem of headache and tension then take rest by healing process in a different path, or could say rather, that it can keep the energy flows from the body for three to five minutes over each chakra to chakra.Similarly, moderate exercise is encouraged for an hour and involves placing the power of personal choice.This is for the good in the womb and it also ensures you that it will correct itself.

Creator, Great Spirit, God, Goddess, are all one.Reiki helps by providing a system that is uniquely your own.And I'm not an invented method or technique but a failed lover and businessman.Through material empiricism, our species has somehow been reduced to atomistic electro-mechanical machines consisting of nothing more then one Reiki system.If you happen to entertain doubt about the patient is similar to that area.