Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The first rule for following a low-carb diet when going to luncheons and other group outings is to assume there will be nothing there that you can eat. You'll usually be right and you'll come prepared. If it's a breakfast, eat before you go. If it's a luncheon, eat afterwards. Check the menu first if it's at a restaurant. Most restaurants can offer something low-carb, but my carb-loving coworkers have a way of picking places and selecting buffets where there's absolutely nothing I can eat. (I'm carb intolerant and allergic to wheat.) Salad doesn't count as a meal. If I were more of a smart-aleck, I'd ask people who suggest salad if that's what they normally have for lunch and if so, whether they don't get hungry until dinner. It's a problem when the meal is the entire point of the gathering or it comes in the middle of an event. This came up today--the buffet at the staff meeting had pasta, meatballs and salad. And here I thought the...

The roaming pain should have been my first clue that my mouth wasn't hurting from newly replaced fillings. As soon as I realized it was TMJ pain, I followed advice from old TV ads for pain pills: "Take at the first sign of pain." They were right--nip it in the bud and tension can't turn into spasms, which turn into pain, which turns into more tension. All I've taken is aspirin and ibuprofin. I've also avoided long practice sessions playing the recorder. (I could say I'm a purist about playing baroque music, but truth to tell, a clarinet is really hard to play. I've tried.) I also avoid coffee when it bothers me, which is as intermittent as my TMJ pain. My parents are still roped in red tape and I have nothing but nail clippers and a screwdriver. Since their credit union wouldn't accept their power of attorney, I whipped up a new one and brought a notary public to their nursing home. Even with some practice, my mother couldn't drive her new...

How did things go so far downhill so fast? A month ago, I wasn't thinking about my parents going to a nursing home and selling almost all their belongings. But kidney failure put my mother in the hospital and an accident put my father there, too, a few weeks ago. They've since improved and now they're both at a rehab center. Their dog has moved in with me. Mom and Dad were in the same room, but they had to move my father because he called out for my mother all night and she couldn't get any sleep. Now he calls out to her from the room across the hall. He stops if I'm there--he calls out for me instead. At least my mother has the room to herself so she can learn to drive her new wheelchair, the one I found on Craigslist and bought from a guy at a storage unit way out in Longmont. When Mom said she found it hard to control, I bought a new joystick for it off Ebay. Ebay wouldn't take my credit card--it said it had expired. It hadn't. The seller's web...

I'll admit it: even though my dietary requirements include organ meat, it was a chore to eat it...and you know what happens when that's the case. I ended up eating Atkins bars instead of liver. Partly, I've been too busy the past few weeks to eat many home-cooked meals, but mostly, there are a lot of things--even on Atkins induction--that I'd rather eat than liver. Last Saturday, needing some wind in my sails after a few weeks of family emergencies, uncluttering my parents' house with a room temperature of 85 degrees, and being too wound up to get much sleep, I checked out a book called Freakin' Fabulous by Clinton Kelly from  What Not to Wear and The Chew. Just looking at the pictures at red lights on the drive home inspired me to stop at the store--the grocery store. I knew Kelly was a stylist, but didn't know he could cook, too. He's quite the meat eater--his good looks attest to that. That, and it sounds like he eats little or no junk food. I ...

Newbies in the low-carb and paleo community often say, "the diet is great, but I still have problems eating (fill in the blank). What should I do?" Maybe they're too young to remember a certain old joke. A man goes to see his doctor and says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." (Picture the patient holding his arm in odd way.) "What should I do?" The doctor says, "Stop holding your arm that way." This old joke now represents a radical idea. If you have trouble eating something, then stop eating it. Or eat smaller amounts of it if the smaller amount doesn't give you problems and you can stop yourself at a little bit. I have FODMAPs problems--polyols in particular. I can't eat more than a strawberry a day or a few spoonfuls of lemon juice without getting an upset stomach and acid reflux. Too much alcohol sugar gives me gas. I could try probiotics, resistant starch, fermented foods and the other latest things that purportedly heal ...

This week has found me at a beautiful assisted living home, at the emergency room, and then at a shady-looking storage unit on the outskirts of Longmont to meet a stranger. First, though, the week started with my doing some housecleaning at my parents' place. I cleaned out magazines, catalogs, junk mail, and other old papers--some 15 trash bags full. I found a vacuum cleaner, a printer, a tub of cassettes, family photos, old hunting and fishing licenses, a letter of condolence from my grandparents on the death of my brother Marvin, a letter from someone telling my parents to "kiss the baby" (me), and a bunch of unpaid bills. My parents' assistant and I organized and boxed up a lot of the stuff to get it ready for an estate sale. The room we worked in is beginning to look like a room. Yes--this was all in one room. It's the worst room, but there are several more to go. Monday, a woman who runs several assisted living homes came by, interviewed Dad, and took me...

Wouldn't it be great to think, picture and believe your way to a wonderful life? Being a science geek, it's easy to forget how popular that belief is, even among educated people. Call it The Secret, the law of attraction, positive thinking, or affirmations. I call it wishing for a no-effort solution; Richard Rumelt describes it aptly in Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: But I do know that believing that rays come out of your head and change the physical world, and that by thinking only of success you can become a success, are forms of psychosis and cannot be recommended as approaches to management or strategy....Nevertheless, the doctrine that one can impose one's visions and desires on the world by the force of thought alone retains a powerful appeal to many people.  This hit home lately because my mother is in the hospital and I have to take time off from work to be with my father since my nephew works afternoons and nights. My parents have an assistant and she's do...