Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Readers know I've had a stressful 18 months: family problems, a root canal that took three rounds of antibiotics to clear up, a move across the country, and a job change. My job back in Denver saw me going at ramming speed, spending two hours a day commuting, and dealing with a couple of vile coworkers. House cleaning and repairs took up my weekends and evenings for a few months, my realtor wildly overpriced my house, and I stepped on a nail a few days before I moved. I ate a lot of take-out while my house was for sale and figured I'd get back on track when I got to Indiana. It's taken five months to get back to normal. My stomach and skin were a mess from the antibiotics--I had cystic acne and just thinking about eating a lot of fat turned my stomach. I couldn't stand for long without a backache. I was so exhausted when I got here that it was a few months before I felt like working full-time again. Probiotics really helped my skin and stomach. I started taking two

Funny stuff! Warning: the video contains some four-letter words.

Of all the research I did before moving to Indianapolis from Denver (looking at crime maps, flood maps, demographics by neighborhood, tax rates, growth policies, local news, and Google street view over time), none of it suggested I'd have to try to shop in a food desert. Not even when I came here on reconnaissance and shopped at the co-op in the area I was planning to move to did I realize I was in the middle of a food desert . That's right--you can have a grocery store in the middle of a food desert. Here are some groceries I bought at Pogue's Run, a co-op in the food desert just above the word "Indianapolis" in the map in the link above. Purchased in a food desert: free range eggs, coconut milk, fresh produce, beef and raw cheese from grass-fed cows, and bacon and lard from pastured pigs. I couldn't find real lard even back in trendy, crowded, overpriced Denver. The animal products are all from here in Indiana. Would that everyone lived in such a desert

I knew last summer when I saw the headline that there had to be a new depression medication out. How? The news was " All Americans Should be Screened for Depression. "(1) That's a good idea because, as you know, depression is a menace, affecting tens of millions and leaving many of its victims tired, overweight, prone to heart disease, impotent, blind, and--wait, I'm thinking of diabetes. It might make sense to screen everyone for diabetes. No, the reason for screening everyone for depression, I figured, was that there was a new drug someone was looking to peddle. Sure enough, the FDA approved a depression drug a few weeks earlier. (2) Some doctors are already screening patients--like me--for depression during routine office visits. My invoice for being seen for a puncture wound included "brief behavioral assessment," which I didn't remember getting. When I called the office about it, they said they gave everyone that assessment through a questionnair